Honor Taylor: White Cliffs Outback Store

Honor Taylor runs the only shop in White Cliffs. Photograph: Angela Schaffer.

Words & Photography: Angela Schaffer from her book 'Pearls', out now.

The street in front of the White Cliffs Hotel was abuzz, and as I watched the comings and goings around the much-awaited supply truck that had rolloed into town an hour earlier, a handful of opals appeared on a table in front of me. “What do you think these are?” a voice drawled. “Opals?” I replied, maybe a little too hopefully. And just like that, the conversational floodgates opened and a night of storytelling began.

1,050 kilometres from Sydney, three hours from Broken Hill and 94 kilometres from the nearest town (itself an outpost), White Cliffs is a place you don’t just happen upon. But I’d been drawn back to this lunar-esque, opal mining town after another chance encounter a year earlier with Honor Taylor, the owner of the Outback Store. Grabbing some basic provisions for our stay, I’d asked her how many people lives in White Cliffs. “About 130 - but they’re mostly underground,” she casually answered.

Two cratered hills rising from the saltbush plains are the first hint of the thousands-odd holes that hopeful miners have dug here in the search of opals. What’s intriguing about White Cliffs though, is that under these pearl and ochre-hued hills is a vast subterranean world where dozens of houses (and even a motel) have been carved out of the earth. Often a corrugated metal sheet or an askey door is the only evidence that a home lies underneath - but enter, and chances are you’ll find an ingeniously designed wonder.

I didn’t know it then, but meeting Honor had been the spark of inspiration I needed to mebark on this book. I’d been gathering stories for a while, but seeing the role that places like the Outback Store play in far-flung towns, and listening to Honour’s candour, made me realise just how special it would be to share tales like hers. More than that, it was a reminder that chance encounters, even in the unlikeliest of places, can take you on unexpected adventures.

There are 50,000 opal mine shafts around the town, most of them abandoned. Photograph: Angela Schaffer

What brought you to White Cliffs?

I was a city kid, born and bred in Darwin - at the other end of the Earth from here - and came to White Cliffs because my husband, Rick, has a sheep station about 15 kilometres away. I’d never been on a farm before I came here, and I’d definitely never eaten a lamp chop fresh off my own animal, so moving was a big eye opener.

Can you tell me about the community?

In winter, we can have 130 people living here, but during summer there’s only about 80 because it’s too hot. So not many people live here permanently, which means that everyone knows everyone and why I often say, “If you don’t know what you’re up to, ask someone else.” But everyone looks out for each other. Even with the kids at school, there’s never any bullying - they wouldn’t know what it is. They just treat each other the same because they’ve only got each other.

How did you get involved with the Outback Store?

When we moved here, I told Rick that I wasn’t station-wife material because I needed to interact with people. So when I heard that the shop was for sale a few months later, I bought it - and that was ten years ago now. As it turned out, it kept our family going because we were coming out of a pretty bad drought and had lost everything.

I love running the store, and I love that I get to chat to people all day. But you can’t have any Joe Blow running a shop like this because it’s not just a general store. I do Centrelink, mail and station runs, tourist information - and if I decided that I didn’t want to do it anymore, and there was no shop, there would be no town either.

So I’m pretty full-on, seven days a week, but if things need doing I’ll do what I can. Like, when the guys from the pub said they weren’t doing big gas bottles anymore, I said I would, because if someone doesn’t do it, then we don’t have it in town. And when the woman who ran the post office couldn’t sell so was just going to close it down, I took on the mail, because otherwise we’d have none in White Cliffs.

White Cliffs is Australia’s oldest opal mining settlement. Photograph: Angela Schaffer.

What do you think surprises people most about life in White Cliffs?

Lots of tourists who come here want to know my story and always ask the same questions - but it doesn’t bother me because I’m happy for them to ask me anything. I don’t think a lot of them understand White Cliffs at all though. They come in and say, “How on earth do you live here? You’re in the middle of nowhere, bugger-all people live here, the nearest big-chain supermarket is 300 kilometres away and there’s no bakery - so where do you get your bread?” Or they say, “Is this it? Where’s the main street?” And when I say, “What you see is it,” they just don’t get it. Then when they find out that most people live underground, they don’t get that either: “You’re in the middle of nowhere and you live underground; what on earth do you do underground?”

I lived in a dugout for the first six months I was here, but I didn’t like it because in a house there’s windows, and I didn’t like standing at the kitchen sink and seeing a wall. I’ve been to friends' places though, and love what they’ve created underground - I just like seeing wide open spaces and having no neighbours.

I suppose there are some things about living here which are difficult - like the heat. And not having any sport bugs me. And if you’ve forgotten one of your kids’ birthdays and need something real quick in the mail, well, that’s a problem. Being an ageing community also makes it hard, although I don’t think White Cliffs will ever die out because there’s too much here - like opal mining. It’s amazing how many people love fossicking.

You live 15km from town at Glen Hope station. Can you tell me about that?

We’ve had Glen Hope for about 20 years and we usually run about 6,000 sheep - although three years ago in the drought we only had 150 and one lamb. When I look at my husband and father-in-law, I don’t know how they do it. I guess that’s what amazes me about farmers, because when you live in a city and pick up meat from a shelf, you’re just shopping for dinner and have no idea what’s gone into it. But my father-in-law is passionate about his animals, and treats them the way city people would treat their pets - and treats all 6,000 sheep that way. I love listening to Rick and his dad because they know everything, and I’d never experienced talking to anyone like that before.

Do you have a love story?

I suppose it’s my life. Rick and I met waterskiing at Kununurra, and when we were in the same city a few months later we hung out and had a couple of beers - until we both realised that we were forever.

Coming here was the best thing ever. Rick’s family had the farm for about 18 years, but his dad was alone and we felt it was time for a change. Most people would have got a different job in the same city, but taking a leap into the unknown seemed important to us. And the farm is just that, because you never know what will happen. There’s no weekly income and you might only get a pay-check twice a year - and the shop’s the same. But it’s about making things work.

What is home to you?

Home is the station - even though that comes with difficulties. Like, we went through a family bust-up in the middle of the drought which was hard, but that happens to lots of people around here. I guess you grow resilient, like, ‘Stiff shit, just keep going’. 

We have lots of mental health issues here though. If we go to a mate’s place for a catchup - and it can be an hour and a half drive away - sometimes, up a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, we’ll come across a tree that a farmer has painted blue to remember someone who lost their life to depression.We have one here, although the poor bugger got hit by lightning so we have to find something else to paint. Because those trees show that we’re sticking by each other.

This is an edited extract from ‘Pearls’ by Angela Schaffer, available now.