A Little Bit Country

Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Think Las Vegas without the casinos. Or the Mafia. Or the entertainment. Okay, it’s nothing like Las Vegas, but it is an interesting place in the middle of nowhere.

I stayed in a delightful old pub with a huge verandah around the rooms on the first floor and refreshing cold beer on tap downstairs behind a long, wooden bar breasted by locals wearing hats, check shirts, wry smiles and weather-beaten skin.

While most outback Australians are warm and welcoming, they like to get a ‘measure’ of a person first: they may nod ‘hello’ and then wait to hear what the visitor orders over the bar before allowing themselves to become approachable. An American or Swedish accent speaks volumes and gains an instant reaction of ‘Where you from, then?’. Two men ordering Campari sodas or vodkas with a twist would get a raised eyebrow. Two women ordering anything would get an immediate ‘G’day, how you going?. But an ordinary ‘bloke’, like me, just ordering a beer, got the nod hello. It was up to me to make a move, which I did. Like a dog marking his territory, I did what ‘blokes’ sometimes do in these sorts of pubs. I put a coin on the pool table to challenge the winner to the next game.

I paid for the game and racked up the balls, as the challenger does, and as we chalked our cues my opponent extended a walnut-cracking handshake. ‘Ross,’ he said.

Ross was early 20s with sandy hair, a wide smile and not a care in the world. I happened to win the first game and asked Ross if he wanted to join me in doubles against the next challengers. And so it went. It was a fairly long session, with Ross opening up as more beer flowed and more games were won. He was a boundary rider. His job, for months at a time, was to ride the boundary of a cattle station that was bigger than Tasmania, checking the fences and fixing any damage. It struck me as the loneliest job in the world, yet he seemed happy enough. He had his horse, his food provided and he got to save every cent he earned, until he hit town. Then, he’d drink a lot of beer, play a lot of pool, have a few bets and spend a bit of horizontal leisure time in the ‘starting stalls’ in Hay Street, before heading back to the wild red yonder. As he said, no girlfriend would wait around for him in his line of work and, if you tried to put a line on a local lass, you’d end up in a fight with her man so, best to pay for it. Anyway, one day he’d settle down…

This chance meeting provided material for a song I co-wrote with Dave Prior (Dave’s the one with the guitar and the voice, and manages two radio stations in Geraldton). Called Wind in the Wire, it was nominated People’s Choice for Best Heritage Song at the Australian Country Music Awards in Tamworth, 2001:

And the flames flicker in the fire
And the smoke floats higher and higher
And the sound of the wind … in the wire

Dave also introduced me to The Abrolhos Islands, west of Geraldton. The Abrolhos are dramatic and have the same aura of mystery and heritage that hits you when you first visit Uluru. They are inhabited for six months of the year by crayfishermen who live in little shacks on the various islands - some of them only big enough to hold one or two shacks. It's another way of life and you feel as though you could be on Mars.

The Abrolhos is the setting for Western Australia’s most infamous story of maritime murders, mistakes, misery and mutiny when the Dutch merchant ship, the Batavia, was wrecked there in 1629. Even the crustiest of craymen will tell you that the ghosts echo about islands. This led to another song, combining the events of 400 years ago with today’s crayfishermen:

If you listen quietly to the wind on any night
You can hear the angry spirits call your name
And the shivers of the timber
Is not just from the wind
It’s the spirits as they hang their head in shame