Today we drove from the Flinders Ranges to Clare down the R.M.Williams highway. The Orroroo Shire was looking lush with hectares of healthy green crops and fat livestock.
It was run of seasons like this one that attracted my Great Grandfather A.R.Addison (M.P.) c1880. He uprooted his family from a successful flour mill business at Middleton with the prospect of success in the more frontier lands to the north.
My Grandfather 'Addie', the youngest of 9 children was born at Orroroo and his mother died soon after. Today the town cemetery includes the graves of his parents, uncle and many siblings, but he (farmed off to be raised by an aunt when his father remarried a woman uninterested in raising some one else's children) escaped for a career with the ANZ bank that took him to N.Z. via a start at Mt Gambier at only 17.
Today in a good season the rolling green hills are scattered with stone ruins, a reminder of the fickleness of the semi desert regions, and the hunger and heartache of many who took their chances and failed.