Bushrangers, beers and pies: On a steel horse we ride
- Dec 16, 2015
- 7 min read
Paul is set for a feed tonight.
"I've got me a nice roo haunch," he salivates in eager anticipation. I glance across the picnic table in Mount Kaputar National Park in northwest New South Wales. The final mouthful of my father's cheese, ham, and tomato sandwich sticks for a moment in his throat. We both have a fair idea where Paul carved off his slice of dead Australian wildlife and share a knowing smile. Paul is a human snail towing his caravan across the state. He can only afford to crawl 40km each day. This way his social security check stretches between pay weeks. "It's fresh," Paul enthuses. "There was still blood dripping from the kangaroo's mouth when I found it." The crack and hiss from a frosty can of cheap beer perforates the still bush. Paul takes a deep gulp. He emigrated from England many years ago. He matter-of-factly tells us he has a Korean wife and a son but doesn't know where they are. In his next breath he laments only getting six kilometres per litre from his old Nissan 4WD. He says he enjoys the solitary of life. Travelling around Australia and living off the land or, in this case, the road.
My father and I swing our legs back over the saddle of our motorcycles and wish Paul safe travels.
I have come home. To the rural town of Alstonville on the red-soiled plateau of the state's north coast. In the late summer afternoons the deck of the Federal Hotel falls into shadow as squadrons of flying foxes leave their roosts in the bush on the outskirts of town and fill the sky. In season, the streets explode into a purple haze as the Tibouchina plants bloom. There was once a festival and a street parade in honour of the varietal named after the town – the Tibouchina Alstonville. Rolling hills surround the village and support sweeping rows of Macadamia trees and fruit orchards.
The ride is not about visiting famous sights or landmarks, although we will cruise beneath the Big Prawn, the Big Banana, and the big Golden Guitar. It is hard to avoid Australia's love affair with giant objects erected along the nation's roads. Our short adventure is a chance to spend some quality time together.
And we are quite happy to get our food from over the counter at a country pub or a bakery.
Riding a motorcycle is in itself a solitary act. But during our religious pie stops and at the end of the day, with the road dust clinging to our leathers, there is time to have a laugh, and talk about the important stuff and the not so important stuff. Usually the conversation is washed down with a beer accompanied by the setting sun. There are shared (bad dad) jokes, I deflect questions about why I am still single at my age and we plan the route for the next day's ride. It feels good to be around this bloke I admire and respect but whom I have not spent nearly enough time with during my life.
The importance of taking every opportunity and making opportunities to be with family and loved ones sadly struck home for me days before my father and I started our engines and hit the road. On returning home I caught up with an old school friend. Like me, he has spent a lot of his life living many thousands of kilometres from his parents. He was home to say a final goodbye then bury his father who lost his battle with cancer. Fortunately they had made time to share plenty of laughs and steins of great Bavarian beer at their family cabin in the Alps over the years.
Rolling south from the orchards of the Northern Rivers area we sweep through Australian bush where kangaroos stand to startled attention among the eucalyptus and wattle trees. We glide into the remaining pockets of ancient forests once the lifeblood of the early European settlers who came searching for timber. We fuel up on petrol and a pie and cool down on a cushion of purple flowers beneath Grafton's famous jacaranda trees. In Wauchope we pass Timbertown - an entire village re-created to demonstrate the struggles and achievements of the bush pioneers. I smile as I remember the adverts from my youth with a catchy call of "All Aboard for Timbertown".
In the late afternoon we glide into the historic logging town of Wingham on the upper reaches of the Manning River. The timber industry boon is long gone. "The Log," a massive tree trunk sits in Central Park as testament to the timber rush.
We sit on the shady side of The Australian Hotel. A contract farm worker still dusty from a day's toil tells my farming father that sheep, cattle, and fruit orchards are the mainstay of the district now.
I go inside to get us another beer. A barman with a limp is chasing down a pensioner. He has ordered a beer but doesn't have the money to pay for it. The old-timer's age is no match for the barman's handicap, and he is cornered. The freshly poured beer is retrieved and the would-be thief is told he is no longer welcome. Fighting for king and country should entitle him to a little more respect, he curses. The old man leaves the pub and shuffles next door to the Wingham Memorial Services Club.
Back outside the sky begins to rust; the hue matches the grass in the square opposite the hotel, and the fruit bats stir and squawk in their roosts down by the river.
The next morning, the sun's rays are barely poking through the thin faded curtains in our cramped hotel room when my father begins a daily ritual I will become intimate with during our short sojourn. The clearing of the throat, coughs, and farts become my alarm clock. By the end of our journey, I find comfort in my "alarm clock". It signals the start of another glorious day in the saddle and on the road together.
We turn our steel horses away from the rising sun and steer them westward. Our tyres tread the paved path of one of Australia's most legendary bushrangers. The Captain Thunderbolt Highway is named for Fred Ward – the country's longest-serving bushranger. The well-tarred road is a far cry from the winding bush tracks the Captain would have ridden in the 1860s. But the rough, rugged, and isolated country of the northern tablelands through which we wind remains much the same. The dense subtropical terrain of the Barrington Tops and rugged eucalyptus escarpment of the Nowendoc National Park hid convicts and outlaws like Captain Thunderbolt for years.
The bacon is hot and greasy good. The egg yolk seeps out the side of the roll and trickles down onto our fingers. At the Nowendoc General Store, Max, the store's owner, my father, and I are the only people stirring in the sleepy parish. However, a few years ago the demand for Max's breakfast rolls reached record levels. The might of the NSW constabulary descended upon Nowendoc. They set up a command post in the small memorial hall when a modern-day bushranger went to ground in these parts.
Armed fugitive Malcolm Naden spent weeks living rough and eluding capture in late 2011 and early 2012 before the police and their dogs finally brought him to heel.
By lunch time we are wolfing down a steak and kidney pie under the shadow of the Golden Guitar in Tamworth, Australia's country music capital. "It's a good pie," my dad says. The positive review is not unusual. I've yet to see the old man eat a pie he didn't like. Though he has yet to chomp into chunks of kangaroo encased in pastry. He has a conservative palate.
On the outskirts of Gunnedah, the galahs and sulphur crested cockatoos congregate on the edge of the baking bitumen. They scatter to the sky at the sound and gust of our passing.
At the bar of the Gunnedah Hotel, the condensation dripping off the glasses is the closest thing to rain the farmers in these parts have seen in a long time. The vast plains in this part of Australia support cotton crops and high quality beef. Our steaks are succulent and tender unlike our beds in a cheap motel.
It's another "pretty good" pie in Boggabri for breakfast. We blink and miss Baan Ba before coasting into Narrabri.
At the rest stop in Mount Kaputar National Park I leave my dad to prepare the sandwiches and I wander through the bush to Sawn Rocks. The kilted stone face is one of the country's best examples of the geological formation known as organ-piping.
The afternoon sun slow roasts us but in the town of Bingara, nestled on the Gwydir River, we find the perfect place to cool down.
Peter's Milk Bar is a restored Greek cafe with a spectacular terrazzo floor, soda fountains and milkshake-makers, and wooden cubicles with worn Laminex tops. The cafe pays homage to the Greek immigrants who settled in the country areas of NSW and Queensland in the first half of the 20th century. Almost every town across rural NSW and Queensland boasted a Greek cafe.
We wipe away our chocolate milkshake moustaches and ride northeast against the languid flow of the Gwydir up to where it spills from the Copeton Dam. Soon we spill into the town of Inverell and settle in for our final night on the road.
During the early settler days Inverell was known as Green Swamp and was a favourite place for bullock drivers and their stock to rest and water. Today, the ubiquitous Australian, Empire, and Imperial hotels provide the means for my father and I to rest and water.
Sweaty leather, stale beer, and the musty lingering perfume produced from the bodies two grown men in close confines combine to create a heady morning mix. It's an atmosphere I've adapted to in a few short days. They are the fumes created from the bonding between son and father, from sharing a few beers and laughs and most importantly time.
It's a crisp morning and the cool air blasting through my open helmet soon clears my head and nostrils. In front of me my father swerves smoothly to avoid giving a dead kangaroo the ignominy of being run over for a second time. As I pass by I notice it's still fresh. We haven't had breakfast but my dad isn't slowing down.
The next country outpost is only a few kilometres up the road and I recall my father's observations after pouring over the map the previous night. "There's a great pie shop in Deepwater."
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