Nobby

Rudd's Pub - a hidden gem

Just a small jaunt today - about 60kms - up to one of my favourite little happenstance, the little village of Nobby on the Darling Downs.

Nobby was just a sign on the road that caught my eye back in 2010 as I was driving the rig by myself from Townsville to home after Sue was rehabilitated by plane with a bad flare up of her back. I turned in out of curiosity and was delighted with what I found.

Probably named after Nobby Carver, a navvy who came out from England with a few mates and gained a reputation by being able to eat more soup that the ship's pig. They ended up working for Queensland railways as fettlers and gang workers laying line from Toowoomba to Warwick in 1868. The siding that they established by their camp - McDonald's Camp - came to be known as Nobby's siding and then just Nobby, where as the small village that was surveyed across the road from the siding in 1891, had been named Davenport, after a local member of parliament and a local land baron. The confusion went on until 1931, when the workers won out and the place has been Nobby ever since.

The Rudd's Pub, which was called the Davenport pub until the 1980's, is named for Steele Rudd (aka Arthur Hoey Davis), the son of Welsh immigrants who lived, as a boy, near Nobby on a selection his father took up and is reputed to have sat in the pub and written his yarns about the struggles of a newbie family on a tough bit of land, Rudd's stories of Dad and Dave and Mable and Mother and the stuff of Australian legend. As with most legend, the truth behind them is far more interesting and Rudd led a colourful and sometimes sad life in a troubled relationship and struggling with a love of the drink and a boom or bust set of moods.

Sister Elizabeth Kenny's Memorial Room

The other outstanding feature of Nobby is the Sister Kenny Memorial room which was purpose built, mostly by local donation. It contain the story of Kenny, one of the greatest Australians and largely unrecognised in Australia. She grew up in Nobby and found here vocation early in nursing and a had a knack for studying the problems associated with treating patients and thinking up new ways. For instance, a young girl called Sylvia, fell under a working plough and had terrible injuries. The nearest doctor was 40kms away and Kenny realised that every movement would worsen the injuries and hasten death. She improvised a stretcher from a cupboard door, tied the patient to it and arranged transport. Sylvia survived into old age and the stretched Kenny developed called the "Sylvia Stretcher", was marketed and sold world wide to ambulance services. She gave all of the profits to the CWA.

She is of course most famous for developing an alternated treatment for polio affected patients, which was in effect, the beginning of physiotherapy but she was shunned here by the medical establishment which believed strongly in calipers and immobilisation. She left Australia with the support of the Qld Government, who alone supported her and went to the USA in the 1940's where her work blossomed and the Kenny Method quickly became the first response to polio, world wide.

We also crashed the 120th celebrations of Nobby Public School and listened some nicely made music from bloke playing covers like Hallelujah and Fast Car, which were maybe a little odd for a primary school event but this is Queensland and a town with a history of opposing the norm. Friendly staff and really friendly locals. Looked at the kids art on display and did some shopping at the associated market stalls.

All in this little village of Nobby.

Earlier in the day we stopped in for a few hours at the historic Glengallan Homestead, no better storyteller of the boom and bust days of the life on the farm. The site of several entrepreneurs, the homestead had at one time been considered the finest in Australia but as fortunes were won and then lost, dreams became nightmares. It has been uninhabited for more than half of its life. The large two storey building, built in 1867 by John Deuchar, with its sweeping spiral staircase and two large, high ceiling rooms - one for dining, one for sitting - hosted the touring English cricket team during the Bodyline tour, when Oswald Slade became the owner for a second time. The villains of that tour - Jardine & Larwood - danced with the ladies of the district and the place was reputed to have been lit up like a Christmas tree. However, by the late 1950's, the place was in decline and it changed hands several times before being sold at a third of the market value for a third of the market value to the Glengallan Trust in 1993. A major input of bicentenary funding then saw the establishment of the heritage centre and the beginning of repairs.

Because it is not back to its pristine condition, we found it fascinating. The damage of years and vandals provides more of an insight that the areas which have been restored, allowing you to view the skeletal underwear of the building. It was a a fascinating two hours and the coffee in the shop was excellent.

Our evening was spend over dinner at Rudd's Pub. Big steak, lots of vegies. Fine country fair. We retreated afterwards to the van, which is parked across the road. No water supplied but we are plugged into electricity for $5 a night!

PL Travers house at Allora

On our second day, we did a short tour of the historical building of the village and then went up to the cemetery to look at Sister Kenny's grave.

We drove south to Clifton and then on to Allora, made famous recently by the movie "Saving Mr Banks", as the town where the writer PL Travers - the writer who gave the world Mary Poppins - spent some of her formative years. Indeed we saw her house.

We closed the day out with a few sundowners at the Rudd's Pub.

Click to see today's photos

No More North

Nobby continued to be an interesting find this morning after a night free of rail transport.

My small new best friend, Pumpkin, was outside my door bright and early with a stick for us both to play with. Each time she would drop the stick at my feet, she would just as quickly grab one end and fight me for it. The throwing of the stick was a secondary feature of the game Pumpkin had designed.mI ate a hearty breakfast in the sunshine and then drafted another poem before having an APC bath and packing up the camper. By that stage it was time for coffee so I went across to the General Store for conversation and coffee.

As a result, I went back across the road further up to the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Room - a new structure which has been built from donations to honour a former resident of Nobby who went on to develop a new treatment for polio which took her to more fame in the USA than in her country of origin. Born in Warialda, NSW, in 1880, her family came to live in Nobby when she was 19 and following the support and encouragement of Dr Aeneas McDonnell, a doctor from Toowoomba,

Elizabeth trained as a nurse in 1905 and was soon installed as the Bush Nurse for her home area. In 1910, polio came like a plague to strike down children in Australia and was dealt with by physicians in the time honoured way of placing twisted limbs in calipers and backs bent in wicked shapes into heavily constrictive corsets with steel ribbing. Sister Kenny faced her first case of polio in 1911 when a local 10 year old girl was soon in agony. After consulting Dr McDonnell, Kenny decided to try an alternate method of treatment of hot flannel strips placed on the major muscle groups, gentle massage and mild exercise - both the basis of what would become known as the Kenny Method and one of the earliest forms of physiotherapy.

Sister Kenny spent the Great War travelling with wounded soldiers as they made the long ship journey from England to Australia, making 12 journeys in all. In 1925, Sister Kenny started the first CWA Branch in Nobby and in 1928, she designed and built a new type of stretcher which she called the Sylvia Stretcher after the patient she designed it for. Sister Kenny continued to treat her patients and spreading the technique across Australia but not everyone was happy with her work. In 1937, a Royal Commission instigated by the Qld Government found that the failure to apply calipers placed young bodies in grave jeopardy. The public reaction was one of furore and soon after, the Qld government refused to accept the Royal Commission finding and endorsed the Kenny Method. In fact, in 1939, the Qld Government paid for Sister Kenny to travel to America to show the medical fraternity there her Method for treating polio.

It was here her fame was made and her method completely endorsed and nine times during the 1940's she was second only to Eleanor Roosevelt as America's most admired woman. From such a humble beginning, this amazing lady with such strength of character changed the lives of young polio sufferers to such an extent that it wasn't until polio vaccine came along that a bigger impact was made. All of this, in a small country village proud of this wonderful lady who was from among them, so long ago.

My last experiences of Nobby were a tour of the excellent facilities at the Rudd Pub by a proud publican Sam and an invitation to take pictures in someone's backyard of a family of Tawny Frogmouths, perched on a tree. I left copies of my book with some interested conversationalists from the night before and went back to the real world.

Lunch was in Warwick and included a visit to the Regional Art Gallery where I made my last holiday purchase. I took a drive to Killarney only to realise I was about to visit waterfalls I had seen with Sue at the start of this tour! Tail between legs, I turned back toward the New England Highway and the way home.

Like gravity on an ageing piece of space junk, the closer my orbit comes to home, the stronger the pull and this afternoon I have been straight lining my way home, possibly because the territory within 300kms of home is so familiar and mostly because I am bored with my own company. So bored I would blog on my phone in a certain Scottish restaurant.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

I don't want to go home. I don't want to do same things every week. I like these days of new horizons and new days and things to learn and wrap safely in my words, my precious trusted friends which give me air to breath and reasons to open the front door. At home, subtle chains slip around me with lead weights of responsibility - Peter Pan has to bid ticking crocodiles goodbye and become a prisoner of men who know nothing of mangroves, or cattle egrets or a Geraldton sunset or standing in the 65 year old footsteps of a man you'll never meet but only admire. Back home life will slowly leech from me in mundane conversations which loop endlessly.

200kms to go - Major Tom to Ground Control ...