Grave matters, plus outback hospitality

June 13, but no internet service:

After a day wandering around Winton, enjoying the company of friends, Rick and Barb Blatchley, who are also motorhoming and whom we met in Winton, we set off for Boulia.

The staff at the info centre had assured me that my grandfather’s grave should be close to the road. I’d also phoned the Woodstock station homestead, asking about it. Thank goodness I did, as the woman there told me it was near a communication tower built quite a few kms from the homestead.



My grandfather's grave

Sure enough, when we neared that tower, and followed its small access track off the road, off to the right (and quite invisible from the road) was the grave, with its headstone and small wrought-iron enclosure.

I felt quite emotional as I thought of my grandfather dying there alone, aged 51, 100 years ago this year. He’d set off from somewhere on the Winton-Boulia road (possibly Middleton) with a load of wool, bound for Winton, but failed to return and his wife eventually got word that he’d been found dead beside his team and buried there.

My Dad was 3 at the time, and there were 2 older children, so my grandmother took on one of the many hotels/staging posts for the Cobb & Co coaches on that run, where she met her 2^nd husband, and had another 7 children, living on a property just east of Boulia.

So on we went, to what’s left of Middleton, just the pub, and the remains of a dance hall, timber floor and corrugated iron walls.

Caravans and motorhomes are welcome to stop in the cleared area opposite the hotel for the price of a few beers. The publican was a delight, Valerie Cain, an elderly woman who’d seen all her own kids through correspondence lessons and was still trying to get her 10-year-old grand-daughter to knuckle down to lessons rather than talk to visitors. Young Chloe showed us the history of the pub as she sat at the foot of a memorial opened in 1960 to mark the visit of the first white men in the Winton district 100 years before.

Then Chloe’s Dad arrived home in his helicopter. He works as a contract musterer.

We opted for dinner at the pub, very good roast, sharing the bar with a selection of characters that made John remark later that he felt like he’d been taking part in a documentary about the outback.

Middleton Hotel

Three stinking great roadtrains pulled up (stinking because they were loaded with cattle bound for Winton and Longreach) and the young drivers came in for a feed of rump steak and chips, swapping tales of what was happening around the district.

Then a bloke called Darky appeared (‘We’ve got a bit of colour in the family’) who worked for a private quarry near Boulia but lived in Winton so worked two weeks on, 1 off and was on his way home. He’d been a rodeo rider and had a hat full of badges to show where he’d been.

The publican’s husband, Lester, was home by then, having arrived looking very dusty, with a disreputable hat on, after a day working at a nearby station. He showered and changed, right down to a different hat that he wore behind the bar. We don’t think he had any top teeth and when he got a bit excited he started stammering, but the two of them served meals very efficiently to everyone, including some young ringers who’d come in to see the State of Origin match.

Valerie and Lester have a daughter who spent years at Sydney Uni studying psychology, then went to England where she took another degree as an electronics engineer. Even Darky confided that his son had graduated from uni in Sydney but two hours after the graduation ceremony Darky was on the road out (‘Can’t stand cities!’).

There was some debate about whether a chap called Nick Robinson was the grandson of the chap in the grave and after I produced the family history I was carrying, we worked out he was the son of one of my Robinson cousins, so he’s the great-grandson. The whole pub just reeks of history, from the Cobb & Co coach out the front to the folders of stuff Valerie has acquired about district properties.

A caravan and a campervan had also pulled into the pub camping ground (which has a shelter for eating and cooking meals called the Hilton Hotel) but the occupants did not come over to join the conviviality. And that was their loss.

In the morning, we lay in bed watching a fabulous sunrise . . . across which suddenly the helicopter swept as Chloe’s Dad, Stoney Cain, set off for work. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

2 days later:

We’re still enjoying fabulous outback hospitality at the home of Adrian and Vicki Wells on Elrose. They also own four other properties surrounding it, run 6000 cattle and turn off about 2500 each year. Adrian supervises all this from his light aircraft.



Vicki and Adrian Wells

Adrian is sort of extended family, as his cousin on his mother’s side is Ron McGlinchey, who is my cousin on his father’s side. Got it? There’ll be a written exam later.

Poor John’s eyes are rolling as Adrian and I discuss various family members, properties, get out our respective family history documents, and generally confuse any listeners.



Adrian and Vicki are big-hearted people who’ve provided a home for an English girl for the past 12 months. She worked for them briefly but now has several part-time jobs in Boulia (abt 20km away). They have also taken on a 15-year-old lad from down south who was apparently going off the rails, but he’s taken to outback life wonderfully.

Their son Grant is an Australian bull-riding champion and this weekend several of his mates have turned up, tossing swags into the old shearer’s quarters, rounding up the bulls Grant breeds here and we’re set for some riding in the arena in the cattle yards later.

In the meantime, there was a farewell function for the English lass in the Boulia Golf Club last night. We’d gone in in the motorhome earlier and spent the day seeing the sights and experiencing the Min Min Encounter (very good) and seeing a stone house museum and great collection of fossils found by a local bloke who had once worked for my Dad and would talk under wet cement.



The small plaque bearing my Dad's name,
on his mother's gravestone at Macsland.

However at night, we all piled into Adrian’s big Land Cruiser and we took off for a great night at the golf club. There were cousins, a widow of cousins and even the son of a cousin who claimed me. There’s a trophy bearing my grandmother’s photo and one of the group insisted I looked so like her I had to stand on a chair and have my pic taken with the shield.

Earlier in the day we had placed a plaque bearing my father’s name, date of birth and date of death on my grandmother’s grave, on the old family property of Macsland, now owned by Adrian and next door to Elrose.

John just gave up trying to work out who all these people were after a while, and relaxed into the convivial atmosphere, having a great time.

It’s quite warm, some washing dried in about an hour in the dry atmosphere and we’re hoping the winter clothes can soon be packed away.



Not sure when we’re moving on as each day brings some new delight to experience. This morning we went with Adrian in one of the utes to a trough that has a solar panel collection powering a pump, but the corellas keep biting through the cables from the solar panel. John and Adrian fixed it with a bit of ingenuity but the corellas were keeping a beady eye on it and trying to work out how to get up to more mischief.

PS. The youngster from down south was hurt during the bull-riding, had to be taken to the Boulia Primary Care Centre (used to be a hospital), and the Flying Doctor came from Mt Isa. The bull’s hoof had come down on the inner part of his elbow, gouging flesh, but nothing was broken, and after some stitching, he was allowed home. By next morning, as good as gold.

June 18:

We left Elrose this morning, quite sad to go, but with more adventures in store. Adrian and Grant had already set off in a big cattle truck for Winton, where there’s a bull sale tomorrow.

Yesterday morning we went back to Boulia to have morning tea with a cousin, Daphne Hindom, then lunch at the Min Min Cafe, where we were joined by Nina, widow of a cousin, Shane McGlinchey.

Now we’re heading north to Dajarra, then across some dirt roads to Cloncurry, and eventually Mt Isa.