I agree with others that David Kowalick's report was a great read. Refreshingly
personalised, it provided listing with immediacy and a dash of local colour.
Let's have more of that style..
I just want to add a note of historical justice to correct a passing comment he
makes about yet another important Australian town fallen on hard times.
David writes "Incidentally Normanton has got to be the worst planned town
(apart from Canberra of course) in Australia. Random shops and petrol outlets
kilometres apart with no one shop having everything one might need. Made us
tour the town and maybe that is the plan."
That drop-in, very brief, morning visit by David and Tait was, we read, a few
minutes in an enormous day trip that ended up in Atherton, almost a time zone,
at least two climatic sytems, and goodness-knows how many ecosystems, to the
east.
If only Normanton could speak for itself! What he saw was not planned.
I first saw Normanton in the early sixties, whilst travelling across Northern
Australia on the pillion of a Triumph Thunderbird. We camped for a few days a
little out of town at the Norman River Crossing. On one day we went into
Normanton for haircuts and a few supplies. Three things about Normanton were
indelibly printed on my memory, two of which contravert David's assessment.
Firstly, after riding round the relatively compact Normanton township, which
took about five minutes, we had found the pub, the barber's shop and the
splendid Burns Philp store - and we had noted the open-barn railway terminus
for that unique railway line on which runs the "Gulf Lander". The second
bookmark on the memory disc (a digression from the planning point) was the most
extraordinary haircutting experience I ever had. We found the barber's shop
empty, the barber propping up the bar in the centrally located pub (it was
lunchtime) and received his laconic statement "The shops open, there's some
perfectly good clippers in the shop, you do your mate and by the time you
finish I will be back from "lunch" to do you - and your mates haircut wont cost
ya". The third, and major, point concerns the Burns Philp Store. I never
entered a more fascinating, diverse and well stocked store in my life.
Absolutely everything from saddlery, to clothing, to foodstuffs, to fencing, to
guns and ammunition, brands and toiletries was on display and hanging from the
rafters. Everything needed for cattle station life throughout the year, in an
area where being marooned for months in the wet season is common, was
available. Google "Burns Philp Normanton store" and read of its trail blazing
importance as Burns Philp's first major northern Australian trading operation.
Canberra was designed to be to be the place that it continues to be, and is
buffered by the continuing industry of government Burns Phip Store was not
built to self destruct. Normanton is yet another once bouyant and complete
township fallen on hard times, with the holes in the urban fabric representing
failures in the mining industry, changes in the cattle industry, advances in
transport and communications and white ants.
Oh and Birding! In my sixties trip the strongest bird memory are of Bustards
everywhere - and so easy to approach with any vehicle, including a motorbike.
Bustards every few miles.
Angus Innes.
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