 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Back on the Wool Track
By Michelle Grattan
Vintage $24.95
 A decade before young lawyer-turned journalist Charles (C.E.W.) Bean cemented his reputation with the six-volume, definitive record of the Anzac experience at Gallipoli, a conflict he witnessed from start to end, he left Sydney on an extended trip through far western NSW to report on the wool industry.
Occupying one-seventh of the Australian continent, the Murray-Darling Basin offered the keen-eyed reporter a wealth of encounters that resulted in two acclaimed books, On the Wool Track, which inspired this homage by The Age journalist, Michelle Grattan, and Dreadnought of the Darling, an account of the paddle-wheelers that were opening up the inland to the world of trade and travel.
Once in the bush, Bean warmed quickly to his task, writing of a station hand named 'Slimy Sam,' who returned to his hut to discover writing on the door. As Sam was illiterate, he 'took the door off its hinges, carried it five miles to a hotel along the road, and had the message read. It was: 'Slimy Sam, of Mumblebone, was the dirtiest beggar ever known.'
Almost a century later, Grattan and her cousin revisited the towns and properties that featured in Bean's epic narratives. 'We were in search of both the old West and the new West, and some of the links between the two,' she explains. 'Out in the Western country, quite a few people have read or heard of On the Wool Track. Often they don't connect the author with Australia's Anzac tradition. The link, however, is strong... Bean's outback experiences made a huge impression on him, shaping the view he brought to observing his countrymen in war.'
Australia might still dominate the world wool trade, but the industry no longer flourishes as it did in Bean's day.
'In the late 1800s sheep numbers here reached more than 15 million. Throughout the 20th century they never got above 10 million, with the average around six million. The numbers are slashed in the droughts; by 2003 there were only two million.'
Of course it is the people, rather than what their land supports, that make both authors' books such valuable snapshots of rural life.
'The people who live in the West have an optimism in the face of an often discouraging reality that is among their enduring and endearing qualities. That optimism, and their resilience and open-heartedness, were captured by Bean, and will appeal just as much to the modern visitor to this distinctive part of Australia.'
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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