The Wild Reed: Australian Sojourn

Part 3: In the Land of the Kamilaroi

I recently traveled inland from Guruk to the place of my birth, the northwestern New South Wales town of Gunnedah in the heart of Kamilaroi country.

Gunnedah and its surrounding area were originally inhabited by Indigenous Australians who spoke the Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) language. The area now occupied by the town was settled by Europeans in 1833. Through my maternal grandmother’s family, the Millerds, my family can trace its connection to Gunnedah back to the town’s earliest days. For more about the town’s history and my family’s connection to it, see the previous Wild Reed posts, My “Bone Country” and Journey to Gunnedah.

Above: A memorial to Gambu Ganuurru, "Red Kangaroo," the aboriginal warrior and leader of the Gunn-e-dar people of the Kamilaroi tribe. After his death in the late 1700s, he was buried in the traditional way inside a carved tree. This memorial is located at Pensioners Hill.

Right: With my Aunt Ruth, my Mum's younger sister, with whom I stayed when in Gunnedah.

Above: Out to dinner with my last remaining uncle and aunt – Michael (right) and Ruth, my Mum's younger siblings. Also with us is my childhood friend Diane and her partner Daz.

Left: Ruth's two Italian Greyhounds, Betty and Bella.

Above: With Gunnedah friends Peter and Cathy at the Court House Hotel – Wednesday, May 8, 2019.

Above: With my childhood friend and neighbor Jillian – Thursday, May 9, 2019.

Last July, Jillian and her husband visited me in Minneapolis. For some pics of their time there, click here.

Above: I asked Jillian to snap this pic of me at the Bitter Suite Cafe and Wine Bar as the sofa I'm sitting on is very similar to the one my paternal grandparents, Belle and Bill Smith, had in their home when I was a child in the late 1960s and early '70s. This particular style of sofa is known as a "club lounge," and dates back to the 1930s.

Above: With Aunty Ruth (center) and my cousin Therese (second eldest daughter of my late Aunty Fay and Uncle Bertie) – Friday, May 10, 2019.

Above: Teaching little Henry (my cousin Greg's son) how to play Snakes and Ladders. . . . He doesn't look too sure, though, does he!

Above: This display in a gift store in Gunnedah reminded me of the short story my maternal grandfather, Valentine Sparkes, wrote about me and the white rooster I formed a bond with as a child.

Above, right, and below: Views of Gunnedah - May 2019.

Located in the Namoi River valley of north-western New South Wales, Gunnedah has a population of approximately 10,000 and serves as the major service centre for the farming area known as the Liverpool Plains.

Above: Gunnedah's Miners’ Memorial.

Erected in November 2000, the Miners’ Memorial honors the twenty miners who have died in a little more that a century of coal mining in the Gunnedah district.

Notes local author and town historian Ron McLean in his book The Way We Were:

Mining started in the Gunnedah area in 1880 when well-sinkers found a coal stream on the Backjack frontage to Wandobah Road. First miners Barney McCosker and James Pryor sank crude pits and started mining the seams, carting by dray to the railhead in Gunnedah.

The first fatality occurred in 1897 when 23-year-old Bernard McCosker, a nephew of Barney McCosker, was killed in a fall of rock at Gunnedah Colliery.

My maternal grandmother’s first husband, Jack Louis, was killed in a mine workshop accident in nearby Werris Creek. The eldest of their two children, Eric (my Mum’s half-brother) was hit and killed by a coal truck while traveling to work at the Gunnedah Mine on his motor cycle. He was only in his early twenties. Both father and son are honored on the Miners’ Memorial.

Above: Looking across the Namoi River valley towards the Kelvin Hills, which I hiked in my childhood and youth – and most recently in 2001.

Located 20km north-east of Gunnedah, the Kelvin Hills are characterized by sandstone ridges and steep bluffs that rise above the surrounding farmland.

Isolated from the mountain ranges to the north and east, the highest point of these ridges is 885 metres. The Kelvin State Forest covers much of these hills and contains a waterfall, numerous feral goats, a cave that is home to a colony of bent-wing bats, and (as you can see from the photo at right) sweeping views of the surrounding forest and farmland.

In my youth, I would often go on hikes through the Kelvin State Forest - usually with our good family friend Gwen Riordan and members of her family. My last visit to the hills of Kelvin was in January 2001, when I accompanied my older brother Chris and his family to the area. (They were visiting Gunnedah from their home in Melbourne). The photo of me above was taken at this time – which was about a year or so before my parents left Gunnedah and relocated to Port Macquarie.

Above and below: At the top of Pensioners Hill is a number of carved tress created "as a remembrance to the Kamilaroi people and their ancestral animal totemic beings."

Above: Gunnedah's memorial to author and poet Dorothea MacKellar (1885-1968).

MacKellar is probably best known for her poem “My Country.” Her writings appeared in London's Spectator, the American Harper's Magazine and the Sydney Bulletin. She also had four volumes of verse published, The Closed Door (1911) The Witchmaid, and Other Verses (1914), Dreamharbour (1923) and Fancy Dress (1926).

The MacKellar family owned several properties in the Gunnedah area, including “Kurrumbede” and “The Rampadells”. Throughout Dorothea’s early life, she and members of her family made regular visits to their Gunnedah country residences from their Sydney home.

The first draft of what was to become one of Australia’s most quoted and best loved poems, “My Country,” was written in England at a time when Dorothea was feeling homesick. Never quite content with the verses, she wrote and re-wrote the poem several times after returning to Australia and living in the apartments above her physician father’s consulting rooms in Liverpool Street, Sydney.

Gunnedah’s Dorothea MacKellar Memorial was erected in 1984 and is located in the town’s ANZAC Park. It depicts her as the young woman who wrote “My Country”, and gazing in the direction of her beloved “Kurrumbede.” That same year, Gunnedah resident Mikie Maas created the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, which has grown into a nationwide poetry competition for Australian school students.

Above and below: Gunnedah's Water Tower Museum, which now displays "memorial murals" to veterans of the Vietnam War.

Writes Vanessa Hohnke: "The mural on the southern side depicts 'Huey' helicopters and a group of soldiers, and the mural on the northern side depicts soldiers gazing on the Long Tan Cross."

The murals were painted by award-winning artist Jenny McCracken and dedicated this past Anzac Day, April 25, 2019.

Above and below: Views of the village of Curlewis, 16 kilometres south of Gunnedah.

Above: The grain silo at Breeza, a hamlet about 43 kilometres south of Gunnedah and situated in the heart of the Liverpool Plains agricultural region. The area directly around Breeza is called the Breeza Plains, with the name "Breeza" possibly deriving from an Aboriginal word meaning "one hill."

The message on the silo refers to the ongoing struggle to prevent mining companies (both Australian-owned and foreign-owned) from engaging in the highly controversial practice of longwall mining underneath the deep alluvial irrigation aquifers of the Liverpool Plains.

Notes ABC News:

A Chinese mining giant is being accused of underestimating the impact a proposed open cut mine will have on groundwater on the New South Wales Liverpool Plains.

The University of New South Wales' Water Research Laboratory conducted a study into the Shenhua Watermark Mine's environmental impact statement (EIS), and in particular its findings around the project's potential effect on water.

The research was commissioned by the Caroona Coal Action Group (CCAG), which is opposed to the project.

The study has found that the modelling used by the mining company was flawed, because it relied upon incorrect data on the storage volume of groundwater aquifers.

"The values used were implausibly high based on our research," Ian Acworth, UNSW Emeritus Professor, said. Dr Acworth peer-reviewed the UNSW study.

. . . The CCAG has been fighting Shenhua's Watermark proposal for more than a decade.

Landholder and CCAG chair Susan Lyle addressed a roomful of people at the Breeza Hall, and said the report confirmed their worst fears.
"We have never expected that mining below the aquifers would result in zero harm for our groundwater."

Above: The memorial wall in Breeza that remembers the famous Australian bushranger Ben Hall (1837-1865). At one point, Ben Hall was believed to have been born in Breeza. It has since been determined that he was actually born in the New South Wales town of Maitland.

Right: Australian actor Jack Martin as Ben Hall in the 2016 film, The Legend of Ben Hall. (For a review, click here. To view the film's official trailer, click here.)

Because Hall was not directly responsible for any deaths, he was sometimes referred to as the "gentleman bushranger," with the Forbes correspondent of the Western Examiner (Orange) writing in 1865:

[W]ith all his crimes, I believe he has never been accused of being bloodthirsty, nor did he directly kill any of the victims he robbed. It is claimed by his relatives and those who knew him best that he was affectionate and generous.

Hmm . . . Sounds like my kinda guy.