The fire had started quietly after a lightning strike. It leapt playfully at first, zigzagging through a fern gully, slowed only by the dampness of the tree ferns. But then it ran up a Eucalyptus and joyfully scampered and crackled, exploding across its dried, crisp branches. No longer playful, the fire leapt triumphantly from tree to tree like a Roman candle. Then it ran down again to the tinder dry undergrowth further down the gully. The fire transformed. It noisily cracked, spat and hissed. Out of control and fanned by a gusty north wind it sent smoke mushrooming into the sky and burning ash across the bush. As the fire marched over the hills the heat took away the air and it sounded as though a hundred fiery, fighting dragons had surrounded the Arches.
It feels like it all happened only yesterday! The hills and gullies were shrouded in an eerie orange light and where the countryside had been green all was black. It was devastating to return and see the charred remains, the glittering embers that lingered in the ruin of the old house, the trees stripped of their foliage and reduced to glowing stumps.
Sadly, there is not so much as a footprint now to mark the place where we spent so many happy hours visiting our friends Edna and Archie Hair in their simple hut, outside Briagalong, just off the Dargo Road, near the Blue Pool. Nature had regenerated the bush that had been gutted by fire, but times changed and as any Miner’s rights had long since expired, no one was able to make use of them, as Archie had done back in the summer of 1944.
Like many soldiers who have engaged in serious combat, Archie never spoke of his time serving in the Great War. However, he was a member of the 23 Battalion and saw service at Gallipoli and France where he had been both gassed and wounded. Upon his return in 1919 he took up farming at Willung South, a small rural community in the Wellington Shire, Victoria. After the discovery. of gold in 1864 there had been a brief flurry of mining activity in the region and fossickers like him loved to work over the old mines and relics that remained scattered throughout the bush. I don’t think he ever found much more than the slivers of gold that he kept in tiny glass vials. Archie worked with a different kind of gold.
In the mid-1950s he retired to spend more time gold prospecting. On one of his fossicking expeditions, he found the abandoned bark hut near the Blue Pool that an old miner named Bill had lived in. He staked a claim, moved in and set about making it more comfortable for his wife Edna. The fact that the house had neither mains water or power was not a deterrent to the couple. Rather, it added appeal to what was, by anyone’s standards, a simple, eccentric home.
To say that living here changed the focus of Archie and Edna’s lives is an understatement. It enabled them to enter what was arguably the richest period of their lives. The simple bark hut, with the banksia roses clustered over the arch entrance, which became known as the Arches, was visited by hundreds.
Archie had used crooked ironbark saplings to build a lean-to and then add extra rooms and this gave the place an appearance of being arched. Watch any episode of the television series Alone and you will get an idea of how Archie gradually constructed their home, cleverly repurposing whatever he could find. The nose of an old aeroplane and green bottles placed in window frames were just two examples of Archie’s imaginative use of available materials
By the time my husband and I heard about the Arches, and regularly visited with our children, Archie had built a kitchen, a cosy sitting room and an attic where visiting children could stay. My youngest daughter loved lying up there, on the simple hessian bunk bed, absorbing images from the Post, Australia’s longest running picture magazine, that decorated the rough walls.
It is hard to find words to express what this magical world meant to us. My husband Colin and I loved spending time with this generous old couple who welcomed so many into their humble abode. We liked to visit of a Sunday and since the hut had no refrigeration, I always stopped at the quaint old store in Briagolong to buy Edna some ice-cream.
Edna was crippled with arthritis but was able to walk with the support of two of Archie’s handcrafted walking sticks. Both she and Archie had been married before and had rich life experience to draw upon.
I cannot deny that Edna filled a hole in my heart. My mother died when I was twelve and my father wilfully broke up our family. I’d lost my connection to my elder sister who moved to Sydney and grieved her untimely death. Edna filled a hole, offering supportive counsel and friendship that was otherwise unavailable.
While I enjoyed the sanctity of time with Edna in her sitting room, drinking tea and savouring some of her famous Kisses, Archie took the children and my husband on long bush treasure hunts and introduced them to magical natural wonders such as the proud talking tree that was quite close to the house.
Archie had a wooden box, the contents of which became a source of fascination to everyone. He called it his “Box of Wonders”. He kept simple things in this hand crafted box that he had collected from the bush. A storyteller and poet at heart, he held all the children who visited captivated as he spun elaborate stories associated with each rock, tiny fragment of pebble, brown bottle or prized bird’s nest. He was, quite literally like an enchanted Piper as he led his famed treasures hunts. Children adored his handmade walking sticks, each with compartments that held clues about where a small ornament might be found tucked within a fairy house, the hollow of a tree.
Before the big flood he led them on expeditions in an old mine shaft and showed them how to pan for specks of gold, amongst the old, multi-coloured stones that nestled in the Freestone Creek, a freshwater creek that ran behind the house. Upon their return with their pannikins, filled with crystals and other small treasures they had found, they relished the home made Ginger beer. Even a plate of spam and a few salad vegetables tasted special when we lingered longer and stayed on for a light dinner.
On balmy summer days, while their sisters panned for slivers of gold with Archie in the shallower water downstream, my boys loved to swim in the Blue Pool, a fantastic pool in a gorge not far from the house. This mystical pool was wide and deep. Together with awe inspiring Peregrine Falcons, who nested nearby and often circled above us, I sat on the pebbly beach watching as the boys clambered over the rocks onto the cliff and fearlessly jumped, performed aerial acrobatics, screeching with delight as they swung from a giant rope swing and dropped into the deep water. The tranquillity of this small Eden, the sheer infusion of joy had to be experienced to be appreciated.
If I close my eyes I can see Archie standing outside his kitchen door, feeding his pet Kangaroo, Skipper and the flocks of birds who came to visit him. He adored those birds and had a standing order for sausages from the local butcher. No circus ringmaster could have provided better entertainment! Our pleasure, watching as he fed pieces of sausage to up to six Kookaburras, perched on his arms and shoulders, was unbridled. Parrots also perched on him and there was a bower birds bower quite close to the house.
Even now transporting myself back to the Arches eases so much of the grief I contended with. Archie, who had witnessed the sheer horrors of Gallipoli and managed to retain his humanity, was such a contrast to my father, a lay preacher who could not walk the talk, who relinquished care of his family after his wife’s death and cruelly passed judgement on my sister, disowning her when she didn’t marry the father of her child. Considering all that she had given to the family, worked to support everyone during the Depression, his hypocrisy burned me deeply. Needless to say, I was devastated when Edna died in 1965 and I cannot deny that after her death I was guilty of burdening my youngest daughter with the heavy grief that she had helped palliate.
But that is another story to tell. At least my daughter carries the memories of having had access to such an enchanted space and I know that this experience, the spirit of Archie and Edna, lives within her and continues to inform her work.
Acknowledging Original Tribal Occupants
Wild Mother Calling 