9.3.11 – Waltzing Matilda and other unusual memorabilia

9.3.11 – Waltzing Matilda and other unusual memorabilia  (Yass and Holbrook, Australia)

Shop in Yass

At 3am, under a sky glistening with stars and crowned by the majestic Southern Cross, we walked hand in hand through the soft warm air to the campsite toilet block – of such stuff is epic romantic literature born.

Banjo Patterson is the one on the left

Yass is a pretty country town, with the now familiar decorative balconies providing shade to the shoppers below.  There is a little park, dedicated to local boy Banjo Patterson, whose claim to fame is that he is the author of Waltzing Matilda. 

View from Mount Parnassus

The road from Yass to Albury, our stop for the night, was along the long, usually straight, cream coloured Hume Highway, past khaki toned mountains speckled with stubby trees, an occasional wide brown river, with golden sandy banks, and numerous massive roadworks, whose huge heavy wheeled lorries were followed by clouds of thick yellow dust.  We stopped at Gundagai Look Out point - called appropriately loftily, Mount Parnassus - for lunch, with wide views over the town in the valley below and the mountains beyond.

6" high lady!

We had intended then to go straight for Albury non-stop, and as the town of Holbrook got nearer, and numerous advertising hoardings sprang up like weeds, we were determined not to succumb to such blandishments, and to ‘keep right on to the end of the road’.  But Holbrook had a surprise in store.  It is important to understand that this town is over 200 miles from the sea, surrounded by dust dry fields and hills, and has no river.  And yet there, in the middle of the town park, right beside the main road, was a full sized, 90 metre long, black, forbidding – you will never guess this so don’t even try – SUBMARINE!  When we had reinstated our jaws to their proper place, I climbed on to the top to walk to the conning tower.  Then we found a little museum.  It had an audio visual display such as I have never seen before.  In the room, there was a glass case containing a model submarine, a set of medals, a white Navy hat, a photograph and various other memorabilia, and looking frankly rather uninteresting.  I sat down, and suddenly, a tiny little lady, about 6” high, walked out from behind the photo.  She proceeded to give a talk about Captain Holbrook, walking about, sitting on a tiny chair, standing behind the medals, sitting on other display items, reading papers.  Some inch-high sailors appeared on the model sub, and bombs burst around it.  It was a hologram, and the most incredible I have ever seen, and all in a tiny, local, volunteer funded and supported museum.

The story that the tiny lady told is that Holbrook is named after an English 1914-18 war submarine captain who carried out an amazingly brave sortie in the Dardanelles.  A committee of volunteers then determined to bring a real submarine to the town in memory of him, and when one was being scrapped, they managed to get hold of the above-water section, had it cut into bits, brought over and reassembled in concrete.  And now Holbrook is known at the Submarine Town of Australia.  Stranger than fiction.

HMAS Otway