...man in Central Australia as far down as Hawker. He has been in China and has lived in the Territory for some time before coming down to the Alice on a Government job.
He insisted on taking me home and putting me up while we were in the Alice. The others went off to the pub which happened to be next door. He is now married with a six month old child called Micky, his wife comes from a cattle station in the territory , near Catherine, which most call CatherINE. She was younger than he, slight, attractive and told hair raising stories of buffalo shoots, and by all accounts rode and shot expertly. At that time she had only once been to Adelaide, though they planned to move on before too long.
We had tea and then talked for a while before going round to the local ice-cream vendor, whose place seemed to be the centre of town life. Here they introduced the solicitor, the bank manager and several others, including a lady newspaper reporter, Ernestine Hill Ernestine Hill (21.1.1899 - 22.8.1972) was one of Australia's most popular writers. Concentrating on travel or landscape writing, her published works include The Great Australian Loneliness (1937), My Love Must Wait (1947) and The Territory (1951). As a zealous journalist, she contributed to most magazines and newspapers in Australia for almost 30 years. As with most booms, the Granites Boom was a gold rush fueled by wishful thinking and wild speculation. It centered around a small mine discovered 30 years before. Some of the newspaper reports shown in the Flight of Ducks could be her work. left over from the Granites boom.
The population of the
Alice
was about 600, officially, give or take the influx of drovers with mobs of cattle, jockeys, (mostly rubbed out in the south), destitute fossickers, conmen, and miners who come and go.
The manager of the Granites, Braynall, was there. He came up on the train with us, with a newly aquired wife, at least 30 years younger than he was. He is taking her out to the Granites.
Next, we strolled over through wide sandy streets with huge white ghost gums, to the administrators place to see the head man of the town, one Carrington. He was a very decent chap. He told us he had just been out a couple of hundred miles to trace a chap (continues...)
