Wambo Shire and its cemeteries

Well about a week ago, I'd never heard of Wambo Shire and now we've photographed four of its cemeteries: Bell, Jimbour Station, Jandowae and Warra. For the benefit of the equally-geographically-challenged, it's the area around Dalby which is west of Toowoomba.

Since last weekend was the Australia Day long weekend, we decided somewhat spontaneously to go up to Dalby and photograph some cemeteries. Although I've visited Dalby once a year or so for some years, I had never actually known what the shire was called.

Aside, according to the Lonely Planet, Dalby can claim the world's only monument to an insect (the cactoblastis), but the local tourist office doesn't seem to go overboard in promoting this unique attraction.

As it turned out, it was not a great weekend to visit Dalby. We started out at Warra Cemetery, west of Dalby. While we were there, the sky became progressively darker with low threatening clouds, which were a rather curious denim blue colour. We thought the storm might come before we finished the cemetery so we worked very quickly, but we finished before the storm came. Indeed as we were driving from Warra back toward Dalby, we could see the storm off to the south rather than on the road ahead to the east. We noticed the way dust was being pulled up by the storm and had a long discussion about why we don't get tornedos in Australia like the American mid-west.

Of course then the storm hit us and it was almost impossible to see through the driving rain so eventually we pulled off the road (not a lot of opportunities on this road) to wait out the storm. Anyhow eventually we get back to Dalby to find branches down everywhere, trees uprooted, etc. It turned out the town was hit by a "mini-tornedo", so much for our theory they didn't happen. And of course the power lines were down all over the place and the town had no power. So we checked into our motel and sat waiting for the power to come back on.

It was well and truly dinner time with no sign of the power being restored that we ventured out to drive around town in the hope of finding a meal in a town without power. Having established that there wasn't any premises with lighting in the main shopping street, we decided that driving down the highway to Oakey might be our only option. By chance we drove past the Dalby RSL on our way back to the highway and found it a blaze of light and full of hungry townsfolk, so we joined them. There were a lot of queues to order meals and drinks, but the staff were doing their best and eventually everyone got dinner.

Now I don't know if the Dalby RSL had its own generator (if so, it was a quiet one), but it was a curious coincidence that they were across the street from the Ergon building (the local electricity supplier). The Ergon building was also a blaze of light, but this was not so surprising as 1) they had a very noisy generator in their backyard and 2) it makes sense for an electricity company to be busy when the power is out. Was there a long extension lead from the Ergon generator to the RSL? Anyhow, eventually we returned to our motel to sit on the balcony in the moonlight until the power came back on around 10pm. However, power wasn't fully restored to the whole town until the next day.

Next day we were out looking for cemeteries. It wasn't realistic to photograph the Dalby cemeteries -- way too big for two people so we went looking for smaller ones. Now smaller towns generally have smaller cemeteries, so we aim for the smaller towns.

We had an easy start with Jimbour Station "historic" cemetery, small and recently restored so an easy exercise to photograph. However, we got a bit caught out at our next stop with Jandowae. Never having visited Jandowae, our extensive research prior to our trip extended to my remembering that Jandowae was (in)famous for its $1 land sale intended to reverse the declining population. (Never let it be said that our cemetery activities are entirely well-planned; we have our organised trips and our more spontaneous expeditions). Anyhow, the $1 land sale made us think it was a very small place, but it turned out to be a bit bigger than we expected in terms of size of the town and also the size of the cemetery. And of course we arrive at the cemetery in the middle of one of the hottest days and we fry in the cemetery photographing all those headstones. I was undecided if I was going to faint first or explode with spontaneous combustion. At least it was well-maintained and we didn't have to fight our way through the undergrowth and prickles.

Also in the category of curious coincidences, I was photographing a plaque about the planting of a tree in honour of the early pioneers of Jandowae when I noticed the date on the plaque. It was that very day -- I guess they did it early in the morning before we arrived.

Alas, we were not completely spared the undergrowth and prickles which abounded at Bell cemetery later that afternoon, when it was still frying conditions out in the sun. It is fair to say that, even at $1, you couldn't tempt me to move to Jandowae or Bell. Of course, they may be delightful places to live, but frankly I had a miserable time at both and have no desire to return. I have never appreciated my car airconditioning so much.

Supposedly there were cemeteries at Macalister, Kaimkillenbun, and Maclagan but we never found them. Admittedly in all cases, it was late in the day and maybe we weren't heart-broken not to find another weed-and-pest-infested cemetery so we didn't inquire too deeply. Maybe we will do a bit more research before going back (be organised).