Saturday, April 2, 2022

534 McGowan Street, Broken Hill

 

534 McGowan Street, Broken Hill by Robert G Barnes

After a month or two in a shared household, it was time to find our own place. I had been transferred to Broken Hill as a geologist in the Geological Survey of New South Wales. I had expected to be in Broken Hill for a few months. Little did I know that my term would extend out to eight years and that I would learn to love this “city”, this iconic but ramshackled place, this place steeped in history.

Coming into BH is a shock. Nearer to the coast and around most inland cities and towns, you approach through a transition, a transition from farmland through a gradual increase in houses and roads, traffic and signs and end up in suburbia, travel past parks and lawns, playing fields and factories or shopping centres and eventually you wend your way to city centres. Not so with BH.

Having spent many hours driving west across relentless semi-desert you cross a bridge over the Darling River and enter Wilcannia. Once a river port, the town has several impressive historical buildings, but its glory days of a place to send the wool to market downstream have long since passed. Wilcannia was a place to top up for fuel until the service station burned down. In minutes your journey across the plains continues. Another couple of hours to go.

The transition onto the Barrier Ranges is rapid. Very low rises, then hills, not high, but hills none-the-less. And with the hills come the creeks, some lined with splendid gums. The creeks are the sandy pathways leading to the mysterious hills. The creeks, for the most part, are dry, but piles or leaves and branches on the banks mark the peak of flows which occasionally drench the landscape and keep the majestic gums alive.

It is common to be approaching Broken Hill driving into the sunset for many will have broken their journey from the coast at Cobar, a small town surrounded by rich copper and gold mines. Having left after breakfast, eight hours or so later you glimpse the first hints of Broken Hill, perhaps as a few twinkles on the horizon. You will have already passed the old Mount Gipps hotel and the former School of the Air at the old Royal Flying Doctors Base adjacent to the highway. With a keen eye you may have spotted a hint of old diggings in the adjacent hills, but you would have to be keen.

On a sweeping and rising curve, you pass a Welcome to Broken Hill sign. After cresting the hill, you are immediately into suburbia and driving along the main road which leads directly to the centre of town, the road aptly named Argent Street.

Surprisingly it was difficult to find a house for rent in BH at the time – 1975. Mining activity was in full swing, but the town was starting a transition. The recognition that the mines could not last for ever had meant that there had been little growth or investment over many years. (By contrast, by the 2020s the place seems to have developed a new vibrancy and new industries and artistic endeavours, many related to tourism, have sprung up).

The team I worked with had been sent to Broken Hill with the expressed aim of helping understand the geology and mineral deposits of the area with a view to assisting a new mineral discovery. Mining in the district started in 1874 and in BH in 1883, so we arrived just on one hundred years after the area was opened up by Europeans. Mining continues in the 2020s but at a much reduced scale, picking away at remnants left by earlier mining. Unfortunately no major new discoveries have yet been made.

The city flanks the massive orebodies which rose as a prominent ridge from the desert. Early on, after rich silver had been discovered, a grid of streets was surveyed on each side and aligned in parallel with the “Line of Lode” at a bearing of 60 degrees and 330 degrees. This was quite unlike many other inland towns in Australia which are oriented with roads bearing to magnetic north. Many of the roads are very wide, wide enough for a bullock team to turn around. Many areas have small lanes at the back of the block for removal of sanitary waste.

After some time looking, we were presented with a small stand-alone cottage/house in north Broken Hill. So, this small house, built with the dominant building material in the town, corrugated iron and related pressed metal, was our first home Broken Hill home.

Out front was a small veranda supported by two large Greek style concrete pillars, very much out of proportion to the scale of the house. These pillars seemed to have been a fashion item at one time. The house comprised a largish loungeroom, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and a small back room with a toilet and shower. Out in the yard were the vestiges of what, in times past, had been a productive space. A small shed contained a small work bench and space for washing. In the yard was a large, mature mandarine tree which produced an abundance of sweet, delicious fruit. Beyond the shed was a tangled mess – this large space had, at one time, been an extensive set of chook pens. Time had taken its toll and when we arrived, they could not hold anything. At the back of the block was a laneway which gave rear access.

Laneways are common in BH as originally there was no sewerage and waste was collected from the back lanes. It is hard to imagine what stench there would have been in summer. After some time, the owners agreed that we could remove the pens, a considerable task, and make the space available for a garden – veggies and such. My wife, forever the gardener, soon had an abundance of vegetables growing out the back including some magnificent artichokes.

A striking characteristic of the house was evidence of how everything, even simple things, appeared to be valued. In the back shed I found a tin full of old bent nails. Why would anyone keep these old, bent nails I often wondered? I was later to learn from our neighbour that the lady who lived there with her miner husband would pick up any nails she could find on her walk to the shops and bring them home. “They might be useful one day”.

And then there was the side fence - nothing wasted – created from flattened kerosene tins. There was also evidence of thrift, or was it poverty, in the house. When we moved in, we swept accumulated dust out of the house. It was centimetres deep in some corners. In doing so we uncovered multiple patches of linoleum of multiple types and sizes, each patch carefully tacked down. I counted seventeen different patterns in all, some covering most of a room, some covering just a square foot or two.

One surprise awaited when we were clearing the loungeroom floor. We came across what seemed to be a trap door, secured with screws. Curiosity took over as I unscrewed and opened a door which had clearly been closed for a very long time. A set of stairs led down into an underground “room” simply dug out of the earth and about half the size of the loungeroom above. There were no defined walls or reinforcement. The space was filled with all sorts of paraphernalia – some old wooden trunks, ancient wood working tools and various bits and pieces which were hard to identify. The “room” had been flooded to waist deep and mud, now dust, covered most things. I managed to recover a few items and still have a wooden travel chest with an original sticker marking Broken Hill as the destination. It is lined with a decorative floral “wallpaper”. It now sits in my garage as an enduring memory of this house.

The house had no air conditioner or ceiling fans. Apparently, the underground cellars were used by miners on shift work to sleep in relative cool during the days and hot summers. We soon bought a small evaporative cooler on a trolley- It worked quite well in the low humidity if you were straight in front of it. Air was drawn though a frame of damp straw-like material moistened by dripping water. It needed to be regularly “topped up” with water and cleared of salty water now and then.

We stayed at McGowan Street for a couple of years before buying our own small home in Thomas Lane, near the Broken Hill hospital. I revisited the McGowan Street house several times over the years as it went from being abandoned, to used, abandoned again but now looking well looked after and renovated.

We never did find out who originally lived in the house. The relatives had left some memorabilia in a small storeroom and later cleaned it out. Amongst the items were numerous framed photographs which had hung on the walls. I asked to keep a few but they wanted everything to go to the tip. I felt an ache as part of the history of the place disappeared.
















Friday, March 19, 2021

U3A presentation - Our Changing World 17 March 2021 RGBarnes

 


This week I gave a lecture to a discussion group at U3A Toowoomba.


A copy of the slides of my talk is here. 


MInerals presentation 2021.pptx


Definitely brought back old times.




 

Monday, November 23, 2020

The Big Red Rock 1976


 

The Big Red Rock 1976


By Robert G Barnes Nov 2020


When you live in Broken Hill you're on the edge of the outback. Yes it's two days drive west from Sydney and very remote, but it's still a long way from the centre of this vast continent that is Australia. To see the inland of the country in the 1970s required an adventurous spirit and financial and spiritual resources which few people had. Stories of early European explorers travelling for months and even years, and sometimes never returning, are part of the Australian mythology. So when a chance came long to make a short, sharp trip to the Red Centre we were on board. Being in Broken Hill, we were already closer than most Aussies would ever be.


The Broken Hill Aero club comprises a collective of people who love flying - almost any excuse would do. One thing that had become a more regular event for the club was an excursion to Central Australia over Easter. Most people had at least four days leave so it was possible. The pilots at the club just wanted some passengers to pay for the fuel and a few extra so they filled a couple of small planes that teachers, geologists and similar people for a dash to the Centre. Travelling light was an obligation:  a small backpack with a change of undies and not much else. The first sector on Thursday afternoon took us from Broken Hill to Lyndhurst on the western side of the Flinders Ranges. Our pilot for this sector took the travel light message to new heights; his small airline bag contained nothing but four bottles of scotch. I was mildly pleased that we changed pilots for the rest of the trip. I think we could have flown home using the contents of his bag. 



Our pilot for the next day, and for the rest of the trip, was Don, a pleasant fellow who always thoroughly checked the plane before we took off. It was a somewhat battered looking old plane, ex Flying Doctor service. It held the pilot and five passengers. Thankfully I got the top spot up front. The dash was not much more than a collection of simple gauges and a long-range radio; no modern devices. The first sector the day before over the salt lakes and then the Flinders Ranges for a couple of hours gave us a hint of what we were dealing with. The vastness and remoteness changes your sensibilities - you turn into a tiny speck of dust. 


Any night at an outback pub is always memorable but we could not indulge as we had to leave early the next day and would be confined to our small aluminium tube for most of the next day. Flying over the sweeping vistas of rocky plains and sinuous sand dunes for hour after hour was almost hypnotic but the plane hummed along seemingly slowly tripping over the surface of the land. By afternoon we had landed at Alice Springs. 


The club had arranged our accommodation and transport to some of the iconic sites that the MacDonnell Ranges provide: John Flynn's grave and the twin gums amongst them. Some of the landscapes take your breath away.  I clicked and clicked trying to capture just a fraction of what we were seeing. The glorious light, the clear crisp air, the rocky ranges  - the bones and ancient land.  Standley Chasm with its life-sustaining waterholes was an example.





By late afternoon we were in the air heading to Ayers Rock now known as Uluru. In the 1970s Uluru was well known but only visited by an adventurous and self-reliant few. There was no town, just a small collection of primitive cabins. The local people were in camps mostly out of sight. Circling the Olgas now called Kuta Juta and then the Rock just as the sunset set was spectacular. We landed on the small airstrip close to the rock and were enveloped in dust. The next day we were driven around the rock in an old double decker bus which would have been retired from Sydney - remarkable that it made it all the way out there. 



Climbing up the rock was common practice at those times. There were just a few vehicles at the base of the climb. Climbing the rock wasn’t a bucket list thing - it was a spectacular and quite moving experience. The climb is very steep and in parts very exposed but on reaching the top, the views across the expansive plains was almost mystical. Vast surfaces and forms around the rock created natural sculptures which can generate their own messages to the visitor. Uluru is indeed a very special place. Our visit was long before the ownership was passed back to the local people and at the time of our visit the locals were living in slum-like like conditions not far from where we landed.





The trip on Monday, back to Broken Hill generally followed the reverse course of our trip out. We circled Mount Conner, south of Uluru, which looked like an ancient castle defending the outback. 




Foxtrot Delta Yankee being refuelled in Oodnadatta


About halfway between Uluru and our stop for fuel at Oodnadatta, I sensed a certain edginess in our pilot. Many radio contacts were made as we flew - Foxtrot Delta Yankee, our call sign is still embedded in my memory. We had been flying for hours over the stony desert and Don seemed to be spending a lot of time looking out the window and down at the ground -  quite different to our outbound flight. After a while I realise why. A small stream of oil was slowly working its way out of the engine cover and up the windscreen. Don didn't say anything and nor did I. I didn't want to cause concern to the others on board. He was obviously looking out for possible landing sites should there be a problem with the engine. As it turns out we made it to Oodnadatta for a fuel refill and engine check. Thankfully there was a simple low-pressure leak of little consequence. Flying across the vast continent in a single engine plane could have had significant consequences and even if we had landed in an emergency, it  could have been days before we were found - just another speck amongst a billion others. We crossed the Barrier Rangers as the sun set and we had completed our first dash into the red centre - short but full of fascination.


More pics below

Thursday, August 8, 2019

New Caledonia 2011

New Caledonia July 2011
Robert G. Barnes
Written 2019

Usually, when you are planning a holiday, you seek places with anticipation, searching for the best places to visit and stay, looking ahead to a new adventure. But sometimes there are surprises - like when our lovely daughters decided that mum and dad needed a holiday and bought us a two week trip to New Caledonia. It was not even vaguely on our list, but the gift was gladly received. It’s difference - we were working with someone else’s itinerary and dates, but hey, am I complaining?

So off to New Caledonia. The trip from Australia is just a few hours and before long we were seeing steep mountains jutting out from the endless ocean. The Pacific is BIG.

We transferred to our resort style hotel, The Nouvata Park Complex on Promenade Roger Laroque, at the southern end of the main tourist strip south of the Noumea city centre and overlooking Anse Vata bay. A series of large resorts and hotels are scattered along the coast line, along with strips of tourist shops and restaurants and cafes. All very tourist brochure, with overhanging coconut palms.



We had a luxurious room overlooking an expansive pool with cliche palms. For all its luxury and appointments and an “over the top” bathroom, I realised that I had arrived but hadn’t travelled.

Across the road from the hotel was a promenade and narrow park and an arc of beach stretching around the bay. It was a place for families to picnic and relax. A lovely location for a stroll, especially near sunset with the bay aglow. Restaurants and tourist shops were scattered all along the bay, this being a resort destination after all. It took a stroll a few blocks back from the beachfront to encounter a more “local” feel. Many places were modest or a bit run down. Roads were jammed with mainly small European cars. And then a genuine French style patisserie absolutely full of pastries, baguettes, cupcakes and an extensive selection of ice creams. Time to stock up. Nothing quite like fresh crunchy bread.


Our other adventures took us on a walk to the Aquarium Des Lagon at the other end of the bay, while a hop on hop off bus tour to the local sites dropped us off at the Parc Zoologique et Forestier. Located in a steep valley the Park was full of local birds and flora. Another drop off was to the Centre Culturel Tjibaou. This is a quite impressive, almost abstract, series of buildings designed to reflect local villages and also celebrate a pro independence leader. It is a meeting centre with local cultural artifacts on display.  


As part of our holiday package, we were programmed to rent a car and drive about 200 kilometres north along the Grand Terre (as the main island is called) to a resort on the other side of the island. It didn’t take us too long to conclude that this was a little too adventurous for us, as it would have taken a day’s drive each way in an unfamiliar country and on the “other” side of the road. So we chose to simply spend a few days in the capital, Noumea.

Noumea is a small city, more like a large country town. It looks and feels like a colonial relic, with old European style buildings in various states of repair scattered amongst more modern but very modest buildings with shops, clubs and offices. The town is centred on a large park, La Place des Cocotiers. Full of pathways, open concert areas, pagodas and fountains and shady trees, it attracts visitors and is clearly a major meeting place for locals. One thing which brought a smile was a plaque noting the importance of nickel to the territory. Scattered around town were a few genuine French restaurants, usually offering French wine. There were also cafes offering a wide range of dishes with a French influence. A strong Asian influence was not evident, but maybe we just didn’t notice while on our search for the French influence. And things are overall very expensive - no bargains here.



The west coast of New Caledonia was visited by Captain Cook on his second Pacific voyage, but his visit was brief. The Musee de la Ville de Noumea was full of local and cultural interest. Interestingly you could not take photographs unless you filled in a log book and described why you wanted to take them. It seems things like the patterns in carvings and textures in weaving where highly valued in a cultural sense. There are clear similarities to such items throughout the Pacific and especially in New Zealand.It is amazing to think of the boldness of the original inhabitants who ventured into this vast ocean in small sailing canoes with no way of knowing what they may find.


Overall, the weather was very mild to warm, but not hot enough to use the pool which was only frequented by robust youngsters. Our final day involved the fairly long drive 45km north to stay at a motel adjacent to the airport, ready for our flight home. On reflection, the trip was very similar to our very first trip overseas when we went to Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides), but nowhere near as adventurous, as this time we didn’t get to climb a volcano.
FIN