Outback; what a word. But the more I researched and looked at the Darling River itself, the more I realised that it would not do. It is a boundary of sorts but it does not represent Australia in the way that the Dordogne Valley represents France. It is a river that seemed to gather together the highly adventurous squatters and nomads of the outback with their more conservative counterparts to the east of the river and it also encompassed many such squatters and station owners from over the border in Queensland.
But it was, even before the coming of the upstream irrigators and cotton magnates, an unreliable river, a stream that was as our historian C.E.W. Bean admitted in the early 1900s, “a river [which] will be navigable, on an average, for six or eight months in each year [and only] in the lower reaches”. And even then we are speaking of navigable for relatively small steamers like his paddle steamer the Dreadnought.
No, the Darling and its valley and the valleys of its tributaries like the Bogan and the Culgoa and the Namoi and the rest of them, bear no resemblance to the Dordogne and its tributaries. Those Australian valleys are to a great extent uninhabitable, but the Darling does, as I have said, mark a boundary in Australia — it always has and it always will. It is the boundary that signals the beginning of the Outback and that Outback and its interpretation by writers and poets and painters and their like (living principally to the east and in the large towns and cities) describes and fixes many of the characteristics for which Australians are known and admired. And so, I could and I have, therefore, written about the actual valley and the people of the Dordogne but the spirit of the Darling and its influence, its disproportionate influence on the creation of the Australian character as we have come to know it.
I ask you to bear in mind, when reading this account of part of the geography and history of France and Australia, that it does not claim to be a complete or an exhaustive account. I hope it will simply whet your appetite and that you will now begin to explore the two countries and their architecture, their countryside, their writers and poets and their food and their differences and similarities — go deeper and go further than I have, but start your journeys. Taste the essence of France by travelling from Clermont Ferrand in the Auvergne and finishing on the Atlantic coast and, perhaps follow our route in Australia: along the east coast and then in a wandering way arrive eventually at Bourke, on the Darling and then wander back again.
And if you do not succumb completely and utterly to the charms, and the differences of each country, I’ll… Yes, indeed I will.
Reg Egan
CHAPTER ONE
There is a stream, or creek, as we Australians say, deep in rugged hills and mountains not far from Victoria’s Alpine National Park and it is called very simply the Evans Creek. It flows into the King River which joins the Ovens River near Wangaratta and the Ovens flows into the Murray.
My brother and I, aged twelve and ten or thereabouts, walked to that stream many years ago, and I thought then how beautiful it was with its rocks, its overhanging trees and shrubs and its cold and its clarity. It is in a deep and steep gully, covered sparsely but adequately with medium-sized eucalypts, sweet bursaria, wattles and patches of bracken fern, and nearer the stream, a leggy shrub we used to call hazel, and the whole is interspersed with these wonderful rocks. It’s as if the rocks have been artistically placed with regard to the density and size of the trees and shrubs, and down by the watercourse, they are flat and smooth, so as to form small ledges and rough terraces. And I know that the scene has not changed even today, for it is still largely inaccessible
How exciting it was for us to set out that day on our journey of exploration! We had been given permission by our father to stay out in the bush overnight and he offered us only one piece of advice about finding our way there and back: “If you think you are lost go to the nearest gully or creek and follow it down. If you do that eventually you will come out at a farm somewhere around Cheshunt or Whitfield.”
So we ventured forth with nothing but warm jackets, a billy, a small frying pan, fishing line and hooks and a box of matches each. Oh, and some wonderful ham sandwiches liberally spread with Keen’s mustard — enough sandwiches for two meals.
In fact we had fish for dinner that night. And perhaps I do not need to tell you about trout straight from the water, fried and eaten in your fingers as dusk descends over the bush and the stars and a nail-moon emerge overhead. We kept our fire going all night and stayed as close to it as we dared, but we were glad to be up at daylight and fishing for our breakfast.
When we walked out that afternoon we both promised to return. I have reneged on that promise.
My love of streams progressed from that distant camping night on the Evans Creek and after a few years encompassed the trout river known as the Howqua near Mansfield, the King River below Powers Lookout and upstream into the foothills, the Ovens and its billabongs and even the Murrumbidgee and the Murray, and then, with a move to Melbourne, the seductive Yarra.
The Melbourne move was responsible for my getting to know the Thames in London, the Rhine and Mosel in Germany with their backdrop of vines and castles, the Seine in Paris and its multitude of fine and romantic bridges, the Danube that waltzes through Vienna and charms the gypsies of historic Budapest, the Arno…
In the film The River (Le Fleuve) made in 1951 by that talented French filmmaker Jean Renoir, son of the painter Auguste Renoir, the narrator, a girl lingers by the river Ganges. She reflects by the river, meditates on the river and its influence on her life and finally she muses that they (she and her friends) might have lived on any river but if they had then “the flavour of the people who live by (that) river would have been different”. I concur — the river, the country, the climate…
The first European river that I came to know and to love was that Rhine river, or more correctly, to know in part. We landed in Frankfurt, picked up a car and drove to the Rhine and then along it to Koblenz and then down (or up, really) the Mosel and so into France. The Rhine with its amazing water traffic, its wonderful valley and its vineyards and its castles: what an introduction to Europe. We were there at the beginning of autumn and the weather, although comfortably warm, was also showery and we were impressed and delighted by the activity in the outdoor cafes. After a shower had ceased, the waitresses were on the scene as the last drop fell, mopping the tables, re-adjusting the chairs and making everything inviting for the hoped for customer. You had to stop for a drink or coffee or anything, there was no alternative. And when you sat at your table and looked upwards, there you saw the golden grapes and the changing colours of the leaves.
When we got to the Mosel the scene was even more elegant and the river smaller, but just as lovely. How easy it was to love both the Mosel and Rhine rivers.
The two rivers of France that stand out in my memory are the Rhone (near Condrieu) and the Dordogne (near Sarlat). The Rhone, by Australian standards, is simply immense and I whiled away the whole of one afternoon just sitting on the terrace of our hotel at Condrieu and watching the activities on that river.
What a mass of water: the width, the depth and the flow. Barges of half the countries of Europe thumped away out in the middle with gentle arcs peeling away from their prows and turbulent waters vainly trying to catch the sterns, and yet not far from where I sat there was a wooden fishing boat seeming almost becalmed with a cheerful fisherman casting a flimsy net supported by a mast and some complicated lines and poles. And on the bank almost under the terrace were two grizzled locals in old caps and workingmen’s blues with their Gitanes, by the smell of it, and they were patiently waiting for a bite on lines suspended from abnormally long and rather rustic-looking fishing rods.
When
