NARRABRI (Pop. 7,300)

 

7/3/02. The hour or so’s train journey from Moree to Narrabri takes one through further changes in terrain. Unremittingly flat scrubby plains to the west, a slowly looming range of desolate mountains to the east. Flocks of emus. The rather haunting peaks are the Nandewar Range from the top of which, I am told, one can see out over c. 80,000 square kilometres or one eighth of the whole area of New South Wales.

            

 

The centre of Narrabri (where I have to spend fourteen hours before a bus connection at half past midnight) is like Moree - a bit of a hike from the station. Shoppy main street, an old gaol, a Victorian Masonic Temple, a couple of non-descript hotels; the standard set-up.

 

In the afternoon I set out to walk to the ‘Little Mountain’, a look-out c. three kilometres out of Narrabri to the east. I lunched (on lentils, figs and unleavened bread - very Biblical!) under the sparse shade of a trackside tree, then delved into the little cemetery. No shade there; scorching sun; heat-cracked tombs, many of which sloped or sank wildly; stone-blasting dust eddying in little ‘twisters’ (or ‘dust devils’ as they are called here) which skipped between the graves; rust- and shard-filled glass domes of old Victorian bisque china ‘floral tributes’. One grave, that of an eight year old child who died in the early 1940’s, is still obviously tended.

 

Of interest was a clutch of vibrantly carved, rather naïve headstones in high, stylised relief (see sketch). Delightful swirls, urns, flowers; eccentric crown and sceptre designs – all, I suspect, by one very local mason working in the mid 1870’s to late 1880’s – though in style the graves look like English ones of the 1830’s and 1840’s and incorporate motifs that go back to the 1770’s and 80’s.

 

             

 

 

Travel Log, Dubbo to Cobar, Friday, March 9th.

 

Now one begins to enter the Outback. An hour or so into the three-and-a-half-hour coach journey from Dubbo to Cobar the fences and any obvious sign of human settlement give out. Thereafter, improbably red soil and a relatively dense scrub of low shrubs and small trees are the only features. The trees decrease in height the further west one goes - by the time we reach Cobar there is nothing much over twenty feet high. This kind of arid country rolls out in front and sweeps for mile after mile to either side as far as the eye can see. A stop is made at Boppy Mountain - a neat, rather cosy three-peaked eminence but nothing else; no sign of any settlement.

 

              

Travel Log, Cobar to Broken Hill, 10/3/02

Out into the Never-Never. Cobar is 134 kilometres from the previous town, Nyngan (pop. 2,500), and the next town, Wilcannia (pop. 900), is a further 260 kilometres to the west. Broken Hill, the next - and last - town before half a continent of emptiness lies 200 kilometres west of Wilcannia.

 

There was a quiet handful of us on the coach. Contemplative Thoughts in the Bush were prevented by videos shown during the two-and-a-half-feature-film-length journey. One was a not-unenjoyable version of Jane Eyre. Odd, though, to see snowy Yorkshire dales and crumbling Gothic piles as one traversed the desolate, heat-humming interior of New South Wales in the westering sun.

 

Wilcannia was a silent grey cluster of shuttered shops, Emmdale no more than a shanty pub with a quartet of card-playing hillbillies (if there were any hills), an outside loo and a corrugated iron barbecue and smokestack. Thus, Life is literally pared down to its essentials: food, drink and defecation - the cards are an added luxury.

 

            

BROKEN HILL  (pop.25000)

 

Three flags fly at the Miners’ Memorial on top of the old rubble heaps overlooking the town and the scrubby wastes beyond; the Australian flag, a red flag for Labour Solidarity and a black flag for Death.

 

Below, Broken Hill’s streets are rigorously rectilinear and are, in the main, named after various minerals and by-products of mining: Garnet, Beryl, Argent, Sulphide, Chloride, Iodide - and even a charmingly named little thoroughfare called Slag Street.

 

There is a number of grand old buildings in showy Boom Town style dating from the 1880’s onwards. The Town Hall is - rather symbolically given Broken Hill’s declining fortunes - merely a façade.

 

BROKEN HILL: THE CEMETERY AND BEYOND

 

12/3/02. In the late afternoon I wandered to the western edge of town curious to see if the Great Beyond is visible - imagining, though, that things probably peter out in some scraggy, plastic-strewn no man’s land, half Bush, half municipal dump or sewage works. As I was to find out, things end suddenly and dramatically.

 

First comes the cemetery. The last cemetery. Vast - like all the ones I’ve been in so far on this trip rolled into one. Thousands upon thousands of gravestones - most in some off-white stone like Kendal Mint Cake - stretch away in every direction. Nothing modern, nothing of the town is visible when one stands in the middle of them. Powerful, overwhelming, sobering effect of all that serried grief, slab on slab of it. The very first two gravestones I looked at spoke of mystery and tragedy. One was not even a stone - merely an  Edwardian enamel plaque nailed to an 18 inch long piece of shattered and weathered paling lying askew in the dust: ‘In Loving Memory of Lionel Roffe and Amy Northey.’ Nothing else. Who were they? What was their story?

 

The second inscription needs no commentary and answers every question:

 

 

In Loving Memory of

Samuel H. Manuel

Beloved Husband of Bessie Manuel

Died through accident at South Mine

April 7, 1910 aged 61 years

 

Also

 

William B. Manuel

Son of above

Who was accidentally killed

At South Mine, May 14 1900

Aged 25 years

 

At Rest.

 

 

 

 I walked on towards the western edge.  A breeze blew up. Flies - dozens and dozens of them - flew all around and crawled all over me. There is no grass anywhere, merely gravelly red soil dotted very sparsely with a few stunted trees, in the branches of which the moving air made a continuous low swishing sound. A rather sinister peculiarity of the ground was that although it looked parched and hard, one’s feet sank through an upper crust into a slightly soft lower level. A little bit like walking on snow - but not quite.

 

At the western edge of the cemetery is a shallow dry ditch and an area of scrub which screens what is beyond. As I stood scribbling some notes, two large kangaroos (their tracks are everywhere among the graves) leapt up and bounded off. I felt a powerful urge to follow them. As I did so, a third kangaroo appeared some way off and sat watching me as I crossed the ditch and walked through the low shrubs and saltbush onto a patch of bare grey rock where the country opened out before me in a great scrubby sweep towards the setting sun…    

 

 

            

 

 

 

POSTSCRIPT, January 2007: The moment described in the diary entry above wasn’t, of course, the end of my journey - and after a few days and with several breaks I duly made the twelve hundred kilometre, sixteen hour train journey back to Sydney. It wasn’t even the end of my drawing for the trip; other sketches were to follow as other towns made their mark - most notably Bathurst with its fine, sweeping Edwardian streetscapes and handsome public parks and monuments.

 

My moment on the edge of the ‘Never Never’ (the phrase, although tired, still seems the right one) was much more powerful than my sparse notes convey - and was of the kind that changes one for good. I remember an almost irresistible urge to continue walking towards that setting sun - and a profound sadness at the thought of having to turn my back on it to return to what goes under the name of ‘everyday life’.

 

I hope that something of the delight I experienced during my three month journey around New South Wales has come across in these notes and sketches. They are the small fruits of a powerful affection. Much as I enjoy and take pleasure in my own country - and I could never pass for anything other than an Englishman - the old phrase of an early and anonymous Australian settler is never far from my mind:

 

 

“In England we exist. Here we feel we are alive.”