Back o Bourke

When someone wants to express that they have travelled deep into the outback of Australia they say they have been “back o Bourke”. Bourke is quite a long way west – so I think we have been quite a bit back o Bourke in the past two weeks!
Today we visited Bourke – which has a most striking mural to welcome drivers entering the town.

Two “swaggies” (the name given to Depression days wandering tramps who would do odd jobs in exchange for food) with their packs (matilda's) on their shoulders striding off into the great desert away from civilization (through the farm gate).

Last year a special exhibition display was opened called “Back o Bourke”

We parked the car and paid our dues to wander through the three buildings housing the displays. In the first was an audio visual display which was very well done, then through an interesting dryland garden into the next building in which there were more audio visuals but no audio! We had been told there were headphones but we couldn't find any! So that part of the display fell a bit flat – instead I read out the bush poetry that was all around the walls and entertained Colin with my own audio! (He couldn't be bothered reading the poems for himself).

Outside again and into another building. This had all sorts of things to read up on the walls. We watched a rather clever presentation of a paddle-steamer making its way up the Darling River and listened to the commentary that informed the listeners of how goods were loaded and many other things too. Finally we followed the path that lead to the exit and found ourselves in the cafe! We nearly bought an ice-cream but realised in time that it would be melted into liquid the moment we stepped outside. When we did get out we found we had half a kilometer to walk to get to where the car was parked! Fancy the tour ending up so far away from where you start! We told ourselves that the walk would “do us good”!

Unfortunately we were unable to partake in a riverboat ride – there is a paddle-steamer that runs every afternoon. The river is so high that the paddle-steamer cannot fit under the cables and power lines that criss-cross the river! They do not think the paddle-steamer will be able to negotiate the river until well into November. We seem to be encountering many things on this trip that we cannot do!

To make up for that disappointment we took a short detour off the road and followed a sign to see some “carved trees”. We had no idea what these would be and curiosity drew us on. When we came up to a sign saying “road closed” our hearts dropped but we turned down a track and found that we had come the right way after all.

I did not know about the aborigines carving trees for their ceremonies so to read the boards describing where they were found and what they had been used for was a delight. These relics of a lost civilization are here in the middle of no-where and we were fortunate enough to be able to see them.

The carvings are quite masterful and nothing like the primitive art we have seen on the walls of cliffs and overhangs, nor like the painting that the aborigines are creating these days.

For me this was a real highlight of today.

Finally a photograph to show you the reason I wanted to head "out west".

The wildflowers after the rains - and the bush and the greenery are something like we may not see for many years to come. Australia is a land of extremes and most of the time the interior of this country is barren of plants except for the hardiest of trees and salt bush plants. This year the country looks amazing. The yellow in this picture is from millions of wild mustard flowers. They are very common but at the moment look stunning - back in our farming days our house cow once had a wonderful feed of mustard flowers and we were unable to drink her milk for quite a while!

AJ