Following on from my 38 day tour of Outback Queensland last year, I decided to revisit the small town of Cunnamulla, population 1500.
During our “I didn’t come here and I ain’t leaving” musical tour with my band Willie Nelson’s Love Child, we played at the very lovely Club Boutique Hotel in Cunnamulla to a packed house of dinner guests who’d coughed up to see us perform and to dine out on the delicious food prepared by owner and chef, Peieta Mills. 
So much of an impression did we make that Peieta invited us to return and participate in the inaugural Cullyfest 2016 during the Easter school holidays.
The festival has a bit more work to go in order to get the numbers needed to etch it into Festival history as a “must-do” event, but the spirit of the participants and attendees more than compensated for the small attendance at the first event. But, during our four day stay in the town, we again met some great characters. One of the most memorable was 82 year old Les, the local story-teller and former drover.
From the age of 11, Cunnamulla resident,
Les Capewell, left home because his mother had a penchant for whipping the rascally young fellow whenever he committed a misdemeanour. Not taking too kindly to this form of maternal punishment, young Les “left the house but not the home” and shacked up with his grandfather who taught him everything he needed to know about the business of droving. By the age of 13, Les was offered his own droving run and when his grandfather agreed to cook for the boys, Les accepted his first job offer and started out on a lifetime of droving.
Those days were tough. Long hours on horseback trailing after cattle or sheep – many thousands of miles covered to get the livestock from one location to the other, choosing the most grazable tracts of land along the way, navigating by the stars or well-worn paths under the guidance of his grandfather, and sleeping out under the big outback sky night after night with little more by way of comfort than a fire and some tucker. More often than not, the food had to be caught and butchered along the way, but the rations were small and sometimes not easy to come by.
By the age of 23, Les had set his sights on a local girl who, after much teasing as to his unsuitability as a sweetheart, finally succumbed to Les’ jovial and unrelenting attention-getting antics. They married and went on to have seven children all of whom spent their pre-school years on the road with their parents. Once of school age, they were placed in boarding schools in the town while their parents went droving together; or their mother stayed behind with them while Les went out on the road with his droving team.
During his many yea
rs on the vast plains of Outback Queensland, Les learned many a survival skill from the local aborigines for whom these often inhospitable landscapes had been home for over 50 000 years. The Outback in drought can be a harsh and daunting place, but when the rains come the dry plains are transformed into magnificent vistas of rushing water channels, flooding plains, verdant pastures of grazing land and stunning red sand dunes as a backdrop.
Cunnamulla is a town which thrived during the wool years of early Australian settlement from 1858. This industry is all but gone now and little remains of the bustling prosperity which was the hallmark of the town. The railway is no longer operative and with its demise so too did the town see a dramatic decline in population and prosperity. Table grapes are grown on two market farms in Cunnamulla. Prior to European settlement, a number of traditional Aboriginal groups lived and travelled within the area of land (47,647 square kilometres) now known as the Paroo Shire.
As in many arid landscapes, roses do surprisingly well and they were in abundance in every garden and adorning the hotel.
Many of the town’s residents are descendants of those traditional groups and are working to preserve the history and culture of their people.
Like most outback towns in Australia, tourism is now the only saviour for these historic hamlets which dot the daunting distances of the vast state of Queensland. Festivals like Cullyfest are seen as a lifeline to the survival of towns and a reason for its folk to remain in the place they’ve known all their lives. The alternatives are grim.
For a country-bred person to have to leave for the city is fraught with danger. The peace and solitude which marks country, and particularly outback, life is nowhere to be found in the bustling east-coast cities of Queensland, particularly its capital, Brisbane, whose skyline is peppered with cranes as it embarks on a period of unprecedented building activity focussed on high-rise apartments. The city is more soul-less than ever and, whilst there are many attractions and activities to entertain its citizens, the serenity of country life is something which cannot be reproduced in a place where it’s impossible to see the sky without a building poking into the horizon. For outback dwellers, the sea is a far and foreign concept too.
Old Les Capewell is a remnant of times past, where whole lives could be spent doing one simple, hard but rewarding job. Where things done with one’s hands meant survival and prosperity. When days were long and slow, and rest was just that.
Les performs at Cullyfest and visits the Club Boutique Hotel in downtown Cunnamulla as an “entertainer” these days; popping by to tell hotel guests a yarn or two about his childhood, show off a few whip-cracking tricks and sell a few bits of old bric-a-brac he’s collected. His wife and best friend of over 50 years passed on a few years back but despite this, Les keeps a jovial, cheerful and interested attitude to life. It’s not the same without his wife and sometimes he feels lonely but the town is his “cocoon” and folk know and love him. His last days on this earth will be surrounded by a few old mates and his familiar outback sky above his worn Akubra hat. 
I told Les that I’d come back to get some whip-cracking lessons from him, and I’ve yet to slot that into my busy schedule. Sure, I could learn to crack a whip from someone closer than a 12 hour bus drive away……but it wouldn’t be Les, it wouldn’t be from a master who crafted his whips with his own hands, who has a cheeky laugh and story to tell about everything.
The characters of the Outback are what make the long journey more than worthwhile for they are found only in those remote and distant places and it is we who must make the journey to find them, treasure them and keep their stories in our hearts long after they have left us.
Cunnamulla is a small town that lies on the Warrego River in South West Queensland, Australia, 206 kilometres south of Charleville, and approximately 750 kilometres west of the state capital, Brisbane. Club Boutique Hotel hosted the writer.