Las Vegas of the Bidgee

Welcome to the outback

By David Silcock

Balranald, like so many little towns in Australia, is really out there.

If you ever visit Balranald and stop in for a meal at the restaurant at the Ex-Serviceman's Club you will see a big banner on the wall proclaiming the club to be the Las Vegas of the Bidgee (Balranald being located on the banks of the Murrumbidgee - to state the flaming obvious). When I first saw this sign I laughed almost hysterically, prompted by thought of how ridiculous this sign was combined with the dawning realisation that that I had in fact moved to the desert. No-one has ever accused me of being overly quick on the up take!

Balranald, like so many little towns in Australia, is really out there. Out there in that space that is the Australian interior. Described by one white Victorian explorer as the place where no white man would ever really be able to live - an early attack of conscience about the notion of terra nullius perhaps? There is no doubt that the effect of distance plays a vital role in defining the life and culture of these small towns. It also plays a key role in stopping people who have never lived in these type of communities from being able to understand the nature of life here.

I need to get back to the banner on the wall of the club and away from the deep and meaningful observations of the social fabric of Australia.

The banner. It's actually not a bad metaphor for a town like Balranald. Like Las Vegas, Balranald is a community built on land which quite rightly should be desert, or at least very desert like. This community isn't made up of lavish gambling joints, motels and strip joints but it is a community struggling with living on the margins and gambling that it will provide the riches of life.

Farmers out here are 'reconstructing' the land. Water has transformed what can be and is grown out here. This same water has given rise to huge environmental and social challenges. Crops are being grown that were never meant to be grown in this kind of environment and this is an amazing demonstration of man's ingenuity. Salinity, water quality issues and the needs of these isolated communities are some of the huge challenges that have arisen.

Balranald is a bloody (I just had to get this word into an Aussie bush piece) long way from anywhere and has about 1400 people living here. 1400 people who are, in a sense, trapped and are forced to interact. They are forced to accept each other's differences or at least accommodate their own dislikes. Things escalate very quickly and activities involving the community working together are plainly obvious and generate obvious goodwill. Tensions and ill feeling can also rise very quickly with quite disturbing emotional consequences. Privacy means something different in these small communities.

It's time now to call a temporary halt to these meanderings. I hope to be contributing some thoughts and experiences about life in small rural communities on a regular basis in the future and so if you have any little anecdotes you think would be worth retelling please contact me at either Balranald Central School or e-mail me at davidsilcock@start.com.au.

Catch ya later.

David Silcock teaches at Balranald Central School.

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August 2000 contents