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| The ruins of
the town of Farina north of Lyndhurst
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Lyndhurst (including Farina)
Historic railway town - now nearly a ghost
town
Located 606 km north of Adelaide, Lyndhurst is
an historic old railway town which is now
nothing more than a few buildings at the
crossroads of the Strzelecki and Oodnadatta
Tracks.
It is claimed that the Strzelecki Track was
pioneered by Harry Redford's famous exercise in
cattle duffing which started near
Muttaburra in western Queensland.
Redford was born in the Hawkesbury River
district of New South Wales in 1842. It is
likely that his father was the convict, Thomas
Redford, who had arrived in Australia in 1826.
By the time he was a teenager Redford was
working as a drover and by 1870 he was in
Central Western Queensland working on the vast
Bowen Downs station which, at the time, covered
1.75 million acres.
At the time Bowen Downs was running a herd of
about 70 000 cattle and Redford felt that the
station owners wouldn't even know if they were a
thousand short on muster. Redford knew that if
he stole the cattle (all of which had been
branded) that he couldn't sell them in
Queensland or New South Wales. So he devised a
plan to drove the cattle down the Cooper Creek
into South Australia. To understand how daring
this plan was it is worth remembering that Burke
and Wills had died attempting to make a similar
journey only nine years earlier.
Amazingly Redford was successful. He drove
the cattle 1300 km to the Blanche Water station
in northern South Australia where he sold them
for £5000. However the loss was noted and in
February 1871 Redford was arrested and taken to
Roma to be tried. The charge was 'that Redford,
in March 1870, at Bowen Downs station,
feloniously did steal 100 bullocks, 100 cows,
100 heifers, 100 steers, one white bull, the
property of Morehead and Young.'
From the outset the trial had the elements of
an entertainment rather than a serious
investigation. Locals, captivated by Redford's
consummate bushcraft and daring, packed the
courtroom. The white bull stood in a yard
outside the courthouse. Forty–one of the
forty–eight people called as possible jurors
were dismissed because they were prejudiced. The
white bull took part in a line up with twenty
other bulls and was immediately identified by
his owner.
The evidence against Redford was
overwhelming. The defence offered no witnesses
and complained that Redford had been gaoled
without trial.
The jury retired for an hour and then
delivered their verdict. The court transcript
reads as follows:
Judge: What is your verdict?
Foreman of the Jury: We find the prisoner
'Not Guilty'.
Judge: What?
Foreman of the Jury: Not guilty.
Judge: I thank God, gentlemen, that the
verdict is yours, not mine!
It was an example of admiration of bushcraft
overwhelming justice and on 5 April 1873 the
governor of Queensland ordered that the criminal
jurisdiction of the District Court at Roma be
withdrawn for two years.
As a result of Redford's 'pioneering' work
the Strzelecki Track was opened up and droving
down the Cooper Creek to the railhead in South
Australia became commonplace.
Things to see:
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| Talc Alf with
some of his talc carvings at Lyndhurst
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Talc Alf
There is very little in Lyndhurst apart from the
now famous, thanks to numerous magazine and TV
pieces, Talc Alf who, apart from producing some
quite interesting, if very stylised, carvings in
talc stone, has a highly eccentric explanation
for the origins of the alphabet. He has a sheet
which explains all his theories but you'll get
the idea by knowing that his explanation for the
letter 'B' is that it is the second letter in
the alphabet and it is the symbol for women. 'A'
is for man and 'B' is for woman - women come
second in his pecking order. No sexism here. And
that 'B' on its side is a visual depiction of a
women's breasts. One presumes that lower case
'b' indicates one breasted Amazons. The theory
is strong on entertainment value and sexism and
rather weak on logic and common sense. Oh, and
by the way, when you combine A (man) and B
(woman) with 'original' you get, wait for it,
Aboriginal - the first men and women.
One of Talc Alf's inspired creations is a new
Australian flag where the red, black and gold
Aboriginal flag simply replaces the Union Jack.
Talc Alf, his real name is Cornelius
Alferink, is located a couple of kilometres out
of Lyndhurst on the Innaminka Road. His shop is
very clearly signposted.
Ochre Cliffs
5 km north of the town there is a tyre beside
the road with the words 'Ochre Cliffs' crudely
written on it. A road heads off the main track
to the west for a couple of kilometres before
reaching a remarkable quarry which is a feast of
harsh desert colours - reds, and yellows and
browns. It was an important site for the local
Aborigines and it is believed that ochre
quarried here was traded with other groups of
Aborigines who lived hundreds of kilometres
away.
Farina
28 km north of Lyndhurst is the ghost town of
Farina which is now nothing more than a
fascinating collection of ruins with the
surrounding countryside littered with old drays,
wheels and rusting pieces of equipment. It is
strange, while wandering around the ruins, to
think that in 1891 the famous French novelist,
Jules Verne, wrote a novel titled Mistress
Branican in which he depicted a futuristic
Farina (the name is Latin for flour) with broad
boulevards and gracious squares. Not all of
Verne's science fiction predictions were to
become realities.
The town did actually grow to a decent size
and in before the copper and silver mine closed
in 1927 it had a population of around 600. It
was also the northern most point in South
Australia where wheat was grown. There is no
proper signpost at Farina. The only sign is a
mailbox beside the road with Farina written on
it.
