My Cottage & My Views

My arrival at the station was delayed by three days, just because these guys are pretty laid back.

The side effect was I got to explore one of our iconic towns, spent a night camping on a salt pan then had a leisurely drive to Mount House Station. 

As you know I prefer to arrive at night totally exhausted because then most things look quite rosy. Weird huh? This night arrival was no exception. 

 

My little fibro (asbestos) cottage is probably over 60 years old and is what real estate agents would describe a “renovators dream.” I have an outside dunny with a resident green frog, a cold bath but warm showers, power is solar. A hills hoist washing line! 

My three bed roomed cottage is also the school. Two bedrooms have become classrooms. My home faces east south east and so I get to enjoy beautiful Kimberley sunrises and sunsets. 

 

I have the pleasure of constant dust and constant lowing of cattle. There is a flock of guinea fowl, several roosters who only appear to have one chook each in their harems, two habituated brolgas and a mad emu.  Wallabies every evening. These creatures are just wondering around randomly. Its great. 

 

Landis!

Goodbye Landi 110 and Hello Landi ex ADF

This charming creature featured was my companion for 2 days as I drove her from Broome to Derby,  two medium sized towns found in the far north of Western Australia in a region called the Kimberly, and then onto Mount House Station off the Gibb River Road

You'd think I'd be pretty blaze about driving this vehicle as I already own a LandRover. But they are all so different and this one is a solid girl and did her task with panache. She was there to greet me when I landed in Broome. Her owner, Peter reluctantly allowed me to drive her and frankly I stuffed up. I rode the clutch. How embarrassing! But I think the pressure of proving I could drive something with no power steering and a non British engine must have rattled me. It is quite sobering to have a driving lesson from someone who is going to be your future boss. Anyway I passed muster and was asked to drive on my own to the station. It was brilliant - stop for “smokos” whenever the feeling grabs you, listen to your own music choice and sing along to it really loudly and no-one whinging. Music had to be via ipod 'cos this diesel engine with only a canvas roof is not quiet. 

Sometimes driving long distances in Australia is tedious and its just lots of the same interspersed with road kill but this trip of about 600km was really quite pretty and very changeable. It is also spring now so lots of flowers, ranges and rivers to ford, vast Australian vistas with azure blue skies and just me to watch and enjoy. The day ended with my safe arrival and a brilliant scarlet/ pink sunset to greet me.

Some of you might recall that I have stated that arrival at night is best. And my arrival after sunset was well timed.  Hot water shower and yummy nosh ready in the cook house, too tired to notice anything which might upset my good mood.

 

 

Letter One

Bell Tower, Barrack Street, Perth

 

Dear FB Friends

On Thursday I fly to Broome The town has an interesting history based around the exploits of the men and women who developed the pearling industry, starting with the harvesting of oysters for mother of pearl in the 1880s to the current major cultured pearl  farming enterprises. The riches from the pearl beds did not come cheaply, and the Japanese cemetery is the resting place of 919 Japanese divers who lost their lives working in the industry. Many more were lost at sea, and the exact number of deaths is unknown. The Japanese were only one of the major ethnic groups who flocked to Broome to work on the luggers or the shore based activities supporting the harvesting of oysters from the waters around Broome.

Next day I make my way to Mount House Station and will no longer have access to the world wide web but Marinus has agreed to download these letters onto my blog “You’re not even within cooee” http://hwvdr1.blogspot.com.au/ and FB timeline. I do hope you will find a moment to share my latest teaching experience and I look forward to reading your comments when I return to Perth.

Perth City from the South Perth Foreshore

 

"We of the Never-Never, " by Jeanie Gunn (1902)

"We of the Never-Never, " is one of Australia's classic books and reflects the 'whitefellas" attitude of the day.  The recently married Mrs Gunn had spent almost all of her working life in Melbourne and as a newly wed she spent a little over a year on the remote Elsey cattle station near the Roper River in the Northern Territory.

 

She describes the remoteness of her situation very well and I am about to follow her footsteps to go and live and work on a remote cattle station in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. I do this over a 110 years later and although I have the comforts of a house, a land-line telephone and the weekly mail plane, I will not have access to my social network. So no inter web, Facebook, Twitter, Viber, Skype. Yikes!

 

My destination is Mount House Cattle Station  which is on the northern side of the Leopold Ranges and after a three hour drive east of Derby on the Gibb River Road and is the second or third road on the right situated on the banks of Adcock Creek. My holiday ends 23 July and next day I fly to work!  I shall be teaching the "Gang of Four" children ranging in ages from 10 down to 6 and there is a little tag along of 4 who, I suspect, will be joining us.

The title of this blog may require an explanation:

The word "cooee" originates from the Dharuk language of the original inhabitants of the Sydney area. It means "come here" and has now become widely used in Australia as a call over distances. It was known among white settlers in colonial times and Watkin Tench refers to the Aborigines of Sydney calling to each other in this way.  It is very effective.  Try it!

 

An expression "within cooee of" has developed. It means "within a manageable distance", and seems to be confined to New Zealand and Australian English, and is often used in the negative sense (i.e. "you're not even within cooee", meaning not close to or, a long way off). Another example would be: "They realised they were lost and there was no-one within cooee". It is also used in the abstract (e.g. "How much do you think they spent redoing this place?" "Oh, I don't know, five thousand dollars?" "You're not even within cooee - twenty-five thousand!")

Cooee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooee (accessed 20 July 2014)