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🏝🌅🛤🛤🏝🌅🛤🛤
Wide open spaces, long empty roads, big skies and amazing wildlife. 🦇🦂🦑🐋
🇦🇺 That's what Northern Queensland was all about, and I've been taken right back there while recording "Mondura Dam" these past days. 🎶
I never dreamt I'd be able to travel to the other side of the world but it happened somehow. I was working as a canteen cook at the time, but my partner just wanted to see her sister again. We'd learned how to get absolute bargains by checking all the newspapers every day, collecting coupons and phoning in as early as possible. Rail trips for a £1, weekends away in a dreary English town, and just occasionally a massively reduced flight ✈️to somewhere obscure at an unpopular time and date. (That's how we got to see the midnight sun from Tromsø). This was before the age of digital tickets and remote check-in. Once you'd bought a bargain ticket from an online bucket shop, that was only half the battle. You then had to fight them every day to get your hands on an actual paper ticket just in time before setting off - scary!
After a few days with the family we were able to borrow an old Hudson car, a guitar and a small tent ⛺️ and set off up the Bruce Highway. Thousands of miles of open road, rarely passing others but sometimes an enormous road train which is like three trucks being towed by one cab, or sometimes even five! It had been August back in England so it was winter in Australia. That meant the climate was just right for us camping in the north, swimming in the sea 🏊🏊 with no sharks or deadly box jellyfish. Camp sites and resorts were just about open, mostly occupied by retired people just relaxing, spending months away from the chilly southern cities, and younger Europeans making the holiday of a lifetime. 🏝There were islands, with vast empty sand beaches, coral reefs, snorkelling with brightly coloured tropical fish. We even stayed on an uninhabited deserted island for four nights, taking all our water and provisions with us.
Near the equator the sun rises at 6am and sets at 6pm which means it's cold in the early morning, then blazing hot at midday, and after about 4.30pm the sun is dazzlingly low on the horizon so you can't really keep driving for more than about 3 or 4 hours a day unless you can set up camp in the dark. 🏕 You don't want to drive at night ever, because that kills all the animals crossing the road. They don't expect any cars and why should they.
From the Gold Cost to the Sunshine Coast. Surfers' Paradise, Noosa Heads, Caloundra, Bundaberg, Josephine Falls, Boulder, Cairns, Emerald and Lake Monduran, all jumbled up in my memory now. Lush gorges at Carnarvon with platypuses, tropical Rainforest with all the colourful parrots, coral beaches with yellow and blue angel fish, giant tree climbing lizards, a Kookaburra trying to kill an escaped barbecue sausage by thwacking it against a gum tree!
What brought it all back during these driech February days was this song I've been reviving, to put on my folk songs album out soon. The song is called Mondura Dam and it was only ever intended to act as a kind of picture postcard, to send back with me containing a memory of a place.
Lake Monduran had been quite newly made, I think, thats why the flooded trees were still sticking up out of the water. Driving up the Bruce Highway as the sun was dropping there was a camping sign, Mondura Dam. Australians call an artificial lake or pond a dam. It refers to the whole body of water, not just the big wall that holds it back. Or maybe that's just Queenslanders, I don't know. Hardly anyone was there, just a big empty camping field with the one fresh water tap and fire pits dotted about. Somebody had kindly left enough wood for our first night, that was a common arrangement amongst us wandering campers. In the forest next to the field we saw our first wild kangaroo, a whole herd of them running through. The pelicans had found the lake because the whole area was set to become a centre for sport fishing next season. Barramundi fish are delicious. But I don't need to explain that, it's all in the song.
One last thing before I post the lyrics, can I just point out that the magpies are different to ours, they have green colour on them and they can whistle two notes at once.
As I said, it's just like a postcard really, a holiday snap to remind me of a lovely place. The tune was also inspired by the situation, from the rhythm of steadily walking downhill, pacing steps, carrying water.
lyrics
Here are the lyrics, just as I scribbled them down on a scrap of paper inside the tent:
Mondura Dam
"When you dam a river, the valley forms a lake
The trees stand out like boat masts,
How much water does it take to feed a small town?
"If you feed the magpies, they won't leave you alone
Let's go find some firewood, tonight we'll be alone under the starshine
" Mondura Dam, that's where I am, with my fire and my pan , I'm up on Mondura Dam
"Pelicans are fishing, cruising up and down
When you stock a lake with fish then all the birds will come around
It's easy living
"As long as we have water, there's no need to move on
When we've finished cooking, we'll throw all the firewood on and watch it flare up
"When you dam a river, the valley forms a lake
You may lose some woodland , but the natural park it makes
is here for everyone"
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