Nothing but the Pub

So anyway, as an oxymoron, somewhere up there at the top of the tree along with ‘humourous German’,   ‘military intelligence’ ‘stable political leadership’, ‘cheap 10,000km service’, ‘pristine motorcycle workshop’, ‘quiet Harley Davidson’ (and ‘quiet Harley Davidson owner’), must be ‘Victorian Outback’. I mean the state doesn't even have a quarter million square kms. It’s less than a third of NSW,   about a quarter of SA,   just over and eighth of Qld and less than a tenth of WA. It’s the most densely populated state in the country and you can ride from its north west corner to its south east tip in a comfortable 11 hours. So when a joint pushes itself as Victoria’s ‘most outback pub’, they’re either endowed with either a massive sense of relativity or a huge dose of humour and irony. And when the hotel’s on a short detour from one of the less interesting stretches of road along the Murray, (one I’ve ridden too many times) I figure the cost/benefit ri...

There’s something about the outback. You either ‘get’ it. Or you don’t. The outback either touches your soul, or it doesn’t. You connect with it, and, like artesian water, flow beneath its surface, feeding off it and returning the richness it gives you or you skim over it, oblivious to its rich and endlessly changing character. As you ride, the change from mulga to box, from turpentine to wilga, from gidgee to cypress to brigalow will enthral you or it’ll all just be ‘trees’. The earth’ll glide from brown to grey to black to red, from sand to clay to iron stone or it’ll all just be dirt. The changes will either transfix you or they’ll be unseen, unheard, untasted, unfelt and unknown.   ‘Getting’ the outback is about your soul not your senses. It’s about your core in tune with the country’s heart. In the 1880’s one of the more erudite transients, the Hon (no less!) Harold Finch-Hatton published his, “ Advance Australia! – An Account of 8 Years’ ...

Back in the 1890’s the various colonies of the antipodes got together and drew up a joint constitution. After a few referenda they’d all decided to live together as one. Being old school, they sought parental permission and the Poms passed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act for us in 1900 and the whole thing was consummated on January 1 st , 1901. It’s article 44 of this constitution that’s been forcing the dual national parliamentarians out of their offices and back to reality, but let’s get onto another part. Further down, Article 125 of the Constitution mandated the creation of a national capital somewhere within NSW but more than 100 miles from Sydney. It took ‘em nine years to get their shit together and actually settle on the Yass-Canberra. But before this was finally chosen, a few other towns went real, I mean really real, close to getting the gig. One of these ‘Coulda been Capitals’, one of the very last to slip off the list was Dalgety. A bu...