The enormous size of the Australian continent and the resulting travelling habits are somewhat reflected by the breakfast-timetables of hotels: On offer in Gladstone was coffee or tea from a flask with bread, butter, cheese and jam until 7 a.m., hot breakfast with freshly made tea or coffee after 7 a.m.. As it turned out, only two truck-drivers availed of the early breakfast-version while the other guests turned up for a hot breakfast between 7 and 8 a.m. In the dark, chilly breakfast room, I was drawn to warm my hands at toast, steaming tea pot and hot plate. “Don’t you get cold hands on the bike?” asked the owner, still sleepy after last night’s session. With this he drew closer to investigate the oddity that had been staying under his roof, who had arrived on a bicycle, subsequently had sat on the balcony until sundown, in mid-winter, and who was now up at half past seven. The information that gloves and hat formed part of my ‘equipment’ did nothing to change his mind. Tact forbade him to call a bike-trip in mid-winter an outright nonsense, so I pushed him a bit by asking, had he never been on a bike. “Oh yes, I have”, he replied, “the last time I used my ‘treadly’ was when I went to primary school.” He thought that I was visiting interesting places, although he felt sorry that I had to “go walkabout” in the middle of the South-Australian winter, but surely I could have thought about a more civilised form of transport. And at that he turned to attend to the requests of his other guests. Later, he kindly, and with a big grin of disbelieve retrieved my ‘treadly’ from its safe overnight storage place.
The morning was crystal clear and fresh. The temperature carried a definite message: “You are now entering the region of the Flinders Ranges, where winter-mornings are frosty”. A strong reminder that July calls itself winter around here and that my friends had not been joking when they mentioned snow around Melrose, today’s destination, only two weeks ago. With a strong headwind ripping across the plain, endless, fields from the north-east, no cover could be expected from the Flinders Ranges on the western side, and I would be pretty cold on arrival tonight. But, at least it was dry.
Moving north towards Laura, I was not only entering the region of the Flinders Rangers, I was also entering an area which used to be the territory of the Ngadjeri-tribe. A few days ago I had briefly entered the very narrow southern tip of the Ngadjeri territory around the vineyards of Nuriootpa and Angaston, and from there onwards my tracks had led me more or less along its western boundary. In all those days I had only come across evidence of white people’s activities, not a trace of the life of the original owners. Being somewhat apprehensive to ask white people, I turned to written material.
According to a short publication of the National Trust “A History of Melrose”, two neighbouring tribes had roamed around these parts of the southern Flinders Ranges, the ‘Ngadjeri’ and the ‘Nukunu’. Both were closely associated with one another and both seem to have had close links with their southern neighbour, the Adelaide tribe of ‘Kaurna’.
“Everything suggests that they were in regular communication with one another owing to the existence of north and south trade routes established for bartering and travel. It is recorded that red ochre from the sacred native mines near Parachilna reached the Adelaide tribe for use at certain important ceremonies despite the existence of a red ochre deposit which the natives mined … near Adelaide.”
A History of Melrose, p. 8
Apart from these activities the people of the ‘Nukunu’ and the ‘Ngadjeri’ lived a pretty ordinary aboriginal life, where the women used yam (digging) sticks for digging out edible roots, lizards, etc. on food gathering expeditions. The collected food was carried in pitjis (wooden bowl-shaped containers) which sometimes were carried on the head, using a pad of reeds between head and bowl. Boomerangs, woomeras (spear throwers) and stone axes with wooden handles (useful for instance, for extracting possums from hiding places) were the main tools the men used on hunting.
“Many Aboriginal hunters had sharp hearing and an ability to reproduce sounds which they bad heard. European explorers and settlers … often observed this gill for mimicry without comprehending its advantages in the hunt…. Mimicry could be an accurate bullet in the chase for food. A skilful click of the tongue decoyed crabs from the holes in the mud of the mangrove swamp; whistling sound could entice a hermit crab from its shell; a snake-like hiss could drive a bandicoot from a hollow log; and an imitation of the call of a hawk often halted a fleeing goanna so that he stiffened and stood still, ….
If two of more men were hunting together they preserved silence and yet kept in touch by means of an elaborate language of hand signals and gestures. W.E. Roth, a surgeon in … Queensland in the 1890’5 was one of the code-breakers who penetrated this sign language… The aboriginal with whom he was riding suddenly asked him to halt, adding that a friend about 150 yards ahead had just signalled that he had seen an emu hen and her young and was giving chase. As both had seen no sign, heard no voice, and seen no emu he was flabbergasted and told the aboriginal he was a liar. A little later be was shown the slaughtered emu and some of her young. So he was led. ..’step by step to making a study of what I subsequently discovered to be an actual well-defined sign-language.. .’. “
BIainey,G. ,”Triumph of the Nomads”, pp 130-132
Apart from hunting skills, their enormous knowledge of plants enabled Aboriginals to utilise a wide range of different plants for food and thus, in the course of a year’s wanderings live on a very diversified diet. “An irrigated market-garden at Alice Springs today would not grow a fraction of the variety of plants visible to sharp eyes in the desert …” (ibid, p. 161) The arrival of white people had altered all this and today’s landscape around Melrose looked very different to what it would have been only 150 years ago. The gently sloping landscape had been turned into rich meadows and productive wheat-fields. Only the absence of hedgerows and the presence of eucalypts reminded me that I was not on a Sunday-outing in Co. Meath, Ireland. Blessed with a more reliable and higher rainfall than Australia’s red centre, this region was a good farming region and had been such for more than 100 years. However, changing the previous diversity of plant-life had its effects on wildlife, too.
“For the native animals the arrival of wheat cultivation meant drastic changes. .. .Cockatoos, characteristically Australian and largest of the continent’s parrots, found the coming of the wheat a mixed blessing… Corellas and Galahs (Cacatua reseicapilla ), birds of the semi-arid grass plains, extended their ranges into the new wheat areas. For them, wheat was just a better class of grass, … Flocks of red-tailed black cockatoos (Calytorhynchus banksii ) also descended on the wheat-fields: it turned out that they were not after the grain but the seeds of a pernicious weed, … that had been introduced with it … Yet for the red-tail’s closest relative, the white-tailed black cockatoos (Calytorhynchus bandinii ) the coming of wheat spelt doom. They depend much more on woodland… because a large part of their diet is the larvae of wood-boring insects. “
Vandenbeld, “Nature of Australia, p. 263
Doom it spelt, too, for the ‘Nukunu’ and the ‘Ngadjeri’. Their former apparently peaceful life, in which they were able to share part of the mountain range around Mt. Remarkable as common hunting grounds without too much fuss over tribal borders, came to an end with the advance of pastoralist’s fences in the middle of last century. They did not watch the advance of those fences and some mines (small amounts of copper had been found around Mt. Remarkable) silently and peacefully, but they could not stop the gradual process of land being taken over by white people. Early pastoralists reported frequent raids on their flock and in February 1848 a Mr. Charles A. Watt complains to the Commissioner of the Police that
“These occurrences tend greatly to retard the occupation of our country in that district, as the majority of men decline engaging at ordinary wages in a country with such risks. “
National Trust,”A History of Melrose”, pp 25-6
This letter resulted in the immediate establishment of a police-hut at the eastern foot of Mt. Remarkable, in what is Melrose today. The hut was later replaced by a stone-building, housing the police-station and court house. If one is to believe the notes of an unnamed traveller who arrived in Melrose’s North Star Hotel in 1854, witnessing a night of revelry and fights, the police-station was not only dealing with black people and their raids:
“There <Melrose> were sundry huts, a few surveyor’s tents, a considerable number of stray cattle, and one log house dignified with the name of a hotel. How a public house could pay in a place like this was at first sight difficult to be solved, but during the evening as we sat on the horse-rail in front of the door, the mystery was solved. Men came in twos and threes, some on horse-back and some on foot … It was pay day at the Charlton Mine, a place about fifteen miles from Melrose. ….
In the morning we started early, and leaving the victors and vanquished reclining in front of the hotel in every possible attitude, except the erect one.”
National Trust, ‘A History of Melrose”, pp 25-26
l was hoping to arrive in a somewhat more friendly place and I was not to be disappointed. Approaching the small, yet charming town, huddled against the foot of the mountain from the direction of Laura and Wirrabara, it is impossible to spot it from anywhere until one nearly stumbles upon it. All that is visible coming from a southern and eastern direction is the clear, distinctive outline of the aptly named Mt. Remarkable. On the the last 5 km, an absolutely straight road rises slowly, in line with the plain fields on either side, and finally, when the wheat-fields on the left turn into gently rolling hills, it descends again, revealing at last the rooftop of the North- Star-Hotel, the tower of the old brewery and the red shingles of the one-storey residential houses. Free wheeling to the very bottom of the town, along the creek at the side of the mountains, under huge eucalypts, I found the cozy camping grounds which offered spacious ‘cabins’ at a reasonable pace.
While the traveller of 1854 had found a “loghouse dignified with the name of a hotel”, I discovered a so called ‘cabin’ that appeared to be a small type of bungalow. The newly built cabins had been designed to accommodate people in wheelchairs: a short ramp led up to a central room with a fully equipped kitchen and dining area. On one side of this spacious room was a bedroom with a wardrobe and double-bed, on the other side was the bathroom with shower and toilet as well as a smaller bedroom with bunk beds. The whole ‘little apartment’ was spotlessly clean, the reversible air-conditioning supplied a reasonable amount of warmth, and I happily set off for the shop to stock up supplies for a few days. I was determined to cook a good meal and then consult the map about a god walking route to the top of Mount Remarkable.
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