Of Rivers, Baguettes
& Billabongs
An exploration of the Dordogne
and east of the Darling
By Reg Egan
Published by Brolga Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 12544 A’Beckett St Melbourne Australia 8006
ABN 46 063 962 443
email: [email protected]
web: www.brolgapublishing.com.au
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.
Copyright © Reg Egan 2012
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Of Rivers, Baguettes and Billabongs
Reg Egan
ISBN 9781922175939 (eBook)
Social history.
cultural relations.
Australians--Travel--France.
France--Relations--Australia.
Australia--Relations--France.
Darling River (Qld. and N.S.W.)--Social conditions.
Dodoigne River (France)--Social conditions.
Dewey Number: 306.42
Cover design by David Khan
Typeset by Wanissa Somsuphangsri
Every man has two countries – his own and France.
Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
(1743 – 1826)
PREFACE
Writers are a curious mob: a few make a handsome living, some make enough to exist and thereby justify their occupation but the majority survive - somehow. So, why do they do it? Why do they stick at it?
The glib answer is: because they love it. But perhaps it is more than that; perhaps it is also a wish to share. They have come upon something or have discovered something which is too good to keep to themselves and so they want to share it with you; whether you like it or not. And while I hope that I do not sound too fervent, that is the principal reason for this book: a wish to share two great loves; one which began to manifest itself when I was as young as six or seven and the other which crept into my life when I was in my early thirties and burst like a grand fireworks display when I crossed the Rhine into France in 1972.
I lived the first nineteen or so years of my life in the bush. I do not mean the country, which is sometimes referred to as “the bush” by clever and disparaging media people, I actually mean the bush. It was a place called Tolmie and it was in the hills halfway between the towns of Mansfield and Whitfield in north-eastern Victoria.
Our farm had deep rich brown soil, a big rainfall and was cold and frosty and wet in winter with the occasional three or four inches (75 – 100 millimetres) of snow. In summer it could be hot but the nights were always cool to cold.
If you walked up to the back of our farm (and on to the neighbour’s farm) you had a reasonably good view down towards Cheshunt and the valley of the King River; you were aware of the wonderfully scenic Powers Lookout a few miles away and of the Mt Buffalo park in the far distance; there was Mt Feathertop straight ahead but also very distant and Mt Hotham, wonderful, enigmatic Hotham and Dinner Plain near by; and finally as you turned to your right there was Mt Cobbler and Stirling and Buller.
Great country, great bush — with its elusive wild orchids, its startlingly clear creeks and their rocks, its rich hillsides blazing in the yellow wattles on a sunny afternoon in late winter, its serious gum trees in their unique greens, deep blue and grey-greens and its questioning native animals like its quick gliders, its ringtail possums, its mumbling, bumbling wombats, its clumsy wallabies and graceful grey kangaroos, and, and… Yes the list could be long.
Even as a boy I was in love with it all, and thanks to my parents and the majority of our schoolteachers, I was rather proud to be an Australian. Yet I had seen a tiny portion of this country. I did not so much as hear the roll of the sea and feel the sand beneath my feet until I was nineteen, and I knew nothing of the beauty of Tasmania, or of the glorious eastern coast of Australia. I had not been to the mountains of our Great Dividing Range nor had I felt the soft and deep warmth of our sub-tropical state of Queensland, and although I had heard about our cattle kings and our intrepid explorers, I had only read of the Outback and the glorious shapes and colours of the centre of this continent. But, ignorant though I was and am, I came to love it all. Then France arrived on the scene.
You can love two countries. Indeed you can love more than two, but let me, a real Aussie, explain to you about France.
Wine has taken me on a terrible, and a momentous journey. It was wine that led me to one of Melbourne’s most honoured wine merchants Seabrook & Son adjoining the demolished Selbourne Chambers in Bourke Street. And it was Tom Seabrook (“old Tom”, the father of Doug) who suggested that I should get a copy of the little Penguin paperback The Generous Earth by Philip Oyler, and it was Philip the lovesick Englishman who started my affair with France. Philip literally immersed himself in pre-World War Two France, but it was the valley of the Dordogne River which captured him heart and soul and held him a prisoner for the rest of his life.
Then came Freda White and her Three Rivers of France — Dordogne, Lot and Tarn, and then we went to France and finally we came upon the valley of the Dordogne. What more could a man ask?
Well, he could, as I have said, ask for a chance to share his love with you. Then comes the problem — how do you concentrate and condense your justification for the affection that you have for both these remarkable countries?
It seemed to me that you would choose a thing or an area that was involved in the history of each country and was to an extent at its geographical centre or near centre. At first therefore, I chose two rivers: the Dordogne in France and the Darling in Australia. Now in France I could have picked the Loire with its historical but perhaps too pretty and perfect châteaux; or I might have chosen the Seine rising in some quite beautiful country just to the north of the middle of France; or I might have written about the mighty Rhone and its remarkable exit in the south of France; or I could have selected the Lot. But I finally concluded that it was the Dordogne originating in the Massif Central, that was most representative of the France that I had come to know and love, and especially villages and towns in its valley like Carennac and Sarlat.
The next task was to justify my Australian river — The Darling. The river which is in the eastern half of Australia marks, in its
