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LAVERTON WA-CENTRAL DESERT COUNTRY
Monday 15 July 2013
(There is a place called Laverton near Geelong, Victoria, but the WA place is pronounced differently…Layverton.)
Another perfect sunny day, 24 degrees, while Perth has cold rainy storms. The rains that have been happening in the north eastern and central parts of WA have settled down, which helps us with our motor biking adventures. We don't want to deal with flooded roads if we can avoid it.
Laverton is today's adventure. I used to live there from 1975 till 1978. I arrived very pregnant with my first child, and had a flight down to Kalgoorlie hospital in a Flying Doctor plane to give birth to the cutest little baby boy called Joe. His father Arthur and I had to leave Laverton in mid-1978 because the Western Mining nickel mine at Windarra closed down and all the workers got retrenched, such is the impermanence of mining towns.
So I hadn't been to Laverton for 35 years. It was fun riding the motorbike for 105km from Leonora to Laverton; you see so much more than when driving a car. And because of the recent rains, the country was showing olive green colours of fresh bush growth. We had to watch out for some wedge tail eagles gorging themselves on road kill, and Dave got excited because he saw a dead eagle by the roadside. We had to stop so he could collect some new feathers for his bush hat. He's upgrading from road kill hawk feathers that he got in South Australia last year. He's been looking out for eagle feathers for ages. His Red Indian name is Chief Carroll Crazy Eagle!
Laverton has changed since I was there. Many of the mining houses are still present but there are gaps of empty blocks where some have been towed away. I was chuffed to see a house we lived in still there, and just by coincidence, the man living in it was in the middle of chain sawing down a huge dead tree right by the front gate. "Did You plant this?" he asked me accusingly when I popped my head over the fence and told him that I used to live there 35 years ago. Well, I would never argue with a man wielding a chainsaw, so I pleaded ignorance! It was a bit hair- raising watching the huge tall tree finally whump to the ground; Dave and I thought we were going to see it crush the house I used to live in!
I was also chuffed to see still standing a neat little brick retaining wall that Art and I had painstakingly built from recycled old bricks from nearby old Lancefield mine site. The locals had laughed at our labours back in those days, but hey, that wall is still looking good, and the mockers houses have been carted away.
Dave and I walked up to the top of a rocky outcrop called Billy Goat Hill, at the edge of town. Back in the 1970s we would never have done this, as the area was a special place for the central desert Aborigines. I used to see them coming in from the bush with speared kangaroos slung over their shoulders. Most of them couldn't speak English, and they used to put on European clothes hanging from a gnarled tree near Billy Goat Hill before they came into town. As a young mine wife I used to feel very sad for these people when they knocked on my front door that overlooked the desert country, and one of them would ask in broken English if they could collect some water from the front tap of my mine house garden. These people belonged to this vast red desert country, and they had to come and ask for water? It didn't seem fair for them to have to do this.
I got to know some of the Aboriginal children in the district; they used to ask "Can we come and play with your baby's toys?" and when I let them they ignored the toys and spent many a happy time playing with my baby Joe! He loved the extra company too.
Dave and I spent a long time looking through the "Explorer's Hall of Fame" museum in Laverton. We enjoyed learning a bit more about the early white explorers who braved the hostile dry desert areas. Grey nomads came and went in quick succession to this museum: why they pay to come in when they don't bother looking properly is amusing.
An Aboriginal Art gallery is next to the new museum, with lots of vibrant beautiful art work and artefacts. I bought a pair of carved tapping sticks and had a cheerful conversation with a Maori girl serving in the gallery.
We ate delicious lamb souvlaki wraps from a tiny shop next to the old pub, watched by 2 quiet big roo dogs; their Aboriginal owners were chatting nearby. These dogs just sat and pleaded with gentle eyes as we munched our lunch; they seemed like gentle spirits, but I was a mean mother and didn't give them anything to eat. But I did tell them they were "very good dogs" which seemed to make them happy.
There used to be a big supermarket at Laverton that is now boarded up, as is the old post office. It hit me with a pang of sadness that Laverton is the last place where I saw my dear sister Pauline alive, back in 1977, when she made a special visit and she told me how lucky I was. We were only 17 months apart in age. When I stood near the old post office door it felt so hard, as this is where a strange terrible feeling lifted off me on 21st April 1978, at 9.30am, which I later found out was the exact time of Pauline's death in Queensland. So a few tears happened for me at this old spot. Pauline died of suicide, hence a terrible 24 hours of dread I was picking up back then, and I couldn't work out why, till the Laverton police came and told me the awful sad news. If only we had mobile phones in those days, maybe she could have reached me and I could have helped her. But with sudden death, there is always the "If only" which you can do nothing about.
As Dave and I rode away from Laverton to get back to our Leonora camp site, I realised how important it was for me to re-visit this dusty little town at the end of the bitumen road before hitting desert. I remembered lots of loving kind people who tried to help me with the grief of losing a sister and who were helpful to me in other ways as well; people who have moved on and I thought I had forgotten till today.
Laverton is a place I will always remember fondly.
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