The Champions of the Outback

There's a part of Australia I've seen now and then,

Where the folks are resilient, both women and men, 

Where drought is the norm, and the rains rarely come, 

Where life can be cruel, way too hard for some.

It's not for the faint-hearted, meek or the weak, 

Or those who have come for quick fortunes to seek, 

If comfort and luxury are your ambition, 

Then big city life may best suit your position.

But for those who are born to a life on the land, 

Or for those who make good with the cards in their hand,

The ones who accept what life throws, up or down, 

They go with the punches, with rarely a frown.

Those are the ones I respect and salute, 

Our stockmen and women of stalwart repute, 

Our primary producers of wool and of meat, 

Our Jackaroos, Jillaroos, “Take a front seat”.

So let's raise a glass and give them three cheers, 

Our remote outback ‘bushies’, our bold pioneers, 

Well met and well done, though time's blurred your name, 

Your deeds will live on in our fine “Hall of Fame”.

The above poem was inspired by my visit to the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame in the outback town of Longreach in Central West Queensland in late July 2022. I had originally planned my visit around my main goal of Dinosaur Hunting, which was described in my recent post here:

https://au.bebee.com/producer/ravenous-raptor-chaises-cretaceous-chook-EzYggMSSLgjD 

It follows, then, that the various non-dinosaur museums and attractions on my itinerary, in and around the towns of Winton and Longreach, initially took a back seat to Winton's ‘Dinosaur Stampede National Monument’ at Lark Quarry, and the ‘Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum’.  As my trip progressed, however, planned visits to the Camden Park cattle station (formerly a sheep station) and Historic Rosebank Station, both located just outside Longreach, left a lasting impression.  This was not just because of the history of these properties and homesteads, but also because of the warm reception and hospitality shown by both property owners and their families, with whom we spent some time being introduced to the trials and tribulations of life on the land on working cattle and sheep stations (for my foreign readers, a ‘station’ in Oz is the equivalent of a very large farm in UK or a large ranch in the USA).

We had dinner with our hosts, the Walker family, at Camden Park Station, in the former sheep shearing building, before watching a magnificent sunset by a camp fire, the warmth from which we welcomed as the temperatures began to sharply drop.

That's me on the far right (above) with a fine glass of red in my hand.

Our trip to the Smith family at Rosebank Station was less drammatically picturesque, as it was at morning tea-time the next day, but the reception we received was, nevertheless, equally as warm and the history of this working station, as told to us by Alan ‘Smithy’ Smith himself, equally enthralling and inspiring.  Smithy is pouring the tea in the photo below and then captivating us with a tale or two in one of the drawing rooms in the next photo below.

The bedroom shown above is where the British Royal Princess Alexandra stayed when she visited the property in 1959.

[For those of you who may not be overly familiar with Britain’s royal family, Princess Alexandra is the cousin of recently deceased Queen Elizabeth. She is still an active member of the royal family and lives in Richmond Park in London, very close to where I bought my first house in my twenties. I wish I’d known back then that I had such a famous near neighbour. I could’ve popped over to borrow the odd cup of sugar.  😄]  

We visited so many places of interest during our time at Longreach and Winton, including the following:

• Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach - more on this below; 
• Qantas Founders Museum - where we discovered the real Qantas story of pioneer aviation, along with stories of Australia's national airline's fledgling years.  We were fortunate enough to be guided through some of the more recently decommissioned aircrafts' flight decks, open crew and passenger areas and in and around many others, including the following:

1. Boeing 747 “City of Bunbury”; 
2. Douglas Aircraft Company DC3; 
3. Boeing 707, interior custom designed (similar to John Travolta's);
4. Lockheed 1049 Super Constellation; 
5. Catalina PBY-6A flying boat.

You can see ‘yours truly’ inside the engine of the 747 below, and also firing at the enemy from the cockpit of a Bristol fighter mock-up.

Then there were the following:

• Longreach School of distance Education (former School of the Air) - where today's children, who live on remote properties in the Outback, are educated by various on-line communication methods; 
• Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton - the only museum dedicated to a song (I didn't know there were so many ways and styles of music to convey Banjo Paterson's theme of a Swagman sheep-stealer who came to an untimely death in a billabong).

In order to reduce the risk of boring you all stupid, however, and turning this blog into an illustrated novel, I'll finish off with some points of note confined solely to the Stockman's Hall of Fame, which, along with our visits to the two cattle stations, provided the inspiration for my above poem.

Not only did this superbly appointed and designed museum, dedicated to the pioneers and settlers of our rugged outback, provide interesting insights into the pioneering way of life and work activities (prior to modern day mustering by helicopter and by four wheeled motorised quad bike), but we experienced an exciting show at the rear of the museum, where we were entertained to typical activities of the stockman and the brilliant capabilities of his Australian Stockhorse.

Not many horses will let you treat them like a piece of furniture (above) and not many stockmen find time to play the guitar at work.

Man and mount in action (above)? Don’t kid yourself, the work is subcontracted (see below).

Man's best friend doing all the work (above) … again!

There were some who doubtless thought that Lackie Cossor, our stockman singer (above), was selling us a ‘load of bull’.

The interior of the museum (above) was beautifully laid out and architecturally designed.  It included a decommissioned plane from the Royal Flying Doctor Service (more on this outback lifeline, the RFDS, can be found on my old blog at this link https://au.bebee.com/producer/what-has-the-royal-flying-doctor-service-in-common-with-bebee ).

I hope that you've managed to stay with me to the end of this blog, without taking shortcuts, and that you've come away with a teasing enough taste of our historic outback and its characters to perhaps entice you to visit us one day soon and explore our massive interior for yourself. As our Lara Worthington (née Bingle) asked all those years ago: 

“Where the bloody hell are ya?”

https://tenor.com/view/where-the-bloody-hell-are-you-lara-bingle-beach-gif-3695661  

Acknowledgements 

The trip described in this post, and in my previous dinosaurs post (https://au.bebee.com/producer/ravenous-raptor-chaises-cretaceous-chook-EzYggMSSLgjD) was made possible thanks to Outback Aussie Tours (OAT). In particular, I wish to thank our tour guide duo, Mick and Di Clark, for their knowledge, humour and organisational skills. You both made the trip a memorable one. As for the OAT owner, Alan ‘Smithy’ Smith, who joined us on the latter part of the trip, and shared his unique and extensive knowledge of the way of life, history, flora and fauna of the Longreach and Winton areas, ‘Smithy’, you’re a legend!

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

https://ken-boddie.squarespace.com 

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.

#outback #stockman #queensland #halloffame #qantas