In early July, having flown from Europe to Perth and then caught the suburban train from the airport to Fremantle, where we recovered from jetlag for a day or two, we returned to the airport and collected a car we'd hired and headed towards York, which is billed as Western Australia's oldest inland town, and was supposedly named because the landscape reminded someone of Yorkshire (if Yorkshire had gumtrees, presumably).
Between Perth and York
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We arrived in York late on a Sunday afternoon in winter, which is rarely the moment in the week that displays any town or city at its best. Nevertheless, it was lovely. We stayed in one of the town's many two-storey verandaed buildings and our landlady told us we would be sleeping in Sam Neill's bed.
It turned out that Neill had been her guest for some weeks, while filming took place for a television courtroom drama. The courtroom in question was diagonally opposite the place where we were staying, on York's main street:
We strolled down this street as the sun was setting, admiring the architecture and, not for the first time, enjoying the special charm of country Australia:
We went down some side streets and found St Patrick's Catholic Church, which is now run by Somascans. Its stained glass windows were imported from Italy in the 1880s, which I found touching as I have the diary of a relative from around that time and, while on the Grand Tour, he seemed to spend most of his time in Italy ordering stained glass for his local church in the Western District of Victoria.
The church in York, we discovered, was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1968 - during our travels we began to realise that, while we had been blithely unaware as children in the eastern states, over in the west some kind of dreadful seismic event happened in that year:
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I loved the clash of tones here - the glorious message of the sign over this doorway and the banality of the cones on each side of it The note on the door, by the way, explains people cannot bring animals into the service. I liked the fact dogs were not specifically named, but the more generic "animals", prompting me to imagine a children's picture book in which people try to go to church with their pig or their horse or their goat but are all turned away. Only of course it would have to have a happy ending. Which might be that they are all allowed to worship at the outdoor grotto:
I though the priest's house lovely:
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Venturing further, we discovered what I suppose might be described as a rival establishment, the Freemasons' Hall, now just someone's house:
And then we came upon York's astonishing town hall:
If you want evidence of the way that gold went to people's heads, this building is it. It is a building made for a thriving wealthy metropolis, surely. Meanwhile York has is a town of two and a half thousand people.
This thing is magnificent outside and in:
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I think the staircase is jarrah - it was certainly beautiful wood, whatever the species:
The fact that contemporary officials decided it would be fine to stick this extension on the back does make me wonder, (not for the first time), if we are totally lost as a culture:
Only one place was open for a meal, a magnificent former hotel, built in the 1890s but subsequently fallen into disrepair - that is, until 2018, when a group of local farmers banded together to renovate it.
I took a photograph of the photograph displayed inside the building, showing it immediately after the 1968 earthquake, which seemed to have stripped all the verandas from the building's facade:
Sadly, as it was dark by the time we reached the hotel and I forgot in the morning, I didn't take a picture of it as it is now. Instead, I will have to make do with another of the town's hotels, which is not hugely different in appearance:
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I love these kinds of buildings.
I also enjoyed sitting near this fine poster showing sheep breeds of Australia while eating dinner (I had beef, in deference to all those sweet, slightly dim faces - to eat their descendants in front of them struck me as bad form.)
There's a lot more I could say about York, but I wonder how many people want to hear more detail. The exhibition in the town hall was full of interesting displays, all very well done. I will only include one picture from those displays here, and I include it simply because I remembered it in amazement when some days later, having travelled by car, we eventually reached Coolgardie (a long, long way from York). The photograph shows a bloke setting off with a handcart to walk to Coolgardie, in hope of gold:
I found this little house behind the main street - it's the kind of building I could live in happily:
This building nearby was the trooper's cottage. It was built within the stable yard of the police station in around 1865 and occupied by Tommy Windich who was attached to the York Constabulary as a native assistant. I should add that there were fairly major hints in the historical plaques around the town that in this area at least the settlers from Europe were not welcomed with open arms:
Breakfast offerings, which I didn't have but which my husband did and which he enjoyed.
A few other silly things:
Only in Australia:
I thought this a nice piece of advertising, although I didn't take them up on it as there are few things I hate more than any kind of guided tour - and, if that isn't what they were offering, we didn't need it either since we were already self-driving:
This was a nice bit of unintended outback artistry, I thought:
For anyone minded to take David Betz seriously and pack their bags and get out of Europe before civil war gets really underway, here are some York real estate possibilities. Judging by the state of the sign, there hasn't been much competition for York's Premier Development Spot - so far.
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