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.