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Nymagee is a small village southeast of Cobar - itself a small town. Nymagee was once a copper town with a population of just over 2200 people, about half of whom were Chinese immigrants. The copper ore was gradually depleted until extracting it from the mine was no longer economically viable - and it eventually closed in 1917. At that time the first world war was also taking a heavy toll on the generation the town needed most. To my eye at least, Nymagee never recovered from those two blows.
After the war Nymagee steadily shrank to become a village supporting the surrounding pastoral industry, and the population declined gradually to about 150 people, something like 150,000 sheep or thereabouts, and trillions of flies. Like many country hamlets, after World War II Nymagee more or less survived "on the sheep's back".
My mother grew up there on a sheep station (property) called "Four Corners". Times are still tough, and apparently the rural industries are still in relative decline, though "Four Corners" still exists. Most people will never have heard of Nymagee, and probably never will. But who knows? There is now a small annual music festival held each October, which has apparently attracted some international acts and led to a doubling of the population (which isn't so hard demographically, but a pretty big achievement economically). Sometimes I think that the perfect antidote to Japan's crowded trains etc might be a trip to Nymagee for the festival, but October is one of the busiest times at Yamasa.
Nymagee is the home of "Clancy of the Overflow", a drover (cowboy) lauded by the poet A. B. (Banjo) Patterson. The station (ranch) named "The Overflow" is located about 32 kilometers (20 miles) to the south east of Nymagee. The city that Banjo is referring to in the poem is Sydney in the late 1880's.
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And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.
And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".
"And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
No better horseman ever held the reins;"A. B. (Banjo) Paterson - The Man from Snowy River
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