historic camping sites (1933)

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The Land (Sydney, NSW : 1911 - 1954), Friday 13 October 1933, page 10

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article104245363

Histo^kCAMPING

'

PLACES

along the OutbackTrails.

I BLUEBZ'SH

JThe Unsolved Mystery of the..

"Ghost of the Trotting Cob

Ghostly apparition, a practical

joking stockman, or cattle thief

—the mystery of the TrottingCob and his headless rider will

never be solved. The ghostly

horseman and his steed years ago

frequented one of the camping

places on the One Tree Plain,

and is mentioned by "Bluebush"

in this absorbing article on

the favorite camping grounds and

pubs of the outback trails in by

gone days.

Any story of the historic camping places of the. New

South Wales outback must be mainly a story of way

side hotels, but not entirely, for some famous camping

grounds were without these adjuncts to civilisation.

One publess camping ground of the old days was the Black

Swamp, on the Old Man Plain, to the north of Demliquin. This

place owed its fame to the Trotting Cob, a headless horse, ridden by

a headless horseman, which sometimes scattered mobs of travelling

cattle during the night.

It was said afterwards.that the cob

was a black animal, the body and legs

of which, but not the head, had been

whitewashed, giving it a headless ap

pearance on a dark night, and that

the rider wore light-colored clothing,

but blackened his face and neck.

At this late date it is impossible to

get at the real truth, for the appari

tion has not been seen for seventy



a ridge, being: perhaps six feet

higher than the surrounding plain. It

lies about midway between Hay and

the W-anganella Creek, and was once

a famous camp with drovers and

teamsters.

The ridge owes its name to the fact

that it was once covered with hopbush ana needlewood scrub. Here the

drover or teamster, during winter,

could light a roaring fire, and get

warm after several fir el ess nights on

the treeless and practically fuel-less

plains. It was like being in Paradise.

Firewood is not plentiful at Para

dise Kidge to-day, but the namestill

sticks.

READERSof Henry iLawson will all

remember "The Shanty on the

Rise." The shanty really existed, and

though there were two places which

Paradise Ridge

fitted the description, it is .generallyj

believed that the shanty of the poemi

was one which stood many years ago

on Crown Ridge, near llford, in the

Rylstone district..

At all events, the shanty at that

spot "was built of bark and saplings,

|Shanty on the Rise

f

and was rather rough inside,'* like the

one desci'ibed by Lawson. and was a

favorite halting place for teamsters in

the early days.

Some people place the shanty fur

ther south, in the Portland-Wallera

wang area, where Lawson spent part

of his boyhood, but on the whole the

Crown Ridge hostelry fits his description better.

* a *

ITis doubtful whether any wayside

hotel is better known than the One

Tree, situated in the centre of the

plain of the same name, midway be

tween Hay and Booligal.This hotel is of a type of architec



This hotel is of a type of architec

tui'e which was once common, being

built of split pine slabs, adzed on the

edges, and laid horizontally between

heavy round upright posts. The

original hotel was built before sawn

timber came into general use in the

outback, and was destroyed by lire inj

the late 'nineties.

The present building was probably

the last of that kind to be built. After

the fire the insurance company elected

to rebuild the hotel rather than pay

the insurance. There was no suitable

pine left in the district, but slabs and

posts were brought by rail from Nar

randera to Hay, and thence by team,

and the new hotel was an exact re

production of the old.

The One Tree Hotel supplied the

middaymeal to coach

travellerscross

ing the plain, and was well patronised

during the shearing season by shear

ers and rouseabouts from Eulongashed, a few miles awav.

* *

'§ HV'O of the most famous hotels

along the Murrumbidgee were the

Marble Arch and the Blazing Stump.The latter name has been used as a

j

The "O^TtW""

"i

nickname for various hotels, but the

original Blazing Stump was at Bene

rembah. It had an official name,

which I forget, and which was never

used by its patrons.

This hotel was the scene of a fam

ous egg-eating contest between two

noted "whalers," Muldoon the Glutton

and the Burly King.

The latter won, getting away with

2S eggs, but would never

agree to areturn match, having heard that his

opponent, who was evidently out of

±1

form on the day of the match, had

disposed of 3S eggs in a private trial.

* * *

THEMarble Arch, officially knov>tn

as the Star, was at Bringagee. It

was a noted convincing ground for



was a

those who fancied they could fight

and the proprietor at one time, had a

wide reputation as a refei'ee.

The thing that hit me in the eye

when I visited the Marble Arch was

a placard over the bar, which read,

"The Lord helps them that helps

themselves, but/the Lord help themthat I catch helping themselves here."

Further down the river, at Carra

thool, was the Dead Finish, but that

ominously-named house had vanished

before my time.*> *

THEAdelaide Camp Hotel, after

supplying the wants of travellers

for half a century, went out of busi

ness only a few years ago. It got its

I

The Blazing Stump|

i

>>[|t|||<01„||1 nn»oo«»?

name from the fact that it stood at

the point where the overland stock

route, leading out to South Australia,

branched off from that which ran

down the Lower Lachlan from Hill

ston to Balranald.

This house, which was about 12

miles north-west of Booligal, was not

popular with drovers only, but also

with teamsters, for it lay between

the Toox-agannie and Merowie Creeks.

The teamster who had succeeded in

getting his waggon through the awful

blue clay of one of these creeks had

earned his rum. "What's more, he

needed something to fortify him for

what lay ahead of him in the other

creek.

The next wayside hotel along that

track was called the Albion, but when

I knew it it was commonly referred

to as the Pilgrim's Progress because

the licensee's name was

John~Bunyan.* * -

QUITEthe most famous camp in

Northern New South Wales in

the old carrying days was Doughboy Hollow, now known as Ardglen.

There was, and still is. a never

failing stream of water here, and it

was the last camp of the teamsters

before facing the steep Liverpool



Range, on their way down to the rail

head with wool from the LiverpoolPlains or New England.

Some teamsters used to camp here

for a few days before tackling the

mountains, and there would some

times be as many as fifty teams in the

camp.There

would occasionally be a

bushranger or two among the crowd,for a place where so many travellers

are assembled is a handy place at

which to pick up infoimation.

£ * 3

'THERE was a sameness about the

-*wayside hotels in the fiat scrub

lands of the Far "West, and the Ca

rowra Swamp Hotel, between Ivanhoe

and Cobar, was typical of a good

many others. There was very little

cleared ground around it. and the

traveller did not see it through thescrub until lie was within a couple of

hundred 3'ards of the house.

Like many other vrayside houses, it

was built of slabs and lined with var

nished pine boards, the walls of thebar being decorated with colored

prints of the Darktown Fire Brigade,

and printed poi*traits of Peter Jackson and Carbine.

Peeping through the surroundingtrees were the whitewashed palinga

which protected half-a-dozen graves.

* * *

MOSTof the wayside pubs had their,

little collections of graves, but

these were not really a reflection on

the quality of the liquor. Men often

sickened on the track, and even if the

traveller had no moneyit

was the

wayside publican who took him in, and

the publican's wife and daughterswho cared for him and nursed him.

Sometimes the sick traveller recov

ered, and married one of the flaugh*

|

DoughboyHollow'"]

ters. Sometimes he died. Then it was

the publican who buried him and

erected the paling fence, and it was



the publican's children who made an

ornamental border of empty bottles

round the grave.;

They weren't a bad lot. those old'

time bush publicans and their wives

and families.

historic camping sites (1933)

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