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Karen Bable

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I thought Hell was somewhere between Hay and Booligal.

 

kaz

 

Hay and Hell and Booligal

 

by Paterson

 

‘You come and see me, boys,’ he said;

 

‘You'll find a welcome and a bed

 

‘And whisky any time you call;

 

‘Although our township hasn't got

 

‘The name of quite a lively spot —

 

‘You see, I live in Booligal.

 

‘And people have an awful down

 

‘Upon the district and the town —

 

‘Which worse than hell itself they call;

 

‘In fact, the saying far and wide

 

‘Along the Riverina side

 

‘Is “Hay and Hell and Booligal”.

 

‘No doubt it suits 'em very well

 

‘To say it's worse than Hay or Hell,

 

‘But don't you heed their talk at all;

 

‘Of course, there's heat — no one denies —

 

‘And sand and dust and stacks of flies,

 

‘And rabbits, too, at Booligal.

 

‘But such a pleasant, quiet place,

 

‘You never see a stranger's face —

 

‘They hardly ever care to call;

 

‘The drovers mostly pass it by;

 

‘They reckon that they'd rather die

 

‘Than spend a night in Booligal.

 

‘The big mosquitoes frighten some —

 

‘You'll lie awake to hear 'em hum —

 

‘And snakes about the township crawl;

 

‘But shearers, when they get their cheque,

 

‘They never come along and wreck

 

‘The blessed town of Booligal.

 

‘But down in Hay the shearers come

 

‘And fill themselves with fighting-rum,

 

‘And chase blue devils up the wall,

 

‘And fight the snaggers every day,

 

‘Until there is the deuce to pay —

 

‘There's none of that in Booligal.

 

‘Of course, there isn't much to see —

 

‘The billiard-table used to be

 

‘The great attraction for us all,

 

‘Until some careless, drunken curs

 

‘Got sleeping on it in their spurs,

 

‘And ruined it, in Booligal.

 

‘Just now there is a howling drought

 

‘That pretty near has starved us out —

 

‘It never seems to rain at all;

 

‘But, if there should come any rain,

 

‘You couldn't cross the black-soil plain —

 

‘You'd have to stop in Booligal.’

 

*****

 

We'd have to stop!’ With bated breath

 

We prayed that both in life and death

 

Our fate in other lines might fall:

 

‘Oh, send us to our just reward

 

‘In Hay or Hell, but, gracious Lord,

 

‘Deliver us from Booligal!’

 

 

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IMO, Nhill is a suitably fitting name for that town. There's certainly nothing worth stopping for, there!

 

Karen - your home page, panoramic photos, are quite impressive - thanks for the link.

 

I would cheerfully suggest the ExplorOz 4WD site, as an excellent source of interesting and remote places to visit.

 

The site is 4WD-oriented, but even many of the remote sites that the hard-core 4W-Drivers think they have to themselves, often have an airstrip not too far away.

 

The ExplorOz database is very comprehensive and lists most airstrips, as well as the roads and places of interest.

 

You can get all the information by Googling, "Places@Exploroz".

 

 

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It looks like I have to backpedal on Nhill not being worthy of a visit! I wasn't aware that they actually have the remnants of a WW2 airbase there!

 

They have a Wirraway on display, an Avro Anson under restoration - and they've been holding fly-ins and airshows there!

 

They held fly-ins in 2009 and 2012, and upgraded to an airshow in Oct 2015. The next airshow is planned for 2019, but the details seem to be a little sketchy, still!

 

At least they've given us all, 2 years to plan ahead! 003_cheezy_grin.gif.c5a94fc2937f61b556d8146a1bc97ef8.gif

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Hay and Hell and Booligal

 

Hell, between Hay and Booligal, is really called One Tree. There's not much to see at One Tree. No runway, but over 5 km of the Cobb Hwy, it does not vary more than 150 metres from a dead straight line. It looks exactly the same in the opposite direction from this spot. The only difference would be the cloud. And as you can see, traffic's pretty light.

 

758526451_cobbhwy.JPG.4856ec6d79ee47e6f1c41f0029dc8a56.JPG

 

The One Tree pub.

 

483960050_onetreepub.JPG.110f0eeba70b800f4d384b61ca500f4f.JPG

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

when I was a young lad I had an encounter of the very scary type out on the Hay Plains...I was driving back to Woodside Army Base (SA) along a very long straight stretch of road towards Hay, I was about 10 miles out

 

I saw a light over to the right, moving along the treetops towards the road - what got me was that it was green/blue coloured, and kept stopping/starting again

 

now I knew that an aircraft travelling in that direction would be displaying a RED wingtip light - and it wouldn't be stopping and starting

 

it kept going until it stopped abruptly about 5 miles out of Hay, right in front of me, hovering over the road - it then started pulsing lots of different colours, getting faster and brighter

 

then it just went ZOOM - straight up, and disappeared. by the time I pulled over to look up it was gone

 

when I passed over the spot on the road I thought it was hovering at (no aircon on my old Cortina, so windows down) I was amazed at the very strong smell...

 

nothing like I have ever smelt before (or since) - it was like a combination of metallic and burnt electrical smell, and it was just awful, it lingered for ages in the car

 

so there I was, at the bar that night, and I told the story to the barman - he went white, and in a shaky voice said:

 

"last night a truckie driving a semi along that same road had a very nasty thing happen to him"

 

"he said he saw a similar light, but it flew straight towards him and screamed over the top of his truck, missing him by inches - he reckon the truck bucked like a bronco"

 

"when he got to town he checked the top of the semi (because of the weird magnetic/burning electrical smell) coming from the top of his truck"

 

"and he found a scorch mark a foot wide all the way down the canvas tarp - it even blistered the paint on the roof of the cab of the truck"

 

we are definitely not alone, folks.....

 

 

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About 1970 I was driving late at night and saw a beam of light going up and illuminating the clouds. It was flashing on and off like morse code. I thought about all the things it could be and decided it was aliens communicating with the mother ship.

 

Then I got to the source - a bloke with a stick welder inside a scraper bowl, hard facing the cutting edge.

 

 

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M8, plenty of people on the planet have seen stuff nobody can explain - please feel free to explain to me how two different people at the same place at a different time might 'imagine' how the same thing happened to them

 

don't forget to explain the absolute proof of the similarity between the two separate events...

 

I've been on the planet for close to 70 years and I have never experienced anything like I did on that night, and I hope I never do again

 

feel free to take the piss but when it happens to you, try not to crap your pants

 

BP

 

 

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.

 

It was shortly after the Min Min Hotel was destroyed by fire around 1912, when a stockman had one of the first experiences with the Min Min Light: “About 10:00pm, I was riding to Boulia and passed close to the Min Min graveyard. The night was somewhat cloudy. All of a sudden I saw a strange glow right in the middle of the cemetery. It got bigger until it was the size of a large watermelon. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched it hovering over the graveyard. I broke into a cold sweat as it started coming toward me. It was too much for my nerves. I dug the spurs into my horse and headed for Boulia as fast as I could go. Every time I looked back the light seemed to be following me. It only disappeared out of Boulia.” Then in rapid succession came two more reports to substantiate the stockman’s story. A woman and her husband reported seeing a mysterious light which intensified in brightness and moved away from them. They were strangers to the area and had never heard of the Min Min Light. Their feeling was one of curiosity rather than fear. Another stationhand had seen the light rise out of the old hotel graveyard, bounce through the air for a considerable distance and then suddenly disappear. Many more sightings of the Min Min Light have followed since these initial few, starting the legend of the mysterious lights that has never been solved.

 

 

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Many more sightings of the Min Min Light have followed since these initial few, starting the legend of the mysterious lights that has never been solved.

 

I saw the Min Min lights in the semi-arid country of the Upper Gascoyne and it made me a bit nervy all Lone in a 4WD a long way from anyone.

 

But I packed death one night when this big red sucker-shaped light began to follow me down the road another night. Took about 10 minutes and 10 years off my life to realise it was Mars rising!

 

Kaz

 

 

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not far from where I lived as a boy my mother had a friend who lived on Rode Road, Wavell Heights

 

their house was a typical old Queenslander but it had a funny design in that the dunny was at the end of a long hallway with a set of stairs going down to the yard at the end

 

the lady concerned had just started rushing up the stairs to get in out of the rain (and lightning) - the door had been opened for her - luckily nobody was in the hallway

 

she had just started up the stairs when there was a huge bang and what looked like "a ball of lightning" came out the doorway and knocked her over as it went over her head and screamed up into the sky

 

it had come in through the dunny window, smashing the glass and setting the curtains on fire - there were minor scorch marks on the hallway walls

 

imagine what would have happened if she had been a bit quicker and was at the top of the stairs or in the hallway......

 

mum said she needed TWO Bex to settle her down...

 

 

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