Wedding at The Dag

At the weekend Gill and I went to her aunty's wedding 10 km south of a small town in country NSW called Nundle (population: 289), which is about 450km (280 miles) north west of Sydney.

Gill's father's family is from Tamworth - one of the largest country cities in NSW. The wedding itself was at a converted Sheep Shearing Station, known as 'The Dag'. For those who don't know, the 'dag' is the rather unpleasantly dirty piece of fur underneath the tail of a sheep.


Whilst the fifty photos in this post tell their own story, what they don't tell is the journey Gill and I made to get there. After a day on a rugby coaching course at school (on a very warm sunny day), tired and a bit sunbaked I met Gill after work on Friday to make the 5.5 hour journey to Nundle. We left Chatswood on Sydney's lower north shore at 4.30. Although this is a journey Gill has done many times, this was the first time she has driven it (we shared the driving), so we used the GPS to pick the best route. Error number one. What we should have done was ignore the GPS 'quickest route' option and take the freeway up to Newcastle (as her dad instructed her), then crossed inland. Instead we took the 'scenic' route (which would have been scenic in the daytime, anyway). It wound its way through small towns and dense bushland. For those unfamilar with driving in Australia, it's generally not a great idea to be driving through the bush at night given the various marsupials that you can hit and which will write off the car, if not its contents - unless, of course, you are in a massive truck. We were in a Toyota Echo. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable before Gill suggested it might not be a good idea to tell her dad which route we'd taken. After dodging the third kangaroo, I realised why.

We made it in good time to Nundle; around 9.45pm. Although we had the address on The Dag's flier, it simply read "The DAG, Crawney Road, 10km south of Nundle, NSW"; and whilst our Google Maps print-out could only take us to an unknown location on the road, the GPS refused to accept that Crawney road existed at all. There was no mobile phone reception. Given that there was no sign of The Dag to the south of Nundle on the 'main road' we were on, we took a safari across an unsurfaced track for about 15km through a cattle station. As we were heading cross country (I was driving at this point), and having avoided a wombat, three wallabies and several large cows, the petrol gauge began to flash empty. I'm not normally afraid of cows. But this was a cattle station. These were not dairy cows. If Hitchcock had written a film about cows, it would have been set here. At one point one of the animals, understandably rather annoyed at having been woken up, began kicking the dirt and adopting the charge position. Gill began to whimper.

Shortly after this incident, the 'road' came to an abrupt end. By now it was about 11.30pm. This was not good. In fact, this was now actually quite bad. It meant we had to go back along the track, with an unknown amount of petrol left, renegotiating the cattle and the wildlife. We made it back to the sealed road and decided to check every property between there and Nundle.


We got to Nundle without having found The Dag. We did, though, find a road sign. This was promising. The good news was that the sign read "Crawney Road". We were on the right road! The bad news was that underneath those words read "Nos. 10-1980". That's a lot of numbers when the petrol light has been flashing for over an hour. There was little choice but to head south again, checking every property on the way. Given the darkness (there was no moon), this meant turning off the road each time and pointing the headlights at any man made objects that might give us a clue as to what was there. When we had left Nundle behind, we decided that there must have been another track off the one we had previously been down. It was with a great deal of trepidation that we turned off the sealed road and headed back though the cattle station on the gravel track - and in to the blackness.

By this point we were both exhausted, stressed and running out of petrol any moment was becoming a very real possibility. We would have to sleep in the car and try and find some form of civilisation in the daylight. About two Ks down the track I stopped the car. I simply couldn't face heading down this track any further. It dawned on me that I was genuinely hoping that this was the wrong way. I hated the track so much that my experience of the wedding would have been ruined even if had been the right way - assuming I'd make it through the night surrounded by demon-possessed cattle. So I turned the car around and drove back towards the bitumen.


It was now about 12.30am. It was a miracle that this journey had seen only bugs being killed as they struck the windscreen. Gill and I had so far avoided killing each other, and, despite the efforts of the wallabies to do their own impersonation of a startled rabbit in the headlights, we hadn't hit one. So it was about time that we did, in fact, come across a startled rabbit in the headlights. It had chosen a particularly good position, too; right in front of a cattle grid, which had a post either side, at the bottom of a hill. Given that I was using the car's downhill momentum by this point to conserve petrol, and that braking hard on gravel may have meant us colliding with a post whilst the rabbit hopped happily away, I opted for a collision course with the rabbit. He looked at me and I looked at him - and I wasn't for turning. Somebody's luck was about to run out - and it was not going to let it be mine. You could say that something had to pay the price for this hellish situation - for my own sanity, as well as safety, I needed a scapegoat. In lieu of a goat, God had given me a rabbit.

Back on the sealed road (again), and having done my bit for reducing feral pests from the bush, it was decision time. We chose to keep heading south of Nundle until we found The Dag, or ran out of petrol. Then, we had some luck. A car! Someone was returning home and was closing the gate on the track to their property. It was a (drunk) woman who, when I asked her for directions, pointed down the road nonchalantly and said "it's just over there, about two Ks". And indeed it was. Crawney Road became a dirt track, and off that dirt track was The Dag.

Here is an interactive map of our Magical Mystery Tour of Nundle. Click on the icons, zoom in -and out, and click, hold and drag to move around.


View Magical Mystery Tour in a larger map




We arrived to find everyone had gone to bed. Gill was worried that her parents would have feared the worst (although there was little sign of this when they realised we had arrived - 3 hours late at 1am!). Gill went straight to bed, but I seriously needed a drink. Fortunately Pete was more than happy to join me. Whilst earlier in the evening he had put away all the drink that they had brought with them, we chucked a few logs on the bonfire and found someone else's esky - and polished off their beer instead.

The bonfire, shortly after sunrise

 

Accommodation was basic, but comfortable. And the showers were awesome. The reception took place in the Mess Hall....

 

'Bushranger Wayne' contemplates a day of cattle rustling

They look a hell of a lot bigger when you're sat in a small car in the dark....

'Where's my brekkie?'

 

"My Ugg Boots are too warm!"

After breakfast on Saturday, we took a trip in to Nundle....

The centre of town....

The pub

The photos below tell their own story of the afternoon and evening; needless to say, we had an awesome time....

Paddy checks out the flowers

In the barn, just before the ceremony

Patrick is momentarily restrained by Grandma, whilst clutching his police car and steamroller

 Lyn's two daughers and son (the brunettes), David's son and three daughters (the blondes)

The Bride and Groom

The Asbury sisters

"What did I tell you Patrick?" - Paddy gets the 'Primary School Teacher treatment' from Grandma shortly before (and without prompting) putting himself on 'The Naughty Step'

Back in the game!

Gill with her cousin Anna (Lyn's daughter) and second cousin Simon (Wayne's cousin)

The scene after the first dance....

Denise unwittingly dances with the devil (nb my head!)
 

Cutting the cake

Hide 'n Seek

Wayne busts some moves to country singer Luke O'Shea, surrounded by adoring groupies

One of Simon's less outrageous dance moves

 
Pete does some line dancing with the groom

Dylan (Gill's cousin, Lyn's son) does his Nick Cave impression

Pete and I attempt a more challenging dance move

Things don't quite go according to plan

 

Three generations of Asburys: Dylan, Michael (Wayne's cousin) and Wayne

Pete grooving with the groom

 

"It reduces sunburn and at night has the bonus of distracting from our receding hairlines!"