I have lived with my family on and off in the wheatbelt for many years. I am quite reclusive, but when I emerge I look and listen closely. I am part of the district, especially around York, where I have lifelong family connections and lived for many years; Northam, the main center of the same region; and the hills north of Toodyay, which we now call “home.” Each of these locales has had disasters and incidents that have brought communities close together and also divided them. Then there are those figures who always remain outside any community. They also interest me. As does how “isolated” farming places (I have always been interested in the particulars of farming, whether I agree with aspects of them or not) connect or distance themselves from the world at large. The prejudices, bigotries, and scepticisms need to be read and “glimpsed,” as much as the affirmations.
I went to high school in the midwest seaside town of Geraldton (now a small city of thirty-two thousand), about 420 kilometers north of the state capital, Perth. Geraldton is a fishing, farming, and mining town. The huge wheat farms that edge the coast are carved out of “sandplain” and are worked using vast amounts of superphosphate and chemical sprays. As a kid, I spent time with my father on a thirty-thousand-acre farm near Mullewa, east of Geraldton. There were tractors with wheels twice my height (machinery at once disturbs and fascinates me). I was traumatized by the clear evidence that the Yamatji people of the region were cut off from their traditional lands, and by the suffering this brought. I had long been familiar with gun culture and saw on a large scale what hunting was all about. By the time I was in my very early twenties, I had become a dedicated vegan. I had the experience to make a clear-cut choice. I did plenty of damage to birds, fish, and animals as a child and a teenager.
When I was twenty, I went away to Mingenew in the northern wheatbelt to work on the wheatbins. Enormous receiving silos. I was a protein sampler. I used the money earned to travel through Europe. I went back the next season and came into conflict with an ex–South African mercenary who was driving a grain truck and held extreme racist views. I resisted and was punished. I witnessed bigoted and aggressive behaviors during that stint that I hope never to witness again. This is always in the back of my mind. But so is positive experience, such as ploughing under the stars on Wheatlands farm, or looking after the farm over summer months—a twenty-one-year-old with responsibility for a large farm is something else. Or again, planting avocado trees with my uncle as he tried to diversify out of monocultural farming, or helping plant trees (they planted tens of thousands) in saline areas to try to reclaim damaged land.
All of these aspects are part of the wheatbelt for me. Giant “food bowl” that it is, its “feeding the world,” as they like to say, has come at a great cost to indigenous people and to the land itself. It has also come at a cost, ironically, to those who colonized, cleared, farmed, and lived there. The suicide rate, especially among males, is phenomenally high, and the sad spectacle of a land dying through salinity and drought goes hand-in-hand with more damage and more misunderstanding of denying the consequences.
In the end, it’s a place of people: their successes and failures, of materiality and spirit. Though the wheatbelt is bound together by the central activity of grain farming, it ranges in geography from coastal plains to semi-arid marginal land, on the edge of the outback, producing very low yields, through to much richer lands (though the soils are still impoverished, there are higher rainfalls) in places such as the Avon Valley, with its ancient river course formed by the Wagyl spirit outside time, and holding the ancient eroded Dyott Range.
To tell more of the place, maybe it’s best just to describe a few towns from the wheatbelt. Following are some of the towns with which I am very familiar, and which in many ways form reference points in my own journey. These are not historical renderings, but impressions formed from living in the regions. In some ways, maybe they are stories in themselves.
York
Earliest inland settlement in Western Australia, founded in 1829. The governor had a residence there, and the police searched for escaped convicts and suppressed the indigenous inhabitants from its police station. The old court building is a tourist site now. Homeland of the Ballardong Nyungar people. I have been in and out of York since I was born—my uncle’s farm, “Wheatlands,” was twenty kilometers northeast. For many years we lived about five kilometers north of town. My mother still lives there. Some call it the “gateway to the wheatbelt.”
As rainfalls have dropped and drought has gripped, an “historic” town such as York has begun to rely increasingly on weekend visits from the city of Perth, a hundred kilometers southwest. York’s early stone buildings, its “colonial history,” and the area’s deeply spiritual significance to the Nyungar people make it a standout in the state.
The town, located on the Avon River, is remarkably beautiful, though the surrounding land has been much damaged by attempts to “train” the river to prevent flooding—that is, dredging it so waterholes, which would once have survived the brutal summers, no longer existed—and devastating salinity caused by overclearing of surrounding lands, as well as clearing of riparian vegetation. In fact, it’s one of the few spots where water stays in the river all year round, even in drought.
Cradled between the small mountain of Walwalinj, or Mount Bakewell as named by explorer Ensign Dale, and Wongborel, known to the settlers as Mount Brown, York is at the crossroads of the Avon Valley. A fiercely independent-minded town, it is home to the deeply religious as well as to the heretical and nonbelieving. Christianity in many denominations is prevalent, and if it isn’t “Bible-fearing,” as some of the more inland wheatbelt towns are, the manners of belief there are always in the background. Anglican gentility informs much of the cultural endeavor of the town, whether it’s an arts festival or baroque music in Holy Trinity, across the swing bridge over the Avon River. But there’s a Catholic church that looks like a small cathedral, and there are halls and meetinghouses of other churches.
Developers eye York with glee; the friction is intense between those who would make a buck and leave and those who see York as a chosen lifestyle place. Bounded on one side by wandoo bushland and by York gum/jam tree woodlands on another, the place suffers more clearing and damage each year. It is conservative, but with a sprinkling of radicals who are generally tolerated because York prides itself on being a cultural place. That’s European-derived culture. But it’s also a center of Nyungar culture, where the strength lies. There is racism and division in the town, but possibly less so than elsewhere.
One of the current greats of Australian Rules football comes from York, and white and black are intensely proud of him. But the town is still subtly controlled by the power of land ownership. The big voices are the big farmers. I wrote a number of these stories in the historic York Post Office building, designed by Temple-Poole in the second half of the nineteenth century, where I had an office within the two-foot-thick stone walls. On the single main street running south to north, I looked out over the day-to-day activities of the town. An incident outside the bottle shop, dogs barking on the back of utes, as Australians call pickups.
Northam
Main town of the central wheatbelt and Avon Valley. A regional center of some seven thousand people, providing the only senior high school for vast distances. It services the broader farming community of the region. The railway here has been important over the years, and one of the largest inland grain-receival points sits on the outskirts of town. The wide paddocks that spread throughout the region carry crops of wheat, barley, oats, canola, and other seeds/grains. Wheat is the mainstay. It is railed and trucked from the bins to the ports (primarily Fremantle/Kwinana) for export. An historic and still functioning flour mill sits on the river at the southeastern end of town. Shearing is also a major industry, with shearing teams buying their gear, drinking, and often living there when not out working the sheds.
Northam has a regional hospital, the main regional courts, and a large police station. It is a violent town, with a high crime rate and often literally blood on the streets, especially outside the hotels. It used to have a small cinema complex, but that closed down because of late-night violence. It has an active and high-quality amateur dramatic company that uses a theater based in an old church building—farce and comedy are their mainstay, which draws locals. The high school puts on an annual play there—our daughter