DAY 136 : COMBO WATERHOLE

 12 August, 2010   A short way out of Cloncurry we turned further south onto the Landsborough Highway - otherwise known as the Matilda Highway - as this is that part of the outback which inspired Banjo Patterson to write "Waltzing Matilda".  100 kms down the road we stopped at the town of McKinlay.... here is the
Walkabout Creek Hotel which was the pub in the film "Crocodile Dundee". 

On the side of the pub was an old iconic Australian sign for XXXX Beer

In a pretty little park we had morning tea and shared our food with the gregarious Apostle birds.... they love to roost together and cuddle up.......

About 80 kms further on, just past the town of Kyuna, we headed off the road for about 12 kms towards Combo Waterhole.  In the early days the owners of  Dagwood Station here "dammed" up their waterholes with stone overruns* and several stock routes and, later, Cobb & Co coaches stopped at these permanent water sources.  It was while Banjo Patterson was in the area visiting his fiancee's family that the owners of Dagwood invited him on a picnic to the Combo Waterhole and it was there, so legend has it, that he wrote "Waltzing Matilda".

On the road into "The Combo".....

Cobb &  Co in the area in earlier days......

Our caravan next to one of the waterholes.................

In a Tree next to the Caravan a Galah was feeding his young....

The stone over runs helped to dam the water.  These were probably built using Chinese labourers but their workmanship was so good that they still do the job over a hundred years on.........

An over run today...........   *When the river was high the water could still "over run" or flow over these structures but when the water was low they served to contain the water in a kind of dam.

A monument marks the spot where Banjo wrote his famous poem.... later a song.   (It was while Banjo was visiting this area that he learnt about the expression of  a swagman carrying his swag as "waltzing Matilda".  During this time there was a lot of unrest with the shearers and farm hands striking because of low wages.  He would have heard the story of a local man who set many farm buildings on fire in protest but when the Police or Troopers came to arrest him he jumped into a billabong to avoid arrest and drowned.  Out of this "unionised" movement the Australian Labour Party was formed and Queensland had the first Labour government in the world.)

This pretty, tiny wattle has been a curse in this cattle country with its long, spiney prickles....   millions of bushes impeded the movement of cattle and sometimes kept them away from water........

.....  another "interesting" weed.......

The waterholes attract all sorts of birds..... including this Masked Woodswallow......

And a Black-Faced Woodswallow......

Not a very good photo..... this little fellow was so neverously active that he was hard to shoot....he's a White-Plumed Honeyeater or "Native Canary".....