AUSTRALIA’S DEADLIEST FLOOD
I’m standing nine miles from Gundagai, a town famous for the ‘Dog on the Tuckerbox.’ There’s a statue here of … well, a dog on a tuckerbox. This old Australian word ‘tuckerbox’ means a lunchbox, only bigger.
During the Back to Gundagai celebrations in 1932, this famous statue was unveiled by the then-Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons. It’s a tribute to the pioneers and bullockies who opened up the Riverina district in southern NSW. More than 3000 people attended the ceremony in 1932.
The dog on the tuckerbox is part of Australian folklore and comes from a poem that dates to the 1880’s. It was later reworked by Jack Moses, whose poem is the inspiration for the statue which has captured the imagination of the nation.
Now, a ‘bullocky’ is an Australian term for the driver of a bullock team that transported timber, wool and supplies through the country. They faced rough tracks, river crossings, floods and extreme weather. Jack’s poem captured their difficult lives.
The last lines of the poem refer to the bullocky’s dog going on strike and refusing to work,
“And the dog sat on the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai.”
Apparently, a teamster named Bill the Bullocky was on the road to Gundagai in the 1850’s. While leading his bullock team and wagon across a creek 9 miles from Gundagai, Bill’s wagon got hopelessly bogged in the creek.
While he was trying to drag the wagon out of the bog, one of his bullocks then broke the wagon’s yoke. Well, that was enough for Bill. He gave up and went to have his lunch. But here, to top off his bad luck, he found his dog sitting – or worse – on his tucker box.
The other bullockies, or wagon masters, thought the incident was a great joke, and supposedly, one of them wrote a poem about it that became the legend of the dog on the tuckerbox.
It’s basically a humorous take on all of the troubles that the early pioneers endured. And it’s a typically Australian thing to make light of difficult situations, because the dog going on strike and then sitting on the tucker box wasn’t the worst thing to happen in Gundagai.
You see, there’s another story to be told here, and it really is about the worst thing to have ever happened in Gundagai, but it’s also a story of great heroism.
The reality is that in its early years, Gundagai was the scene of one of the worst natural disasters in Australia’s history, and the heroes were two local Wiradjuri men. Let’s investigate this forgotten story from the annals of Australian history. And it’s a story that carries a special message for us today.
GUNDAGAI
Gundagai is a classic Australian country town situated in rural NSW, just four hour’s drive south west of Sydney, and five hours north of Melbourne. Locals consider it to be the most picturesque rural area of the Riverina, an agricultural area in southern NSW.
Gundagai sits beside the second longest river in Australia. The Murrumbidgee River flows through the Australian state of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory to where it joins the mighty Murray River.
The great Murrumbidgee floodplain at Gundagai is crossed by the historic Prince Alfred Bridge and the Railway Viaduct. They are timber truss bridges that were built by the early settlers. They are over 800m in length and are a spectacular latticework of wooden trusses, and are wonderful examples of early engineering solutions to crossing a major flood plain.
The Prince Alfred bridge was completed in 1867. It was named in honour of Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son. He was the first member of the British Royal Family to visit Australia, touring in 1867 and 1868 when he was 23 years old. His visit was very popular and well publicised. Unfortunately, he was shot in an unsuccessful assassination attempt in the Sydney suburb of Clontarf in March, 1868.
The railway viaduct was built in 1903, and connected Gundagai to the main Sydney to Melbourne rail line at Cootamundra. It is the longest timber truss bridge ever built in Australia, and today it is heritage listed.
CAPTAIN MOONLITE
Now, one of the first stone buildings in the town was the Gundagai Court House. Gold mining and agriculture in the district had made Gundagai a prosperous little town and it soon became a centre for bushranging, an Australian term for robbers who stole and then sought refuge in the bush. Here in this courthouse, was the site of the trial of a famous bushranger, Captain Moonlite..
Captain Moonlite’s real name was Andrew Scott. He was born in Ireland in 1845. When he was 16 he moved to New Zealand, and then to Australia. He became the leader of a gang of bushrangers. They robbed the Wantabadgery Homestead farm near Wagga Wagga in 1879, and took 35 people hostage.
Before the final shootout with the troopers took place, all the hostages were released unharmed. But, in the confrontation, a local policeman was shot dead. Moonlite’s accomplices and friends, James Nesbitt and Augustus Wernicke were also killed in the siege.
The surviving bushrangers, including Moonlite, were captured and tried at the Gundagai courthouse, and then retried in Sydney for killing the policemen. Moonlight, and his second in command were sentenced to death and hanged. They were buried in Sydney’s Rockwood cemetery in unmarked graves.
But as he faced the hangman’s noose on the 20 January, 1880 he made one last request. He asked to be buried beside his friend and fellow bushranger, James Nesbitt, who had been killed earlier in the farmhouse siege.
It took 115 years to grant his last wish, but on the 13th January 1995, Captain Moonlite’s remains were exhumed from Rockwood cemetery in Sydney and finally laid to rest at Gundagai next to the outlaw’s friend, James Nesbitt.
AUSSIE ICONS
Well, with all this and more going on at the time, Gundagai developed a romantic bush appeal that resulted in it becoming iconic in Australian folklore. Many outback stories, songs and poems refer to Gundagai. Even the famous Banjo Paterson, Australia’s much-loved bush poet, wrote of the drovers, bullock teams and bush travellers around Gundagai.
Today in the heart of Gundagai there’s a monument that’s a tribute to one of Australia’s most popular radio programs of all time – ‘Dad and Dave’. Australian author, Steele Rudd’s famous ‘Snake Gully’ characters – Dad, Dave, Mum and Mabel – have been immortalised in copper.
The radio show, ‘Dad and Dave’ was first aired in 1937 and ran for 16 years. The series is based on the stories in Steele’s book, ‘On Our Selection’ – an old term for a farm. These 11-minute comic soap operas of the adventures of the folk from Snake Gully became legendary, and can still be heard on radio today.
The radio program’s connection with Gundagai comes through its theme song, ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’ written by Jack O’Hagan in 1922. It really captures the spirit of this town. Its catchy tune reflects the attraction of the Australian bush for many people. It goes like this:
There’s a track winding back to an old-fashioned shack
Along the road to Gundagai
Where the blue gums are growin’ and the Murrumbidgee’s flowin’
Beneath the sunny sky.
There my mother and daddy are waitin’ for me
And the pals of my childhood once more I shall see
Then no more will I roam when I’m headin’ straight for home
Along the road to Gundagai.
But there is another famous poem, ‘My Country’ written by Dorothea Mackellar when she was just 19, that captures not only the harsh beauty and the splendour of the Australian bush, but also its unpredictable dangers.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
WIRADJURI WARNINGS
Now, the original inhabitants of this land, the Wiradjuri people, who are the largest Aboriginal group in NSW, once occupied a vast area on the plains west of the Blue Mountains. They were people of the land. This was their country. They had lived here for centuries and knew the cycle of the droughts and flooding rains that Dorothea Mackellar wrote about.
And when the first European settlers arrived in the district in the 1820’s, the local Wiradjuri people repeatedly warned them of the great floods that swept the Murrumbidgee. They strongly advised them not to settle on the low-lying ground around the river.
But the settlers ignored their advice. They built the small settlement on the rich river flats of the Murrumbidgee River. And so it was that the township of Gundagai was officially gazetted in 1840, and by 1843 the first Gundagai Post Office was opened. The town grew and prospered, oblivious to the dangers that lay ahead.
THE FLOOD
On the night of Thursday, 24 June 1852, the river burst its banks and rose to a height of 12 meters. A wall of water raged through the small township, and completely overwhelmed it.
And that was just the start of the disaster that became Australia’s deadliest flood. As people clung to their rooftops, many were thrown into the darkness by the raging torrent.
Over the next two days, 89 people out of the 250 European residents are known to have drowned. That was more than a third of the total population who died in the town, and that number doesn’t include the isolated settlers and travellers in the wider district.
71 buildings were destroyed. The Old Mill is the only building of the original town left standing today. The rest of the town was engulfed and swept away. It was completely destroyed.
Though little known, this remains as one of Australia’s worst natural disasters.
A newspaper from the time described the scene as the floodwaters continued to rise:
“On Friday morning, about, 9 o’clock … A boat came from the other side of the river to relieve Mr. Thatcher, whose family had taken to the loft. In re-crossing the river the boat was swamped, and five children were drowned. From the fearful current, and the enormous logs that it was carrying down, it was impossible to attempt to take any more that day. As night drew in, the unavailing cries for assistance all around became fearfully harassing. Crash after crash announced the fall of some house, and the screams that followed the engulphing (sic) of those who clung till the water attained its greatest height, about 11 o’clock at night. Up to this time, about 34 houses had been washed away, and 60 lives lost.”
HEROES – YARRI AND JACKY JACKY
However, almost another third of the population – 69 men, women, and children – would also have perished, had it not been for the actions of a number of the Wiradjuri men, and in particular two of them, Yarri and Jacky Jacky.
Yarri was a local Wiradjuri man who had been working as a shepherd. He was the first to plunge into the raging river in his bark canoe to begin the rescue operation, and he was soon joined by Jacky Jacky, and then by two other Indigenous men, whose names have been sadly lost to history.
To put you in the picture, by now, the Europeans who hadn’t already drowned were on the rooftops of houses or clinging to trees or floating branches.
And over the course of the next 48 hours, Yarri and Jacky Jacky repeatedly launched their bark canoes up-river and then paddled down in and around the trees and houses in the raging floodwaters, searching for survivors, plucking them from the water and helping them into their canoes. Then they would deposit the rescued settlers on the banks of the river.
Then they would pick up their canoe and walk up-river, and do it again and again, until they had rescued everyone they could find – all who could be rescued.
For three days in the great flood of Gundagai, Australia’s deadliest flood, Yarri and Jacky Jacky proved that their traditional canoes were both stable and manoeuvrable. The bark canoes were also immune to the large logs in the water because they had such a shallow draught and were made of flexible material.
QUIETLY FORGOTTEN
Their heroism and compassion saved almost a third of the township. Yarri and Jacky Jacky were given an engraved brass breastplate each, and then they were quietly forgotten. And that’s probably why most people have never heard this story before.
So, the dog on the tuckerbox became the much more important story for the town of Gundagai.
In fact, the way that Yarri and Jacky Jacky were forgotten, and the struggle to remember them, are as much a part of the story as their heroism in June 1852. Over the years, some of the descendants of people saved by the two heroes helped to erect some plaques to the rescuers. And eventually a few people began to be interested in the story.
In 2006, a poet and songwriter, John Warner heard the story and wrote a ballad called Yarri of the Wiradjuri. In the ballad, the people say to Yarri after the rescue:
‘What reward do we give the hero, Money, property, tools or food?’
But when Yarri rejects their money, the people say,
‘How dare one of your race be Ungrateful for our gratitude?’
And Yarri responds,
‘What I have done, I do for the people,
Bone of my bone, blood of my blood,
Would you not have done this for me,
Were I the prey of the Mother’s flood?’
At the end of the ballad, the people reflect in these words,
‘Yarri of Wiradjuri, what kind of folk are we?
Is there reconciliation? What hope we can agree?
Your voice cries out from the wounded land,
Your bark wheels round at your command,
And now you’re reaching out a hand,
Yarri, if only we could see,
Yarri, if only we could see.’
The local Aboriginal people applied to have Yarri and Jacky Jacky honoured posthumously with bravery awards. And in 2017 a magnificent sculpture by renowned Melbourne artist Darien Pullen, was unveiled in the main street of Gundagai.
The sculpture shows Yarri and Jacky Jacky and their canoe. And these interpretive panels alongside the sculpture, tell the story of the great flood of 1852 and the heroic actions of these two brave and skilful men.
And in 2018, Yarri and Jacky Jacky were granted their bravery awards, more than a century and a half after their courageous and compassionate deeds.
“Awarded the bravery medal, the late Mr James Yarri McDonald and Mr John Jacky Jacky Morley, to be accepted by Miss Sonia Piper and Miss Roslyn Boles.”
[Sir Peter Cosgrove, ABC News footage of award ceremony]
THE GREATEST DISASTER
Although most people have never heard of it, the Great Flood of Gundagai was one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit Australia. Yet it illustrates a much bigger disaster: the biggest disaster to ever hit our world.
Just like the people of the Wiradjuri had warned the first European settlers not to build on the river flats, so too One who was older and wiser warned our first parents against leaving God’s protection through disobedience. That’s what the story of Adam and Eve is all about.
The Lord said this to them in Genesis 2:17,
“You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
By the way, the Bible doesn’t say that the fruit was an apple. We actually don’t know what the fruit was. But we do know that God set this up as a symbolic test, as tangible evidence for Adam and Eve that they always had free choice, and that they could choose to either stay in the safety of God’s care or choose to leave God and his protection.
Faced with God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree, Adam and Eve thought they knew better, and so, by not listening to God, they brought disaster to the world. They opened the floodgates of sin that raged into the world.
And sin always brings death, because sin separates us from God, the Source of life. That’s why the Bible says this in Romans 6:23,“The wages of sin is death.”
Countless millions have perished in the flood of sin that came into the world. Like the victims of the Great Flood of Gundagai, who tried in vain to cling onto their roofs and onto trees and floating branches, millions have tried to cling onto things like material possessions, fame, and fortune, in order to avoid the results of sin, but there’s no escape. The waters of death have carried them away. And then, when we least expected it, Some-one appeared to save us!
The last people that the early settlers of Gundagai would have expected that they would need were Yarri, Jacky Jacky and their Wiradjuri friends. After all, they thought they didn’t need them.
THE GREATEST RESCUE
In the same way, to the world, Jesus was the unlikeliest Saviour. He was the one who owned the world, but the world had rejected his claim and had rejected him. In fact, Jesus was treated as the worst of criminals, judged as worthy of death, and tortured and executed in the cruellest possible ways. He was considered unworthy of our respect.
Why would Jesus come to rescue the world? After all, we had rejected Him and turned our backs on Him. But still He came, because of his compassion and love for us.
By accepting the guilt of the world upon himself at the Cross, he stopped sin at its source. By rising from the dead, he overcame it for ever. And then he offered salvation and eternal life to everyone who would accept his gift.
You’d think that now, all would be well for people everywhere. But you see, there was a problem. Just like we forgot about the heroes Yarri and Jacky Jacky, so too, the world has forgotten about Jesus.
Not only has the world forgotten about Jesus, but many don’t even believe that the story of his heroic rescue at the Cross is true. And they don’t believe that he’s coming back again to finish what he started.
Instead, people everywhere spend their days, their energy and their money on things that are nowhere near as important as entering into, and sharing the story of Jesus. We spend our lives fiddling around the Dog on the Tuckerbox, while all the time there’s a much more important story to be told.
It’s the greatest story of courage, compassion, and hope. It’s a story that says that the hand of God is still extended to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and that if we will just believe and take his hand, we will be saved. You can be part of the greatest rescue ever!
Eventually, the people of Gundagai remembered what Yarri and Jacky Jacky had done to save them. Eventually they built a monument to their heroism, so that they would never be forgotten again.
FACING LIFE’S CHALLENGES
I don’t know what kind of challenges you are facing right now, but I know this. You don’t have to face them alone. There may be things that keep you awake at night, and that stress you during the day. You may feel that you’re about to be engulfed and swept away. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There’s a way out. There is a rescuer, Jesus, the One you may have never known about, or ignored or forgotten, or perhaps even rejected all your life. He’s extending his hand to you, inviting you to accept it.
He’s offering us safety and security. He’s offering true inner-peace and happiness. All you have to do is reach out and say, “Yes” and take hold of his mighty hand.
Recognise that in the floodwaters of life, you cannot do it alone. Recognise that you need help. And invite Jesus into your life. He will build you up and strengthen you, and grow you into the person you were always meant to be.
SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER
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If you’ve enjoyed today’s journey to Gundagai and the story of Australia’s deadliest flood, along with our reflections on the greatest rescue of all time, then be sure to join us again next week when we will share another of life’s journeys together. Until then, may God, the Great Rescuer, keep you safe and give you peace. Let’s pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the bravery of Yarri and Jacky Jacky, and their commitment to rescuing all those people. Their story reminds us of the greatest rescue, your offer to rescue us from the challenges of life, and from the sin and guilt that often seem about to engulf us and sweep us away. Please grant us forgiveness, peace and happiness, and eternal life. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
