Geraldton, Western Australia, has established itself as “ground zero” for the commemoration of the loss of HMAS Sydney and all hands in November 1941. Its hill-top, slightly over-done memorial overlooks the Indian Ocean. But the loss of the Sydney happened far to the north-west of Geraldton. Relics and historic sites are easy to find. Start in Carnarvon at the very good free museum near the jetty.

Here you’ll find the lifeboat in which the German crew from the raider Kormoran came ashore after they scuttled their ship. Apart from a rusted-out keel it’s in remarkably good condition and worth a look.

Head north from Carnarvon about 60 km on a good gravel coast road and you’ll come to Quobba Station. This is a wild, rugged coast with blowholes, rogue waves and a simple stone memorial to HMAS Sydney not far from the homestead. You can stay at the homestead in very spectacular surroundings. It’s also near the site where the Kormoran crew landed. They climbed out of their lifeboat on Quobba at Red Bluff (another 80 km north). Quobba Station owners have set up safari tents at this remote outpost. When the Kormoran crew landed they threw their handguns overboard and one of these was recovered recently and is now on display at the Geraldton museum. With a little sleuthing we found these relics and sites with ease. It’s a pity that the locals around here have not made more of their links with HMAS Sydney, especially since the shipwreck was recently discovered.

The bloke who delivered the mail to the 15 families along the Birdsville Track during the 1940’s and 50’s in a beaten up old Leyland Badger truck has been immortalised in a bronze bust that was unveiled on Sunday 16 November at Waterloo, Tom’s birthplace in the mid north of South Australia. And the old bloke was there to witness the moment.

Tom, now 94, is a tough, dogged giant of a man who delivered the mails, supplies and good cheer along Australia’s most remote mail run. He’s the only bloke we know who could lift a full 44 gallon drum onto the back of a truck.

“I have trouble lifting a schooner of beer now,” quipped Tom.

In 1954 the Shell Film Unit made a documentary about Tom and his mail run. “The Back of Beyond” won numerous cinema awards. Tom was awarded an MBE for his services to the outback.

In 1999 Tom reappeared in a sequel that showed him restoring his old mail truck and making one last run down the Birdsville Track carrying 7000 letters. “Last Mail from Birdsville. The Story of Tom Kruse” screened on TV and the DVD has gone on to become one of the Royal Flying Doctors’ big fundraisers
Last Sunday 300 of his admirers gathered to honour Tom’s exploits outside the house in which he was born in Waterloo.
“I can’t understand all the fuss,” Tom said as he unveiled the bronze bust. “I was just doing my job.”
The bust is the last of four to be unveiled. The others are at Marree, the southern end of the Birdsville Track, Birdsville at the northern end. Another stands near his restored mail truck at the National Motor Museum in Birdwood, South Australia.

For years there had been whispers of a wild man living in caves high in the hills. A century later the secrets are revealed.

Discovered at last; the Wild Man caves.

From any high spot along the ramparts of the Grampians in the Western District of Victoria you can look west to another range, distant against the horizon - the Black Range, about 30km away.
Few venture into these hills, they lie in the shadow of the Grampians’ popularity. No plunging waterfalls here, no Wonderland walking tracks, instead there are legends and whisperings about caves and a wild man. Locals from Horsham in the north to Hamilton in the south can give you a few snippets. They’ve heard of the Wild Man Caves but never been there. A bloke hid out from the police for 20 years, they’ll say. No one is quite sure where or when or why. The Black Range hides its secrets well.
And that’s almost certainly the way David Ross liked it. From what we know, Ross was a shearer and apart from the Spring shearing season he lived a lonely life in caves high in the Black Range in the late 1860s. It seems he liked the alternative lifestyle as it was in the then. His particular - some would say romantic - life was the stuff of which novels are written and movies are made. But was David Ross a latter day cave man here in Victoria? We decided to track down the Wild Man Caves and the story of the Wild Man himself.
There are no sign posts to the Wild Man Caves in the Black Range. Forestry Officer Roger Edwards from nearby Cavendish told us that David Ross did indeed live the cave life for around 20 years.
“He lived in two caves and he actually made a few improvements to make them livable - a bed, chairs and things, but access is not easy,” he warned. “The site is quite fragile and the track is very steep in parts with some climbing over boulders needed.”
We left the main road from Horsham and headed south. At the road junction opposite the delightful Cherrypool picnic ground we turned right toward the Black Range. This gravel road skirts the northern arm of Rocklands Reservoir. We threaded our way through giant old gums on bush tracks that led to the base of the range. A gate here blocks entry to all but park management vehicles to the Black Range State Park. The walking track begins as a narrow pad through heathy fringe myrtle flowers. An occasional blue tinsel lily glitters in the grass. Then, quite abruptly you’re clambering upward, scrambling over rock, squeezing through narrow rocky chutes, up and around the side of a 400m towering rocky buttress. And near the top, hidden to one side, we found the first of the two known Wild Man’s caves.
Remarkably, after 140 years, Ross’ caves remain mostly intact, due no doubt, to their inaccessibility. Few, it would appear, have found their way up to this eyrie. It’s possible that he lived here from around 1860 to 1880 - no one is quite sure. His “improvements” are still evident, a neatly built stone wall covers in the natural cave opening. A tiny entrance to one side is the only access. An open slit across the top allows a view of the approaches. Roger Edwards said that the beds and chairs Ross used to furnish these caves are now thought to be preserved at a nearby homestead. The rock walls inside form ledges that make reasonably comfortable seating. There’s evidence of small fireplaces too.
“Smoke never built up inside,” he said. “Somehow Ross designed it so that natural drafts drew the smoke out.”
The second cave is located a further 300m around on the eastern side of the buttress. It’s sited in the wall of a huge, naturally hewn cavern. The beauty of colour and texture in the eroding sandstone create a kind of art gallery. Look up and high on the walls are remnants of Koori art. The acoustics, you discover as you pause here, might have been designed by some audio genius. The views from here are sensational and that, to Ross, was the whole point. Views were important to him. From here he would have had a vast panorama to the south east across the huge Glenisla Station where Samuel Carter had his sheep run. Wild Man Ross must have been able to spy anyone approaching.
In 1875 a fence worker, employed by Carter, discovered the haunts of a wild man. Carter and his men searched the mountains and found a cave blocked by a large boulder. Inside they discovered dried mutton, sheep skins and tins of black sand suggesting that the occupant was into gold prospecting.
Fearing that the dried mutton may have come illegally from his flock, Carter had the police conduct a search. When the police discovered Ross in his cave they pretended to have been lost, hoping to lure him from the cave as a rifle had been seen. Wild Man Ross made a dash for freedom but was arrested and taken to nearby Balmoral, charged with having stolen mutton. It seems that, in their zeal at having a cave man in their lock-up, a further charge of having no visible means of support was added to the accusations.
Locals scoffed at the tale but the “Hamilton Spectator” (9 February 1876) made a meal of the Wild Man story describing the arrest as “sensational”.
“It was nevertheless strictly true…David Ross was brought before the police bench at Balmoral on the 2nd inst. when he was accused of having no lawful visible means of support. The “hermit” who, it will be remembered, was found living in a cave in a remote part of Mr Samuel Carter’s run where he was suspected of evading justice or qualifying himself for canonisation,” the “Spectator” trumpeted.
Ross was able to prove that he had recently earned money and the vagrancy case was dismissed. As for the stolen mutton, Ross was found guilty but a witness, the Balmoral storekeeper Mr Basil Lyon, testified that he had cashed cheques for the accused and he spoke up for the Wild Man, according to the press report.
“He believed (Ross) to be honest, but appearances were against him. Strange to say, he experienced no difficulty in paying the fine,” the paper said. Ross was sentenced to three months’ hard labour or 15 pounds fine.
Ross was then 56 years old, his only possession at the time was a knife, according to police. Sitting on the boulders above his caves today you can speculate that this Scottish labourer just wanted to drop out of the 1860’s rat race and lead a simple life with marvellous views. Here you can gaze down on redgum forests and the Grampians’ Victoria Range beyond. It’s a view that has not changed much since 1875 - certainly the peace remains.
We had uncovered the mystery of the Wild Man and his caves and then, as clouds darkened, it began to rain. Would we seek refuge in Ross’ former home? It was late and modern comforts beckoned from below so we retreated down the water-slicked rocks to the car as the mists closed about this little known scrap of Victorian history.
But for his taste for a bit of illegal mutton we may never have known his story and the Black Range would have concealed the Wild Man’s story forever.

Strike me rich! Gold nuggets galore.

There’s a forested area of central Victoria called the Golden Triangle. Look at the map and find the towns of Dunolly and Tarnagulla. Back in the 1850’s and 60’s they found gold nuggets the size of footballs around here. Australia’s largest gold nugget, the Welcome Stranger a 66 kg monster, was unearthed on a hillside near the hamlet of Moliagul.
Gold rush church Moliagul

There are two good reasons to explore the Golden Triangle. You can still find gold nuggets around here and the cycling here is pretty good. In fact it’s the best way to explore the old mines, townships and early buildings. The ironbark forests are laced with delightful gravel tracks just made for cycling, leftovers from the mining days.
The mines and landmarks ring with history; Murderers Hill, Grumblegut Gully. You can thread your way down the Catch Me If You Can Lead or search Painkiller Gully.
Today’s explorer on a bike will come across old tunnels, ruins of townships that once housed 9000 people and the odd bicycle wreck.

One cyclist we know even bought an old Dunolly house and shop and, between bike rides, restored both as a weekender. You don’t hear much about the Golden Triangle, mainly because there’s still a lot of gold around here and nobody’s saying a word. It’s the cyclists who are doing all the talking.

Historic bicycle bits

Reg and Eileen Clarke bought a Skoda Octavia in 1952. The purchase was something of a compromise because Reg had planned to buy an English car but the waiting list was three months long. That was the way it was in 1952, wartime production had wound down, new car production had just started.

The Czech-made Skoda was a strong little car, made we were told, from German Army scrap metal hauled in from the Pripyet Marshes battlefield in the Ukraine. The Skoda had independent suspension all round, a wind-out front windscreen that leaked and the rear seats folded down giving access to the boot. It had a revolutionary lubrication system. An additional pedal was pressed every 1000 miles to lubricate all ball joints.

Reg and Eileen, my parents, had four children and the Skoda seemed to carry all of us and tow a caravanette with little effort. As an eight year old I could find only two design faults in the car. It had a radiator blind designed for cold European winters that I wound up over the radiator one warm Melbourne day. The engine and my father came to the boil very quickly. The other shortcoming was the tail light switch. It was a toggle switch beside the rear tail light. I could jump out of the car at traffic lights, turn on the tail light and be back inside before the lights turned green.

I recall we picked up our new Royal Blue Skoda from the dealer in LaTrobe St, Melbourne one exciting Friday night. In those days cars were imported in large pine boxes. Dad asked the dealer if he could have the box. No problem. That box became the car’s garage at our home. Recycling? Not exactly. In those days you never threw anything away.

And now Skodas are back. I must check to see if they’ve ironed out those design faults.

It’s was a typical outback solution to a modern day problem. Donald Campbell arrived at Lake Eyre, South Australia, in the winter of 1964 with a dream to break the land speed record in his 4250 hp Bluebird jet powered car. While its Bristol Siddely Proteus gas turbine engine powered all four wheels it wasn’t what you called a 4WD as we know it. So getting the beast through the sandhills around Lake Eyre was the problem.

An oxy welding kit, some lengths of old railway line from the Ghan, axles and tyres and voila! You have a transporter to piggy-back Bluebird out onto Lake Eyre. Bluebird can zip across Lake Eyre at 650 kph. World land speed record done and dusted.

After 43 years this historic contraption is rusting quietly in the outback sun near the southern shore of the lake. Without it there would have been no world record.