PART 2 - A 1959 ROAD TRIP AROUND AUSTRALIA.

Tenant Creek part of the Red Centre

I finished the last instalment at Katherine in the Northern Territory but didn't add anything about Alice Springs, the town situated in the centre of the Australian Continent or Tennant Creek.

Above is a tableland at Tennant Creek, a place known for its Gold and Copper mines.  It lies between Alice Springs and Darwin.

In 'the Alice', as it is known, we visited a church named after Doctor John Flynn who started the The Royal Flying Doctor Service.  This wonderful service is still operating throughout the Outback, flying to towns and properties where patients need medical attention and often flying them out to hospital.
 

The John Flynn Memorial Church, Alice Springs

Another feature of Alice Springs is Katherine Gorge and scenery that inspired our most famous Aboriginal painter, Albert Namatjira.

Katherine Gorge near Alice Springs

A landscape reminiscent of an Albert Namatjira painting

A Painting by Albert Namatjira

The landscape in South Australia had been dry and dirty beige but mostly the Outback was red and dusty.  I found the red outback quite beautiful.  It doesn't seem harsh with its white ghost gums and azure blue sky contrasting with the red ochre dirt.

A Beer Bottle Tree

We drove past an interesting piece of flora in the desert landscape.  It was a variation of a Bottle Brush, or Banksia plant, for which Australia is renowned.  This one was covered in real beer bottles and the actual tree quite dead.  I wonder if it's still there all these years later.  It may even have grown, in bottles that is or given rise to others.

I remember little of Darwin except another church that still stands today and for its time from very modern.

Darwin Uniting Memorial Church

Dad was a devout Catholic and it says something that this church appeared in his photographs.  He was nothing if not ecumenical and a church was a church to him.  I think, however, he was more interested in the architecture which was very new for its time.

A Termite Mound, something actually bigger than Gordon

From Darwin we headed around the Gulf of Carpentaria and stopped at a coastal town north of Normanton called Karumba.  Prue and I swam in the water in a pool made by enclosing pylons.  I knew there were sharks there, I didn't know there were crocodiles, but as there was so little vegetation, these must have remained in the river estuary.  Now to a girl, this place was interesting.

Gordon Brown gets to pull in a Shark

Kim and Prue with what's left of the Shark

Kim with a local girl

Gordon with a boar he has shot

The owner of the hotel in which we stayed was a famous crocodile hunter.  We later saw him at the movies in a documentary in which he hunted them.  That's him above with Gordon looking at the poor dead boar Gordon shot.  As you may remember if you read the first instalment, after shooting an eagle, my father refused to hunt anymore.  He went along and took the photo but that's all he shot.

I remember my mother, Bev, Mollie Brown, Prue and I having toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch in the dining room.  We were the only people there.  It's one of funny things that come back to mind but the cheese toast was cut into three strips.  My nimble fingers always went for the centre one without the crusts.  There were quite a few slices of toast and when I went for another centre piece, my mother firmly told me to leave it for someone else.  It was the prize piece and I never forgot this little lesson in manners in the wild coastal town.

I managed to upset the mother of the little aboriginal girl in the photo with whom Prue and I played.  I asked the little girl, in all innocence, why she was always so sandy.  This got back to her mother who helped in the hotel kitchen and it turned out I had insulted the little girl.  I would never have done so deliberately and my mother realised this.  I didn't get to apologise, not that I would have managed without putting my foot innocently in my mouth again.  The mother was fired from the kitchen on an unrelated matter about, from what I recall, was something to do with stolen scissors.

It was all too complicated for one of seven but I never forgot and felt bad ever after that the little girl had felt insulted.

The local men had caught a shark on a line and they asked Gordon, the man mountain, to pull it in.  We all went down to watch.  What was left of the creature afterwards was framed about Prue and I, the jaws still dripping with blood.

There were bigger jaws all around the wall of the pub or restaurant at the water's edge.  It was a wild place at the back of beyond and I loved it.

We moved on through dry, hot desert towns in Queensland's outback before coming upon lush cane fields where harvesting was underway.  What I remember of coastal Queensland was the lovely shades of green of the foliage and how lush everything was.  I fell in love with it and its why I live here now.

An Outback Town in the Northern Territory or Queensland

Our Holden FJ with boulders

Brumbies, wild horses, in the Outback

The old fashioned way to plant sugar cane, Queensland

Three flowers probably in Cairns

We arrived at the coast probably at Cairns judging from the photo of myself, Mum and the orchids above.  Then we made our way down the coast to Mission Beach.  I fell in love with the place.  It looks over to Dunk Island, a famous Whitsunday Resort Island known for its spectacular blue, iridescent butterflies.

Kim and Prue riding Gordon at Mission Beach, Queensland

No matter how everyone assured me there were no deadly box jellyfish in the water in June, as it was the wrong season, I wouldn't get down from Gordon's shoulders when he went in the water.  Really, I didn't.  Later as our parents set up camp and the evening meal, Prue and I dug a hole in the sand, lay in it and watched as evening fell.  I fell asleep in the warm sand.  I remember that to this day and the lovely time we had there.

After this we went on a boat to explore the Whitsunday Islands.

Bev, my mother, looking like a Vogue model in the Whitsundays

On Green Island there lived a scientist, whose name I have forgotten, with his wife.  He had studied the marine life there for years.  We met them both and they gave us a tour of the island.

Scientist who lived on and studied Green Island

Scientist on left, his wife, second from right, and others on Green Island off Cairns, Queensland

I was very excited to find a TV character staying on one of the islands.  He hosted a television show as a captain.  Of course I can't remember the name of the show but I remember being thrilled to be in the presence of a real live television personality.  Below he salutes as we leave, making my day complete.

TV Captain on a Whitsunday Island

There is so much more from earlier in the trip I could have included in the first instalment, however it is taking me an eternity to scan the slides that my father so carefully stored away.  I had to look at each one to see what was on it.  This proved no easy task.  Just when I had enough slides on disk this blog decided it wouldn't take BMP or PDF files and so I have had to convert them.

The slides will grow old and mildewed and I am trying to save them all.  This is my history that I leave for my son and his children.  I think it is wonderful that photography has allowed us to look into the past and preserve memories.

The girl I was then as I travelled with my parents around Australia in 1959

I still feel so young.  I am basically young in mind and body now at 61 years of age.  I don't look my age.  But looking back into this past seems almost like another person's life.  Yet I remember it.  I look fondly at the photos and the young girl in them.  She is almost like a daughter to me.  I know her future and wish I could tell her so many things to protect her and to stop her taking certain paths.  But she knew then, as she does now, that life is good and she loved the environment and always will.

But if I had changed things, I wouldn't have the son I have now or my new grandson.  I am just grateful for my past, all of it.  I treasure the memories my father has left me here, for he recorded them.  I treasure my parents, now passed away.  The trip around Australia was the best of my life because I was ready for it and the country is magic.  It filled me with its spirit and fortified me for the future.

That's All Folks

So long.  Drive straight and true.

THE END.