The most memorable outback characters

In the red dusty expanse, single-minded, eccentric and sometimes utterly insane personalities thrive. And without question it’s the people who have formed a special bond with the outback that make it so wonderful and unique. Sol Walkling looks at just a few of the amazing people out there who have made the outback what it is today.

Ian Conway

Those born into the seemingly inhospitable wilderness hundreds of kilometres from what most people would consider civilisation consider themselves lucky and rarely leave the place. Some, like Ian Conway, have become modern-day pioneers. The son of an Arunta woman and a Kidman boss drover, Ian grew up on Angas Downs station, three hours southwest of Alice Springs. As a boy, he learned everything there was to know about camels from his Aboriginal grandmother – and transformed that traditional knowledge into his daily bread when he decided to invite tourists in for a cuppa and some bush tucker at his Kings Creek homestead to share his love for the land.

Today, the outback camel station and eco lodge owner is the leading exporter of camels in Australia (he also co-founded the Camel Industry Association), plays host to regular documentary film crews as well as tourists and has even retraced Ernest Giles’ steps on his favourite camel, Atwa. It mightn’t seem like a traditional life, but Ian considers himself a keeper of the land – here to look after it until he’s gone – like those before him.

Ian Conway at Kings Canyon. (Image: Tourism NT)

Robyn Davidson

Tracks, A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback, is the title of a travelogue by this adventuress extraordinaire, whose story also involves camels. Her preparations and taming of the temperamental animals took two years, not counting the countless hours spent looking for them every morning before each day’s ride. Robyn set out on her dangerous and crazy-sounding journey in 1977 practically by herself – dog and four camels aside – to learn about the desert and its traditional owners. She came back an infamous hero who’d walked at times clothed in nothing but her own skin.

Burke and Wills

In 1860, Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills famously attempted to cross Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in order to become the first Europeans to open up the uncharted territory at the heart of Australia. Despite being pretty inexperienced bushmen, they actually completed the north-south part of the journey with their 18-strong team, before perishing on the return journey in June 1861 at Coopers Creek.

Although seven people died and only John King, who was in charge of the camels, made it all the way back to Melbourne, the expedition did serve to increase our knowledge of central Australia – and at least disproved once and for all the fanciful notion of an inland sea.

Burke and Wills at the Dig Tree, painted by Sir John Campbell Longstaff in the late 1800s.

Steve Irwin

A more recent tragic hero’s death in Queensland moved the world, not just Australia. Our beloved Crocodile Hunter, conservationist and self-proclaimed Wildlife Warrior’s rare gift with animals and his larger than life personality earned him worldwide recognition. With his “Crikey" catchcry, broad smile and sparkling eyes, he captured TV audiences and sparked an interest in his conservationist message.

He died in 2006 after a stingray’s spine pierced his chest. (Interestingly, a series of suspected revenge attacks on stingrays along the Qld coast soon followed, with several found with their spine-tails severed.)

Steve’s daughter, Bindi, who seems to have inherited Dad’s sunny personality, wowed audiences at his memorial service at Australia Zoo, the family’s home, when she gave a speech in front of more than 5000 people, beginning with the words: “My Daddy was my hero." Bindi has since become a celebrity in her own right – just as her father had predicted – with her own TV show, DVD, appearances on US chat shows, and as the youngest ever front-page model for New Idea in 2006. She is also a zookeeper at Australia Zoo and continues her father’s conservation work.

The one and only Steve Irwin, RIP. Image by Paul Williams, www.sardrabbit.com

RM Williams

To survive in the outback it helps to be a jack-of-all-trades. Reginald Murray Williams was born over a century ago, in May 1908, and it was during one of his first jobs in WA – helping to establish a mission for Aboriginals – that he found the inspiration for his life: the Indigenous Australians’ mastery over their environment.

His job descriptions were as varied as the outback is vast, ranging from horse breeder to miner to stonemason, author and entrepreneur. If it hadn’t been for a chance encounter with a man known as Dollar Mick, who knew how to make pack saddles, RM would’ve likely stayed a very successful (but far lesser-known) well-sinker.

Together with Dollar, he perfected the art of boot making using only a single piece of leather, before opening a workshop in Adelaide. His skills must have been rather extraordinary as his first overseas order came from no less than the King of Nepal. In combination with a successful gold mining venture at Tennant Creek, his business quickly turned RM into a multi-millionaire. He must have been quite a sight when he staggered down the street to the bank with bags of gold, shotgun on each side. He passed away in 2003, aged 95, as the nation mourned the end of an era.

The quintessential outback hero, Reginald Murray Williams. (Image: National Archives of Australia)

John Flynn

Born two weeks after Ned Kelly was hung, the life of John Flynn couldn’t have been more different from the famed outlaw’s. Trained as a minister, Reverend Flynn’s defining moment was his arrival in outback Beltana, SA, in 1911. Moved by the hardship of life in the bush, in particular the lack of medical help, his moving report to the Presbyterian Church the following year led to his appointment as head of its “bush department", the Australian Inland Mission.

When Flynn started his work, only two doctors served a total area of 1,8000,000km2, using bush hospitals, hostels and ministers-cum-boundary riders on camel or horseback. Faced with the problematic vast distances in the outback, Flynn’s solution came in the form of a letter from Lieutenant Clifford Peel, a young Victorian medical student with an interest in aviation.

Even though radios and planes were very much in their infancy in 1917, Peel’s letter impressed the reverend and was the first step towards the establishment of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, and today more than 20 bases span the length and breadth of Australia.

The Reverend John Flynn. (Image: Royal Flying Doctors Service)

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.

Steve Irwin to RM Williams: the most memorable outback characters