Club House Hotel, Hillson, NSW

 

                        “Oh, we started down from Roto when the sheds had all cut out. 

                           We’d whips and whips of Rhino as we meant to push about” 

     This first appeared in print in Paterson’s collection, “Old Bush Songs” in 1905 and it’s gotta be one of Anon’s best works. But not everyone who cut out from Roto Station headed across to the Murrumbidgee and thence to the smoke to drink until their money ran out. 

     In 1863 William Hill, a Roto stockman, only made it 50 miles south through Wiradjuri lands to a small township on the banks of the Lachlan. The traditional owners knew the area as ‘Melnunni’, meaning ‘red soil’, and to the whites it became known as ‘Redbank’. 

     Rather than hand over his cheque to a publican to be lambed down, William Hill set up his own establishment and called it simply the ‘Redbank Inn’. He proved to be an extraordinary host, exemplary town figure, and prodigious drinker. When he died in 1867 his death certificate put the cause of death as, ‘exhaustion due to intemperance’. 

     Two years after he passed away, the post office arrived in town with the news there were three ‘Redbank’s in NSW and this one had to change its name. The locals decided only one person deserved the honour - the genial but intemperate William and the place became Hillston. 

        

         A hundred and twenty years after Hill died, there was a kid born on Roto who very soon learned how to seriously ‘push about’. And who became one of the nicest, most successful athletes in the two-wheeled world. First time I head to Hillston – one scorching February day - I’m charging north up the Kidman Way after a night to remember and a morning to forget at the Black Stump pub at Merriwagga. About 5 kms outa town there’s this homemade banner that’d obviously been put up just recently. 

    It reads: “GO TOBY PRICE”. To which a fresh bit’s been added on: “CONGRATS DAKAR WINNER 2016’. 

     Toby’s parents (and grand-parents, oh and an aunt and uncle) moved from the Southern Highlands to the 42,000 acres of Roto in the 1980’s and he was born there in 1987. There was no power and no plumbing when they arrived. Life was raw. But fun. 

    In his recently released book, “Endurance”* Toby tells of being around 4, his father tying a life jacket on him and being shoved inside a main irrigation pipe. His dad’d fire up the pump and Toby’d get spat out by the gush into the irrigation channel. He also tells of riding goats on Roto and the 17km ride to the school bus-stop then the 50km ride to Hillston in a non-air-conned bus each school day. And how all the town kids couldn’t wait for the weekend or the holidays to get out to Roto and go wild. 

     Anyway it was hot as hell (or Booligal) when I rolled on into town and I could’ve done with being shot out of an irrigation pipe into a channel but instead I followed the main drag through the place and out past the silos at the northern end, turn left and into the parking area beside a large cool reservoir. And jump in beside a couple of young ladies who’ve brought their horses in for a frolic too. 

     Hint: if the water’s got a current, always bathe upstream from horses. 

     I wasn’t staying that first time so a quick slaker in the Club House and under faultless blue I headed south west on a dry-weather rattler of a road to Booligal - about which Paterson did write. And none too complimentarily either. Seventy kms of corrugations later, I pull up on the edge of town and the GoPro that I’d fixed on the crash bars is missing. Bugger. I’m not going back. Put it down to experience. 

     Two months later I get a call from Officer Something from Hillston Police. He has a GoPro camera that might be mine. I’m stunned. Turns out this bloke Dick grades the dirt roads for the Council and he was grading the ruts on the Booligal road and saw this thing shining on the side so he stopped and picked it up. His wife, Charlene, likes photography and she worked out how to open the case, take out the data card and check out the images. And one of them was a shot of the rear of a Super Tenere and it showed the numberplate. 

    So he ran the plate, got the phone number and rang it. Bugger me! The cop offers to parcel it all up and send it to me courtesy of the NSW Police which is great and I ask how I can get in contact with Charlene and Dick. So he gives me the number and as soon as I’ve thanked him and we hang up I ring the number. Charlene answers and I thank her profusely but Dick’s out on the tractor and she’ll pass on my appreciation. 

     Now at this stage I had the resources to get ‘guests’ into NRL matches. State of Origin was coming up. Does Dick follow league. He sure does, loves the Blues. Well if he can get to Sydney for game 1, I can get him into the ground to watch from the sidelines. There’s a pause. Can she get back to me in the morning? Of course. 

     So next morning Charlene rings me back. She’s spoken with Dick. Dick’s never been out of Hillston. Where he takes the grader to the Shire boundary is as far as he’s ever been. And he says thanks but he doesn’t really feel like he’d enjoy Sydney. So I didn’t get to meet Dick or Charlene but this time in Hillston I’m determined and when I rock up from the north, after passing the huge silo on the left across from lagoon which for some reason is dry despite the Lachlan in flood and lapping at the beer garden of the pub, it’s a busy Saturday arvo in the Club House. 

     The date on the front says it’s 1929 but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s so young. First built in the early 1880’s, partly burnt down in 1924, it was then seriously rebuilt with bricks from Griffith and included a front bar, lounges, dining room and 17 upstairs bedrooms. Plus of course a stunning front veranda. 

     I get a cold beer and notice a woman looking full-on-country in jeans and pink work shirt who’s entertaining a mob of mates with yet another story, so I sidle over and ingratiate myself. Now in his book, Toby Price writes that by the time he was, “three years old the only place I wanted to go when we went to Hillston was the bike shop.”

Well that shop was run by this same woman in pink, Sue, who’d taken it over in 1972 and kept it until 2006. Apart from being the person who provided Toby Price with his first riding kit and spare parts, Sue’s the grandmother of Nick the publican here at the Club House and after a bit with Sue, I head over to chat with her grandson.

     “I left tractor driving in 2018 and some people had bought the pub and they were doing it up but they didn’t know a lot about running a pub and they asked me if I wanted to come and run it for them and for 6 months and it was running good but it was on the market.” 

     He then had a stint at the local club but then one day: “Mark, one of the couple who owned it rang me and said we reckon you should buy the pub and I said I’d love to but can’t do it. He said, look it’s on the market and I said, I’m pretty sure someone who’ll love it’ll buy it and he said, no, someone’ll buy it, take the pokies and shut it down.. And we don’t want that. So we mulled this and three schooners later, three weeks before Covid hit, I said give me the keys and I’ll have a crack.” 

     He spent Covid shut downs renovating and updating the pub but by the end he’d sold the courtesy bus to pay the power bill and there wasn’t much money around so a couple of mates decided to take his mind off the problems and take him fishing on the Murray around Tocumwal.

 “We stayed at the Palms Hotel and Geoff who runs the pub heard about me and said, ‘well what do you need to get going?’ and I told him, ‘a couple of kegs’ and he asks me, ‘what flavor?’ So next day he buys me a couple of Great Northern kegs. That afternoon we load the kegs into the boat on the trailer and head back to Hillston. Then the IGA across the road asked me what grog did I need and I said, ‘look I can’t really afford to pay for it,’ and they said, ‘don’t worry about that, you can fix us once you’ve sold it,’ so they used their account to buy the stock I needed to get back on my feet.”

 You getting an idea yet of what sort of town this is? 

     Now, amongst the many tales Toby Price tells in his 300 page book, is one of how “NRL player-turned-TV star Paul ‘Fatty’ Vautin” once promised him two motorbikes on the Footy Show. Well Fatty, and Nine, reneged on the deal and there was not going to be a single, let alone two motorbikes. The community of Hillston was enraged. Through a concerted deluge of letters the community basically shamed the Channel into providing one. 

     Later, when Toby’s dad’s health declined, they decided it was their time to come ‘down from Roto’. They moved to Hillston and a house with no back yard for Toby to ride around. No problem. The local Council allowed them to build a MX track out near the local tip. Yep, it’s that sort of town. 

     As the afternoon blends into the evening and into the night, I spend time with people showing me their tattoos which say ‘ouch’; others offering to take me out to William Hill’s grave once the waters
have gone down (still hasn’t happened); who offer a bed next time out on their property; who have tales of Toby Price as a wild child. And finally Charlene – complete with moonboot – and Dick. It becomes a memorable time. 

No better place, not better town to drink your cheque surrounded by honest good people – each one with stories and memories. 

                         “So hump your blues serenely and make for Hillston town, 

                        And sort the cheque between you, and look to knock it down.”