Things look all quite normal until you embarked on one of the four car door tours and discover that just one turn off the main street there is no longer bitumen. It is all higgledy piggledy dirt tracks (thank goodness there are car doors to guide us on our way) and piles of dirt everywhere. Add to that ramshackle old shacks and rusty machinery of every kind and you have all I would expect from an opal town.
Is that a Coolibah tree beside the abandoned house? Every Australian knows about Coolibah trees because the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda is nigh on our unoffical national anthem but most of us live nowhere near the inland where they grow. Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
Unique concept that: car door tours! Guess they have plenty of old wrecks! As much a blight on the landscape as coal-mining, I guess, albeit less extensive.
ReplyDeleteI think I read somewhere that car doors were a tradition for marking the various properties. You would need something to tell on pile of dirt from another.
DeleteLove this idea!
ReplyDeleteQuirky like the place.
DeleteThese mining towns might not be pretty but they sure have character(s).
ReplyDeleteYes I wonder what it is that makes the characters. It's all so rough and ready.
DeleteI think you have to be a 'character' to throw in your life and head out bush in search of treasure.
DeleteGood point.
Delete