Open Writing

Most visitors to Australia are attracted to the well known tourist spots, Sydney or the Barrier reef, with its snorkelling and fantastic corals to look at from under water, and other such places.

Maybe a quick flight into Ayers rock, Uluru, or they could go by the Ghan, that luxury train with its air-conditioning and fantastic service which isolates them from the world outside, or they may take a trip into Kakadu National Park with a tour guide who knows his way around. Then they leave, with visions of surf and sea, ultra modern cities and strange animals, brightly coloured birds with raucous calls and slithery things, which they will only see in zoos, and, of course kangaroos. Unless…..

My first trip to Australia was rather different. My daughter had decided to marry a boy from “the bush” and I arrived, after many hours on a train, at a sleepy one horse town, in the middle of no-where, to be met by my future son-in-law. Outside the station stood a battered old jeep with a large bar across its front.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A ‘Roo bar,” was the reply

“Go on you’re kidding me,” I said.

“Nope.” And off we set.

The first thing we encountered as we left town was indeed a kangaroo. “Thousands of ‘em around here,” said my down to earth son-in-law to be, then we paused to let a large goanna, just like a big dinosaur, cross the road. Knowing that I am phobic about snakes, he looked at me. “It’s OK,” I said “it’s got legs.”

And so we proceeded through dry grassland, where you count acres to cattle, not cattle to acres, passing the odd clump of gum trees and scrubby bushes, a place where people do ride horses to muster cattle and wear hats with corks hanging from the brims to keep away the flies. “Clancy of the overflow” and “The man from Snowy River” country. I had thought this sort of land was the product of story books but no, here was the “Outback”.

“Nah, you’re not in the outback here,” I was informed. “You’ve to head out passed Bourke to get to the real outback, beyond the black stump.”

By this time we were pulling into a quarter-horse town, verandas, hitching rails and the top and bottom pubs, plus a general store, bank and post office. Well that is a slight underestimate, it boasted a high school and two primary schools, a library and a small cottage hospital, a police station and three churches, so catered for everything from birth to death. Thus I was introduced to “The Bush” and not the “Outback,” I had yet to wander beyond the “Black Stump.”

Who are these “Bush” people? The real Australians whose families go back to the convict days when a man could be transported for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. These people belong to the pioneering stock who explored and broke in the land, living rough and as a result becoming strong. The big property owners with their grand homesteads are there too, some still close to the land, some dropping in, now and again, in their private planes from Sydney, to see how the manager is getting on. Two types of people, almost as it was in the days of the convicts and the New South Wales Corps.

They are a down to earth lot. Most have lived in the same town for generations and everyone knows everybody else. They play “footy” and tennis, bowls and golf and of course cricket. They go to “Quiz night” at the club, line dance and do patchwork etc. No-one uses the front door, they always come round the back. Women bring bowls of salad, pavlova and fruit, and stand around the kitchen bench drinking wine and chatting, while the men stoke up the “Bar-b” and cook steak and sausages and drink stubbies. It is a close community and not the place tourists go to.

In the years they lived in the bush my daughter established a lovely garden. By the front gate was a wattle tree with its resident blue tongued lizard and snakes went under the house to lay eggs. Kangaroos bounced across paddocks which seemed to have no fence lines, they were so big, and wombats wobbled along the edge of streams.

We got to know the area well in our stays there, first walking Smithy, the dog, and then later pushing prams with our two grandchildren in them. We walked miles along the back roads and the land looked the same. Lower down the valley were the vineyards and we would take picnics out for the day to explore the famous Hunter valley. Sulphur crested cockatoos raided the wheat fields, grass parrots descended on paddocks and the cheeky fat kookaburra and his mates sat in the gum trees and woke you up each morning.

You sat on the veranda at night, watching the sun set, and something about the colour of the light made you realise that you were a long way from water. This is a big country. We are only in the bush, not the outback.

So let’s venture a bit further. Four-wheel drive to Lightening Ridge and beyond the Black Stump. The wheat belt ends and the scrub begins, the tar seal gives way to dirt roads, red dirt for it is a red continent. The last real town comes into view, the place where the road trains stop for they are forbidden to go any further into civilisation, it is their roadhead. You see the “black fellas” sitting in the gutters, waiting for the Welfare office to open so that they can spend their benefits at the pub and you ask, “What has the white man done?”

You drive on. Emus race along beside you, like prehistoric creatures, kangaroos, the big reds, stand still on the horizon, believing themselves to be invisible, the odd snake or lizard lies squashed on the road, and you still drive on. A rise on the horizon indicates Lightening Ridge, a place where opals are mined and hot pools can be found, you pull over for the night.

You explore the mines, holes in the ground resembling a battle field full of bomb craters, but a place from which some of the finest opals have been extracted. Miners are protective of their claims and eye you suspiciously, and you are still not in the outback.

You drive on. The scrub becomes salt bush. There is nothing but flat red earth all around you. You drive on, towards Burke and the “Black Stump,” over this big dry land and you have only just touched the edge of “The Outback”…….