When songwriter Fred Smith brought his show Dust of Uruzgan to Maleny in November 2013, he called me and asked if the band could rehearse in our downstairs room. It seemed the venue was not available until 4pm and he needed to rehearse with his locally recruited band. So Fred and five other people arrived at our place (bringing the makings of lunch with them), which explains this happy snap (left).
Self-funded songwriters have to do these sorts of things all the time in Australia, when they can’t afford to fly people in for two gigs. I remember that concert because Fred managed to pull more than 100 people to a small town gig on a Wednesday night. They were a listening audience too, and that’s a good thing for songwriters who tell long, involved stories. Fred (I wrote about his WA tour last week), has been pursuing his passion for songwriting for 17 years and like many of us, he is finding it harder to draw an audience in a sports-obsessed country.
I have a lot of admiration for songwriters like Fred, John Thompson and Nicole Murray (Cloudstreet) and Roz Pappalardo and Chanel Lucas (Women in Docs). They have worked hard, toured hard and persevered. I decided this week to ask some of the songwriters I know who have been doing this for a long while just what it is that keeps them going.
John Thompson and Nicole Murray chose to make music their career in 2002, after working seriously at music around day jobs for two years. Since then, they have toured seven times to the UK, and have also been to USA, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and Morocco.
“There are still plenty of places in Australia we haven’t seen,” says Nicole. “Most of our touring in Australia has been east coast, from Townsville to Tassie, with a couple of trips to Adelaide and southern WA, once as the entertainment on the (Indian Pacific) train.”
Cloudstreet sing both traditional and original songs which fit into the Australian and Anglo-Celtic traditions, using close harmony vocals and a range of instruments. After years of touring and turning out seven Cloudstreet CDs, the duo took a year off when John was cast as The Songman in the travelling stage show, War Horse. While John was away on tour, Nicole made two recordings with violinist and singer Emma Nixon as The Wish List. Now John and Nicole are planning to record again in early 2015 to take a new CD to the UK in May.
Is there is a living doing what you do?
“There is usually money to be made when touring, but the cost of the travel, food and accommodation eats a lot of it up,” says Nicole.
“We can afford our rent when touring but it’s not so easy when we come off tour. Because of this we have diversified and are concentrating on musical activities that can be sustained locally a bit more, like choirs and dance bands.”
Ah, but will you still be doing it when you’re 74?
“I think we will find a way to keep making music, because the emotional sustenance it provides is essential.”
Queensland acoustic duo Women in Docs (Roz Pappalardo and Chanel Lucas) have toured all over Australia and beyond since forming in 1998.
“We formed after years of playing in rock bands across Far North Queensland and deciding that singing our own songs, telling our own stories and using our own set list was more important than almost anything else,” Roz says on the phone from Cairns.
“It’s hard to know how many k’s we’ve driven. I wish we did know. I think we’ve probably driven from Cairns to Adelaide maybe 25 times? We’ve never driven to Perth but flown there many times and we’ve done Darwin as Women in Docs once. We’ve crisscrossed both America and Canada in a car. Goodness!
Roz and Chanel regret not listening to their intuition more – “it’s always right, you know…”
“We always ‘knew’ that we shouldn’t have done something. But, even in those situations, we always get a cracking story and a potentially a song.”
Meanwhile the Docs are quietly beavering away, writing new songs and getting ready to tour in late October, the Tamworth Country Music Festival in January and then a few festivals in 2015.
“And hopefully a new record. Why not? We love it.”
Solo singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chris Aronsten has been persevering with music for 35-40 years.
“I just love it,” he says. Chris sings original songs, traditional folk and blues, and plays Celtic and bluegrass fiddle tunes.
“I started playing and singing as a kid in Brisbane in the 1960’s and moved to Adelaide in ’74, playing gigs at folk clubs, coffee shops and pubs. I went to Melbourne on and off for gigs and started writing songs back then too.
“I’ve been scratching out a living ever since, except for a brief time in the early ’90s when I had a second-hand guitar shop with a muso mate and did gigs on the weekend. After five years of that I just went back to playing full time. Couldn’t do both.”
Chris has produced two CD’s in recent years, one of which was praised by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Bruce Elder, and is working on songs for a new one.
“These days I’ve got enough of an established circuit here and in the UK that the next few months are usually (financially) secure.
“I guess I could be more ambitious, but I’m more excited about playing music than ever.
“I can’t imagine not still doing gigs when I’m 74 if I stay fit and healthy.”
Brisbane songwriter Mark Cryle’s best-known band was Spot the Dog, which produced three CDs of Mark’s songs and though the members have gone on to other projects, they remain good friends and often join Mark on stage.
“I have always tried to surround myself with good musicians – players who can find what is right for the song. I still think that the parts of my recordings that I like best are the parts I didn’t think up myself.
“I enjoy writing for different projects and am currently planning in my head two recordings – one of chamber folky sort of stuff with the Civil Union (Rebecca Wright, Donald McKay and Alice McDowell), and another CD more in the vein of Sideshow Alley.”
The latter, with its sweet nostalgic song about first love at the Brisbane Ekka, has received radio play. Another track, Kalgoorlie Girl, was nominated in Macca’s Top 10 for 2013 and Waiting for the Ice to Thaw has been included on Macca’s just-released compilation “Well I Love It”.
Mark says his next album will have a mixture of “relationship” songs and some narratives about the nation’s past.
“But I have a thesis to finish writing first, though.” (The origins of Anzac Day).
Granite Belt-based Penny Davies and Roger Ilott perform their own songs, as well as those of other, mainly Australian, writers. They have had their own studio and record label since 1982 and released about 20 albums.
They had a long association with the late poet and folklorist Bill Scott and as a result many of their songs have become well-known on ABC radio.
“Both of us have always seriously pursued a music career – about 40 years all up (each),” says Penny.
“We both started in the folk music scene in Sydney in the early 1970’s
“We’ve performed in about 100 towns throughout Queensland including Cooktown and Weipa and out west to Boulia and a fair bit of NSW.”
And is there a living in it for you?
“We’ve always got by financially by learning to live on a little. We used to make money touring when the Arts Council used to fund it. These days it’s difficult to make money if you have to travel to gigs.”
No regrets, though?
“I hope we will be making music till our last breath – so long as we can sing and play, we’ll sing and play,” says Penny.
Independent acoustic music artist Steve Tyson is another whose work has caught the attention of mainstream CD reviewers.
“I think it just helps reinforce the necessary social media marketing these days. There is so much stuff out there, so many people doing shows, that fairly constant (not crazy bombardment), social media messages help keep your upcoming show front of mind.
“I have always looked at touring as an adventure. I don’t want to lose money, and I at least want to pay my best mates who tour with me a few dollars to buy a few beers! Fortunately most tours have ended up in the black.”
Steve is about to go on the road with a new CD, “Green Side Up”. He says he tours to take his story songs to fresh audiences, and experience that “incredible feeling” when people are listening attentively to the lyrics.
“That’s the most important thing. Sure I hope that translates to sales and I want to cover costs, but that’s not why I do it!”
The challenge for narrative songwriters like Mark Cryle, Steve Tyson and Fred Smith and yours truly, is to find a listening audience. The pubs, clubs, restaurants and cafes that hire musicians are more often meeting places for people who want to catch up with their friends and have a conversation. Unhappily, this often happens at the tables in front of the stage.
We (The Goodwills) discovered house concerts were a good way of helping songwriters find a listening audience. We’ve promoted house concerts in Brisbane and Maleny over that last 20 years.
We usually do an opening set. There’s afternoon tea, carrot cake and I can go and have a lie-down before the guest act starts. We’ll be looking to do house concerts next year when we tour with my new CD, The Last Waterhole (shy retiring songwriter seeks listening audience: apply within).
Next week: Crossing the Nullarbor

Few itinerant musicians could claim to have drawn a full house to a lecture at the University of Western Australia, but Australian diplomat and singer-songwriter Fred Smith did just that, on the topic Live like an Afghan. Fred was the subject of an Australian Story episode last year, which brought him from folk circuit favourite to the mainstream, no doubt accounting for the interest shown in his lecture.
Fred is currently touring a show called Dust of Uruzgan − a narrative of his time with a multi-national peacekeeping force in a remote dusty outpost in northern Afghanistan. He and his entourage were halfway through the 13-gig tour of Western Australia when we caught up with him for a meal at the Castle Hotel bistro in York, 97 kms east of Perth, and for a quick chat after the show.
In his role as a diplomat, Fred has been to Uruzgan twice – from July 2009 to January 2011 and then May 2013 to November 2013. The time he spent there made a big impact on Fred, and in turn, the songs and stories that emerged have resonated with ordinary people around Australia, as well as those who have personally experienced what he’s talking about.
The show begins with an emotive song from bass player and singer Liz Frencham and then moves on to a narrative, interspersed with Fred’s songs (written during his time at the multinational base at Tarin Kot), accompanied by a slide show using hundreds of photos taken by Australian Defence Force photographers and civilians. It is an absorbing presentation.
Fred’s songs differ from the work of most of his contemporaries, as the subjects of his songs are often real people. The song Dust of Uruzgan, for example, is a tribute to Australian soldier Ben Ranaudo, one of 40 Australians killed in action during this country’s engagement in Afghanistan. Many of those killed or injured were sappers, the forward patrols who scout for IEDs (improvised explosive devices), placed by insurgents along the roads used by the military coalition.
Fred’s song Sapper’s Lullaby has become something of an anthem for the Australian troops in Afghanistan and the families of those who lost loved ones. The last Australian troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in December 2013. Since coming home, Fred has been touring Dust of Uruzgan around all parts of the country.
The WA tour was 18 months in the planning, and Fred says it is a civilised tour, because the band get to stay in motels, there are proper meals and days off. There’s a PA and stage lights and someone to operate them. All the same, Broome to Esperance with 11 other stops along the way is a big commitment, more than 3,000 kms and not much time for sight-seeing.
The tour is organised by Country Arts WA and sponsored by the WA government Department of Culture and Arts, Lottery West, Healthway, GWN7, the ABC and Act Belong Commit, a movement to encourage people to achieve better mental health.
The tour covers familiar territory for Fred, whose parents were teachers in Regional WA until his father got a job with the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra in 1969. Fred returned to Perth as an adult to study Law and Economics, completing his studies at the Australian National University. He took a job with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1996 “about the same time I caught the songwriting bug”.
While he is making money at the moment, touring with a properly funded show and enjoying the mainstream popularity of the critically acclaimed Dust of Uruzgan, it is not a way of life he sees going on forever.
“I just don’t think (touring) is viable in Australia anymore, and especially not financially viable. The towns are too far apart and people are more interested in sport.”
Despite Fred’s pessimism about the future for independent musicians touring Australia, the Dust of Uruzgan tour is doing quite well – 100 at Exmouth Yacht Club (big military presence in Exmouth) and 60 on a Monday night in York are quite respectable numbers for this type of show.
Fred says the tour is about raising awareness of what Australian troops were doing in Afghanistan and how much they need support at home.
“The Vietnam generation got back and no-one knew what they had been through and they copped a lot of hostility, even from the RSL.
“Over the last 12 years, 20,000 young Australians have served in Afghanistan. Regardless of what you think of our involvement there, it is important that their story gets told and heard so they don’t walk the land as strangers, like a generation of Vietnam veterans did.”
Fred told the York audience that soldiers injured during the conflict have struggled on returning home, through a combination of their injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and some had since taken their own lives.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, welcoming the last troops home in December, said it was a heavy question to weigh up if the war had been worth the price paid (referring to the effects on those who had served in Afghanistan over a 12-year conflict and the cost of more than $7.5 billion).
“If you look at the benefits for our country, for Afghanistan, and for the wider world, then my conclusion is yes, it has been worth it,” the PM told the ABC.
“But not for a second would I underestimate the price that’s been paid by individuals and families, and the price that will continue to be paid because, while there are 40 dead and 261 wounded, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who will carry the psychological injuries with them for many years to come.”
Meanwhile, Fred Smith says he has come home to find balance in his life, although for now he has a fairly hectic schedule. Fortunately for Fred, DFAT seems to think a lot of what he achieved through using music to build relationships and trust during postings to Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Uruzgan.
“I’m busy all the time. I work part-time for DFAT and because most of the gigs we get are on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I spend the weekends doing that.”
He will be on the road again in October launching his new CD, Home, which though mostly set in the domestic frontier (home), also contains a couple of strong songs about the difficult return many soldiers face coming home from Afghanistan.
“It’s about coming home and calming down. I became a Dad in January and I’ve already written a love song for my daughter.”
I asked him if he considers what he is doing as a job, or a calling.
“The only reason to make art in this country is if you can’t stop yourself, so yes I guess it’s a calling,” says Fred.
And is the candle worth the game?
“It depends what time of day you ask me. I’m OK, if I manage to have an afternoon nap!”
But can he see himself doing a Leonard Cohen, one more comeback in his 80s?
“Never say never,” says Fred.

For the past six years Western Australia has been channelling 25% of the royalties it earns from the mining and oil and gas industries – capped at $1 billion a year – into regional community projects. The Royalties for Regions programme was introduced by the WA National Party in 2008 when it had more of a say in State government than it does now.
As we travel through WA, we can see this money being put to good use in hospitals, schools, regional programmes, community assets and community programmes – for example, an Aboriginal cultural centre and art gallery in Carnarvon and new buildings in Geraldton’s thriving universities centre.
We think this distribution of mining profits goes only so far. What if all States and Territories imposed a royalty (say 5%) which would be spent on renewable energy infrastructure? She Who Is Back Reading Newspapers peered over the top of The Australian to tell me Tony Abbott looked set to break another election promise by asking Dick Warburton to review Australia’s 2020 renewable energy target with a view to scrapping it altogether. Abbott now says he was just floating the idea. We hope it will be like a helium-filled party balloon and that someone lets go of the string.
Australia is often criticised by global renewable energy supporters for apparently squandering the abundant options we have to generate solar, wind and hydro power. There are only two commercial-scale solar energy plants in Australia. The Uterne (“bright sunny day” in Arrente language) Solar Power Station is a 1MW capacity grid-connected solar photovoltaic system 5 kms south of Alice Springs (it provides 1% of the town’s power). Then there is the 10MW Greenough River Solar Farm near Geraldton. On last year’s figures, the cost of using photovoltaics is less than half the cost of using grid electricity.
But despite this, the Federal Government’s $95 million Solar Cities programme is not exactly catching on. Surely solar is a better option for remote communities and roadhouses than the ever-present 24/7 diesel generators. Timber Creek is one of six small NT townships (also Borroloola, Elliott, Daly Waters, Ti Tree and Kings Canyon), that are largely diesel-fuelled. Most of the larger towns supplied by NT power company Generation are powered by gas or diesel. Generation says it also works with independent power producers to support renewable energy power generation initiatives. From our observations, solar power in the outback is small-scale and limited to solar-powered water pumps and the like. Many remote roadhouses, caravan parks and farmstays run diesel generators, if not 24/7 then for peak demand periods.
Considering that diesel fuel has to be transported vast distances by road trains from large cities, this seems a very backward way to generate power when your average outback town enjoys many more sunny days in a year than, say, Melbourne (or Maleny).
Australia’s modest renewable energy target states that 20% of our electricity must come from renewable sources like solar, wind and hydro by 2020. The Howard government introduced this target in 2001 and it was supported by the Rudd/Gillard government, in the ensuing years it has attracted around $18 billion in investment.
The Clean Energy Council this week called the Abbott plan to scrap the target “reckless,” saying four million Australians already live or work under a solar power system and more than 21,000 people work in the renewable energy sector.
The review prompted Silex Systems to suspend its proposed 2,000-dish solar farm near Mildura − enough to run 30,000 homes. Chief executive Michael Goldsworthy told the Sydney Morning Herald the uncertainty about Federal government support for a long-term renewable energy target and low wholesale power prices were the reasons the $420 million project would not go ahead.
Nevertheless, we have seen some encouraging signs of renewable energy around the country, including hydro power from Lake Argyle that powers Kununurra, Wyndham and 85% of the Argyle Diamond Mine. Wind power is big business in WA. Alinta Energy’s Walkaway Wind Farm south of Geraldton is a popular drive-through photo opportunity for travellers. Its 54 turbines produce 90MW of power, only one megawatt less than Australia’s largest wind farm at South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. The smaller Munbida wind farm 10kms south supplies 55MW to WA Water Corporation to offset the energy used by its desalination plant at Bunbury. The Collgar wind farm in the Merredin district of mid-west WA, owned by local farmers, produces 206MW of electricity a year from its 111 turbines – enough to power the equivalent of 125,000 houses.
In South Australia, Alinta Energy is favouring a stand-alone solar-thermal power plant (solar-thermal uses a field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight for a central receiver) to replace its ageing coal-fired power stations. Repower Port Augusta’s Dan Spencer told the ABC a solar-thermal plant would mean transition away from base load coal to base load renewable energy, “which is something we haven’t seen in Australia before”.
Germany is the world leader in renewable energy and we’d be the first to acknowledge it is easier by far to transmit electricity around a small, landlocked country. But the Germans are showing the rest of us how it can be done. The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3% in 2000 to about 30% in the first half of 2014 and the country will easily meet its own target of 35% by 2020, using wind, biogas and solar power. Travelling through Bavaria in 2010, we were astonished to see the roof of a 17th century farm building covered with solar panels. In many other rural areas, sheep grazed peacefully under banks of solar panels, and we spotted a waste-to-energy plant built on top of a small town’s landfill site.
We did our bit for renewable energy a few years back, installing half a dozen solar panels as well as a solar hot water system (admittedly with a booster switch from the grid if we have a prolonged wet spell). But what to do, we asked ourselves this week, about the carbon-burning exercise of towing a caravan 15,000 kms around Australia?
She Who looks up UBIBOI (‘useless but interesting bits of information’ – thanks, Grandad Ray), calculated our carbon footprint for this epic journey. By journey’s end we will have produced 4.77 tonnes of CO2, based on driving 15,000 kms at an average 14.5 litres per 100 kilometres. On this basis, we owe $24.15 per tonne or $115.95. We plan to donate this amount to Barung Landcare http://www.barunglandcare.org.au/ on our return home so they can plant trees to offset our hypocritical squandering of resources. Given the odds against an all-States and Territories commitment to Royalties for Renewables, it’s the least we can do.

English is a curious language. Often there are two or more words that sound the same but are spelt differently and mean different things. Sometimes a word can have two or more meanings, even with the same spelling. At Purnululu National Park in Western Australia (previously The Bungle Bungles), we woke at 6am after what used to be called a three dog night (the dogs get on the bed to keep you warm). We rugged up and went to the camp kitchen where a young German backpacker was making breakfast.
“Chilly this morning,” I said, as you do.
“Sorry? What is this chili?”
I explained that chilly mean cold, brisk, crisp etc.
“No, no – chili is hot. How can chili be cold? That makes no sense.” (Tempted to  start an ESL teacher’s explanation of homophones, but desisted.)
The word “depression” has several different meanings in the language, although most of us would immediately identify with what used to be called melancholia. Its other meanings include: An area sunk below its surroundings; a hollow; a region of low barometric pressure. The word is also used to describe the economic collapse of the early 1930s.
This train of thought picked up speed after we encountered 65 people riding 55 motorbikes around Australia to raise awareness of depression and suicide. Led by Steve Andrews, an organised man on a mission, the Black Dog Ride aims to circumnavigate Australia in 32 days, along the way taking its message to small communities, schools, mining towns and areas of large cities, where Steve says the incidence of depression among young people is serious.

As all sufferers will have found out, many after years of self-medication, depression is a psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite and apathy. Sufferers can also have feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death. When you put it like that, a prolonged weather low over the coast isn’t so hard to take.

We caught up with Steve and convoy at the Nanutarra Roadhouse, 293 kms south-west of Tom Price, on Monday. The roadhouse was doing exceptionally well from this scheduled stop, with fuel at $1.94 a litre and a big run on pies, sausage rolls and chips.

The Black Dog Ride left the central coast of New South Wales on July 24 and is scheduled to arrive at Bondi on August 24. Each day these 55 motorbikes, some with sidecars or trailers, rack up between 400 and 800 kilometres. (Quite an ask, says Ed. – we struggle to do more than 300km in a day and we don’t have to worry about keeping our balance.) The charity ride has three support vehicles (sponsored by Holden), and organisers keep in touch via mobile phones provided by Telstra. A film crew is also travelling with the group.

I tracked down Steve, a fit-looking 60 year old whose sunburnt face is showing signs of the constant exposure of riding a 1200cc BMW into the head winds they’ve been experiencing out in the desert.

He says the incidence of depression and the air of hopelessness that goes with it is rife among adolescents in the top end of Australia, particularly among indigenous communities.
“But it’s not just restricted to indigenous communities – it just happens to be worse there.
“We’ll be going to visit schools down south and talk to kids about the importance of looking after your mental health.
“It’s a serious problem among the young kids today and a lot of it is to do with the social media and 24/7 connectivity which is putting a lot of extra pressure on them.”
Steve decided to ride around the country on his own in 2009 to raise awareness of depression and suicide after having personal experiences with family and friends. He posted his itinerary and people gradually started taking an interest, and over time he started to make connections with bike riders all around the country.
“I had the feeling that there were other people that had the interest and the passion that I had and the back story.
“That led me to start what became known as the Black Dog Ride to the Red Centre the following year. We’ve done that ride for four years, with 300 riders last year.
“I thought it was time to do something different this year. I felt like a ride around Australia and thought it would be great to bring members of this Black Dog family along with me. People have it on their bucket list of things to do and support a great cause at the same time.”
Tragically, the Black Dog Ride lost one of its members this week when the WA co-ordinator, Les James, was killed after being involved in an accident with a truck on the highway near Geraldton. He had been about to join the group, who were devastated by the loss, but determined to continue the ride. 9NEWS reporter Simon Bouda, who is on the ride, said Mr James was a devoted family man who had a passion for motorcycling that led him to become involved with the Black Dog Ride.
“This accident has shattered everyone on the ride, there’s no doubt about that,” Mr Bouda said. “But the ride will continue because we feel it should continue as a mark of respect for him and what he believed in, which is starting the conversation about depression.”
As someone who has put up with every kind of black dog there is for many years, I salute these champions of the cause, taking their message to remote Aboriginal (Let’s start using the term First Nations- Ed.) communities like Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing.
As I now only pay $6 a month for my regular maintenance dose of anti-depressants compared to the ‘non-concession’ cost, I’m going to donate the difference every month to the Black Dog Ride. These generous people have raised more than $1.5 million for mental health services. This year half the money is going to Lifeline and Mental Health First Aid. Send these guys some money or at least send this story to someone you know who has an affinity with the subject.
Postscript: We were saddened to hear about the death of brilliant actor/comedian Robin Williams, who reportedly suffered from depression. I have posted a separate piece on my website about this story and the media’s approach to the subject of suicide. http://bobwords.com.au/suicide-and-the-media/

When I started this weekly essay three months ago, I was aware that from late June it would tend to have the flavour of a travelogue, given that we were about to set off on a three-month expedition across remote parts of this magnificent land. Now at the half-way point, coming to the end of a three-day stop at a bush camp in Karajini National Park, I’m doing it the old-fashioned way: who, what, where, when and why, the basics salted with philosophical musings about why the world is the way it is. My writing method is to start with an idea or a theme and cross over to the Internet when I want to find out stuff or check facts. We have all become so dependent on Google and other Internet search engines (yes, there are others), and what is (at present) a free service. It is like someone taking a 99-year lease over your memory and maybe someday making you pay when you want to remember things.
Here at Karajini National Park in Dales Gorge (known in local dialect as Nyingbungwana) campground, we have neither power nor mobile signal and only enough water to last us until we get to Tom Price on Friday. There are people here who have satellite dishes sitting outside their caravans, so I guess if you could be bothered you could find out what’s going on in the world. Last time we heard a radio news bulletin it began with reports on three separate murders in WA and then went on to talk about a sex offender who had breached release conditions by being around teenagers (he was fined $1000).
So now, in this remote part of the Pilbara, I can imagine how it might have been for the monkish scribes of yore, scratching away with a quill pen on the most rudimentary parchment; or for our original inhabitants, painting their handed-down stories on rock walls.
So I’m hammering away at my laptop in the shade of a Cypress tree, aiming to keep on writing until Windows 7 warns me to plug in to a power source or risk losing work that has not been saved.
If that happens, I will revert to pencil and notebook. If it’s good enough for David Malouf, it should be OK for me.
Meanwhile the tree under which I sit interrupts to admonish me for calling it a Cypress.
“I’m a bloody Mulga, you ignorant tourist. Your botanists named me Acacia aneura – you’d think they might have asked the local aborigines if we had a name.”
“Oh, you mean like Mount Nameless,” I say (biggest mountain in these parts). “I’m told the local name for that is Jarndunmunha.”
“That’s outstanding,” says the Mulga, shaking his branches in excitement. “You’re spot on, even if your pronunciation is shite.”
Just then She Who Has Gorn Orf Newspapers puts her cool palm on my clammy forehead.
“You need to drink more water,” she advises.
Shade is good out here in Karajini. While the temperatures are nothing like they were in the Kimberley, it is still hot and dry and those keen on bushwalking are warned to drink a litre of water for every hour of walking. We had just returned from a day of two-hour hikes down gorges to waterfalls and back, some of it in the middle of the day, which might explain the talking bush.
Wednesday our walks took us along the rim of Dales Gorge and then to the steep descent into the gorge, where walkers can either hike to Circular Pool or have a swim under Fortescue Falls. Or you can go further on to the Fern Pool (Jubula), a beautifully serene place of significance for local Aborigines.

Once the party of people from South Australia who were talking about AFL moved on, it was indeed a special place with its cobalt blue waters and bright green ferns growing around the base of ancient native fig trees, clinging tenaciously to the rock face.
One’s sense of place and awareness of the spiritual nuances of the land becomes finely tuned when sitting in the midst of Western Australia’s second biggest national park. If I had the Internet I could tell you which one is the biggest. Maybe you already know?
We came here from Port Hedland, a strangely fascinating industrial town, dominated by the iron ore shipped out on giant ore carriers every day of the week. Every day except Monday August 4, apparently.
The Information Centre, the Museum, and every shop was closed and all pubs bar one were closed for Port Hedland Cup day. We wandered around the deserted town, following the self-guided interpretive walk. It was a quiet day in port too, with only a couple of ore carriers moored in the harbour, but at least a dozen sitting way out on the horizon.
So we pressed on, after making sure we had enough good water to last four days, to the ancient gorge country 263kms south-west of Port Hedland. The road to Karajini is between Port Hedland and the major mining towns of Newman and Tom Price, so road trains are frequent, as are wide loads.
We have no idea what the equipment is or where it was going, but we were happy to leave it parked at a roadside rest area while we went on ahead.
Karajini National Park was declared in 1969 (it was then called Hamersley National Park), but it part of it was excised in 1986 to allow a new mine to start operations. There is a constant clash of values out here, between the needs of conservationists, tourists and miners. The traditional owners have a lot of say in how the park is managed today, but the prospect of more mining in the park is ever-present.
Karajini’s majestic scenery was brought about when massive rivers gouged away at the mountains over millions of years, creating distinctive gorge walls – layers of iron ore-laden sedimentary rock. The gorges are particularly special at sunset when the rock walls turn molten red. No comparison to the Grand Canyon, as it is hardly commercialised at all. The only public communication is limited to one card-operated public telephone.
So, now we’re in Tom Price, having done the mine tour (“know your enemy” –Ed) to pick up some WIFI and send this out. And we still don’t know who won the Port Hedland Cup.

 

 

 

So I’m standing in front of a smeary mirror in an outback caravan park washroom having a shave when this old bloke walks in.
“Owya goin?
“Great thanks,” (continue shaving while Old Bloke goes into a cubicle nearby).
“Whereyaheadin?” says the voice from behind the door (rustling of clothing and clang of belt buckle as pants hit floor).
“Goin’ to Katherine then headin’ west to Broome,” I say, going with the flow of outback caravan park talk.
The conversation continues, punctuated with a few strained noises, the kind of which we all unconsciously make at one time or another in such circumstances. I nick my face, distracted by this curiously intimate dialogue and the steam on the mirror. Old Bloke finishes his ablutions and (good thing) washes his hands.
“Safe travelling then,” he says, disappearing into the starry night.
When you set out in a 12-foot caravan to ply the highways and byways of this vast land with nothing save the Thunder Down Under portable loo, it is a given that you will end up using other people’s dunnies. For my non-Aussie readers, dunny is Aussie for toilet (or WC, Washroom, Bathroom etc)
This bush toilet (top photo) at a roadside rest stop just before the turn off to Derby in the western Kimberley, is a good example of what we call “the long drop”. At Karlu Karlu (Devil’s Marbles) in the Northern Territory, National Parks provide a number of these unplumbed toilets at the unpowered camp ground. Each is a fair distance away from the camp ground.
If you go at night and switch off your torch when you get there, the night sky lights up with panoply of stars, the likes of which city dwellers rarely get to see. A torch is an essential piece of equipment when traversing even a short stretch of desert at night. Shoes are a good idea too. And when venturing outback and using these sorts of facilities, it is a sound idea to take your own preferred brand of toilet paper with you, as often there will be none, or worse, those small boxes with 200 wafer thin tissues (17.5mm by 11.5mm in case you were wondering).
This brings me to a persistent urban myth out here in caravan park land. Grey Nomads, we keep hearing, steal toilet paper. Yes they do, one woman insisted. They take their battery-powered drills into the loos, dismantle the dispensers and liberate the rolls. If author and folklorist Bill Scott were still around I’d ask him if he’d heard of that one (Bill wrote a book about urban myths called ‘ Pelicans and Chihuahuas and Other Urban Legends’).
I’m sure the loo roll-stealing granny is an urban myth (a fictional story re-told so often it assumes veracity). I mean, if you can afford a 30-foot caravan and a V8 truck to tow it, why would you flog $2 worth of toilet paper? That would be a selfish and tight-arse thing to do. (tight-arse being Aussie for cheap, overly thrifty, etc).
One of the joys of getting to use other people’s dunnies is that you get to collect examples of over-zealous sign-writing. The most common ones in washrooms and public loos are reminders about flushing, what not to put down the toilet and instructions on how to use toilet brush (and when). Some are ambiguous: “Please flush” and underneath “Water is scarce – be considerate.” Some are poetic: “Even if you’re in a rush, don’t forget to flush.” (and a coy reminder to flush twice to get rid of the evidence).
The inside walls and doors of some dunnies are festooned with philosophical and sometimes unprintable remarks from fellow travellers, some of whom one might guess are sorely disaffected. In 2014, with a mean-spirited Tory government beating up the poor as if it were their fault, a theme is developing: “Retiree bludgers with $100,000 fifth wheelers ripping off social security,” reads one. “Stop grey nomad welfare cheats,” says another. A socialist scholar urges us to “Subvert the dominant paradigm.” “Frankie and Donna were in this stinky toilet,” reads another.
Those Grey Nomads who travel all the time and have their own amenities have one pressing need when they come to civilisation: they need some place to empty their chemical toilet cartridges. Some towns provide a dump point, which is like a public septic tank. The oddest sight I’d seen for a while was in Emerald, where we’d stopped to admire the giant Van Gogh replica painting in the park. Four large caravans, each towed by a $70,000 4WD, drew up to the kerb one after the other. From these vans emerged men of retirement age, each carrying a long heavy metal box. They proceeded in convoy to the public dump point, rid themselves of the week’s takings and returned to their vans, having also had their exercise for the day. Did they stop to admire the scenery? Nuh.
In bigger towns which get swamped with backpackers and other travellers, it is not so easy to find a public toilet. Increasingly, service stations, libraries, information centres and cafes are keeping the keys behind the counter, in a bid to keep out the riff-raff. In Katherine, a sizeable town in the Northern Territory, a local shopping centre provoked some outrage and claims of racial bias last year after hiring a security guard to police the toilets and ask for a $2 “donation”. “That’s un-Australian,” I protested, as we went to the information centre instead. I often wonder what Riff and Raff think about being denied a basic human right.
Town Councils are increasingly installing smart toilets to help combat instances of people vandalising toilets or using them as meeting places for purposes nefarious. So far we have found dunnies like this one in Alice Springs, also in Armidale and Hall’s Creek.
When you press the green button, the door slides open then closes with a metallic swish.
“Door larked,” says a metallic voice in an American accent. “You have 10 minutes before the door will un-lark. ” Well thanks for that – now I can’t remember why I came in here in the first place. Ah, right, the curry.
“Door will open in one minute 30 seconds…”

I was sitting outside a remote Northern Territory roadhouse in the sun, enjoying a Mars bar, musing on the whys and wherefores of life when I was somewhat startled by the appearance of a troupe of US Marines. I know we’ve been out of touch for a while, but surely this was a ‘friendly’ force…
They had stopped off at the Victoria River Roadhouse to buy snack food, use the latrines, saying y’all and howdy and that. She who reads Facebook when she can’t buy Newspapers said she encountered a few Marines coming out of the ladies loo. Neither of us was aware there were women in the US Marines, but there was the evidence right in front of us, wearing attractive salmon pink fatigues, faces already pink from the relentless northern sun. It wasn’t the first convoy of the day. A variety of road vehicles rumbled by, including a low loader carrying a grader, supply trucks and several armoured vehicles which I lack the technical know-how to accurately identify and describe.
The locals say the US Marine presence is building up. Private Nonamenopackdrill (Ms) from Oklahoma told our investigator they were bound for Bradshaw. Our reporter said “I don’t know where that is” and the private replied “Neither do I” and they both laughed – having a moment.
The Bradshaw Defence Area, 8 kms west of Timber Creek, is a training camp owned by the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The Bradshaw Defence Area is what Kevin McCloud would call ‘vast’. The ADF bought Bradshaw Station from private owners for $5 million and generously allowed the former owner to keep his cattle, on the proviso that he cleared the 990,000ha property of livestock. So Bradshaw then became a defence asset, sprawling 8,700 square kilometres in all directions, with rivers on two sides and pastoral properties on the other boundaries.
The first thing the ADF did when it bought Bradshaw was to spend $10 million building an all-weather bridge across the Victoria River. Citizens are not permitted to cross the bridge, although it is quite the photo stop on the route that takes in historic monuments like explorer Augustus Gregory’s monument and a big old Boab tree thoughtlessly carved with the dates it was “discovered” by white explorers.
Most of the information about Bradshaw comes from the US-based Nautilus Security Institute www.nautilus.org, which keeps track of all things military. The Nautilus Institute says it is used by Australian, US, and forces and those from other countries (including Singapore) for infantry and armoured formation manoeuvres, ground and air live firing and bombing.
We got a bit more personal run-down on Bradshaw on a sunset river cruise 35 km down the 800 km long Victoria River, while being expertly piloted by skipper and tour guide Neville Fogarty, a long-time resident of the nearby town of Timber Creek, population 300, including four Aboriginal communities. This is one of the longest permanent rivers in Australia, named after a then newly crowned Queen of England, after Captain J.C Wickham sailed up the river on the HMS Beagle in 1819.
On our three-hour sunset cruise Neville regaled us with stories of crocodiles taking on Brahman cattle when they come down to the river to drink. Even though Bradshaw was destocked, about 40 head of unbranded cross-breed cattle, descendants of those that were shipped elsewhere, still run wild on the property. Apparently a bold croc will lie in wait, just under the water, and then lunge, grabbing the beast by the nose, dragging it into the water. The drowned beast is left to decompose some and then ripped up later by one or more crocs. Lovely.
If you can appreciate the analogy, amphibious apex predators patrol the banks of the river, making sure no rogue beasts cross their borders, while on dry land thousands of soldiers play war games, ostensibly for training purposes, but ready to repel boarders.
There is a long tradition of border patrols up here in the Territory. After the Japanese bombed Darwin and other NT locations, an Army unit, nicknamed ‘The Nackaroos’ kept vigil, patrolling the northern shoreline on horseback, aided by local aboriginal guides. It seems a futile task, given the vast expanse of shoreline across the top of WA and the Territory. Nevertheless, the Bradshaw pastoral lease is doing its bit to protect our sovereign borders. US Marines took part in exercises last year that involved the strange-looking Osprey, a tilt rotor aircraft with both a vertical take-off and landing and short take-off and landing capabilities. It is a bit hard to bring aircraft like that into the remote NT without people noticing.
The 2011 decision to allow a US Marine battalion to set up camp in northern Australia raised fears that it makes us more of a target than we were when it was just Pine Gap and other US-linked bases around the country. Nautilus says the main reason the ADF chose Bradshaw is the abundant space, a long, long way from large-scale human habitation. Despite the growing popularity of the Kimberley as a tourist destination, the area around Bradshaw is sparsely populated, not counting the 2,500 single accommodation units on Bradshaw.
US Marines last ‘invaded’ this part of the world back in September last year for full-scale military exercises. There is much speculation that exercises will be held earlier this year, with September in the Territory maybe a bit on the hot side for the Americans. Now most of you would know that there is a battalion of US marines permanently based in Darwin. It was controversial at the time and it still ought to be. We can put this one down to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard cosying up to the latest Sheriff of Washington, but we doubt Tony Abbott has plans to change this arrangement any time soon.
As the latest batch of marines milled about in the hot noon-day sun at Victoria River Roadhouse, a tall black man with the bearing of someone in charge shouted something that sounded like “H’okay. Move’m out.” The response was a chorus of “Hoo-ah” or maybe OoRah, a common Army and/or a US Marine response to command which apparently means “anything and everything except no”. “Hoo-ah” is also said to date back to the 19th century British army acronym for Heard, Understood and Acknowledged. Again, it could have been an appropriated from Indian (ie American First Nations’-ed.) chant.
On the other side of the Victoria River from the Bradshaw Defence Area lies the vast (there’s that word again) Auvergne pastoral holding, once owned by the listed Australian Agricultural Company and now owned by a British group. I once had shares in AAC but sold them after discovering the extent of that company’s involvement in live cattle export. In that sense, a big wide river separates our ability to stop funding something on ethical and moral grounds, while on the Bradshaw side of the river, our tax dollars ($29.2 billion 2014-2015) are put to work, with no right of veto.

Here’s a radical plan to help rejuvenate small-town Australia and send a message to the world that yes, we do have compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves. The Pittsworth Solution (I just picked a small town at random), calls for all 2,017 detainees on Manus Island and Nauru to be re-patriated to Australia to live in rented houses in small, affordable towns like Pittsworth. This is not an ideological plan; it is about economics, humanity and giving people a fair go.
In March, Australian management firm Transfield Services won an A$1.2 billion contract to run the country’s two troubled Pacific island immigration detention centres. The centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island together house about 2,107 asylum seekers (January 2013 figures). Transfield’s contract runs for 20 months, which works out to a weekly bill of $13.86 million, or about $6,600 per person per week. About eight times the cost of keeping someone in jail in Australia. The offshore detention model demonstrably does not work: it is broken and should never have been created in the first place. Nothing happens in these centres except boredom, despair, riots, suicides, mental illnesses, assaults and abuse. If this was a town of 2,107 people in mainstream Australia, the government would have declared a Federal Intervention by now.
My back of an envelope scheme envisages about 200 detainees repatriated to 10 small towns throughout Australia to live in rented houses, paid for by the Federal Government. The former detainees would receive the Asylum Seeker Allowance, (a fortnightly payment not unlike the dole, which lasts until the asylum seeker’s claim is heard and assessed). The Government would pick up all the basic costs, rent, bonds and utilities. After the maximum two-year period has elapsed, those whose claims have not been heard are automatically given a two-year visa extension with the same conditions. Once the asylum seeker’s claim has been assessed, he/she is either sent back to the country of origin, or given permanent resident status. Free market rules apply from that day on.
This subject was expertly canvassed in The Age last month by prominent barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside. I concur with his summary that the alternatives are more effective, humane, and less expensive than our present approach. The regional solution, as Burnside calls it, should restore our reputation as decent people – “something which has been tarnished and degraded by our behaviour over the past 13 years”.
The best part of any such regional solution is that the Federal Government money invested in a more humane scheme would be spent in local communities. While Burnside does not name specific rural towns, the National Farmers Federation says there are more than 90,000 unfilled jobs in rural areas. Asylum seekers would no doubt pick up work and everyone would benefit, if such a scheme was ever approved.
Even with a proportion of these small communities resenting the new Australians, it is surely a better option than locking up people who have not been charged with an offence or proven guilty of one. The 200 or so temporary residents moved to each of the towns would spend their allowance in local shops and, good grief, some of them might go to English language lessons and work on their plan for permanently settling in Australia.
Last time I looked, a lot of rural towns were doing it tough. A scheme like this could contribute about $6.5 million a year to struggling local economies – the kids could go to local schools, and if jobs were not readily available, the Asylum Seekers could be offered a scheme not unlike Work for the Dole, which would get them out into the community.
Now that Iraq has once again flared as a world trouble spot, there will be people saying that we don’t want religious zealots in our country, stirring up trouble. From what I read, the people stirring up the trouble don’t want to go anywhere else – they just want to run their own country according to their religious and political beliefs. The asylum seekers are the people who don’t want to know about sectarian violence; they want a better future.
This is not so different to the people from Belfast, Killarney and Carrickfergus who fled Ireland during the Troubles to settle in Australia. The Pittsworth Solution (or the Maleny Solution if we want to be even-handed about it), has a bit more going for it than the current model, which is to “Stop the Boats”, incarcerate the ones who got this far outside our sovereign borders, then sit on their hands and wait for the next government to come up with something better.
It is hard to believe that a year has passed already (July 19) since the Abbott government introduced Sovereign Borders. Shame on the Labor Opposition for failing to vote in the affirmative to close Nauru and Manus Island.
This issue has been clumsily handballed by governments of all creeds for far too long. It’s time to show some compassion and at the same time breathe some new life into rural communities.
It all comes down to one thing: what are we afraid of and how can we overcome our apparently entrenched xenophobia? Take a wander through any suburb that has been tagged “ethnic” and you will find a colourful slice of life that deserves to be shared by all. Here in Alice Springs, where I’m finishing two of these essays to email before we set off into the NT/WA outback, there is an Afghan Mosque. It is not so surprising (though not widely known), that Alice Springs has an Islamic Society. It dates back to the pioneer days of the 1880s when thousands of cameleers from Afghanistan and Pakistan served as the railway of the outback. The Afghan Mosque is a modest building, nestled in a corner of the suburb of Larapinta with the McDonnell Ranges as a backdrop. It looks like it belongs there.

Australia’s fickle weather can pick you up one day and dump on you the next; months of drought can turn in a heartbeat to flooding rains that ruin crops, damage property and erode the land. Rainfall can be prodigious – notoriously wet places like Tully in far north Queensland or Springbrook and Maleny (south east Queensland), can receive 100mm in 15 minutes and some of those places have recorded up to a metre of rain in a week or two. Unhappily for farmers in the arid interior who depend on water to grow food and sustain livestock, much of this precious water runs out to sea. Some is captured in dams, but Australia’s notoriously high evaporation rate together with the country’s growing population (not to mention industry), soon enough sucks the water level down to normal, then low. Authorities impose water restrictions, although the constraints are usually self-imposed. If the Toyota Prado’s been out in the bush, the owner is probably going to wash it, water restrictions or not.
We all waste water, alas, even those of us who claim to be conservationists. Washing dishes – run the tap until the water turns hot, and then put the plug in. You just let four or five litres run away down the storm drains. When brushing their teeth, most people let the tap run. There are so many ways in which first world householders waste water. Think of impoverished African villagers making the daily trek to the well to cart a bucket of not very clean water. Much about how we manage water comes down to common sense and having an unselfish attitude to this most precious resource. Without water, everything dies.
So we need to share it around. As Nelson Mandela once said: “Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.” This nicely distils life’s necessities into one terse sentence.
Water is becoming big business in Australia’s agriculture sector where big global investment groups like Kidder Williams (not to mention a few mainland Chinese companies), are buying up water rights – legislated water allocations for farmers and irrigators.
It is not difficult at all to find registered water brokers, whose job it is to stitch up irrigation entitlements for landowners.
Meanwhile, the United Nations estimates that 780 million people lack access to safe drinking water. By 2030, 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Environmental Outlook to 2030 report The OECD says water scarcity will worsen, due to unsustainable use and management of the resource as well as climate change. The number of people living in areas affected by severe water stress is expected to increase by another 1 billion to over 3.9 billion by 2030.
“Do Something” – a community organisation which tries to raise awareness about environmental issues, says that while Australia has the luxury of quality tap water, Australians have developed a habit of buying bottled water. According to <gotap.com.au>, we spend more than $500 million a year on bottled water. In 2009, Australia produced 582.9 million litres of bottled water, and these figures would only have increased since then. In most cases, a litre of bottled water costs as much or more than a litre of petrol. Moreover, the manufacturing process of producing, packaging and selling bottled water is not environmentally sustainable.
This subject came to life for me again while driving through South Australia. The Murray River provides 40% of the State’s water, which probably explains why South Australians get twitchy about irrigators upstream in other States tapping into an ever-diminishing resource. In South Australia, a network of above-ground water pipelines keep people focused on the fact that they live in one of the more arid parts of a dry continent. We followed one such pipeline 143 kms from Keith, a prosperous grain growing centre not far over the border from Victoria, to Tailem Bend. That particular pipeline was built in the 1960s, including 800 kms of branch mains, so someone had a long-term plan. Fifty-plus years on, a lot of one and two-term governments faced with crippling drought opted for expensive, power-hungry desalination plants. SA has one of those now too, but it gets mothballed when it is not needed, which raises all sorts of questions about the cost of water conservation. As we trekked northwards to Port Augusta, we followed another water pipeline, which brings water from the Murray River at Morgan to Port Augusta, Whyalla and Woomera. This too was built years ago to provide water security to remote, arid towns.
We lived through a lengthy period of dire water restrictions in south east Queensland when a combination of drought and over-use saw the major dams dwindle to below 30%. It was amazing how quickly the conscientious among us adapted to collecting shower water in buckets, restricting hand-held garden watering to our allotted days/hours and driving around in dirty cars. But once the crisis was past and torrential rain had filled the dam, we tend to lapse back into our wasteful ways.
A study by Rheem Australia found that almost half of Australians spend six minutes or more in the shower and 26% of Australians have two or more showers a day. When one is in a caravan and winter temperatures remain in single figures through the day, one sometimes forgets to have a shower at all. Here in Coober Pedy we have to stump up 20 cents for a three-minute shower – the morning is looking good!
We have all developed middle class, first-world attitudes to water – we expect it to be of pristine quality, and if it isn’t, then off we go to the supermarket to buy a 10 or 15-litre carton. I confess to buying a lot of bulk spring water last time we went to the outback; it doesn’t take long for our treated city water stomachs to start heaving with frequent changes in water quality as we travel. Bluegrass band Uncle Bill recorded a song called “Don’t drink the water” which resonates loudly in the outback where aquifer water often smells so much like unleaded petrol you don’t want to believe that after boiling it is OK to drink.
On this outback trip, after filtering local water and finding it unpalatable, I went into a local Coles and bought 20 litres of spring water for $10. Hypocrite? Maybe, but I feel less queasy already.