Australia - Crossing a Continent

It takes just 2.5 days after leaving Kerang to reach the East Coast. I arrive, fairly randomly, at a place called Tathra, total journey 14.5 days and 4,510km. I have actually driven across this vast continent, from West to East. How fantastic is that? I feel pleased with myself, like I have really achieved something (which I think I have – not many people can say they have done that, probably not even many Australians) and I celebrate with a cup of coffee in this quiet, deserted, sea-side town. Since leaving Kerang I have driven through landscapes resembling the Wiltshire Downs, the Scottish Highlands and the Alps (each for days on end) and travelled through a myriad of National Parks. The most spectacular was the Kosciuszko National Park, with dramatic and sharp ascents and descents through endless eucalyptus forests and deep river valleys, climbing beyond the snow line at one point to drive through the coldest weekend for 15 years and thick snow and ice to Cabramurra, Australia’s highest town. On the radio they mentioned that people were travelling from miles around to see the snow in the area, as a lot of people had never seen snow before! At other times I have driven through countryside that seems distinctly European, with olive and orange groves, orchards and vineyard after vineyard, so that I could easily be driving through central France or Northern Italy. Australia really has the landscape of the world rolled into one country.

I hug the East Coast to slowly make my way to Sydney, stopping off randomly at one deserted beach and sea-side town after another, simply taking detours from the main highway whenever I see a sign which says Beach Road or Ocean Drive, or sometimes I just like the sound of a place name, or I follow the brown, pentagon signed Tourist Drives, which at times follow the coast and now and then detour inland. I’m happy with either and like the randomness of not really knowing until I turn off the main highway which one it might be. The towns on the coast are melancholy (dismal even, in the incessant rain), pining for lost sunny days and the busy laughter (and wealth) of holiday makers. I use the last of my Holiday Inn points on 2 nights in a hotel in Potts Point, Sydney, which borders the city’s gay and red light areas, so the evenings are really buzzy and I try a few local bars, including what I hadn’t realised at first was a gay club, (although the Drag Queen competition should have been a good clue!) The luxury of the hotel is fantastic after so many days on the road and I can see the centre of Sydney, including the Opera House and Harbour Bridge from my 7^th floor hotel room. The Opera House is a bit like Stonehenge, in that when I first saw it, it seemed a lot smaller than I had imagined, but it somehow gradually grows in stature after the first viewing. The weather is overcast, bitterly cold but mostly dry, so I get to see the centre of Sydney, some art galleries, the Botanical Gardens and of course, the Opera House. On the Tuesday morning, with the weather warm and sunny, I travel across the Harbour Bridge itself to visit Simon and Ali Dudley in North Curl Curl, on the coast, North of Sydney. It is great to catch up with Simon after not having seen him for many years and it is fantastic to eat some home cooking. The hospitality is brilliant and the conversation is interesting (I realise I’ve missed that) and the two evenings flow by easily. Thank-you both very much! Simon is kind enough take time out to show me around on the Monday, first North Head, with stunning views over Sydney Harbour (and a brilliant rainbow) and then an ascent to the headland overlooking Palm Springs and then Turrametta Head. The coastline is absolutely beautiful and although cold, the Sun is now shining and the waters are an ever changing mix of deep greeny-blues and light blues.

After a total of 4 days and nights of luxury, I feel revitalised and revived. I hadn’t realised how important it has been to enjoy a fire each evening when out in the bush, but the snow, ice and rain had made that impossible for the 3 or 4 days before Sydney. The weather remains mild after leaving Simon and Ali, so I return with renewed enthusiasm to driving in the campervan, (staying mostly in free overnight stops) and enjoying a fragrant eucalyptus wood fire each evening, sometimes on the beach, sometimes in a forested highway rest area, but always with a fire. I continue to travel northwards, through the Myall Lakes National Park, a land of creeks and inlets, large lakes, lagoons and rivers on one side and the deserted beaches of the South Pacific Ocean to my right, but always with the mountains of The Great Divide in the far distance, as I meander closer and closer to Brisbane. My daily mileage has dropped considerably now, from around a maximum of 300 or 400 km per day to perhaps only 100. The weather is warm now I’m close to the Gold Coast, in the early 20C’s and I am driving through a land of bananas, palms and sugar cane. I don’t think I have crossed the Tropic of Capricorn yet, but it is certainly more tropical and the cicadas are again cheerfully noisy through the nights. I can’t believe that the month in Australia is slowly coming to a close. I have certainly enjoyed all of this vast country (and there is so much more still to see - maybe that’s for another trip?), but the peace and silence of the vast forest and deserts of the West and South and those extraordinary, magical, seemingly never ending, star strewn skies, remain with me still.

Kosciuszko National Park

Tathra, West Coast. I have drive across a continent. How great is that?

Camel Rock Beach

Tomakin Beach

Cheaper than a lawnmower

"It's one of those humans. Don't worry, they are more scared of us than we are of them"

A stormy Killea National Park

Yep, you've guessed it!

Circular Quay, Sydney

Sydney's oldest pub, The Fortune of War

One of the world's structural icons and you can drive across it! Amazing! Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Manly, surfers paradise

South Curl Curl

Sydney from North Head

Palm Springs

Kerang? Be my Guest!

In 1835, William Guest, a direct relative on my Mother’s side, married Eliza Sweet in Dodbrooke, near Kingsbridge, in Devon. William was a Stone Mason and probably worked at the quarry in Kingsbridge which is still operating today. They had 3 children: Sarah Guest, born in 1835, Joseph Guest, 1839 and Elizabeth Guest, 1842. William Guest unfortunately died young at the age of 30 and within a year, in 1854, Eliza had remarried a younger man called John James Lake. Who knows what personal, social and economic factors compelled them to undertake such an arduous voyage, but on the 21^st February 1855, the family boarded a ship called ‘John Banks’ and set sail from Plymouth. They landed, safely, in Adelaide, Australia on the 29^th May, 1855.

All the family, that is, except Joseph. Perhaps he didn’t like the fact that his Mother had remarried so soon after his Father’s death? (Although economic necessity must have played a large part). Or possibly he didn’t get along with the new man in his Mother’s life? Perhaps at the age of 16 he wanted to strike out on his own, having served as a stone mason’s labourer under his Father? Whatever the reasons, he moved over 250 miles to work at a quarry in Cumbria (again, still operating today) and then later Liverpool and the family was divided; one part destined to live in Liverpool and then, much later through the generations, in Swindon in the UK and the other part to be early pioneers in a new world down under. John Lake was a Farmer. I imagine the new Australia needed plenty of those.

Eliza Lake, (formerly Guest) died in Kerang, in the state of Victoria on 14^th October, 1891. Sara married Charles Thorne and died in Kerang in September, 1900. Elizabeth married John Isaac Moore and died in Quambatook, about 20 miles from Kerang, in 1907.

I have woken very early in a small motel in Kerang, with the names and imagined faces of those distant ancestors on my mind. Kerang is a small, neat place, comprising an orderly grid of streets centred on a cream coloured clock tower. The houses are mainly low bungalows, some of a vaguely colonial type, with verandas, looking as though they might have been built in the 1920s. There are a few shops, 3 pubs/hotels, a primary school, a racecourse and a small hospital. The oldest buildings are confident Victorian structures, which have probably not changed much at all since their construction. There is an old Post Office and a Chamber of Commerce building, so it must have been reasonably prosperous once upon a time. The red-bricked Victorian school was founded in 1874, too late to have schooled the young Guest children. The population is around 3000. It is very strange to be here, seeing these same buildings, knowing that they very likely formed part of the backdrop of the lived reality of those ancestors, seeing the buildings perhaps as they would have seen them through different eyes. To misquote (murder) TS Eliot, it is as though time past and time future are compressed into the moment of time present.

The land here is flat farming land; winter cereals, sheep, cattle, horses. The River Loddon runs alongside the edge of town and there are a 20 lakes close by: Kangaroo Lake, Lake Charm and, tired of naming new things, one called Third Lake, amongst many others How long it took to get from Adelaide to here and what was already here, if anything, when the family arrived, is interesting to ponder. Looking at the farms on my way from Swan Hill, I was wondering if they lived in that place, or over there, or perhaps there, stupidly checking post boxes for names I might recognise, or the landscape for some impossible, enigmatic clues that would speak across time. It is the coldest weekend for 15 years in these parts and grey rainclouds hang low in the sky so the flat featureless landscape looks bleak and dour. I resolve to check the cemetery to see if I can find any graves with names I might be familiar with.

I visit the graveyard in Kerang. It is quite large, perhaps about 1000 graves, jostling together in a sociable sort of way, without any obvious grouping by date, but subdivided by denomination (Catholic, Church of England, Methodist, etc.,). Although I check all the graves apart from the Catholic area, I can’t find the graves of Eliza Lake or John James Lake, or Sarah, although I did find the grave of what must have been a subsequent child between John and Eliza, Charlotte Lake, who is described as ‘Charlotte Selina (Lottie) Beloved daughter of J.J and E. Lake’, so it must surely be their Daughter? She died in 1908, at the age of 22. What a young age! I didn't research that side of the family, so I'm not 100% sure, but there can't be many people in Kerang with the same initials and second name. The problem is that Kerang is both a town and an administrative district, so Charles and Eliza could be buried in many smaller places hereabouts.

I also visit the cemetery at Quambatook and although it is much smaller, maybe about 50 graves, again divided by denomination, I couldn't find the grave of Elizabeth. Somehow I felt a little glad about that. The cemetery here is in a completely cold and desolate spot, about 3km away from Quambatook, down a small dirt lane. There are a few trees around the outside of the cemetery, but it sits in the middle of very large, open fields. It is very isolated and the wind whistles across the plains. I'd rather she was somewhere warmer and friendlier. It was very strange and haunting seeing the landscape and travelling along the roads that my distant ancestors would have seen and travelled on. The images of that landscape are still with me now.

Thank-you Joseph Guest. If it hadn't been for your independence and obstinacy, in part, I wouldn't be here now, seeing where the rest of your family ended up. Did you maintain contact with them? Or did you just wonder...?

The land North of Kerang town

It's a one-horse, cowboy sort of town. A bleak and bitter Sunday morning.

One of the three Hotels. Farming is thirsty work. Did Charles pop in for a drink on market day?

Victorian High Street

Chamber of Commerce. Built 1927.

Court House. The Court preceedes most other buildings. Must be the importance of law and order in a frontier town?

Kerang Primary School established 1874.

Road to Quambatook

Have fields changed much in 200 years? Probably not.

Quambatook. A half-horse town, formed by very brave people