Quambatook on the Avoca river is childhood home of two of Australia’s music celebrities. John Williamson, a country and music star and Molly Meldrum, music entrepeneur, record producer and journalist. It’s hard to believe that not only did they attend the same small country school, but they attended at the same time. Both are celebrated in the Quambatook museum.
John Williamson is my favourite Australian singer and he was the reason we went out of our way to visit this small dying country town. I am currently reading his book True Blue. In it he describes his inspiration for his songs. I hadn’t thought about it before. So I was surprised to learn that many were based on his home town and his childhood.
To explore this further we needed to to stay overnight to get into the museum. This allowed up to meet more locals and understand Quamtabook in its hey day.
OLD MAN EMU was his first hit 
Local special events still held in Quambatook include Silo Cinema and Australian Tractor Pull Championships. They both sound like a lot of fun and bring people from everywhere to the town. When we visited Quambatook, they were setting up for a Silo Cinema that weekend and locals were certainly excited.
I think the thing I was impressed by the most about Quambatook the cremation of Sundeh Singh in the old cemetery in 1917. The town respected the Indian hawker so much that they wanted to give him his rite of cremation according to his religion. This novel ceremony using butter and kerosone was conducted by an out of town priest. After the large funeral pyre went out and the ashes were cooled they were transported back to India and scattered over the river Ganges.
Being an old gold mining town it was interesting to see the goal at the museum site. After gold mining the focus of the town changed to wheat farming. The area is still a large wheat supplier however changes to farming techniques has halved the size of the town.
