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| Downtown Charters Towers - Captain Photogenic was in the blue ute parked on the left 3 cars up |
The reason I mention this is because it almost speaks to the way many out-of-the-way towns try and market themselves today. They hang out a shingle for the tourist, whether it be a big Banana, big Pineapple or big Crocodile (remember Krys the Croc from Normanton ?). Such is the competition for survival of many of these towns that they have to try and identify a differentiator from other like towns. They all have such fantastic history, having been borne out of the late nineteenth century mining and land rushes. We never learned anything about these early pioneers when we were at school, we only got the European edition because that was our origin, at least most of us. Having travelled through a fair part of Australia now, even only as primarily a bitumen based roady, I now have huge respect for the people that opened this country up; the inspired, the imaginative and the strong willed, all of whom believed in themselves. You can still see them today - if you know where to look. Start at the local pub, particularly with the guy wearing a safety colour vest - he'll be a Road Train driver who knows the country like the back of his hand. Or the bloke with the Texan-style hat - he'll be a cattleman or Station owner. Or the gnarled elderly bloke with the well worn "bushies" hat - he'll have a wealth of experience in all things outback. Either that - or he's the town drunk, in which case you may need to recalibrate your "bushie" spotmeter. Either way, I guarantee you'll come away with a slightly different slant on life.
So the young bloke at Charters Towers who fancies his photogenic qualities needs another angle. Everyone's a nice person - until they're not. Cities are full of 'em.
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| Out of 60 tyres, spot the flat one ! |
Hughenden, which was the next major stop was a distant 350 km odd further on, so we ended up pulling off the road at a free camp area about 100 km short. Whilst there, a triple carriage cattle truck pulled in with a flat tyre. While the guy was changing it, I got talking to him as happens in these parts. Turns out he owns the property from which the cattle onboard were coming, and he was headed east for agistment on greener pastures. Yet another full triple cattle truck pulled in headed in the same direction and he owned the cattle on this one as well - as well as the two cattle trucks and also one parked on the opposite side of the road headed west, this one empty. I asked how he survived the live cattle export ban and he said he was ok but those that bought land several years earlier - and paid too high a price for it - were going under. His fallback plan was investment in the cattle trucks. Having said that, he didn’t seem to think it would get any worse as this was the first year in 5 or 6 where rainfall had been down on average. According to the Publican at Winton (Publicans know stuff ...) rainfall in the general area this last wet season was way down on what it should have been.
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| Road Rage or just someone disenchanted ? |
At the same stop, we saw evidence of what leaving one’s car unattended can amount to. A campervan parked at the end of the camping area had been trashed. Either someone had completely lost it and taken it out on the van, or it’d been stolen and someone had some “fun”. Either way, it was totalled - a rather sad end to a van that had, perhaps, served someone well for some time. But then, this wasn’t something new. We’d seen lots of this sort of thing up through the centre in the Northern Territory, in particular. Off to the side of the road, and usually 50 metres or so into the scrub, you see literally countless numbers of cars that have been stripped and then burned. They’re usually upended on their roof, probably so that the wheels and suspension can be stripped as well. It’s an eyesore and something that the NT Government is going to have to come to grips with. While we’re on the subject of trashing, the Stuart Highway up through the centre, as well as having burned out cars, is littered with bottles, cans and anything else that’s easily thrown out the window of a moving car. At some stage, this is also something the NT Government is going to have to tackle.
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| A "Blazed" tree - Miner strike camp 1891 just outside Hughenden |
Hughenden was sort of interesting. They have a Flinders Discovery Centre which claims fame to dinosaurs discovered at Muttaburra (and called - Muttaburrasaurus ... true ..) and to being the centre of the shearers strikes in 1891 and 1894. We did consider taking a diversion to the dinosaur footprints where they believe around 3000 stampeded at this particular spot, however like Muttaburra, it's a considerable drive and besides, we see dinosaur footprint every caravan park we stay at .... Other than this, there really isn’t all that much to see or do around this town. The area surrounding the whole region appears very barren, but not to the eyes of sheep and cattle producers. To them, it’s good grazing land and as a result, there are many sheep and cattle stations surrounding the major and minor towns in the district. The area round these parts would, I assume, be called Northern Queensland rather than the Far North. It’s still just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, which, according to Wikipedia, is: “...... the dividing line between the Southern Temperate Zone to the south and the tropics to the north.” Having seen the areas north of this, and just shy of the Gulf, I’d say they need to redefine it. The area south of the Gulf for about 200 km is wetland, but south of that it definitely aint tropical this year. The rivers are dry, grasslands barren and that’s why they’re moving cattle to greener pastures towards the east coast.
After Hughenden, we stopped at Winton. Winton is the home to the Australian classic Walzing Matilda- which in fact, is based on a scottish tune about which are wrapped words, the meaning of which are derived from the German language. So we were multicultural even before we knew it. The explanation for all this was provided in the very interesting and informative Matilda Centre - yet another museum .... So the explanation for all this is as follows;
During 1895, Arthur Barton Paterson (A.B. Paterson) was visiting Winton with his fiancee who had family relatives in the area. At a gathering at the Dagworth Station, Christina MacPherson performed a tune on a zither that she had heard the previous year at the Warrnambool races. Paterson liked it so much he put words, phrases and events into the verses, the likes of which he’d recently heard about the traps from shearers, drovers and others in the outback at the time. He named the song Walzing Matilda. As an aside, Paterson's nickname of "Banjo" was the name he adopted. It was the name of a favourite horse owned by his father when Paterson was quite young.
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| The Quintessential "Swaggy" - painting by an artist local to central Queensland who's name I'm ashamed to say I did not pick up. If I had a spare $3500 I'd buy it - that's the price asked and it really is an excellent portrayal - similar to what I remember about this bloke dad invited on to our back porch. |
Walzing comes from the German term auf der walz which means to travel whilst learning a trade. Young apprentices apparently used to travel around with the Master craftsman as he undertook various work contracts. Matilda on the other hand has a more tortuous derivation, but long short, it came to mean “ to be kept warm at night”, which refers in this case to the swag or blanket into which all one’s belongings are rolled and then slung over the shoulder, bike or horse, depending on the mode of transport. So put more succinctly, Walzing Matilda means to travel from place to place with your belongings wrapped in a blanket. This is what the Swagmen did, and I remember as a kid in the early 1950 when dad - with great disapproval from mum - invited a Swagman in to our house when we lived in Pascoe Vale. This was at a time when our house was one of the few in the area, dad having built it himself, and it wasn’t all that long after the war so I guess things must have been tough for a while in those days. I remember this particular event because this “Swaggy” had this huge beard and I remember just staring at him because I’d never seen such a big beard before. I can't imagine the humiliation he must have felt to sit there while this shy kid just stood there staring at him - if he was around today, I'd apologise, invite him in and try and help him in some way. Anyway, dad made him sit on the back porch while he went inside and got some food for him and then when he left, dad went outside to make sure he didn’t put a marker on the post out front. They used to make different marks on posts so that others would know that they’d been given a free meal - or whatever it was they got. So the Swagmen were around for many years - but I can’t recall any one of them lustily bellowing out the verses of Walzing Matilda as they dragged their bony-arsed bodies about looking to just stay alive. Instead, these poor unfortunate souls, for whatever reason, had to eek out a life virtually dependent on the generosity of others or by other less savoury means. Today they're called "street people" and they hang out in cities. Things haven't changed all that much when you think about it ....
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| Bladensburg Homestead and outbuilding |
The other event worth mentioning was a visit to the Bladensburg homestead and shearing shed, about 20 km south of Winton. Both of these building complexes reside inside the Bladensburg National Park and you are free to wander through both at your leisure. The Homestead comprises a central house surrounded by out buildings including a kitchen, meathouse, coldroom, Jackaroo quarters, book keepers office and chook and turkey runs. Most buildings are in original condition, right down to tree trunks as stumps, although there has been some concrete re-stumping of the Homestead. Aside from the main house, all other buildings are clad with corrugated iron on all sides and roof. The homestead has a huge verandah around the perimeter and simply has internal wall cladding, with no cladding of any kind external to the frame. Unusual to say the least. The roof is high pitched and clad with corrugated iron.
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| Shearing Shed - built 1960's |
The Shearing shed is great. It’s in original condition, with the last sheep having been shorn in the early 1990’s. The sheep retaining pens outside the main shearing shed are all made from thick tree branches and the uprights from tree trunks. There’s the usual barbed wire and netting and sheep spraying booths with roughened concrete flooring. Inside the shed, which is about 100 feet long (30 metres) and perhaps 40 feet wide (13 metres), there’s the original wool press located centrally down one end of the building whilst at the other, there are 8 shearing stands with Sunbeam shearing machines - as opposed to the Wolseley machine which was the more popular - and a number of ramps and pens for incoming and outgoing sheep. You stand in the middle of all this, let your mind wander and try and visualise what the scene must have been like on shearing days - well, at least I do. But then I'm a dreamer .....
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| Shearing shed - Woolpress on the left - shearing stands far right |
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| T-Model Fords - Utility on the left (1924), Camping model on the right (1922) |
And finally, there’s the Winton Diamantina Heritage Truck and Machinery Museum. A $5 entry fee with payment based on the honour system. The collection of restored trucks is very good - but my favourites are the old T-Models in their various guises. In the back paddock which is a good 2 acres or more, there are numerous old trucks and tractors in various stages of disrepair. These vehicles are beyond restoration but the variety is extraordinary. My interest is drawn to the old tractors and there are a few of these. But for anyone interested in seeing some old stuff, dating back to the 1940’s, it’s worth the visit - if you’re up this way of course. Just don’t plan a trip around it ...
One last note for this blog. Today we pulled into a pub (again) to get some stuff, and got talking to the bloke at the drive-thru. Turns out he was a shearer around the area about 40 years ago and how he ended up in a drive-thru - well we didn't ask. But he was originally born and bred in Casterton in Western Victoria. I told him about my sister Pat who'd been a Nanny down that way many years ago. I said she was on a farm of around 5000 or 10,000 acres - can't remember. A thought suddenly struck me - in WA, the NT and central and northern QLD they are referred to as Stations. So when does a farm become a Station ?. Didn't get an answer so that's one I'm going to have to Google ....
Good stuff, keep it up.
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