By way of introduction, I am an Aussie of Dutch-Indonesian heritage who, I guess by the very nature of her Tri-cultural existence, is destined for a life of adventure. Having arrived as a child of immigrants at age four, I can observe this country with the eye of both a local and a foreigner.
When I was invited to write a column for this paper, I decided to serialise some of these adventures, more specifically, those I’ve had in the great Outback of Australia – in the second largest state of Queensland. These remote townships need tourism more than ever with the decline of the pastoral industry thanks to multi-national ownership and lack of succession in family owned properties. I hope that my writing will whet your appetite for your own experience “Downunder” – to experience this unique English-speaking landscape for yourself.
The Outback constitutes 70% of Australia’s landmass and is populated by just 3% of its people. It consists of 5.3 million square kilometres.
Aboriginal people comprise about 20 per cent of the population in arid areas and about 12 per cent in the semi-arid areas, and are about 3 per cent of the total population. Aboriginal people, of diverse language groups, reside in as many as 1,300 discrete communities widely distributed across their traditional lands. (Brown et al, The demography of desert Australia, The Rangeland Journal, Vol 30(1) 2008)
Queensland has a total area of 1.727 million square kilometres of which 68.4% is considered Outback. Only 1.9% of the 4.7 million residents of Queensland reside outside the green coastal areas. Quite some amazing statistics!
Queensland farmers are now struggling through their fifth year of drought. I write this article from my comfy seat on a coach returning from the town of Cunnamulla (pop. 1200) having just performed as a musician in the inaugural aboriginal and folk festival, Cullyfest 2016. Thanks to some recent good rainfalls, there are now some green sprigs to be seen and gone are the thousands of dead roo carcasses along the long roadsides. Even in drought, however, the undeniable mysterious attraction of the vast landscape remains constant in its rugged beauty.
I first met “Cully” as the locals refer to Cunnamulla, in 2015, when travelling as front person for the Willie Nelson’s Love child show – a tribute to the great man and his music. Our 38 day tour covered 15 towns including Cunnamulla, performing 25 shows. My husband and fellow musician, Sean, is my travelling companion and together we traversed 5000km of parched landscape. Yet, despite its thirsty condition, I found the vast, rugged emptiness the most intoxicating landscape of all my travels the world over. There is something surreal and mysterious about standing in the middle of thousands of miles of shimmering emptiness – with only blue skies, mystic white cloud patterns and hovering Eagles overhead for company and the plaintive drone of a didgeridoo in your mind’s ear.
I hope to each week transport you to a little touch of Queensland outback – the Aussie Outback – through my stories rich with encounters with the odd, touching and downright amazing characters and places in this vast land of the South.
Australia is the driest continent on the planet, yet it was home to its indigenous peoples – the Aborigines – for at least 60 000 years and quite likely longer. Their gentle footprint on this great land can be felt in places like the Kimberley in Western Australia, Uluru in the Northern Territory, Birdsville in far western Queensland and everywhere in between. But as I am a Queenslander, I shall start in my own back yard. And what a superbly rich back yard it is.
277 years since the arrival of the English convict ships, the Australian political landscape still struggles to find the right balance of land rights, self-governance, central governance, the enabling of its first people’s to take their rightful place at the bounteous table of this land, on a macro level, I see first-hand how the tapestry of this former colony has been woven, reft, patched, worn, pulled, faded, even blood-stained. Yet it stubborn fabric endures, a testament to the will of the people in these remote towns and communities to cling to whatever good has come out of the troubled beginnings of this country, and to try to forge on in a new global-economy and digital world.
And as the Internet still only operates within 20kms of a township – and there are still towns where no internet exists – it is a life that you dear reader may find hard to imagine.
But as these farmers and townsfolk tell me, it’s the isolation itself that makes it special. Yes, folk want the Internet to work for business reasons, but by golly, it’s still a great and rare commodity on this planet to be “incommunicado” – alone with your thoughts and feelings. Uninterrupted by anyone or anything. This is what farmers and station owners still see as their most prized commodity in a world obsessed with the 24 hour news cycle.
As you sit, coffee cup in hand, reading this on your mobile device or desktop pc, can you possibly imagine what it’s like to live 500 or 1000 miles from the nearest town, have no mobile phone or internet service other than slow satellite if you can afford it, and not be able to “duck to the shop” for a packet of crisps?
Join me here each week for a peek into a world where old drovers tell tales, emus pepper the landscape and Kangaroos bound shining white in the moonlight, or under a sparkling spillage of stars and planets in the dark outback sky.
Come with me to the great Queensland Outback.
Next week: The Love Child, the Drover and the Angels.
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