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Kookynie , WA - a roundabout tale of a one-horse town...

7/22/2018

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I’m resisting the temptation to make some observation about Kookynie being a ‘one horse town’ (it is) only because it has a roundabout. Down the road, Kalgoorlie, with a population nearly 3000 times that of Kookynie boasts a few roundabouts, too, (and several horses) so roundabouts are understandable. In Kookynie (population twelve souls and one horse) it is baffling - and it’s very tempting to negotiate it the wrong way round… just because…


We arrived in Kookynie on a still, cool evening disturbed only by the wheeling of a wedge-tailed eagle and the last flittings of the day of numerous little birds in the mulga scrub. Our late arrival, due solely to a mesmerising linger  on the red, rocky shores of the still waters of Niagara Dam ten minutes down the road, coincided with that of a train. No - it’s not what you think. Only ore and supply trains break  their long rumbling roll at Kookynie and then only to change drivers. Trains bringing passengers to Kookynie finished a long time ago, when gold extraction and processing costs rose along with subterranean water tables in a classic case of Sod’s Law: in a region forever dogged by scarcity of water, Kookynie’s mines were eventually overwhelmed by it.


Kookynie is on the Golden Quest Trail, which is now also the back road to Laverton. It was not always so. A little over 100 years ago, Kookynie sprang from prospectors’ camp to a 400-building town in record time. At its peak, the town sported a racecourse, swimming pool, numerous hotels, two newspapers and a brewery. There were several churches, general stores, banks, a hospital, school and a few ‘red light houses.’ Of course, it was gold which had drawn the population of nearly 2500 population to the place. And it was the lack of gold which emptied it in a scenario so often repeated in the goldfields.


A swift dusk tour of the townsite revealed ruins of classic cars and buildings speckled over the flat, tussocky ground. Faintly illogical in the scene of abandonment is a row of well preserved shop fronts - empty and closed, but ready for … well, something to happen.


We stayed at the Grand Hotel, the last hotel standing in the town.  Eighteen foot ceilings, long passageways, an intimate bar and dining room, a beautifully relaxed, outback welcome from owners Kevin and Margaret and one of the best steaks ever; the evening there was delightful. But it was in the early morning light the next day when Kookynie really revealed its quirkiness to me.


The clatter and drub of a cantering horse swept out of the silence of the dawn. As I stood in the road by the pit and bricks of the National Hotel, once deemed the finest building north of Kalgoorlie, I could see nothing against the glare of the rising sun from where the hoof beats were approaching.  I had met Willie the Horse the previous night when we spied him being given a bedtime cuddle and a blanket outside the hotel shortly before we were forced to negotiate with ( that is, move) his large bottom blocking the doorway to the hotel so we could get in. I was in little doubt that I was now about to meet the other end of Willie, a former trotter although obviously quite capable of cantering.


I did meet Willie but it was, of course, on his terms. I could almost detect a cartoon brake-squeal as the cantering stopped as suddenly as it started - Willie had realised I was not Kevin. His interest and enthusiasm vanished as did my anticipation of a Lawrence of Arabia moment: witnessing a horse emerge from the impenetrable brightness. Instead it was up to me to go to Willie, who allowed me, briefly, to scratch his forehead before he nonchalantly surveyed his domain and got back to doing what horses do best, eating.


It was intriguing wandering around the area. I did not have to look far to see the signs of big industry long gone: enormous tanks and spoil mounds hiding dilapidated cottages. Significant ruins marked by plaques tell modest tales of the buildings, long dismantled and dispersed for use elsewhere, in true goldfields tradition.


By the pit and bricks of the National Hotel, opposite the shop fronts, a plaque, complete with photograph of the Hotel in its vast grandeur (think a one storey version of the Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle)  quotes Queenie Fogerty (née Lynch) recollecting a “dray and horses bringing loads of beer barrels and unloading” and how her “trusty three-wheel trike carried me as far afield as I ever went, on my own anyway.”


We climb aboard our four wheels and swing out of town toward the breakaways to the north and Malcolm and Laverton beyond. Willie is still eating, looking up as we pass him, not to look at us, of course, but to survey his estate. It’s a wonderful, unusual outcome for a once great town, really: a horse now rules it, visits its pub, treats its visitors with barely concealed disdain. And why not? After all, the gold rush is well and truly over in Kookynie.

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Under the Gimlet Tree

7/1/2018

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Summer 1922/23: Police discover 22 year-old sandalwood cutter George Harrod under his spring cart after he fails to return to Bullfinch, near Southern Cross for Christmas.  Harrod has one boot missing, is lying face down and is dead. He is presumed to have been killed by a snakebite.


April 2018: I am with a friend (I’ll call him Geo Bob) who knows this region well. We have located a rude trail which winds its way through the glades and gimlets of this part of the Great Western Woodlands, to a long-disused airstrip. The strip, once used to bring mining exploration teams in to the area, 100 kms north of Southern Cross,  is now only recognisable thanks to the occasional tyre which might have once edged the runway and a  small set of star pickets marking where the windsock might once have stood. Otherwise the area could be another glade, large but only remarkable for the expanse of sparsity of tall trees.


A small spinney of young spiralled-trunked gimlets lies a little distance from the old runway, close to a scattering of ancient tin cans, the only signs of camps of sandalwood cutters and prospectors who first ventured out here. A rusting frame and springs of a cart lies in the shade of this whispering stand of trees. A horse’s head collar is attached to it.


This, we suspect, could be the last resting place of George Harrod.


We had heard of the story of a man found dead along with his horse still tied to a cart or a tree but did not come here specifically to locate the cart, nor to search for the gun which, one story relates, was leant against a tree which ‘subsumed’ it, carrying it high up its trunk over the near- 100 years since Harrod’s demise. Although we did search for it, craning our necks to stare high into polished branches, to discern the faintest gun-like ripple among the boles and  whorls of the trunks, and although we ran a metal detector around the hard-decaying, bleached skeletons of trees long fallen, we found nothing but the occasional nail or a rusting bully beef tin.


Harrod’s tale  is just one of so many about men and women who, in the early years of exploration, ventured out, became ‘unstuck’ and perished to be subsumed, like Harrod’s gun in these woods.
It’s even bizarre now, standing in the shade of one of the massive eucalypts, to think there was once a busy airstrip here with all the smells, sounds and detritus which accompanies it; that once men - and maybe women - sat around here planning digs and chucking empty cans into the scrub; that maybe the woods rang to the sound of the sandalwood cutters’ axes and saws. Or that a man died a painful death in such an inoffensive, tranquil place


Lance Stevens of the Yilgarn History Museum is not so certain that our cart is related to Harrod’s death. He points out:


Police  would have gathered all property belonging to the dead man, that carts were abandoned if a wheel broke or the horse went lame and that the Old Coolgardie Track in the early years was littered with equipment and carts 'which never made it.'


All fair points and maybe academic now that, except for the occasional flit and twitter of small birds in the scrub, or the rustle of the leaves in the light breeze, there is the distinct impression that these Woodlands have shrugged away the incursions of mankind and are peacefully carrying on the way they were  tens of thousands of years before Harrod or any other European made his ill-fated journey out here.

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All Well  in  the  Borough

5/20/2018

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Well, this was unexpected.

I’ve picked my way through narrow, darkened streets wondering at several centuries' worth of dirty dealings definitely done there, only to emerge at a bright, bustling food market. I’m sipping from a disposable cup (ominously named ‘Snakecatcher’s Scrumpy’) of hot, spicy cider - because someone had to try it out -  and  bought a more traditional pie. Now I’m boggling my poor brain as I work my way along a curved, cobbled path between brightly lit stalls selling, for the most part, unusual food.

Borough Markets lies on the south side of the River Thames opposite the City of London. I’ve heard of it many times and expected, I suppose, a farmers' market of sorts.  But it isn’t.  The atmosphere for starters: The Markets are undercover but airy, with bright stalls  and an air of quality, both of produce and display.
The names of the stalls mix the innovative and the exotic:  Chocolicious, Ethiopian Flavours, Balkan Bites, Pate Moi, Spice Mountain, and Nana Fanny’s (OK, so that last one may not qualify as exotic…). The Pieminister administered unto me a “Matador” (a beef steak pie with chorizo and olives) and New Forest Cider  tempted me beyond a reasonable man’s endurance by placing at its bar a steaming urn, its lid open, cosy, appley, spicy smells of that hot cider luring me, luring me…

To be honest, I could have meandered between the stalls filling up on all the samples that are handed out: cheeses, chocolates, nuts, cups of exotic-sounding teas. I was there for an hour or so and felt I had not even scratched the surface of what was on offer over the large area  covered by the markets. It’s wonderfully incongruous, I feel, to its surrounds: the names of the pubs and cafes selling porter and oysters bordering the markets are of a style straight from the 17th century. And that’s not surprising for this area of London has a history; a heck of a lot of it - and I’ve just  enjoyed a fascinating walk through it.

My journey to the Market had started on a rather more sober note when, emerging from the Underground at St Paul’s Cathedral, I walked around imposing colonnades, dodged the gargoyles’ stares and made my way to the Millennium Bridge.

This pedestrian bridge across the Thames affords some of the best views of the City of London. It did not have an auspicious start to its life when, in 2000, it was closed after a couple of hours on its opening day  because it wobbled. Badly. It was reopened two years later after being strengthened.
The morning I crossed it there was not a whiff of a wobble. Instead a bright day with low clouds allowed me a view of the  95 storey Shard building, spearing into the sky through clouds shifting around its middle floors. Behind me , to the North, was a clear view to St Paul’s and the north bank of the Thames with the ancient “Square Mile”  gathered behind it.

A head of me, lie Shakespeare's Globe, the Tate Modern and the Bankside Gallery.
Just how much history, how many places to visit, can be placed in such a short walk?

But wait! There’s more… quite a lot more, actually

Walking steadily east from the bridge, past The Globe Theatre, I enter the sort of place associated with the seedier part of  Oliver Twist’s tale. Old London.Tall buildings, once warehouses, some now offices, flank narrow, dark streets. Footsteps ring on cobbles. That and a murmur of voices is  what I’m aware of: no cars, no music. It must have been very much like this in Dickens’ time, bar some yelling and clanking, I suppose. I pass the “Clink Prison” - hence the English slang name for a prison -  where you are invited to come in and torture a friend. Mmm. Very tempting…

And just as I’m thinking I’d better be mindful of pickpockets, thieves and urchins as well as friends, I encounter something different again.  Something that reveals that area was not always so industrial.

Redevelopment in the 1980s exposed Winchester Palace. The gable end of the massive Great Hall, whose length once ran alongside the river, towers up on green-grey, weathered stone blocks in full view for passers by. Built in 1242 for the Kings brother, The Bishop of Winchester, that Hall  witnessed royal feasts and wedding banquets until, in the 17th century, it was converted to warehouses and tenements before falling into disrepair.

Moored in its own quay 50 metres from the Palace is another significant item of British history: The Golden Hind. It’s a full size, historically accurate replica of the original ship, of course. But looking at the sleek lines, its towering masts, the bright, intricate decoration, it’s still impressive that, in the late 1500s, a handmade craft of that size circumnavigated the globe.

I’m still pondering that significance as I turn off the street into an insignificant entry to an undercover area, just past the Food Museum. And step into the sounds  and smells of welcome at Borough Market.

There cannot be many short journeys that capture such history, modernity, adventure, royalty, poverty, art and architecture in so little time - well under half an hour if you don’t pause too long anywhere.

And did I mention hot spicey cider?

Don’t over do that cider: you may still need to navigate those dark ancient alleyways to get home….









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CoolGardie

5/6/2018

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   There are three reasons to stop at the Coolgardie Visitor Centre: first, the Centre is a prime source of up to date information on the condition of the roads on the Golden Quest Trail. I am setting off on the Trail the next day because Coolgardie is a perfect starting point.
    The second reason: there is an intriguing pharmacy museum, the beautiful, internationally renowned Waghorn bottle collection plus an intriguing display about the rescue of trapped miner Modesto Varischetti as well as artefacts and photographs from the town’s heyday.
    The third reason to stop: you may, if you are lucky, meet Vic  Dale. He was there in the foyer of the magnificent building when I walked in and, it turned out, knows everything there is to know about Coolgardie in the most intricate detail.


    I spent the afternoon with him. Had I not I would never have discovered the school - still teaching Coolgardie kids - built by the Bunning brothers in 1894. And yes: there’s a certain popular WA-based hardware store named after them.
Vic told me tales of characters of the day, went into considerable detail about the politics of Coolgardie’s heyday, when the clamour from the Goldfields, heavily populated by native eastern-staters, threatened to form its own separate colony. A reluctant State premier was forced to call a referendum on Federation: the Goldfields vote ensured WA joined the rest of the States.


I learned about Coolgardie’s reign as capital of the would-be colony, Aurelia, and its decline once Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s Golden Mile proved to be so rich and enduring. Many of Coolgardie’s buildings succumbed to a fine Goldfields’ tradition they were recycled and moved: Merredin’s majestic Cummings Theatre and the Tavern at Westonia were both originally located in Coolgardie in its glory days.
The school, railway station, old hospital , morgue, and a few teetering shacks from that time are dotted around the town. They are all worth a visit, if only to admire the style of the solid buildings and fortitude of those early residents. The sights and sites are best located with help from the Golden Quest Trail Guidebook, App or Visitor Centre, itself located in one of the magnificent buildings peppering the main street.


Vic guided me to the still waters of the incongruous Coola Carbi gnamma hole - from which Coolgardie took its name - and recounted how it was enlarged, courtesy of explosives, to retain more water for the burgeoning township, named at that spot by the first warden Finnerty.


Warden Finnerty - one of Western Australia’s richer characters - was ordered from Southern Cross where he was Warden of the Yilgarn Goldfield, to live in Coolgardie. His Bunning-built house, originally the administrative seat of the Goldfields, commands a sweeping view from the hill above the gnamma hole. It is now a National trust property, open to the public for a nominal admission charge. Historic and ghost tours are also offered, admission otherwise is self-guided. Do consider a guided tour in order to hear details about the redoubtable Finnerty:  as magistrate and administrator of the region he was a large figure, highly regarded for his determination and practical approach to the complications of leases, gold, not averse to administering swift justice to  those found behaving badly in the town’s streets.


A small distance out of town toward Perth lies the graveyard, the last resting place of hundreds who died of illnesses and infections which rushed through the community. It was said, at one point that half the town was burying the other half. History’s sieve filters out wonderful stories in graveyards: Finnerty’s wife, Bertha lies there, as does the body of Italian cyclist,  23 year old Leo Beretta  killed when the forks on his bike collapsed during an international race held in the town in 1900.
We all but stumbled upon the grave of redoubtable explorer Ernest Giles who, in numerous major expeditions, crossed to the Swan River Colony from the then Darwin-Adelaide Telegraph line, discovered The Olgas, Victoria and Gibson deserts, and mapped out large areas of  the inhospitable interior. Pneumonia also took him, his exploring days over, working as a clerk, living with his nephew in Coolgardie.
 
I returned to Finnerty’s house in the dawn to witness, to the east, where the Superpit’s spoil heap hunkers down on the horizon, a golden mist hovering over invisible lakes, weaving  among the eucalypts and gimlets.
  That scene, soon burned away by the day, was the first of many not normally associated with the Goldfields. Let’s face it: most of us associate the area with big money, big mines, big machines, high vis-clad workers and skimpies.


Coolgardie and the subsequent journey around the Trail shows a very different side to the Goldfields. In the first few kilometres out of Coolgardie we passed a small lake. An enterprising humorist had placed imaginative art of a Loch Ness monster, a fisherman in a dinghy, a shark and a flamingo. A little later we passed the ruins of Kunanalling and all the time we are making our way through the bronze trunked gimlets of the Great Western Woodlands, now growing strong after their virtual eradication to fuel the gold rush. The humour, the ruined dreams, the resilience: I was realising the pulsing themes which has kept the Goldfields alive for so long in such adversity.



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The House on the Hill

5/1/2018

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You know you are onto a winner when the sign greeting you at the creaking iron gate states:
“NO DOGS (NOT EVEN YOURS)”. It is the humour that appeals, rather than the message; that moment when the dog-walking reader of the sign would realise that their mind has been read before they have even thought of bringing Fido into these unique, rarefied gardens.


I’ve absented myself from a(nother) shopping trip and, having heard about a secluded garden and stunning pergola in north London, I’ve rumbled up the Northern Line to Hampstead, walked an exhilarating kilometre through crisp, February air, fresh from an overnight frost, and a village that really should not be in London at all. I am now at the gate to Hill House Garden and Pergola.


It must have been a fun thing to do with a few hundred tons of dirt needing a home after excavations for the  nearby Tube line. Lord Leverhulme, in 1904, had made enough money from his washing powder business to indulge in some legacy-building. Still there today, open to the public - and not many seem to know about it - a long, branched, raised walkway with seats and lookout points carries visitors high above or through tended gardens, affording views into the woodlands of Hampstead Heath.


It is  unmistakably grand. Although the carved wooden beams that support vines, now in winter dormancy,  are old and crumbling, the colonnades, the stone, the stairs all exude a statesmanly, if faded, grandeur harking back to the Edwardian era. The peacefulness is enhanced by silence: in the couple of hours I spent wandering this Thomas Mawson-designed creation, the three small groups of  people I came across were all whispering- it has that effect. It is so peaceful and undisturbed that, apart from the occasional rumble of a train somewhere in the valley below, it’s hard to believe you are in the middle of a metropolis.


The Pergola, finished in 1925, now has an air of opulent glory long passed. Hill House, once Lord Leverhulme’s home is enormous. Easily visible from the Pergola, it sits in resplendent grandeur across an immaculate lawn beyond a pond and fountain. It has, I am told, been turned into apartments. Part of a deal in the development meant the Gardens and Pergola are now open to the public.


The walk back to the Tube line in Hampstead is also worth taking slowly. The suburb sits on the edge of Hampstead Heath, the highest point in London as well as being the largest park in the capital. Hampstead is renowned for its genteel ambience. With its beautifully preserved and clean, cared-for buildings, it is home to some of the UKs leading gliterati, celebrities and champagne socialists. Cobbled streets, period townhouses, quaint shops, discreet alleys and stairways are all there for anyone to investigate. I investigate a delicious, simple burger at Spielburgers, but there are a variety of eateries around if you  fancy a meal before further exploring the suburb or heading back to catch up with the shopping party.









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" and then there's the time I went to a brothel..."

4/22/2018

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The story so far:


Having found gold at a prospector’s camp, I’ve hot-footed it to Kalgoorlie, visited a gold dealer and now find myself in an unusual situation…


I am being entertained by a delightful, attractive blonde in Kalgoorlie’s last remaining historical brothel. I appear to have followed, in the last 24 hours, a well worn path and here I am, in this den of sin and depravity. Enjoying myself bigly. (Dear Editor, Please may I use that word?)
Except that there are twenty other people in the same room with me, on a fascinating, insightful and hilarious tour of Kalgoorlie’s last remaining working brothel. Carmel, who has owned Questa Casa for the last 25 years, is conducting a highly entertaining tours of her brothel.


“We could not survive,” she admits, “without the tours.”


Carmel, was a Queenslander in need of direction after a family tragedy when she bought the brothel after being marooned in Kalgoorlie having, initially, decided against purchasing  the 113 year old building.


In her quiet, well-spoken, understated tones she is very easily mistaken for a high end Pom, when, in fact, she is fourth generation Australian. She told us about the rules and regulations brought in at the turn of the century when men outnumbered women 20:1, a time when Kalgoorlie was rapidly overtaking Coolgardie as the principle mining town in the region. She told us why the high fences were constructed at the front of the building to shield negotiations from onlookers as well as to preserve the respectable nature of Kalgoorlie:


“Kalgoorlie was a family town,” she asserts several times.


She tells of the system of negotiations designed to protect the girls from finding themselves in dangerous or uncomfortable situations, talks of the demise of the other 18 brothels in the town  and talks of the rules and regulations that kept the family part of town separated from the seedier side: working girls had to come from outside town, could not live anywhere but in the brothel and must never, ever attend places where people gather - so no outings to the races, pub, shows and so on.
Breaches of the rules lead to banishment from the town and could mean permanent closure of the brothel.


Carmel’s daily tour, which she has run for the last ten years, lasts for one and a half hours, includes a viewing of all three ‘working rooms’ , and her gleeful demonstration, on a Bundy Bear lying face down on the bed of the “Domination Room”, of a few sharp strokes of a “paddle”.  There are numerous jokes and priceless anecdotes of unusual goings on, tales of some of the characterful girls who worked there, a history of the change of the town’s attitude to and reality of prostitution, a few statistics regarding number of clients and, er, speed of service. One of our  group was invited to work for Carmel after she cracked a particularly witty pun which I wish  - O! How I wish! - I could repeat. But, as you would expect, the tour is for over eighteens - and so were most of the tales and jokes.


We all spilled out into the late afternoon light chuckling about the most entertaining and risqué history lesson ever.


And it occurred to me, a little later on as I watched a huge full moon rise over the Superpit, that my journey around the goldfields and, particularly of the last 24 hours, was one which had been repeated (almost exactly) thousands of times before in the last 130 years, by men in search of that elusive precious metal. Journeys which, in the dying years of the 19th Century, were witness to unspeakable privation, tragedy, loss and love.  Which forged today’s state of Western Australia both politically and economically.
So little is now left as testimony to the hardiness and determination of men who built the multiple towns and their connecting railways., but it is all still out there to discover for ourselves. As are the various delights of Carmel’s brothel…

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A Walk by the Water, London

4/17/2018

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Years ago a friend of mine lived on a canal boat in London. Occasionally we would jump aboard his little boat and chug along waterways for a different perspective on the metropolis. We encountered small riverside pubs, long grassy, paddocks lined with blackberries and, in the autumn, sloes  (it’s fun to add sloe berries and sugar to gin: allow to fester for 6 weeks, open and approach with extreme caution around Christmas time!) All of this within a few minutes of Paddington, where my friend’s boat was berthed.


I’m reminded of all this as I peer over a bridge crossing a canal in Ladbroke Grove. Beneath me is a large barge grumbling up the canal. It is laden with a colourful assortment of red and blue gas cylinders and yellow bags of firewood. I had forgotten about the other world, a subculture beautifully integrated into London life -and most of us unaware of its presence.


London’s canal system is easy to access and well worth investigating. As canal boats were once towed by horses around England’s substantial network of canals, a wide towpath along the water’s edge makes it easy to navigate on foot and bike. I took to my feet.


On a crisp, spring like day,  I set off from Harlesden, easy to reach on public transport. I am heading for central London.


It is a lovely varied walk. Peaceful, too. As soon as you dip down and away from the traffic, you enter a different world. Ducks and geese paddle on the slow-moving waters, birds in bushes and the occasional clank of work on one of the dozens of boats moored along the canal. There is a still, almost lazy feel: people reading books in the sun on the deck or roof of their boats or cycling gently to or from work.


And the boats, too: most are neat, tidy, colourful and frequently ingeniously decorated with flowers, clever iron art. It’s like walking past an ever-changing floating art gallery.


Canals, of course, pass the rear of what people see from the streets: gardens, allotments, waterside factories still sprouting forlorn hoists in the hope of loading barges long scrapped; all invisible except to those on the canals.


Closer to town the semi-rural nature changes. Pubs and cafe’s, a supermarket, apartments now line the banks and, close to Paddington (a small stroll to the station from the canal bank) a pumpin’ canal boat café/restaurant. A perfect spot to finish this section of the canal.























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A Workhouse - Carrickmacross, Ireland

4/2/2018

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It’s funny what you come across when off the beaten track.


And sometimes it really is not.


We’re visiting a (officially named)  Community Resource, Training and Heritage Centre for a tour which is not likely to be jolly.
We are about to be guided around a former, partially renovated Workhouse. Workhouses appear to be places which are muttered about quietly, but about which we know very little (except for small mentions in novels by, for example, Dickens’ and Thomas Hardy.) It should be enlightening.


It is.




The enormity of The Workhouse is the first shock. The massive building, a short distance from the centre of Carrickmacross, just over an hour’s scenic drive north from Dublin, we learn, is only one third of what once stood there. Three storeys high at the highest, one hundred metres long, the original complex - for that is what it was - has been partially restored from dereliction, turned into a community support Centre and opened for tours for those brave enough to learn a bit more about one of the most sorrowful part of Ireland’s history. There are plans to restore the second, larger, derelict building that looms behind. The third building was demolished for its stones after the Workhouse closed between the Wars.


130 workhouses were built in Ireland in the early 1840s to help alleviate the distress of destitution suffered by one third of the country’s population of 9 million. It was a time when England ruled and owned Ireland. They were there just in time for the Famine that ravaged the country, killing a million citizens and forcing a mass emigration.


I’m braced for a bout of Brit-bashing, for it is well known that Britain did little, if anything, to alleviate the famine, preferring instead to export the produce that could have fed the populace. But our guide carefully steers around apportioning blame, instead concentrating on the workings of the establishment.


The Hotel California it ain’t: you couldn’t even check in anytime you liked. You certainly couldn’t leave freely.


There were strict  rules about when you could leave : everyone who entered as a group, had to leave as a group - that must have restricted an inmate’s (for that is how they were titled) ability to find work or betterment.
The genuinely dispossessed, having renounced all claims to land and possessions, were admitted for assessment and eligibility. If accepted, personal clothes were removed and a standard outfit was issued. Then men and women, boys and girls were separated. Children were housed in the renovated building, adults in the second, which sported a watchtower. The third was the Fever House, which included the death house.


The “work” part of the system meant, among other civil projects, building roads (you can still drive down Famine Roads today) and the women learned to make lace to sell to the affluent: Carrickmacross Lace is still highly valued to this day.


Our first port of call is a look at the adult building, it’s sightless windows and forbidding, gaunt skeleton serve as a reminder of all the souls who must have gazed out, trapped inside beneath a watchtower.
A small pile of rubble and indent in the long grass at the back of the complex marks the site of the Fever House. Beyond that, in the corners of the paddock  crosses stand tall. They mark the mass graves where countless unknown people were buried in pits after succumbing to the famine or its related diseases..


Our tour took us to the girls’ accommodation, on the third floor. It is  sparse: bare boards, bare walls, sombre windows. The girls, locked in at night, had no access to toilets: the floor was sloped and channelled to deal with the obvious results. The whitewashed walls and smooth boards belie the sheer misery and filth in which the inmates must have lived.


A small pile of boxes, the top one opened to display its contents, a yellowing sheet of paper detailing its contents, sits below a plaque with 38 names on it. These are the names of the girls who were sent from the Workhouse to colonies, like Australia, where settlers needed more females to settle the men and help populate the regions.
The box contained finery with which the girls were issued to help them get a decent start after initial housing in a camp in Sydney. One box belongs to Rose Sherry. It was understood that once overseas, these girls were never coming back to any family that remained.


Downstairs we look at the huge cauldron from which the sustenance would have been ladled to the queuing children. An artwork “The Last Resort" by Orlagh Meegan-Gallagher evokes poignantly the misery that prospective inmates must have felt upon reaching this point of last resort. An example of girls’ and boys’ issue outfit hangs dejectedly on a wall. But a colourful tapestry “The Land of Plenty” also by Orlagh Meegan-Gallagher draws us in. The accompanying fact sheet about the produce available, but never released is stunning, the figures shocking:


During the Famine years 3 million live animals were exported, together with tons of vegetables and dairy produce (more than 800,000 gallons of butter to Liverpool and Bristol alone). Well over 800,000 gallons of Porter, 250,000 gallons of Guiness and 175,000 gallons of whiskey were exported - all made from grain. And troops were brought in to protect the produce from the starving.


Just as we leave, still pondering the callous injustice and counterproductive rules brought in by those who had power over the hungry and dispossessed, it is mentioned almost as an aside, how Sting of the band The Police, dropped by for a private visit early lat year while on tour. He had come to pay his respects to his third great grandmother Mary Murphy from Inniskeen, who had been admitted and died in that Workhouse in 1881.


You never know what you may find when you leave the beaten track.

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    Travel has always featured strongly in my photographic work: whether on assignment for a newspaper or on holiday with my family, I have always enjoyed recording the unique scenes and sights appreciated most by eyes fresh to a region. This blog is a small record of some of my travels and experiences - and even some photography tips. Some have been published, some not. Whatever, I hope you enjoy the blog.

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