Rissole the emu is motionless, looking me dead in the eye. At this close range, it\u2019s clear she\u2019s either sizing me up for fighting, feeding or mating, and the cerulean shade painting her neck in a dirty watercolour makes me surmise she\u2019s showing her breeding colours. Rissole, I\u2019m thinking, is ready for love.<\/p>\n\n
She punctuates the silence with the oddest sound I\u2019ve ever heard issued from a living thing \u2013 a kind of booming poonk from the depths of her throat that makes me alert, slightly alarmed and not at all able to take her seriously.<\/p>\n\n
Leaving Rissole to send her poonks into the air to be heard by bachelors up to two kilometres in each direction, I hear the exact same sound from an even less expected source. Eddy Harris is the resident artist at Warrawong on the Darling, here on the breezy billabong outside of Wilcannia in outback New South Wales, and his\u00a0place as part of the Bakandji (river people) mob means he can not\u00a0only recognise the emu\u2019s call but can recreate it with a squat, decorated section of tree trunk that I mistook for a short didgeridoo.<\/p>\n\n
He\u00a0thumps it and it thumps back with a poonk. We\u2019re indoors, alongside the hotel reception in the gallery colourfully filled with Eddy\u2019s detailed, soulful art creations, and I hope the sound doesn\u2019t escape to\u00a0give Rissole the wrong idea.<\/p>\n\n
As Eddy starts recounting quiet tales of the area, I feel like I have\u00a0the wrong idea about Wilcannia. But I know what I see: once the country\u2019s third busiest port, the stately architecture and wide streets hint at Wilcannia\u2019s mercantile past. However, now those wide\u00a0streets are entirely empty of humankind, the supermarket boarded up, and the Darling River stolen to a trickle by upstream farming concerns. Population 600, it is a question mark of a town, intriguing and worrying in equal measure, perched upon the precipice of a rich past\u00a0and an unmaintainable present. I see a ghost town in the making.<\/p>\n\n
But with Eddy\u2019s help, I also see a country thick with tradition and story, for anyone willing and able to take the time to go for a walkabout. This countryside\u2019s songlines have massive breaks in them, so the young people\u2019s framework for traditional learning sits on shaky foundations, but Eddy and his elder contemporaries are repairing the bonds, restoring pride in country. They take them into the forest and teach them how to tell their story through art, to provide the catharsis that Eddy himself experiences with every single artwork.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI get feelings out there, out in country,\u201d he confides, gesturing beyond the bird-swooped billabong. \u201cSometimes too many \u2013 I have\u00a0to do something with them, to look after myself. So I make art.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s all gazetted in paint: bird tracks in flood season, the landscape\u2019s colour and the many dreamings that speak for the land.<\/p>\n
North of Wilcannia, the red earth turns a rocky white. The gibber plains (small rocks and pebbles) spelt the end for Burke and Wills\u2019s camels, unable as they were to\u00a0navigate the purplish shining stones surrounding the town of White Cliffs; but those who followed had dollar signs in their eyes. Ever since roo shooters stumbled across a precious white opal here, a tight community of dreamers has called this desolate town home, with an estimated two-thirds of the 100 or\u00a0so\u00a0residents living underground to escape the lunar-level extremes.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why I stayed,\u201d says resident Cree Marshall, among\u00a0the white-washed tunnels of her unexpectedly luxurious underground home. \u201cYou either love it or you hate it here, but there\u2019s\u00a0just something about the land that\u2019s so powerful. It just lets you be what you want to be.\u201d She welcomes visitors into her home for $10 a pop, and it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n\n
Her artistic streak is apparent in a\u00a0giant angel on the wall, made from a sewing machine table and a box-worth of Thai leather belts; in emu eggs lined up, bleached from the sun to form a modish pattern; and in the mosaic floors, which somehow manage to follow the curving, labyrinthine walls. She and\u00a0her handy-as-hell partner Lindsay White began to convert this erstwhile mine into a home about nine years ago. Its mining past means a few dead ends here and there, but it\u2019s certainly one of a kind.<\/p>\n\n
The Underground Motel<\/a> in town offers a first-hand experience of\u00a0living in the white tunnels under White Cliffs, with a long staircase\u00a0to take you topside to drink in the slow desert sunset from\u00a0atop the earthen motel mound \u2013 the \u2018rooftop\u2019, if you will. A\u00a0swimming pool and underground bar complete the good-life vibe,\u00a0but there\u2019s no escaping the true nature of the town down the\u00a0road the next morning.<\/p>\n\n The Blocks are the current major diggings being worked by ambitious miners looking for the Big Find; pits and mounds scar the\u00a0surreal landscape like the burrows of a hundred giant meerkats. Overlooking it all is the entrance to the mine belonging to White Cliffs success story Graeme Dowton, whose sandy-haired charm hides either a steely will or a deadset addiction to the digging game \u2013 or both. Either way, visitors can explore his mine with him and even rummage through the opal chips on the ground, then see his famous white opal \u2018pineapples\u2019 back at his headquarters at Red Earth\u00a0Opal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n These huge chunks of opal number less than 200 in the\u00a0world and can fetch up to US$70,000 from collectors, which explains Graeme\u2019s rather happy demeanour. Down in the mine, he waves his\u00a0hand vaguely toward a small dead-end passage still being worked on. \u201cThis little section is worth about six or seven hundred thousand to me,\u201d he says in passing. This is a man who\u2019s struck it rich\u00a0in one of the toughest opal fields to work in the world, and there\u2019s a genuine kick in bearing witness.<\/p>\n Mutawintji National Park<\/a>, further along from White Cliffs and\u00a0a\u00a0veritable oasis protected by both green-tinged hills and the\u00a0determination of the local Aboriginal land council, shines a somewhat\u00a0different light on mining.<\/p>\n\n In one Bakandji dreaming, my guide Mark Sutton tells me, the people were turned into veins of silver and lead by divine force, \u201cwhich explains our unease with it all. It\u2019s like disinterring our very\u00a0ancestors. But we\u2019ve had to put up with mining almost since white people came here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n It\u2019s a privilege to walk the land here with Mark. The open, wave-like caves fringing the valley shelter some mind-blowing history, and they\u2019re not for the casual visitor \u2013 you need to be brought here by an\u00a0accredited local guide. The pay-off is rich: cave after swirling rock\u00a0cave, acting as billboards to display the story of people who\u2019ve passed by. Full armprints from elders, or simple handprints from the younger ones, just initiated. A somewhat cluelessly blue one from William Wright brings to mind the stories about him \u2013 that his refusal\u00a0to meet Burke (as in, Burke and Wills) at the appointed location, due to\u00a0non-payment, spelt ultimate disaster for the famous expedition and death for Burke and his men.<\/p>\n\n Up on a jagged, impressive hillside, all that modern history seems like ridiculous bickering. These carvings were tattooed into the shining, fragile rock face perhaps as early as 5000BC. An ancient, carved emu bends its head, forever surveying the cypress pine and mulga of the valley below, and the vertigo hits me, of not only our precarious perch on the hill but our much more precarious perch in the vastness of time. What a wonderful way to feel very, very small.<\/p>\n Two hours away is Broken Hill. It is metal and boots and a reputation\u00a0for dust from the rampant mining that built the city, though the dust has settled, thanks to a bush regeneration zone ringing the district that has cleared the air. In bathrooms and on local\u00a0TV, you\u2019ll encounter reminders to mop the floors and wash your hands, to keep the lead dust from coming home each day. The transcontinental train line shines beside the giant slag heap; the grey\u00a0heap, in turn, is a stone\u2019s throw from the gay colour, in every\u00a0sense of it, found within the Palace Hotel<\/a>. The Adventures of\u00a0Priscilla,\u00a0Queen of the Desert filmed here, and left an indelible trail\u00a0of\u00a0pink feathers behind it; gruff miners sink a few cold ones among sequins and frescoes, and it all somehow makes sense in a place\u00a0like Broken Hill.<\/p>\n\n Out of town, a small mob of emus splashing in a precious puddle guards the Living Desert and Sculptures park; I still go\u00a0out of my mind with excitement at seeing emus in the wild, always a dream of mine before this trip. The sculpture park makes sense in Broken Hill too: the majestic curves of the artworks crowning the hill herald a deep love of creativity that is as much a part\u00a0of the city as the red earth and sparse, flower-dotted scrub stretching across the plains beyond the park\u2019s lookout is.<\/p>\n\n One of the emus keeps pace with the 4WD bus as we head away, as if to coax us into staying a little longer, but we\u2019re picking up speed on a road that seems to have as many dips as a good-sized cocktail party. Because Queen Elizabeth herself graced these parts on her 1954 tour of Australia, the road out to the famous old mining ghost town of Silverton was hurriedly paved \u2013 and it seems like they missed a few spots. The dusty roads of Silverton are now mostly walked by itinerant donkeys and mowed down by the fat tyres of Mad Max 2 fans who\u2019ve come to see the locations filmed back in 1981. So no one\u2019s complaining.<\/p>\n\n Head out from Broken Hill on a different road, though, and gigantic water-supply pipes trace a straight line to a wonderland of green and blue, a landscape transformed in a matter of moments: the Menindee Lakes. Holding more than three times Sydney Harbour at their peak, the massive waterways wind their way through impossibly green grass with nary a blade of it pressed by a footprint; the main\u00a0population is in the trees and the sky, with thousands of birds insouciantly watching our progress by boat. Squadrons of pelicans lazily take wing, Nankeen herons vainly pose and Jesus Christ birds seemingly run across the water as they take off \u2013 hence the name.<\/p>\n\n And even here, the emus are resident. Three of them, distant but clear in this crystalline environment, narrow their eyes at me and take off running along the bank, outpacing the boat, and the thrill in seeing them hasn\u2019t worn off. Much like the hillside carving back at Mutawintji, they\u2019re more a part of this place than I\u2019ll ever be, but I\u2019m good with that. It won\u2019t stop me coming back. Not in a million years.<\/p>\n Getting there:\u00a0<\/strong>You can fly to Broken Hill with Rex from Sydney, Melbourne or\u00a0Adelaide, take a train from Sydney or travel on the iconic Indian Pacific from Sydney or\u00a0Adelaide<\/a> if\u00a0you\u2019d like to do it\u00a0in style.<\/p>\n\nThe veins of ancestors: Mutawintji National Park<\/h2>\n
Lead and silver and feathers: Broken Hill<\/h2>\n
The details: Outback road trip (New South Wales)<\/h2>\n