I smile as I pass the town sign for Ariah Park: ‘1920s Heritage Village’. I’ve wanted to come here for a long time. Like the Birdsville Track, Dad often mentioned Ariah Park. I think he would have enjoyed the country childhood his mother had had.
The town’s main thoroughfare, Coolamon Street, divided down the centre by a row of peppercorn trees, is quiet. There’s no one about. Wikicamps tells me that fees for the campground are paid at the Ariah Park Hotel or the hardware store. I stop near the IGA and two kelpies in the ute parked under the peppercorn trees by the White Rose Café turn their heads as I cross the road.
The streetscape doesn’t seem to have changed since the earliest decade of last century. The verandas of the small shops reveal the meaning of the name ‘Ariah’; it comes from a local Wiradjuri word, narriyar, meaning ‘hot and dry’. I can imagine the heat of summer shimmering on the road from the relative cool under the verandas. The historical society has filled the empty shopfronts with displays. Among the disused premises a hardware store and a vintage second-hand shop are operating. One or two seem to have been converted into homes.
The hardware store is closed so I go to the hotel which dominates the street with two-story long wrought iron verandas. I feel I’ve stepped into an Agatha Christie novel. The interior has been beautifully restored with cream vaulted ceilings, geometric floor tiles, dark wooden sideboards with a display of antique suitcases and black and white photographs, stained glass windows, green tiled walls so typical of public houses and a staircase with a thin carpet runner leading to hotel rooms upstairs.
The hotel owner is nowhere to be seen but there is an ancient farmer at the bar, twirling the dregs of his beer and staring at the TV screen high on the wall. He nods at me and I tell him I’m waiting to pay for the campground.
‘My Grandmother lived here with her family, I mean, years ago. Her father, Dr Gibbs, he was the doctor here’.
I don’t know why I do this, mention my connection with the town to this complete stranger who’s just here for a quiet afternoon drink. Why would he be interested? Am I staking some sort of claim here at Ariah Park?
‘My mother…she remembered being treated by him. Dr Gibbs….’
Time expands and contracts in a millisecond.
I’m so astonished there could be anyone alive today who would know someone who knew my ancestor that I don’t absorb what he says.
The hotel owner returns and I pay for a couple of nights at the community-run caravan park located in a corner of the sports ground and it reminds me of Saddleworth; cared for, welcoming, neat as a pin. The camp kitchen is well stocked with equipment and there is a free washing machine. Campers share the shower block with the ladies’ netball and tennis teams and is off limits during matches. There’s an elderly couple in a small campervan reading at a camp table and I pull up a few sites away from them.
I decide to search for the house first thing next morning.