Dimboola - No ordinary pub in a town that's as good as the movie was Rubbish.

Dimboola's Victoria Hotel

In an early scene of the Dimboola the movie, the visiting English writer asks the two blokes at the train station where he’s just arrived what Dimboola the town’s like. 

 “Ordinary,” replies one to which the other adds helpfully, “Dead ordinary”. 

 This place on the Western Highway, midway between Melbourne and Adelaide, was known to its ancestral owners, the Wotjobaluk, as “Watchegatcheca”, meaning “wattle trees and white cockatoos” but was given the name “Nine Creeks” when first surveyed by whites in 1862. 

     A few years later a new surveyor arrived in the Wimmera. J.G.W. Wilmot - likely a bastard offspring of an English baronet - had lived in what’s now Sri Lanka making coffee and money, and he arrived in Sydney by boat in 1852. Maybe because he was white, his boat wasn’t towed back into international waters and he ended up in Melbourne, and then Nine Creeks. He figured the place’s name was ordinary - probably dead ordinary - but was impressed by the fruit trees at a station up the road and so he changed the town’s title to a modification of the Sinhalese ‘Dimbula’ which meant “Land of Figs”. 

     Anyway, Jack Hibberd’s original play, Dimboola, was set around the wedding of Protestant Morrie McAdam and Maureen Delaney, a Catholic – what was once termed a ‘mixed marriage’

- and the play examined, as Hibberd put it, “the testing of strengths of the newly conjugated tribes.” Because, see, Catholics didn’t marry Protestants back then. 

     Each performance’s audience was cast as the wedding guests and shared the wine, the toasts and the cake. The cast included Knocka the father of the groom, Dangles the best man, Darkie, father of the bride, Bayonet and Mutton - described as the local wits and drunks - and Shirl, a bridesmaid and town bike. (Wikipedia helpfully have a footnote explaining that last term.) There was also Leonardo Radish, reporter for the ‘Mildura Trumpet’ – based very loosely on Leonard Radic, long time theatre reviewer for The Age. 

     The play’s first production was at the Tarago Hall just west of the Loaded Dog - still a decent hotel -  where it was played to an audience of around 80 students from ANU who’d arrived by steam train as a culmination to a liver and kidney endangering seven days known as “Bush Week”. Akin to an extended Foundation Day at other unis, Bush Week – created in the 1960’s - has sadly, like so much, slowly withered in these humourless and PC times. 

     By the time this admirable play had been turned into a movie in 1979, the examination of the religious divide and inter-faith animosities had disappeared, replaced with jerky slapstick, the characters

with caricatures, and Leonardo Radish erased by Vivian Worcester-Jones, a writer for the London Times played terribly by Max Gillies. Chad Morgan was skin-creepingly horrible as Bayonet, Bruce Spence wasn’t much better as Morrie but Max Cullen was almost believable as Mutton, the drunk. 

     Wiki is succinct in its appraisal of the movie’s success: “The film was a box office disaster." And deservedly so. Meanwhile back in Dimboola, half a century later, the play – seen live now by over 500,000 people - is still performed – Covid willing – every year. And it’s London to a Brick that I’ll be at the next show.

 The town’s stunning double storey Victoria Hotel didn’t feature in the film – the externals were shot outside the Dimboola Hotel up the road (which burnt down in 2003) and the internal pub scenes were done up at the Hindmarsh Hotel in Jeparit. It’s now also not operating. 

     Now I didn’t really need to pay Amazon Prime to watch the shocking movie and I didn’t really need to background the play because when I rock up to the pub there’s a red mobility scooter out front and inside sits its owner – on his personal pew at the left end of the bar in a beanie. And he’s done all the research for me. 

     “Movie was shit.” 

     “Which bits didn’t you like?” I ask.

     “Dunno, never saw it. (pause) But it was shit”

    "What about the play?"

 

    "Playy was great."

     “So which parts about it did you like?” 

     “None. Never saw it.” 

     It’s just one of the many coincidences in the warps and wefts of this story that this 88 year old goes by “Mo”, because (“what sort of name is ‘Maurice’ for a man? My uncle called me ‘Mo’ very early and it stuck.”) It’s the same name as the Bruce Spence’s character in the play and movie. This real Mo was born down in Horsham and after a few years of school headed to Melbourne looking for work but hated the city and came back to Dimboola in 1956, working as a train – steam train – examiner. 

     For the first 14 years he boarded at this pub, in barracks out the back and then had a decade at the ‘big pub’ – the Dimboola – before getting his own place up near the station. But that’s just one of his ‘places’. This stool at the end of the bar is his other place. “I come in around 3 each day and if you were in my seat I’d arsehole you because this is my seat.” “How’s that?” “Well have a look at that,” tells me pointing to a sign on the wall. It reads “Grumpy Bastard’s Corner”. Mo smiles just a bit, and adds, “and I’m the grumpiest bastard around so I deserve it most.” 

     We’re just getting on to the 17 publicans who’ve run the pub since Mo had his first drink here when Meran, whom he rates as one of the best joins us. Geoff, another old mate who’s got his Dimboola VRI beanie pulled down low and who’s had ‘maybe 7 or 8 publicans’ interjects that she’s not ‘one of the best’ she is the best She has a break and is free for a chat and give a tour so Mo lays his glass on the bar and heads out. 

 “We were living in the town, and I was working in Horsham and Stoph was working with a Civil Contracting group and we’d come here on weekends and just we’d be hungry and the people running it would go, sorry, we don’t feel like cooking tonight so tea’s off and I’d just go I don’t want to live in a town with a pub like this. Then one Sat night we had friends over from

Horsham and we came here and they said they didn’t feel like cooking and I just said, what is going on here? And not long after that ‘Stoph’ “came home one day and I’d just had our 3rd child and he said, ‘you want to buy the pub?’ and I’d just had 3 kids in 30 months and I told him that I probably wasn’t ready for a pub and he sort of looked down and then up at me and said, ‘um, I think I might have already bought it’, and …… well here we are!” 

 She takes me and Aaron – a young train driver who’s just piloted the “Overland” up from Melbourne and passed it to a colleague for the 2nd half of its trip to Adelaide - on a tour of the place and, well it’s breath-taking. Extraordinary Victorian-furnished (as in Queen) bedrooms upstairs and the memorabilia filled wonder of the “Elbow Room” downstairs. Clean carpets, spotless bathrooms, plenty of power-points and hanging space and hooks. This place is a benchmark setter. We’re accompanied for part of it by Syd, their eldest, (now 8) who took the pub to heart from the start. Meran: “He kicked a patron out of the pub when he was 3. This fella’d been really rude. He wanted a TAB in here and we told him that we weren’t getting a TAB and he became really rude and aggressive and Syd just went up to him and said, ‘You’re not welcome here and I want you to go.’” 

     Later, we take dinner in the ‘Elbow Room’, named after a longer existing etching in the door’s glass window of a raised lady’s hand hold a bottle of bubbly, elbow elegantly bent. Four courses between two from chef Brendan: A prawn entrée, a stuffed mushroom entrée and mains of kiwi-fruit infused lamb and of pork belly and every one in the top ten pub meals that I’ve ever had. Just incredible. It's what pub food can be.

     Back out front for a nightcap and Trout (‘because I've got a trout mouth’), resplendent in a Collingwood sleeveless footy jumper is creating mayhem in the bar until Abby behind the bar’s had enough, calls time and we’re all outa there. 

     Next morning, after a brew in the sun on the verandah, it’s off to the other end of town where the Dimboola Imaginarium stands across from the resuscitated site of the burnt Dimboola Pub. Out front Jamie, one of the owners with partner Chan, is taking his 5 year old turkey for a stroll. But if that’s a tad out of usual, the inside of this converted Nat Bank building what’s inside is out of the realm. A quirky, idiosyncratic conglomeration of old, of new, of tasteful, of outrageous, of useful, and of not so; of furnishings and fittings, of tools and decorations and extraordinary books – (including 4 copies of my latest which they get me to sign under the belly of a giraffe) - but nothing’s not colourful. Not a single thing is dull or not just a wee bit wacky. This pair has been in town developing their crazy dream for three years. 

    Soon there’ll be accommodation upstairs and a place for high teas and a Pimms. A perfect counterpoint to the pub at the other end of town but it’s not their only contribution to the place. This is and was a railway town – a steam railway town. Mo arrived on a steam train, those ANU students who attended the first performance arrived in Tarago by steam train. There’s an old steam train on exhibition up at the station still. So back in April, through inspirational efforts of Jamie and Chan, Dimboola hosted the first Wimmera Steam Punk Festival. (A mix of Victorian era and the future, ‘imagine Queen Victoria in a spaceship’ explains Chan). Eighty percent of the town turned up and three quarters of those were in dress. 

The main street was closed with bands and street markets and almost 3,000 turned up. The thing was covered by the

press in places from Sth Korea to Spain and it’s on again next April. I’m working on my costume already. 

     So Mo was right, the movie was shite. It got so much wrong but nothing was more wrong than that early exchange. Because, led by Meran and Stoph’s Victoria Hotel and Jamie and Chan’s Imaginarium, not to mention the stunning Pink Lake 9kms out of town and the Sidney Nolan Museum, Dimboola’s not dead and it sure ain’t ordinary. 

 Disclaimer: Contrary to what seems common industry practice I neither sought nor was I offered any discount, freebee or special consideration during my stay.