Nothing but the Pub

  The Wellshot Hotel Ilfracombe Qld           In 1954 the boss of the Qld A.W.U. was interviewed about the roots of unionism in the Sunshine state:  “The Labor Movement in Queensland as we know it-…., was born in the pastoral … In 1886, at Wellshot station … industrial trouble arose at shearing time because shearers would not accept the … slave-like conditions of work proposed (and) went on strike, and the news of their action went like a bushfire throughout the outback (and) when no settlement was reached at Wellshot the men began to march on Blackall (where, with shearers from other gangs and stations) they decided to form the Shearers' Union.”            Eventually this Shearers’ Union grew into the backbone of the organization which became the ALP in Barcaldine in 1892. The place of Wellshot Station and Ilfracombe in our political and social history were cemented forever.        ...

It was the light that drew me to Middleton.   Actually it was the lack of it. It was that and a yarn on the mulga wire saying the pub there was a ‘gotta-see’. And because I was camping, I didn’t much care that it had no accommodation, apparently there was plenty across the road. So anyway I headed down west from Winton, with the ubiquitous gales bashing me at every turn and on every straight. (There ain’t too many turns!) The road from Winton to Middleton sees the country morph from harsh to brutal, from grey to red and back again. New hues come through but the toughness only ever increases. Hughenden is the end of the bush and start of the outback. This is the land of the laconic single finger driver’s wave from the hand uppermost on the steering wheel. If you’ve been out there you know what I mean..the index finger raised, part in a kind of “g’day”   and part a salute for being a fellow crazy out here in the Vast. In the heat of the day I see noth...