I pulled myself away from the intrigueing rocky open-air-museum and followed the dirt road to Bangor. With its rolling hills, the countryside possessed a “Kentish” character, had it not been for the big and countless heavy River Red Gums. The absence of endless geometrical fields or meadows made everything appear more natural. Although definitely worked, farmed, cultivated, nature had managed to keep some influence on the character of the place.
Effortlessly, the bike rolled steadily up and down the hills like a sailing boat in a breeze. The presence of groups of trees, eucalypts but also pine trees and some acacias, ensured that I was attacked frequently by bl… …. breeding magpies. Luckily, I knew my remedy! Pockets of woodland were home to a number of Laughing Kookaburra, whose laughing call accompanied me all along. At streams and ponds there were some ducks, too.
In no time I arrived in Bangor, now a quiet, quaint place. Small, attractive houses are huddled on the slopes on either side of the valley, quietly tugged away behind gardens, sloping lawns, bushes, trees and rock. On the northern side of the valley which is less rocky, fields were stretching uphill beyond the banks of the road. Although not really like the Welsh Bangor but also not completely unlike some quiet place in Wales, this secluded pocket was once teeming with heavy traffic. Bullock teams carrying wheat and wool from the southern Wirrabara area as well as the plains to the north-east, east and south-east of Mount Remarkable, met at the road-fork at Bangor, before descending to the coast through Port Germein Gorge. No better place for a hotel as a stopover point.
A count of the year 1564 reveals that the nearest run (Wirrabara North, lease 6) covered an area of 27 square miles and grazed 3.100 sheep, while the main pastoralist of the time must have been John Howard Angas, with a freehold of 50.101 acres and a leasehold of 15.550 acres. These nearly 66.000 acres were estimated to support 45.000 sheep (figures from National Trust, “A History of Melrose). There were other pastoral leases with sheep, and there was wheat-production, too (for which I could not obtain any figures), so it is not surprising that at times up to 100 bullock teams were known to have camped around the Bangor Hotel. At up to 16 bullocks a team, a frantic place that would only eventually be calmed by the advent of the railway-line and the resulting redirection of traffic. The steam-trains from Gladstone to Melrose and beyond ended the days of “The Teams”.
The Teams
A CLOUD of dust on the long, white road,
And the teams go creeping on
Inch by inch with the weary load;
And by the power of the green-hide goad
The distant goal is won.
With eyes half-shut to the blinding dust
And necks to the yokes bent low,
The beasts are pulling as bullocks must;
And the shining tires might almost rust
While the spokes are turning slow.
With face half-hid by a broad-brimmed hat,
That shades from the heat’s white waves,
And shouldered whip, with its green-hide plait,
The driver plods with a gait like that
Of his weary, patient slaves.
He wipes his brow, for the day is hot,
And spits to the left with spite;
He shouts at Bully, and Ricks at Scot,
And raises dust from the back of Spot,
And spits to the dusty right.
He’ll sometimes pause as a thing of form
In front of a settler’s door,
And ask for a drink, and remark “It’s warm”.
Or say “There’s signs of thunderstorm”;
But he seldom utters more.
The rains are heavy on roads like these
And, fronting his lonely home,
For days together the settler sees
The waggons bogged to the axletrees,
Or ploughing the sodden loam.
And then, when the roads are at their worst,
The bushman’s children hear
The cruel blows of the whips reversed
While bullocks pull as their hearts would burst,
And bellow with pain and fear.
And thus – with glimpses of home and rest
Are the long, long journeys done;
And thus – ’tis a thankless life at the best! -
Is Distance fought in the mighty West,
And the lonely battle won.
“Poem of Henry Lawson”
selected by Stone,W., 1973
Cycling downhill through Port Germein Gorge, I had no distance to fight, no lonely battle to win. After days of flat country I thoroughly enjoyed the winding way of this gorge; more so, I suspected than the truck-drivers whose not very frequent, but regular runs up and down seemed to indicate that they were the modern version of “The Teams”, now running to the highway for Port Pine, Port Augusta and Adelaide.
Coming out of the ranges, I allowed myself to be deceived by distance and headed further to Port Germein. What seemed to be 5 km turned out to be more than ten (had not botanist Robert Brown been deceived in the same way just a few km north from here?).
With a population of 250 the quiet town seems to come fully alive only in the summer during its “Festival of Crab” on New Year’s Day. Today it was very quiet and not even one single visitor walked along the breezy jetty, with 1680 metres supposedly the longest in the southern hemisphere. Like the Bangor Hotel, the busy times of the jetty had ceased and could only be explained to interested tourists by displays. In modern times they had just briefly come to life again during South Australia’s Jubilee 150, when a coastal ship had taken on grain grown in the district.
The sun turning northwest and west, the spotlights were turned on the Flinders Ranges while I slowly approached Port Germein Gorge again on my return-journey, viewing the mountains from angles similar to those seen by Captain Matthew Flinders in 1802. Aview, never to be forgotten.
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