Diamonds and Dust

by Sheryl McCorry

  We didn’t leave without having made plans. The Managing Director of Australian Land & Cattle Co., Jack Fletcher, made the kind offer for us to manage Kilto Station. By moving there we would still have a hand in the cattle game, but also be only 50 kilometres from one of our 10-acre blocks north of Broome where we wanted to build a log cabin. My parents, who’d been caretaking Kilto, had moved back to Broome, so they would be nearby too.

  The move to Kilto Station was on. At 86,000 acres, you could almost spit from one side to the other. It was the size of a real good horse paddock, made up of sandy ridges and mostly wattle scrub with several nice flats and the odd cabbage gum.

  It would just be my younger brother Michael, Kelly, Leisha, Bob and myself – the smallest camp ever. Kilto was more or less a poddy-dodging block – because it was so small, you couldn’t run enough cattle there to make a living, so the only viable way would have been to set up traps for wandering cleanskins from the neighbouring properties and hope to capture and brand them. There was no money to spend on the place and at the time the company didn’t have a cent to bless itself with. But Bob was happier with the tougher challenge. He and I knew that a darn good cleanup, replacing post and rails, cost nothing, so with the help of Michael we got into it.

  It was a pleasure to have Michael working with us now, as our jack-of-all-trades. We all got along extremely well and the kids just loved him. We cleaned up around the old homestead, removing the odd king brown snake that was in the way, and cut bougainvillea from outside the loo. At night it was hard to tell the difference between a bougainvillea runner and a snake.

  In the cool of the afternoons we gave Kelly and Leisha their first riding lessons on Sirocco, a lovely Welsh Arab stallion. They took turns bouncing around the homestead bareback. Kelly was a natural in the saddle and Leisha developed a little later. This was really an idyllic time in our lives: a beautiful and precious period for our family. McCorry and I had more time with each other and the children, and Michael was our added bonus. I’d often sit on the front steps of the Kilto homestead and watch the children playing with their toys in the red pindan sand that was the colour of dark oxblood. They played well together; Kelly was always helping Leisha push her truck along their sandy little track. He would then have to catch her pet green frog when it escaped and jam it back into the cabin of her truck. The frog was the driver! They were good children and we loved them dearly. I never needed to be told how lucky I was to be a mother.

  The wet season had started to settle in. Bob had ploughed the cleared ground again and now the seed was going in: lucerne, buffel and sorghum. We were amateur farmers just having a go.

  One day Missy, my bull terrier, charged into the old homestead and Sally, the blue heeler, followed as backup. Kelly and Leisha were playing games on my bed. Michael and I were over at the yard working on cattle spears, for setting up traps for cleanskins. With the dogs going berserk and sounding aggressive and agitated, we were alerted to the danger. Yelling, ‘Snake!’ we sprinted across to the homestead. Michael grabbed a post-hole shovel and I grabbed the station killer rifle. We burst into the room. The kids looked up from their game, wondering what the heck was going on. Guided by the dogs’ incessant barking at one point in the wall, Michael launched the shovel and made a hole about twice the size of a dinner plate, poked in the handle of the shovel, and felt something soft. I handed him my bedside torch.

  ‘Come here and have a look at this,’ Michael said. It was the biggest and fattest king brown snake I had ever seen. He had been living well on the oversized rats. I had to walk past the snake to get out the door, with Kelly on one hip and Leisha on the other. Michael kept an eye on the thing. A snake this size would have enough venom to kill a horse in 20 minutes, so he wasn’t spending another night with me. I put the children safely down and got a gun. I shone the torch down on the king brown to get some idea of where his head might be, then stood back and fired, blowing another hole in the wall. There was blood and fibro everywhere. The brown really came to life, but seemed too big to get out. Mick broke more of the wall down and pulled the big bugger outside to finish him off.

  Early in April 1981, after only 18 months at Kilto, we were offered the manager’s position on both Louisa and Bohemia Downs stations, adding up to 2.5 million acres owned by the Australian Land & Cattle Co. Bob and I sat up that night and gave it some thought. We had achieved what we wanted on this break, planted more mango trees on our block and started the log cabin. We were champing at the bit for more of a challenge and some excitement in our working lives, and this sounded good.

  There were several things that bothered me, though. For the 2.5 million acres of these stations, there had only ever been 600 to 800 head of cattle trucked per year. That was reasonably small numbers for large acres. Also, managers in the past had spent an average of two years on the stations and moved on. On the upside, there was a large permanent Aboriginal camp on the property and they were keen to work.

  I suggested to Bob that we go and look it over first. His reply was for us to take the position and if for some reason we were not happy, we could always leave. Bob had his way.

  Moving day, Friday 17 April 1981, came and the easterly breeze was gently carrying the banging and rattling sounds of a vehicle along the corrugated sandy track into Kilto.

  ‘Here they come,’ yelled Kelly, his blue eyes lighting up.

  He and Leisha stuffed his metal toy Cat dozer, a gift from Mrs Higgins of Water Bank Station, into the front of the Ford. This was a very precious gift; therefore the tucker box would have to travel in the back. After a quick cuppa with Nan and Grandpa, who were moving back to Kilto to take over its management from us, we were chugging down the track towards the main road.

  Occasionally glancing into the rear-vision mirror, I felt happy to see our convoy steadily moving along together. It was a great new adventure, since neither Bob, Michael nor I had ever been to Louisa or Bohemia stations.

  My little man Kelly was my ‘spotter’, sitting up high to keep a lookout for straying cattle that would occasionally drift across the main road. It was also an opportunity to draw his sister’s attention to any birds or animals that he thought might interest her. Before leaving the station we had all agreed to pull over under the first shady tree beyond the Fitzroy and have a corned beef sandwich and a pannikin of well-earned tea. It was also a good opportunity for the kids to stretch their legs. All fed and watered, Michael checked the horses, Bob checked the load of stores and fuel, and we were off on the last leg of our adventure.

  The two stations were semi-desert, slightly undulating spinifex country. The Mary River ran the full length of Louisa Downs and a big watercourse called Christmas Creek ran through Bohemia Downs. As we travelled through its vastness we couldn’t help but gaze in wonder at the rich ochre- and cream-coloured plateaux away in the distance on what must have been Bohemia. We were travelling through undulating country with many deep but narrow creeks on the Louisa side. My body tingled with excitement. I was wanting to look about and take in as much of this new country as I could, while struggling with the wheel of the F100 to stop it from jumping all over the road like a disturbed kangaroo.

  The road was deeply corrugated and I very nearly missed the Twin Sisters, two hills that rise like perfect breasts out of the spinifex and mark the way to the Louisa turn-off. I carefully turned in and followed the two-wheel track. I could see no sign of gates, fences or yards until I spotted the horse paddock and then the homestead. Kelly jumped out at the gate, gave Leisha a helping hand down, and they unhooked the chain together. As the gates swung open, huge smiles lit up their beautiful faces as they looked back at me. Yes, we were there at last.

  The children walked the hundred metres as I crept along, seeing for the first time our low-slung homestead atop the red gravel rise. The homestead was fronted by the airstrip, with a huge jacaranda tree and low scrub and spinifex at the sides. The only other trees of any height were the river gums bordering the Mary River, which flowed
around the foot of the hill just below the homestead. The lawn seemed to be more brown and brittle than green. The house itself was old, made of fibro and corrugated iron but in reasonably good order. The back veranda with its cracked cement floor and fly screens and huge old dining table looked like it would become a very happy place for smokos and evening meals. The enclosed front veranda was equally welcoming. I knew that I could make this a good home.

  It was time to visit the camp to meet and greet the Aboriginal people. I found it silent and eerie, about 30 old humpies and bow sheds – shelters made from spinifex and chicken wire – billy cans still hanging from meathooks, flour drums that were used for water containers or chairs, old wartime camp stretcher beds and about three dozen hairless, blue-eyed inbred dogs cowering in the shadows. There wasn’t one person in sight.

  These people were so proud of their humpies that they’d swept the full expanse of their camps so often as to create little gullies around the perimeter. I could tell from the sweepings that the people had only been gone one to three days. We deduced that they must have moved to the neighbouring towns and were homeless, thinking the white managers had abandoned them. Whenever there were changes of management, the Aboriginal people tended to take fright, fearing that new managers might evict them – even though the camps were, in reality, their home.

  On Easter Monday, a young fellow with a wife and baby drove in from the main road looking for work. He confessed that he had no money or food and was desperate. But Danny said he had some mechanical knowledge, so we put him on the payroll to offside Michael. Later that same day we had a visit from an old Aboriginal fellow called Alex Gordon. Alex had a sad tale to tell.

  ‘Louisa my home country, Missus, we been told to leave, new manager come. Please, the peoples are hungry; they have no meat or money.’

  ‘We don’t know this country, old man,’ I said. ‘We need stockmen, good stockmen, who belong to this country, who know this country well. In fact we need them by Monday; otherwise I will bring Aboriginal people from the Napier area.’

  Alex said he would pass on the message, so I fuelled his old bomb car with super petrol and gave him some beef to carry the message to the other stockmen.

  Two weeks later we had more Aboriginal stockmen than we could possibly afford to hire. Alex, being the elder in the camp, with a good knowledge of this Louisa and Bohemia area and a good horseman as well, became our head stockman. We left the drafting of the stock camp to three older men: Alex, Ringer and Frank. We knew they would select well.

  There were more visitors. Bull Pup and Sally, our two faithful dogs – Missy had died when we were at Napier – drew my attention to the front gate, where, in front of her white dust-covered Toyota, stood a blonde girl in her mid-twenties.

  ‘I’m Julie,’ she said. ‘I’m the travelling kindy teacher.’

  Her arms were loaded with educational toys and story-books. I welcomed Julie with a quick cuppa while the house staff mustered all the kindy-aged kids, including Kelly and Leisha, onto the back homestead lawn under the shade of a beautiful mature jacaranda. The back lawn soon became a hive of excitement. Leisha and her little friends were willing participants, happily drawing and painting. Kelly and Jeffrey, his Aboriginal mate, were forever escaping school and climbing onto the laundry roof.

  Later the same afternoon, I was feeling a little tired and weary after a trip to Halls Creek hospital with a sick child from the camp; then I’d had to wait an hour at the station turn-off for the Greyhound bus to drop off Sharon, the station cook. Katie, my tall, slim house help, came running into the kitchen.

  ‘Missus, Missus, that Kelly boy, Jeffrey and that baby girl Leisha, they gunna jump, Missus!’

  She grabbed me by the arm and hauled me outside to the laundry shed. Sure enough, on the corrugated-iron laundry roof I counted three children. There was Jeffrey with his thin black legs dangling over the edge and Leisha and Kelly standing with what looked to be homemade parachutes tied loosely around their waists. A cold shiver ran through my body, knowing one of them could break an arm or leg, or at worst break their neck.

  ‘Sit down, sit down carefully,’ I told them gently so as not to frighten them. Jack, who worked around the house yard, grabbed a ladder from the nearby shed and I coaxed them down. Kelly was five and Leisha three at the time.

  In the weeks following our arrival on Louisa we covered as much of our 2 million acres as we could, assessing the work that needed doing and the potential of the place. The horse paddock turned out to be the only decent paddock between both properties, and there were many sorry sights of burnt, rusted, twisted barbed wire lying around from years gone by. I couldn’t blame past managers for this neglect, as there were never enough funds. All of us had battled along without wages for months on end. Some were strong enough to hang in; others simply retired or pulled the pin. Who could blame them? This was hard country which ran more or less on a 350-millimetre annual rainfall. A tough country for the white man to survive in and make a profit from. Many hard men had tried and many of them had walked off with nothing but their swag.

  There was a lot of excitement at the station as the stockmen got their new gear and swags ready to move out on the muster. We had more men than we needed, but the extras just wanted to work for their keep. Some of the stockmen’s wives joined up as cooks and about half a dozen kids from the camp decided to come for the ride.

  We set out to find a reason for the previous years’ low cattle turnoff numbers – the cattle sent to the meatworks. Maybe past management had been covering and mustering the same country, the same old pattern year in and year out. We explained to old Alex that we wanted to muster new country, extend our work to the boundary of our properties first, and then, with subsequent musters, come back in stages towards the homestead. The reason? The cattle in this country were wild, cunning and mostly rogue. As soon as they picked up strange movement and sounds, they scattered among the desert sandhills, spinifex ridges and rugged ranges. They favoured a peaceful existence, and who could blame them? By mustering boundaries first we reasoned that cleanskin cattle not picked up in our first sweep would flee inwards, and eventually be mustered anyway.

  ‘Lead us to places that no other managers have mustered,’ McCorry said to Alex. He lit up his tailormade, tapped Little Arab on the flank, and men and horses moved out.

  Alma, the yard man’s wife, and I would hole up in camp each morning baking fresh damper in the coals and boiling salt beef in flour drums for the day’s dinner camp. We would then follow the cattle tracks until the mob was in sight. With Jack and the help of several stockmen, we would erect the portable yard panels. Once the cattle were yarded, the horses could be hobbled out for the night. A week after leaving the station, the first cattle were picked up on the open watershed country out from Christmas Creek. By this time we were travelling through some rough areas new to both Bob and me. Prior to leaving the station we had studied the old maps. It soon became apparent that we were close to the invisible boundary of a million-acre neighbouring station, Go Go. I had suggested carrying the maps, but Bob’s answer was always that the old Aboriginal stockmen knew their country. I suppose I wasn’t really worried that we would get totally lost, but I was concerned that we stay on the right side of this invisible frontier.

  I rode over to Bob and mentioned my fears. Feeling the same, he beckoned old Alex over.

  ‘Where are we, old man?’ he asked.

  ‘A little bit Go Go,’ was his reply. He said no more and rode away. We were on Go Go Station, it seemed. I was worried about trespassing, but Bob was happy to turn a blind eye, as Alex was the elder and guide. In any case, there were no cattle there.

  Several days later we crossed over a rough rock ridge. Looking east I could see the outline of a huge square abutment. Both Bob and I had flown past this landmark several times on our way to Halls Creek. We also knew that at the foot of this landmark was a big spring known as Morgan’s Grave. At last we had some idea of our position. Bob reasoned that
we could be travelling along the edge of Fossil Downs country – another neighbour with whom we shared a boundary. He again beckoned Alex to ride over to him and asked the same question as he had before. In other words, Wherethehellarewe?

  ‘A little bit Fossil,’ was the reply. Bob had asked Alex to lead us into country where no other manager had gone before. He had done that and more!

  As we did all our life mustering vast areas in the Kimberley, we followed this rule: let go all the branded cattle that did not belong to us, but hold onto all the cleanskins. So Bob decided to work back towards Morgan’s Grave, which was on Louisa country, and then head home.

  Kelly and Leisha were always with me in the stock-camp, and on the days I mustered with the boys Alma our cook would watch the children closely for me. But this was the second day Leisha had been showing signs of being unwell. She was tired, miserable and now running a high temperature, and Panadol, cool wet flannels and an abundance of water were not easing it. I was concerned. Bob’s old Trager two-way radio had seen better days, and I was angry he would not carry the newer Codan. He seemed intractable lately and kept moving along as if we didn’t seem to exist. He had a goal and was heading for it, alone if he had to. He had no fear. Whenever I demurred or raised a question about our whereabouts, he ignored me. He had a cold, tough edge, even with his own daughter sick. Instead of talking to me, he’d ride along with the mob while we followed in the vehicles. I was beginning to think he belonged, spiritually, to the long-gone era of the bushrangers.

  With the Trager too hemmed-in among the ranges, crackling and static dominated when we tried to communicate with the Flying Doctor. I decided to take the Toyota on the rocky two-hour drive to the homestead, with nothing to follow but our own earlier tracks. With some trepidation, alone with Kelly and Leisha, I was able to follow our tracks back to the gravel road before sundown. Finding renewed confidence, I steadily progressed towards the homestead. Tuning in the Codan back there, I was able to make contact with the doctor, who prescribed some antibiotics that we already had in the Flying Doctor medical kit. I gave both children a warm flannel wash before settling them in bed.