Besides clay and wheels, Kate Hennessy is unsure what to expect from a decades-old potters society. So she does what savvy travellers do: asks a local.
“The potters society?” replies local artist, Rick Ball. “Amazing. It is a highly-organised, committed group that’s been going for donkeys in a little old hall but has a spirit connected to the properties and the land. It’s part of the land.”
I ponder his comments en route to meet Sandy Bright and Lilly Spencer, the president and secretary of the society, respectively. But my first assumption – “is it Broken Hill clay?” – is fairly quickly dashed by Sandy.
“I do have some clay from my property,” she says. “But it needs a plasticine consistency and the clay I dig up is very…. do you use pastry? No? Well, it’s very ‘short’ – it breaks easily. So I have to add things, which makes it not local clay, really.”
In the society for 20 years, Sandy tells me about the “pot-ins” and craft fairs and why the group changed from its original name as a Ceramic Society. “It became fashionable for people just to paint already-built pieces so we reverted to the old-fashioned name of ‘potters’ to differentiate from the ceramic artists.”
It’s not until Lilly mentions ‘outback firings’ that I suspect I might be onto Rick’s meaning. “Tell me more about those!”
Lilly’s face lights up. ““Our outback firings? Well, they’re primitive firings you couldn’t do in the city.”
“Our Purnamoota weekends”
First, gather a lot of cow dung. Second, find an old bed frame. Load your pots onto the piled-up cow dung, put a match to it, watch the flames lap the pots, then lay corrugated iron sheet on top. Leave it overnight and return in the morning. It’s not a kiln, per se, but the same motto applies. “We always say opening any kiln is like Christmas,” Sandy tells me. “It’s always a big, lovely surprise.”
It is one of five kinds of primitive firings that occur on what Lilly calls “our Purnamoota Weekends”. Forty minutes out of town is Purnamoota Station, an old township now owned by, you guessed it, a potter. About four times a year, the society (mainly women, presently two blokes) head out to make a weekend of it.
“Most of us stay in the shearers’ quarters,” says Lilly. “We take our swags and cook with a camp fire oven on hot coals. The silence is amazing out there. There’s a crow flying over occasionally but it’s really quiet and peaceful.”
During the day, the group gets busy doing salt firings, sawdust and pit firings. “We dig a pit and wrap our pots up in corn husks,” says Lilly. “We throw in coffee grounds and things like oxide, copper and cobalt.”
A brick kiln is used for salt firing – still classified as ‘outback firing’ because you can’t do it indoors. “We get it up to about 1000 degrees and throw in a couple of handfuls of salt which splatters and gives off striking marks.”
The next food craze?
Pots are not the only thing fired at Purnamoota. It turns out Sandy’s earlier reference to pastry is not metaphorical. “We roll clay out like sheet pastry and wrap up chickens and bury them in hot coals,” says Lilly. “It’s an ancient technique. When they’re ready, they whistle from a little hole in the clay. You crack the clay off and eat the chicken – it’s tender as, scrumptious.”
While Purnamoota weekends aren’t on the official itinerary for those “from away” (locals’ term for out-of-towners), Lilly says it’s always possible if you ask the right person. “People bring other people along,” she says.
If you do find yourself at a Purnamoota pottery retreat, make sure to ask about the homemade mead – I failed to pin down if the rumours were true but there were certainly lots of whispers.
First published for Broken Hill Tourism, here.
