Nothing left but hope
THERE’S more bad news in the world than good, so when a good yarn waltzes up and smacks you across the chops you just go “wow”.
Such is the case with 81year- old retired West Australian mechanic Barry Anderson whose car and caravan caught fire on the Burdekin Dam road about 50km south of Ravenswood a couple of weeks ago. This is a lonely, lonely stretch of road and right now on the stations here like Mt Ravenswood, Carse- o- Gowrie and Old Glenroy the hills roll on as bare and brown as the dunes of the Sahara.
He was there in the bush on the side of the road watching the smoke rise from the molten remains of his caravan and Mitsubishi van when Townsville bloke Jamie MacKenzie drove past. Jamie, a local mining contractor was in the area on a work trip. He stopped and took Barry back to Ravenswood’s Imperial Hotel where he was looked after like royalty.
Before lending Barry $ 100, Jamie told publican Di Schluter he would look after Barry’s room cost, his dinner and a few drinks. Jamie then arranged for Barry to get a lift back to Townsville the following day on one of the company trucks.
A mate of Barry’s lived at Deeragun so the truck driver took him there. There was no one at home so the driver took him to the Veales Rd police station. The police there took Barry under their collective wing. First they drove him to a bank where they helped him explain to the bank staff that all his cards had been destroyed in the fire and that he needed some money.
The bank sorted things out and Barry was set up with cash. The officers then drove him to a caravan park where he obtained accommodation. He lost everything in the fire. The fire started in the back of the van. By the time Barry noticed it and drove off the road, the caravan was in flames. He tried to unhitch it, but the heat was intense and the paint was starting to peel on the back of the Mitsubishi.
At one stage he opened the door of the caravan to see if he could retrieve anything only to be confronted by a two- metre brown snake. He could only reason that the snake had been living in the van with him. It stayed inside and “went down” with the van.
Photographer Fiona Harding and I came across Barry while driving to the Burdekin Dam last week. He was back at the scene trying to see what he could salvage from the burnt- out wreckage of both the Mitsubishi and the caravan. Scavengers had got there before him and had taken anything of the slightest value. He is a pensioner. Nothing was insured. He is now in what you might call a “pickle”. He doesn’t know what his next move is, but he needs to buy another vehicle.
“I’ll just have to see now if I can find another vehicle so that I can continue my travels around Australia,” the 81- yearold said philosophically.
The experience has left him stranded and temporarily reliant on a mate, but from it all he takes a huge amount of comfort in the fact that there are still so many good people in the world. Dust’s thirsty work GROG is to blame for so many of the world’s woes, but without it there would be no Julia Creek Dirt ‘ n’ Dust Triathlon.
Of course it is more than just a triathlon now. The event has morphed into a giant weekend including children’s events, a PBR Australia bull ride, the BHP Billiton Artesian Express horse races, Australia’s Best Butts and a host of other activities.
But everything revolves around the triathlon. It was this event alone last weekend which drew 335 athletes and their camp followers to Julia Creek, 653km west of Townsville.
It all started back in 1993 over a few beers, in fact a lot of beers in the now defunct Julia Creek Town and Country Club on a hot, dry November Sunday afternoon.
Townsville athlete and a man who has raced 19 of the 21 Dirt ‘ n’ Dust triathlons, Max Fegan, remembers it well.
“I was in there having a drink and the mayor Daren Ginns and a few others including Tony Batt and Margie Ryder came in. They started talking about something they could do that would put the town on the map. The beers were going down and no one could agree on anything. Daren Ginns turned to me and said ‘ what’s that stupid sport you do, Max’?” “Triathlon,” I told him. “What’s that and what do you do with it?” Daren asked.
“I told him what it was and that all triathlons in Australia were held in coastal cities. There were none in the bush. They were all talking about surf carnivals, and boat races like the Todd River one in Alice Springs, billy cart races, that sort of thing. Then they started talking about the fact triathlons were all run on the coast and that having one in the bush would be really different,” Max said.
More beers were ordered and the decision was made to go with this newfangled thing called a triathlon. And so there it was at a Sunday “sesh” in Julia Creek that a sporting legend was born. Max is claiming naming rights to the Dirt ‘ n’ Dust, but adds that Margie Ryder has also staked a claim to having come up with the name as well.
“When we were talking about it I said it will be ‘ dirty and dusty’. Margie and I still argue about who came up with it,” he said.
The first event in 1994 had 15 competitors. Max missed one Dirt ‘ n’ Dust when away competing in France. He missed another in 1998 when he fell from a windmill on his family’s property and broke every bone in his body. After the fall he was lucky he was still alive, let alone recover and to become a force to be reckoned with at triathlons around the world.