QI Tour - More Bourke (Day 23)

A pretty laid back day today. 

Started with a coffee at the Old Darling Store, down by the Port Of Bourke and then next door for a demonstration of an old Crossley engine. Built in Manchester 102 years ago, its initial post was at the Sydney Powerhouse, where it generated electricity for the city of Sydney from 1923 to 1938. During those fifteen years, the engine ran non-stop. Replaced, it was shipped to Coffs Harbour where it used to run the churns and other machines in a butter factory. Its final working life was on a river bank at Narromine, where it pumped water from the Macquarie River for use on a farm until 1964, where it finally gave up the ghost.

Left there, it was inundated several times by floods, rusted and decayed to a terrible state until Bourke Shire retrieved it  in the late 1990's and bought it to the Port Of Bourke to be painted and displayed. Don Burns then offered to restore it and it now takes pride of place in the park and is started up every day for tourists. Its a truly magnificent beast. I have always loved engines, as did my Dad. There is just something fabulous about watching all the levers and rods and flywheels and the various gizmos go up and down, in and out, round and round. The two blokes demonstrating where our Skipper from the Jandra and his deckhand, only with roles reversed.

Top marks to Bourke Shire for maintaining this great old machine.

After sandwiches we went for a walk across and under the replica wharf. This replica was constructed in 1996 but the original dated back to the river boats of the 1880's. There had been a succession of wharves, all smaller than the one replicated now. The main wharf features different levels to accommodate passenger traffic to and from the paddle boats at different heights of the Darling. Before the wharves were built, the boats were unloaded by a crane pulling items up the bank across large skids of wood which had been laid up the bank. Back in the day, a punt used to run across the river for golfers, to get them between holes. The Darling is possibly one of the world largest water hazards!

We went back out to the Back O Bourke Centre for another more detailed look and to absorb more information. Its a must see in Bourke.

The former London
Chartered Bank building

As the afternoon wore on, we returned to the town centre and while Sue did the grocery shopping, I went for a walk about centre of Bourke. There are some delightful old buildings but as useful for country towns, especially those a long from their capital cities and "civilisation", the most prominent are the banks, the hotels, the police station and the court house. The best of them all was a two storey, wide verandah building which had been the home the London Chartered Bank of Australia, built between 1886 and 1888 after being designed in Melbourne. The bank became a major holder of pastoral properties and one of its managers became the Mayor of Bourke. It was closed in 1942 and purchased by the Tancred Brothers who converted in into a boarding house. The Commonwealth Bank operated out of it for ten years from 1946, despite the fact boarders still lived there. It remains a residential building to this day, accommodating seasonal workers, mostly for the meatworks and usually those on work visas from overseas.

Tired of walking and with no cafe insight, I retreated to the Port O Bourke Hotel, a rather large affair on Mitchell Street. Entering the bar, I had to walk through a group and in particular had to excuse myself to squeeze past a giant of a bloke who was answering questions about cricket. He sounded pretty knowledgeable, although it was clear he had been a bowler, so really, how much could he know?

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It wasn't until I reached the bar and it dawned on me that the bloke I had squeezed past was Glenn McGrath! He was on some sort of meet and greet promotional tour. Came away with a snap. Seemed the least I could do for Australia's most successful quick. Jokes aside, it was a buzz for an old cricket tragic such as I to meet him but of all places, in a pub in Bourke!

Finally getting to Queensland tomorrow as we head for Cunnamulla.

QI Tour - Back O Bourke Centre & The Jandra (Day 22)

Our first day in Bourke was a slow tour of the Back 'O Bourke Museum/Information Centre, which we had seen previously. A series of buildings starts with a animated, twenty minute film outlining the Aboriginal history of the area, including its dreaming creatures and how the arrival of white settlers affected their lives. Nice positive spin imagining the future, working in unison etc. The museum proceeds to highlight people who came from or to Bourke, especially Henry Lawson and his support for the striking shearers. Other notables included Edward Dickens, the favoured son of Charles; Fred Hollows (who is buried here); Nancy Bird, Breaker Morant, Will Ogilvie, Charles Bean, Sidney Kidman and a cast of thousands. There is notable focus on indigenous people who where prominent in the area following white settlement. Jimmy Barker, a self-educated son of a German pastoralist who left when he was 5 and Margaret Ellis, a Murawari women. He fought all his life against racism and was influential, along with Bill Ferguson and Pearl Gibbs in forming the Aboriginal Progressive Association. Ferguson was the first to highlight Australia Day as a day of mourning. Then there was Percy Hobson, a keen your high jumper who set all sorts of records and won Gold at the Perth Commonwealth Games ... this after being told not to let people know he was Aboriginal because it would hold him back and for a long time leaving Bourke on the Friday train, competing in Sydney over the weekend and returning Sunday night! Good museum but take advantage of the two day pass as there is a lot to see and read and listen to and watch!

The importance of the Darling as a channel for trade and prosperity was detailed in the story of the paddle steamers. By 1882, up to forty flat-bottomed, steam driven boats were operating out of Bourke, taking wool to Echuca and bring supplies back to Bourke. Dependent upon the height of the river, drought could sometimes stop the flow of boats and whilst floods provided the chance to cut miles off the trip, boats were often caught on receding waters and left stranded there until the next flood.

The story of the magnificent North Bourke Bridge - the first bridge in NSW to have a centrally raised platform to allow the passage of boats, which the keeper would crank up by hand winch - is also fascinating. Bought up in sections along the Darling, its steel frames were constructed in England. It opened in 1883, as the West Bourke Bridge, because its construction started on the west of the river but reverted to its current name because of it location north of the main town. It had a curve added to the northern end in 1901, because the bullock and camel trains couldn't make a sharp turn onto the bridge without jackknifing. 

As well as the stunning opening animated video, there are a number of others - a version of Henry Lawson's story "A Rough Shed" and another highlighting what Charles Bean wrote about the importance of the river trade to Bourke. Bean was famous as Australia's official war correspondent in WWII. All of the animated videos are produced by a Sydney production company, Ample. 

After lunch, we took a one hour cruise on the Darling, Australia's longest river and one that travels three times the distance that a straight line between start and finish would, because of its overtly bendy nature. We cruised on the PV Jandra, an electric/diesel recreation of the original which was steam powered and transported wool along the Darling in the late 1800's. 

Nice cruise with a difficult start when another couple spoke disparagingly of the Back 'O Bourke Centre owing to their disgust at the stolen generation being highlighted in the opening video. This, they said "made the entire experience a waste of time". The stolen generation never happened apparently and he should know because his dad was a policemen. What the? Aboriginal children were abandoned by their mothers and history re-written. Hmmm. We politely but firmly and very clearly disagreed but chose to avoid further discussion, because he quite clearly was up for an argument. After we were all social acceptable to each other, we found somewhere else to sit for a pleasant outing along the river. 

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Not a great variety of birds but there were lots of cormorants and swallows and a darter, all working the river. The cormorants would constantly dive and resurface in front of the boat, leading us to think they were using the boat to help nab disturbed fish.

Queensland Outback Tour - Bourke Bus Tour

"Dance of the Echidnas"

A long morning at camp doing bugger all was followed by a revisit to Back O Bourke Exhibition Centre so Sue could listen to all of the sound bites she missed yesterday. Having been assured by staff that a chair with a back could be found for her if she returned, a new staff member revived the great art of indifference and simply assured her that she was the first person to complain about backless chairs. He would, however, make an entry in the “diary”.

Big whoop.

So while she made the best of things by manoeuvring against walls an posts, I made a human exhibit of myself in the final gallery as I sat and read “Wednesday With Bob” from my iPad.

A final coffee followed at Little Birdys and it was equally as good as the outstanding predecessors.

The afternoon was occupied by a much anticipated Back O Bourke Mateship Country Tour. Our host, Stu Johnson, we were assured, was “quite a character”.

Hmmm.

Look, the tour was informative. It was three hours and covered some territory. The small coach was comfortable and air conditioned but in future, I’ll have a better understanding of what “quite a character” means. It wasn’t that he was a non stop talker and it certainly wasn’t that he was proud of his town. It was the racism, which wasn’t restricted to aboriginals, as Muslims, the Dutch, New Zealanders among others, all coped his racial slurs. It was the extreme right, Australia First viewpoints, masquerading as National Party. I know lots of Nats and none of them think like Stu Johnson. It was the heavily political bias in his viewpoint about water usage on the Darling River system. It was his warped views on the media, politicians and anyone who attempted to criticise his “mates” in the cotton industry.

Above all, it was the three hour tour which was a thinly disguised advertisement for the cotton industry. Sure, it was interesting to visit a water storage facility. It was interesting to visit a paddock and pick some cotton and have the growing process explained. It was interesting to visit a working cotton gin and be taken through the processing of cotton from the paddock. Interesting but not enough to take up so much of the tour that we felt like we had just be put through a brainwashing exercise to show how the world is wrong – particularly those greenies and media types – and cotton farmers are poor, hard done by blokes who are struggling to make a buck because too much water is being fed to Menindee Lakes. It became almost farcical when we were told that the cotton gin we visited was owned by Peter Harris - the very farmer placed under such doubt by the Four Corners program "Pumped" for allegedly breaching his water licences and pumping water from rivers when they were too low.

We heard two hard luck stories where farmers was screwed by everyone on the planet who didn't think Genghis Khan was a pussy, but we spent hardly anytime on the history of Bourke or looking at the town itself. We did, however, manage to stop outside Mr Johnson’s new business venture, where he described the accommodation and facilities that would be offered when it opened.

At one stage, Mr Johnson explained how much he admired the policies of US President Trump.

From a comfort angle, it was a long time before the first toilet break and that was provided by the staff toilet at the cotton gin where facilities were far from acceptable.

Having started the tour with a spiel about how negative people are in society, during the next three hours he single handedly proved it, with a constant diatribe of what’s wrong with the world, always followed by “am I right” or “you know what I’m talking about, right” or “I know you agree”.

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Well no, I don't agree Mr Johnson’s - not with your politics and almost all of your myopic conclusions and not with you structuring a tour whose major purpose is to be an advertising activity for the cotton industry and an opportunity for him to express your far right political opinions. This was a dreadful experience and I would caution others who are considering it.

Apart from that, it was nice day.

Queensland Outback Tour - Bourke - Museums & Boat Trips

A few spots of rain during the night only just settled the dust and gave the car that driving through

dust for months look.

North Bourke Bridge

After breakfast - a leisurely breakfast at that - we traveled back into Bourke. Kidman's Camp is about 8kms north of the Bourke Post office, across the North Bourke Bridge and the two bridges which span the Polygonum Swamp and Polygonum Billabong. Both looked dry and dusty today.

The North Bourke Bridge is a cement affair which has spanned the Darling River in two wide lanes since 1997. It replaced a 114 year old predecessor made of local timbers and iron transported from England. It was made at the height of the river trade and has a central section which once lifted to allow river traffic to pass through in times of high river volumes. It was one of only two lift bridges still in existence in NSW until the one at Balranald was closed in 1973 and subsequently demolished. Closed now but open for foot traffic from the eastern side, the curved western approach is no longer safe to traverse. Whilst the eastern end has a straight approach, the western end bends in a gradual arc. The reason is that the roadway used to end in a T-intersection in front of the North Bourke Inn but the increasing use of bullock teams in the late 1880's made it impossible to make the right angle turn at the intersection, so the curved approach was added.

Its a beautiful old structure.

Our morning destination was the Back O Bourke Exhibition Centre, a series of buildings made from iconic curved corrugated iron - colourbond these days - with excellent wall and audio visual displays of the history of Bourke and its characters. Among the famous who lived here at times were Henry Lawson, who was sent by his Sydney editor to "dry out" and humped a swag for 300kms soon after getting here with his fellow writer Jim Gordon (who often wrote as Jim Graham). Lawson returned in threadbare clothes and with no soles on his shoes and determined to never see a swag again. He then became an advocate and organiser for the local shearers and instigated strikes.

Nancy Bird Walton, probably Australia's most famous aviatrix, after being taught to fly by Kingsford-Smith, came to Bourke to pilot a Gypsy Moth for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Edward Dickens acted in the role of a supervisor of lands and later served for six years as the local member in the Parliament of NSW. Dickens? Does that name sound familiar. He was Charles Dickens favourite son.

Fred Hollows based himself here to administer eye surgery to aboriginal people and changed many lives. At his request, he was buried in the local cemetery.

Its a great spot and they offer a two day pass to allow plenty of time for it all to sink in.

Before lunch we managed to squeeze in a visit to the excellent Back O Bourke Gallery of local artist Jenny Greentree. She creates the most amazing landscapes, which are sensitive to the local indigenous customs and totems, from the brilliant application of pastels. The business is fully self-sufficient, framing their own works. Outstanding reproductions of original work are also for sale using a process which she outsources to a photographer in Brisbane. I couldn't tell the original from the reproduction. Artworks are offered framed and unframed and are remarkably well priced for such high quality. You'll find the gallery on the Mitchell Highway in North Bourke, just after the North Bourke Bridge.

The afternoon was a pleasant cruise along the Darling, from our digs at Kidman's Camp, down stream towards Bourke. To go all the way to the Bourke Wharf would take an hour, so our vessel, the Jandra, only goes half way. Its long enough to see the North Bourke Bridge from yet another perspective, see some water birds and hear an extensive description of Bourke and especially the use of craft on the Darling over the years. It was a very pleasant hour looking at the steep sided banks of perhaps Australia's greatest river and see the huge River Red Gums clinging to whatever purchase they could hold in order to keep their roots in the water.

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It was remarkable that both the Exhibition Centre and the paddle boat - not steamer because a diesel is at her heart - are run by the local council.

It was back to Little Birdie for another excellent coffee to round out the day.