An end and a beginning

Now, we are cancelling our around Oz stint as we've just had so many dramas.  Our motorhome has continued to plague us with time-consuming little hassles enroute, which, while they are not major problems in and of themselves,  the more remote we go the bigger they seem.  And the harder it is to find a mechanic enroute.  Let alone a part.  

Every little hose, or tyre, needs a week from ordering to installation the further west we go. Which makes travelling around Oz a different experience, as, sensibly, to save  hassles folk should carry as many spare parts as possible.  Along with a few tyres, as no business carries the extras of the specific model number you need out here, as there are just too many different ones.

So, the others are continuing, but we are heading back to Toowoomba from Mt Isa to get yet another complete overhaul closer to home.  We''ll stay nearer mechanics then,  so they are handy if needed.

Pete has already decided that the next time we attempt an 'around Oz' trip it will be a fly-drive scenario from various vantage points, rather than driving twelve thousand kilometres in one stint.  And I have no problems if he feels more comfortable doing that.

But that is for another year.

We now have another planless, timeless trip ahead of us,  so will go where our noses twitch. Which is a new and different experience for me.  I usually know well in advance what is likely to be on the travel agenda.  But, wherever and whatever,  this time, too, should be fun.

There may even be another blog in the offing as I have been enjoying this one.  Though, I am chewing up so much data on my router, always, so must find cheaper ways to get permanent internet access, too, before long.

Where is Telstra Air when you need it?

oooOOOooo

In old and ancient footsteps

As we headed north to Mount Isa, we followed in the tracks of the first four white men to visit these parts : the Burke and Wills team that had headed for the Gulf in January 1861.  They clip-clopped over these ranges with “the camels sweating profusely from fear”, Burke recorded, in one of his brief diary entries.  A memorial stands enroute where they passed.   

Further along,  we came to Kalkadoon territory.  We were welcomed by a rock monument which says: “You who pass by are now entering the ancient tribal lands of the Kalkadoon, dispossessed by the Europeans, honour their name, be brother and sister to their descendants.”

Sadly, some travellers ignore the gentle Kalkadoon welcome.  Their monument has been brutally defaced several times since it was installed, even blown up with dynamite once.   Yet, down the road,  the Burke and Wills monument remains unvandalised.    Such shameful actions.  

In 1923, travelling north to the territory on the lookout for gold, a prospector named John Campbell Miles, tested a sample on a rocky outcrop only to discover evidence of valuable minerals in the surrounding rocky ranges here.   The following year Mount Isa Mines company was set up to to mine the copper, silver, lead and zinc finds, and the Mount Isa township slowly evolved in a valley beneath.  

It is an unprepossessing city which has had its ups and downs over the decades.  Its area, though, is huge: some 43, 310 square kilometres which make it one of the largest city areas in Australia, second only to Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia.

 In one mining boom in the late 30’s to 50’s, when miners flooded the town, accommodation was in dire demand, so the Mount Isa Mine company built several hundred tent houses to encourage families to move to the area:  one of which has been relocated near the underground hospital which had been built as a precaution during the second world war after Darwin was bombed.  The worry was that Mount Isa, because of its lead mining,  might be next.  If so the need for a hospital would be imperative.  Though that need never actually eventuated, and the tunnel hospital, built by volunteer mine labour in just three months, was never actually needed, so closed after the war, only to be rediscovered a few decades ago, when it was decided to kit it out with appropriate era medical equipment and reopen it as a tourist attraction.  

The tent house was an evolution of the tent, though its roof and walls are of galvanised iron topped with canvas in the upper sections;  its partitions of iron and wood, with boards or earth for the floor.   

This one is a three roomed house built in 1937. It also had a lavatory and a shed, so was likely much more accommodating than a tent for the hard working miners, I imagine.  

We had to wait till Monday for our other pair of tyres to arrive and be fitted to the back of the motorhome so spent Sunday out at the very beautiful Lake Moondarra along with the peacocks.  

This lake is man made and provides water for the mines and town.  It is built about one of the largest prehistoric  stone quarries ever found in Australia  operated  by the Kalkadoons.  They were kept very busy here mining good quality stone hatchet heads which they traded with passing tribesmen for other goods.  Some of this Mount Isa stone heads have been found as far west as Perth.  

A special place.  

Buttes, mesas and termite mounds

Our overnight stop after Winton was amidst a gorgeous outcrop of jutting red rock in a pull out beside the road, which, thankfully, was as still and quiet as the landscape all night.  

To our right the sun caught the raw red cap of the butte formation: higher than it is wide.  

While to our left, the lower and wider-topped mesa glowed under the setting sun.  

We were too early the following morning for breakfast at the Blue Heeler pub at Kynuna. 

But the doors are open when we pull in ready for a drink and a chat at the Walkabout pub at McKinlay, that of Crocodile Dundee fame.  

Here we learned some of the horrors of being a backpacker trying to find work in Australia.  It seems that some of the youth hostels here literally determine who works where, even if they work; so if you aren’t staying at one of them paying the exorbitant rents they can ask even when you have no job yet to pay that rent, you simply won’t get a job because it all seems to be tied up between the employers, the hostels, and employment agencies.  

Or, you might be picking fruit in Stanthorpe, being paid below the minimum wage, around $12 an hour, for 10 hours a day,  6 days a week work only to come away with less than $500 for the week as the government requires that you pay tax.   Which, as a foreigner, you are never likely to have reimbursed. 

We also learned that agriculture and mining are now the only two industries permitted as a means of extending a visa here.  Outback pubs such as these can expect no backpacker assistance as the government will not approve jobs in hospitality under the extended visa scheme.  Ridiculous, when there are backpackers willing and happy to work out in some of these remote areas to help take the burden off the locals yet this is not allowed to happen.  Or so we were told.  

The landscape enroute to Cloncurry has become riddled with tiny termite towers,  which stretch kilometre after kilometre.  Termites are amazing little architects.   Like ants, they soldier on, building their mounds with just a mouthful of dirt each trip, though they can carry half the weight of their body in water to help in their construction.  

To keep up their strength they can eat as much grass in a year as a cow.  Yet their hard building slog can be undermined by one drenching downpour which can easily destroy a goodly chunk of their castle in one go.   A hole in their mound is like a major red alert to an army of termites.  They swarm out en masse ready to plug it up.  

Formidable.  

We follow them all the way to Mac’s Camp in Cloncurry where we pull in for the night.

The Chinese market gardeners of Winton

We rocked into Winton calling in, again, at the musical fence on the outskirts of town, where Pete gave us a rousing encore on the drums.   

The musical instruments made from any resonating cast-offs have grown and changed over the years since we first visited.  This is now more of a musical venue, than a fence.  It now has stall seats and a set of bleachers in the dress circle, for larger groups, so folk are still enjoying it.  

One of the locals has arranged his old vehicles, including his ancient carts, in a rusty row all along his fenceline in town.  He sign says he has 'Dun travellin' so has hung up his wheels, ready to retire.

Wille Mar never had time to retire.  His fruit and vege stand at the back of town was one of the longest running market gardens  in Australia.  It was his life and his livelihood.

Willie’s Chinese name was Mar Way, but  he was only ever called Willie Mar in Winton and thereabouts.  His story is one of the highlights of old Winton town.   

As a young man at the beginning of the 20th century Willie worked on stations in and around Winton cooking and gardening.  He started growing vegetables on a little plot of dry land on the edge of Winton, where he eventually built himself a house and a storage shed, too.   

He came from Zhongshan in China where he had a wife, but he rarely had the funds to go home. When he did visit for a lengthy stay in 1929, a son was born, Mar Yen Shoo, but Willie had to return to Winton to run his vege patch and did not see his son until he turned up in Winton some twenty years later.  

Young Willie Mar came to town in 1949, without any English at all, and knowing little of his father.  He had five busy years with him, though, learning everything he could about market gardening before Willie Mar senior died in his garden one day, at the venerable age of 86 years.  

Young Willie continued on about his father’s business. 

His home was spartan: corrugated iron, without electricity for yet another 40 years, so, no heating in winter, even.  His furniture was minimal: his cooling fan a rusty 20 litre drum filled with water, covered with a hessian sack.  Evaporative.  

His vegetables, too, were stored in dark spaces covered with moist jute bags to keep them hydrated and fresh.   He recycled newspaper into little paper sacs glued together with flour and water gum— little containers for his precious vegetables so that his customers could comfortably carry them from his store.  

He repaired his father’s  irrigation channels and maintained his water ponds.  There were six of these set in two rows of three apiece down the garden. Originally these were lined with wood, with steps built down into the pond, then up out the other side.  Willie would water the garden using a long pole over his shoulders and two watering cans hanging from each end.    He would step down into the first pond, fill up his watering cans,  step out the other side laden like an ox, then water two rows of vegetable by pouring from the home made spout.   He would step down into the next pond and continue it all over again, many times a day so that his plants stayed well watered despite the relentless sun.  

He grew vegetables of all varieties, even bok chop and gai choy, harvesting what seeds he could for his next planting season.  These he kept in recycled tins, pots or paper bags in his storage shed.  

In season his ponds held fish, crayfish and even inland crabs.   He boiled peanuts for the children who visited and  gave away turpentine mangos free from a tree his father had planted in the centre of the garden.  He jerry-built cages for the roosters with twists of wire and corrugated iron, attempting to keep them away from the hens at times.  “You like chicken?” he would ask in his tortured English as customers came through the shop door.   Orders he promptly delivered in his utes which were held together with chicken wire and remnant bicycle tyres.  The locals kept driving to a minimum when Wilie was doing his rounds; he drove without looking left or right.  

He wanted no wife, he said.  He went back home to China for a visit in 1980, but returned to Winton a few months later to his beloved vegetable garden and his customers who treated him with great affection.  

Willie died in 2007.  

He is buried in Winton.  Close to his father.

West of Winton a recycled mailbox caught our fancy.  Just bits of metal recycled, drums, buckets and rods, then painted up.

I think Willie would have approved.

Waiting for parts

Our stay in Longreach stretches to three days as the turbo hose takes its time to arrive.  We have roosters for company at the Apex Park.  Evidently, locals, not wanting a second cock in the hen house tend to lose their new roosters near the waterhole so there is now quite a clutch of them living off camper’s crumbs.  

We had seen beautiful brolgas enroute: but they were much more timid than our fearless cocks.

We have seen most of the sights of Longreach over the years but new attractions keep developing. 

A fascinating stop at Ilfracombe is the family home of the Langenbacker's.  Harry and Mary Ann Langenbaker lived in this home further east, but picked it up and moved it on as the railway moved west. Harry was a teamster, so he had the cart to carry the house which moved, like so many houses, and public buildings of the time, west to where the railhead brought trade.  Mary Ann lived in her home until 1964, when one of the children, Bernard, continued to live on here, eventually dying here in 1991.  The verandah lattice is particularly remarkable.  It is made from the thin hoop iron straps which secured the wool bales which Harry carted.    The wool went to the wool scour; the metal made a decorative lattice for Mary Ann's porch.  Still in extraordinary condition today.  

There is now a Cobb & Co coach ride through town offering tourists the chance to experience how folk travelled these parts over a hundred years ago.  Though the roads are better.   And some of the old local business stores have been turned into tourist venues marketing crafts, or offering morning teas of scones and cream followed by a relaxing stint in an old canvas seat watching old historic movies, like Smiley,   There were nearly a hundred folk in the theatre the morning we visited the old store, so good numbers of tourists are turning up to participate.   Many from the train and hotel package holiday bookings, too, it seems.  

Finally, our lovely mechanic phones; he is in town with our hose and fixes our problem right where we park our car in just minutes — a few little clamps and a replacement hose.  Had we thought to carry one of these with us we might have saved ourselves three days and four hundred dollars.  But it did not occur to us.  We also learn that there are two other potential hoses that we should keep an eye on under our bonnet, so we are a little more prepared, now, than when we set out.

Off we go, again, delighted to be on the move.  

The country is so dry heading north west though we understand it is better than last year.  Mile after mile of endless brown grass stretches to the horizon.  Then we see a cluster of sheep around a shaded waterhole — the first sign of life for ages.  One or two wander a few hundred metres away nibbling the roots of brown tufts, but they tend to stick close to the water and shade, just like humans.  

The tussocky grass on the road verges becomes fascinating when you are driving along hour upon hour.  Nature is, it seems, as precise as a minimalist gardener.  These tufts naturally grow in very ordered and offset parallel lines, looking as if they have been planted by a designer landscaper, each tuft in a precisely measured space.  

Cropped. Ordered.   Beautiful.  

A fascinating stop at Ilfracombe is the family home of the Langenbacker's.  Harry and Mary Ann Langenbaker lived in this home further east, but picked it up and moved it on as the railway moved west. Harry was a teamster, so he had the cart to carry the house which moved, like so many houses, and public buildings of the time, west to where the railhead brought trade.  Mary Ann lived in her home until 1964, when one of the children, Bernard, continued to live on here, eventually dying here in 1991.  The verandah lattice is particularly remarkable.  It is made from the thin hoop iron straps which secured the wool bales which Harry carted.    The wool went to the wool scour; the metal made a decorative lattice for Mary Ann's porch.  Still in extraordinary condition today.  

Around Longreach we came across our first bit of obvious politicking from the paddocks.  

Here, a truck decked out with a torn half of an Aussie flag,  and the once-iconic and once-Australian-owned XXXX label, on th back of the truck -- thought now owned by the Japanese.  

A little foreign ownership resentment is evident  around Longreach, mayhap.

Here, also, was our first sighting of a Dingo corpse hanging from the Dingo Creek sign.  Again, a bitter denunciation of government ineffectiveness developing effective policies and practices to control the dogs that are destroying the sheep industry in these parts.   

The locals appear to believe they will have more effect, and make more of a statement, by  hanging the dingo corpse than collecting the pelt bounty.  

A double whammy with this shot.

Art, artefacts and Mother Nature

Things go smoothly for a couple of days as we take time to visit some of the attractions enroute set up to entice the hoards of grey nomads who seasonally ply these parts.    

We  call in at the Big Easel in Emerald.  The sunflower intent of this piece of work is fine given the area, but the Van Gogh association is a bit  of a stretch out here under the sizzling Aussie sun, so I, personally, think this commission might have taken an Aussie slant in creativity.  But, still, people do stop to view it.  

We took a brief diversion up to Rubyvale and Sapphire to visit the odd little mining settlements there that look so cartoon-like with their remnant pieces of corrugated iron, canvas and  buried wreckage strewn creatively all over their slag heap settlements.    Still wishing and hoping most of them.  But the earth must be giving up a few of its treasures as some are plodding on, characters all by the looks of them.  

Over the Drummond Range and down into Alpha we drive, admiring the panorama.    

Here we find a small faded community making a real effort to enhance their local business with interesting historic murals. These would benefit from clarifying information plaques that might develop into an informative mural walk around the entire town; the works are so beautifully done.  

The fossilised forest installed in  the town park is an excellent piece, too — beautifully conceptualised.  The rocks represent a family of tree forms with fossilised remnants inserted in the felled and split trunks representing aeons of growth. Similar to the rings of a tree.   Among the inserts are pink zeolite and black granite representing the mineral wealth of the region today.   A lovely piece.  Well worth stopping for.   

We camp on the river Jordan at Jericho and as this turns out to be one of those iconic creek camps that are so appealing it is hard to move on the next day.   So we stay.  An  easy decision on this planless, timeless trip we seem to be on.   

We  pull out our fishing rods, load the red claw pots with what little bait we have,  then plop both into the gum-coloured water.   And wait.    

And while we wait we invite neighbours over for a fireside chat and a ‘billy boil’ and chat into the night with the stars as our canopy, learning about modern day drovers who still ride the range for a crust.   

The creek fish must have objected to our chatter, though, as they hightailed it elsewhere, but we still managed a delicious appetiser of red claw wrapped in bacon thanks to a kindly camper who thoughtfully gifted them to us at a previous stop  at Lake Maraboon, outside Emerald, the night before.  Gourmet fare.  This particular couple come up from New South Wales for six weeks every year to throw their 4 crab pots each into the lake, pulling out 10 or 12 red claw each pot harvest, blanching and shelling them, then wrapping them in freezer bags to take home to last the rest of the year.   In between pot pulling they fish and freeze that catch, as well.  Catching their Omega 3 intake for the entire year in one six week span.  

We left Joshua, the trumpeter of Jericho, on the banks of the Jordan and investigated the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine.  

This fabulous installation of separate pieces of carved timber hanging from chains, simulating branches and twigs over a crafted trunk, now stands instead of the tree that offered the shade that protected the early trade union movement in Australia.  That tree was deliberately poisoned with Roundup, by disgruntled persons unknown,  over a decade ago.  

As the railway moved west from Rockhampton, so, too, did settlement. Sheep men built their runs.   Workers came in droves: railway gangers willing to hammer iron rails under a hot sun; miners with their wheelbarrows, shearers with their blades, hobos with their swags.   All hunting down any sort of a  job enroute that might give them the fixings for a meal.  

As Spring approached in 1891, the pastoralists on the runs decided to lower the pay for the shearers they would need for the season.   The workers, as in Eureka,  revolted.  They gathered together in the shade of the old tree in front to the Barcaldine station and decided to quit work.  To strike.   And to prevent others from scabbing their jobs they set up an hourly watch.  The strike went on for months, until the armed forces were brought in and the leaders imprisoned: some were sent to prison on St Helena Island off the coast of Brisbane’s bayside; the others soon disbanded.

But, their rebellion marked the beginning of the trade union movement in Australia.  Striking for better pay and better conditions for the hard working man.  The Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine stands to this day as the symbol of the beginning of that labour movement in Australia.  And, in fact, the Labour Party in Australia stemmed from that movement.  

This beautiful built installation is now a permanent reminder of that.  A real drawcard, too. 

Barcaldine has  other appealing attractions, as well: a wonderful old Art Nouveau cinema that still plays to the townsfolk, operated by volunteer movie buffs.  

The Masonic Hall down one of the side streets is an architectural gem with its exquisitely crafted frontage and original features repainted now in its first colours: many shades of dun and clay red.  The earlier Masonic Hall that this one replaced, in 1901, was an iron structure that literally moved as the railway terminus moved.  About every 18 months or so,  as the terminus moved further west, so, too, did the temple.  Similarly, the school and many of the hotels were relocated from surrounding small towns to make an instant railway terminus of Barcaldine.  Though many buildings came to a halt here, as they simply could no longer be moved. 

Remnants of wonderful old places survive on many street corners.  Huge, many of them are, too.

We drove, then, toward Longreach, stopping only when we ‘popped’ something else in our motorhome.  This time a hose under the bonnet split, sending the engine into limp mode.  

Disconsolate at the repeated problems we are having we hobbled into Ilfracombe, sank behind its old historic bar made of a wool press, ready to drown our sorrows only to hear that there is a great mechanic just a block away who will look after us.  And he is cheaper than the “Golden Spanner” in Longreach we are strongly advised.  

After we had had the Cook rustle us up a steak sandwich, we left the worn Shearer’s Moccasins on the pub wall, then headed off to find the mechanic and order the necessary pipe.  

It will only take two days to arrive, he said: and in the meantime we have two new tyres waiting in town to be fitted to our back axle, so that will keep us busy for a time.  

We head, then, to the Apex Riverside Park just out of town and join many campers.  Some of whom we have already met enroute: a lovely couple with Nordic accents use their bicycles to visit the loos at the far end of the camping space.  And a newbie friend we call Aquarius, as his wife is washing and has him lugging 20 litres of water on the trot all afternoon, as she has four loads of washing to do today in her caravan.   We ask him if he can do pushups with his water weights.  He can. Easily.  

We end up going to the town laundromat later just to fill in time.  Ours wash takes barely an hour and we don’t have to even break a sweat.  

Next morning Aquarius jokes he is never again going to install a Jacuzzi in his caravan.  The drained washing water is still a big wet puddle.  So, he moves his rig.   And grins.  

On the road again

We headed off on our first day around Australia feeling less than prepared.  There were still so many things that we might have been done, or that could or should have been done, but, as ever, we rationalised leaving it by saying it might all be tackled enroute just as easily.

Evenso, we were still really late setting out after last minute stops at the accountants, the bank, the chemist, a grocery store, gas station and tyre shop.  Sigh.  

Still the roads were much improved since our last visit, thanks to the coal and gas exploration works from Toowoomba westwards which have had a really positive impact on the road surfaces.   Big trucks with big loads still do their best to reverse all the good works, though.  This one we had to get completely off the road for as it occupied all the space.  We were thankful we weren’t one of the long line of trucks and utes following behind it.  Slow and frustrating for so long.

Massive truck load enroute

Our first night stop was a wilderness and environmental park in Wandoan as our route took us to many of the waypoints Ludwig Leichhardt passed when he left Jimbour station outside Dalby, on his long trek north to Port Essington in 1845.   Delightful park this was, and free, with immaculate toilets and  showers, and all the space you could wish for, filled with birdsong and a distant game of footie, going on in a nearby playing field.  We cooked up some rice and prawns from the freezer and finished the day with a game of cards which, for once, Miss Bec did not win.

Wandoan Environmental park 

Up early and on the road we found Mick the dog in the O’Sullivan Park on the edge town.  Animal tales feature hugely in the Aussie bush and Mick’s place is up there with the best for a good deed award for his initiative in 1901, rescuing his master.   Sid McCoy, a stockmen, broke his leg while mustering on the huge Juandah Station run which once occupied most of these bits of the country.  Unable to mount his horse Sid scratched a rescue message inside his tobacco tin and tied it with his leather belt to Mick’s neck, sending him off for help.  Mick rose to the task and hurried back with the life savers.  

Mick, the dog

Today, a statue in Mick’s memory sits beside the old Juandah railway station, relocated here, along with  an iconic Aussie windmill that spent its early days pumping around 6,000 gallons of water a day from a bore on nearby Bungaban station.   An interesting historic park well worth a visit.  

Old Bungaban station windmill 

Another park we found further on at Taroom was similarly historic and interesting.   Close by stands an old Coolabah in the heart of town, once blazed with Leichhard’s expedition record of “LL 44” , but the knife slashes have long ago healed, so that particular record is lost, but the lovely tree remains.  

Under a coolabah tree

As does another old memento in the park atop a cenotaph.  A piece of ancient petrified wood found when the railroad was being built in this area was placed atop a built cenotaph as a memorial to the young who died at Gallipoli and seeds taken from an Aleppo pine at Gallipoli were planted beside it.  The young with the old stand tall to this day.  

Petrified wood and Aleppo pine

As we drove out of Taroom heading north, we found another interesting historical artefact on the edge of town: an old steel windmill, one of a rare breed made by the Steel Wings Company in Sydney between 1895 and 1910.  There are only two others of this type, left in Australia — one in Jerilderee, the other in Dalwallinu, in Western Australia.  

Steel Wings steel windmill

A little further along we came to Palm Tree Creek and had to pull over and walk back to the amazing stand of Livistona cycad palms growing along the creek bed here.  Lush, ancient and gorgeous.   So unusually green in this sun-bleached landscape.  

Given the cycads we quite expected to see banana trees growing as we headed into the town called Banana -- only to learn that "Banana" was once a cow.  Way back in the 1880s, local stockmen trying to wrest wild cattle from these grassy plains often used a dun-coloured bullock called Banana as their decoy to coax the cattle into yards.  When Banana eventually died he was taken to a gully for burial, thereafter called "Banana's Gully",  and from which a settlement eventually grew:  Banana.

Two or three times enroute we came over rises that looked out over valleys so splendid we all gasped.  This is a quiet but lovely road heading north, and one we have not driven before, we realise.

After a late lunch stop in Theodore, we wave to my niece who is teaching here in town, then head off to meet up with old friends in Duaringa who are to be the other part of our convoy on our around Oz trek.  

We stopped at Duaringa just twelve months ago, on our trip up to Cooktown.  Here we had our first bit of bad luck with our motorhome overheating.  That problem now fixed, we head out the next morning and pop a tyre just 10 kilometres short of Blackwater.  Luckily, a young man at the tyre place in town fixes us up with our spare, though we learn our back tyres are old — too old to trust on a trek around Australia, so that sets the boys phoning around trying to find good tyres for the rest of the trip for both vehicles.  

By late afternoon, on a Friday, they’d and found a couple further ahead at Longreach.  The others, they ordered, to arrive when we arrive in about a week, at Mount Isa.  

Trip preparation never really stops, it seems.  

And anything that can go wrong likely will.

We just have to be ready for it.