Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

A peep at Narrogin

When we dashed down to Narrogin Regional Hospital last Saturday to see number four son recovering from his emergency appendix operation we arrived about lunch time. After spending a half hour watching him in post operative semi-consciousness we briefly departed to find something to eat in the town.

Normally we would have had some take-away chicken or fish and chips. There are places in Narrogin where travellers can buy these delicacies, however we were still on a vegetarian diet because of the Bowelscan requirements. For us, lunch ended up being a carton of choc milk and a packet of potato crisps. Is that part of a healthy diet or is it not? Nevertheless it tricked our stomachs in to believing they had been well fed.

I'd seen the Narrogin Cemetery as we entered town and so we had nipped back there to consume our gourmet meal. I think cemeteries are quite interesting. Reassuring even. They are certainly the most peaceful part of any town and this one was no exception. I took a photo of it from the southwest corner. The camera was level. You can see that there is a gentle slope to the northwest.

There are a lot of war veterans buried in this cemetery. We knew this from a plan of their graves erected near the main entrance. There are probably more now than are listed. Some oldies will insist on living to an older age than everyone else. I took a photo of the sign for Panoramio. When it's clicked to enlarge then the names, religion and location of these old soldiers can be read. The town proper is to the east of the cemetery.

The Narrogin area was first explored by Hillman in 1835. He passed through near where the cemetery is located. Pastoralists had begun moving into the region by the 1870s, but the big surge began when the Great Southern Railway opened for business in 1899. There was a fresh water pool at the bottom of a hill for the steam trains to have a drink; and thus began the town of Narrogin. The townsite was surveyed the same year. The main drag was Federal Street, running parallel with the railway line. The name provides a clue to its age. Australian Federation was in 1901. They were proud times.

I took a photo of Federal Street last Saturday. It's shady and quiet - maybe quieter than at the beginning of the twentieth century - and look, still no parking meters. Back from this area extends a network of countrified urbanity. The population of the town was 2,238 in the 2006 census. This is enough to support a busy Coles supermarket in one of the back streets.

We would have liked to spend more time wandering around Narrogin taking photos, but there wasn't time on this trip. We did take some photos of other places on the way home. I'll produce them over the next few days.

And what about our son? We went back to the hospital on the Saturday afternoon and spent some more time with him before coming home. He was discharged from hospital late yesterday. They have guaranteed he won't get appendicitis again.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!