Bruce Elder in the Sydney Morning Herald asks this question and asks for suggestions that might help small communities attract more visitors. What do you want to see when you visit these small places?

Given we are visiting a comparatively small town at the moment, and given that we spent a cosy afternoon in a small bistro in an even smaller town today, the answer to me seems pretty straight forward. I grew up in a town of 800 people and even we knew the attempts at museums and revitalised train stations (with no trains in them) were hopeless and pointless and bleak. In visiting the country towns I am visiting this week I am reminded that the things that attract or deter me here are the same things that attract me or deter me in Sydney. Friendly, hospitable staff/hosts. Quality products. Reasonable pricing. Crap tourist nick knacks made in China. Pubs that smell like they were last cleaned in 1974. 1974 decor!

I stop in small towns to find something that is unique to that place. Something of a local flavour. A friendly chat with the local stock and station outlet has its own rewards and is far better than a poorly presented local crafts centre, or dodgy museum that is only looking to rip me off. Small towns should simply try and be themselves, highlight their points of difference (Ballarat’s colonial/Victorian architecture is outstanding and worth the visit alone – the Ballarat Train station shown here is a case in point) and offer the same hospitality and friendship we all crave wherever we go. Oh, and at this time of the year an open fire helps as well!!

Travelling down the Hume Highway invokes all sorts of memories, building a thirty year tableau of images. The previous two blogs refer. Once upon a time the highway took you though Seymour but now days the freeway blasts you past and you can’t see the town at all. Nearby is the Army training area of Puckapunyal which you could never see from the road and for which I am always mildly thankful. I spent a few frozen weeks there during school holidays as school Army Cadet and the memories are not altogether positive for Puckapunyal. As I know it is not for a lot of the troops who trained here before going to Vietnam. But finding Gary asleep on the fireside log, covered in frost, and where we left him the night before, anaesthetised by a full bottle of smuggled Southern Comfort remains a highlight. So too my first sighting of a Kookaburra. Two in fact who laughed as we stood shivering in the foggy predawn light under tepid, dribbling bush showers. And the appalled faces of my Toorak school buddies – the prospect of eating bits of rabbit slow cooked in tinned butter off a rusty piece of steel plate was too much for them (I had taken three rabbit traps with me – the NCOs checked my gear the next year to ensure there was no repeat culinary horror).

Stretches of asphalt and/or bitumen are not supposed to be evocative (unless they are runways!) but this stretch of road which links Sydney and Melbourne is 880km of highway that invokes a lot of memories when I travel it. Oddly enough it is quite provocative in other ways as well. The foremost memory I have of the Hume is that of joining the highway at Yass at 1 o’clock in the morning and driving to Melbourne. Over the course of the next six hours more than 380 18 wheelers passed me traveling in the opposite direction and I spent the entire trip with one pasted right on my tail while I stared at another only a few metres in front of me. Fortunately on those days many sections of the road were narrow and steep so they moved fairly slowly. I quickly discovered that slipping past one every now and then only reinserted me in between another pair of giants. Tonight the trip, heading in the general direction to Melbourne, was almost all on freeway and the rigs thunder past in a blur of light and sound. Rarely do you ever get caught behind them.

I never really liked the Shah but I made lots of noise about the Ayatollah. I did not want him running the country but to be honest I was not expecting him to come into power. Suddenly I found myself having to leave Iran for safety reasons. I think we actually say, for political reasons. I have some family in Iran even today so I have to be careful about what I say. Still. Sadly I don’t think I can ever travel back to Iran. It is hard to leave your roots and even though I have been here more than ten years now I would like to touch the ground where I was born. But I have my wife and children here and we are free to say what we think and worship how we want. I love that Shia, Sunni, Jew and Christian can live in one place and not fight. Even a follower of Isa (Jesus) can live next to a follower of the Prophet and not feel that they have to fight. Indeed, I am a Sunni and we can all live together in peace as God instructed us all to do. It’s just a shame that I had to come to the other side of the world to actually do that. I would prefer that I could do that in the land I was born.

The Run was a wild place. Probably still is. Country like it has become well known around the world thanks to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite what I recount above, my most precarious driving experiences were up on that place with David edging his truck over steep edges with no view over the bonnet of the descent or the destination. Here were wild horses which we occasionally went up to shoot for “dog tucker”. David’s favourite rifle was a .22Hornet – a .22 on steroids. I watched him one day, truck still rolling, open the door, and with rifle poised, vehicle moving, fire a round over a distance of about 50 yards at a running horse. To bring a horse down with a .22 is quite something and only a shot that reaches the brain will do it.

The round entered the head just below and behind the ear and I watched with amazement as the animal slowly folded up and collapsed to the ground. David had put the round where he wanted, and expected to and was matter of fact and businesslike in his response to our applause. His dogs were another matter. They leapt off the back in a cacophony of barks and yelps and raced to the horse, know that that quartering and butchering was going to yield titbits. And so it did although an enduring image of that poor animal was to discover how riddled with parasites it was. We pulled open intestines to observe closely packed worms and carefully examined its stomach to discover other parasites clinging to the stomach walls. David was always intrigued with the internal workings of an animal, and offal seemed to have special fascination. Not morbid but forensic. We dissected and poked and probed and found all sorts of interesting things in a kill.

One memorable kill was my first slaughtering of a sheep. Two in fact. Appropriately it happened at David’s. Although I had seen countless numbers killed and dressed for our table I had a lot of theory and no practise. David took Steve, his brother Ken, and I down to the woolshed where he had three rams held in a pen. Standing there quietly in the dim, dusty light of the place, backing up together against the far wall and watching us warily. We had no idea what was coming next. But I always reckon the sheep knew what was coming – there is another truth in the words “As a sheep stands before its slaughterer is dumb”. They stand there in silence but they know what is up. David pulled a knife from somewhere, handed it to me and declared that he wanted these things not simply killed but dressed and it all to be done by the time he got back from town. Then he walked out. We talked about the theory for maybe fifteen minutes or so – the best way to cut, the need to break the neck at the same time, and so on. All along plucking up the courage to do the deed. Eventually I entered the pen, drafted one of the rams into a neighbouring pen, tucked him between my knees and started sawing. Steve did the same. Poor Ken, he started but at the first spray of blood, dropped the knife and said he could not go through with it. If you have ever seen this sort of thing done you will understand the dramatic and copious expression of blood that comes from the jugular. With a nicked artery, blood was spraying all over the place and I had to jump in and finish the throat cutting as quickly as possible. Dressed and hanging, David’s only quip when he saw our efforts was that it was a shame one of them was hamstrung!! But that was always David’s teaching style – that he would show us once, or understand that we had seen how a thing was to be done, perhaps seen somewhere else, so he would trust us with the job without any further instruction. We did not always get the task right but there is real potency in that trust. He was a clever trainer and sharp psychologist in that regard.

Next Chapter

The first law of travel is “Never irritate the person in uniform who lets you in or out of a country.” There are some very sensible reasons for that. They are not paid very much. In a country’s defence and security they often are the first in line but the last to know. They work horrible hours. In many countries they are not empowered to make a decision on the spot. Often these officials are caught up in a very bureaucratic milieu. And, they usually love their uniform, are proud of their country and just want to do their job well. OK, in places like Zimbabwe they want some extra dollars as well.

A different law, but far more immutable goes something like this – that young Air Force Officers (boys actually), but especially pilots and aircrew, have a swagger gene, closely linked to the “I’m indestructible gene.” These are in the same strand of DNA which contains the “I know everything gene.” Wrap that genetic make-up in crew suits, put squadron badges on them and they think they can walk anywhere, go anywhere, do anything.

In 1991 when visiting Brunei, I watched an Air Force C130 crew arrive in Brunei. They expected to be able to swan into the country through an airport that was being rebuilt and not endure the required checks, stamps, visas and other paperwork. Immutable law clashes with first law of travel. First law of travel wins out. The aircrew, after “misbehaving,” arrive in the Sheraton (no less) and encamp for the night. They drink late and party as much as is possible in BSB (the capital) – which is actually pretty restrained. Unbeknown to them the hotel staff had placed them in rooms facing this mosque – only 600 metres away. Calls to prayer were broadcast at 90db (that is, loud to very loud) at 5am the following morning, only a few hours after they retired. Directly into their windows. Worse, a sermon or similar dialogue had started at 3am.

I had the blessed good fortune the next day to watch a grinning team of customs and immigration officers smiling at the sorry lot of aircrew working on their aircraft, complaining of disrupted or complete lack of sleep. I was not convinced the boys understood the connection. It was a nice touch and should have been expected in this very small, close knit town.

(Click on the photo to be taken to a terrific collection of photos by “geertsonck” )