The Grumpy Old Doctor, aka GOD, was a solo GP in a small country town for 32 years. He’s now working as a rural and remote locum across Australia. His stories take the form of letters to his daughter, Julia, in Sydney.
Dear Julia
According to Hugh McDonald’s song, “The rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina.” Yet storms were forecast, so I went straight to the cemetery after my round of the hospital ward.
Sunday morning seems the right time to visit the dead. The silent rows of headstones reaffirm how short and cruel life is. Every epitaph is a reminder of the harsh reality of love and loss, the ultimate futility of it all. The atmosphere of soft melancholy is harmless enough in small doses, soothing for the soul.
I enjoy country cemeteries. A respectful meander among generations of graves is the best way to get a sense of the history of a town, but there’s something off about Winton. The overgrown weeds and poorly maintained paths don’t trouble me; a trust of volunteers can only do so much.
Its location is the problem. On the western edge of town, the dead are hemmed in by the council works depot to the north, golf course to the west and saleyards to the south. The cemetery, which must have been there first, feels out of place and unwelcome. I stayed for just 15 minutes, then left to rejoin the living.
Banjo Paterson came to Winton once and left a big impression. Reminders of the song he wrote on that 1895 visit to Dagworth Station aren’t hard to find. The centre of town, Elderslie Street, is just off the Matilda Highway. The coffee shop abuts Matilda’s Wardrobe, a former women’s clothing store, with the Waltzing Matilda tourist centre a block further east. There’s a Matilda Motel just up from the roundabout and The Lost Poet cafe and bookstore is tucked away on a corner a couple of blocks north.
There’s a wide, grassed median strip and all the buildings, except the bank, have generous verandahs. A few elderly tourists were tottering about in shorts and T-shirts (the locals wear long pants and sleeves), but not enough to spoil my view of the hotels. The Art Deco North Gregory takes up an entire block and was briefly home to Lyndon B Johnson – who later became the 36th US president – whose plane made a forced landing at Carisbrooke Station during World War II. The Australian is closed but Tattersalls is a thriving waterhole, as is The Winton, up near the old railway station, making it three active pubs for a population of about one thousand.
The locals are a thirsty lot. In the surgery last week, we conducted an audit of smoking and drinking habits. One patient responded truthfully. A middle-aged woman ticked the box to say she has five to six drinks per day, but left unanswered the question on how many days of the week she indulges. “Hard to say, doc. I only drink on hot days.”
After coffee, I took a walk over to the Waltzing Matilda Centre and was disappointed. A dapper Banjo, erect and confident, fronts a modern pile of mud-coloured walls and smoke-glassed windows. It was closed due to a malfunction in the air-conditioning system. I wonder what the old-timers would make of that.
Across the road near the entrance to the swimming pool, battered hat shading creased face, pipe in hand, a swagman sits on the ground beside his Matilda. There are no jumbucks nearby and he looks anything but jolly. With their backs to the cemetery on the other side of town, both Banjo and the swaggie gaze east. Hoping for a change in the weather perhaps – “Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning” – and relief from the relentless heat.
Banjo would have been at home in any century, but what about the swaggie? Would life have been kinder to him if he was born a hundred years later?
Those who once “waltzed Matilda” – men with buggered lungs and a love-hate
relationship with the bottle; solitary, estranged from family, no older than me – are now holed up in aged-care units. Itinerant hand-to-mouth lives of poorly paid farm work traded for “a-bed-four-walls-an-a-roof”. Three feeds a day. Air-conditioning. No dogs allowed.
Diamantina Gardens, across the road from the hospital, has a well-watered lawn patrolled by two pairs of brolgas each morning and grazed of an evening by three generations of skinny roos.
One of the residents responded to the smoking and alcohol audit with, “Buy a packet of smokes and a carton of beer now and again, doc, if I can afford it. Sit and drink and smoke and think until it’s all gone.”
The same bloke gave me a little-known tip from his previous life on the road as a shedhand on how to avoid collisions with kangaroos.
“The secret is to drive at night,” he said. “Did it for 30 years and only hit two. Thing is, when you see one, don’t take your foot off the accelerator! Keep the car noise at the same pitch and they won’t move. Been past plenty of them within six inches at 130 clicks. Takes nerves of fuckin’ steel, but.”
There is more to Winton than memorials to a catchy song about a depressed petty criminal. The big attractions are older and underfoot.
Boulder opal was formed about 30 million years ago and the dinosaur fossils closer to 100 million. The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History is stunning, David and Judy Elliott’s endless labour of love set on what was known as “the jump-up”, a rugged mesa, out of town.
Local discoveries take pride of place. The theropod, Banjo (Australovenator wintonensis), is a carnivorous predator in the T-Rex mould. Matilda (Diamantinasaurus matildae) is a big girl. A sauropod 2.5 to 3 metres tall and 15 to 16 long, her bones were found scattered and intermingled with those of Banjo.
Maybe the next big find will be named Swaggie. I’m pretty sure it won’t be Qantas, which was founded here in 1920 with local pastoralist Sir Fergus McMaster as chairman. To fly to Winton from Brisbane now, you have to travel with Rex; the Qantas flight terminates in Longreach.
The rain began to fall as the sun went down. It came in from the west, so they should be getting a bit to settle the dust on the Diamantina.
Love, Dad
Names and places have been changed to protect privacy. Some of the dialogue is colourful, but all is authentic. None is intended as medical advice.
