The Long Paddock; and Mutawintji National Park

It seems these travels into The Centre become journeys into the past, unavoidably. Last Monday 3rd August we departed Bendigo greatly relieved after doing battle again with Telstra to get this internet connection sorted; leaving the city gates at about 1:30, we headed for the Cobb Highway past Deniliquin to Hay, to spend our first night camped beside the Darling River. Those with more than a little familiarity regarding stock will doubtless know the stories of The Long Paddock - that droving run from Wilcannia on The Darling (where wool bales were loaded for carriage to Adelaide) to Echuca/Moama where the cattle on the hoof went to feed the gold rushes in Victoria. Known as the Cobb Highway now, it was of course also the famous route taken by the Cobb & Co coaches, taking up to 17 passengers at a time, and many days between. It is thankless looking country, but a tinge of green among the bluebush at the moment, with grassy verges beside the road and lots of yellow flowers (weeds?) blooming in the pasture.

You can’t help being carried along by stories from the past; there seems to be little future for these places to focus on now. We heard in Hay how there are families still, whose names appeared on the honour rolls of these towns a hundred years or so ago, enormous properties, whose Riverina heritage was strong through awards for best Merino fleece or the like, whose still local descendants live now in abject poverty. Certainly there are regular reminders in the many irrigation channels, now redundant, of how use of the land has changed so much from the heyday of The Riverina. Now families on the land are grouped together into cooperatives and selling vegetables to the supermarket barons. Thing is, there is a myth about The Riverina still being part of the backbone of the pastoral economy, that seems to live on in the city. Am I wrong? (Helen demurs, with a reminder of Banjo Paterson’s poem about Hay, Hell and Booligal. You can’t escape the fact that things are changing in the bush very fast.

We spent a night in Wilcannia beside The Darling. The locals were having a ball at about 4am, their calls reaching us across the river from the township across the way. This was once a lovely old town, now largely closed up except for the police station, courthouse and the aboriginal’s pub. Nowhere is the march of change more evident than here and it is very sad; even with the sun shining on once bustling streets edged with sandstone building you’d die for in Carlton, it fails to encourage any sense of optimism for these communities. But with miles to do we turned west out of town , with Mutawintji National Park in our sights, where rock art can be found. Leaving the bitumen of the Barrier Highway towards Broken Hill, we turned north through arid country. A strange isolated patch of Spinifex made plain our northward passage. Strange because it ran out within a kilometre and we saw no more Spinifex for several days, and still have seen hardly any. Helen was bubbling with excitement as we arrived at Mutawintji NP in the heat of the day, because she had found three walks we could do before dinner, only eight kilometres! I’m very aware as we go, that men have a poor record on the stopping stakes. The woman in the camper next to us now has already confirmed that her partner refuses to stop for anything unless it is lunch and at a pub. So naturally I volunteered to join her on two of the walks provided I had a good night’s sleep between. We climbed up onto the ancient ranges and looked down into lost gullies where yellow footed rock wallabies can be found and other marvels. And far too many feral goats. I nearly always stop now when commanded, and generally comply in most things. Brownie points have to be hoarded carefully.