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 Topic: An Island Holiday (Part Three)
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18/7/2021 at 12:41pm
Location: Melbourne Australia
Outfit: Windsor Rapid Off Road Van + tents
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Hi all,
Our last report ended with us having just visited the Rufus River Massacre Memorial site.
In our last report I had shown you Wompinni Station, whilst there Eric (one of the owners) had offered to take us by boat to a remote and very historic grave site. At the time it would have been a bit of a rush, so he mentioned that if we called in at another time he would make himself available, and without charge take us to it.
On this drive we were passing the entrance to his property so we decided to take him up on that fantastic offer.
On arrival at the homestead we found Eric absolutely flat chat as a sizeable House Boat had pulled up with a number of people on board. They had ordered pizzas so he had the wood fired oven blazing and obviously his hands full. He profusely apologised and said if we wanted to hang around for maybe a couple of hours he should be free. As we were a long way from our camp and had a number of other things to do that day, we decided to move on. Because we had our own boat, he gave me rough directions on where to stop on the river and how to find the grave if we wanted to check it out on another day from our camp. He again said if we needed help he would make himself available.
A pic of the complex, the river side camp kitchen deck on the right, the old homestead in the middle and the cabins on the far left.
Just before we left he gave us directions to an obscure (remote) cemetery that we could visit (if we could find it) on our way back to the main track.
A km or so into the scrub we eventually found it, after driving across areas of no tracks and over a few rises (directions not 100%). However we found ourselves on the wrong side of an electrified fence!! Long story short we got through it but Jen did get zapped and in doing so couldn’t free herself so the zapping continued until Kristie and I freed her. I got a bit of a shock/zap helping but we were laughing at it all, Jen didn’t see the funny side as much as we did Ha!!!
The cemetery in the distance after we had got through the “FENCE”
On the way again when all of a sudden Kristie called out “Stop”. We love having her with us on these trips, but I never thought it would be for her “eyesight”. She had noticed a lone grave beside the track up on a slight rise.
I love the country where he lay.
William Pollard was a significant person in his day, he was a settler who owned a sizeable property right on the Murray River. He has been remembered forever by having a section of the river carrying his name, Pollards Cutting. He helped clear a narrow section of river in front of his property to enable paddle steamers to take a short cut, by passing a longer shallower section of river which over time has now partly silted up.
Right in the centre of that last pic is Pollards Cutting and right in the far top left is where our camp was.
We arrived at the Vic. S.A. border, along this track (that heads north) the fence is the state border.
We turned south, Todds Obelisk our first destination. Built in 1868 the blurb in the pics will explain how significant this remote spot is.
This is the track that heads south from Todds Obelisk, one that would take us to our next destination. I had discovered the existence of a remote ruin a couple of years ago. Early last year pre Covid I’d planned to visit it, on this trip I had hoped to get there in person, I was pretty excited to finally get the chance to see it.
And finally after many years, the ruin.
Called the Scab Inspectors Hut (officially “Littra House”, although that name is rarely if ever used) it was built in 1871 replacing a wooden one that got partly washed away in an earlier flood.
Around the mid 1860s great numbers of sheep were being brought into S.A. via Wentworth and through the Chowilla region (where we were), more and more of them were carrying a debilitating disease called Sheep Scab, hence the need for an inspector in the area to check the travelling flocks to help prevent the disease getting into S.A.
That disease is one of the worst and most contagious ones of its type, it can seriously effect the condition and welfare of the sheep and their fleece.
Just to the right of this dead tree (about a hundred metres from the house) amongst the bush, a sign can be found.
That small welded plate marks the final resting place of a Police Constable, his wife and three young children (who were living in the house) who died from diphtheria in the late 1800s. Around that time Diptheria was the most common form of an infectious disease that caused death.
A short distance from there is Punkah Creek, connected to other creeks that leave the Murray and return to it further downstream. It is used as a Kayak/Canoe trail for those so inclined. This next pic shows a flow regulator/monitor in the middle of the creek.
Looking down then up the creek from near the same spot.
Back to the “Hut”, still today this is a very remote place, imagine how remote it would have been 150 years ago?
When a decision was made to remove the Scab Inspector from the area, the house was used for Customs purposes. I don’t think a lot of revenue would have been raised in such a remote locale!
Restoration works have been carried out to stabilise the ruins, making sure that they will remain in perpetuity for future generations to enjoy, enabling them to ponder over a fascinating part of our rural and early history.
We continued our remote drive through the Chowilla Game Reserve. The next place I wanted to show the girls was “Suicide Bridge”
Built in the late 1800s, tenders were called for the building of a bridge along what is now called, “The Old Coach Route/Road” between Renmark and Wentworth, it was to be constructed across the inlet of Lake Limbra.
Its inlet is at the bottom of the Lake and the outlet at its top, however the successful person who won the contract to build the bridge thought that the inlet was at the top of the Lake and so built it over the outlet by mistake.
By building the bridge in the wrong location, the authorities refused to pay the contractor. This affected him greatly as he then couldn't pay his employees and those who had sourced the timber for building the bridge. He felt so bad he committed suicide by diving head first off the bridge, hence its name. It was never used and is slowly deteriorating, standing forlornly in a very remote and not often visited part of the reserve.
This is Monoman Creek another of many waterways that dissect these unique flood plains and low lying areas.
From there we left the remote track we had been on and made our way back towards Renmark on a more defined road, just before reaching there we stopped at this information bay.
A number of interpretive panels explain the significance of the area that we had just been in.
After we left Renmark on your way back towards Victoria, we passed through Paringa. Only a few months earlier work had been completed on some murals to the sides of their Silos. They depict various local scenes painted inside head images of famous local identities. I didn’t know at the time who they were, I wish I did.
This first scene is depicted inside the image of the first female Riverboat Captain Pearl Wallace, (1911-2005).
She led an amazing life, far too much to tell here, but I will tell you this. In 1947 she travelled to Melbourne with Neil her husband and 10 year old son Leith to sit for a River Master's Certificate. After an intensive three day exam, the strict examiners said "You are as good as any man we have put through and better than some", and Pearl became Australia's first female certified skipper.
This image is of George Disher (1883-1953), it was said that not only was he a much loved local identity, he was a local “institution"
An aboriginal, he had many set backs. He lost a son who died at 14, his wife of 28 years died aged 46. In 1941 from the pulpit of the Renmark Congregational Church, the astute Rev. H.R. Ballard said of George, “How many of us, if we were situated, practically isolated from the rest of his race, living a life alone, would maintain such a cheerful outlook on life, meeting each day with a smile? I tell you that man has much to teach us and we will be well advised to learn his lessons if we hope to be worthy of this country which we have taken from his ancestors”.
The next face I’ll show you is of Sister Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy (1912-1942)
After receiving her education in Renmark and Adelaide, Elaine began her nurse training in the Adelaide Children's Hospital. In 1940 she enlisted in the A.I.F. as a Sister in the Australian Imperial Nursing Service. In 1941 she left our shores for overseas service.
She was on the Steamer Vyner Brooke when it was attacked by the Japanese and sunk. Elaine was one of twenty-two nurses and a number of civilians who made it to shore in a leaky lifeboat. They were found by a party of Japanese soldiers who told them to form a line (including the wounded) and walk into the sea, they were then machine gunned down from behind. This tragic event became known as the Banka Straits Massacre. Luckily Sister Vivian Bullwinkle survived to tell the tale.
This one is of Charles Francis Chaffey (1859-1938). The Chaffey family were the first to introduce the concept of irrigation to Australia. Their story is quite well known so I won’t expand on it further here.
The subject matter inside Chaffey’s image is what I want to mention now, a man known as “Possum”
David Jones was born in New Zealand in 1901, he arrived in South Australia in 1924 where he started work as a shearer in the far north of the state. In 1928 his Australian Workers Union ticket had expired and during the Depression in 1929 he was turned away from a shearing shed on the Lake Victoria Station in NSW.
You can see him in this mural that is on display in Wentworth.
Too proud to borrow money he walked into the bush and remained there for over 50 years until his remains were discovered by woodcutters in 1982 beside the Murray near Lock 8. Living off the land he roamed the Murray River mainly between Renmark and Wentworth but there were sightings of him in the1930's and 40's as far as Bourke on the Darling, Wagga on the Murrumbidgee and Albury on the Murray.
A statue of him located in Fotherby Park Wentworth.
Shy and resourceful he shunned the company of others but carried out many acts of kindness - mending fences, chopping wood, clearing noxious weeds and crutching flyblown sheep, he performed these tasks mostly unobserved helping the station folk on whose properties he passed through. They in turn would occasionally leave out food and clothing.
His nickname "Possum" came about from his habit of taking refuge in the trees where he had 'hides' for sleeping and where he would raid wild bee hives for honey.
A painting of him on a piece of old Lino that we found in the historic Wompinni Shearing shed.
He was buried 60km from Renmark on Lucerne Day Station (formerly Wangumma) in NSW, his gravestone carries an apt epitaph, At Rest Where He Roamed.
What a day it had been, nearly 400 ks driven many of those on narrow bush tracks, heaps seen, so much history experienced.
Back at camp I lit the fire and there was just enough light to capture these scenes.
Reflections were a feature of the start of the day, it was fitting to end the day, and this report in a similar fashion.
This report covered from around 11.00am till 6.30. Crammed a bit in eh!!
Col, Jen and Kristie.
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The worst day above ground, is a whole lot better than the best one under it. Live life to the fullest while you can.
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