We Share Some History, This Town & I

Thus spoke Don Walker in his Cold Chisel song Flame Trees, which prior to me becoming interested in Edward, was pretty well the sum of my knowledge about Grafton. Walker spent time here as a child and wrote the song about his memories of the town. It's better known for it's jacaranda trees but I guess that didn't scan as well. (As a side note, I've long thought that Don Walker has not received sufficient acclaim in his role as the Banjo Patterson of the latter end of the 20th century. His lyrics are the bush poetry of those times, telling very Australian stories of ordinary lives. Well done Don.)

Gwydir Hwy at Heffron Lookout, overlooking Mann River a tributary of the Clarence.

We arrived here mid-week, driving down the incredibly scenic (it has world heritage listing apparently) Gwydir Hwy through the Gibralter Range & Washpool National Parks.

We're staying for the next month or so at the Gateway Caravan Park on the northern outskirts of town. Grafton is one of the most well treed places I've ever been with jacarandas, flame trees, huge Australian figs, palm trees and many more. There are also lush manicured gardens everywhere and this caravan park is no exception. Built around a central lillypond it's very reasonable at $22/night.

The lillypond at the Gateway Village. There's a telly in the gazebo where I froze last night watching Richmond destroy the Dockers hopes of 10 wins in a row!

Our "camp" at the Gateway. Bet it beats Edward's overnight camps.

It is also part park home park and I can only assume the price structure is to get the oldies in so they can be tempted by the joys of park living. With a swimming pool, tennis courts (don't even play tennis) and immaculate amenities block, kitchen, BBQ etc I'm tempted myself. Trish is currently off at Bingo in the recreation room so once she's addicted to that, we might move in. The only disconcerting note is the neat and politely worded signs around the place warning of "instant dismissal" (I think they mean eviction) for various offences against park policy. (I hope sarcastic blogging isn't one of those offences because I really do like the place.) Still it's given me a new lexicon and I now threaten Trish with "instant dismissal' if she does anything that annoys me.

An incredible avenue of fig trees in Breimba St, Grafton.

Grafton at just under 20,000 people is a little smaller than Albany but what it does share with us is an absence of traffic lights and a plethora of roundabouts in their place, plus no paid parking.  I could love the town for this alone. Perhaps we should develop a sister city relationship between the two places!

On arrival in town I visited the Clarence River Historical Society HQ and museum to start doing some local research. When I explained what I am doing I was very warmly received, being told several times "you're important". Made me feel like royalty.

Schaeffer House, c1900. 

We also visited the Grafton Regional Art Gallery because they currently have an exhibition of 1870's photo's by John William Lindt of Aboriginal residents of the Clarence Valley. The Gallery staff were also very helpful when I explained my project and have given me contact details of people in the local Original Australian community who may be able to help me locate stories about Ogilvie and Tindal and perhaps descendants of either.

Prentice House, c1880, a former Drs house bequeathed to the city to become its art gallery.

When Edward first arrived on the Clarence, Grafton was little more than a camp at South Grafton and it doesn't seem that there was much more when he left on his trip in 1854. I can only find a few buildings in town that pre-date 1860 at this stage. It did grow hugely during the years after his return although I gather that there was no love lost between him and the city fathers here. Edward favoured the town of Lawrence about 30kms downriver so I will visit there soon.

The Anglican Deanery & Parish Office which are about the only buildings I could find in town that pre-date 1860.

Our First Taste of Family

Inverell is an attractive town but I was keen to get to Glen Innes 70km further on where our first family connections begin. Inverell and Glen Innes both have attractive and well preserved late Victorian/Edwardian streetscapes and I'm starting to think I may have to rethink describing Stirling Tce as one of the best preserved examples of same. Perhaps best in WA.

We stayed at the Poplars Caravan Park in Glen Innes which I was moved to review on TripAdvisor as the best value in 5000kms because it is! Lovely spot despite the fact that it got down to -6C on our second night here (yes that's a minus sign) and the water in our van hose froze causing the hose coupling to pop open with the pressure.

Sorry. This photo should be below the one of the Tindal family but sometimes this blog has a mind of its own. It insisted it should be here! It's in the beautiful garden at Virginia/Tatiara.

I knew that dad's maternal grandfather, John Travers Tindal and his wife Mary, who was Edward Ogilvie's eldest daughter, had lived here just before John died in 1926, on a property called Tatiara. I inquired at the local historical society about the location of Tatiara and was told by the lady there that it was now called Virginia and she gave me the location. However, she said a family member is very unwell and said that while it should be ok to drive past, she asked me to not call in as it is a difficult time for them.

John, Mary & Dorothy Tindal in the gardens at Tatiara in 1922. Relatives & friends may be struck by John and Mary's resemblence to current family members! John was 62, only 2 years older than me when this was taken.

Again, this should be below the 1922 photo of the house but it didn't want to. It shows the same side as the older picture.

Virginia today, from the front. 

We went up there today and while I was taking some photos across the paddocks from the road, a charming lady named Rose, who was checking cattle on a quad bike, came across to ask what we were doing. When I explained, she said that it was her family property and that her sister Margaret,who lives in the old house is very interested in the property's history and probably would welcome a visit despite her husband's illness. She rang her to check and we were invited to come up.

Tatiara in 1922. Today the trees are much bigger obscuring this view but the house is little different (although lovingly preserved). Both these 1922 pictures are by photographer Michael Terry from a large collection of his in the National Library. 

Margaret proved just as charming as her sister and showed us around the house which was built in 1885. It's timber and iron with some magnificent polished cedar doors and paneling and many of the original ripple glass window panes. Her grandparents, Harold & Beatrice Mott bought it from the Tindals just before John died in 1926 and the Mott family have owned it ever since. The original Tatiara property was about 300 acres and the Motts also purchased the larger Virginia block over the road, combining both properties under that name.

After visiting Tatiara/Virginia, we took a circuit drive up to Emmaville which has a fascinating local museum, and then across to Deepwater which has another facility, essential to any good tourist destination, a great pie shop!

5000 kms From Home

Leaving Moree the land is still fairly flat but after about 50kms or so it starts to rise and become more heavily timbered. Just into the hills you come to Warialda which is notable for two things. Firstly the quality of the homemade Choc & Nut Biscuits sold by the lovely ladies at the Carinda House Cultural Centre (an old house in the centre of town that is also a museum and craft shop) and secondly the enthusiasm of the Visitor Centre staffer who came to town 27 years ago as a young teacher and never left.

Cranky Rock reserve, a lovely picnic spot just out of Warialda.

I mentioned to this lady that we had been to the Reconciliation Dinner in Moree the previous night and that prompted her to tell me that the Myall Creek Massacre wasn't far from Warialda. I had thought it was further south so hadn't been looking out for it but it was a place I wanted to visit. Without this lady's thoughtfulness we might have missed it.

Myall Creek is in a beautiful valley that belies its awful past. The massacre site has a short walk with interpretive signs telling the story of the massacre. It was an important event in that even in those days society was split into two types of people, those who believed we should get on with the Australians and those who thought the solution was to get rid of them. According to Squatter's Castle, the Ogilvie family were firmly in the former camp, Myall Creek split the colony open because a number of participants in the massacre were prosecuted and 7 hanged and there were those both for and against this prosecution. After that it seems that the will to prevent such incidents evaporated because there were few prosecutions of perpetrators of later massacres. The last recorded massacre took place in the Kimberleys in 1927, ten years after we waged war on Germany, in part because they were considered more barbaric than us!

I often think that Australia could be an even better place than it is, had the good guys persevered. The Barkers and Collies (and I hope - the Tindals, Ogilvies & Travers - more about that later). The ones who advocated entering into Aboriginal lands peacefully and politely, recognising their prior ownership and being prepared to gain some understanding of their culture and laws and work with that. For their part the Australians were usually quite affable towards polite visitors and welcomed them for their technology (look at Mokare)so had we been prepared to do it nicely, we could've been assimilated into the country and now reap the benefits of both cultures.

Sadly though we have often been dominated by the other mob. The ones who think that the best way to solve a problem is with arrogance and aggression. They're still at it today. (Incidentally, the last visitor in the book at Myall Creek before us was Barnaby Joyce, who had been there the previous day. Not drawing any conclusions mind you. Just saying.)

From Myall Creek we went on and spent the night at a campsite at Compton Dam which is probably lovely when it has some water in it. At the moment it doesn't really although it was still a nice spot. Next morning we headed into Inverell and a few kilometres short of there we ticked over 5000kms since leaving home.

Out at the Back of Bourke

Where the mulga paddocks are wild and wide
That's where the pick of the stockmen ride
Out at the back of Bourke!
Thus wrote Will Ogilvie, one of the lesser bush poets, in 1890, presumably giving rise to the now famous expression meaning a long way from anywhere. And it is. Even now.

I consulted Professor Google to see if Will is a relation but it appears he is not. He was born in Scotland and came to Australia in the late 1800s. Henry Lawson also spent time in Bourke as well as Albany so we now have that in common. I canoed the Darling the 7kms or so from Kidman's Camp in North Bourke where we stayed, down to the Bourke Wharf. As a West Australian I find it hard to get my head round a river that must be a thousand kilometres or more from the coast and is fresh, deep and has a discernible flow. Apart from the numerous Pelicans (again thousands of kms from the sea) and Major Mitchell cockies, I had it to myself. It would make a great trip to follow it down to the ocean but not this time.

At th bottom of the Bourke Wharf, which gives you some idea of how much higher the water can get.

From Bourke we headed down to Brewarrina, another of NSW's sad towns with little to recommend it apart from the ancient Aboriginal fish traps. It didn't look like it had ever amounted to much.

Walgett too is not much chop. The fact that its tourist literature makes much of the fact that it is Australia's chick pea capital is some indication of what it offers as a tourist destination, Sadly its in drought at the moment so not even the chick peas are providing much solace to the residents. We camped overnight at the Telleraga Rest Stop just west of Moree.

The Brewarrina Fish Traps. The Pelicans seem to think they were constructed for their benefit.

Moree is a place that deserves more recognition. All I knew about it was that it was infamous for having its swimming pool busted open for black kids by the Freedom Riders in 1965. Trish spotted an ad in the local paper for their Reconciliation Week Awards & Dinner and as we usually attend Albanys, we bought tickets. (When we travel we often try and attend community functions, quiz nights etc, because its a great way to get a feel for the community.) It was a great night. They've come a long way in 50 years

One of Moree's amazing Art Deco buildings. 

Moree is an attractive town. After a major fire in the 1920s, most of the central town was rebuilt with some amazing Art Deco and Arts & Crafts buildings. As a result the town equals Napier in NZ which is known worldwide for its Art Deco. I googled "art deco towns australia" but it didn't get a mention. Then I tried "Moree" and got an article from the Sydney Morning Herald describing it as the "crime capital of NSW" but you don't get that feeling from the town. It has none of the bars and shutters that a lot of the other towns do. Maybe that journo grew up here and has an axe to grind?Moree's friendly lady Mayor was at the Reconciliation Dinner and I told her how impressed we are.

Something else I didn't know about Moree is that it has artesian spa pools. There was one in the Mehi River Caravan Park which we took advantage of. The Park was on the river so I also went for a canoe there. Its a very pretty river with weeping willows, honeysuckle, some of the biggest castor oil plants I've seen and other deciduous trees turning red and orange, lining the banks. Ok so they're all weeds but it was purty. The overstory is still river gums with Sulphur Crested Cockatoos which means it still has a bush feel.

Moree's Imperial Hotel which appears to give Cobar's Great Western a run for its money in the iron lace stakes.

The Mehi River appears to be an anabranch of the larger Gwydir, which as far as I can see flows into the Barwon, which flows into the Darling, which of course eventually flows into the Murray. I can't believe how big this river system is!

Canoeing the Mehi River. Note pretty weeds - none of them blackberries!

I understand now too why a lot of eastern states visitors to Albany comment on how windy it is. Living in Albany I only think its windy if its blowing a gale but there is always some background wind. I've noticed on my canoe jaunts here that often there is a complete absence of wind. Incredibly peaceful.

A Bloody Big Country

Coming out of Broken Hill it's desert scrub country. As I drive through it I am eternally grateful for the motor car. It seems that you just drive and drive and drive and I can't help but think of people like Edward and others who made their way across it on foot, horseback, by camel or bullock train. Not only were they faced with slowly trekking mile after mile but they did so without the insulation a car gives you from weather extremes, insects and dust.

Somewhere along the road from Broken Hill to Cobar, I can't remember where, a local installation artist or artists has constructed a TV tree, a hard hat tree, a bra tree, a barbie doll tree and several other trees festooned with such objects. For several kilometres it breaks the monotony. Thanks guys.

Wilcannia lives up to it's reputation as one of the sad towns of outback NSW. It's sandstone public buildings speak of better days when it was at one point the 3rd largest port on tonnages shipped in Australia. Now everything that isn't closed and abandoned, has barred and shuttered windows and there is an air of lethargy about the whole town. The only sign of life was the local Indigenous Radio Station which was blasting out country music to the main street. Out front were two smiling local trannies and despite it being a radio station I don't mean old fashioned portable radios.

I called into the Police Station to check if the road up the Darling to Bourke was sealed. The Station, in one of those fine old sandstone buildings, has a formidable modern steel mesh door and I got the impression it was not designed so much to keep prisoners in, as to keep seriously disgruntled clients out. In the station I asked a receptionist about the road and she had just responded in the negative when a policeman popped his head out of a back office. He looked and sounded like a bogan who had decided to steal a police uniform and wear it as a dare but as he was inside an actual police station I assumed he was an actual policeman.

"Whadda yeh drivin", he asked. I replied that it was a Suzuki Vitara which would be fine but I was more worried about what I was towing which didn't have much clearance and isn't really designed for off road. "We went up to Tilpa this mornin'. Sat on 110 most of the way with no probs." I was thinking "yeah in a top of the range Landcruiser that you don't pay the maintainence on" but I refrained from saying it. The receptionist helpfully pointed out that was only half way and it might be worse further up.

"Much corrugations", I asked. "A bit. But if yeh hug the west side of the road yer pretty right." Now I'm not averse to using the technique of driving on the wrong side of isolated dirt roads if the surface is better but I was surprised to hear a policeman advocate it to a member of the public. I got the distinct impression he was challenging me, the presumed city slicker, to man up and get off the seal for a while. I guess Constable Bogan skipped class the day the Police Academy covered "Promoting Road Safety to Members of the Public". Anyway I thanked them for their help and decided to take the sealed road to Cobar and thus to Bourke.

Cobar's Great Western Hotel with what  they proudly assert is the longest stretch of cast iron lace in the Southern Hemisphere.

As we procededed east the vegetation got higher and turned from desert to Mulga scrub. I think I mentioned goats previously and there are millions out there. They keep the scrub neatly pruned so you can see blue horizon both below and above the trees. Apparently they are sort of feral, sort of owned and they do get trapped and sold for a good price.

Gundabooka National Park just south of  Bourke.

We camped a night at the Meadow Glen Rest Area and then went from Cobar, a copper mining town, up through Gundabooka National Park where we camped on the banks of the Darling River. We did end up doing nearly 100kms of dirt road through the park and the Suzi and Avan both acquitted themselves well. Despite some significant corrugations nothing came apart except 2 eggs in a carton in the fridge and virtually no dust got inside. It was worth it because the Park has some fine Original Australian artworks and a nice campsite.

Matilda views what she declares is some fine rock art.

A Desert Coincidence

Went out to Silverton, a mining ghost town 20kms from Broken Hill and home of Mad Max, Pricilla and numerous beer commercials, yesterday and found ourselves parked next to another Suzuki with Albany plates. Ok that's not a huge coincidence but the driver turned out to be Julian Hough who works for Amity Suzuki and sold our car new to it's last owner! That's a coincidence.

Who'd of thunk it? 2 Albany Suzukis.

Silverton Jail

Visited Silverton Jail Museum cos I collect Jail Museums. Have been to them all round the country. I guess it says something about our convict past that we have so many. Maybe my next project should be a guide to Jail Museums of Australia. This one's a real hodgepodge collection of stuff from  Silverton, Broken Hill and surrounds but that detracts from its function as a jail museum I think. Silverton itself is cute but I reckon it's not a patch on Gwalia near Leonora as far as mining ghost towns go.

Matilda, Queen of the desert, visits the Mundi Mundi Plains, one of Australia's largest flat lands just out of Silverton. Does that road in the background look familiar Mad Max fans?

Broken Hill is very like Kalgoorlie. A huge slag heap in the centre of town, old tin miner's huts cheek by jowl with grand mansions of those who got lucky, a pub on every corner but with many of them no longer pubs and some grand public buildings. However, Broken Hiĺl now has art in a big way with numerous art galleries, the most famous being Pro Hart's. Visited there cos I am a fan of his work.

It also has a proud Labor History, being the first town in the world to elect a Labor Mayor (with the fine name of Jabez Wright - remember that for your next quiz night) and the first Trades Hall in the southern hemisphere. The locals were vehemently against Australia entering WWI as they saw it as being a battle  for capitalist interests and not something honest working men should die for (good on you lads - wish you were still with us) and consequently the town was a major centre of opposition in the conscription referendums. Looking at the local pollies offices now though, it seems there are more Libs and Nats here these days. Perhaps that's appropriate given that I've often said the Nats are the only remaining Socialist party  (discounting Mr  Katter that is). If only they could accept that you have to socialise your profits as well as your losses!

This glorious pile is Broken Hill's Trades Hall.

Are We Closet Train Buffs?

The tyre turned up at last and we're off again. Bad news too was that the wheel in question is slightly out of alignment and can't be adjusted but if we rotate the tyres every 10,000km, which isn't so bad, that should be ok.

We headed up Horrocks Pass out of Port Augusta to Wilmington which has a puppet museum run by Brian who appears to be turning into a puppet himself. Well he has a face and haircut that was reminiscent of most of his ventriloquist dummies but tact prevented me from pointing that out to him. From Wilmington on, we are travelling in what is to us virgin territory. The route we had traveled so far was the one we took when we came over in 2003 for Erica's 50th birthday just when she was first diagnosed with cancer but now we were into new country.

Up and over the Flinders Ranges it is pretty country. Smooth green rolling hills although I suspect that much of the time they are more brown than green. They have recently had some unusually heavy falls of rain which has brought on the green which makes it lovely for us.

We stopped at Orroroo for lunch. It would've been worth it for the name alone but they have a lovely walk along a spring fed creek gorge which has some Aboriginal rock carvings in one spot and then further on an outrageously sentimental poem, full of o'ers and ere's, also carved into the rock, in 1896 by a young man who was about to go to America to make his fortune with a chainless bicycle he had invented! You couldn't make this stuff up.

We spent the night in Peterborough, once the central point of Australia's north-south and east-west railways and a meeting point for the country's three different rail guages. Their old railway yards and roundhouse is now Steamtown, a railway museum which has a nightly Sound & Light Show with a one hour video of the history of railways in this region. So having rode the Pichi Richi steam train we now had the Steamtown experience. I'm now full bottle on the difference between T and Y type trains and of course familiar with the Garrett engines. However, I think that is sufficient so I shall refrain from visiting any more rail museums etc for a while.

Matilda declares that she is a train buff too.

Peterborough also has a motor cycle museum in the old Baptist Church which I visited as well. No Ducatis but a very nice 1977 Laverda Jota which was the owners first bike. Lucky him.

The town also has some of the cheapest real estate in the country. The "Institute" which served as the original town hall and is a two story building about the size of Albany's Town Hall and has been restored as a private residence for some time, is currently for sale for $278,000. It looks in good nick too but sadly I don't think Peterborough is really the place for me despite that bargain price.

Peterborough Town Hall has a large quilt on display made for the centenary of Federation ànd depicting all the significant  buildings in town. I could see Trish's mind working and suspect Albany might end up with one similar. 

Out of Peterborough the hills stop rolling and turn into wide open saltbush plains with the occasional low range in the distance. It's still pretty green but with tinges of brown, Goats seem to be the livestock of choice in these parts with the occasional sheep. Fat and healthy looking goats they are too. After about 300kms of these goat filled plains and we have arrived in Broken Hill.