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| ISBN-13: | 9781743432211 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 5 MB |
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Penelope Bungles to Broome
By Tim Bowden
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2001 Tim BowdenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86508-799-3
CHAPTER 1
Assignation with Alice
There is a wonderful feeling of exhilaration on the first morning of a big trip, gear packed, fuel tanks full and the joyous realisation that unknown pleasures and adventures lie ahead — combined with the luxury of freedom of choice on the open road as to where you go and how long you stay there. As the clutch engaged, and Penelope and The Manor crept up our steep laneway at 5 am on that cold June morning trying not to make too much noise to disturb our sleeping neighbours, there was the gleeful realisation that we were leaving behind the daily routines of suburban living. This was quickly followed by periods of soul-searching and reflection — not of the wisdom of leaving — but pondering what items, essential or trivial, had been left behind. There is always something. At least it wasn't the all-important sleeping bags.
Getting away on a fine morning also raises the spirits. The red flush of dawn had us almost clear of the great Sydney sprawl, heading south from Campbelltown on the Hume Highway to connect up with the Sturt Highway at Yass, which would take us west over the Hay plains through Wagga Wagga, Narrandera and Hay to our first overnight stop at Balranald. Still pumped up with the adrenalin of heading off, I slipped a cassette of our 'holiday song' into the player (on a major trip an almost daily occurrence that Ros calls 'morning prayers') and sang along with Harry Nilsson's rendition of 'Everybody's Talkin' with its undeniably 1960s' ambience. Those who remember those years may recall the film Midnight Cowboy featuring a New York hustler, played by Jon Voight, heading south to Florida with his crippled friend (Dustin Hoffman), where — as the song so delightfully points out — life, the weather and just about everything else simply had to be better.
As we began the climb up into the Southern Highlands, cattle stood patiently in the frozen fields, waiting for the sun to thaw their pastures. But they only had a fraction of my attention. I had begun a king-sized worry. Ros says I always do this at the beginning of a trip. This time I was brooding about the roof rack. Why had I insisted on putting it on? When we finished our packing, there was more room in Penelope than I'd anticipated for some of the gear I had destined for the roof. The aerodynamic drag of a roof rack is considerable. They say it adds 20 per cent to your fuel consumption to tow a trailer. Maybe I should add another ten per cent for roof rack drag? So what about my fuel calculations? With main and auxiliary tanks holding 140 litres of fuel — plus another 20 litres of diesel from the spare jerry can — I had calculated we could safely travel 800 kilometres between re-fuelling points. I needed to get at least 400 kilometres from the main tank. But perhaps the roof rack had put paid to that.
Ros was looking out her window as the early sun threw long shadows across the countryside, blissfully unaware that I was nurturing a classic fret.
Bloody roof rack! With no head wind at all, we were battling to do 85 kph. Admittedly we were climbing, but what if we couldn't manage our cruising speed of 100 to 110 kph over long distances? A sudden flash of inspiration — maybe it wasn't too late to get rid of it? We could divert to Canberra and leave it with friends and repack. Or take it to Queanbeyan and leave it with the Jayco people there.
'Ros —' (tentatively).
'Yes?' (She knows that tone of voice.)
I advanced my arguments. They were not well received. What about our ability to carry firewood into national parks? I admitted that was a good point. And how could we possibly test fuel consumption when we were climbing over the Great Dividing Range? Point taken. Ros produced our travelling thermos.
'Would you like a cup of coffee?'
Perhaps she thought caffeine helped soothe lunatics. I sipped away and cogitated darkly on matters of fuel consumption and wind drag. Ros broke the long silence.
'OK, this is what we do. We can refuel at Wagga Wagga and then test the speed and fuel consumption of the main tank on the flat when we hit the Hay plains. If that proves a disaster — which I don't think it will — we can leave the roof rack somewhere in Port Augusta. We have to come back through there on the way back.'
What a woman. Sheer genius. I brightened up and began to enjoy the passing countryside again. And so it came to pass that we did manage to coax 400 kilometres out of the main tank, cantered along quite comfortably at 110 kph on the Hay plains, and forgot all about leaving the roof rack at Port Augusta.
To maximise the distances we could travel on our first two days out we had decided to stay in motels at Balranald and Port Augusta, and celebrate our first bush camp somewhere off the Stuart Highway on day three. I'd not given much thought to why Balranald was so named. It's the oldest European settlement on the Lower Murrumbidgee River, dating back before 1850, and the result of a homesick Scot, George James McDonald, the Commissioner for Crown Lands for the Lower Darling District, who dropped by in 1848 and thought the tiny settlement looked like his home village Balranald in the Outer Hebrides, for God's sake. I'm told that 'bal' in Celtic means abode, or village, of Ranald — the clan of Ranald. How McDonald managed to tie in the Outer Hebrides with the kangaroos, gum trees, resident Aborigines and inland plains can perhaps only be explained by copious libations of whatever moonshine was available at the time.
Balranald has also been a crossing point for many of the early explorers. Charles Sturt was the first European to pass by in 1830, during his exhaustive exploration of the Murray-Darling river system, followed six years later by Thomas Mitchell who, having demonstrated that the Lachlan River flowed into the Murrumbidgee, then went on to prove that the Darling River actually joined the Murray — which Sturt believed to be so, but had not actually seen.
The doomed duo of Burke and Wills crossed the Murrumbidgee by punt on 17 September 1860, and camped overnight on the river bank in front of the Balranald Inn. Despite crossing the continent from Adelaide to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Robert O'Hara Burke must go down in Australian history as one of the more fat-headed explorers. He rushed off from the Coopers Creek camp in December with a party of four men, six camels, four horses and inadequate provisions instead of waiting for the bulk of his party who were making their way up from Adelaide to join him. It was the hottest time of the year, and they didn't make it back to Coopers Creek — on their last legs — until April the next year.
The story of their deaths by malnutrition and thirst is well known, and only one of the four, John King, survived by sensibly attaching himself to a group of Aborigines for a month until a relief party arrived. (King was originally a soldier in the Indian Army who had left India because of poor health! He later said of the Aborigines: 'They treated me with uniform kindness and looked upon me as one of themselves.') The Aborigines must have been puzzled by the inability of Burke and Wills to live off the land. Burke and his companions must also have wondered from time to time where the Aborigines got their food and water and how they managed to live. Was it a misplaced sense of British superiority that prevented them from making closer contact with other human beings who were clearly making a success of existing in that harsh country? Like Scott of the Antarctic (also an impetuous planner) in a different kind of desert, Burke took other, more sensible expeditioners like his deputy, William John Wills, with him to their deaths.
It's a pity today's travellers can't see more from the road of the rivers they are following. Often the only evidence of the river's presence is provided by the irrigated fields of bright green, newly-sown cereal and vegetable crops against the more subdued olives and browns of the native vegetation. You have to detour down side roads to see narrow ribbons of life-giving water that sustains life and agriculture in the Murray–Darling basin on a slow meandering journey to South Australia.
Travellers not on a tight schedule should allow time for detours. On our last foray along this route to Port Augusta (via Mildura and Renmark) we called in briefly to the town of Morgan in South Australia. We refuelled, bought a couple of dogs' eyes with dead horse (pies with sauce) for lunch at the first shop we saw, asked about the state of a then gravelled road to Burra, and took off. To our enduring travelling shame, we weren't even aware then that Morgan was on the Murray where the river sweeps around what is variously known as the Great Bend or the Great Elbow. Only 160 or so kilometres from Adelaide, it was once an important regional and communications hub, not only for river traffic, but as a railhead and port. In its heyday, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Morgan was the second busiest port in South Australia after Adelaide. This time we drove in further to a little park where we could overlook the river, ferry, charmingly restored buildings along the river front and remains of the railway station and wharves. While we had lunch we resolved to call in on our way back to do the Morgan Historical Walk, detailed in an excellent pamphlet put out by the local tourism association.
Although the vineyards along the Murray near Renmark were not looking their most attractive with the vines leafless and skeletal, we called in to a small winery to pick up a few glass receptacles of bottled sunshine — and the cheapest muscat we would find. We planned to meet up with Greg Williams, Heather Messer and their two boys Todd and Ryan at Kununurra in a month's time. On our first meeting at Cape Arid National Park on the south-east coast of Western Australia, I had generously given Greg a bottle of muscat purchased from the same area at the startlingly low price of $2. Neither of us had high expectations of it, and when Greg did get around to sampling it he claims he put it to better use by topping up the brake fluid in the master cylinder of his venerable Toyota Landcruiser. The cheapest muscat on offer this time was $4.50 a bottle and we bought two — one to sample in the cold nights of the central desert and the other for Greg and Heather.
We had given Port Augusta short shrift on our previous visit. It was raining at the time and the mix of salt flats and muddy mangroves at the head of Spencer Gulf and sweep of scrubby desert wilderness stretching seemingly to infinity caused us to agree with the explorer Matthew Flinders when he came here on 13 March 1802. He wrote in his diary: 'Nothing of particular interest having presented itself to detain us at the head of the Gulf, we got under way.'
For the modern traveller, the view from Flinders' desolate vantage point now takes in the sprawl of Port Augusta's light industrial area, and the big chimney of the power station belching a great plume of smoke. I had written in my travelling diary that Port Augusta was one of those places that simply had to exist because of its geographical location, whether it wanted to or not. It was railhead, port, gateway to the north and a place all road traffic heading east or west across the continent simply had to pass through. Keeping my original ignorant dismissal of Morgan in mind, I was clearly in need of what the Chinese would call 'correct thinking' about the charms of Port Augusta.
Our friend Ted Egan in Alice Springs, all-round good bloke, singer and spinner of outrageous yarns, had recommended we stay at the intriguingly named Standpipe Motel in Port Augusta which, Ted said, had a brilliant Indian restaurant. We didn't mind 'doing ourselves nicely' because it was the last time we would sleep away from The Manor for the next three months — apart from our planned voyage on Coral Princess. Even though we were looking forward to camping again, it was a special occasion of sorts.
The original Standpipe Hotel was built in 1883, shortly after the arrival of water piped under Spencer Gulf to a pressure tower at Port Augusta West. Charles Chappel, the original licensee, saw the virtue in having another watering hole close by, and his hotel was strategically situated as a meeting place for travellers heading north or west. He erected the original 'standpipe' which was a pipe, like an inverted L ([??]) under which water containers could be filled up, or camels and horses washed. The pressure came from the nearby water tower. The hotel's licence lapsed in 1901 and after that the building was variously a private residence and a nursing home. Since the early 1980s the old hotel has been splendidly restored as a function centre, restaurant and bar with high, decorated ceilings and a superb collection of historic photographs dating back to the days when camels and their Afghan drivers were the only way of getting supplies to remote settlements and when a forest of masts and spars from the rigged ships at the port loomed over the town.
It was the shortest day of the year when we were there and we needed to buy fresh supplies for the beginning of our 'proper' camping. I was having problems with the battery of my eMate notebook computer which was not holding its charge. Fortunately Port Augusta had a Tandy electronics shop, and I hoped to get a charger which I could plug into the 12 volt bayonet point socket on Penelope's dashboard. The problem, I reasoned, was to find a charger with the right voltage, and computers can be tricky. That is how we came to meet Paul Wilson, the Tandy manager and long-term and enthusiastic resident of Port Augusta. He did not have the equipment I wanted, but suggested an even better idea. There was a converter available — perhaps in the sister shop in Alice Springs — which would convert 12 volt direct current to 240 AC current, thereby allowing me not only to charge up my tardy eMate with its existing charger, but also to run my bigger Powerbook away from mains power. A quick phone call to Alice Springs. Yes, they had one and would hold it for me. Now, how long were we staying in Port Augusta?
I confessed we were off the next morning. Paul was incensed. 'But there is so much to see here.'
He looked at his watch.
'The sun will be setting in about twenty minutes. You just have time to drive north to Yorkey's Crossing — that is right at the actual top of Spencer Gulf — and you can get some great photos of the setting sun lighting up the Flinders Ranges to the east.
'There's no time to talk further now. Just get in your four-wheel-drive and go. I'll come and see you at the Standpipe Motel tonight when you get back and we'll talk some more. Make sure you have a good look at the black-and-white historic photos in the bar of Port Augusta taken in 1900.'
He was absolutely insistent about this, and we drove off obediently. We got to the crossing as the orange bowl of the sun dipped behind the hills to the west, and we saw its dying light highlight the rolling flanks of the Flinders Ranges to the east, just as Paul had described it.
We met up in the Standpipe bar as arranged, and had a good look at the historic photos on display. When I mentioned, over a drink, that I was interested in the 1802 visit by Matthew Flinders in his ship Investigator, Paul nearly exploded with enthusiasm. He had read Flinders' original journal of his Spencer Gulf visit and drawn conclusions based on his local knowledge. Flinders had seen a large mountain in the distance which he named Mt Brown (after his on-board botanist) and a party was sent off to climb it.
Mt Brown was approximately 30 kilometres to the east of Spencer Gulf, and Paul Wilson believed that a trick of the light made Mt Brown look at least half the distance away it really was — and Flinders' exploratory party miscalculated and had to spend a night out on the mountain. To put his theory to the test, Paul did the walk himself and spent a night on the mountain.
'I thought of how terrified they must have been looking back towards the Gulf, with the lights of Aboriginal camp fires glowing in the dark. They had no contact with the Aborigines.'
Paul's enthusiasm for Port Augusta and its surrounds was so infectious I felt I should sell up in Sydney and move there to live. After our succulent dinner of Tandoori chicken, garlic prawns and buttered narn I had completely revised my earlier ignorant impressions of Port Augusta. A lesson, surely, for spending more time exploring unknown places before passing judgment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Penelope Bungles to Broome by Tim Bowden. Copyright © 2001 Tim Bowden. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Introduction,
Maps,
1 Assignation with Alice,
2 Tackling the Tanami,
3 Cruising with the Ancient Mariners,
4 Kimberley Kaleidoscope,
5 Into the Bungle Bungles,
6 The Bradshaws,
7 You Can't Drink Tea Through a Fly Veil,
8 Engorged,
9 Blown Away,
10 Wildflowers and Wild Places,
Bibliography,