Bards, songsters of Nulla Nulla Part 1
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First published in Macleay Argus, North Coast Magazine section, week commencing June 19, 1983. Sourced by Phil Lee, Macleay River Historical Society, kind permission given by Dr Jane Harte, executrix of the late Bernie Harte's estate.
There's nothing special about Nulla Nulla. It's just a partly cleared patch of a couple of thousand acres on the Upper Macleay near Bellbrook, which looks as it may have seen better days. A few decaying cottages close by the track is evidence that back in the 1930s about 25 families dairy-farmed there.
There's a bit of flat land - partly fenced, that suggests a cricket pitch a long time ago and nearby, a few crumbling stumps point to the fact that once a school house sat on them. Meandering through the country, sometimes alongside the track, sometimes behind the hills, there's a straggling creek that runs and stops at the whim of its source, the towering Sugarloaf Mountain.
Nulla Nulla would hardly warrant a pause by passing travellers. Its scenery isn't exactly commanding,-you see it anywhere in the hill country, just off the main Kempsey-Armidale Road.
So why write about it? It's just that Nulla has cradled some of our best bush bards, who wrote in simple style of a country we like to feel is still our own.
One of these was Ivy Waters who wrote in The Bulletin of yesteryear under the pen name of 'Babbling Brook'. One of her poems "The Old Rusty Bell" was put to music and sung by troubadour of country and western music, Slim Dusty. Christened David Gordon Kirkpatrick, Slim was born and raised at Nulla Nulla and so was his mate, that prolific songwriter Shorty Ranger.
The Kirkpatrick cottage - left vacant for many years, is on the historic Elsinore property of about 3000 acres, owned by the Rossiter family. It's been recently titivated up and is occupied once again. Slim and Shorty started out in the music business together in 1942, busking on Saturday mornings down-town Kempsey and then made it to the stage of The Mayfair Theatre and the local radio station. That was some time ago. Since those days they've gone their own way, coming together now and again - one as the songwriter and the other as the songster. As I write this story, Slim is appearing in a C & W show at Forster, while Shorty is also appearing in a C & W show, but at Bourke.
As for Nulla Nulla all these years, its gradually easing back to the way it was before the first "Giddyyaaap" and the crack of the whip sounded the approach of civilisation back in 840, but it did come alive for a few short violent months a couple of years back.
It seems the producer of "The Chant of Jimmie Blackmith" decided it was just the ideal location to provide a couple of sequences to the story. An old cottage alongside the track was taken over and done out as it would have looked at the time and a schoolhouse was erected close by. Well - not the complete building - just the facade, which was propped up.
While the action was on most days of the week, the dusty track was stirred up by the film makers coming and going and the many star gazers who wanted to "See them in the flesh". And when the dust settled, there wasn't a soul in sight. The Nulla had gone back to sleep.
Continue reading: Part 2: And then there was Sam Chapman, bushman, soldier, poet