There’s A Track Winding Back - Growing up in Gundagai

So begins The Road to Gundagai, and that’s where I grew up. Gundagai. I learnt to swim in the Murrumbidgee, collected mushrooms in an old, tin billy, dangled a piece of cotton and rancid meat for yabbies, reeled in the occasional trout and shot and skinned rabbits. It’s what rural kids did in the 1960s. We rode pushbikes to school, ate hamburgers with beetroot, drank milkshakes from metal containers and gazed in wide-eyed wonder at airbrushed Man magazines that someone had knocked off from their father. On Saturday nights we’d go to the pictures, share an underage bottle of Brown Muscat and sober up over a Coke and a chat in the Niagara café before heading home around midnight to a house that was never locked.

I’m writing about Gundagai as an example of so many Australian country towns. If you want an inexpensive but rewarding holiday, you could pull out a map of Australia and whack a pin in it (If you get the Simpson Desert, try again!) There are literally hundreds of small rural towns offering excellent, well-priced accommodation and lots to do. Explore the town’s attractions, take time to meet the locals and go on day trips to other towns in the area.

And, while it won’t be far to a McDonalds, there’s every chance you’ll find a Niagara, Boomerang or Liberty Café that serves burgers with egg, bacon and beetroot and a milkshake in a metal container or a Chinese restaurant where you’ll have to ask for chopsticks.

‘Where my Daddy and Mummy are waiting for me
And the pals of my childhood once more I will see…’

My mother and father will always be waiting for me. In the cemetery. On my last visit, in January 2002, the kids picked wildflowers for the graves and we wandered for a while, with me remembering the living faces of others buried there and the children picking up a bit of history. I directed them to two graves, side by side. One belongs to Sergeant Parry, who was shot and killed by the bushranger Gilbert, the other to Senior Constable Webb-Bowen who was killed by Captain Moonlight. We then walked up the dry, grassy slope to a grave in the shade of a tree belonging to Andrew George Scott – aka Captain Moonlight.

Again, I’m using Gundagai as an example of any country town. There’s always history in the cemetery and attractions and things to do. Frank Rusconi sculptured the famous Dog on the Tuckerbox, cemetery headstones were his bread and butter, but his crowning glory is his Marble Masterpiece in town.

There’s also an eclectic, badly organised but riveting museum (most towns have interesting and quirky museums) and there are rare, old and exceptional photographs in the Gabriel Gallery (above the hardware store). There’s the old gaol and courthouse that saw the beginning of the end for Moonlight, a railway station dating back to 1886 and heritage listed bridges from 1867 spanning the flat above where the original town was flooded in 1852. The death toll of 89 would have been far greater but for the bravery and stamina of local Aboriginal, Yarri, who tirelessly fought the raging current in his frail dugout canoe.

Also, like similar towns, there’s fishing, bushwalks, a swimming pool, tennis courts, an 18-hole golf course, a bowling club, services club, pubs and parks. Oh, and as for pals of my childhood – a couple of them still breast the bar at Lott’s Family Hotel and, at the Chinese restaurant, we were served by a classmate from those mushroom and yabbie-filled days. Like much of the town, she, too, hadn’t changed a bit.

I urge anyone travelling the Big Country to take their time, to explore and absorb, because sometimes it’s the little things that are most rewarding.

I mentioned the Niagara café in Gundagai. Vic and Jack Castrission owned the Niagara from the 1930’s to the 1980’s. In the early days it was hailed as “one of the finest cafes in the country” and, following the opening ceremony by the Hon W.F.M. Ross MLA in 1938, the brothers donated the day’s gross takings to the Gundagai Hospital. In 1942, just after midnight, Jack was locking up when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, prepared to tell an unwelcome visitor where to go, to discover Prime Minister John Curtin. Curtin tipped his hat and said he had a couple of mates in the car and they were all hungry and freezing. The ‘mates’ were future Country Party leader, Artie Fadden, and future PM, Ben Chifley. Vic cooked them steak and eggs and they ate around the warmth of the kitchen stove.

“How’s the war affecting you?” Curtin asked.

“Our ration of tea (28lbs a month) runs out real quick,” Vic replied.

For the rest of the war the Niagara received 100lbs of tea and the PM always dropped in for a cuppa when he was passing through. In those days there was a big difference between corruption and repaying a favour.

I was last in Gundagai on 5 January 2002. The Niagara hadn’t changed a bit. I remember the date because we were sitting in a booth, having a burger and a milkshake, when a Greek Orthodox priest in his robes emerged from the kitchen, splashing holy water about. It was the day before Epiphany. I got talking with the new owner, Nick – well, he was ‘new’ to me, even though he’d taken over from the Castrissions 19 years before. We chatted about Greece, about Gundagai and about racehorses. I asked about the Castrissions. He stroked his unshaven face, shook his head and told me that the remaining brother, Vic, had died at 10:00am that morning in the Gundagai hospital.