Historic Larceny and Superstorms on the Fraser Coast

An early morning breeze gently moved the curtains framing our open window as I woke. In the darkness, the bones of the hundred year old wooden structure creaked; the building flexed in the cool of early morning. I pushed back the covers, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and eased open the door. Outside in the hallway, nightlights along the wall banished gloom to remote corners. Moving silently along the hall, and out to the verandah, I eased myself into a wicker chair; then held a lighter to my cigarette and drew deeply. Yesterday’s storms had moved on but along Maple Street, lamps highlighted residual dampness along the edge of the road camber. Maleny’s main street was a study in still life; absolutely nobody was around, nothing moved. In the early morning tranquility, contemplation of historic larceny and superstorms couldn’t have been further from my mind.

Different Directions

Unfettered by agenda or purpose and exhilarated by the bracing cool of pre-dawn, my thoughts drifted as I attended to my nicotine deficit and sipped tentatively on a very ordinary long back. I pondered our two lives that had, for so many years, taken almost diametrically opposed trajectories; and mused on why and how that had happened.

Way back before deciding to study for the ministry, Mel had enrolled in a Biology Degree at Sydney University. He’d shared an old weatherboard house in Wahroonga with a bunch of mates, and owned a Yamaha 650 Trail bike; motorcycles had been part of Mel’s life back then. But somewhere during that year, Mel heard – or perhaps felt – a call to church ministry; and the next year he enrolled for a Bachelor of Theology at Avondale College – now Avondale University.

The Dismissal

He’d set off on a journey that would draw him closer to the church, at about the same time as I’d started drifting away; not that I’d ever been really committed. Matters for me, came to a head in 1980 when I’d taken an appointment at Kabiufa, in the Highlands of PNG; and had been fired from that appointment before the end of that same year.

Suddenly, I was no longer drifting. My employers had issued an ultimatum and I, backed into a corner, had come out fighting. Ultimately, I’d been summarily dismissed; fired! In truth, the sacking probably had more to do with my intractability and arrogance than any sin I’d committed. I realise now, that church organisations don’t mind the odd transgression, as long as you’re contrite about it. I was anything but contrite; indeed, I failed to see transgression in anything I‘d been doing.

Things Come Together . . . and Fall Apart

With a young family, no resources, and facing the very real prospect of unemployment, I’d taken up a job offer with Papua New Guinea’s Education Department; and, the next year, shifted to Passam National High School in the East Sepik Province.

I guess you could say that my subsequent rise through the ranks was not far short of meteoric: Head of Department in 1981; Deputy Principal in 1982; Principal in 1983; and, Regional Secondary Inspector in 1985. Ultimately, at the grand old age of 34, I became  Assistant Secretary for Education.

Looking back now, it’s obvious that, in the process, I became overly impressed with what I’d considered to be my own achievements; and dazzled by that rapid rise through the system. I’d been willingly seduced by the trappings of authority; compromised by the short-cuts and situational ethics I’d deemed necessary along the way. My good Lady saw it all. She didn’t like the determined and self obsessed arrogance of the prick I’d become; and promptly left.

Facing Facts

At the time, I absolutely failed to see any of this for what it truly was. But some thirty years after the fact, sitting in quiet pre-dawn solitude, I could see it all with humiliating clarity. Hindsight has never really been a problem for me. My flaws and missteps always seem to have been informed by seriously dodgy judgement; an inability, or unwillingness, to discriminate between the light and the end of the tunnel and the oncoming freight train. 

In the half-dark of an upstairs verandah at the Hotel Maleny, I guess none of this really mattered, except that it explained the distance between us – brothers both. By the time we arrived back in Australia in late 1989, Mel and I were miles apart; physically, and in faith, outlook, and mindset. 

Mel’s rise had, if anything, been even more spectacular than mine. But mine had been in the context of a very secular Third World. His had been within the culture and traditions of the Church; and indeed, our family. As the years continued to slip quietly away we had, without malice, continued on our diametrically opposed trajectories; until around the time of our Dad’s diagnosis with pancreatic cancer.

Re-Joining the Fraternity

Then towards the end of 2007 Mel phoned, out of the blue, to ask about the price of a good used Harley Davidson. He needed something, he said, that would get him out of the house and clear his mind. At the time, I advised against buying. Instead, I’d suggesting that I put one of my bikes on a trailer and deliver it to him. I was planning a trip to visit Dad anyway; trailering a motorcycle to Brisbane seemed to be a simple and obvious solution. How could I, or anyone, know what a watershed that delivery would be.

As many of us have found, Mel’s rediscovery of motorcycles and riding introduced him to a whole new set of mates. More than that, riding a Harley Davidson kicked off a fascination with the mystique of that brand; which eventually resulted in his becoming nearly as much of a Harley tragic as I am.

My own fascination with motorcycles goes back a long way; a very long way. I love the sound of them, the feel of them and the unfettered freedom they afford. I learned to ride on a BSA Bantam around the Ela Beach Mission compound in Port Moresby; where we’d lived back in the early 1960s. From that point on, I’ve been a motorcycle devotee; and later, a Harley Davidson tragic. 

A Motorcycle Road Trip to Remember

I didn’t become involved in serious road trips, until much later. The longest motorcycle ride I’d done up until 2005 was probably no more than a few hundred kilometres. But, after one pretty tough year, I decided to use the Christmas break to get on the road; to Alice Springs and Adelaide; on to Melbourne via the Coorong and Great Ocean Road; then, to Sydney via the Princess Highway; and thence to Brisbane, Townsville, Mt Isa and finally back to Darwin. During that year I’d completely rebuilt, with my Auto Studies class, a 1995 XLH 1200 Sportster; an extended road trip seemed an ideal opportunity to see exactly how good that rebuild had been.

By the time I arrived home, 2005 had rolled into 2006 and I’d covered just a bit over 10,000 kilometres; blown an oil line; and made the repair by the side of the road. I spent most evenings for the first week in motel forecourts tinkering with the main jet in my Keihin CV Carburettor; until I got it just right. I’d listened to, and yarned with, truckers in roadhouses along the Stuart, Princess and Pacific Highways; old timers in one-horse towns recounting tales from days that used to be; and others lamenting the passing of the good old days. I’d even spent an afternoon in a country pub with a couple of Hells Angels of about my own age; talking  about children, grandchildren and life on the road.

Change of Perspective

That motorcycle odyssey resulted in a tectonic shift in attitude; a change of perspective that irrevocably altered the way I looked at the world, and people. I’d headed out on the road with a bad attitude; a serious chip on my shoulder. I had no plan beyond getting away, clearing my head and getting back before commencement of the new academic year. I’d packed a minimalist grab-bag of the tools I thought might come in handy: a tyre repair kit; a bunch of spanners and Allen Keys; a quart of 20W50 engine oil; and, a couple of feet of oil line. For clothes, I’d packed three pairs of jeans, half a dozen T-shirts, underwear, a toothbrush and an old leather jacket.

On that journey I discovered early on that, by the time I got a couple of hundred kilometres down the road, most of what had been bothering me had faded into the background. The steady uneven beat of my V-Twin settled in to become the steady, consistent heartbeat of my journey. As I pushed further south, the heat and humidity of each day built; and returned to me from the road surface with interest. The mighty storms, harbingers of the oncoming wet season, had transformed the landscape: dry season aridity had morphed into a verdant backdrop of green; and the tensions, frustrations and disappointments of the year melted into the distance.

Road Trip Reality

By the end of my first day on the road, engine vibration had numbed my fingers; the unrelenting ferocity of the sun had seared my face, arms and backs of my hands; the non-porous vinyl seat had set my butt on fire no matter how much I squirmed or shifted position; and, my legs struggled to keep me upright. That night, on checking in at the Renner Springs Roadhouse, my order of business had been to re-fuel the motorcycle; shower to rid myself of heat and grime; get something to eat; and, tinker with the jetting of my carburettor. But later, when I’d finally rolled into bed, I slipped off the edge of consciousness; no sporadic resurfacing in sweat-drenched panic attacks; and no nightmares to haunt the dark hours.

Baptism of Fire and Ice

On a motorcycle, there is no avoiding the uncompromising harshness or reality of the environment you’re riding in. Later that week, on my first day out of Adelaide, the temperature soared as I headed down through the Coorong. Aided and abetted by a ferocious northwest wind, the mercury hovered steadily at just over forty-three degrees. In fact, this was how I’d got to meet a couple of bikers on their way to a Hells Angels meet; I’d stopped at a little country pub mid-afternoon to get out of the sun for a while.

The next day dawned as cold and bleak as the previous one had been scorching. As I headed out of Port Fairy, a cutting wind from the south buffeted me; and successive squalls that crossed the coast from the southern ocean soaked me to the bone. It was a baptism of fire and ice; and there was no quarter for any navel gazing or fretting about unfinished business back home. During the weeks that followed, I rode through the whole gamut of Australia’s climatic extremes; rain and cold winds, bushfires, and floods across the Barkly Tableland.

Conversion

So when, at our Dad’s bedside a year or so later, I’d suggested the possibility of taking an extended motorcycle road trip together, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I’m not sure Mel did. As things turned out though, he took to it like a duck to water; by the time we’d reached the end of our gallop around America, he was a motorcycle road trip convert.

Now, while I’d been genuflecting on all this, the early half-darkness had morphed into the muted light of an overcast day. I wandered back down the hall towards our room. There was no snoring; but there was no sound of movement either. So I slipped downstairs and out onto the street.

The air was fresh and clean as it always is after a storm. A light breeze disturbed the tranquillity of trees along Maple Street. Sauntering down to Obi Obi Creek, I leaned on the bridge guardrail; and watched the stream, now muddied by last night’s storms, rush over rocks and pebbles. 

Any day’s a Good Day

‘Good Morning,’ said a gravelly voice from somewhere behind.

I turned and looked into clear blue eyes; eyes that were set in a face which had clearly weathered more than a few of life’s storms. It was a face that had probably been chiselled and etched by a lifetime of hard work in the sun.

‘Morning,’ I responded. ‘Nice Day,’ I added.

‘Son, at my age, any day you wake up is a nice day,’ he rasped with a broad grin.

His voice might have been rough but he was articulate, polished and precise.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids would you?’

‘Too right,’ he responded. ‘Haven’t seen you round here before . . . you new?’

‘Well, sort of . . . actually, just passing through on a motorcycle road trip with my brother.’

‘How long have you been on the road?’ he queried.

‘Only just started . . . today’s our second day,’ I said.

A Life Well Lived

He’d introduced himself as Thomas; Tom to his friends, he said. His handshake was firm, his eyes clear and direct, and he had an easy smile.  Born the same year as our Dad, in 1922, he’d lived through the hard years of the Great Depression. Then, in his late teens he’d seen service along the Kokoda Track; with the 39th Battalion during the Second World War. His father, he said, had been a timber cutter in the district. He, himself, had lived in the Maleny area all his life, he said; except for the years he’d been away in Papua New Guinea ‘fighting the Japs’.

We stood learning on the bridge rail, and yarned for quite a while. Well, truth be told, he’d talked and I’d listened. In South of My Days, Judith Wright describes Old Dan as having seventy years of stories clutched round his bones; seventy years hived in him like old honey. Well, Tom was a bit like that; though possibly with eighty rather than seventy years hived in him. Born in a different age, he’d lived through the best, and worst, parts of our nation’s history; and he seemed to have done this with his head held high and a twinkle in those startling blue eyes. He was on his way to take breakfast with an old mate, he said; and eventually to that end, he reluctantly took his leave.

Dignity of Days Gone

With polished manners from a bygone day, he reached up, touched the brim of his immaculate Akubra, inclined his head, bid me good day and walked away. And as I watched him walk away, it was impossible not to notice his upright stance, his slow but steady stride and straight back. I turned and headed back to our digs. Perhaps out of respect for the dignity of this old gentleman, I found myself standing a little more erect; holding my back a little straighter; and walking with a little more purpose.

By the time I got back to the room, Mel was out and about; well, in the shower anyway. Laying out a fresh pair of jeans, T-shirt and clean socks, I stripped, and packed yesterday’s gear; and then headed for the showers. By the time I got back, Mel was dressed and busy retrieving his gear from the dresser and wardrobe.

‘There you go . . . way ahead of me – again!’ he quipped with mock annoyance all over his face.’

‘Nah Mate,’ I responded with a grin, ‘just making sure I don’t get left behind.’

Breakfast . . . but not at Tiffany’s

On checking in the previous day, Mel had asked about good places to eat; and had been reliably informed that Monica’s made a really good breakfast. So, once we’d lugged out T-Bags down the stairs, hefted them onto our motorcycles, and secured them, we fired up; exited the car park; turned right; and, cruised a couple of hundred yards up Maple Street to Monica’s. The heavy thump of our aftermarket pipes turned heads all the way up the street.

As usual, Mel gave serious attention to the menu while I checked notifications and comments on Facebook. In the end, I ordered what he’d decided was a worthwhile breakfast. We then settled back and reviewed yesterday’s ride; speculated about where we might go for the day; and generally congratulated ourselves on our motorcycle road trip during the time of Covid.

Monica’s

Breakfast, when it arrived, was brilliant and the coffee truly spectacular. One of the wonderful things about travelling in Australia is that you can find pretty good coffee almost anywhere; we could certainly teach the Americans a few things about coffee shops and the availability of an acceptable brew.

By the time we’d done justice to the food, coffee and hospitality at Monica’s, it was going on 10am. The day had warmed a little but the sky remained overcast. I got up and headed in to settle the bill; only to discover that Mel had beaten me to the draw. I sauntered outside with every intention of berating my him about his profligate spending; but again, he’d beaten me to the draw. By the time I got to the sidewalk, he’d already climbed aboard his Road King, and had fired up; the machine rumbled unevenly in a slow lumpy idle.

Heading North

We cruised back along Maple Street and, a kilometre or so later, took a left onto the Maleny-Montville Road; otherwise known as Highway 23. Accelerating north, we passed Gerard’s Lookout on our right and Lake Baroon on our left, as we pushed on through Montville towards Mapleton. Then, just before entering the town, we took a left onto Obi Obi Road; and skirted the southern edge of Mapleton Falls National Park. The Obi Obi Road essentially traces the course of the Creek of the same name, past the Walli State Forest and through to Kenilworth.

Nanna McGinn’s

By the time we arrived at Kenilworth, the sun was pretty much directly overhead; and the town seemed to hold reasonable prospects for good coffee and something to eat. Gearing down, we slowed in deference to local speed limits, and what appeared to be tourist traffic. We drifted to the curb just along from Nanna McGinn’s; a promising looking eatery and ‘purveyor of fine coffee’.

The day remained overcast but the humidity had risen steadily throughout our morning ride. A gusting breeze ruffled leaves along the sidewalk and blew the occasional piece of litter up the street. Mel parked himself at an umbrella-shaded, outdoor table to study the menu; I wandered off to have a cigarette. If the waiter fronted the table before I arrived back, Mel knew what to do; just order two of whatever he was having. And that was the way things turned out. By the time I got back, the order had been placed and coffee was on the table.

A Storm Front

Because we’d noted a menacing bank of blue-black cloud building in the west, our break in Kenilworth was only long enough to have something to eat and top up our tanks. That having been done, we headed north out of town on Brooloo Road. We traced the course of the Mary River until we reached the eastern extremity of the Imbil State Forest; and then, after Brooloo, continued on the the Mary Valley Road.

We hadn’t been working our iron horses very hard since leaving Maleny; this was more a canter than a gallop. After all, the day was pleasantly cool; the environment lush; and, the road had just enough curves and corners to make riding enjoyable. After pushing on north through Kadanga, Amamoor, Dargun, Gildora and Long Flat we arrived at outskirts of Gympie; and took a break for a meat pie and coffee.

Finding the Mother Lode

The name of the town derives from the local Aboriginal word gimpi-gimpi, which means stinging tree, and refers to dendrocnide moroides; a tree with large, round leaves and properties very similar to stinging nettles. The first non-aboriginal settlers after logging in the area was done, were graziers. But the town only really took its place on the map when gold was discovered there in 1867, by James Nash. In fact, there was a brief time when Gympie was actually known as Nashville; in honour of the bloke who discovered that gold.

As lady luck would have it, Nash’s discovery was fairly fortuitous; because Queensland was in the midst of a severe economic depression. It’s arguable that this gold discovery probably saved Queensland from bankruptcy back in those very early days. As for the town itself, the rapid development associated with the ensuing gold rush resulted in streets that are, to say the least,  ad hoc.

Tin Can Bay or Not . . . that is the Question

In any case, once we’d done the coffee thing – which turned out to be hardly worth the effort – we headed out onto Tin Can Bay Road. This took us through Canina, Ross Creek and past the Toolara Forest. The massive bank of cloud, now at our backs as we cruised east, had developed apace; and seemed to be growing more menacing by the hour. Clearly, a massive storm front was heading our way out of the west.

Then, just before Wallu, Mel slowed and pulled off into the gravel where Tin Can Bay Road forms a junction with the Maryborough-Cooloola Road. I followed suit. And, while Mel took a long hard look at the sky, I wandered off for a cigarette.

‘What do you reckon, Mate?’ he called out.

‘Reckoning is for idiots and silly buggers who don’t know!’ I called back. ‘And I know, I don’t reckon, that in another couple of hours, maybe three, we’ll be in the middle of a one hell of a storm.’

We Don’t Do Rain

‘Well,’ he said, ‘given that we don’t do rain, do you think we ought to bother with Tin Can Bay . . . or take this road, and head straight for Hervey Bay?’

I took a long drag on my cigarette as I considered the ominous front marching irrevocably in our direction.

‘It’s a no-brainer, Mate . . . we take this road and head north.’

So we took a left, cracked open our throttles and accelerated north past the vast Wide Bay Defence Training Area. This training area extends from the Maryborough-Cooloola Road right out to the shores of Great Sandy Strait; that stretch of water separating Fraser Island from the Mainland. Suddenly our ride had taken on a distinct sense of urgency; and we thundered past the Tuan State Forest towards Maryborough. The heavy bark and thump of our exhausts echoed from the dense bush that edged the road.

Maryborough

At the outskirts of town, we rolled back our throttles; against the possibility that the local constabulary might have their speed cameras out. Maryborough is located on the Mary River about 255 kilometres north of Brisbane; if you take the most direct route up the Bruce Highway that is. The city is closely tied to its neighbour city Hervey Bay about another 30 kilometres to the northeast; which was where we were headed.

For most of the afternoon we’d been riding through the traditional land of the Gubbi Gubbi [Kabi Kabi] and Batjala [Butchulla] people; original inhabitants of the region. These clans had been traditional custodians of an area that extended west as far as the coastal ranges and Kilkivan; north as far as Childers and Hervey Bay; and the south to the headwaters of the Mary River and Cooroy. Incidentally, an escaped convict by the name of James Davis, lived for years among various clans of the Gubbi Gubbi. And later, John Mathew, a clergyman turned anthropologist, spent five years with them and mastered their language. Now, if you think that this interaction was indicative of things to come, you’d be wrong.

Larceny on a Grand Scale

Following hard on the heels of logging operations, squatters moved into the area in search of grazing land. The Maryborough we know today was founded by George Furber in 1847; he set up a small wool depot on the banks of the river. Then, a year later Edgar Aldridge together with Henry and Richard Palmer constructed several permanent buildings. By 1849, there was a post office, petty sessions court and police station. The township site itself was laid out by the government surveyor in 1850, and the first land sales occurred in January 1852. The fledgling town took its name from the Mary River, so named in 1847 for Mary Lennox; wife of the then Governor of New South Wales.

Aboriginal resistance to the incursion of settlers was determined; numerous squatters and their shepherds were wounded or killed. Within weeks of his arrival, George Furber himself was seriously wounded; he eventually shot the Aboriginal man who tried to kill him in the main street of Maryborough. Then, a couple of years later, Furber and his newly arrived son-in-law were killed by two Aboriginal men. One of the men, named Minni-Minni, is reported to have said that this was retribution for Furber’s killing of his mother for stealing flour.

Dispossession and Exile

In the end though, the outcome was pretty much a foregone conclusion; it was essentially a one sided contest of wills. By the late 1860s Aboriginal resistance to settlement in the district had been defeated; and those who survived, only existed in poverty and squalor as fringe-dwellers. Many of those who did survive were forcibly transferred to an isolation camp on Fraser Island in the 1890s; and later shipped to Far North Queensland.

I’d learned about this tragedy years before while visiting an old mate. After his HIV diagnosis, he’d fled Sydney to live out his life on a allotment of native bushland just out of Bauple. On Friday and Saturday afternoons, we’d drive together in his old Datsun ute, into Maryborough; to an old pub with a battered old upright, steel frame, Beale piano. And there, for the price of a beer or two, my old friend and I would spend afternoons; with him tickling the ivories in that lazy slip-note style made popular by Floyd Cramer. 

Galloping from a Superstorm

Our arrival in Maryborough, years later, was a much more abbreviated affair. Running ahead of a massive storm-front, there was no ‘whiling away the afternoon at an old pub’; no toe-tapping to the nostalgic tones of Last Dance. With one eye on the rapidly encroaching storm, we paused only long enough to refuel; and, in my case, have a smoke. That having been done, we climbed back aboard our beasts, fired up and headed out onto the Maryborough-Hervey Bay Road; hoping to make Hervey Bay before the storm broke. 

With scant regard now for local speed limits, we roared out of town through St Helens, Dundathu, Walliebum and Susan Creek. And about half an hour later, took a right onto Harbour Drive and then a left onto Main Street. At the roundabout, which forms a junction with the Esplanade, we took the second exit into a parking area adjacent to the Wetside Water Park, and cut our engines.

While Mel searched his message bank for Margaret and David’s address, I wandered off for a smoke; and to take a few pictures of the Bay. The storm hadn’t yet broken over Torquay but it was pretty damned close. A determined onshore wind pushed scattered leaves across the car park surface. It sucked up eddies of dust and discarded paper wrappers; and set empty plastic water bottles skittering across the bitumen.

Friends and Shelter in Torquay

Mel finally gave up on finding David’s address and phoned him. Then, after I’d finished my cigarette and and stretched my legs, we climbed back on our bikes; fired up; and, cruised a hundred yards or so along the Esplanade to where David was standing at the curbside.

Our hosts for the evening, David and Margaret, had been holidaying in their Hervey Bay Townhouse. They’d only planned to stay a couple of weeks. But, just as they were about to head home, a significant Covid outbreak put paid to their plans. A return to New South Wales would have meant going directly into Lockdown. So they decided to stay on; and were both still in Hervey Bay when we arrived.

The threatening storm remained just that; threatening. It was not until later that evening, after night had blanked the town, that the monster arrived. The heavens opened with a naphtha flash that turned night to broad daylight; and a long series of of thunder-claps shook the building. Of course by then, we didn’t care. Our motorcycles were parked and covered, we’d eaten a very fine meal, and were immersed in convivial conversation and fine coffee.

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