by Thea Hayes
Time was running out for we were due in Dalwallinu, Bob’s hometown, for the Dalwallinu One Hundred Year Centenary, and to meet his sister Edna and her husband Colin Ralph, and his brother Ian Black and wife Verna. A great weekend of activity for the centenary of Dalwallinu, which was officiated by the Premier of Western Australia. We visited Bob’s family farm, the place where Bob was born, grew up and worked, and we met many of his old friends. It was hard to move on.
After touring through the beautiful timber country in the south of Western Australia, we crossed the Nullarbor and travelled along the incredible coastline of South Australia to Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula.
Then we suddenly realised that we had been touring for six months.
30
A change of direction
We had planned to travel in Australia for six months before going to Tasmania to a sheep property at Triabunna, where Bob had been offered a management position. However, when Bob rang up to confirm the position, he found it had become unavailable. The timber mill at Triabunna had been closed down by the government and 120 people lost their jobs. The owner of the sheep property had employed two of the unemployed, so there was no job for Bob to go to.
I had told everyone we were going to Tasmania to work. ‘Come and see us,’ I would say—so we weren’t the only ones who were disappointed.
After asking Penny to look on the internet for any cattle management jobs available, we were delighted to find on her return email what appeared to be the ideal job for Bob and me at Narrandera.
Wanted manager Angus and Murray Grey Stud Narrandera, Riverina, NSW.
Bob’s experience was with Angus cattle; mine with Murray Greys—it couldn’t have been better. We rang the owner Brian Powel; applied for the job; sent him three references and were told that the job was ours if we got there within a week.
Leaving Port Lincoln, we drove through blue bush country, down through Adelaide to Port Elliot to catch up for two days with another Territory friend. We then drove around Lake Alexandria, the mouth of the Murray River, and onto the Mallee Highway at Tailem Bend, joining the Murray Valley Highway and onto the Newell Highway at Tocumwal.
From there it was a straight run to Narrandera.
It was December 2010. We were about to inspect Brian’s 3800-acre property, eleven kilometres east of the town, which provided a well-paying job, plus house, phone and electricity.
We wondered on the drive there about the accommodation. What would it be like? What sort of country would we find in the Riverina? I had visions of languid, flat plains with the odd irrigation canal running through, but the landscape seemed to get better the further east we went.
Not knowing the Riverina area, Bob was wondering about soil types, land contours and water availability. He had asked Brian about yards and fences, and being a stud property, we assumed the cattle would be top quality. As we had only been together for six months, we thought it was time to settle into a house instead of a caravan—to become a working couple, instead of adventurers travelling around Australia, and see if we would continue to hit it off.
31
Carraman
Driving into the ‘Town of Trees’, as Narrandera is known, the road is elevated for half a kilometre as you cross the Murrumbidgee River, which has been known to flood many times. This is the river that Charles Sturt and his men surveyed in a rowboat, all the way down to the Murray River, and on to Lake Alexandria, the entrance to the Southern Ocean and then back again. We marvelled at the determination of these incredible men.
This was Narrandera, with large parks, nineteenth-century buildings, tree-lined streets and a feeling of peace and friendliness. It was the nearest town to Carraman, the property we might be about to manage.
Brian Powel was leaning against his BMW, gazing down the road as we angle parked outside the information centre, where we had planned to meet. He was a fit, perhaps sixty-year-old with trendy glasses. On the footpath in front of us, a six-foot, brightly painted poster of a frilled-neck lizard declared, ‘Meander in Narrandera’. Behind this stretched a cricket oval, green lawns, shady trees, and a very quaint old grandstand. Towards the left was a children’s playground, with a flying fox that I knew my grandkids would just love.
Brian looked towards us as Bob jumped out of the Nissan Patrol, while I casually walked around the vehicle to meet our potential boss. After a few words with Bob he came over to shake my hand. He gave me the once over and said, ‘You won’t like the house.’
Doesn’t sound good, I thought.
Brian had summed us up in a glance. I trusted his judgement immediately though, because he not only owned this Murray Grey and Angus stud but was also a businessman from Sydney.
Following Brian’s BMW through the town of Narrandera, we drove through the shopping centre past nineteenth century buildings, down a wide tree-lined street, and past a large impressive football oval and the show grounds, with an ancient yellow and ochre coloured rotunda standing in the grounds.
‘He seems pleasant enough,’ Bob said.
‘But the house doesn’t sound very hopeful.’
‘If we don’t like the house we won’t stay.’
‘Right.’ We agreed on that.
Five minutes later we were out of town, on the Old Wagga Road, which dated back to the 1830s, when early settlers established properties in the Riverina, and Cobb & Co travelled through Narrandera to Wagga Wagga. It was dirt most of the way, passing stony ridges covered with cypress pine.
What sort of country is this? we wondered, but not for long. After a few more kilometres we left the ridges, suddenly the country opened up to a grassed plain scattered with tall stately trees. We breathed a sigh of relief—river red gum country!
We turned off onto a red dirt road, and half a kilometre further on, we drove through an open gate, passing a dilapidated shearing shed on the neighbouring property Bundidgerry. Around a bend we found a large expanse of water, formed from the waters of the Bundidgerry Creek and the Murrumbidgee River coming down through the Berembed Weir from Burrinjuck Dam. Water was rushing in torrents; cascading through the control gates as we drove across the bridge forming the water gate into this man-made canal. An elevated dirt road, the Canal Bank Road, stretched before us.
The canal had been made back in the 1920s to carry water to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area along the route of the Bundidgerry Creek. From the Murrumbidgee, water is diverted by a control gate at Berembed Station, thirty-four kilometres east, and then follows the natural bed of the Bundidgerry Creek, through Bundidgerry and Carraman, to Narrandera and on to Leeton and Griffith and all of the properties in between.
We drove on feeling more excited than we expected to be. River red gums were on one side, the canal on the other, and an old homestead was standing grandly on a hill in the distance. This was Bundidgerry Station, our neighbouring station, which Carraman had been a part of some years before. We were to find out that this property was one of the most contested properties in the Riverina, having been at the centre of bloody conflicts between armed settlers and the original inhabitants, the Wiradjuri people.
Driving past a yard and some very large sheds, Bob was pleased to note the property was quite well equipped. On an elevated mound beside a creek lined with river red gums and the occasional Weeping Willow stood Brian’s house—it was a new Sidney Williams shed, with a veranda on both sides, that had been made into a very comfortable and chic domain—where we stayed when we first arrived. Ducks by the hundreds sailed gently along the waterway until disturbed by human or vehicle, and the explosion of flapping wings was startling as they escaped.
Brian was most hospitable; wining and dining us with his excellent culinary skills while we discussed the future. The house was used by Brian on his short, frequent visits to the property, sometimes with his wife Corrine or his friends, particularly those from the Bondi Surf Life Saving Club. Corrine and Brian operated three very successful fashion houses in Sydney, but Brian loved his cattle and did
n’t mind the six-hour drive from Sydney every couple of weeks. Corrine, who was a magnificent cook, often accompanied him and we enjoyed their company and the delicious food they brought back from Rose Bay in Sydney.
That afternoon we were taken on an inspection of the two cottages that Brian had told me we wouldn’t like. The first, on stilts 2.5 metres high, was 500 metres away from the homestead—a little close, I thought—with unkempt grounds and dying fruit trees. It must have been built in the 1800s. The front door opened into the bathroom!
‘You could always put up a shower curtain,’ Brian said.
French doors in the lounge room opened onto a three metre drop.
Well, no thank you, I thought. What will we find next?
The second cottage was a kilometre away, to the east of Brian’s house. It stood on a sandy hill, nestled in a group of river red gums and beside a tributary of the Bundidgerry creek. ‘The little house on the prairie’ came to mind.
This house had been occupied by the single manager, who was away at the time, and who was to be replaced by us.
As we entered via the badly peeling veranda door, we could smell the stale mustiness of the interior; see the unwashed pots soaking in the sink; dirty clothes strewn around the bedroom; junk, tools and oil covering the dining room table—typical young single male, I thought. But underneath all that it was basically a comfortable three-bedroom cottage, with a practical and well-designed kitchen, a lounge room with a large window looking out on a timbered landscape, plus a closed-in fireplace—a must for winters, especially in the Riverina. The polished floors needed re-doing, and the air-conditioning was broken. I recoiled from the fat-encrusted stove, but Brian said he would buy a new one for us. After six months living in a caravan, we thought it looked pretty good—especially when Brian promised to have the floors re-sanded and the air-conditioning repaired. We decided to take the job, on the condition that we could still spend Christmas with Penny and Patrick in Sydney in a few weeks’ time. Brian agreed.
With a shake of hands, Bob agreed to stay for three years and was then taken on a tour of the property, while I stayed to unpack. Bob was told that Carraman had nine kilometres of river frontage, and as they drove around he noted quite a few flooded paddocks. Brian wasn’t concerned. Was this unusual? Two days later, after Brian had returned to Sydney, we found out that the Murrumbidgee was to rise to 8.25 metres in the next few days, which would cover the whole property bar two small paddocks. Great! I thought. What have we taken on?
32
Our first flood
Looking out from the homestead you would never have guessed that a drama was developing. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing. But the water was rising. I had put a marked rod in the creek beside the house to measure the rise, and the rod was disappearing into the creek. You could see it slowly coming towards us. Neither of us had ever experienced a flood before, but there was no time to dwell on inexperience, as there was too much to be done. Everything had to be moved to higher ground on the Canal Bank Road: the electric and diesel-powered motors, water pumps from the pivot irrigation system (200 metres in length), three tractors and various other machinery, plus the vehicles, trucks, four-wheel drive motor bikes. And it was up to Bob to move it all.
The only high land on the property was the Large Sand Hill Paddock and the Little Sand Hill Paddock, where the cottage stood. Three hundred cows and 120 calves had been taken there before Brian left. Thankfully, an offer to take our fifty bulls had come from our neighbour Tom Dawson, caretaker on Bundidgerry. The main obstacle was getting them across the control bridge with its bright metal sides and the sounds of rushing water, which would cause the cattle to baulk. Bob came up with a solution: we’d cover the bridge with hessian. We found a huge roll of it in the old shearing shed and also scattered hay across the length of the bridge.
Luckily, by this time Brian had returned and the previous manager had come back to retrieve his gear, so we were fortunate to have much-needed assistance. To prevent the bulls from rushing down the steep sides of the road to the lush grass at the bottom, hay was piled on to the back of the station utility, to tempt them to follow. I drove the utility at the front and the men followed up behind the herd on their quad bikes.
The bulls were walking so well along the Canal Bank Road and were only a few metres from the control gate bridge. But suddenly there was a deafening noise as a motorboat with its motor revving rushed past, just as the bulls were about to tread on this strange hessian-covered contraption in front of them. Despite the hay on the floor of the bridge and the tempting bales on the other side, the bulls jumped and ran for their lives in the opposite direction.
‘We can’t do any more tonight,’ the men said, so home we went, hoping the waters wouldn’t rise too quickly during the night. Lo and behold the next morning we found that most of the bulls had wandered across the bridge on their own and there were only a few stragglers left to muster and push on to the large paddock on Bundidgerry.
Back at the homestead, which was elevated on a 1.5 metre soil pad, the water kept rising. Brian decided to surround the homestead with a wall of sand. Men and machines came out from town, just in time to do the job, building a two-metre wall, all around the house.
In the meantime, my daughter was pleading with me to evacuate. When the water was one to two metres high around the new wall and the water pump in the house stopped working, I started to panic. Being a poor swimmer and an even less capable kayaker—kayaking being our only means of escape if the flood got worse—I suggested to Bob that in the present situation, he was better off without me, and much to my relief he agreed. Brian was taking off again, so I got a lift to Sydney with him. We drove out in the tractor to Brian’s car on the Canal Bank Road. As it happened, I was only away for a few days when the floodwaters started to disperse, so back I came with Brian.
Every day, Bob and Brian would go off on the tractor carrying the kayak on the rear carrier; ploughing through a kilometre of floodwater to the yards. They would then kayak to the next paddock and swim across a flooded creek to another tractor at the hayshed, where they would cart hay to the cattle. They would be gone all morning.
After Brian returned to Sydney, Bob would go out on his own. I worried about him. What if he got washed away? I would never know what happened to him, so I decided I’d best accompany Bob on his dangerous mission each morning to keep an eye on him.
It wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was terrifying, walking across a flooded bridge, with water a metre deep, holding on fiercely to the railing, which was substituted in parts by barbed wire.
Thankfully, a few days later the flood started to subside with no stock losses, and no flooding in the houses or sheds. But what a mess: mud, mud everywhere, and mosquitoes and flies in their millions. All the fences, or what was left of them, were covered in trees, logs and branches.
And who helped Bob repair the fences, pulling away trees and branches, untangling miles of wire and re-fencing? A German couple, both accountants, who were travelling around Australia. They stayed for six weeks, living in the other cottage but being fed by Brian. Their help was greatly appreciated.
After they left, we had help from BlazeAid. At various times, up to thirty people, under the direction of a professional fencing contractor from Victoria, replaced or repaired forty-three kilometres of fencing on Carraman. In Narrandera, the Shire Council looked after the BlazeAid volunteers with accommodation or sites for their caravans, serving breakfast and dinner, with the property owners putting on smoko and helping with food for lunch. We met some lovely people—grey nomads who gave up their time to help Aussie farmers.
33
A lucky escape
It was several weeks after the flood before we could drive out and inspect the town that we would be a part of for the next three years. The main shopping centre of Narrandera was very compact, with everything we needed in two town blocks.
The condition of taking the job at Carraman was that we would
be able to spend Christmas with Penny, Patrick and their family at their holiday house at Pearl Beach on the NSW Central Coast. Brian asked Peter Royal from Narrandera to relieve us. Peter was from England, had grown up on a farm and had great all-round knowledge of farming.
After a most enjoyable Christmas with the family at Pearl Beach, Bob and I parted, going separate ways for a week or two. Bob drove back to Carraman, while I flew to Brisbane and thence to Toowoomba, to pick up my Daihatsu car and household effects, which were still being stored in Jason’s shed.
In Brisbane I stayed with friend Susie Shaw at her unit in St Lucia, which looks over the Brisbane River. It was January 2011, very wet, and you could see where the river had risen.
I had an appointment for the following week with Dr Lumley my surgeon, but he managed to see me a week early, which was a lifesaver in the end. It was still raining when I left to get the bus to Jason’s in Toowoomba.
Jason and his family were away, but I was going to stay a few days to wait for their return. While waiting, Jill and Alan Roughan had invited me to lunch at Toogoolawah. I decided to drive down to the Brisbane Valley, have lunch with them and spend that night with Susan and Christopher McConnel at Cressbrook, but I changed my mind when Susan said, ‘Thea, I wouldn’t come down to Toogoolawah if I were you, the Brisbane River is seriously in flood.’
Both Jill and Susan’s properties are on the banks of the Brisbane River.
So, I stayed in Toowoomba, concentrating on what I needed for Carraman: paintings, linen, crockery and bits and pieces from Jason’s shed that I had left there when I moved out of Straddie. The poor little Daihatsu was nearly bursting at the seams when I finished.
