Billy's pool

 photos - Janene McNamara


It was a hot February day when I went walking down the Six Foot Track with companions. Our destination was to be the Cox's river, and part of our route, Megalong creek. We were to come out at the junction of the two.

The leader, Rogo, allowed me to divert the group in to Megalong cemetery so that I could show them where Fanny Lynch is buried. After some searching, I found her headstone and grave. She was a Gundungurra woman, and one of the people camped on the Wollondilly river, who gave anthropologist R.H. Mathews the Gurangatch Mirragan story in the 1890's. This story or songline tells about the creation of the Wollondilly and Cox's river. She died in 1895 when a flu epidemic swept through.

I was excited that we were being taken to the junction. We clambered over the smooth granite of Megalong creek very carefully, as it's very slippery. The water falling down through the boulders was brown - the odd dragonfly hovering above. At the junction there's a waterhole and we all stripped down to cossies. I have been told that Billy Lynch, Fanny's husband, is buried near this junction. He died in 1913.

Billy's pool
cools
our white skins

 He sold land that he owned ( amazing achievement for an Aboriginal man) to a white man, in exchange for the funeral trip to this place, so that he could be buried on his beloved Gundungurra country. It is said that he had a traditional Gundungurra burial.

 As I enjoyed the water,  I thought about how many thousands of generations of Gundungurra people would have enjoyed exactly the same thing!

Later on the same walk:

the leech

wants to get close to me

unlike you

the Cox's river
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