No one can ever praise highly enough the role the mango tree played in the settlement of the Northwest Queensland Outback.
Outback Mango Tree.Just look at how old it is.
Even on The Plains of Promise where nothing ever grows, off in the distance are stands of mango trees, all planted by those poor settlers who tried to farm out there in a land where it rains only once every two decades.
Grown around homesteads,they provided
the only shelter from
the fierce desert sun.
Of course, little tastes worse than an Outback mango. That underground water is heavily mineralised and desperately undrinkable, so all that goes into the very few mangoes the trees produce.
Mango season on the coast, but no mangoes here!
Actually, Outback mangoes taste like turpentine so it's hardly a loss that there are so very few.
But the fact these tropical coastal trees are able to grow in the desert at all just astonishes me. No other tree ever could. And yet everyone takes them for granted. You know, someone needs to write about the role these trees played in the lives of early settlers in this region.
I could tell you a very stupid story about mango trees on The Plains of Promise, and, dammit!, I have nothing else to do for the next hour so why don't I:
The Plains of Promise is the deep desert country around the Northwest Queensland Outback town of Richmond, and a more unpromising landscape is impossible to imagine.
Visualise it: Under a fierce blue domed sky, for thousands of miles to the horizon in every direction, unbroken flat red bulldust. Out here you feel like the main course in a serving dish on god's banquet table. And that sun. Relentless! Temperatures regularly over 50 degrees centigrade. A more awful place would be hard to find.
(I had a bet with myself that the aboriginal people of this area would have a complex mythology about the stars - since they had very little else - and was lucky enough to discover that Oz actress Deborah Mailman's dad, Wally, came from this region and so I asked her, and yes indeed they did. I have very happy memories of the night we lay together out on a football field while she pointed out the different stars and constellations and explained what they all meant.)
It's brutal land all right, yet those poor settlers tried to farm it. All Burke and Wills fault! When the bodies of these Lost Australian Explorers were discovered and their belongings returned to Melbourne, they found among their effects notebooks containing description of the wonder of this area. Thousands of miles of sweet green grass, they said, which they'd given the name The Plains of Promise. Word got out and settlers brought acres of land, sight unseen, piled their families and goods onto wagons and, herding their livestock ahead of them, plied their way up the centre of Australia to this "good land".
Unfortunately, when they arrived ...
... seems Burke and Wills had told the truth, only they'd passed through the area immediately after the only time it had rained in 20 years, so, after a long, arduous and dangerous journey, these poor settlers simply discovered the desert was back with a vengence. But these were intrepid and hardy folk - The Bulldog Breed - and so they immediately went digging for water and discovered that, deep underground, rivers ran freely and so everyone sunk bores, pumped water and, yup, decided to make a go of their awful situation.
Today, after a century most have given up because the life is just too hard, but there are still folk out there breeding their cattle and making enough money to get by.
I can tell you another story about The Plains of Promise, although this isn't the stupid one I will tell you later: I know of one family in this region - no names! - who were at war with each other. Real biblical stuff! All "lawyers at 20 paces" and "I'll shoot you on sight!" and courtcases, suing and countersuing. Really bad blood all round ...
... but one day a phone call from the family cattle station: "The bore's stopped pumping!" Instantly every male member of that family - brothers, father, uncles - was in his plane and, from every corner of Australia, flying "home", where, for two days, in the fiercest and grimmest silence, they worked on that bore until the water started to flow again. And then each got back into his plane and flew off again, not a word spoken.
I love this story because, to me, nothing else illustrates so vividly just how desperately important their bore is to every person who has ever lived on The Plains of Promise.
But that's not the stupid story I was going to tell you. This is:
If you read my posting "Richmond Rocks", you'll understand why these bizarre rocks have such a passionate fan base. Everyone who knows about them - and few do - wants to get hold of as many as possible. You'll also know that they only appear after it rains on The Plains of Promise. So ...
One day, an excited phone call from a dear friend: "It's rained out at Richmond! You wanna ...?" I was so there! But it took me well over five hours to reach my friend. When I finally arrived, we hitched up the u-haul to the back of the 4-wheel drive, anticipating a rich find, and hied off to Richmond.
Too late! Tyre-tracks all over the desert! The place had already been plundered! And yes, I was brutally cussed out! So, feeling most guilty, there I was, in the truck, slowly traveling down the highway, scanning to the horizon with binoculars. Nothing!
And then I noticed, off in the distance, black specks. Instantly I knew they could only be one thing. "I can get you as many rocks as you want!" I promised! "Just drive over there!"
Friend doubted and, yes, on the way, red bulldust pumping through the air-conditioning, coating us and making it difficult to breathe, even I started to doubt I could deliver. But the only reason I would have been wrong was if other people were the same sort of smarty-pants I was.
Nearly half an hour later, every second brutal, we finally reached the black specks. Mango trees! A square of them surrounding a quarter acre of red dust and a few rusted pieces of metal. We got out to explore.
Nothing!
But I was sure, so began kicking at the dust ... and, bang!, hurt my foot. Yup, deep underneath the dust were Richmond Rocks. Hundreds of them. We loaded up the u-haul and the back of the 4-wheel drive, and there were so many we even left a lot for the next smarty-pants who realised what I had realised on seeing those black specks on the horizon!
And what I realised was, where nothing else grows, those specks could only have been mango trees and mango trees meant settlers, and settlers had wives, and wives would have deeply and desperately hated that dust! Can you imagine what their lives would have been like? Bull-dust on every beeze, coating everything around with a fine layer of rich red talcum-powder! Impossible to keep anything clean! And then, over a century, at least five times it would have rained, and there they were, dah, dah!, in a vast landscape where no one else was competing for Richmond Rocks! And what I saw in my big smarty-pants flash was those wives out there in the desert, gathering up those rocks, taking them home and laying them over every inch of ground around the homestead, trying to settle that dust and thus bring themselves a small semblance of CLEAN!!!
And that's my stupid story. Honestly, someone really does have to write a book in recognition of the importance of mango trees in the lives of those early Outback settlers, don't they!
Oh, and if you can't imagine what the lives of those settlers wives would have been like, read Barbara Baynton's harrowing short stories in a collection called "Bush Studies", which, you will be astonished to hear, is on a Restricted Reading list up in China. God knows 1) how anyone in China would have discovered and read it, and 2) why they find the book so offensive. Maybe, you know, it's too close to the lives of poor farmers' wives in Mainland China ... although, apart from in post-attempt-at-creating-Beijing's-wheat-basket up in Mongolia, I can't see Chinese farmers' wives having that much to do with DUST!!!
Later: went looking for a link to Deborah Mailman and discovered this youtube post where she talks about her dad. Check it out.
She says Wally never taught her about her "aboriginality" but, from what I witnessed that glorious night, he had certainly taught her all about the sky.
I could tell you a very stupid story about mango trees on The Plains of Promise, and, dammit!, I have nothing else to do for the next hour so why don't I:
THE PLAINS OF PROMISE
The Plains of Promise is the deep desert country around the Northwest Queensland Outback town of Richmond, and a more unpromising landscape is impossible to imagine.
Visualise it: Under a fierce blue domed sky, for thousands of miles to the horizon in every direction, unbroken flat red bulldust. Out here you feel like the main course in a serving dish on god's banquet table. And that sun. Relentless! Temperatures regularly over 50 degrees centigrade. A more awful place would be hard to find.
(I had a bet with myself that the aboriginal people of this area would have a complex mythology about the stars - since they had very little else - and was lucky enough to discover that Oz actress Deborah Mailman's dad, Wally, came from this region and so I asked her, and yes indeed they did. I have very happy memories of the night we lay together out on a football field while she pointed out the different stars and constellations and explained what they all meant.)
It's brutal land all right, yet those poor settlers tried to farm it. All Burke and Wills fault! When the bodies of these Lost Australian Explorers were discovered and their belongings returned to Melbourne, they found among their effects notebooks containing description of the wonder of this area. Thousands of miles of sweet green grass, they said, which they'd given the name The Plains of Promise. Word got out and settlers brought acres of land, sight unseen, piled their families and goods onto wagons and, herding their livestock ahead of them, plied their way up the centre of Australia to this "good land".
Unfortunately, when they arrived ...
... seems Burke and Wills had told the truth, only they'd passed through the area immediately after the only time it had rained in 20 years, so, after a long, arduous and dangerous journey, these poor settlers simply discovered the desert was back with a vengence. But these were intrepid and hardy folk - The Bulldog Breed - and so they immediately went digging for water and discovered that, deep underground, rivers ran freely and so everyone sunk bores, pumped water and, yup, decided to make a go of their awful situation.
Today, after a century most have given up because the life is just too hard, but there are still folk out there breeding their cattle and making enough money to get by.
I can tell you another story about The Plains of Promise, although this isn't the stupid one I will tell you later: I know of one family in this region - no names! - who were at war with each other. Real biblical stuff! All "lawyers at 20 paces" and "I'll shoot you on sight!" and courtcases, suing and countersuing. Really bad blood all round ...
... but one day a phone call from the family cattle station: "The bore's stopped pumping!" Instantly every male member of that family - brothers, father, uncles - was in his plane and, from every corner of Australia, flying "home", where, for two days, in the fiercest and grimmest silence, they worked on that bore until the water started to flow again. And then each got back into his plane and flew off again, not a word spoken.
I love this story because, to me, nothing else illustrates so vividly just how desperately important their bore is to every person who has ever lived on The Plains of Promise.
But that's not the stupid story I was going to tell you. This is:
If you read my posting "Richmond Rocks", you'll understand why these bizarre rocks have such a passionate fan base. Everyone who knows about them - and few do - wants to get hold of as many as possible. You'll also know that they only appear after it rains on The Plains of Promise. So ...
One day, an excited phone call from a dear friend: "It's rained out at Richmond! You wanna ...?" I was so there! But it took me well over five hours to reach my friend. When I finally arrived, we hitched up the u-haul to the back of the 4-wheel drive, anticipating a rich find, and hied off to Richmond.
Too late! Tyre-tracks all over the desert! The place had already been plundered! And yes, I was brutally cussed out! So, feeling most guilty, there I was, in the truck, slowly traveling down the highway, scanning to the horizon with binoculars. Nothing!
And then I noticed, off in the distance, black specks. Instantly I knew they could only be one thing. "I can get you as many rocks as you want!" I promised! "Just drive over there!"
Friend doubted and, yes, on the way, red bulldust pumping through the air-conditioning, coating us and making it difficult to breathe, even I started to doubt I could deliver. But the only reason I would have been wrong was if other people were the same sort of smarty-pants I was.
Nearly half an hour later, every second brutal, we finally reached the black specks. Mango trees! A square of them surrounding a quarter acre of red dust and a few rusted pieces of metal. We got out to explore.
Nothing!
But I was sure, so began kicking at the dust ... and, bang!, hurt my foot. Yup, deep underneath the dust were Richmond Rocks. Hundreds of them. We loaded up the u-haul and the back of the 4-wheel drive, and there were so many we even left a lot for the next smarty-pants who realised what I had realised on seeing those black specks on the horizon!
And what I realised was, where nothing else grows, those specks could only have been mango trees and mango trees meant settlers, and settlers had wives, and wives would have deeply and desperately hated that dust! Can you imagine what their lives would have been like? Bull-dust on every beeze, coating everything around with a fine layer of rich red talcum-powder! Impossible to keep anything clean! And then, over a century, at least five times it would have rained, and there they were, dah, dah!, in a vast landscape where no one else was competing for Richmond Rocks! And what I saw in my big smarty-pants flash was those wives out there in the desert, gathering up those rocks, taking them home and laying them over every inch of ground around the homestead, trying to settle that dust and thus bring themselves a small semblance of CLEAN!!!
And that's my stupid story. Honestly, someone really does have to write a book in recognition of the importance of mango trees in the lives of those early Outback settlers, don't they!
Oh, and if you can't imagine what the lives of those settlers wives would have been like, read Barbara Baynton's harrowing short stories in a collection called "Bush Studies", which, you will be astonished to hear, is on a Restricted Reading list up in China. God knows 1) how anyone in China would have discovered and read it, and 2) why they find the book so offensive. Maybe, you know, it's too close to the lives of poor farmers' wives in Mainland China ... although, apart from in post-attempt-at-creating-Beijing's-wheat-basket up in Mongolia, I can't see Chinese farmers' wives having that much to do with DUST!!!
Later: went looking for a link to Deborah Mailman and discovered this youtube post where she talks about her dad. Check it out.
She says Wally never taught her about her "aboriginality" but, from what I witnessed that glorious night, he had certainly taught her all about the sky.
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1 comment:
Denise, this blog entry caught my attention -- very amusing and entertaining! However, it does paint an unreasonably bleak picture of NW Queensland, especially the area around Richmond, so here's some background information to refresh your knowledge of the region:
Richmond, which is in the next bioregion west of the Desert Uplands, is called THE DOWNS -- it's treeless, yes, but it's a bioregion dominated by Mitchell Grass which is not only palatable to stock, but downright devastatingly appealing and nourishing. Because the land is formed not from fine red desert bulldust but from heavy rich black soils, it cracks deeply -- which, while it generally won't support the growth of many species of native trees as such, does however mean that in the wet season (which is actually MONSOONAL and nowhere nearly as erratic and random as you naughtily suggest, and is therefore extremely reliable when the country's not in El Nino mode) the ground swells and retains water for long periods and becomes positively lush and rife with Mitchell and Flinders grasses and other more ephemeral native vegetation and fauna. This is the "boom and bust" cycle common to many interior grazing rangelands of Australia, and which is factored into decisions made by pastoralists about stocking rates, pasture management, paddock rotation, supplementary feeding and so on.
This Downs area, including Richmond itself, comprises some of the wealthiest graziers and the richest and most sought-after grazing lands in Australia. Far from people having "given up because life is too hard" or the owners "making enough money to get by", the properties are still so highly desirable and costly it's almost impossible to obtain one unless you inherit it outright or have a fortune behind you to buy one. For example, my husband's parents' place (which you've visited) sold earlier this year for more than 10 million dollars -- for the land alone. My husband's grandparents' (larger) place which is an hour or so from there sold just two months ago for a staggering 15 million dollars -- also not including stock and plant. As you might see from just these two examples, the cattle and sheep stations on the Downs are highly productive, highly coveted and well-grassed AND have an efficient, reliable, almost boundless and superb-quality artesian water supply AND provide their exceedingly lucky owners with an almost inconceivable wealth of income, security and comfort.
The "Plains of Promise" are actually the large area of Savannah landscape around Normanton and Burketown, up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, further north-west from the Downs and in yet another bioregion. They were given that rather optimistic title by the surveyors who arrived via boats from the Gulf in a good season, and gazed south. That particular epithet is still used today as an advertising "hook" for Burketown and its surrounding Savannah grass plains and doesn't connote any negativity whatsoever -- but is not ever applied to the area around Richmond. Love, R xxx
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