Monthly Archives: September 2022

Out the back of Bourke

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You may or may not be familiar with the expression “out the back of Bourke”. The Outback Dictionary defines the expression in the following way: Australian expression which means any place which is remote or inconvinient(sic). Based on an actual place west NSW which is an extremely hot country town known for cotton farming and dust storms. And helpfully goes on to give an example: Where the hell is that place? It’s out the back of Bourke…

So it comes as a surprise, to me at least, that Scott’s grandfather was born in Bourke. He comes into the world on the 25th November,1889, and we hope to find some trace of the ancestral home. Far from dust storms, we drive through a horrible thunder and lightning storm to get to Bourke, which really is a long way from anywhere else. And proud of it.

As close as Scott gets to the ancestral home

In the late 1890s Bourke was a thriving inland port. At its peak, the Bourke Wharf had three steam driven cranes handling 40,000 bales of wool a year. This freight travelled down the Darling River by paddle steamer to railheads in South Australia and Victoria, and from then by train to Adelaide and Melbourne to textile mills and for export. With the advent of irrigation (to combat all those dust storms) citrus, cotton and wheat were also grown and shipped down the river.

While we have bits and pieces of information – grandfather’s date of birth, his parents’ names, his father’s employer etc., after a couple of days canvassing extremely helpful people at the Library, the Shire office, and the Lands Department, it seems few records remain. There are some stunning old buildings in the town dating around the late 1800s, but it seems lots of information and history has been lost.  And no, we didn’t find any family graves as the family left for New Zealand in 1896. Still, we had a lovely time wandering the streets, admiring the lovely old buildings and talking to lovely people. It was lovely.

We arrive in Bourke from equally as remote Lightning Ridge, world famous home of the Black Opal and weirdness. The sign at the entrance to town proclaims Lightning Ridge Population ? indicating the secretive nature of the inhabitants. Much like Coober Pedy, the other opal centre of Australia, people arrive and disappear underground – in both senses of the word. Black opals are not black. They come in various colours but on a black or dark body, which shows colours more vibrantly. They are very rare, therefore valuable – Economics 101, supply and demand.

If you are planning on moving to Lightning Ridge, you can lease a 50m x 50m home block. The town planners and council inspectors seem to have gone an a really long vacation because anything goes in terms of dwellings – I’m using the term extremely loosely. A broken down caravan, a tin shed, a bus or something that looks like a house but is made of rocks and beer bottles. And, yes, it is possible to build a house with beer cans.

the beer bottle house
the beer can house, currently available!

At the other end of the scale is a magnificent, although incomplete, castle built on a mining lease. The 15 metre tall structure is the work of Vittorio Stefanato, known locally as Amigo. Amigo commenced building his castle, completely by hand, from ironstone boulders he collected in the area. His scaffolding consisted of 44 gallon drums and boards. Under the castle there are tunnels, but these were closed off on our visit.  The property is littered with piles of “interesting” bits and pieces – a pile of boots, drums, bike frames, iron pots and pans and other junk. Frankly, it’s a mess, but a dreamer’s mess. And in Lightning Ridge it’s not even eccentric. There are at least two castles.

A man’s castle is his home.

When you think things can’t get any weirder in the outback, they do. From Bourke we are on the way to Dubbo (see previous post) and we enter the Shire of Bogan. Yes, we do. The town of Nyngan has such a sense of humour they decide to erect a statue in homage. Not just any old statue, but a Big Bogan. Controversial, yes, but after much, one imagines heated, discussion, the proposal goes through and has an understandably mixed reception.

Resplendent in singlet, stubbies and thongs (jandals), with a Southern Cross tattoo, fishing rod in hand and armed with an esky (chilly bin/cooler) full of cold ones (bevvies/beers), the final product is 5.96 m tall and weighs close to 1500 Kg. We are lost for words.

who are you calling a bogan?

Planes, plains and rains

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I’m not a fan of either Sting or Coldplay, so it’s annoying that Fields of Gold and Yellow run through my brain as we drive through the south of New South Wales. Thousands of hectares of canola plants are in full flower, and if you think you know the colour yellow, I’m telling you you have no idea until you see these iridescent, fluorescent, luminous flowers flowing down hills and sweeping across plains for kilometres. Wheat, barley and other crops are a plain second to the compelling glory of the canola flowers. Photos do not do it justice, but here’s one – of several hundred taken.

We arrive in the Heart of Gold (enjoy Neil young) by way of our inland drive from southern Queensland. Lightning Ridge and Bourke are another story, coming soon on this blog. Dubbo saw us meet with friends Eleanor and Phillip who drive from Newcastle to catch up – last seen more than a couple of years ago. So what do we do? We go to the zoo. Typically mention of a zoo would see a deep lack of interest, but this is a zoo of another kind. Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has a satellite just out of Dubbo – the award winning Western Plains Zoo. This is an outstanding facility with nary a cage in sight. The open range design replaces walls and fences with clever use of islands and moats which, while dividing the animals from visitors still gives an impression of actually being with the animals. So you can walk, bike or drive around the five kilometres of track through the park, which incidentally covers 300 hectares. Being daredevils, we hire a golf cart and let Eleanor drive.

We are safe in Eleanor’s capable hands

We watch a tiger take a poo, see otters dismember yabbies, marvel at the number of giraffes (there’s a breeding programme for several species), wonder how hippos swim, laugh at the antics of ring-tailed lemurs, and close our ears to the screech of Tasmanian Devils. It’s a great afternoon and though clearly it’s not the equivalent of an African safari, it’s miles better than most captive environments.

It is about now that rain stops play. Three glorious days in Dubbo then the rain sets in and refuses to stop all day and all night. As we are now in the low lying plains, and there are lots of rivers – Dubbo is on the Macquarie River – and there was a lot of rain the week before our arrival, there are floods across roads everywhere. Travelling south there are detours, closed lanes, and opportunities to drive through very big puddles. The paddocks are sodden and look like lakes. But the rain eases and we carry on.

About 20km north of Parkes, we detour out to the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope, star of the 2000 movie The Dish. The movie (comedy/drama) is the true story of the role a group of eccentric Aussie scientists play in relaying live television of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. To NASA’s dismay the Aussies are the world’s only hope for receiving the historic images of man’s first steps on the moon. As in the movie, the giant dish stands impressively over surrounding farmlands – a sophisticated piece of scientific equipment ironically in the middle of sheep paddocks. There’s a terrific information centre with engaging hands on displays and lots of interesting, but less engaging, information – enough to make your brain hurt. The Dish started operating in 1961, but has been upgraded several times to keep the telescope at the cutting edge of radio astronomy. The telescope is now 10,000 times more sensitive than when it was first commissioned. Also on display is an astro photographic exhibition with competition winning photos which are glorious. If you haven’t seen the movie, do see it – it stars Sam Neill, pretending yet again to be Australian – when we all know he’s a Kiwi.

Sophisticated technology in the sheep paddocks

Our next foray into history is by way of a much longer detour to Temora, where we hear there is an Aviation Museum like no other. It is set up to be a flying museum, so all fifteen of the historic aircraft fly regularly. The collection includes the only two flying Spitfires in Australia, along with a Tiger Moth, a Canberra bomber, and the only Australia built fighter plane, the Boomerang. It is a well set up exhibition with exhaustive technical (and, I’d say, exhausting for all but the most passionate enthusiasts) information. I prefer the stories and videos of old pilots talking about their exploits, and giving lie to the saying there are old pilots and bold pilots but no old, bold pilots. Eight full time engineers keep the aircraft in working order and most months there’s a Showcase with flying displays, informative commentary, interviews with pilots and veterans and so on. Sadly, and typically, we are not here for September’s. One of the wondrous, and not in a good way, things about travelling is you are often a week late or a week early for what sound like must-do events. FYI, Temora alternates the Warbirds Down under with Wanaka in New Zealand.

Spitfire disguised as a shark

We fly home in a couple of weeks and I owe a blog on Lightning Ridge and Bourke, and on whatever we do between now and the end of the month. So stay tuned – by radio telescope if necessary.

Dubbo to the Canola Way – our end point for now is Narrandera

Solving a sticky problem

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It is 1886 and you, sir or madam, but more likely sir, are a sugar baron, owning one or more sugar mills. Sweet as, you say, I must be a great fellow. Maybe, but you have a problem. A very sticky problem. The delicious and rich volcanic soils around Bundaberg are perfect for growing sugar cane, and by 1885 there are 166 sugar mills in Queensland, 40 of which are around Bundaberg producing 20% of the sugar in Australia.

The rich and fertile soils around Bundaberg

Excellent, you say, so what’s the problem? Molasses. Not surprisingly, 20% of the molasses in Australia, and there’s nowhere for it to go – you and your buddies have kegs, casks, buckets, vats of the stuff and please, do not empty it into the river – this a sticky situation any way you look at it. 

So, let’s go to the pub and find a solution. I think your mate Frederick Buss has a idea. Yes he does. A distillery. Being the late 1800s some top hats and bushy sideburns sputter moral objections to the demon drink, but these are overcome by the prospect of a solution to the molasses problem, and of course, the prospect of filthy, but not sticky, lucre. And so the good and great give birth to a healthy offspring, Bundaberg Rum. It would be rude not to visit the distillery. And ruder to leave empty handed.

So, bearing the fruits of our visit we head inland for the remainder of our journey. Is it an irony that from Bundaberg Rum we head to Gin Gin? Or more specifically further out into the wilderness to visit the rellies: Scott’s cousin Elizabeth and her bloke David. It is almost exactly four years since our last visit and we see the difference a bit of rain makes – below left, Late July 2019, right early August 2022.

We have an enjoyable couple of days doing farm related things, like taking molasses – there’s that sticky thing again – to the cattle; checking out the damage this year’s torrential/beneficial rains did to the new ford; admiring Liz’s new red tractor; doing some preparation for the installation of a new shed; and driving David’s new (old) yellow bulldozer. I did neither of the latter two activities, but did drink my share of gin and cook the green beans just right.

Scott decides he needs a bulldozer

If you ever wondered where the attractively named Darling Downs are, I can now tell you. Not that it was ever a secret. And, somewhat alarmingly, we have been here before, but the dog ate my homework so I failed to appreciate the importance of the area.

The Great Dividing Range stretches more than 3,500 kilometres from just off the northern tip of Cape York, runs the entire length of the eastern coastline through Queensland and NSW before turning west across Victoria. The Darling Downs is a tableland covering 14,200 square km on the western slopes of said Range. It sits at an elevation of 450–600 metres and is primarily a cropping and dairying area, so we see hectares and hectares of mainly wheat and canola, with massive grain silos punctuating the landscape.

We snake down the Great Dividing Range to arrive in Toowoomba, the largest city in the Downs and, incidentally, after Canberra the most populous inland city in the country (approx 120,000). Also known as the Garden City, it is a very attractive rural town with, as you’d expect lots of gardens and parks. We are too early for the Carnival of Flowers by a fortnight, but looking at some of the plantings, I think they may bloom too late. At Laurel Bank Park in the west of town, where every year Council gardeners plant 60,000 seedlings and 18,000 bulbs, the butterfly theme has some way to go before a riot of pansy and alyssum butterflies are evident. Thomas the Tank, on the other hand, looks proud of himself regardless.

We head to Ballandean, just out of Stanthorpe, to stay with friends Tony and Julia at their Granite Belt winery, Just Red Wines. You may not be aware that there are wineries in Queensland, but at nearly 1,000 m of elevation and a terroir of decomposing granite similar to France’s Cote du Rhone, it suits Shiraz in particular. The region has a growing reputation as one of Australia’s top producers of alternative variety wines: that is a variety representing no more than 1% of the total bearing vines in Australia as defined by Wine Australia. These are known here as Strange Birds, and include varieties such as Petit Manseng, Verdelho, and Rousanne, varieties more likely to grace the labels of Northern Hemisphere bottles. It makes for interesting cellar door visits as wineries are boutique and most growers are hands on in the winery and at the cellar door.

After so long in the warmer north it comes as a surprise to need our winter woollies in the evenings. The elevation means cold nights – just the excuse you need for a raging fire, a BBQ plate laden with steak, and bottles of those Strange Birds.

Our hosts build a great fire and cook a mean BBQ. And make delicious wine.