OUTBACK STORIES

My involvement with the development of this website reflects a personal passion for our environment, the wool industry and the history of our region. Through "Outback Stories" I hope to be able to reproduce some of the life stories and anecdotes that make up the human side of our region.

The "Corner Country" has been my home for thirty years, having moved here in 1980 with my husband and infant son. It seems that we were not the first of our "family" to visit the 'Corner.

During the last quarter of the eighteen hundreds  my husband Jon's great great uncle William Hogarth was employed by Goldsborough  Mort as a chief inspector in the Wilcannia area.

In 1994, whilst clearing an access road for the connection of grid power to our region, Jon came upon the lonely grave of Hogarth's wife Belle, on Momba Station.  She was just in her thirties and the mother of several children, when she died.

If, during our first few years in the 'Corner' we experienced episodes of intense and confronting loneliness, it would have nothing in comparison to the experience of those early adventurous and hardy souls who came in search of gold, or opal or to produce wool, or even as Chinese gardeners whose vegetables helped keep scurvy from the door.

Today in our homes we have the comforts and communications of the twenty first century.  Our children study at a distance, but now use the most modern technologies available. Our trip to "town" today takes just a few hours; nothing in comparison to the several days journey on a horse drawn cart of a century ago.  

Our wool and livestock travel under the power of a four hundred horsepower engine.  Less than one hundred years ago the stock walked, stopping at public watering places for a drink once a day.  

Dirt was scoured from wool before it left the station, and was carried in packs strapped to camels.

Teams of surveyors stepped the distance, and camped beneath our clear bright stars as they measured and marked the miles with sextants and chains.  

To these people we owe so much. To the people of the 'Corner today, we owe our future.

In time, through these pages, on this medium not even dreamed about so long ago, I hope that we can share their stories with the world.

Ruth Sandow,