Moments later ensconced in a car with a local driver behind the wheel, we rode a bit into the open vista of this agricultural region of Australia. I kept waiting for the house to come into view. I waited. Waited some more. I finally took out my smartphone and started to film the drive.
To say this place was remotely situated is an understatement. Eventually, we entered another gate and the house rested in front of us. Not jaw-dropping imposing, but beautiful. The car stopped, and we got out. The sun was crisp and what became clear at that point was the intensity of the long horizontal vista of the slightly rolling landscape. The Australian sky felt very large and in control. The house was merely a small bit player in this theater.
This experience was made more intense from the fact that we just had just spent a few weeks in dense urban cities where there is an almost complete absence of a vista or horizon. What was already clear to me was that this historic site was all about the landscape the relationship to it. Saumarez Homestead was once an enormous ,acre grazing property. The property was inhabited by several families up to when it was donated to the National Trust of Australia.
Collectively the lands measured about 3, square miles. The Anewan consisted of four clans, 1. Irong; 2. Arpong; 3. Lyong; and 4. The Irong intermarried with the Lyong and the Arpong with the Imbong. As was the case in almost all of Australia, the British forcibly moved and contained Aboriginal populations into tighter and tighter areas.
They were constructed of throw-away materials like hessian bags, corrugated sheet iron, and cardboard boxes.
