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10th Nov 2005
The Burdekin
Thursday, 10th November, 2005
Up at 6.30 and in spite of the early hour, its already baking outside.
We had breakfast at 7.15 and although the initial thought was that we’d have it outside; its too hot so we retreated to the aircon.
Glenis arrived at about 8.30 to begin our whistle stop tour of the area and we climbed aboard her 4WD so as not to curtail our explorations.
First stop was to drive along Kilrie Road near Home Hill, in order to visit Kilrie House. Although retaining the core of the verandahs, which would have adorned the first floor have now been enclosed and the fig trees which formed an entrance avenue only relatively recently removed.
Elsa who owns the property now was delighted to meet Anne and we chatted for quite some time and had an opportunity to have a look underneath (the house is raised about 6 or seven feet on stilts to raise it above the Burdekin floodwater) Here it was possible to see the very strong structure of the core of the house and also see the marks on one of the support pillars indicating the levels of floodwaters in the last seventy years.
We had a look at the Burdekin itself. A huge river, looking extremely benign on this day, but bearing all the tell-tale signs of huge potential power of massive volumes of water and loads of debris.
A lone fisherman was ignoring the warning signs for the saltwater crocs and casting his lines out into the muddy flow. We retired back to Glenis’s house … or more correctly her husband Harold’s work shed where there was a group of men sitting around discussing life in a typically Australian way. These were middle aged cane farmers, with battered, sweat stained and bleached wide brimmed hats, working boots, battered jeans and open neck shirts revealing nut brown sun scorched flesh.
They were an interesting group and the meal time gathering reminded me of the sort of characters depicted by Russell Drysdale (yep we’re back to Drysdales again) in his Burdekin River sketchbook. Line drawings of cattle and cane men.
After a restorative coffee we left for Home Hill and after meeting Graeme, who is involved with the exhibition we toured the ‘Power Station’ exhibition and corporately funded exhibition in a shop premises on the main street which has a series of archival photographs enlarged and mounted on the walls, showing the mills in the area and the various events associated with the river … several bridge crossings, flood events and old ferries.
We stopped for lunch … well a packet of crisps and about a litre and a half of fluids. Its baking outside and I should, by rights, be sweating pounds away. At this stage we also tried to arrange a viewing of a private machinery collection owned and largely restored by Tom Callow. An appointment was duly arranged for 2pm and we made ourt way along the dusty cane trackes to the Callow Farm. I had a good laugh when to Annes stockpile introduction which involves variants of 'Hi, I'm a Drysdale' he responded 'Well now, that's not necessarily a good thing'. I'm going to be noting that one for the future!
Tom is a cane farmer and in 1984 decided to purchase a Lister JP2 engine to pump some water. Little did he know that it was the start of a collection which after twenty years now numbers over 250 fully restored engines, tractors and pumps and the yard is littered with another several hundred wrecks which have been acquired for spare parts and some which are awaiting his detailed attention. It all seems a bit strange given the amount of trouble I have with only one tractor and one wrecked car outside the house !!
And its not only wrecks, he has a dentist’s chair, a complete jailhouse moved and re-erected at his farm, he has butter makers, petrol pumps and signs and a few railway items from the cane railways.
The restoration process can be a slow one and a steam roller parked in the yard is gradually being loosened off after decades of neglect. Oil points oiled and the great machine rocked back and forth and re-oiled. A day, a week or a month later he repeats the process and eventually it frees completely and more serious work can begin.
After my conducted tour of what is known as Tom’s Toybox, Tom’s wife Jan made us tea and we sat around discussing the whole mechanical process. I was intrigued to hear that they travel as far as Dorset for various steam engine related gatherings and events ,,, we may see them yet in Scotland!
Our final visit of the day is a look at a part of Pioneer Mill … not the 24/7 production part, but the old part in the shadow of the expanded mill is the site of the old Pioneer Houses, all of which have sadly, been demolished and cleared. We didn’t enter the site until about 5 and while Glenis had a notion of where the old buildings had been located, so much appeared to have changed, that the re-photography task was not going to be as easy as I had hoped.
I was stomping around the back of a particularly pungent cooling pond, trying to avoid snakes, keep dry and line up some trees when a young mum arrived on the scene complete with two children on trikes. In a very unnatural moment of comradely conversation … which was mostly designed to determine the likelihood of snake encounter, and/or attack in these parts I asked here whether she knew anything about the history of the mill. No she didn’t, but she knew a man who did; her husband and he was just over this way if I’d like to follow her.
Warren Derrick was watering his roof, which I suspect is the sort of thing you do after a very hot day (?) and was not immediately delighted at being disturbed and asked three times by his wife to ‘come down please’.
Once he did come down and had tuned into the purpose of the visit … and also had a look at a few of the pics that I was matching, he became very interested and we walked back around the lagoon so that he could point out the drain covers for the old house and from that I could work out the camera angles accordingly. Warren also provided us with an important steer as to other unidentified locations by picking up that one shot, which we thought was Inkerman Mill included some wide guage cane railway … immediately identifying it as Pioneer. Like many of the other people we met, he’s grown up here and is a fifth generation sugar miller; he knows the sites intimately but is seldom called upon to remember or record his knowledge in any way.
It was too late for the re-take by this time but Warren then collected some keys and took us in to the old School Of Arts building which is one of the original structures which was moved and re-built as a social club for the Mill employees, but which appears to be fairly run-down in the meantime. Inside there were a few rather poor copies of some early pics, some shots of various prize bulls from the Pioneer Stud (a relatively late venture) and a massive hand written ledger book dealing with wages back in the 1950s.
We left them as it was getting dark and Glenis dropped us back at the motel by 7. We’d invited Glenis and Harold out to dinner so had time for a shower and literally a minute or twos reflection before Glenis returned.
We ate at a bar in Ayr and fell into bed not long after we were dropped off at 9.30.
A long, hot, exhausting day !
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