Nostalgia Trip!

24th August – 6th September, 2023

I have just returned from a most memorable trip by road northwards. I clocked up just over 4,000 kms in my very comfortable BMW X5 Diesel with all ‘mod cons’, including safety enhancing Cruise and Lane Controls. As it progressed the trip became quite nostalgic as I visited some places I had not seen for over sixty years or more and re-connected with long term friends.

First stop was my beloved (“heaven like”) St Leonards Creek with great friends and great managers Jim and Jules Young at Sallywood, Walcha. This was primarily to attend a quarterly family meeting of the Glen Collin Pastoral Co partnership. Season was quite good with higher than normal soil temperature as they emerge from their usual cold winters, helped by recent useful rain. Economics not helped by weak cattle and lamb prices, in contrast to last year’s record highs.

They have recently purchased two additional joining holdings to add to their Niangala properties. They effectively farm (graze) two aggregations 50kms apart – St Leonards Creek and Niangala. All consist of beautiful moisture holding basalt soils in an area at the top of the Great Divide (4,000 feet above sea level), noted for high (40/50 inches) average rainfall. The very best of Walcha. This country lends itself to highly productive pastures and the Young family are masters at it. The business breeds and fattens beef cattle (Angus) and prime lambs, and is beautifully focused.

Our connection goes back to Gail and my strong friendship with Jim’s parents-Bob and Bev from our time at Walcha (1970 to 1974) and thereafter. So we have known Jim since he was a boy – now a 65 year old grandfather! I have long said that Bob was the best farmer I have ever known and believe that Jim possesses the best qualities and abilities of both his parents. It would be a big mistake not to also recognise the qualities of Bev and her daughter-in-law Jules, both who have played a significant role in the family’s success. As have Jim and Jules four children and their spouses, all of whom now make a significant contribution. I was honoured to be asked to attend their family meetings and continue to say that I feel I learn more than I can add, but I try! When Bev, Bob and their young family moved to Walcha from Cumnock they purchased 1600 acres – “Glen Collin”. The family are now farming some 16,000 acres!

From Walcha I headed up the New England Highway. At Armidale I called on my old mate John Campbell. We played Rugby together at Nyngan after Gail’s and my wedding in 1966. John’s wife Rosemary who is now in care, went to boarding school in Bathurst with Gail.

I stayed overnight with Pete and Maree Savage at Warwick. We originally met at Hillston where we moved in 1968, after Nyngan. Like Gail, Maree was the daughter of a highly respected shearing contractor. Peter hailed from Crookwell and was a jackaroo on Willandra Station before returning to the family property. Maree and Gail became very close friends and Maree did some karitane nursing for us in Sydney when our kids were little. They loved her. We met up again when we bought our Unit at Mooloolaba and kept in touch. Peter went to Barker School in Sydney where our grandson now attends.

I drove from Warwick to Mooloolaba via Brisbane and was delighted with the renovation of my Osprey Unit which was looking very smart. I spent a week enjoying the Unit and doing some serious walking to Point Cartwright and back every day. One day I had a great long lunch at my favourite Loose Goose restaurant at Twin Waters with our long term friend Pop Petersen and former Clyde colleagues John and Prue Wettenhall. Another day I had a long lunch of Dalgety reminiscences with Barry and Meg Blakely. Barry succeeded me as Dalgety Branch Manager at Walcha and about ten years later joined me as NSW Livestock Manager in Sydney when, after the formation of Dalgety Farmers, I was NSW General Manager.

Last Sunday I departed Osprey at Mooloolaba at 6:00AM, very uncertain as to whether I should head south to Sydney or stick to my original plan to go north to Rockhampton/Yeppoon. At the access to the Brisbane Motorway, feeling strong, I made the bold decision to keep going and head north.

I was surprised by the extent of the detour off the Bruce Highway at Gympie. Must have been off the Highway for nearly an hour. I thought my navigation had led me astray until I stopped and was overtaken by two vehicles I recalled passing before the detour.

At the Gladstone exit off the Bruce Highway, I decided to detour and have a look at Gladstone-a good decision. A very stimulating,well presented town. The fourth largest coal exporting port in the world. Beautifully positioned logistically with rail from the coal mines to the west, its own coal fired power station and a bauxite/alumina conversion plant to produce electricity hungry alumina from bauxite shipped from Weipa in the Gulf of Carpentaria. A wonderful example of what can be done with fossil fuel driven abundant electricity.

At Rockhampton I noted the remains of the railway track that once went centrally through the town. I also drove along the road which is beside the Fitzroy River and noted the sites of where the grand old Dalgety and Winchcombe Carson buildings used to be. Lots of memories about the difficulty we had merging the two branches in 1989!

As I drove to Yeppoon I realised it had been sixty five years since I was last there! The development has been enormous. A once little coastal town with the main street running at right angles to the ocean is now a modern seaside resort. A helpful lady at a ‘No Vacancy’ centrally located Motel couldn’t believe I hadn’t been there for all those years. She had a slight accent and on questioning told me she had emigrated from South Africa thirty years ago and loved Australia. She rang the Seaspray Waterfront Holiday Units where an 84 year old proprietor, who rejoices under the name of “Blossom”, said she had a spare unit. Beautifully positioned on the waterfront in Keppel Bay.

Next morning (Monday) I did my usual thing and got on the road early. Back through Rocky and the long road through the picturesque ranges to Emerald-a long haul. I made contact with Allison Ray who sponsors, with heavy local involvement, a small school in Zambia. It fired my imagination when I first heard of it and I have been a small donor. A relatively small country town population in Australia sponsoring a school in central Africa appealed to me. Her husband Terry was a well known highly regarded agent with Dalgety and now has his own agency in Emerald. I had a long talk with Allison followed by lunch with her and Terry at their old homestead style home which they had moved to the edge of town.

Another long haul on to Barcaldine. Found Sue Counsell (see my Outback Opera blog post) working in her garden and had a beer with her and 90 year old husband Jim. We worked out that when we first met I was eighteen and he was twenty-five. I was a jackaroo on the Counsell family property “Lyndon Station”.

I found a Motel, made contact with Andrew Petersen at “Alice Downs”, Blackall and headed off early on Tuesday morning. Very familiar country with lots of dry feed and herbage beneath following good July rain. Alice Downs is only fifteen kilometres out of town. Had a cup of coffee with owner Sue Allan before Andrew returned from ‘the paddock’. Sue and I had lots of mutual acquaintances and we spoke warmly of my Dalgety colleague Bob Jolliffe who was close to Sue’s late father Sir William. Andrew was planning to meet up with wife Amy and go to a show-like event in Barcaldine-I should have stayed there for the day, but was reluctant to retrace my steps.

After driving further south I had a lunch stop on the banks of the dry Warrego River at Augathella before going south-east to Morven and on through Mitchell to Roma then south to Surat. I was very impressed with the rolling downs country as I approached Roma and again as I headed to Surat.I found a comfortable cabin at the back of the main hotel for the night, not far from the Balonne River.

I headed to St George early Wednesday morning. The town has clearly benefited from the growth of the cotton and mining industries and is more impressive than I recalled from several previous visits. I had contemplated making a visit to “Binnerwell Station” north of Talwood which I had visited with my father in 1947 or 1948, one or two years before he died. I would have been six or seven years old. It was there I learnt to ride. The owner was Rod Wood, a jackarooing friend of Dad and my Godfather. It was to Binnerwell that I returned some ten years later, just after my sixteenth birthday, as an immature first year jackaroo.

I decided I would be adventurous and approach Binnerwell from the north knowing it was somewhere north of Talwood. I took the Moonie Highway knowing I would need to turn south about 60 kms out. I came across a gravel road marked Hollymount and that ‘rang a bell’. I took it and drove some 50kms when I came to a crossroad and I had a decision to make. My instinct suggested I should go further east so after much hesitancy I turned left and after ten or twenty kms I was delighted to see a mailbox on the left marked “Nariel” and I knew I was on the right road, Nariel being the Binnerwell next door neighbour! It was owned by Rod Wood’s brother-in-law Bruce Morse and I knew it was still in Morse family hands. I knew the next property on the right would be Binnerwell and so it proved to be.

I was tickled pink that I had driven straight to it after an absence of sixty five years! But, I had very mixed emotions as I looked at the dilapidated once rather grand homestead with a once beautiful garden and well maintained ant-bed tennis court. All sorts of memories came rushing back. All the axe work – scrub cutting for starving sheep, ring barking and sucker bashing, milking four cows each morning.etc. There appeared to be nobody around although I could hear dogs barking out the back, and when I drove around nobody appeared although there was a car parked near the back door.

I called at the General Store in Talwood and a very verbally colourful female proprietor gave me much information in a delightful exchange. She had only been there thirty years, but gave me much information on properties and personalities. I was able to give her some ancient history. I then drove through Boomi and Garah to Moree – all great farming country. I noted the turn into Midkin Station and recalled my very distant memory of visiting there when we lived in Moree. It is my earliest memory – I could not have been more than two or three years old!

In Moree I drove straight to the Gwydir Street house that I believe was once owned by the AML&F Co and was where we lived. I ran into a 77 year old neighbour, Peter Boland, who it turned out I had once met at the Clyde owned Port Of Bourke Hotel prior to the Louth Races. We had a very interesting discussion, mostly about Moree Agencies and mutually known grazing identities.

From Moree I drove through Narrabri, Gunnedah,and Tamworth to the beautifully appointed accommodation at Goonoo Goonoo, a few miles down the New England Highway from Tamworth. I was in the very smart Shearers Quarters.

Over dinner in the Glasshouse Restaurant, owned and operated, along with the Goonoo Goonoo accommodation by the Haggarty family, I met Simon Haggarty. To his credit he was waiting on tables – I suspect he was filling in. He kindly made time for a discussion and I shared with him my disappointment that no one has written a full history of Goonoo Goonoo and the Australian Agricultural Company (AA Co).

Goonoo Goonoo was owned by the AA Company prior to its sale to Ray Lord in the mid 1980s. A transaction about which I have first hand knowledge, which I shared with Simon.

For most of its existence Goonoo Goonoo was the flagship head station for the Company and would inevitably loom large in the history of the AA Co. Simon agreed that this is a job for a rural journalist supported by an archivist and it is very desirable that it should be done.

My rib-eye steak was quite the best I can recall ever consuming!

I returned home last Wednesday via the New England Highway and the M1. Tired, but very stimulated by all that I had done and seen.

As I travel I mostly have my 1000 songs, recorded over many years, playing at random in the car. The words of the Judith Durham (The Seekers) song “I am Australian” caught my attention. I am advocating that this should become the theme song for those who do NOT support the forthcoming referendum on “The Voice”.

Nostalgia indeed seems an appropriate name for this trip.