The Royal Hotel at Hungerford, in Qld (just). Don't forget to shut the gate and don't believe Henry Lawson's Reviews!

When Henry Lawson left Hungerford in 1893 after a stay of possibly just one but probably two nights to walk the 220 kms back east to Bourke, he turned his back not just on the town, but also on the bush.

He never returned to the outback despite the trip giving him material that would fill his stories and his ‘sketches’ for several years.

The day after arriving here after walking from Toorale Station with his mate Jim Gordon, Henry wrote to his Aunt Emma. He told her that she could have, “no idea of the horrors of the country out here. Men tramp and beg and live like dogs…The flies start at daylight and we fight them all day till dark – then mosquitoes start.”

Describing himself as a, “beaten man”, he vowed to, “ start back tomorrow…(and) never to face the bush again.”

Lawson would later write that the town straddled the border with ‘two houses and a humpy in New South Wales, and five houses in Queensland……both the pubs are in Queensland.”

And he added that, he believed (wrongly) that  “Burke and Wills found Hungerford, and it’s a pity that they did….”

Before he left the most westerly, the most outback town he’d ever visit, Lawson took in the sights - Hungerford’s only two real claims to fame: the gate on the main street where the rabbit-proof fence traced the border line and the Paroo River just to the north of town.

He wasn't impressed by either.

The fence was just a bad joke for him, a symbol of waste and stupidity: “(A)n interprovincial rabbit-proof fence – with rabbits on both sides of it – runs across the main street,” he wrote, “The fence is a standing joke with Australian rabbits – about the only joke they have out here..”

And what passed for the Paroo River wasn't much better. That same year his “The Paroo River” was published and it wasn't flowing with praise:

It isn’t even decent scrub,

Nor yet an honest desert;

It’s plagued with flies and boiling hot,

A curse is on it ever;

I really think that God forgot

The country round that river

….

‘But where,’ said I,’ ‘s the blooming stream?’

And he replied, ‘We’re at it!’

I stood awhile as in a dream,

‘Great Scott,’ I cried, ‘is that it?

Why, that is some old bridle track!’

He chuckled ‘Well I never!

It’s nearly time you came out-back –

This is the Paroo River

In the morning, Henry Lawson, for once, kept his word and turned his back on Hungerford and the far outback and began the trek to Bourke. He never returned.

Reading through his impressions from what has been described as the “the most important trek in Australian literary history”, it’s just not possible to be unimpressed by the strength of his venom, the depths of his disgust and the breadth of his distaste.

For a town to make such an impression, for its scenery, its constructions and its people to be just one massive shit sandwich, it has to have a certain strength of character. To hate something you have to respect it and I needed to find out just what it was slash is about Hungerford that makes is so, well, Hungerford.

So I headed out there.

The road out from Ford’s Bridge where Henry’d spent a couple of nights at the Salmon Ford Hotel on his way west, had only just been re-opened after some good rains.  The wet red soil was a challenge but at least the dust was down.  Eventually, three kms from town I turn north onto the Wanaaring Rd and suddenly the famous gate is in front of me.

There’s a joke around these parts about a fella driving his ute through the bush and he comes upon a bloke walking the road. The driver stops and offers him a lift, but the walker declines, saying, “bugger you mate, you can open your own gates.”

Anyway, I park the bike and open the gate for myself, read on the sign that it’s a thousand buck fine for leaving it open so I push the bike over the border, or what I thought was the border and latch the gate behind me.

The Royal Mail’s fifty metres up on my left and I’m tonguing for one!

I nod to the old couple of the roadside seats, but they ignore me. They both look totally stuffed.

Graham’s behind the bar yacking with a tray of the locals and since this is a stubbie pub, I order a shortie of Coopers Ale and grab a stool outside. 

I don't always drink this stuff but I wanted to check that the service had improved since Henry’s time when he reckons he “asked for an English ale….(but) got a glass of sour yeast (for) sixpence” at the then Royal Hotel.

In those days there was draft on. The cellar where the old kegs would be rolled down the earthen ramp is still as it was. All cool and welcoming through the trapdoor behind the bar. The mute walls shout hints of ghosts and stories and tales and myths and exaggerations when I survive the old ladder and take myself a tour.

Anyway my beer’s perfect, as is the afternoon as I face the east and watch a full moon rise over the old corrugated place opposite as the sun sets behind me.

A 4WD pulls up right out the front and an old bloke, a very old bloke, crawls out. He can hardly walk and needs to lean first on his truck and then on the fence and then on the walls of the pub.

But he’s not too crook to say, “g’day” which I return and then when the bottle’s empty I follow him inside.

There’re eight stools at the bar and five are taken. I check with Graham if any of the others is the permanent perch of any local who’s about to show and he points out the safest one to park on.  It’s on the eastern wall beside Aldon, who asks what the hell I’m doing in this part of the world.

I tell him about Henry. He coughs, actually sorta splutters and puts down his beer.

“That fucking pisshead imposter! He never walked out here, he was just on one of his bloody pub crawls!”

Aldon hates Henry, hates his maudlin sad grim stories. He’s read every word Lawson ever wrote, all the works of Banjo too. When he finished he donated his Collected Paterson to the library at Broken Hill.

“He never wrote anything bloody happy!”

Al reckons there was a shanty or a pub every day’s walk from Toorale and I reckon he’s right on the first three. After Fords Bridge, Henry made for Lake Eliza with visions of swimming and cold beer leading him on.

We quite forgot our aching shanks,

A cheerful spirit caught us,

We thought of green and shady banks,

We thought of pleasant waters.

But all he got was disappointment:

A lonely pub in the mulga scrub

Is all that the stranger passes.

He’d pass the Lake a dozen times

And yet be none the wiser;

I hope that I shall never be

As dry as Lake Eliza.

No patch of green nor water seen

To cheer the weary plodder;

The grass is tough as fencing-wire,

And just as good for fodder.

Henry’s next stop was at Yantabulla which  is now a ghost town of corrugated iron, decaying cars and the mosquitoes are still big enough to have names. “Pegasus” would’ve been fitting for a couple I see there on the way through.

But after that, there’s no sign, no evidence of any respite from the searing heat, and Lawson certainly didn't mention any, either on the way out or on his way back.

So I’m not sure Al’s not falling into a bit of myth, and indeed Lawson had warned about the locals.

It wasn't just the natural splendor and the efforts of distant governments that earned the poet’s scorn, he wasn't exactly unstinting for his praise of the populace either!

He wrote that all the trouble in the town was on the Queensland side where the pubs were but placed a caveat on the claims saying, “(a)t least, I believe that's how it is, though the man who told me might have been a liar. Another man said he was a liar, but then he might have been a liar himself – a third person said he was one. I heard there was a fight over it, but the man who told me about the fight might not have been telling the truth.

(And you know, he might’ve been onto something. When I chat with publican Graham a bit later I do my usual spiel about being happy to turn off the recorder if there’s anything he wants off the record.

“I don't give a shit,” says Graham, “I’ve always got two answers for every question, the truthful one and the bullshit one. I’ll leave telling the difference to you.”)

Anyway Al’s distain for old Henry seems to almost mirror Henry’s for Al’s hometown of the last 26 years.  Al arrived here with his wife in 1990 after a career as a suburban fencing contractor in Brisbane and, well, they both just liked the place.

When the locals heard of his occupation they put his name forward for a gig with the mob controlling the fence, which had grown from its original 3ft 6ins height for rabbits to 6 ft above ground and a foot under the ground to keep out wild dogs as well.

 “The first thing you have to know about the fence,” Al confides from his corner at the bar, “is that it’s not on the border. It’s a chain inside Queensland.”

He reckons that when Queensland went to NSW in the 1880’s and asked for help keeping the southern rabbits out of their state, the New South politicians didn't want to know and told them to do it themselves. 

So they did. Sticking it inside their own state so if the threat ever receded they’d have full control over pulling it down. Sixty years later karma raised its beautiful head when NSW went to Qld and told them their wild dogs and dingoes were destroying the New South lambs.

This time Queensland told New South to stick it where the sun don't shine. “And there ain’t many places like that around here.” They had no interest in keeping their wild dogs inside their boundaries and if it worried the southerners they’d graciously allow them into Queensland to upgrade the fence at their own expense.

So anyway it’s now in pretty good shape and Al reckons it, “keeps out all pests except Victorians”. He looks serious but I think he’s joking.

At the far end of the bar, past Graham’s partner Carole, and locals Craig and Tony sat the old bloke from the ute:

Mac’s about to turn 90 and he’s been in Hungerford for the last 30 or so, ever since his ex-wife sold the family home without his knowledge, kept all the money but sent him an envelope with a gift voucher inside.

So far Mac’s not used it.

It was for a coffin.

Mac’s not in great health, the joints don't bend so well and the bones are no longer strong. He could do with a few more teeth over which to pour his favourite Bells whisky and his hands eloquently tell stories of a life spent working.

He’s one of those blokes who can fix stuff. For the past ever, if it’s been broken in Hungerford, Mac’ll fix it for you: irrigation stuff, tractors, washing machines, bicycles, window panes, oh and engines, any type of engine, anything mechanical. If it stopped for broke, Mac would get it going again, especially cars.

He also lives in Hungerford Heights, the only two storey place town. Years back the post office up on the main street closed down so Mac and his mates surveyed it then stuck a whole load of poles into the ground back on Mac’s plot.

They cut the post office off its foundations, rolled it around the corner then lifted it onto the poles. Mac camped beside it as he built the ground floor lounge, kitchen and bathroom underneath and after six months he moved into duplex mansion.

I later ask Graham what the hell a frail old bloke with his trouble just moving on a single level is doing living in a two storey place and he just smiles.

“I reckon he figured that coupon might’ve been used before he got to this stage.”

But Mac’s got it sorted. He sleeps upstairs and comes down just once each day and then back up just the once in the evening. On the fourth Thursday of every month, the Flying Doctor Service touches down on the all weather strip just out of town and the doctors head for the medical centre next to the pub. In one morning they can check out Mac and everyone else in town plus any who come in from off the surrounding properties.

“We get the very best doctors in Australia out here,” reckons Graham,  “every medical student in the country wants to have RFDS on their resumé and they fight like crazy to get accepted. Only the very best get a shot at treating us old blokes.”

Like the tops of many wooden ceilinged bush bars, this one is spotted with five, ten,

twenty and fifty dollar notes pinned to its lid, chucked up there by drinkers and by Graham himself on the other side of the bar. Every couple of months he takes them down and adds them to the contribution to the RFDS. Each harvest is around a grand for the outback’s favorite cause.

By around 7.00pm all the locals have gone back to their homes and Carole serves me up a whopping steak sanger ‘n’ chips for tea and then I head out to photograph two icons of the bush in one frame: the dingo fence and the southern cross.

The old pair are still on the seats outside. Still totally stuffed.

I get some night shots of the pub and then hit the sack.

In the morning, after one of Carole’s big breakfasts,

I head up to Mac’s place. When I headed out here I had a few ideas of what I’d be doing, the kinda people I’d be meeting and the things I’d be seeing. Included in amongst them wasn't having a 90 year old bloke showing me over his 1925 T Model Ford which he drove around town up until about four years ago.

He meets me at the door, standing with his walking frame which’s got an old Globite school case on its seat. He makes me a brew and then we head out to check the beast.

It’s not running at the moment, an issue with the electrics but we lift the bonnet and poke around a bit. There’s three pedals for the driver. The left is to go forward, the middle for reverse and the other is the brake. The petrol tank’s under the seat and there’s no fuel pump meaning that if you need to get up a steep hill, you have to turn around and reverse up keeping the tank higher than the engine.

This one has a starter engine but the crank at the front was used most of the time. Mac reckons he could get it going with an hour or so of tinkering but he wouldn't drive it coz “it’s never been registered and, well, things aren’t quite as relaxed about that sort of stuff as they were back in the day.”

We go back inside to our brews and Mac opens his old Globite. It’s an original, his own school case complete with internal wooden frame. It contains a jumble of photos, renmants and testaments to a life well lived. He digs out some shots of the T model laden with kids and guests and visitors and tourists.

“It’s brought a lot of fun that car.”

I head out back to the pub, thinking once again how amazing this country is, about how so very close beneath the surface are the hidden gems. Henry Lawson may’ve been right about the harshness and the flies, but his bitterness blinded him to beauties which he wasn't prepared to see.

Turning back toward the pub I almost hit a jogger. A female jogger!!! Huh?

Turns out Lea’s, the local cop. Hungerford’s the smallest town in Queensland with its own police station and the copper’s after some photography tips After going through a few basics, Lea tells me that these pointers should really help with her, “forensic photos. You really don't want to see some of the things I have to photograph.”

Nah! Despite Henry’s sage advice about the veracity of many of the claims made by the locals out here, I’m happy to take the uniform’s word on this one.

Back at the pub, Graham’s been up for hours. He’s the postman, the rain-gauge checker and the river-level documenter. No rain’s fallen in town but the river’s rising almost to the top of the pipes and he reckons it’ll cross the road in three days’ time after big falls upstream.

It sure isn’t Lawson’s, ‘bridle track’.

The Paroo’s just north of town, crossed by a causeway, not a bridge. The river’s more an expanse of channels than a single flow and it’s a full kilometre between the river signs on either side. No matter how dry the season, Graham assures me that it flows at least once every year.

On a wall in the pub is a framed picture from the 1930’s of a dray and a car crossing the flooded Paroo. To keep the car afloat, they’re using a canoe. It’s a great little piece and the canoe now lives on the fence at the northern end of the pub.

(I ring the pub four days later and it’s a full metre above the road surface.)

On the same wall is a photo of a thermometer with the mercury at 52ºC. In 2013, after over a week of 45ºC days, the celestial oven got serious and passed 50ºC on two successive days.

In the shade.

On the tar that day it measured 70ºC on the only thermometer in town that’d go that high.  Al swears that when the locals die they always ask to be buried with a jacket in case they go to Hell and it’s cooler than they’re used to.

I’ve not opened my wallet since I arrived. Everything’s been put on the slate, so I settle the bill and head out.

I open the gate and park slap in the middle of it, right on the fence line and set the Garmin GPS.  It puts me at S28 59.939, just a tick north of the 29^th parallel which is the border. Al was spot on about the fence being a chain inside Queensland.

Here was a man whose word Henry could’ve trusted.

I push the bike forward so I can close the gate and Henry’s in my head.

If the outback had been some sort of liquor, some fermented concoction, he would’ve persevered, gone back for a second and a third swig, staying with it til he got the taste and learned to love it.

But you can’t get drunk on the hardships of the bush for it is a different elixir, and for once he was abstemious, oblivious to the intoxications that the outback had to offer.

And in leaving as he did, so soon and so splenetic, he left a poorer man.

I head south knowing I’ll be back. I’m not turning my back on the town or on the outback as Lawson so bitterly did.

Because Henry Lawson was wrong.  He talked of ‘facing the bush’ in some weird adversarial bent but the outback isn’t like that. It’s not something to be faced-off, you don't stand up to the bush. You don't stand up to the bush, you stand in it, with it. You immerse yourself into it, let it surround you, and as you become part of it, it becomes part of you.

So I didn't turn my back on nothing, just my front to somewhere else.

And eased myself back into the glorious harsh desolation of the red earth which is the road to Wanaaring.

*** Since I wrote this, old Mac has shifted digs up to a nursing home in Cunnamulla. I'll make damn sure I drop in to see him next time I'm up there. All the rest of the people are pretty much the same, just a spare seat at the bar most afternoons.