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1923
10 April 1923
Eurunderee.
(By Sea Rue.)
Verily 'tis a small world, wherein the Long Arm of Coincidence plays such fantastic tricks before High Heaven as make us poor mortals squirm - for most of us, hard-bitten old timers, have forgotten how to weep. And yet have we? The magic touch of a vanished hand and his immortal verse have still the key to our secret and sacred skeleton chambers.
'Crool forchin's dirty left having so smote me soul, and my sorely tried physical machine, that rustication became urgent.
In pure - but as it turned out - misguided mateship - my good old cobber Harry O'Brien persuaded me to go into retirement - of all places in the world for a sentimental old bloke - to Eurunderee.
"Seen plainly from O'Brien's Hill, that stands by our old home," to be precise, in the now famous Log Paddock, portion of the property of Mrs. T. R. Randell's Eurunderee Estate.
Incidentally, a goodly portion of this estate, including "The creek that I can ne'er forget," is leased by Mr. Seaton, who bred a Melbourne Cup winner, "Westcourt," whose swollen legs were far more magically and successfully treated by the leeches of Eurunderee Creek than was dreamt of in all the philosophy of punters. Both "Westcourt" and "Wollaroi" are still doing useful work, although while "The glow of sunrise purples yet along the Mudgee hills, the flats and sidings" are undergoing the ravages of drought, and most of the stud is on agistment at Cooyal.
But it is of Eurunderee and its atmosphere, and the spirit of the gifted youth, Henry Lawson, which haunts its every gully and mountain track, that moves this writing finger.
From my country seat in "Paradise," Log Paddock ("Paradise" by reason of its being aforetime occupied by a jovial soul, yclept Harry Lord), the poet's old home is about 400 yards, the immortal "Old Stone Chimney" still standing stark and lone, cheek by jowl, with an up-to-date tennis court.
Writer was fortunately able to present to the "Voice of the North" a photo of the "Old Stone Chimney," with the poem, which were published by a devotee of Lawson's, Mr. Frank L. Jago, the "Western Posts" manager. In Log Paddock is the alluvial shaft which inspired one of Lawson's most pathetic stories, "His Father's Mate." The "shaft" is a mere man-trap, o'er-grown with thistles and Bathurst burr, for the unwary wine-laden feet which pursue an erratic course across the barbed-wire fences, those that in later years Lawson "did not seem to know," they were so unlike "a fence that I put up some thirty years ago."
The "Shanty on the Rise" is an endless topic for fierce debate among many of young Lawson's personal friends.
From "Paradise," in Long Paddock, when
"The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow," one loves to fancy that the immortal shanty is that old building in Willie Roth's vineyard - literally on a "rise." "The German farmers seem the same
About Eurunderee,
And others, careless as of yore,
Except for two or three."
How faithfully, if somewhat sadly reproachfully, does Lawson picture the happy-go-lucky "cocky," "careless
as of yore" and sorely stricken, as now, by the ever recurrent and remorseless drought.
There is a half-hour of enchantment - of Australian fairyland - about Eurunderee, when all nature is hushed and bathed in glory.
"In the purpling light of half-past six, Before the stars are met,
While the stricken sun clings fondly to his royal mantle yet,
Dying glorious o'er the hill-tops in reluctant violet."
the indescribable kaleidescope of moving shades and shadows on the wooded peaks, the apple tree flats, and the willows and oaks of Eurunderee Creek: - it is in such rare moments that the children of Lawson's fancy pluck tenderly about one's heartstrings, and, a while later, "the friends and kin who were lost in waking, they all come back while the swagman slept; but when again on the empty morrow the pain at one's heart is a deadened pain, and (none too) bravely bearing one's load of sorrow, the scribe wanders back to the world again2
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23 April 1929
MANY FAMOUS ESTATES CHANGE HANDS
Demand for Hunter Land
WYBONG. - The demand for land on the Upper Hunter has been very keen for some time, and many famous estates have been subdivided. At the present time about eight well-known estates, ranging from 1280 to 19,639 acres, are on the market, some of them comprising some of the best fattening land on the Hunter.
MUDGEE. - Two important property sales have been completed during the week. Messrs. Macarthur and Brown have disposed of their Erudgere Estate, near Mudgee, to Messrs. Gibson and Sons, of Plevna, Trundle, and have purchased from Thompson Bros. the Coonaroo property, near Cooyal3
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