23/07/10 - Mildura Weekly
www.sunraysiaonline.com.au
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family... they were English immigrants who opted for a new life Down Under, but who perished during the Christmas from Adelaide to put a proper headstone on the family grave off the Birdsville Track. He tells the story of...
• WORLD-WIDE NEWS: Pictured - LEFT are some of the newspaper clippings from Australia and the United Kingdom reporting the Page family tragedy. ABOVE - Emma and th two younger boys, and BELOW floodwaters only metres from the grave, an irony not missed by local bushmen.
• From previous page It was Noel who provided Avril with the GPS coordinates of the grave. “He is an amazing gentleman,” Avril said. “He is still touched by the events of that day, and still has a lot of bushman in him... he’s off to the Kimberleys in a week or so.” She also caught up with retired SA policeman Eric Sammon, who led the search for the family in 1963. Avril, Keith and Jordan (Avril’s other son Scott, 17, couldn’t make the trip) called in at Marree and then Mungerannie and Birdsville before being taken to the grave site, 80 kilometres from Birdsville, and just seven kilometres off the Birdsville track, by Queenslander Ron ‘Sully’ O’Sullivan, a frequent visitor to the region. On the way, ‘Sully’ showed them Wirripilli Dam, about 30 kilometres from Birdsville, near to where the Page’s car ran out of petrol, and where the doomed family had walked to refill water containers. The turn-off to the grave was 50 kilometres away. “You would have missed the track if you had blinked,” Avril said. “A marker was no longer in place, so it took some time to find the grave site. Jordan spotted the cross first. Flood-water was only 10 metres from the grave... there was so much water, greenery and birdlife. It was so serene and picturesque... it was hard to believe how deadly and unforgiving the outback can be.” Avril went back to Birdsville where she met up with her brothers,
and the following day they returned to the grave, this time accompanied by Birdsville policeman Neil McShane, Peter the Birdsville publican, as well as ‘Sully.’ There they laid the new marble headstone, and mixed up a batch of cement to fix it in
Birdsville. The reports, from Australia and the United Kingdom, are often conflicting, but the general theme of the sad tale is the same. Ernie Page, described as a good bloke who could be a little stubborn, was working as a mechanic in Mar-
It was the week leading up to Christmas, 1963. The heart of summer, and an area where the mercury regularly climbs above 40 degrees Celsius. Some Marree old-timers say Ernie ignored advice to delay the trip until after the holidays, and
• MATES FOR LIFE: Avril and Keith in the Birdsville Hotel, where they met Jimmy Crombie (left) who remembered working with Robert Page on Clifton Hills station, and who later gave her a belt buckle that Robert had given him before the ill-fated trip. With the group is Ron ‘Sully’ O’Sullivan, who Avril said was a pillar of strength and a great help in driving them to the gravesite, and helping with the new headstone - ABOVE. place. The headstone lists the names and ages of the members of the Page family who are at rest in the grave. There are newspaper clippings about the tragedy in some of the outback pubs, including Marree and
ree when he decided to pack up the family and head for Queensland in search of better work. Ernie filled his powerful 1958 Ford Customline with fuel, and packed the family possessions into a trailer.
set off in the dead of night. Ernie was driving, his wife Emma in the passenger seat, and younger sons Doug, 12, and Gordon, 10, in the back. The eldest son, Robert, 19, wasn’t with them initially, having ob-
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tained work on Clifton Hills Station, just 133 kilometres out of Birdsville. But Robert’s destiny was also sealed when he hitched a ride on the mail truck heading for Marree, joining his family at a roadside stop after seeing the car and trailer coming towards them and telling Noel Glass; “that’s the old man’s car.” Robert jumped on board, and the family of five continued up the remote track towards Birdsville. It was soon after this that Ernie Page made several fatal errors. He mistakenly left the main track and followed another track, apparently left by a geo-survey team who had recently been through the area. By the time he tried to re-trace his steps, it was too late. The car ran out of petrol. The first law of the bush is never, ever leave your vehicle. But Ernie, after initially staying with the car and exhausting food and water supplies, tried to lead his family to safety on foot. Blacktrackers later told the story... when the family initially ran out of water, they walked several kilometres to a windmill and dam they had sighted earlier, re-filled their containers and returned to the vehicle. As Christmas Day approached, Ernie made the fateful decision to once again leave the vehicle. He left a note on the car; “No petrol. Have water for two days. Heading south.” They didn’t know they were walking towards an area known as ‘Dead man’s sand hills.’ • Continued Page 10