It's an unseasonably balmy spring evening in downtown Gunning. The sun is slowly dipping into the western sky and the cockatoos are squawking high in the canopy of the century-old pine trees that stand sentinel near the entrance to the town's shire hall.
A steady flow of hobby farmers and tree changers wander up the concrete steps and into the corrugated iron-clad hall which is looking schmick after a fresh lick of paint and new lights.
Sure, it's not groaning, but 50 people is a big turnout in these parts. After all, this is a place when two mates arguing outside the Telegraph Hotel over who got more rain in last night's storm is usually deemed a crowd.
So, what has drawn everyone out on a Friday night? Is it a tell-all meeting about plans for more of those wind turbines, or maybe it's to hatch a plan to breathe new life into the town by re-routing the highway back down the main street which was bypassed three decades ago?
Turns out it's neither. Two soloists have joined forces for a one-off concert - a meeting of ancient cultures billed as a world premiere.
Holding up stage left is Ngunnawal-Wiradjuri man Joel Bulger with three of his treasured hand-crafted didgeridoos.
Joel, who has been playing the traditional instrument since he was five when his parents "took him on a trip around Australia and picked up his first didge in Cairns", lives in Dalton, a little dot on the map about 12 kilometres north-west of Gunning. The town claims him as their own, and you can't blame them.
Meanwhile, at stage right is Henry Liang. Born in China, the Sydney-based multi-instrumentalist and composer is a full-time musician, playing flute in the Royal Australian Navy Band. Not surprisingly, it's his first performance in Gunning and unless the Navy launch a new frigate on the town's ephemeral Meadow Creek, it's likely also his last.
But Henry hasn't carried his flute down the Hume Highway. Instead, almost comically he has what looks like a giant wooden peg held vertically up to, and over, his mouth.
But it's not a peg plucked from the bottom of his grandmothers peg backet. It's a Japanese sho, a free-reed bamboo mouth organ first used in the Imperial Court music of Japan during the 7th century, of which Henry is Australia's leading exponent. He's also the only one.
He's been tutored by sho masters in Japan, performing concerts in Tokyo, and at The Institute of Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University in New York.
Tonight, the unlikely duo has teamed up under the Creative Gunning banner to perform a collaboration, an Ancient Worlds in Harmony Concert.
But before they perform their duet, they first treat us to solo performances to explain the finer points about playing their respective instruments.
Henry reveals the sho is handcrafted from 17 slender bamboo pipes bundled together on top of a small wooden resonating chamber near the mouthpiece. Oh, and rather than a peg it's designed to look like the mythical Japanese phoenix, complete with two symmetrical wings. Really!
"In each pipe is a thin metal reed topped by a dot of melted lead shot, the weight of which determines the speed of vibration on the reed," he explains.
Although most of the audience is au fait with the didgeridoo, Joel still enamours us with how he makes his own, by selecting certain tree trunks in the Northern Territory hollowed out by termites. "We get a stick and run it down the inside to remove all the honeycomb, then use hot coals to further clear it out," he reveals before performing a rousing rendition of a laughing kookaburra.
While Joel is midway through delivering a crash course on circular breathing, which is integral to playing the didge (pretend you are blowing bubbles in a straw), Henry carefully wraps his sho in an electric blanket.
"It needs to stay warm," he says, caressing the freshly wrapped instrument like a newborn baby.
Apparently, condensation from his breath from playing his earlier solo can cause his instrument to become out of tune.
"Because the reed is so small, the heaviness of the condensation can stop the reed from vibrating at the ideal frequency, so I need to keep it dry," explains Henry who also has a small heater, that doubles as a hotplate to make tea, on standby.
But he can't heat it too much. "The reeds are stuck to the bottom of each pipe with a mix of tree resin and beeswax, which if it gets too warm can melt," he says. "When I began playing, I made that mistake and at great expense had to send my sho back to Japan to be fixed."
Finally, it's time for the world premiere.
The expectation is palpable. And not just among the audience, for as the first notes reverberate around the hall, the cockatoos shifting in their roosts outside chime in with some vocal accompaniment. And I'm sure I can hear the bush rats scurrying under the freshly sanded floorboards, no doubt startled by the ethereal sound of the sho mingling with the mystical reverberations of the didgeridoo.
No one has heard anything like this before. In Gunning, or anywhere else.
A truly enchanting evening.
Journey of blood, sweat and tears
While in Gunning, I popped over to the town's 1875 railway station which was recently spruced up by Transport for NSW.
While the revamp was the result of a lot of hard yakka, it pales into insignificance when compared to the blood, sweat and tears shed by the worker gangs who built the railway line south from Sydney in the 19th century.
Many of the male workers - including James Curtis who migrated from England in 1857 - brought their wives and families with them, living in railway camps along the line as it extended south.
While at a camp at Fish River, just north of Gunning, James's wife Maria died after suffering from a prolonged bout of renal pericarditis. She was 45 years old.
In fact, if you look west from the Fish River bridge over the old Hume Highway, you can see the stand of exotic trees near the former siding which mark the site of the worker's cottage where it's believed poor Maria died in August 1876.
Maria's great-granddaughter Robyn Coghlan, who lives in Hawker, often reminisces about the tough times Maria and her family must have endured.
"Maria lost three newborn children before she gave birth to my grandmother, Alice, at the Goulburn railway station in 1870," she reports.
"Shortly after Maria's death in 1876, James sailed back to England in 1877, leaving Alice in the care of a friend in Sydney."
Maria is buried in Gunning cemetery where her headstone also records the death of James just a year later in England.
"James was buried in a churchyard in a village surrounded by other family members," reports Robyn, "but there is no one from the family near Maria's lonely grave."
You've got to love country cemeteries. So many untold stories.
WHERE IN CANBERRA?
Rating: Medium - Hard
Clue: No need to pull out the magnifying glass, the plaque reads 'Goulburn NSW', but it's actually in a Canberra park.
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday, November 16 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Peter Harris of Latham who was first to identify last week's photo as part of the Satellite Laser Ranging Station at Mount Stromlo. The clue related to a time capsule that was dug up near here in 1973 after being buried during WW2, the contents of which were indecipherable due to water damage.
SPOTTED
It appears as if the moulds for the formwork for the 1970s waffle slab ceiling of the Belconnen Mall carparks has been re-used far and wide.
Not only were they repurposed as picnic shelter roofs at Ginninderra Falls and as fish ponds in private gardens, but also as feed bins for animals, including this one still in use at Mane Lodge near Sutton.
- CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
