January 30 - Wilcannia in the Darling

Wilcannia - people tend to drive right on through, but like Pooncarie, Wilcannia was once an important, busy port on the Darling River. In the language of the Barkindji people who have lived in the region for 40,000 years, the name Wilcannia means ‘a gap in the bank where the flood waters escape’ - sadly there are no flood waters these days!  My high- (or was that primary-) school knowledge of Australian history has again been found sadly wanting, but in a nut shell .....

Hot on the heels of surveyor Major Mitchell, by the 1880s Wilcannia was booming and came to be known as the ‘Queen of the West’. Tens of thousands of tons of wool and other goods were shipped to and from its mighty wharf and a new punt and a pontoon bridge were built to carry sheep across the Darling at a rate of 4000 an hour. Wow!  River transport declined in the early 1900s impacting many ports along the Darling, and other major rivers, as other transport methods became viable.  So began a slow death! 

Sadly, Wilcannia has declined and tends to be viewed as a good place NOT to stop because of ‘the Aboriginal problem’. Much of that problem is due to ‘the government’ using Wilcannia as a dumping ground for disenfranchised aborigines from surrounding areas with no concern (or knowledge) that they belonged to different language groups and were not necessarily going to all live happily together - echoes of a few other places of ‘resettlement’ in Australia, methinks! Imagine putting a mix of Croats, Serbs, Macedonians and Greeks all together in a town somewhere in the Balkans because they all look white and similar and therefore it is assumed that they will all get along with each other!  The blinkered view of ‘officials’, of ignorance, lack of caring! The ill-considered mixing of the local Barkindji with Wangkumara, Danggali, Barindji and Malyangapa people from surrounding areas was racially insensitive and proved deeply divisive. Such unnecessary pain and disruption which lingers still and sadly a culture of violence and non-cooperation exists across the whole population - aboriginal and ‘white’ alike. 

We limped into Wilcannia covered in mud with a flat tyre on the van but it seems we were on a lucky streak! A local came to our rescue in the pouring rain and helped us change the wheel on the van. Bless him many times over! His kindness and reassurances convinced us to stay overnight so we camped by the ‘river’ in the Victory Caravan Park which is safe and has good, clean facilities.  We had a mob of kangaroos to keep us company; it had rained so there was a reasonable amount of feed about. Except for the occasional soft thud of kangaroos passing by the van, it was a very quiet and tranquil place.

Next day after hosing some of the mud from our rig, we set off to Broken Hill via White Cliffs. Both mining towns but White Cliffs is driven by the promise of opals. Its opals are white (or milky) or crystal similar to Coober Pedy. Lightning Ridge is home to the spectacular black opals including some spectacular opalised fossils. But that’s a story for another day ......

Washing some of the mud off!

Sadly the Darling is even lower here

This kangaroo waited patiently for me to get further away before feeding 

The flood level in 1976. It is hard to believe the contrasts

The Roos gathered in the shade for grass and whatever moisture they could get

The White Cliffs Solar power station was built in 1981 and provided power to the community until 2004. They are now on the grid but it was a valuable experiment from all accounts.

Almost all dwellings are underground so the town looks deserted

Opal towns are not pretty. Here so many of the people here live inside the hills-underground.

January 29 - silence and heat at Pooncarrie

Silence and heat! At sunset as the air cools a little and tiny puffs of air do their job of evaporative cooling - but only partially - we sit and soak it up. The silence is punctuated by bird calls and occasional cracking of branches while the visual stillness is broken only by the shadow of a bird flying between trees, a tiny bat out on a twilight forage or a goat wandering to the rather tepid algae-tainted water of the poor old Darling River trickling through Pooncarie where we are camped. 

Hard to believe that Pooncarie (population <50) was once a major port on the Darling - the river was deep, flowing past its busy wharf. So now? The locals have started to find dying fish here too. What a tragedy, a travesty really. 

At over 3000 km in length, the Darling River system covers almost 15% of Australia. With river systems like this which have sustained the land for millennia one has to wonder why we, or rather many communities like this along its length, have such a problem with water - or the lack of it. Well no of course we don’t wonder - but they shouldn’t have a problem. Time people really talked sustainable farming practices and crops suited to our regional climates. Stepping off my soap box now, sorry. 

But here, or rather there, we were in Pooncarie, why?  We were attempting the Darling River Run - not the entire length but the stretch between Wentworth and Bourke, as a starter. The first leg for us began in Wentworth where the Darling meets the Murray then on through Menindee, where the famous lakes are dry! to end in Wilcannia. It was dirt road most of the way. High wind swept sand and dirt in clouds like low fog across our path and the air was tinted pale orange with willy willies scattered around the horizon. We struck some heavy rain and the road turned into a bit of a quagmire, but it was a fascinating drive under slatey, thunder-clouded skies. The rain brought the kangaroos out in groups onto the road where the water collected; they weren’t shy. 

We made it to Wilcannia in time for another deluge which bucketed down just after we started changing a wheel on the caravan - isn’t it always the way!?

The Darling River

Our favourite kind of road - no traffic!

High wind swept sand and dirt in clouds like low fog across our path.

A large willy willy shaded grey in the shadow of the storm clouds

There had been a wee bit of rain!!

The mud plastered on our rig was a couple of cm thick.

January end of the month - on the road NW

Happy happy happy - we’re on the road again in the Outback on roads less travelled. 

We’re seeing lots of interesting things - as always! and it’s been marvellous to see that so many places have picked out ‘heritage trails’. The place in the photo with the Desert Oak for instance is north of the Murray, west of Moama. You may think it looks very uninteresting, but it has a fascinating history and surprising abundance. The vegetation .... you simply have to look to appreciate. The region is still part of the travelling stock routes, the long paddocks of old, that crisscross Australia, and over the millennia it has been part of the homelands of the Yorta Yorta, Wamba Wamba and Perrepa Perrepa peoples. The gully marked by the trees in the background of the photo was once part of the ancient Murray River course and a great source of food. 

Looks can be deceiving, but if only we learn how to look we would find the remains of wetlands and middens, rookeries, fish traps and ochre pits. Today the traditional peoples of the region continue to use the river forests for food and medicines including the Box Mistletoe (one of the 70 odd species endemic to Australia) and the many tubers - I want to know more! As an aside, in Europe mistletoe is being trialed as a cancer treatment and it has been used to treat headaches. 

We know so little about the medicinal, nutritional and other benefits of the scraps of plants at our feet or indeed what plant species have survived millennia of Australia’s challenging climate. Interestingly we passed large areas of cultivated saltbush - it seems to be the new wonder herb. It is all part of a move towards cultivating indigenous plants for consumption. Well hooray, it’s about time is all I can say - scheez!  My much-thumbed SA outback plant book lists at least 25 species of saltbush out of Australia’s 300 or so indigenous species (1500 globally). I’m looking forward to exploring Australia’s hundreds of species of saltbush - later!

Because of the lack of local stones to be found here, once most tools used by the local aboriginal people were traded from neighbouring groups. These trade routes went in all directions linking into major indigenous trade networks that covered the whole of Australia. Many say that the cameleers, drovers, etc forged significant trade and communication routes. Well yes they did, but these relative newcomers weren’t the first trail blazers and in fact in many cases followed the aboriginal trade routes.

I’ll keep exploring to discover more about our wide rainbow-coloured land!! Au bientot .....

A slightly denuded Desert Oak. I love these trees

Our trusty rig

Samphire, a saltbush, is a member of the Chenpod family and is rather a trendy salad in some quarters.

January 2019 - A week plus in Wang II

Before we headed west, going from hot weather to more hot weather we spent time in the rather beautiful northeastern corner of Victoria.  From the water eroded granite of Woolshed Falls, the promise of gold and gemstones at Reedy Creek (yes we did find flecks of gold!), quirky places like Mount Big Ben - ding dong!, the gourmet delights of the Milawa region and King River Valley, through the tranquil almost hidden delights of Dederang Valley, Happy Valley and the Ovens Valley - the whole region is a delight. Echoes of times past marked by oasts - kilns used once for drying tobacco but recently used to dry hops. Flash back to the 80s and this region grew masses of tobacco. 

We try to travel on roads we had never driven on before. A challenge sometimes, but very interesting - you never know what you were going to discover. We drove along roads lined with beautiful pink and mauve crepe myrtle trees big and small, and blowsy walnut and chestnut trees. All the while bright yellow grasshoppers leapt about like crazed wind-up toys. 

We travelled beside rivers and creeks - the King, Rose, Buffalo, Ovens, Kiewa and Hurdle, past Bread and Butter Gap, the long Buffalo Lake. We were in the high country and were surprised at the number of Highland Cattle chewing their cud under eucalypts. A bizarre sight after Scotland! Some places we would never have found had it not been for my Hema map app - it works even when there is no ‘signal’ by tracking you with GPS. I love it! 

Woodshed Falls. Be lovelier in cooler weather

The vacated home seemed tethered to the tree with spiders web

Outside Myrtleford

Oasts now used for hops which are widely grown in the area 

Whitty Café in Whitfield. It was like stepping back in time. Quite delightful.

Lake Buffalo dotted with pelicans and many other waterbirds. Quite tranquil

Idyllic hideaway in the mountains

January 2019 - A week in Wang I

You know what they say about mad dogs and Englishman - well add crazy fossickers to that! There we were squatting in the sun panning and sieving in Reedy Creek not so far from Eldorado. Talking of Eldorado, there’s an interesting old dredge there which when it was built in 1936 was the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. From then until it ceased to operate in 1954, it recovered 2.2 tonnes of gold. That’s a lot of gold! But what did we find panning in the creek? Hmmm well.... lots of pretty quartz - smoky, a piece I would say had a little rose in it, tiny birds-egg quartz stones polished by the river, pink granite and other things yet to be identified. I saw a fleck or two of gold in my pan but attempts to extract them ...... poof, gone! It was a lovely place - but it would be far lovelier if it had been cooler!!! But it was a good time to acclimatise before we head NW to near the border of Qld, SA and NSW - the really hot spots. Crazy! did I hear someone say? 

Isn’t this astonishing!?  Look at the variety of form, pattern and colour. So beautiful

This is the owner of that beauty. Poor creature was caught in the car grill. I rescued it but sadly the poor creature was mortally wounded

Buckets of gold! This is the dredge at Eldorado built in 1936

Kangaroo Crossing on Reedy Creek. Beautiful spot. 

So what have we here? Lots of quartz - mostly.