Outback tour is ridgy didge

FOR only $1500, you get a trip from Townsville across Queensland to the Gulf of Carpentaria that's pretty much all-inclusive. The catch?

Wowed ... performers join the audeince after the show at Ernest Henry mine. Picture: Ray Strange.

HAVE I got a deal for you. For only $1500 from Townsville, you get a trip right across Queensland to the Gulf of Carpentaria, including all flights, transfers and meals, four nights' accommodation in good motels, tours and attractions, and an underground dinner at the Hard Times Mine in Mount Isa.

As well, there's free entertainment and a chance to meet the locals and mix with friendly young professional musicians.

However, it happens only once a year. If the prospect catches your imagination, start making plans for next June, because the Australian Festival of Chamber Music Outback Tour fills up quickly.

And don't be put off by the chamber music tag, because until you've heard Pachelbel's Canon played with a didgeridoo accompaniment in an Aboriginal retirement village, or a startlingly modern Australian piece by Ross Edwards performed under the stars, when you are part of the performance as you ring gentle bells, you don't realise what music can do.

I joined this tour last month, along with the Fyra Quartet (young women musicians who are as unstuffy as you please), legendary didgeridoo player William Barton and artistic director Christopher Latham. We had a feast of fun, as well as prawns straight off the trawler.

From Townsville we flew to Cloncurry, and don't even think run-down country pubs. The Gidgee Inn is new, made of rammed red earth, with rooms that are soundproof.

And just as well, for much as I love William Barton, I don't want to be woken from my afternoon nap even by the dulcet tones of his didge.

In the inn's very good dining room we feasted on butter-tender steaks and consumed too many bottles of red wine.

That was the first night we heard Ross Edwards' Tyalgum Mantras, as the quartet quietly unpacked their instruments, positioned themselves around the dining room, gave us a bell each, and began playing so softly that it was like being awakened from a dream.

All the lights went out, and we were in a dream world of musical beauty unlike any I have ever experienced.

The next day was a little different, for we were taken out to the Ernest Henry mine where the musicians set up a sound stage in the 200-tonne scoop of a dump truck.

The cynical miners stood around, asking when the Dixie Chicks were going to turn up. Although some of them drifted away, most of them were transfixed as William Barton unpacked his five didgeridoos from their cloth bags and treated them to the complexity and subtlety of this oldest of musical instruments.

The third day it was on to Mount Isa, where the town welcomed Barton, who is one of its most famous sons.

Here, though, he wasn't a world-famous musician, but just one of the gang, greeting his old mates as we saddled up, hard hats, torches, orange gear and all, to take the underground tour at the Hard Times Mine and eat dinner in a miners' crib. There was no music down here, for the way was dark and damp, and the instruments wouldn't have liked it at all. So it was another night of eat, drink and be merry, and groaning quietly as we piled on to the plane next morning to get to Normanton.

Normanton is famous for its purple pub but it's a tiny town with not much going for it except a giant crocodile statue and my new best friends Gertie and Bettina, residents at Kukatja Place, a home for old people from the Walamgama area. I'm sure Peter Sculthorpe's Jabiru has never been played in a more unlikely venue, but Gertie and Bettina loved it.

Bloody good, said giggling Gertie, who has a way with words – "maybe them jabiru might play the didgeridoo". Bettina was more enchanted by Mozart's Et Exultate, and nodded along in perfect time.

This little concert was one of the great successes of the tour, especially when Gertie decided violinist Janet Anderson was too skinny to be boiled, so that she'd be better roasted, and Bettina fell in love with tour leader Latham, declaring that she was going to tie him up so he wouldn't leave.

Our final day was spent at Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria where, despite warnings the best seafood goes straight to Japan, we ate prawns off the trawler and the best barra and chips in the world.

We also went on a twilight cruise on the river to see the sun set, and finished the evening in the local pub, where the musicians had to compete with the bank of television sets inside. But the outside crowd, eating their fresh barra under the trees, were eventually charmed into silence with Bach plus didge, a Philip Glass string quartet, and finally the Ross Edwards piece, with little kids solemnly ringing their bells as the strings and didge created a quiet enchantment.

It was a trip like no other, and we saw places and mixed with people that most Australians will never know about.

And why is it so cheap? We couldn't understand it, for we worked out that to arrange and pay for all this ourselves would have cost at least $4000, and there wouldn't have been the extra fun of the musical events.

But here's a free plug for a mining company: the tour is sponsored by Xstrata Copper, and it makes a pleasant change to see some of the best young musicians in Australia getting such a boost, not to mention the experiences they bring to people in remote outback towns.

And for the lucky few who tag along, it's something to remember all their lives.

So if you fancy chamber music, and want a chance to see the real Great Outdoors, make plans for next June. I can guarantee an experience you'll never forget.

Sunday Mail (QLD)