The Never Never

Never Never Land is a real place. My great grandfather, George Chale Watson, spent seven years surveying the Never Never.

The name was first recorded, in the late 19th century, describing the uninhabited regions of Australia - then called just ‘The Never-Never’. The more remote outback regions of the Northern Territory and Queensland are still known by that name. This is as much a state of mind and a folk-memory that recalls the pre-settlement outback life with fondness as it is a precise geographical location.

 

By hut, homestead and shearing shed, By railroad, coach and track- By lonely graves where rest the dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where beneath the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand- My home lies wide a thousand miles In Never-Never Land.It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A blazing desert in the drought, A lake-land after rain; To the skyline sweeps the waving grass, Or whirls the scorching sand- A phantom land, a mystic realm! The Never-Never Land.Where lone Mount Desolation lies Mounts Dreadful and Despair- ‘Tis lost beneath the rainless skies In hopeless deserts there; It spreads nor-west by No-Man’s Land Where clouds are seldom seen To where the cattle stations lie Three hundred miles between.

The drovers of the Great Stock Routes The strange Gulf country Know Where, travelling from the southern droughts, The big lean bullocks go; And camped by night where plains lie wide, Like some old ocean’s bed, The watchmen in the starlight ride Round fifteen hundred head.Lest in the city I forget True mateship after all, My water-bag and billy yet Are hanging on the wall; And I, to save my soul again, Would tramp to sunsets grand With sad-eyed mates across the plain In Never-Never Land.by Henry Lawson

“Soon after the weather moderated we took our departure from Bucknall’s Station and crossed over to Middle Creek, the country held by a stalwart pioneer, Mr A.E. Bullmore, whose head station, Oakwood, was on the Ward River. Mr Bullmore accompanied me during my survey of Middle Creek whereon he had an out cattle station, a sign of civilisation that was welcome, for since leaving Bucknall’s we had only seen the out sheep stations near the head of Middle Creek. In those days fifty, sixty, and seventy miles intervened between the outposts of civilisation - if such it could be called - where a solitary shepherd or stockman endure their periods of isolation in a round of existence that can hardly be called life.

In the approach of the rainy seasons in those parts the experiences of the traveller and residents are very unwelcome as regards flies, sandflies, and mosquitoes that the only successful remedy found being that of smoke of cowdung. The flies will eat the eyes out of a horse’s head and when a dish of mutton chops are placed on the table the chops become invisible through the swarms of flies thereon: so that the unwary bushman, who fails to protect his eyes with a veil finds himself suffering from bung blight which often times develops into sandy blight and severe ophthalmic diseases. Sand bites will run horses fifty miles off a station and scatter them all over the country.

On one night our camp was overwhelmingly beset with mosquitoes, which bit through blankets and every other coverage except our boots. The country not being stocked there was no cow dung mosquito fuel available, and the atmosphere being calm the mosquitoes were the masters of the situation. At breakfast next morning I reminded my assistants that if John Wesley were present he would suggest that before eating those who had indulged in profanity at the mosquitoes should wash their mouths, in which one of them unhesitatingly replied, “I would like to have seen John Wesley encamped here last night without cow dung.”

Settlement in the Western districts in the year I commenced my surveys being so far apart the country was very wild: immense camps of blackfellows roamed at large; they had committed and were still committing some foul murders of unprotected settlers and travellers so that as a precaution our survey party was necessarily well armed. I expended about fifteen pounds in revolvers, guns and ammunitions, which, happily we never had the occasion to use. The sight of our weapons displayed on our saddles had the deterrent effect desired. Nevertheless the blackfellows had his rights; as we had taken their country without any commensurate recompense and our lawless whites had wreaked violence and outrage upon them, in some cases with wholesale iniquity. Not infrequently, when mobs of blacks were driven in by the dry weather to fall back upon their tribal waterholes for sustenance in fishing the pastoral occupants of the country would tell the police that the blacks were assembling for violence. The native police, who delighted in taking life would disperse them with unmitigated violence.”