The Kyalite Hotel on the Wakool/Edward - the Murray's longest anabranch

Excerpted and adapted from my book Drinking in the Rivers Vol 1: the Pubs and People of the Murray and Edward Rivers. Available from: Nothing but the Pub

One of Australia’s first high-profile divorces was very messy. 

It involved the usual allegations of mental cruelty but, sensationally, it also centred on charges by one party of several instances of inappropriate behaviour by the other with a camel. In fact, more than one camel. And the first alleged occurrence of this shameful behaviour with said camels, was at the river at Wakool across the road from where the Kyalite Pub now stands. 

The Royal Society which was backing the 1860 expedition decided that camels were needed and that they required expert care.

They appointed George Landells to the expedition on higher pay than the leader. Which was probably a wrong move. These two had just met and apparently things went fine until Burke tried to load-up the camels to a degree that mahout Landells objected and as the group headed slowly north after leaving Melbourne on August 20th 1860, the relationship between Burke and Landells quickly went south. 

 Long story short, Landells stuck it out for a bit under four months and the group was near Menindie where he resigned and returned to Melbourne.

A month later George faced an extraordinary meeting of the Exploration Committee and sheeted it all back to the camels and to Wakool. “permit me to refer again to the chief point of my complaint - viz., (Burke’s) constant interference with me in the management and movements of the camels: even Wills was allowed to interfere. And here I feel I cannot do better than quote instances in point from my journal:- While crossing the Wakool Punt, Wills's interference with my arrangements in disembarking the camels caused an accident to one of them, and nearly led to its total loss.” 

Maybe Burke should’ve left the crossing of the camels to the expert and taken himself and eventual naming rights assistant Wills up the cliff for a drink. Four years earlier John Talbett had advised all and sundry that he’d opened a ‘first-rate Punt on the Wakool River’ and that he was one of the fabled ‘Pub ‘n’ Punters’, also being the owner the adjacent Wakool Inn. 

Just nine months later, in January 1862,  Henry Talbott's Wakool Inn, "situate on the Wakool River in the police district of Balranald", was "stuck-up" by two armed men, who, after a severe struggle, in which the barman received two shots-one in the hand, the other in the shoulder succeeded in robbing the house of considerable property. 

When I mention this to 'Blinky' at the bar of the Kyalite Pub he tells me the place’s maintained the relationship with the police up in Balranald. He promises to tell me a story about a shooting down here later but meantime: 

 “In the old days here the publican, when there was a big night planned, like an all-nighter, would ring up the cops up at Balranald and tell them there was big trouble brewing up at the Homebush pub (about 30kms north of Bal). So all the cops would head up there and the party at Kyalite would rage all night.” Problem was that the host up at the Homebush twigged and started returning the compliment and the police would begin turning up at Kyalite, and they weren’t often happy. “So they agreed on a ceasefire and everyone, specially the coppers, was happy.” 

 Blinky fell out of the back of ute on his 18th birthday, puncturing his left eye on a piece of wire.

 “I broke every bone in my head and spent the next 6 weeks in hospital. The only thing that saved me was that I was so drunk and relaxed when I hit the ground, and for the first ten days I was in total darkness and wasn't allowed to move. They got some photos of me so they could recreate my face and they did a pretty good job. They did their best but couldn't save my eye and the doctor told me that two eyes are a luxury, one is a necessity and to look after what I had.” As soon as he was sort of fixed, he headed back to shearing and just a couple of days later someone in the shed dropped the nickname on him and he’s been ‘Blinky’ ever since. I’d let you know what he was called before that but he’s not keen on revealing what his mum and dad saddled him with over 50 years ago. 

 Two Hundred and forty nine was his best one day and he’s done 85 in a run. He’s been around too. “I’ve shore in three states,” he brags, “drunk, sober and indifferent, I’m probably at my best when I’m indifferent. I shore my first two hundred on Remembrance Day 1991. It was my first season after coming up from being a rousie.” – another shed job that he’d taught himself and loved. 

Later in the evening I learn that it’s not a croc skin on the wall - it’s a Wakool goanna; that the punt gun on the wall is real; that the place’s official name is The Kyalite Pub because "it’s not a hotel, hotels are things in England which rent out rooms with beds"; that the cellar door might be strangely in the middle of the back bar’s floor but that’s because the pub expanded around it; that the bikers have been stopped doing burnouts in the bar; that living here all that time doesn't make you a local but it helps locals know your name and that visitors from NSW are the best because: “when Victorians leave home for a holiday up here they take one pair of undies and one ten dollar note and when they get home they haven’t changed either.” 

 I head down to the old punt landing. There’s not a camel in sight. But across the river a victim of the last floods of the Edwards/Wakool lies smashed against the gums at the line of the highest water and causes me to smile. One hundred and sixty years after Landells fought with Burke over what he took to be damaging treatment of his camels, at this same spot there’s something that was originally intimately connected with those ships of the desert – ironically and incongruously it's a broken caravan.