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Winton - Monday 15th September
Winton Car Kilometers: 177,879
Distance Travelled: 186km
Total Distance Travelled: 9628km
Since we'd stayed on an extra day in Longreach to pick up the pump and pegs, we plan to stay just one night in Winton.It's not too far from Longreach, and despite leaving there at 10ish, we're in Winton by lunchtime.We head to the only campsite in town first, who assure us that there are plenty of pitches free and to come back later if we prefer.Since the campsite is indeed empty, we decide to have a look around the town.Dave chose Longreach for the Qantas museum.I chose Winton for the Waltzing Matilda museum.
The population is 3,100, and the pub-to-person ratio is relatively low, with several appealing looking hotels gracing the main street.Banjo Patterson, author of the great Aussie song 'Waltzing Matilda', was said to have first performed the song in one of the hotels across the way, although we settle into a friendly bar on the corner that the owners of the Longreach site recommended.
We chat to a fiercely proud Yugoslavian, who insists that the country should be called nothing else within his earshot.He tells tales of opal mining and communist rule, and soon has a few others involved too.We also talk to a Taswegian couple, who are lamenting the fact that most Aussies treat Tasmania as a different country.They put a lot of energy into persuading us to visit, although we'll see how the finances are when we get nearer to it before we decide.
We then walk down to the Waltzing Matilda museum - surprisingly enough, a museum more or less wholly dedicated to the great Aussie song and unofficial national anthem.We arrive at 3pm, and the lovely girls at the door are so concerned that we may not have time to take everything in that they write us out a free pass for the following day just in case.
There's a fake billabong scene set up in the centre room, with a lights and music show telling the story of the song... I learned that a jumbuck is a sheep, and pretty much have the words memorised now after hearing it so many times as we walked around.Poor Dave.Although don't feel too sorry for him - he was spared from further pain, as I decided not to purchase the CD from the shop, containing all 14 different versions of the song.Who knew that existed?
Just as the cringey nationalism is getting a bit too much, the curators have broken things up a bit by putting a few old train carriages outside to explore, as well as a room of completely random stuff, in which they appear to have accepted anything old that anyone has given them, ever.My absolute favourite exhibit is the 'piece of dung found stuck to a cow's tail', painstakingly mounted on cardboard.Dave is keen on the general concept of the bottle room - a room full of dusty, empty, non-descript glass bottles.Given that the room is in a museum, one would assume that the bottles had some kind of historical significance, however tenuous.It turns out they don't though, it's just a random collection of plain old bottles without labels or explanation that someone has donated and that they most likely felt obliged to accept.I can't recommend this museum highly enough, it's genius.
On the walk back to the car, we pass several wheely bins encased in fibreglass dinosaur feet... we think it's because there are some dinosaur fossil sights nearby, although quite why the council have chosen to express that in the form of eccentric bin covers, we're not sure.Nevertheless, there's a cheerful row of them down each side of the street.
We stop in at a general store to pick up some drinks, and find ourselves transported back a couple of decades - the shop looks small and unassuming from the outside, but is cavernous inside - they sell everything from tape walkmans to handy hat holders, faded valentines cards, gumboots and country and western CDs.At the till, Dave gets chatting to the owner who regales him with tales of 'how it used to be' for at least half an hour - some of the other customers chip in as they pass.It's so lovely to be somewhere where people have the time to chat and smile.
We take a detour to see Arno's Wall.It's the wall around someone's house at the back of a pub, where the owner has decided to embed household objects into the mortar as he goes along.So far there is about 150 metres of wall; full of tv's, motorbike parts, ornaments, plates, a cooker, religious statues and even a puzzled looking batman figure.It's more Aussie kitsch at its best, and I'm suitably delighted... I could even create my own one day at home.
Sightseeing over, we head back to the campsite that we scoped out earlier to pitch up.We get the tent up easily enough, but just as we are getting the last of the bits and pieces out for dinner, disaster strikes: the wind picks up to speeds perilous to tents out in the open, and grey clouds race across the sky - it was fine five minutes ago!We decide to pack up again in order to preserve the tent, and quickly shove chairs, table, cooker et al back into the car.Our pickle is how to deal with the tent, which is now blowing almost flat, and is straining and groaning at the ropes.One of the poles snaps as we try to hang onto it, and we have no idea what to do without either damaging the tent further or having it blow away.Dave solves the problem by pulling the poles out to flatten the tent properly, taking the pressure off a bit so that we can weight it down with boxes while we take out the poles and bundle the lot into the car unfolded.
That done, we have a new problem of where to sleep - it's now dark and raining heavily, and the owner of the site has retired to the motel that he runs down the road.One of the long termers points us in the right direction, and we turn up to ask if we can rent one of his cabins out for the night instead.However, he hasn't got any made up, and rather than come back out to the site, he offers us the use of a spare caravan that's kept under a shed-like cover near where we were originally pitched, at no extra charge.He doesn't look like he believes us about the storm at first, until he sees our drowned rat appearances once we get out the car - although we're only a few kilometres down the road, it hasn't hit here yet, although it starts to thunder while we talk.
We head back to investigate the caravan, and find it to be clean and tidy, if not an interesting experiment in how to decorate a space in as many shades of brown as could be imagined.An unexpected but very welcome bonus is that there's a tv in there, albeit with only two channels, and we snuggle up for some David Attenborough before heading out to find somewhere to get tea - after the evening we've had so far, neither of us feel like cooking.We go back to the friendly pub on the corner who, after a full inquisition on the evening's events, serve us up an incredibly cheap and tasty burger, chips and garlic bread to share in the pokey room (not called so because it's small, but because it has gambling machines, or 'pokeys' in it) behind the bar.At a total cost of $12 including drinks, we feel like we're getting hotel service at campsite prices tonight.
Settling back into the caravan to listen to the storm, we watch a dull Jack Nicholson film on tv after folding the tent up properly under cover of the shed.Another added bonus of the caravan is that we get to sleep on a real bed for the first time since 2nd August - aaaah.
Waltzing Matilda - by Banjo Paterson, c.1895 - Words and translation courtesy of Wikipedia
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
"Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?"
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,
Up got the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
Down came the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Up came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Who's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Who's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
Up got the swagman and jumped into the billabong,
"You'll never catch me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?"
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?"
The song narrates the story of an itinerant worker making a crude cup of tea at a bush camp and stealing a sheep to eat. When the sheep's ostensible owner arrives with three police officers to arrest the worker, he drowns himself in a small lake and goes on to haunt the site. The lyrics contain many distinctively Australian words, some now rarely used in Australian English outside this song.
These include:
Swagman - a man who travelled the country looking for work. The swagman's "swag" was a bed roll that bundled his belongings.
Waltzing - derived from the German term auf der Walz, which means to travel while working as a craftsman and learn new techniques from other masters before returning home after three years and one day, a custom which is still in use today among carpenters
Matilda - a romantic term for a swagman's bundle. See below, "Waltzing Matilda."
Waltzing Matilda - from the above terms, "to waltz Matilda" is to travel with a swag, that is, with all one's belongings on one's back wrapped in a blanket or cloth. The exact origins of the term "Matilda" are disputed; one fanciful derivation states that when swagmen met each other at their gatherings, there were rarely women to dance with. Nonetheless, they enjoyed a dance, and so they danced with their swags, which was given a woman's name. However, this appears to be influenced by the word "waltz", hence the introduction of dancing. It seems more likely that, as a swagman's only companion, the swag came to be personified as a woman. Another explanation is that the term also derives from German immigrants. German soldiers commonly referred to their greatcoats as "Matilda", supposedly because the coat kept them as warm as a woman would. Early German immigrants who "went on the waltz" would wrap their belongings in their coat, and took to calling it by the same name their soldiers had used.
billabong - an oxbow lake (a cut-off river bend) found alongside a meandering river.
coolibah tree - a kind of eucalyptus tree which grows near billabongs.
jumbuck - a large difficult to shear sheep, not a tame sheep. Implies that the sheep was not 'owned' by the squatter or regularly shorn, thus not able to be stolen by the swagman. billy - a can for boiling water in, usually 2-3 pints.
tucker bag - a bag for carrying food ("tucker"). troopers - policemen.
squatter - Australian squatters started as early farmers who raised livestock on land which they did not legally have the right to use; in many cases they later gained legal use of the land even though they did not have full possession, and became wealthy thanks to these large land holdings.
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