by Thea Hayes
Everyone brought wine and we sat on our folding chairs beside the beautiful Murrumbidgee, barbequing our steaks and sausages, having a wonderful time. ‘Someone’ kept filling up the wine glasses, and I didn’t realise how much I had drunk until I went for a walk. When I returned everyone was laughing. Bob had commented as I walked out, ‘I think Thea has the “Wobbly Boots” on today.’
On the way back to the homestead, I sat in the back of one of the vehicles, to open the gates.
‘I’ll do it. I’ll open the gate.’ Jumping out, I landed feet first in a hole in the ground, had to be helped out, and suffered a sore back for weeks.
‘No more “Wobbly Boots” for me. I’ll pour my own wine in future,’ I declared.
Having worked as a nurse for forty-odd years, I missed being employed. I rang the Narrandera Hospital to enquire about nursing positions, but then realised I could be on call and be working in emergency, trying to save lives. My skills had been in palliative care for the last nine years, helping people in their last days.
Instead, I applied for a registered nurse position at the Narrandera nursing home, which meant working two or three days a week. It was the first time I had ever had to get a police check. Times are changing.
The Narrandera nursing home had about sixty beds. Once again, the patients were people who couldn’t be nursed at home because of their condition or because of their family situation. It wasn’t flash, like some of the nursing homes seen today. There were a few single and double rooms, but most rooms had three or four beds, so the patients had company, and one bathroom to service two rooms.
The care those patients received was excellent. I worked with a great team of registered nurses, enrolled nurses and assistant nurses supervised by a highly experienced nurse manager. The medications would take hours, mixing the medicines with jam or honey for those who couldn’t swallow their pills, and checking transdermal patches. Then the drugs in the form of tablets, capsules or patches had to be checked and given out. The registered nurse had to do the dressings, and was responsible for everything, even writing up the incident reports by hand for patients that had falls. Thank goodness they changed things: they now use electronic transcripts and whoever found the patient does the report. There were nurses from the Philippines and from India, lovely girls who worked really well with the Aussie girls. It was a great place to work.
38
The Sturt Ladies Club
Many years ago in Narrandera, the graziers and squatters would come into town in their carriages to spend time in ‘The Murrumbidgee Club’, while their wives sat outside in the carriages, much to the displeasure of Mrs Bonnie Aston who lived next door. On the death of Mrs Aston, her house was left in her will to the ladies of Narrandera, who named it ‘The Sturt Ladies Club’.
Every month the committee organised a get together for the exclusive members—Bubble and Fizz, luncheon in the garden, tea parties, book talks, tours to the highlights of neighbouring towns. These events were great fun, made even better by the superb cooking skills of the committee ladies.
One day the president of the Sturt Club, Beth, said she was planning the programme for the following year and I said, ‘What about a book talk by a well-known writer!’
And that’s how Jane Grieve, author of In Stockmen’s Footsteps, came to visit us at Narrandera, staying with us at Carraman, bringing her sister Tina Merriman as a guide and helping to pull a bogged cow out of the Murrumbidgee mud.
I introduced her to a large audience, who were delighted with Jane’s amazing story of her interesting forebears, her experiences in the Outback, and the pivotal role she played in establishing the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach.
And here is Janie’s thank you to The Sturt Ladies Club.
A Thank You to the Sturt Ladies, 14 March 2014
In a town quite near Grong Grong, and not far from Coolamon
Is the one and only posh Sturt Ladies’ Club;
It’s adorned with lovely flowers from the lady members bowers
And is known for great events and greater grub.
It’s beside a house once famed as a men’s club aptly named
The Riverina Gentlemen’s Retreat
But the ladies stole a march which the gentlemen found arch
’Til they realised at last that they were beat.
There was no doubt which was the grander of the clubs around Narrandera
The Sturt Ladies Club lined up for serious biz
And until the time of writin’, for Sturt ladies it’s excitin’
To gather every month for bubble and fizz.
Led by Beth their fearless boss they are never at a loss
For more ways to celebrate their friendship bliss;
For Jo Jenny Pat and Ann, Judy Bernadette and Jan
And the other lovely members it’s a tryst.
One day there sallied forth from a bleak place in the north
A wee person by the name of Thea Hayes
The girls recognised her charm, and spread wide their welcoming arms
In the totally unique Narrandera way.
Thea and her partner Bob, with Rupert their wormy dog
Lived at Carraman by Murrumbidgee’s side
With koalas and sundry birds they were happy beyond words
As ’neath river red gum trees they made to bide.
Now your Thea had a friend, who was from the Queensland end
And she made it known that she had writ a book;
Said yon Thea—What a joy! If the ladies like my ploy
I’ll get you to come and give us a look!
So it was that Jane arrived—with her sister for a guide
And was welcomed with congeniality;
There was food and there was blathering at the Sturt Narrandera gathering
And the famous Sturt conviviality.
Well! It all went well as planned, and the night was really grand
And the ladies and their men sat still for ages;
While Jane spruiked until she croaked, and they listened ’til they choked
’Til they all knew what was written ’twixt those pages …
Just like all good things that tend to eventually end
Jane and Tina’s visit soon had had its run
But they want you all to know that they loved their time there so
Thank you Thea and Bob and ladies, it was fun!
39
The magpies
Every morning at Carraman we were woken by the warbling of a pair of magpies that lived in the tree just outside our fence. They have a rich, melodious song that is delivered with steeply uplifted bill, fluffed up plumage and open wings.
They claimed not only our yard, which was all of a quarter of an acre, but also the surrounding area—a balanced combination of open country together with river red gums, suitable for nesting, which lead down to the creek.
These narcissistic creatures chased every bird away from their domain; only the beautiful yellow and eastern rosellas would sneak in for a quick breakfast on the opposite side of the house to where the magpies were foraging early in the morning.
The wood ducks had their brood, nesting beside the creek at the bottom of our garden, and having braved the sights and sounds of humans, finally decided to feed on the overgrown lawn. But they too got chased away.
The white cockatoos and the galahs didn’t stand a chance. While happily pecking away at grass seeds and food scraps on the lawn, they would suddenly be conscious of the magpies as their powerful, pointed wings drove them in fast flight with rapid, lashing wing beats. The screeching of the cockatoos as they departed was probably music to the magpies.
Often, they chased their prey on their long, strong legs. The only enemy who objected to their presence was Rupert, our dog, who hated the magpies and chased them on sight. He objected to them eating the scraps of meat on the lawn which he had left to bury at a later date.
During spring the magpies started looking for sticks f
or nest building, and soft grasses, leaves and bits of bark to line the nest.
That’s when the trouble starts. The baby magpie has hatched in the nest, learnt to fly, and follows its mother everywhere, but it is still very dependent, despite being the same size as the parents. They hardly stop their ‘quark, quaark, quaarking’ until their fatigued mother has given them a morsel or two, or three.
We were very proud of our little squatter family. One year the peach and plum trees in our garden, laden with fruit, attracted a flock of cockatoos.
Coming out of the house one morning, we heard the loud, harsh quaarking of the magpies, plus the screeching of the cockatoos, who had begun devouring the unripened fruit. Rising high in the sky, the magpies dive bombed the thieves, scattering the intruders in all directions.
After that we had no worries. We hung a few old CDs on ribbons to swing in the breeze on each tree, and with our magpie guards we had nothing to worry about and looked forward to a feast of fruit in the future.
40
The Rocky Waterholes Bridge
Next door to Carraman are approximately 650 hectares of public Crown Land reserves, where you can spot a koala and enjoy the very tranquil river red gum riparian areas. Bundidgerry Creek, which becomes the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area canal, runs from Carraman through to Narrandera. It passes through Lake Talbot, with swimming pools and very popular slippery slides, and incorporates an extensive network of bike and hike tracks.
The original bridge was to enable access across the river to the town common for bullock team owners to rest their teams, and for travellers to rest their animals. The wooden bridge was dismantled in the forties and fifties when it became unusable.
For more than twenty years a dedicated group of Narranderites have wanted to reconstruct a replacement bridge, so the bike track could do a circular route across the canal and back into town.
All sorts of bridges were suggested but all were too expensive. After a feasibility study, Narrandera Shire Council pledged a small amount of funds towards the cost of a bridge.
Narrandera Landcare group initiated the project and worked collaboratively and in partnership with Narrandera Shire, Murrumbidgee Irrigation and other relevant stakeholder government agencies and led the project themselves.
A community meeting was held in 2011 and a Project Management Committee was formed to implement the project.
This committee, led by the project leader, Peter Beal, and Landcare Secretary, John Primrose, gained all the necessary approvals to install the bridge according to required engineering standards. The construction of the bridge was led by Terry Smith.
Using component parts of the Australian panel bridge (circa 1943), which are similar to the English Bailey bridge used during the war, enough panels were sourced from several properties across the Riverina to build the bridge spanning forty metres. Bob had found an old Bailey bridge at Carraman partly buried in mud which Brian donated to the Landcare Committee.
The volunteers, guided by Terry Smith, would put the panels together and fit a bracing transom across the base to hold the panels together, which were then winched across the creek on multiple rollers. Putting the pieces together was like working with a giant Meccano set; the men absolutely loved it.
The bridge was assembled with approximately fifty community volunteers and several engineering experts over eight days in May 2013.
The town of Narrandera was fascinated. Everyone came to watch as the bridge with all its panels gradually reached across to the far bank.
There was an official opening on 6 October 2013, with Mayor Jenny Clarke doing the honours, and the Deputy Leader of the Nationals, Mr Adrian Piccoli, attending, plus a few hundred eager residents. A magnificent undertaking by a group of determined and dedicated people.
41
The Wiradjuri
The early settlers in the Riverina must have thought they were in heaven with the creeks and rivers, the lush grasses, the open plains, and the abundance of birds and animals. But the natural richness was partly due to the Wiradjuri people, called the Narrungderra clan in our area—the local Indigenous people who for thousands of years shaped and maintained their landscape, looking after their land as their culture dictated. They used fires to keep the trees low and sparse and to encourage new growth to attract more game. Concern for their land allowed the Wiradjuri people to live well, the men being mostly six-foot-tall, large and very active, with feet up to fourteen inches long.
The Wiradjuri diet included yabbies and fish such as Murray Cod from the rivers. In dry seasons, they ate kangaroos, emus and food gathered from the land, including fruit, nuts, wattle seeds and orchid tubers. The Wiradjuri travelled into alpine regions in the summer to find and feast on Bogong Moths.
In summer they went naked. In winter they wore possum or kangaroo coats. The Wiradjuri were known for their handsome possum-skin cloaks stitched together from several possum furs. They would kill hundreds of possums to make these coats. Governor Macquarie was presented with one of these cloaks by a Wiradjuri man when he visited Bathurst.
The name Narrandera is derived from the Wiradjuri word meaning place of goanna or lizard. Captain Charles Sturt, the famous explorer, was credited with being the first white man to observe the area that later came to be known as Narrandera, the gateway to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.
The upper Murrumbidgee, the ‘Big Water’, was discovered in April 1821 by Charles Throsby. But with the onset of white settlers, who came and stayed, their cattle and sheep eating and continually treading and impacting the ground, the landscape started to change. For the Wiradjuri, the introduction of disease and the white settlers’ superior arms were the beginning of the ruin of a once noble people.
White settlers first came to settle in this Wiradjuri country in the 1830s, but many were forced off by the Wiradjuri; too many sheep and cattle speared; too many killings on both sides—this time was called the Wiradjuri Wars.
But then, Bob and I were told, after a pitched battle between early settlers and Wiradjuri, mobs of settlers on both sides of the river trapped sixty-four Wiradjuri men, women and children, shooting them as they tried to escape to Murdering Island, on the Murrumbidgee at Carraman. There was one survivor, who hid in the bulrushes but lost an eye, and later became a native tracker. This property on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, where we lived, was where in 1840 the Wiradjuri had their world completely shattered. We were told that large corroborees were held by the Wiradjuri on the north side of Bundidgerry where the land slopes down to the base of the hill with a scattering of trees. It was a favourite eating ground for kangaroos. On walks around this beautiful property, I would imagine groups of tall naked Wiradjuri assembling on the edge of a clearing, preparing for their corroboree and initiation ceremonies. Bob and I would keep hoping we might find some sign of Aboriginal life.
One day Bob took me down to see Murdering Island. It was about 250 metres long, surrounded by the fast-flowing Murrumbidgee. All was so quiet except for the river and the wind in the trees. It was quite eerie. Did we feel a presence—maybe the spirits of those once great Wiradjuri people—wandering through the river red gums lining the Murrumbidgee? It was certainly a spiritual and moving experience, and we could feel the hair standing up on the back of our necks.
42
A little bit of history
Narrandera and the Riverina area are full of interesting history. The first settlers to move out from Sydney town to take up land were the Irish in search of their fortunes, but they were driven out by the Wiradjuri until the massacre at Murdering Island.
And then the squatters came, taking up large cattle and sheep runs in the district, dealing with droughts and floods. The early station huts were bark or bark on timber, with dirt floors and walls of calico bags. Once a year the men on neighbouring runs would have a general muster, rounding up the cattle, drafting, branding and dividing up the clean skins. The cattle would be managed, no doubt, with Aboriginal help.
They say th
at the paddle steamers used to come up from South Australia and unload their cargo on the other side of Murdering Island on the Murrumbidgee River at Carraman and another river boat would pick up the same cargo and transport it to Wagga Wagga or Gundagai and down the Murrumbidgee.
The first explorers of the Murrumbidgee valley found this region a desolate landscape, but Murrumbidgee Irrigation was developed in the early twentieth century to control and divert the flow of local river and creek systems for the production of food. It is now one of the largest private irrigation companies in Australia.
Narrandera was one of many NSW towns to benefit from the railway in the 1870s and 1880s. Many towns in the surrounding areas had numerous trains every day carting wool, grain and people. These days, of course, the trains carry a very limited supply. At Narrandera, we had one train on Saturday going to Sydney and one train on Sunday returning. Quite a delightful trip with meals available plus a wine or beer as well if desired. I personally love railway travel. Bring it all back!
The Old Wagga Road, used by Cobb & Co, once crossed the Bundidgerry Creek at Rocky Waterholes Bridge, which was on our western boundary, and went past our cottage on the way to Grong Grong. These were the remains of the old wooden bridge near our house that I wondered about.
Bundidgerry, of which Carraman had been a part, was taken up by William Taylor in 1843. Here Rolf Boldrewood, the pseudonym of Thomas Alexander Browne, a pastoralist, police magistrate and gold commissioner, had lived and written Robbery Under Arms.
As we drove along the Canal Bank Road going into Carraman we could see the imposing homestead of Bundidgerry. It was owned by a Bert (Albert) Carr who had been a stockman and manager for Sir Sidney Kidman. Bert bought Bundidgerry and Carraman from two different people. He had fallen in love with the water in the river and creeks on these two properties, especially after spending years in the Outback on some very dry blocks.
