Notes in a Sydney Train

Scrubbed timber has no smell. The burnt brake pads and the metal wheel flange create their own dust and heat and smell which lifts in the warm afternoon, hangs in the humid air and is pushed aside by the train as it sighs up to the platform. I watch the handful of people who angle towards the last carriage. They walk past the second to last to align with the trailing one as if there is something lucky by being there. Or not being somewhere else. Read more

Cobar - By Moonlight

I rolled into Cobar with the sun sunk by twenty minutes and the clear autumn sky turned Indian ink blue. The rising moon was flashing through the trees on my right, distracting me from the roos taking a leisurely leap into my path. Thank goodness for peripheral vision. To my surprise all the “No” neons in front of “Vacancy” were lit, not what I was expecting in this desolate place. So I trawled up the main street, and then back looking for a place to sleep, finally settling on the Great Western Motel, a classic corner pub with verandahs and a public bar slapped down on the corner. Plenty of character on the outside but dead silence in the public bar as I booked a room. Patrons sat quietly, the television was muted and the only sound was the pulsing hiss of the gas heater. I pay my money, the warden issues a key to my cell and I head for the street. Read more

Snaky Creek and Other Place Names

Snaky Creek, just out of Manna Hill (ironic given the arid country, but then, perhaps not so ironic: I wonder if quails fall from the sky around here?!). Not Snake Creek. Or Big Snake Creek. Or Black Snake Creek even. But an adjectival snaky, suggesting deviousness. A slipperiness. A snakiness. And perhaps a sense of humour on the part of those who named it? Or was it such a pit of vipers that’s perpetual snakiness had to be perpetually commemorated those of us passing through? As I jot some notes wondering all this we roll over Cockscomb Creek then Winnininnie Creek. My musing about naming places dries up - to be replaced by a setting ball of yellow fire which makes driving a chore, and both of us wish the bugs on the windscreen had been removed when we had a chance, such is the now refracting light. But the fire lights up the distant jagged landform, dusting the rock with a yellow halo which reduces us to silence. The art and colour is off a palette none of use could devise.

Green Red Zone

There was something unsettling sitting in the offices of a certain government department in Baghdad and hearing senior civil servants, some with PhDs from US and European universities, cynically observe that they had swapped their home grown dictator for Dictator Bremer of Washington DC. Perhaps most disturbing was their discussion about how they were poised to assist the imposed coalition government but how they were rejected and ignored - ironic given these are the folk now trying to administer their country and get it back on its feet. We sat in a boarded up building that had been bombed and looted. Here met men charged with providing utilities and basic living infrastructure four years after Bremer had arrived. Outside sat queues of silent and staring Iraqi citizens, waiting for a chance to petition their minister - a novel concept for them. Not all the signs were hopeless, though in my town we are not searched for weapons before we meet our local member. Read more

Turns out Albert Priest was…

…the town clerk (not sure which town) in the 1920s or so who thought it would be good for all in that part of the bush to have some water delivered via the channel that now bears his name.    Once can only suspect he well earned the naming rights since, as a town clerk, getting such a venture accepted, funded, launched and completed may well have turned into a life calling.

Who was Albert Priest?

Who was Albert Priest? We cross the Albert Priest Channel 26km south of Nyngan. Not such a luminary that a town or desert is named after him. No mountains either of course, this part of the country being billiard table flat. Perhaps it is appropriate that landmarks out here are subsurface ones such as a channel, for the only high points are eucalypts and casuarinas.

Oodla Wirra - Where?

A (very sharp) boning knife protruding backwards from hip pocket, mad scramble through thorn bush hunting jittery goats and a forearm inadvertently connecting with aforementioned knife had us do a quick (one hour) run to the hospital at Peterborough (that’s not a real wound - gotta love those country nurses)  through Oodla Wirra. A name that rattles out of your mouth and falls to the ground in a clatter. The sensation is so pleasing you have to try it again. And again. It makes you laugh. Read more

Cactus is Fractus

Well, it is fractus (there is one for your Scrabble games) out on Miss Betty’s place, even if you do see it flourishing elsewhere in the state. Over the years prickly pear has been managed quite well and the family property is pretty much free of it. But given she is now managing it on her own a few plants have been creeping back. So part of our efforts in SA were directed at knocking these things off. First drive a hole into each pad and into the trunk of the plant. Just as Chris is doing here. Then fill the hole with undiluted Roundup. Then spray a mark on it - it can get pretty confusing out here and you don’t want to cover old ground. (It is a method a whole lot safer than the original treatment methods which involved boiling an arsenic mixture and letting the fumes drift into the weeds!) More than 200 plants were so treated, much to Miss Betty’s relief.

Apart from overrunning vast amounts of land the cactus spines get into the sheep wool making it a problem to handle come shearing time. In fact some shearers refuse to shear sheep known to be farmed in country with cactus. The spines will penetrate clean through a hand and leather boots are no protection. Hence Chris attacking this plant with a specially crafted spear - it allows him to stand off and drill the holes for the Roundup.

( A little bit of Prickly Pear disaster/success story in NSW here)

A Country Finger

Rarely is the gesture of a single finger ever interpreted as anything except someone wishing the worst things to happen to you or your mother. Or both. Regardless of culture, language or age. Except in the country where a single, brief wave of a finger off the steering wheel is understood by rural folk to mean something completely different again. In some respects it is akin a secret handshake.  Read more

Fixing the Back Fence

The boundary fences out here were built in 1898. Or to be more precise, the wire you lean on today was strung out in 1898. The steel posts replaced the wooden posts which are still lying where they were pulled out of the ground more than 110 years ago. We stood in awe of the steel and wire for it stretches as far as the eye can see in a perfectly straight line. More than 110 years old and still straight as a die.

We take some of the original posts, still strung through with original wire and sue them to dam up the trough burrowed under the bottom wire by the goats. The rabbit wire mesh is rehitched, and clipped and in some cases it is replaced or patched. We start this work as early as possible but it is not early enough. The morning is cool and fresh but he oven door opens about 9 am and by 11 we are done. Working with no hat and with minimum water intake catches out some of the team on the first day, a lesson quickly learned. We coach everyone to keep an eye on the colour of their urine as a guide to how hydrated or otherwise they are. It is a novel concept for some of them, but that is what this time away is all about after all.

We get one of the lads hydrated, get him loaded up into the ute and start back to the quarters. It is 17km from the back fence to home - as the crow flies. A bit further as the lizard wanders.

Next Page »