The Punt Hotel, Darlington Point on the Murrumbidgee

The classic lines of the Punt Hotel, Darlington Point on the Murrumbidgee

Like many pubs along the major rivers, the hotel at Darlington Point on the Murrumbidgee was from the very start, closely, intricately, connected with the punt. 

And I’m not talking gambling. I’m talking about the town’s punt across the river.

From Tintaldra on the Upper Murray to Wellington down near its source, it was common practice, not to mention good business for the punt owner to also own the pub near the crossing point.

Originally known as the Darlington Point Hotel, when it was offered for sale in 1866 the deal included stores and the punt “in full working order.”

Advert from 1866 

The punt might well’ve been in good working order (numerous newspaper adverts testified to this)  but I’m not so sure about the pub.

In 1879 the Town and Country Journal sent a scribe down to check out the ‘bidgee. In Darlington Point he wasn't too impressed by the actual hotel building:

“The miracle of how it got together is only surpassed by the greater miracle of how it holds together and does not tumble en masse.”

And he ramped up his sarcasm and outrage when describing the pub’s clientele: “Here, for all purposes of drinking, spreeing, and fooling with impunity, is a really splendid situation…. respectability is naturally astonished that no representative of the law is stationed at the Point to uphold the majesty of Government and guard from affront to the sense of public decency.”

But if the writer had punted that the pub would soon collapse, he’d have done his dough. It stood another 45 years before it burnt down in 1924 and was replaced the following year by the current beautiful two storey classic bush pub. The quality building no doubt attracted a raised the quality of drinker!

Anyway along the roads maybe half a dozen people have told me the ‘must see’ bloke in this town is River Rat but when I rock up in the late arvo Jess who’s running the bar tells me he’s usually in by now and maybe this is one of the rare days he’s not going to front.

I grab a coldie and head outside where my legs, tired from 9 hours on the bike are more acceptable up on the table. Midway through my second, a car pulls up and out gets a bloke, maybe in his late 60’s or early 70’s wearing a worked-in hat, dark polo shirt and darker hands. Oh and a smile on his dial.

I ask but I already know. Yes, this is John aka River Rat and yes he’s on for a chat but he’s tonguing for a cold can so let’s get into the bar.

He won’t let me buy a round but when his can arrives, gets rid of the top half without breathing and I can see some sort of normality returning to him.

John, "River Rat" in his element at the bar of the Punt Hotel

“My dad must’ve done a pretty good job in the army during the war because when he came back in ’46 he got a bigger settlement block than most.  By coincidence it was down at Darlington in Victoria and there was a bit of a creek running through the allotments down there and on one side there was a pile of land that they cut into 500 acre blocks. But on the other side of the creek there was 1480 acres which wasn't quite enough for three blocks so they made two of 740 acres and my dad got one of them.

And that saved him. The 500 acre ones were too small to be viable and most of the diggers went bust but dad made a living out of it. It was good or bad depending on the season but whatever happened you were your own boss and that’s how we liked it.

 My brother’s still down there on the same patch running sheep.  I’ve haven’t spoken with him for a while but I’d bet he’d be in bangles now with the high prices for wool and for stock.

John was born two years after his dad got the farm, went to school in Darlington about 50 miles north east of Warnambool and spent a restless life of rural work.

“I was married but no kids and we were living down in Geelong and one day she told me I no longer had a home to come home to so I moved around a bit and twenty years ago lobbed here to catch up with a mate.”

When the mate asked if he was looking for work, John said he was open to offers and’d try his hand at anything. His mate organised a job planting grapes and John stayed at the same vineyard for 11 years.

“I lived in a tent when I first arrived – camped down by the river almost right across from where I was working. That’s how I got the name, “River Rat”. I used to come in here on Friday nights and do my washing and they’d always give me a room for the night because I was such a good client!

Next day I’d go to the butcher shop for my meat and the grocers and here to get my beers and a couple of bags of ice. By Monday all the ice’d be gone so you had to cook all your meat for the rest of the week and store all your beers in the river.

Thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I got myself a place with a fridge and started having cold beers all week!

"River Rat" at Darlington Point's Punt Hotel

After 11 years of grapes River Rat branched out into the almonds and he’s been at there ever since.

He counts back through the publicans he’s enjoyed or endured. He’s little time for the present bloke who, “lives in a mansion in Kriiibilli and does bugger all for this town. But Cindy who’s the licensee does a pretty decent job. Cyril the bloke before her was the only bloke who ever barred me.

It was about 5 years ago and I needed some cash so I went around the back there to the ATM and it was empty so I called Cyril – he was an ex-copper – and he went upstairs and came back with some notes to feed it but still couldn't get it to work.

I called him a useless fat prick and really spat the dummy before I left and started walking home. Pretty soon he catches up to me and says, “no-one’s ever spoken to me like that before, you’re banned for a week’.

So I stopped and looked at him and said, ‘Cyril, I apologise. When I called you a useless fat prick before I wasn't really sure. But now I am sure. You really are useless, you are fat and fuck, you really are a prick.”

He grabs me and says, “make that a fortnight!”

My fridge was full of beers so I stayed away but after a week Cindy came by and said, ‘we miss you too much’ and gave me a lift to the pub!

On the wall is a team poster of the Darlington Point Coleambally Roosters Rugby League team. They wear the same colours as the namesakes in the NRL.   River Rat’s not impressed. He’s been a Rabbitohs’ die hard  (just like me) since leaving Victoria and social climbing north and he supports South Sydney and any team that’s playing the Roosters.

Right now he’s particularly bitter as the Roosters have eliminated his team from the premiership race. In one of those rare, insightful moments, with logic that can’t be countered, he delivers his verdict which I’ll long treasure on Souths season:

“We had it won until they beat us.”

I just nod.

So he follows the local team despite the pain of embracing colours and an emblem which he despises and whilst he’s explaining the benefit to the town of having the footy club healthy, he cuts off to welcome a new arrival.

“G’day Dennis,” and then turns to me. “That’s a bloke you should be talking to. He grew up here. Always preferred a fight to a feed but he’s quietened down at bit. I’ll let him get settled and call him over.”

Dennis is wearing a Wilcannia Rugby League footy jumper. A barrel of a bloke about 180 cms and probably weighs around 105kg.

But he’d be taller if he had a neck, and he’d weigh more if he had two complete ears. If things get rough tonight, I’m on Dennis’s side.

He came down from Darwin last week to spend the weekend at Dubbo for the Inidigenous Knock-out and’s dropped in with his giant son on their way south. He’s not been here for the best part of a year and he’s greeted by all on both sides of the counter like a prodigal. Everyone’s real glad to see him.

He finishes a round of “welcome backs” and grabs a pew beside us.

Dennis Gamblett reckons he’s always had an affinity with dogs and calls himself a ‘dog whisperer’.

Dennis with his battle scars
at the Punt Hotel.

“As long as I’ve got about 8 dollars worth of Devon I can catch any dog out there. I’ve actually driven alongside a dog and dropped Devon for it and then got my lasso on the end of a long stick out the window and lassooed it. Was a dog that no-one else, even the original owners could ever get near.”

Dennis became the chief of the local pound, spending his nights tracking rogue canines, what he calls, ‘nuisance dogs’, often pets that’d escape for the night to go killing lambs and sheep in packs of from 4 to half a dozen.

“I’d catch a dog in the paddock and get a photo of it and then I take it back to the owner.  I’d always have a witness with me and I say to the owner I’ve caught your dog. You don't tell them where or how or anything. and most of the time they won’t admit it’s theirs so I get them to approach the dog and you can tell if its theirs. Most of the dogs out here aren’t chipped. Once they've admitted that it’s their dog you tell them that you have proof it was killing sheep and take it to the pound and they are liable to all the court costs for the hearing and then the costs of destroying the dog.

I’m pretty fair and open and a lot of times I’d take it back to its owner so long as its not a nuisance dog and tell ‘em to lock it up at night.”

But sometimes it’d cost them 800 bucks to get their dog out of the pound but there was never any malice. I’d sometimes catch a dog on a Friday and play footy with the owner on Sunday.

And playing footy on weekends was one of Dennis’s two passions. The other was chasing wild pigs with his own bunch of piggin dogs. (There’s never a final ‘g’ on ‘piggin’ !

Dennis started off playing 5/8^th for Darlington Point and then, as his speed fell away, gravitated to the front row. He became captain and then captain-coach and led the locals to the premiership.

The opposition up at Hay decided that since they couldn't beat him they’d try to poach him and sent a board member to try to cut a deal.

“He asked me what it would take to get me to switch clubs and I told him: ‘I want access to 12 properties to go piggin on and I want a hot dinner in the pub on Fridays.”

A week later, Dennis had a new club.

“I’ve still got the contract with the piggin’ and the free dinner all written down and I’m still welcome to go piggin’ pretty much anywhere in Hay!”

He also took up an admin role and before one meeting in 2000 a couple of mates dropped around and one of his pig dogs was barking out the back.

“So and I went out to tell it to quiet down and I picked up a stick and I was making like I was going to hit him with it. This was one of my best dogs and when I crouched down a bit he just ran at me and latched onto my ear off just like he’d do with a pig. Ripped the entire centre section off.

So I skipped the meeting and went into the hospital in Griffith. It had all come off but this bottom piece was flapping and had to be sewn back on. The top piece got gangrene in it.

It was a Saturday and I couldn't play the next day. We didn't put the dog down because I told everyone it was my fault, I should’ve known better.

(I find out later from a very reliable source that a stray silky terrier just may have been blamed so the real culprit could be saved. The terrier’s fate is not recorded.)

The doctor said I could go to Albury and they could take an imprint of my good ear and then take some tissue from my left ear and grow a new ear on the back of a rat and when it was fully grown, they could transplant it onto me.

I said, “What colour are the rats?” and he said they were all pure white ones.

I asked him if they had any black rats but he said no. I told him, “Listen, I’m a Wiradjuri Man and proud of it! I’m not gonna to have no ear from a white rat!”

So we just left it.”

It became a bit of joke around the place. I got an award one time which was half a pair of ear muffs and another time someone gave me a pair of glasses with just one arm on the side.

A voice from the back of the room cuts through the laughter:  “I’ve also heard him tell people that Mike Tyson bit it off when they were sparring before the Evander Holyfield bout and that’s what gave Tyson the taste for blood!”

The room lights up again and as I order a round of drinks (River Rat’s now accepting drinks), Joe in high-viz yellow asks if I’d like some of his home-made jerky.

 

Smokin' Joe 

Alert eyes behind thin-rimmed square framed specs,  a forehead now stretching back over half of his skull and with a long, greying ranga’s beard, Joe espouses seasoned, dried meats with the quiet passion usually reserved for religious zealots at your front door, usually at an inconvenient time.

By day Joe drives a, “bloody great turning machine that turns waste into fertilizer” and by night he stokes up his smoker.

He cuts near-frozen beef and lamb into very fine strips, usually infuses it with varying amounts of chilli and smokes it over the embers of almond, apricot or cherry wood.

You can have it unseasoned but Joe reckons the chilli stuff is better. 

“My hottest stuff at the moment is labelled ‘After-burner’ and I use Habaneros but I’m working on a new variety using Carolina chillies which have four times the Scoville rating of Habs and I’m going to call the jerky, ‘nuclear waste’”.

Dennis and River Rat watch me take a mouthful of After-burner and then dive for some water.

“Damn,” I hoarsely shout, “more bite than a piggin dog.”

Dennis just smiles and says, “I wouldn't punt on that!”

And this time he was talking gambling!


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