The Yaraka Hotel, for lovers of the Australian outback, its pubs, its myths and its poems.

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I’m in Barcaldine and ring Chris the publican at the Yaraka Hotel.

It’s pumping down rain and the police are saying both roads in are impassable for anything other than powerful 4WD’s and that the bike won’t make it through. I was hoping to be there in the morning, but there’s no utes for hire in Barcy or Isisford or down at Blackall so there’s a problem.

“Stay where you are and I’ll ring you back within the half hour.” I ask Noeline at the Railway for another lite and she’s hardly handed it over when my phone rings.

“If you can get yourself to Isisford early tomorrow morning, I can get you a lift. Ken’s the publican at the Golden West hotel and his son’s been wanting to take a trip down here for a while and he’s free tomorrow.”

I leave the beer untouched and head for the door. It’s a bit under two hours to Isisford  - 80kms straight west to Ilfracombe, (no time for a whet at the Wellshot), then due south to the Golden West. And this day’s only got about 90 minutes of daylight left in it.

A quick call to Ken to make sure the story’s kosher and there’s a room free and I’m outa there.  The storm’s coming in from the northwest, probably born back up in the tropics. In the late afternoon light the clouds and contrasts are stunningly threatening and I stop a coupla times to capture their beauty.

I can’t outrun it and the first drops,

large solid noisy drops, hit my visor with 60kms still to go. But it’s still 28ºC and I’m in engulfed in a high pressure warm shower for the rest of the trip.

As I park the bike under the awning, a young fella comes out.

“You must be my hitchhiker for tomorra. I’m Byron, mate, Ken’s son. Can I help you get sorted?”

I tell him all’s good, that I’ll dry off and see him inside.

There’s a certain smile that people in a pub give you if you walk into their haven when it’s seriously shit outside. I get it on the days of furnace heat and when I’ve come in from riding through snow. There’s always a “hello” or “g’day” and that smile – eyes crinkle a bit at the corners and the mouth usually stays closed but it’s a smile of acknowledgement that you’ve come through a bit to get there.

It’s that smile and welcome that Ken gives me when I front the bar.

“So you made it, eh.”

“Yeah, just. Aquaplaning across causeways in the dark sure gets you focussed.”

They ask how far back it’s been coming down and how heavy and where was the water over the road. Rain talk’s good talk.

Byron was born in Isisford but now lives with his wife and young son on the south coast of NSW. They’re back for a month or so and Byron’s been looking for an excuse to head down to Yaraka and Mt Slowcombe and I’m it. He wants to leave early in the morning in case it all goes pearshaped in the rain so I tell him how grateful I am, that I’ll be more sociable after some sleep and take my kit back to my room.

“How’d ya sleep?”

I think of the poem that’s brought me here and one of Banjo’s most well-known but least attributed lines:

“ Great sleep, mate, was ‘as snug as a bug in a rug.’”

Most of the clouds have gone when we head south. The falls have been heavy but localised. Some of the red clay road is a bog and we take it carefully, in other places the track’s only had a dust-settling sprinkle and Byron switches off the 4WD for long stretches. I get to thinking that Super Ten would’ve made it through.

We cross channels of the Barcoo a couple of times. Earlier rains had lifted the water to the bridge at one crossing and Byron hopes it won’t rise too much before we come back.

I’d never heard of Mt Slowcombe or its views, and Byron hadn’t heard about the reason I was so keen to make it to Yaraka. The tall mesa stands out from the surrounding plains for a good half hour before, some 5kms short of the town, we turn west and head to the steepest road for hundreds of kilometres. The view from the top is stunning in every direction.

I head to the western side of the lookout and scan the view.  I’ve stumbled across something for which I’ve been searching for years.

One of Paterson’s most unforgettable couplets is from “Clancy of the Overflow”:

“And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.”

I’ve been blessed with many evenings under the ‘everlasting stars’, but I’ve been obsessed with finding such a vision of the ‘sunlit plains’ untainted by some human structure. Each time I think I’ve found it, some buggers’ve put in a road, or a shed, or a station or a fence or a powerline.  But not this time.

I scan from left to right, from the foreground to the horizon and there is nothing: Not a fence line, no poles or sheds; not a road or track. I head back to the ute for my cameras. We stay there for maybe an hour, probably more. Byron came for this bit and he sucks it all in. Rains in the previous weeks have greened the country and removed the harsh edge.

It’s a truly a wondrous sight and it’s fitting that Byron’s given me another piece of Banjo.

In 1893 Banjo Paterson wrote one of his most popular poems, The Bush Christening. It begins:

“On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few,

And men of religion are scanty,

On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost,

One Michael Magee had a shanty.”

The remains of Michael Magee’s wine shanty are around 70kms west of the Yaraka Hotel and it’s this poem, these lines, that’ve lured me to this pub in a town that proudly portrays itself as the end of the line.

The road curves around the end of a railway line and then past two yapping dogs in a yard and the Yaraka Hotel is on our right. We haven’t seen another vehicle since we left Isisford and there’s none in front of the pub.

A bloke who seems too well dressed for this part of the world comes down the steps to meet us. I guess he’s Chris who sorted my lift and he guesses I’m Colin and the chauffer must be Byron.

There’s one other person on the balcony and so Chris introduces us to Ian. If we’re heading west, Ian could do with a lift out to his property. Turns out that the remains of Michael Magee’s shanty are on Ian’s farm and if we can give him a lift back to his homestead, he’s doing nothing so he’ll guide us out to the ruins and to a noteworthy grave nearby.

He doesn't want us to join the ranks of ‘folk that are lost’.

It’s all too easy but with the western sky full of moisture and the temperature already nearing 40ºC, Chris reckons a storm will boil up in the arvo so best get out there soon.

Ian piles into the back seat and we off. It’s soon clear that Ian doesn't just occupy the land, he is within it. He points out waterholes and hills, tracks and trees, it’s all interesting to him and it’s all known. To our left is the Battle Hole Lagoon. It’s near full so we detour in to check it out. In the 1870’s Acting Sub Inspector Thomas Williams led a detachment of Native Police in a pursuit of a large group of aboriginals.

“Many blacks” were cornered against this billabong and dived into the water to escape. The Native Police waited at the edge of the lagoon. As each aboriginal came up for air, he was shot through the head. It was a massacre, one of many in these parts in those times. Williams was later suspended and then dismissed from the Force.

Ian’s story changes the landscape. From a great place for a dip on a hot day, it becomes a place to be treated with reflection and reverence. Our voices are lowered, the conversation quiets down out of unspoken respect.

We then turn west, a pair of brolgas eyes us, chattering. The red sand gives way to the grey claypan. Two days ago this was underwater and we would’ve been snookered. It’s spongey now, but passable. We follow Ian out past the grave of Richard Macoffin

to the remains of Michael Magee’s shanty.

There’s not a lot to see. There’s a cairn with a plaque surrounded with bits that visitors have found in the dust. As I’m photographing, Byron finds a old bottle neck with the stopper still attached and adds it to the collection.

Beside the cairn are the stone outlines of rooms, probably the bar and off to the side the poles from the horse yards. This most likely was a Cobb and Co stop on the crossroads of the Windorrah to Yaraka and the Budgerigar to Jedborough tracks.

There wouldn't have been a single visitor arrive who wasn't parched and thirsty, unless of course they’d let themselves into the barrels and bottles that many of the wagons would carry to outback pubs and shanties. Not much local business but good passing trade!

In 1991, ninety eight years after “The Bush Christening”  was published in the Bulletin, the town of Yaraka held a festival. Rough bench seats were made for the throng and an ecumenical baptism was held for five more or less local kids. The remnants of the benches are scattered near the cairn and off to the edge a ragged tree-line alleges the existence of a creek.

This is harsh hard land. When we’re done we return to the grave of Richard Macoffin. Like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there, Macoffin died in a sandstorm just 180 metres from the Barcoo’s waters.

Thunder rolls in from the west. It’s still far distant but we need to be moving. Ian leads us back to the main track where we part company.  Ahead the sky is clear and we’re pretty sure we’re going to get out dry. The afternoon sun draws out every drop of the land’s harsh beauty.

Back at the pub, Alan’s standing at the rail having a yack to Chris. Bob lives down the street with his son and he’s just on his way up to shut the dogs up that have been yapping for the last 7 hours because their owners are away. I sure ain’t going to hold him up so I tell him I’ll catch him when he’s put the dogs away.

In 2009 Alan was at the top of Mt Slowcombe driving around the country in his ute, looking for a place to live. Bob, the postie from Yaraka happened to be up there admiring the view and they got talking, Bob knew a place for sale down in the town. Alan checked it out and bought it. So what does he like about it?

“It’s the peace. The peace and the quiet. It’s a very quiet town and I’m in the quietest corner.”

Before he quit working:

“I was a bit of everything, I’m not a qualified butcher but I’m as good as any and I grew cattle up near Ingham then I bought a station out near Torrens Creek and ran cattle there”. 

Then he retired back to Charters Towers, his marriage broke up and with nothing to tie him down, he packed his ute and starting driving. It wasn't long until he met Bob on top of Mt Slowcombe and ended up owning his own patch in a town he likes. In his tie-dyed shirt, his anarchistic hat and flowing beard, Alan resembles a older Grateful Dead fan frozen in time. 

A few lines from Victor Daley stir in the back of my brain:

“His hat was shocking bad,

He wore a faded tie,

And yet, withal, he had

A moist and shining eye.”

And though he’s happy here, living with one of his 6 children, and although cataracts in both eyes have put an end to his driving days, he’s not rooted to the place.

“But if I got the right price for my place now, I’d move on. Dunno where, I’d just move to somewhere else.”

It’s getting a bit crowded for Alan, a bit noisy. There’s almost half a dozen people in the pub by now and he excuses himself. Doug at the end of the deck tells me Alan’s a decent bloke and I suggest to Doug, the local cop who’s off-duty for the day, that for him a ‘decent bloke’ is one who’s quiet and law-abiding.

“Well that’d mean everyone in the town and for a hundred miles around must be decent.”

Doug’s just drained his glass so I ask if I can get him one but he passes.

“If you’re a country cop in Queensland, I think it might be the same in New South, if you’re in a one cop or two cop town you have to always be under point zero five.

If you’re on duty you have to be zero point zero but even when you’re off duty you have to be under oh five.”

Cops out here are never completely off-duty. Crashes, fires, prangs can happen whenever and there’s never the option of, “I’ll come out when I start my shift in the morning.”

“You have to be ready for the call twenty four seven. It’s part of the job, part of the life.”

I bring him out a water and he gives it the sort of disdainful distasteful look that he must give some poor buggers when he arrests them.

Georgia is looking after the bar so Chris has time for a yarn.

In the mid eighties his wife Gerry was sent out to Yaraka school as the Headmistress and for ten years they lived in the town. Their initial affection turned to a real love for the country out here.

“Once you cross the Barcoo,” says Chris, “you always return.”

But Gerry was transferred to Beaudesert and a school with 750 kids where she stayed until 2013 when they figured it was time to think retirement. Each year they’d holidayed up at Woodgate Beach near Fraser Island so they headed up there to check out the real estate, found a place that suited and then headed home to mull it over.

“On the way home I said to Gerry, ‘what are we doing? We’ve always had lots of space around us but we’re about to buy a home for the rest of our lives that has a neighbor 3 metres from that side, 3 metres on the other side and one 30 metres behind us.’ So we put it on-hold for a bit but then, talk about timing, I got a call from Les Thomas who’d owned this pub for 26 years.”

Les explained that he was ‘over it’, that the last 12 years running it on his own had been too much and he asked Chris if he remembered a conversation from years back when Chris’d said that if he ever felt like selling the pub, to give him first option.

“We spoke for a while and I hung up and went back into the lounge and told Gerry that I’d just bought the pub at Yaraka. First of all she didn't believe it but when I convinced her, she was very happy and very supportive.”

They moved into the old Station Masters house, right at the end of the old railway line, worked out a five year plan to ramp up the services and the accommodation, rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

Meetings were held to discuss the best ways to turn Yaraka, the town and the pub, into a destination. Community space was turned over to free camping grounds and the entry fee to the small swimming pool was abolished.

A string of regional Councils joined together to develop “The Outer Barcoo Way” as a tourist route from Blackall down to Yaraka. The final section was sealed by late 2017 and has bring vanners and mobile homes in massive numbers.

As we talk the clouds way out to the west open up. It must be windy out there as the purple rain curtain is angled at almost 45º.  Chris looks up and his voice puts on a different hat.

“That’s heading the wrong way. Pity. We’ve had some good falls but we really need followup to get the Buffel grass and the Mitchell grass to really start shooting. Then we’ll be in for a good season.”

All very different to 2015 when Chris and Gerry arrived at the height of the last big dry when grass was a dream and a memory, when red and grey dirt was the reality.

In 2015, not long after they took over, they had a call from Matthew Moloney, the priest from Longreach. Matthew was writing a dissertation on the effects of the drought on faith and on outback communities. He was in need of a quiet retreat to focus on this writing, did Chris know of anywhere?

For four days the next week, Father Moloney was quietly typing away in one of the accommodation rooms out the back of the Yaraka Hotel. In the serenity of this town, he composed a paper which he presented to a conference in tropical Bundaberg on the social effects of the harsh conditions out west.

A few months later, Gerry put through a call to the priest. 

As one of the very ‘scanty men of religion,’ would he consider coming back to Yaraka for a baptism?

Well of course he did and so 122 years after Banjo Paterson had penned, “A Bush Christening" and centred it at a wine shanty on the banks of the Barcoo, Father Matthew Moloney from Longreach performed a similar ceremony up on top of Mt Slowcombe for the grand-daughter of the owners of another pub on the ‘outer Barcoo’.

Gerry joins us for a bit but Byron is keen to watch the sunset from the mountain and Chris and Gerry are also headed up there in their courtesy bus with some more blow-ins.

We meet up at the top and though the cloud’s mostly disappeared to the south the view is still spectacular.

As we head north back to Isisford, I realize there’s a priest I need to talk to.

Father Matthew Moloney, spent two years heading up the disocese in Longreach and another two years in Blackall.

He reckons the biggest challenge for men of religion out here, like for the rest of us, is distance.

“In Longreach and Blackall, I’d do 40,000kms a year driving around my area. There’s less people but because of the isolation and the droughts, there is often a more urgent need for pastoral care.”

To meet the challenges, the import of denominations subsides and the primacy of faith takes over.

“In Longreach I was the only major minister of religion for nearly 12 months and so I was doing funerals for everyone. There was no distinction, there was no Catholic or Protestant, no Anglican or Uniting, I was the minister of the church. Out there people don't want necessarily want the Catholic priest or the Anglican priest, they just want a priest and when I’d do a Christmas service I’d do it for the whole community”.

But one year it became a bit competitive.

“In Muttaburra, the Anglican bishop had just been the day before I got there and they’d not gathered too many people, I think it was maybe seven. When I arrived to prepare for the Christmas Mass they asked if we should have the mass in the church but I said, ‘no’. Then they suggested the hall and again I said,”no”, and I suggested we should have the mass out in front of the pub where the fete was going to be later.  So we brought the seats to the front of the pub and I went into the bar and said, cmon you people, bring your beers and come outside. We got about 70 people out on the street in front of the Exchange hotel.  We had people praying and celebrating and I was very happy with the turnout.”

But that wasn't the best bit of the night.

“After we finished we set up the fete”.

A nice community thing to do but I couldn't see where he was leading.

“And then I won the meat tray!”

Too funny! When we both stop laughing over his afternoon of renouncing Mammon then going home with the Gammon, I ask him about baptisms out in the bush.

“A farmer called me from a far western community out near Bedourie. They had three children and he asked if I could do a baptism the next Tuesday – this was Friday. I told him no we can’t do it that quickly, there’s some preparation to do and the father said, ah well don't worry.

I was a bit taken aback and I asked, is there a problem and he said they had come in from the far west and the wife was only due to have the baby on the Monday morning and they had to be heading back out west on the Wednesday so it needed to be Tuesday.

When they told me this I of course changed all my thinking about the preparation and so we had the baptism. The baby co-operated and arrived on time and it was just the family. The eldest boy was in grade 5 or 6 and I gave him the book and he helped me go through the service.

It was the most sacred and most special occasion for them but also for myself sharing it with them, listening to the young boys talking of their love for their parents and their love for their new sister was one of the most sacred and faith filled experiences of my time out of my rural ministry.

They all went home the next day in their truck. The power of their faith and the family love is something I’ll always remember.”

When I ask him what word most sums up his time in the outback, the priest barely hesitates.

“Inspiring. I find the people in the harsh country with their harsh reality to have spirits which are inspiring.”

I think back to Chris organizing me a lift in, to Bryon who carted me for 100’s of kilometres, to Ian who gave up a morning to show us the shanty, to Doug who insisted we let him know when we got back safely. I think of everyone connected with the Yaraka Hotel and I need no explanation of ‘inspiring spirit’.