This can be an unforgiving landscape to live amongst, particularly in any form of comfort, and a great deal of careful cultivation and respect for your surroundings is required. The mere notion of owning such a vast acreage of land is almost unthinkable in British terms, but in this area of Queensland, bushland is readily available to anyone brave enough to tackle it, and at an incredibly low cost. This land, for example, was bought for the sterling equivalent of under £20,000. Affordable, yes, but here’s the catch: we’re off a hidden dirt track on the brilliantly named Bruce Highway, roughly 150km from the nearest city, an hour and a half drive away. That’s a long way to go for milk, so welcome to the most sustainable housing environment that you’re ever likely to come across.
Any food waste is fed to the chooks, while cows dote on the more open fields, keeping the grass in check. Cooking is done by fire: we enjoy hotpots of stew and, on one occasion, a baked scone-like bread called ‘damper’, made from the limited swagman ingredients of flour and water. A private creek provides ample supplies for fishing and crabbing, as the mouth opens up into the Clairview shoreline, but more on this later.
Now back to the dunny shot, a surprise for any townie like myself, whose experience of a swift evacuation has never before involved a bucket of water and a procession of giant ants. Visit in the dark under torchlight and you’ll never know what you’ll find: one particularly tense excursion was accompanied by a rather severe scuttling sound. Just so you know, this is the terrain for the giant huntsman spider, one of which takes a particular shine to our tent on the last night. These arachnids grow to the size of a small plate, and although they do bite, they can’t kill you with quite so much discomfort as, say, the redback spider, which also patrol these grounds. This is a small comfort, obviously.
But it is a great notion to consider how the creatures that inhabit this area have been doing so for some considerable number of years, mostly unhampered, and now side by side with humans who are still finding it tough to fully adapt to the terrain. This is the land of roving wallabies, possums, kangaroos, birdlife too numerous to mention, snakes, dingoes, ants (white ones, green ones, red ones, all in intimidating numbers), and a buzzing population of mosquitoes and sand flies. These blighters don’t seem to bother the locals, of course, but positively feast on and devour any out-of-towners like a mobile buffet. Out of the three Brits here, we’re all currently resembling something out of John Carpenter’s Hellraiser.
During this scene, we’d catch crabs with wire cages and have to empty our catch due to the weight restrictions. This is where the following slightly disconcerting conversation would take place. “So, er… there wouldn’t be any crocodiles in here, would there?” You’re surveying the green murkiness of the creek water as the tin boat slices through the stillness causing ripples to cross the mangroves. “Oh no, not at all…” A brief but unsettling pause. “Well, actually, yeah, maybe…” Crocodiles have been sighted merely a kilometre south of this creek, but my girlfriend’s father, with a lifetime’s knowledge and appreciation of the landscape which surrounds him, takes a more philosophical approach to any form of impending danger: “Well, when your number’s up...” he says, which is undoubtedly a more positive outlook, but it still won’t stop you from clinging onto the side of the tinnie with gleaming white knuckles.
But what paradise, particularly the derelict sand dunes, private beaches and startling scenery. We sit around a late night camp fire, where the full moon gleams with enough power to rival a light bulb. This is the night where the drink flows and the guitars come out. My girlfriend’s father reaches for his trumpet, blaring out a rendition of ‘God Save The Queen’ causing a piercing intrusion into the quiet of the night, shouting at full volume “thank fuck for the Queen”. Here, here.
It suddenly dawns on us that this is the sort of Australian experience that you don’t tend to read about in guide books. Even many backpackers would struggle to fully involve themselves in the unpredictable, untamed and unrelenting magic of bush life. Queensland is regarded as the real Australia - straw hats and big beards, singlets and fishing, spiders and snakes and so on. So when authors write about discovering the ‘Australian dream’, I reckon that they could do a lot worse than to start their search somewhere around here.
The camping was different, though, which is where I have to come back to those two nights spent on the back of a rubbish truck. This was the result of a cheap $20 tent, which had taken some liberties in calling itself a ‘two man tent’, when Ronnie Corbett would have struggled to have spent a night there, not to mention the distinct omission of the words ‘waterproof’ on any of its associated literature. You’d think that would be a rather basic prerequisite for any tent, but clearly the notion of being protected from the elements is only reserved for those who don’t want to take the cheaper option. The weather, it has to be said, was unseasonably warm (26 degrees, and they have the cheek to call this winter?), so a piece of tarpaulin strapped over the back of a dumpster truck didn’t seem like too strange an alternative at the time.
As for the music, the larger stages are mostly filled with the current crop of electro indie and faux-folk bands that have gathered continual airplay on the Triple J network (which are bravely streaming most of the sets live on air), but with three more established headliners: Ben Harper, who is massive here; The Strokes, enjoying a brief resurgence and still sounding just as important; and Pixies, who were reportedly paid $1 million for their closing Sunday night set. But this was seemingly still not enough to get Kim Deal to show her face on the big screen, which was made particularly evident when it came to her song ‘Gigantic’ with the camera panning up to a seemingly headless woman.
There is a large constituency of British bands making their first, excited sounds in Australia, like Mumford & Sons, who seem to have only been around for five minutes and are already folk champions of the world with their stompy, rootsy banjo-led Americana; a bizarre sound, of course, for a band from London. Florence Welch (and her machine) is still doing her best Wuthering Heights routine and I am quite certain that she will soon start referring to herself in the third person. Her set is a wailing whitewash of theatrics which suits her sound and the large setting. Then there are Foals, who are a post-punk band from Oxford, responsible for the track ‘Spanish Sahara’ on their new album which is probably the best track of the year so far. Foals are great, but whenever I see them live, I get the distinct impression that they don’t want to be there.
As for the best of America (or, more specifically, New York), James Murphy seems to have adapted his awkward front man act into something quite powerful, fronting his LCD Soundsystem with great verve, while Yeasayer are finally enjoying some well-earned fame for being a superbly crafted and talented act. Australian bands feature heavily, which is just as well for bands like, say, The Vines and Wolfmother, who probably wouldn’t be given the time of day anywhere else. Other local heroes include The Temper Trap, Art vs. Science, Midnight Juggernauts and Paul Kelly, but what I’m aching to discuss is Aussie nutball Luke Steele (pictured below), who finally has his Empire of the Sun set down and ready to travel to a circus near you.
Meanwhile, during the Empire of the Sun and Pixies sets, ex-Verve front man Richard Ashcroft takes to the smaller third stage and gets halfway through his opening song before realising how small his crowd appears to be. He summarily throws a tambourine at the drum kit, screams at his security and storms off stage. Allegedly, his last words were “I’m off to watch the Pixies.” His manager has since said that his shortened set was due to vocal problems. Now that’s a bittersweet symphony. Ba doom.
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