THE DUKE OF Edinbrough Hotel
GO TO HELL! YEAH I guess like me you’ve been told that on a few occasions. Well let me invite you one more time!
Banjo Paterson didn’t really believe in slagging off the bush. He left it to Henry Lawson to concentrate of the privations, the cruelty, the inhumanity and the harshness whilst he himself mostly romanticised it, almost never trashing any person or any place.
But for Booligal he was prepared to make an exception. He gave it both barrels:
“…the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is ‘Hay and Hell and Booligal’
“Oh, send us to our just reward
In Hay or Hell, but, gracious Lord,
Deliver us from Booligal!””
When Super Ten delivers me south on the Cobb Hwy to Booligal in the early arvo the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel looks anything but hellish after camping last night in minus-6 up at the Willandra Woolshed.
The bar’s quiet except for a woman behind the bar in one of those strong single-colour work shirts everyone has out here, (hers
