The Ellangowan Hotel, Augathella, home of the Augathella Meat Ants, an extraordinary history and some truly wonderful locals.
Like a select few world leading centres of arts and
learning, Augathella in Queensland has had more than one name change in its
history.
The Big Apple started out as New Amsterdam and then switched
to New Orange before it became New York City.
Walt Whitman wrote of NYNY: “There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride,
and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with
ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die”.
In 330 AD Byzantium was renamed Constantinople and
stayed that way for 1600 years before becoming Istanbul, the only city to sit
astride two continents.
Fatih Sultan Mehmet said of this city, once the second
largest in the world:
"İstanbul
is a magical seal which unites Europe and Asia since the ancient times. Without
a doubt, Istanbul is certainly the most beautiful place of the world.”
When I grew up India had a place called, ‘Bombay’. Today
it’s Mumbai but before both it was first Mumba and then Boa Baia. Deepak Chopra
wrote of it:
“In every conversation I've had - with housewives in Mumbai, with
middle-class people, upper-class, in the slums - everyone says there is an
underlying consciousness of karma. That people believe in karma - that what
you're putting out is going to come back. If I do something to you, the energy
of it is going to come back to me in the future.”
Meanwhile up in Queensland between Morven and Tambo, the
tiny new township of Burenda soon had its name changed to Ellangowan before being gazetted in 1863 and adopting
its current moniker of Augathella.
So what did some learned person, some local equivalent to
Whitman, to the Sultan or to Deepak have to say about the Aussie town in league
with their bastion cities of taste, class, culture and intellectualism?
Well in 1875 The Darling Downs Gazette didn't bullshit
around, calling the place, ‘a disgrace to
civilization……Burenda is the prolific source of crime, outrage, suicide,
'accidental poisonings,' sudden deaths, delirium, and poetic flights of
imagination committed to paper never
surpassed out of bedlam, if ever equaled
within its walls.
Oops! Can we get a second opinion?
The January year before The
Brisbane Courier in its wrap of country New Years celebrations advised its
readers that big brother Charleville was not the place for a knees up to bring
in the New Year:
Christmas at Charleville is kept neither
very religiously as a festival nor very jollily as a holiday. Of public worship
there was none, and public houses fared but little better……….however, what was
lacking in Charleville was amply compensated for at Burenda, where, I am credibly informed, not a single man was sober. In
fact, nothing was wanting to make a Christian festival of the nineteenth
century a frightful Saturnalia of pagan Rome.
Later in 1874 the Brisbane
“Queenslander” noted, “(evidence of) a
disgraceful state of things in the public-houses at Burenda ; there is no place
in the colony that more requires additional police protection ……”
So it seemed the jury was in: Burenda was neither a seat of
learning nor a temple of temperance and things were to get worse before they go
better.
When the town changed names the first time, the local sheep
station kept the Burenda. When it changed the second time, the pub kept the
‘Ellangowan’ and it was the Ellangowan Hotel, which took a central role in what
became known as the, “Burenda Tragedy”.
The Brisbane Courier of February 12th 1874 set
the scene:
At Burenda township, ten miles from the station, a race programme, ….. had been arranged for
the 28th December; and a motley crew of shearers, washers, shepherds, &c., from the stations round had gathered (at the Ellangowan Pub)
A move was made to the race-course by those who were able to move about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and the (the races) ran off amid scenes of drunkenness and
bestiality sickening in their details — a
living disgrace to any civilised community of white men.”
The partying didn't stop when the horses did but kept
going for days. A lot of the stuff they were drinking was, well, improvised and
one bloke later testified that
“He took two nobblers of Cavanagh's grog
early on the morning of the
race day and remembered nothing more till the evening of the 31st, when he found himself in bed with his clothes on, in a back room at Cavanagh's public-house, and all his money gone.”
“Cavanagh’s”
was the Ellangowan, and once this bloke, Larkin, had woken, he and some mates
had a “final carouse” to celebrate
the New Year and then the next morning five of them decided to head out to Nive
Station.
They’d
spent their remaining funds on some bottles of something which may’ve been
brandy, may’ve been rum but which definitely contained tobacco.
It
wasn't a smart move. Three of the men died and Larkin only survived by slitting
his puppy’s throat and drinking the blood.
Neither
survivor reached Nive but, guided by the barking of dogs, crawled into Burenda
Woolshed where the staff immediately sent out search parties for the others.
They found two bodies, three dead dogs and a dying man.
Popular
blame for the deaths was poured onto Michael Cavanagh at the Ellangowan Hotel,
and the adulterated juices that he allegedly sold.
At
the inquest and in the press Cavanagh defended himself testifying that the
liquor was genuine and sealed, “either Hennessey’s or Martell’s” and blamed the
“Burenda Tragedy” on heavy swags, the heat and lack of water. The publican
claimed the men were ‘perfectly sober’
when they left the township and he begged to have it known that, “(he had) never been charged
with selling poisonous liquors, nor ha(d)
any man's death been previously laid at (his) door.”
The fact that
Michael Cavanagh survived any retribution and that his pub was not red steered
has to be testament to the belief of the locals that he was innocent or maybe
just recognition of their pragmatism that this was the only pub for miles and
bad grog was better than no grog at all.
Now a still
existing pub with a story like that in a town with an old reputation like that
and a nearby sheep station with such a history would be more than enough to get
my wheels into action. But it’s not even
close to the whole of story of Augathella and its pub and the other strands
make the place an absolute magnet for a solivagant obsessed with history, pubs
and myths and stories.
Because in
contrast to Gundagai, Augathella is a town that can handle shit.
Like the place itself, Augathella’s place in the poetic
pantheon has had a number of name changes. The song now mostly known as,
“Brisbane Ladies’, has also gone by “Augathella Station”, “Ladies of Brisbane”,
and “Farewell to the Ladies of Brisbane”.
The song’s history is so long and convoluted that Ron
Edwards, the greatest expert on Australian folklore wrote a 53 page book about
it. There’s any number of versions of
the words but what’s certain is that the tune is from an old sea shanty, “We’ll
Rant and We’ll Roar” and that the chorus goes thus:
We'll rant and we'll roar as onward we push
Until we return to the Augathella station
Oh, it's flamin' dry goin' through the old Queensland bush.
The most accepted Aussie lyrics were written by Saul
Mendelsohn in 1891 and in the Augathella Park across the road from the pub,
just in front of the giant meat ant, the council has constructed a display of
the story of the town including the full “Brisbane Ladies”.
(I’m assuming no one needs me to explain that the “ladies”
were ladies of leisure, they were, er, working girls.)
Now if Augathella were down south, and the city fathers
more, er delicate, the fourth verse would’ve no doubt been sanitised but up
here, in this ‘disgrace to civilization’,
there’s scant time for such concerns and it’s printed in all its original
glory:
Then on to Nanango, that hard-bitten township
Where the out-of-work station-hands shit in
the dust,
Where the shearers get shorn by old Tim, the
contractor
Oh, I wouldn't go near there, but I flaming
well must!
I took the final verse to be an invitation not to be
refused:
Then fill up your glasses, and drink to the lasses,
We'll drink this town dry, then farewell to
them all
And when we've got back to the Augathella
Station,
We hope you'll come by there and pay us a
call.
So I headed out there to check out the pub, the racecourse,
the old Burenda Woolshed and of course the current “motley crew of
shearers, washers, shepherds, &c”.
Auguathella
is about a kay off the Landsborough Hwy between Morven and Tambo and when the
pub’s quiet the town’s quiet too. This late arvo it’s all quiet.
I
get a room upstairs that opens onto the balcony, dump the riding gear and head
back to the bar. The publican knows where the racecourse is but can’t help with
the sheep station.
“You really need to hang around in the
morning and ask the Tree of Knowledge.”
Around
every morning a bit after nine, a bunch of local blokes gathers on the seats
downstairs to chat ‘n’ yarn, tell stories and swap memories and they’ll know
for sure the answers to anything I need to know.
“And if they don’t, they’ll sound very bloody
convincing!”
So
I head out for a wander. Check out the Warrego River which is nothing more than
a string of greasy green waterholes, with mosquitoes bigger than packhorses,
more persistent than a Jehovah Witness at the front door and more annoying that
a bloke who won’t shout.
They
reckon the aboriginal name for this river translates as, ‘river of sand’ and
here, less than 200 kms from its source at Mt Ka Ka Mundi to the north east,
its pools aren’t fit for cattle and to describe towns like Charleville, Cunnamulla
and Fords Bridge as being ‘downstream’ would be to misleadingly infer some sort
of flow.
Oh
yes, it sure is “flamin' dry goin' through
(this part of)
the old Queensland bush.”
I grab a parmy and a couple of beers for dinner and turn in
early. A massive squadron of corellas signals the end of the day
Next morning after a brew on the balcony I head down for
some early shots of the racecourse and then back to wait for the locals to turn
up. This is cutting into the very DNA of Australian pubs, dancing within the
double helix: locals and travellers
getting together to share times and tales, of keeping up to date with news
exchanging gossip and most of all, making each other laugh and chuckle.
Around 9.30 Joe turns up. He’s an old shearer and shearing
contractor who’s lived his entire life in Augathella, started at the school
when he was 5 and at the pub not too much after that.
The first publican he can remember is Mary Cavanagh,
probably Michael’s daughter or maybe daughter in law, and how she had a
disabled son, Colin and how she managed it on her own after her husband died in
the early fifties.
He remembers Mary selling out to the brewery and moving to
Brisbane but not liking the life there and trying to buy the pub back but the
brewery refusing. In 1959 Joe’s mum took him to Brisbane for a while and they
lived around the corner from Mary in Sandgate. He even remembers the street
names which I check later and he’s spot on.
Keith turns up and Joe does the introductions. Keith’s a
massive, obese bloke who eases himself down and joins the chat. Joe mentions
I’m interested in Burenda (pronounced, ‘Brenda’ out here) and Keith tells me to
hang around a bit and it’ll be sorted.
They remember the old blackboards on the sidewall of the pub
where the weekend’s footy teams would be listed each Thursday night of winter,
and the cricket teams in summer.
And they talk of how good the veges used to be when the
Chinese down at Yo Yo Creek “which always
used to flow in them days,” had their market gardens.
Joe talks of one of the Chinese women who had a shop in the
town but who had a cancer across the top of her nose.
“No doctor could fix
it, it was eating her flesh. So everyday she’d cover her face with this big
wrap but at night would cover the cancer with raw meat and the cancer would eat
this and not her face. I dunno how much meat it ate each night but I do know she
lived for years like that. It really did save her.”
A ute cruises down past us and Keith butts in.
“That’s Dan from
Burenda. He’ll be heading for the CRT. Go and catch him and he’ll fix you up
about that woolshed. We told you we’d sort it.”
I leave them to it and head down the street.
Of course I can go have a look around. The original shed is
long gone and there’s not much at the new one now. Just close the gates and
mind the horses. Dan gives me the directions and distances which later prove
correct to the metre, and I leave him to his business and head back to the Tree
of Knowledge.
A couple of other blokes have turned up but time’s moving
and I have to get my arse into gear so I say my thanks and farewells and head
east for the woolshed.
It proves to be a beautiful building in a beautiful spot.
The horses barely acknowledge me and the eloquence of the silence within begs,
and receives my reverence. The smell of the lanoline, the shards of light
piercing through holes in the corrugated iron, the remnants of the last shear.
The best woolsheds have the aura of cathedrals, of shrines, or temples, and
this is one of the best.
Three years later I’m back at the Ellangowan at Augathella
after a ride down from Isisford. Brett and Sharyon are now managing the place.
They made some changes. The old dining room’s been turned into a café and
coffee shop and it’s now open from 8.00am. It’s become the meeting place for
tradies and mums after school drop-offs. There’s pool comps and hookey, games
and general fun.
Tonight’s Sunday night - pool comp with a $200.00 first
prize. I get eliminated in the first round and then the peaceful evening is
shattered when the local lads turn up, fresh from a day of charity golf and
uncharitable drinking.
It’s a loud crowd of young blokes and a couple of far more
sensible young women. The boys all play for the Augathella Meat Ants, the local
rugby league team and they’ve all had a good day.
A couple start betting on the computerised horse racing
while the others drink outside. There’s some misunderstanding in the bar and a
couple of them start wrestling and facing up.
Brett closes the bar and orders them all out. The rumble
continues for a bit on the footpath, the two women trying to separate the
brawlers.
I think of those 142 year old words of the Brisbane Courier:
"all
hands and the cook" were deeply engaged
in the more congenial pleasures of
"lushing," "scrapping," and "gaffing," — i.e., drinking, fighting, and
gambling”, and realize one more time how little
things change.
Next morning Brett tells me it’s only
the second bit of ugly that he’s had in the 9 months he’s had the place and I
tell him it that’s as bad as it gets, he’s on a pretty good wicket.
I go for a walk through the beautiful 5
buck a night council camping ground to the levy bank and the river of sand is
just that. There’s been good rains but there’s scant evidence here, just a few
dank algae covered pools and a brown snake waiting for frogs.
When I get back Joe’s already turned up
and we talk about the river. When he was shearing there was a regular flow. And
some good fishing.
“When
we were shearing on the Warrego or any river really, we’d use our day off on
Sunday to go fishing. Each day we were shearing the cook’d kill a sheep or
sometimes two if we were a big group and we’d keep the heads. On the Friday or
the Saturday we’d chuck the heads into the river, try to find a pool without
any flow like. The fish would come and eat the meat out of the heads and they’d
still be there on Sunday when we’d throw in our lines and whammo, we’d catch
all we wanted in a couple of hours.”
“But if the river was flowing too fast, and this used to happen a bit
back then, we’d tie the heads to a bit of string. We’d also use any carp we
caught the week before.
The rest of the Tree of Knowledge know Joe as, “Mad Dog”.
Everyone here has a nickname and as he’s talking Heifer and Buffalo Bill turn
up. Heifer is one solid unit. Probably in his late fifties now, maybe sixties,
he’s a tank on legs, an ex-shearer who spent a long time working for Mad Dog.
“In the seventies and
eighties there were over 20 shearers living in Augathella and we had some
really good nights at this pub.”
One night back then secured Heiffer’s place forever in the
folklore of this pub. It was a very busy night and the shearers were drinking
upstairs when a stink broke out downstairs
As he was laying there trying to work out if anything was
broken one of the police shone a torch in his face and asked what was going on.
“Why the fuck are you
askin’ me? You know I just dropped in.”
The time eases past 10.00 and Buffalo Bill is into the bar
for his heartstarter as Joe tells me that big Keith died in his home last year.
“They had to break
down part of a wall to get him out.”
A ute pulls up and the fella needs some advice on his
chainsaw that won’t start. Joe tells him to bring it around and he’ll have a
look but he already pretty sure it’s a fuel problem.
Kerry turns up with his blue heeler puppy, given to him by a
breeder because it showed zero potential as a worker. I wonder whether he
thought that’d give dog and master something in common from the start but I
keep it unsaid.
Heifer tells me he’s buggered from all the years shearing -“Only cane cutting’s harder on your body”, but
that he’s glad he cut out before harnesses came in.
“These young blokes
who use harnesses are now all getting cancer from the rubbing on the breast.
Same with women, it’s their bras that cause all the breast cancer.”
The tales and the stories, the “poetic flights of imagination”
and the laughter meander on, flowing like the Warrego in its prime but once
again these blokes have outlasted me and I have to get moving.
I’d come in search of a ‘disgrace
to civilization’, with a pub which was equally in ‘a disgraceful state.” But I found no Saturnalia, no town where no
man was sober. Instead I found a hotel which was the essence of a bush pub: the
centre of the community where friends meet up to pass the time and to catch up
on the news, where the youngsters can still ‘rant and roar’ and where any morning you can find a bunch of blokes
who’ll be only too ready to give you medical advice, social counselling,
mechanical diagnosis or just entertainment with their absolutely true stories
of times gone but not forgotten.
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