Sydneyside whin Janet Parr: AWAY IN THE OPEN SPACES

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32706, 8 September 1971, Page 7

Sydneyside whin Janet Parr: AWAY IN THE OPEN SPACES

I suppose you could call this Sydneyside if only because it is the Sydney side of the Tasman. But we are a good way beyond Sydney now —travelling the tourist route that I thought went south-west to Adelaide.

But I was wrong, because Adelaide is further north than Sydney, although I cannot imagine I am the only person In Australia who would make that mistake.

And so we're going northwest at the moment and well into the orange country. At the miles go by it is more and mon apparent that this is a different country; that down at the grass roots where they grow the wool, the wheat, the rice and oranges, that sustain our supermarket

civilisation in the big city there is a tough and often solitary way of life that we tend to shrug off as we voice our urban criticism of rural subsidies and support for rural industries. Not that I’ve ever confused or equated, as some people do, lite on the land with the simple life.

A better writer than I once said his idea of the simple life would be to live in a luxury hotel with a bell handy to summon every human need, like food ana laundry, and someone to run the bath water. I wouldn’t go that far. But I do know, and from experience, that country life can be extraordinarily complies-

ted. Or is that just an urban view?

Actually it is several different countries out here linked by empty space under a big, big sky. Once you cross the Blue Mountains and head west across the plains you remember that it took Governor Macquarie nine days to travel the first road to choose the first site for the settlement at Bathurst, once the way through the mountains had been opened.

Even then Bathurst wasn’t the easiest place in which to live. The Aborigines were hostile and in the 1820 s, martial law had to be proclaimed to protect the settlers. A reward of 500 acres of land was offered for the capture of the Aboriginal leader.

There was rioting in the gaol in the 1830 s which resulted in 10 prisoners being hanged when it was all over. Perhaps an ancient ripple of those times still stirs in the peaceful, pleasant town that Bathurst is today. The gaol and its prisoners and allegations of brutality against them have stirred conciences in recent weeks to demand an inquiry.

And then there was gold and after the gold the bushrangers, the late Frank Clune’s "Wild Colonial Boys” of the Weddin Mountains, Gardiner, Gilbert, Hall and the rest and the police cursed them and chased them and mostly caught them. But today their hideduts in the caves and valleys are places to visit as you travel the midWestern Highway through Bathurst and Grenfell. But at Grenfell the pilgrimage is

to a more peaceful place, a little white obelisk on the edge of town which marks the site of the old gold diggings where Henry Lawson is said to have been born. On Hospital Hill, the Hill of Memory, another obelisk records the achievements of the early pioneers in sheer weights of wheat, wool and gold. And there’s a comer full of old machines whose use can now only be guessed at but which makes a playground for two boys. One of them directs us to the Lawson obelisk by telling us “You know the comer by Andersons ... ”We tell him that we don’t really and he puzzles out how to be more specific about something he’s known all his life.

LURE OF GOLD It was gold that brought the diggers crowding out this way right out to West Wyaiong, where hundreds of thousands of ounces were taken out before the last mine closed in 1921. Now the town has other industries—including a plant for distilling eucalyptus oil. But it’s still something of a golden land on these dying days of winter and early days Of spring for all along the road the wattles are out and the black-eyed yellow daisies. And it’s green—silver green among the grass, darker green for the conifers, red-dish-green at the tips of the gum trees, and an incredibly young green among the wheat.

The country is pleasant if empty, and although the nights are cold the days are

• warm enough. And at West Wyalong I discover that I have a double for I am greeted as an old friend by someone who thinks she knows me and is confused to find that she doesn't. We change a shredded tyre for a new one and wonder whether this couldn't be described as a horror stretch for as we wait another car pulls in with its tyre ripped to pieces and further along the road another man is changing his wheel and yet again the tyre hangs away in rubber ribbons. But it’s faster than on fbot Or in the bullock drays that opened up this country lumbering across the creeks whose names reflect a bit of Australian history—Diamond Bay Creek and Frying Pan Creek, Dick’s Creek and McLean’s, Bungalong Murray’s, Ironpot, Bogdong, Ooma, Cleary’s, Lignum, Pope’s. And what, one wonders, happened at Humbug Creek? KANGAROO COUNTRY It’s sheep country and kangaroo country too, for at night we see the shooters out sweeping the countryside with car spotlights and hear the crack of a rifle. West Wyalong lists rabbit and kangaroo shooting among its sports. . At Hay you can shoot duck in season and they say there are pigs to be hunted in the marshes and forests near the junction of the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan rivers. Sturt came this way as he did over much Of the surrounding country and today a modem highway bears his

name. Now in the school holidays the road is full of children. “They were all

streaming up to Sydney last week," says the man in the service station. “Now It’s all the Sydney kids going to Adelaide. I think they crawl out of the woodwork or something. You see people you’ve known for years and suddenly they’re surrounded by kids you’ve never seen before.”

And It’s decidedly unisex in the motels and caravan sites where the kids and their parents have achieved a remarkable equality and uniformity in their dress, slacks and sweaters that vary only in Colour, although in the early mornings the women pad off to the shower blocks in quilted dressing gowns and fluffy slippers, and a mother tells her daughter trying to comb a tangle of hair, “I told you you shouldn’t have washed it last night.”

But here’s Hay and I discover that the toilet soap that costs me 18 cents in Sydney costs me 28 cents here. And here’s Balranald where Burke and Wills once went

through and where a nephew of Alexander Graham Bell installed Australia’s first telephone. And now Euston where a man in a white coat impounds the fruit and tomatoes that we haven’t managed to eat thinking that the fruit fly inspection wouldn’t catch up with us until after lunch, on the South Australian border. Without realising it, we’ve come into a comer of Victoria. So later in the day I hand the South Australian inspector the bag of peel from the mandarins we bought in Mildura and assure him that we don’t have anything as we’ve already been cleaned out. But they did let us keep our lettuce.

FRUIT PROTECTION They protect their fruit here with something of the proverbial ferocity of the lioness guarding her young. Among the saltbush and the succulents and the mallee scrub and the dry shredded gums they have irrigated the red earth into acres of citrus orchards, vineyards, olive groves and farmlands. Perhaps more intensively cultivated than anywhere else in Australia. They call the area Sunraysia and in Mildura you can buy a glass of orange juice that tastes as if it’s just been squeezed for you or buy a case of dried fruit to send back home. Yet the fruit industry that flourishes here and has produced a brand name that’s almost synonymous with oranges is Only about 90 years old. Alfred Deakin persuaded the Canadian Chaffey brothers to come here from California and after some political wrangling they found themselves eventually with half a million acres of semi-arid desert to work on and irrigate into production. A dry and dusty job, drier and dustier probably because the Chaffey brothers were strong on prohibition and asked the Victorian Government not to issue liquor licences in the irrigation area. This wasn’t, naturally, something a good Australian could support so they got round It by establishing licensed clubs. Even today there are only a few hotels in the area. Their licences are comparatively recent and they cater mostly for visitors.

PADDLE steamer Mildura, Renmark, Wentworth and the towns of the Murray today draw a good income from tourism, nearly s2m a year. It’s pleasant country without being spectacular but it extends itself to show off what it has for the amusement and edification of the visitor. You can cruise the Murray in a paddle steamer—a relic of the great old days of river trade

before the railways came—see pelicans and black swans and white storks, fish for Murray cod. A Renmark man, a South Australian, says: "There were three Victorians here this afternoon pulling them out so fast they only bothered to take the steaks off the sides and threw the rest back. I was a couple of hundred yards away and didn’t get a bite.” Neither, I might add, did we. There’s an aeroplane museum and a private bird collection that boasts Australia’s only captive white crow and a singing, whistling white cockatoo that was alive before the Chaffeys came, and five different kinds of pheasant. There’s an old gaol at Wentworth that they seem to be very proud of, and there’s a sheep shearing shed that was built by Chinese labourers and doesn’t have a single nail in it.

They say, with some pride, that Drysdale painted this country and Arthur Upfield wrote it into his book “Death of a Swagman,” which reminds me that we sew a swaggie back along the road humping his billy and bluey In traditional fashion. And there were drovers on horseback with a bunch of sheep, but accompanying them was a modem caravan and a young woman came out and brought her baby into the sun.

ORANGES EVERYWHERE

And now the sun is warm again and there are peacocks walking around outside for We’ve spent the night at a caravan site in a wildlife sanctuary beside the Murray. And we're off' among the orange trees again for this is Orange Week in Renmark With all sorts of festivities going on—Opening a new senior citizens Chib, a celebration dinner, a golf day, cooking demonstrations, a Mayoral ball with a free sherry party beforehand, a speedboat carnival, a country and western show, shop window displays, a visit from two of the famous “Golden Girls” from Surfers Paradise, film nights, and a mini football carnival.

There’s the fruit-growing to see and the fruit packing. And there's to be a koala count at the Goat Island Reserve. But rm afraid we shan’t be able to stay long enough to help to count the koalas although, in anticipation, it sounds the sort of thing one could dine out on for a long time to come. For now our way really does lie south to Adelaide and between here and there are the great Australian vineyards of the Barossa Valley. A good place to look at—one imagines an excellent place to linger.