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.