by Don Watson
When the pear fell, it was a revelation: hills, trees and rocks stood out where nothing but the advancing army of tall, green, well-armed pear had been. Those plants, I later learned, had sprung from an introduced specimen brought to Maitland in very early times in a pot. As the plant proliferated – and every pad could grow new plants, as well as the seeds in the fruit – they were taken up into the northern country to provide hedges against Aboriginal reclamation of land. It was a famous invasion, but the reason for its being carried north had long been suppressed.
I remember how thickly the eucalypts regenerated when the soil was freed again, and how hot the country became once more. One drought year we drove to Kindon by a back road through a long stretch of waterless country. The boundary fence along the road was newly built through what had been ‘pear country’ not long before. When I got out to open a gate, the sand of the road burning hot to my bare feet, there against the fence posts stood a dry and empty skeleton of a horse, saddled and bridled with a dummy jockey on its back. My poem ‘Drought Year’ came of that encounter.
In such years, Kindon was a blistering hot outpost of what we called ‘civilisation’, the heavy repp curtains drawn closely all day to keep the coolness of the night inside, mosquitoes from the creek waiting for entrance, and dingoes howling dismally and eerily in the newly accessible forest. Their voices were joined in the evenings by those of the curlews, now almost all vanished as foxes joined the dingoes in predation.
Half a lifetime / Judith Wright, Patricia Clarke (ed.),
Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999
Judith Wright
1954
At Cooloolah
The blue crane fishing in Cooloolah’s twilight
has fished there longer than our centuries.
He is the certain heir of lake and evening,
and he will wear their colour till he dies,
but I’m a stranger, come of a conquering people.
I cannot share his calm, who watch his lake,
being unloved by all my eyes delight in,
and made uneasy, for an old murderer’s sake.
Those dark skinned people who once named Cooloolah
knew that no land is lost or won by wars,
for earth is spirit: the invader’s feet will tangle
in nets there and his blood be thinned by fears.
Riding at noon and ninety years ago,
My grandfather was beckoned by a ghost-
a black accoutred warrior armed for fighting,
who sank into bare plain, as now into time past.
White shores of sand, plumed reed and paperbark,
clear heavenly levels frequented by crane and swan-
I know that we are justified only by love,
but oppressed by arrogant guilt, have room for none.
And walking on clean sand among the prints
of bird and animal, I am challenged by a driftwood spear
thrust from the water; and, like my grandfather,
must quiet a heart accused by its own fear.
Collected Poems, HarperCollins, Melbourne, 1994
Tony Wright
2010
This writer lived for a decade by the Murray at Albury, regularly numbed by a babble of voices offering opinions that never reached resolution. There was at one time – and it remains gob-smacking to relate – a serious view that the river should be allowed to become a drain for the effluent of all the towns along its length, a fresh-water pipe running alongside to supply human needs.
The problem has always been that in this great dry continent, there are so many competing voices and interests. And almost all of them, one way or another, have rational foundations.
The Murray-Darling Basin, which covers one-seventh of our nation’s land, produces a third of all our food, and a lot of it comes from farms irrigated from the river system.
A substantial cut in irrigation entitlements, farm groups contend, will not only destroy farm incomes but threaten national food security. And for every farmer who might receive a government payout to walk away, scores more who rely on the dollar-go-round from agriculture –farm workers, machinery suppliers, shopkeepers, car sales people and all the rest – are likely to go to the wall uncompensated.
Ecologists, however, maintain that the river system’s health has long been dangerously compromised by too much water being siphoned off by those irrigators. Current and future irrigation allocations, a clamour from the environmental and scientific communities insists, simply cannot be sustained and must be reduced.
Leaders of state governments nod sagely, and then resume traditional headbutting over who is the most responsible or irresponsible. Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all blame each other.
Queensland allows too much water to be bled off the headwaters and feeder rivers of the Darling. NSW hoards the Darling’s water in the shallow Menindee Lakes and jealously guards the rights of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation District, even though the Murrumbidgee regularly is so depleted it hardly flows at its juncture with the Murray. Victoria plans to pipe water to Melbourne from the Murray-Goulburn system, arguing it is actually saving irrigation supplies by modernising and making the northern grid more efficient. South Australia fumes that it gets the rough end of everything, even though Adelaide and other cities and towns in the state have long happily relied on pumping the river’s water over hills to slake residents’ thirst.
Treasury officials stare balefully at the $9 billion already spent to try and fix the mess – without much return – and wonder where the extra $2 billion will come from to buy water allocations under proposals currently being batted about.
Politician-farmers such as Senator Bill Heffernan say farming should be moved to the monsoon-fed north, National Party MPs have spent decades insisting the cap on irrigation allocations is too mean, old timers argue that the nation’s northern rivers should be turned inland – and every few decades, drought and the studies of science and ecology remind us that the plight of the river system is becoming more dire.
Is it really beyond our national imagination to grasp that the breaking of a drought has provided us a period of respite to reach agreement that without a healthy river system we can have no reliable agricultural economy, and without a robust agricultural economy we cannot properly fund a healthy river system, and to seek – for the first time since Federation – a workable series of compromises, even though no one might be entirely happy?
Or are we content to consign Mr Percival and the Coorong to mere scribbles on the sand, wind-talk and wave-talk, memories of what there once was, and what we allowed to die?
‘Keep the water ideas flowing’,
Sydney Morning Herald, October 9, 2010
Thea Astley
Robyn Davidson
Albert Facey
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Ernestine Hill
John Shaw Neilson
Margaret Kiddle
Joseph Banks
Charles Bean
Charles Sturt
Marcus Clarke
David Campbell
Allan Cunningham
James Boyce
T.G.H. Strehlow
Mary Durack
Eric Rolls
Sarah Murgatroyd
Ann McGrath
Colin Thiele
Shirley Walker
Arthur Hoey Davis (Steele Rudd)
Katharine Susannah Prichard
George Dunderdale
Edward John Eyre
Thomas Livingstone Mitchell
Mrs Aeneaus (Jeannie) Gunn
George Augustus Robinson
Barbara Baynton
Joseph Furphy
Georgiana Molloy
Ludwig Leichardt
Rosa Praed
W.E.H. Stanner
Williams Wills
W.E. Roth
Oscar de Satge
Mary Gilmore
Louisa Anne Meredith
L
ucy Gray
Dorothy Maguire
Kenneth Slessor
Thomas Keneally
David Malouf
Daryl Tonkin
Randolph Stow
Dennis McIntosh
Roger McDonald
Samuel Wagan Watson
Deborah Rose
Judith Wright
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Peter Andrews is a grazier, thoroughbred racehorse breeder, author, inventor and advocate of natural sequence farming: b. NSW 1940.
James Armour was a gold digger, bush labourer, butcher, cook, hutkeeper, engineer, author of book on aeronautics and inventor of patented flying machine, 1884: b. Lanarksshire 1830; d. Gateshead 1907.
Arthur Ashwin was a prospector, bush labourer, wanderer, pastoralist of sorts: b. Adelaide 1850; d. Western Australia 1930.
Thea Astley was a novelist, four times winner of the Miles Franklin Award: b. Brisbane 1925; d. Gold Coast 2004.
Murray Bail is a writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction: b. Adelaide 1941.
John Bailey is an Australian author: b. 1944.
Sidney John Baker was a journalist, novelist, biographer, philologist: b. Wellington 1912; d. Sydney 1976.
Joseph Banks was a botanist, naturalist, patron of science: b. London 1744; d. Isleworth 1820.
John Batman was a grazier, bounty hunter in VDL, ‘founder’ of Melbourne by means of a ‘treaty’ with the Aboriginal owners: b. Rosehill 1801; d. Melbourne 1839.
Barbara Baynton (a.k.a. Barbara Allonson-Winn, Barbara Jane Frater, Barbara Janet Lawrence, Lady Headley) was a writer of short stories and a novel, Human Toll (London 1907), businesswoman and antique collector: b. Scone NSW 1857; d. Melbourne 1929.
Charles Bean was a barrister, journalist, war correspondent and historian: b. Bathurst 1879; d. Concord 1968.
George Bennett was a physician and naturalist: b. Plymouth 1804; d. Sydney 1893.
Judith Beveridge is a poet and poetry editor: b. London 1956.
Ralph Vincent Billis was a pastoralist, public servant and private secretary: b. Castlemaine 1879; d. Hawthorn 1947.
Tony Birch is a poet, novelist, essayist and short story writer: b. Melbourne 1957.
Herbert Schreiber Bloxsome was a cattle breeder (Aberdeen Angus) in Mundubbera, historian in the Burnett river district and memoirist: b. UK 1876; d. Toowomba 1957.
Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake (Surcingle) was a poet, drover: b. 1866; d. 1892.
Peter James Boyce is a writer and historian: b. Hobart 1964.
Martin Boyd was a soldier, architect and novelist: b. Switzerland 1893; d. Rome 1972.
Edwin James Brady was a journalist, poet, short story writer, publisher, publicist and socialist: b. Carcoar 1869; d. Pambula 1952.
George A. Brown (Bruni – after Bruny Island) was a sheep breeder: b. Tasmania 1834; d. Melbourne 1909.
Mary Bundock was a flower painter and collector of Aboriginal artefacts: b. Hunter Valley 1844; d. Perth 1924.
Caleb Burchett was a builder, selector and pioneer: b. Hounslow 1843; d. Poowong 1934.
David Wynford Carnegie was a miner, adventurer and explorer: b. England 1871; d. Nigeria 1900.
David Cameron is the manager of heritage and Aboriginal relations, Rio Tinto: b. Newcastle (NSW) 1963.
David Watt Campbell was a rugby player (England), RAAF pilot (DFC and bar), grazier and poet: b. Adelong 1915; d. Canberra 1979.
Paul Carter is a scholar and ‘spatial’ historian: b. England 1951.
Coles Child was an Anglican clergyman: b. London 1817; d. Sydney 1898.
Francis Grenville (Sir Frank) Clarke was a farmer, grazier, company director and conservative MLC (Victoria): b. Sunbury 1879; d. South Yarra 1955.
Marcus Clarke was a poet, novelist, critic, librarian and bohemian: b. London 1846; d. Melbourne 1881.
Louis Charles Cook was a South Gippsland dairy farmer and naturalist.
Lyle Courtney is an author: b. Maryborough 1930.
Peter J. F. Coutts and Dan C. Witter are archaeologists. Peter Coutts was the first director of the Victorian Archaeological Survey.
Christopher Keith Wallace-Crabbe is a poet, teacher and critic: b. Richmond 1934.
Emily Caroline Creaghe was an explorer and diarist: b. Bay of Bengal 1860; d. Sydney 1944.
Bernard Charles Cronin was a graduate of Dookie Agricultural College, farmer, journalist, writer of novels, short stories and verse (often under pseudonyms): b. Ealing 1884; d. East Camberwell 1968.
Allan Cunningham was a botanist and explorer: b. Wimbledon 1791; d. Sydney 1839.
Robyn Davidson is a writer: b. Miles 1950.
Arthur Hoey Davis (Steele Rudd) was an under-sheriff, horseman, farmer, magazine editor, playwright and writer of short stories: b. Drayton 1868; d. Brisbane 1935.
James Dawson was a pastoralist, amateur ethnographer, protector of Aboriginal people: b. Scotland 1806; d. Camperdown 1900.
Robert Leycester Dawson was a farmer, cedar getter, public servant, naturalist, and collector of Aboriginal words and artefacts in northern rivers district: b. Bowenfels 1860; d. Lindfield 1943.
David Denholm was a soldier, academic, historian and novelist (writing as David Forrest): b. Maryborough 1924; d. Wagga Wagga 1997.
Arthur Dewhurst was a surveyor and photographer: b. Cambridge c1833; d. 1889.
George Dunderdale was a prospector, Clerk of Courts in Port Albert Vic. and author: b. Lancashire 1822; d. 1903.
Mary Durack was a pastoralist, writer and Aborginal benefactor: b. Adelaide 1913; d. Nedlands 1994.
Chester Eagle is an author, editor and publisher: b. Bendigo 1933.
John Frederick Edey was a WWI soldier, soldier settler, farmer, rural contractor and bushman: b. London 1897; d. Red Cliffs 1983.
Martin Edmond is an author and film writer: b. Ohakune 1952.
Ray Francis Stanley Ericksen was an academic, historian and biographer: b. 1919; d. Melbourne 1998.
George Essex Evans was a patriotic Australian poet, columnist and essayist: b. London 1863; d. Toowoomba 1909.
John Leyworthy Evans is a Mallee farmer and conservationist: b. Waikerie 1930.
George Everard was a shepherd, rabbiter, shearers’ cook, Mallee dweller, pedestrian and theatre lover: b. London c1835; d. Ballarat 1925.
Edward John Eyre was an explorer (with Wylie, an Aboriginal man), walked to Albany from Adelaide (1844), enlightened protector of Aboriginal people in Lower Murray region, SA, ‘notorious monster’, governor of Jamaica: b. England 1815; d. England 1901.
Albert Facey was a rural worker, soldier, farmer, tram driver, unionist and author: b. Maidstone 1894; d. Midlands 1982.
George Knight Erskine-Fairholme was a drover, watercolourist, explorer, squatter, amateur scientist, botanist, palaeontologist and author: b. Scotland 1822; d. 1889.
Elizabeth Farrelly is a columnist, architect, author and Sydney City councilor: b. Dunedin 1957.
George Michell Farwell was a traveller, adventurer, writer of books (especially about the outback), stories, articles, radio documentaries and plays: b. Bath 1911; d. Adelaide 1976.
James Fenton was a farmer, historian and timber merchant: b. Ireland 1820; d. Launceston 1901.
John Fenwick was a pastoralist, hide and skin merchant, and freemason: b. United Kingdom 1823; d. Brisbane 1900.
Timothy Fridtjof Flannery is a zoologist, paleontologist, mammologist, environmentalist and global warming activist: b. Melbourne 1956.
Mary Eliza Fullerton was a selector’s daughter, feminist, socialist, anti-conscriptionist, writer of novels, non-fiction, short stories and poetry (often under pseudonyms): b. Glenmaggie 1868; d. Sussex 1946.
Lyn Cuthbert Furnell was a teacher, barrister, judge, Royal Commissioner: b. Lismore 1903; d. 1981.
Joseph Furphy was a failed selector, successful bullock driver and ‘sage of the riverine’: b. Yarra Glen 1843; d. Perth 1912.
William Leonard Gammage is a historian: b. Wagga 1942.
William Garner is
a writer (especially for television, films, plays): b. Bendigo 1944.
Karen George is a historian and sole proprietor of Historically Speaking: country-born, now based in Adelaide.
Dame Mary Gilmore was a socialist, New Australia settler, schoolteacher, essayist, patriot and poet: b. Mary Vale 1865; d. Sydney 1962.
Lucy Gray was a pioneer at Hughenden, Queensland, diarist and correspondent: b. Ireland 1840; d. Dunedin 1879.
Tom Griffiths is a historian: b. Melbourne 1957.
Mrs Aeneas Gunn was a best-selling writer (especially childrens books under pseudonym Jeannie Gunn); We of the Never Never was based on thirteen months she spent on a station in Northern Territory where Mr Gunn died: b. Carlton 1870; d. Hawthorn 1961.
Charles Harpur was a poet, critic, gold commissioner and sheep farmer: b. Windsor 1813; d. NSW 1868.
Alexander Harris was a writer and traveller: b. London 1804; d. Ontario 1874.
Joseph Hawdon was an overlander, farmer and pioneer postal contractor: b. Durham 1813; d. Christchurch 1871.
Elizabeth Hawkins (nee Lilly) crossed the Blue Mountains to Bathurst in 1822 with her husband, mother and eight children under twelve (the first free white family to do so): b. Kent 1783; d. Sydney 1875.
Arthur Thomas Henry was a contractor (surveying, building, dam and road construction, rabbit destruction) and bushman: b. Geelong 1871; d. Yarram 1956.
Mona Violet Henry was a nursing sister with the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission in Birdsville 1950–52: b. Townsville 1914; d. c1990s.