by Sally Morgan
After that, we kept walking until it was dark. Luckily, we came across an old abandoned house. It was falling down, but it was better than nothing. We got some old, dry gum leaves and sticks from the bush and lit a fire. Then we settled down for the night. There was an occupied house further down the hill, but we’d been careful to avoid it.
We was just all driftin’ off to sleep, it was a cool, clear night, when suddenly, we heard a woman’s voice drift by on the wind. ‘I tell you, Bill, there’s someone in that old house, I can see the smoke coming through the roof!’ We all looked up, there was no roof. We quickly put the fire out and sat close together, ready to run if we had to. Then, the man’s voice drifted by, ‘Shut up woman! You mind everyone’s business but your own!’ Their light went out and we never heard anyone. We didn’t light the fire again, even though we were cold. It was a long time before any of us slept.
Early next morning, we made our way to the railway line. There was a goods train waiting there. I took my two boomerangs and walked up to the engineer. ‘Please mister,’ I said, ‘will you swap two boomerangs for a ride on your train?’
‘No!’ he said.
When the train pulled out, we jumped on a wagon that was only half full. The train passed through Northam and we finally ended up at Kellerberrin. We didn’t know where the train was headed, but riding on that wagon was a lot better than walking.
At Kellerberrin station, the stationmaster spotted us. He came running over and hauled us down. ‘You’re the boys that are wanted by the police, aren’t you?’ he said. He had his hand on my shoulder. I wondered what he was going to do with us. He looked us over real good and then said, ‘Right boys, you see that building over there, that’s the police station. I want you boys to go and present yourselves to the constable, he’ll know what to do with you.’
He pointed again to the small building further down the track and sent us on our way. We walked slowly down the track, we wasn’t sure if he was watching us or not. When we got near some bush, we veered off and ran for our lives.
No one chased after us, so, after a while, we stopped. We were starving hungry by then. We found some mouldy bread and an old milk can. We ate the bread and scraped out what was left from inside of the can, then we set off again.
We kept following the railway line. Just as the sun was setting, we reached Hines Hill. We were dog tired by then. We sat down at the bottom of a hill to rest. Suddenly, we spotted a tall man coming slowly down the hill towards us. The sun was in our eyes, so we were frightened he was a policeman, but we were too tired to get up and run.
He walked right up and said, ‘What are you boys doing here? Where have you come from?’ We told him our story, he looked at the scars on our legs and shook his head. He told us he was a farmer. We asked him if he could give us some flour to make damper and some tea and sugar. He went away and came back with some tucker. He warned us to be careful, he said the police had been asking about us.
After he left, we built a fire in the bush, we still had a few matches left and we wanted to fill our bellies real quick.
Just as we were making damper, a man appeared from nowhere and shouted, ‘What are you boys up to?’ He said he was the stationmaster from Hines Hill and he’d spotted our smoke and tracked us down. We were scared, tired and starving, we didn’t have the heart or the strength to run away. We waited for him to tell us he was going to turn us in to the police. He walked up close to us and looked us up and down. ‘Where’d you boys get those scars?’ We told him our story and he took pity on us. ‘Put out that fire, boys,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to a friend of mine. You’ll eat better there.’
We followed him through the bush, we were too tired to care where he took us. We ended up at a small house. It was owned by a contractor with three daughters. He was a widower. They sat us down at a table inside the house. They took us inside, just like that. Wasn’t that something? The girls giggled when they looked at us. They cooked us a big meal and we were allowed to eat as much as we liked. Can you believe that? It was sure better than damper, they even let us sleep the night there.
The next morning, Tommy decided to strike off by himself. He was from the Goldfields and he wanted to get back home. He missed the people. Pinjarra Frank and me didn’t know what to do. We thought we’d just keep on walking.
Then, the contractor came to us and said, ‘Boys, how’d you like to stay with me for two weeks and help with some fencing?’ I can’t pay you, but you’ll have your tucker.’ That was good enough for us. We didn’t have anywhere else to go.
We helped with the fencing and whatever else he wanted doing. The two weeks turned into over a month and we were still there. The girls cooked us good meals. They were allowed to play with me, but not with Pinjarra Frank. He was real dark and he didn’t work as hard as me.
One day, a man came by. He was a good-looking man with a big moustache. He came in a sulky, all dressed up. At first, when I saw him coming, I thought he was a policeman, and I nearly ran away. He pulled up at the house and said to the contractor, ‘I’m after a boy who can ride. I hear you’ve got two boys, can they ride? There’s jobs going if they can.’
‘I can ride,’ I said. I prayed the horse wouldn’t throw me as soon as I jumped on. The contractor said, ‘Stay with us, we’re fond of you. Let Pinjarra go.’ He was a good man, that contractor, but his house was close to the railway line and, all the time I’d been there, I’d been lookin’ over my shoulder, wonderin’ when the police would catch up with me. I decided to go with the stranger. McQuarie was his name.
McQuarie climbed down from the sulky and unhitched two horses from the back. ‘On you get,’ he said. Pinjarra leapt on, but they had to give me a leg up, I was too small. I clung onto the reins and mane and prayed with all my heart I wouldn’t fall off. For twenty-five miles McQuarie drove the sulky, and for twenty-five miles I bumped up and down, barely hanging in the saddle. Jig-jog, jig-jog, I went. My bottom and the insides of my legs were painful sore. I kept telling myself the next hill would be the last one, but they kept going on and on. We went through forest country they were clearing for a new settlement, then one more hill, then Nungarin. The sun had set by then. It was teatime. That was my first start in life.
The next day, McQuarie’s son Ernie came to me and said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you the ropes. I hear you need some riding lessons.’ That day, I learnt to canter so my body didn’t jolt around so much. My legs and bottom were still store, but I wasn’t giving up that easy.
Ernie took me out to one of the runs and we stopped at a lake. He reined his horse in, climbed down and lay on the grass. I did the same. I thought he was going to tell me about the run. He said nothing. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, took out a plug of tobacco from his pouch and rolled a big, fat cigarette. Then he smoked it real slow. All the time, he was looking at the lake. When he finished, I sat up. I thought, now he’s going to tell me about the run. He didn’t even look at me, he just lay back, pulled a book out from his pocket, and started to read. He turned each page real slow and deliberate like. I sat looking at the lake. We stayed like that all day, not talking, just laying there. When it was dark, he said, ‘Right, let’s go.’ They were the only words he said to me. We rode back to the station and had tucker.
I had tucker in the kitchen. The white workers sat at one table, the blacks at another. McQuarie and his family ate in the formal dining room. That night, I slept in the stripper. I lifted up the top and crawled inside. Later I got an old sheepskin for a mattress and, sometimes, I had a blanket too, if there was one to spare. Later on, they floored the barn ready for barn dances and I slept in there with the horses. I reckon I must have slept in that barn for well over two years.
The following day, Ernie took me to a different run. It was along way out. By and by, he reined in his horse, climbed down and sat on the ground. He pulled out a plug of tobacco and rolled another big, fat cigarette. We did the same thing we had the day before.
The third day was
the same, except in a different place. I soon learnt that Ernie was not only lazy, but greedy, too. He never shared anything. Not his tobacco, not his food, nothing. You could be starving and he wouldn’t offer you anything. Later on, McQuarie built a store and Ernie would sneak in there and eat big tins of peaches when we were supposed to be boundary riding. He never offered me a drop. He’d open up a big tin of peaches and scoop them out with a spoon. He’d lean against the counter, look me straight in the eye and eat some more.
Eventually, Ernie ran the store and all the farmers who lived nearby bought on credit, payable after harvest. No one paid their debts, Ernie kept on eating and eating and the store went bankrupt.
As for me, I decided never to worry about tucker. When I was out all day minding the cattle, they only gave me one piece of bread and a thin slice of pork. The meat was so thin that, if you held it up to the sun, you could see through it.
After I’d been there a while, McQuarie told me I was now a stockman. From then on I took my orders from him. He said my conditions were five bob a year, my horse and saddle, board and tucker. I never did get that five bob a year, but then, I wasn’t worried about wages. I had a home.
In three years, I was head stockman and mustering cattle all over the district. It was pioneer days, then. They were just clearing Nungarin and the railway line wasn’t even there, only the earthworks.
When there was no stock work to be done, I spent my time grubbing boab tea-tree and clearing more and more land ready for cropping. Other times, I did errands for McQuarie, driving him and his friends here and there in the sulky.
All this time, I went under the name of Marble. I thought it might give me some protection from the police, they were still looking for me. McQuarie told me, ‘Marble, if you ever see the police round here, you hide, and I’ll tell them to take Pinjarra Frank instead. I’ll send you word when they’ve gone.’
McQuarie reckoned Pinjarra didn’t work as hard as me. Thing was, they didn’t want him, he was real black. They wanted me.
Even though Pinjarra was older than me, I was his boss. Pinjarra was lazy, and, in the end, McQuarie gave him the sack.
McQuarie was a good man, he never growled at me. I remember once, I was in the barn putting blinkers on a horse. I had to climb up onto the manger to do it. I was only small. It took me a long time to grow. McQuarie came in and saw me and laughed, ‘Hey Marble,’ he said, ‘when are you going to grow?’ I didn’t say nothin’. I’m like a tree that never been watered. I just thought to myself, yeah, I don’t get enough to eat.
Dick McQuarie, the other son, used to give me clothes. They were always too big, but I just rolled them up till I grew into them. They fitted me for years.
Sometimes, McQuarie would ask me to drive a visitor around or help someone with work they were doing. Everyone wanted me in those days.
I remember this fella Baird. They call the shop he owned in Perth Myers, these days. It used to be called Bairds. He came to Nungarin once to help build a house for his brother. I took him out with his tools and he got interested in me. One day he said, ‘Would you like to come to Perth, Marble? I’ll look after you, give you a good schooling.’ I started to think about that hiding I got at the mission. That was supposed to be schooling. I thought, nobody’s going to school me again. Now if he had’ve said, ‘Marble, what if I take you back to Corunna Downs?’ I might have gone, but school, that was where they gave you a good hiding for doing nothing. Seems funny, thinking about it all now. If I’d have taken his offer, I might have ended up as a shopwalker for Bairds.
I decided to stay with McQuarie. He never said, ‘How long are you gunna be?’ I was my own boss. He never gave me any money and I never worried about it. I was just growing up and there was nothing to spend money on.
One chap McQuarie had me drive round was a big squatter from Victoria by name of Syd Stock. I had to take him by buggy to his brothers in Nungarin. One night, we was sitting by the fire, the air was real cool and quiet like, when he turned to me and said, ‘Would you like to come back to Victoria with me, Marble? I’ve got stations there and horses and buggies too. You can work on one of my stations.’ I looked at him, he was a good man. The kind of man I liked. Then I said, ‘No. I don’t want to go far away from the North. I might never come back. This land is my home.’
Now, that could have been an opportunity missed. He was an old man and he trusted me. I was young then, with no ties, just a young, working man. He might have given me a station. I knew he was a good man because, whenever we went to the hotel, he never put me outside or cast me away like most white men. Where he went, I went. He kept me with him always. Treated me like his equal. That was a rare thing in those days. A thing to be treasured.
Everybody seemed to like me then. I couldn’t make out why. I’d look in a mirror and what’d I see. Me. An ugly bloke like me. What did they see in me? But each time someone asked me to go with them, I said no.
One day, Dick said to me, ‘Come on, Marble,’ we’ll take you to the Northam Show.’ They gave me new clothes and everything. They stayed in their Aunty’s pub, the Shamrock Hotel, and I camped in the horses’ manger nearby. I wasn’t very big. I used to sit on the beer cases outside the hotel and eat my tucker.
I loved that Show. They had merry-go-rounds and all sorts of things I hadn’t seen before.
I met a bloke there, Jack Gollan was his name. He was an announcer at the races and owned delivery stables in Northam. He used to come and talk a lot to me after we met. He wanted me to work for him too.
When I went to the Show week races, it was the only time I hit the boss for some money. Dick said to the boss, ‘Give me some money,’ so I said, ‘Me too, boss.’ He gave me half a sovereign. When we got to the races, I gave it to a bloke to put on a winner for me. I never saw that half sovereign again.
I had to watch from outside, they said I didn’t have enough money to bet and pay me entry fee to the races as well. Inside, they had two big pots of hot dogs boiling up. I could smell them and I was real hungry. My money was gone, so what could I do. Later, two blokes in a sulky came through from New Norcia. They gave me a ride back to the pub.
As far as crops go, 1911 was a good harvest for nearly everyone. It was never as good after that. Dry conditions seemed to set in. Good rain fell in some places, like Bruce Rock. The farmers there were getting two bags to the acre, but it was lighter soil. If you were cropping in heavy soil, it was like trying to plough without hitching up the horses. Things got bad and we took three hundred head of cattle further north, trying to find better grazing and water.
It was July 1912, miners were finding gold at Paynes Find then. There was traffic on the roads. When the bit of water we found finally dried up, we took the cattle back to Nungarin. In the end, we had to sell most of them.
We kept working McQuarie’s station, but things got worse and worse. The first time McQuarie went broke was because everyone owed him money. All the farmers were in debt to him and none of them could pay their bills. The bailiff came to sell off the stock and the machinery. All the farmers got together and agreed not to bid against McQuarie. He used his sister’s money and got everything back for ten shillings or a pound. The bailiff didn’t know what to do. McQuarie was the only one bidding, the others were just standing around, watching.
After that first time, McQuarie got the other farmers to help him clear a lot of land for extra cropping. He wasn’t going to get nothin’ out of that crop, just enough to pay his bills. Jackatee and me cleared even more land and put in more crops. We pulled out big boab trees, raked the roots together and burnt them. Then, we put the crop in. Jackatee was a good worker. He was real black. At night, we’d boil our billy in the bush and cook pancakes for tea on the forge. That was all the tucker we had. He was a good friend, old Jackatee.
Anyway, turned out the crop was better than before, but still not good enough to save McQuarie. A bad drought came and finished him off. There was no water, no feed for the animals. Dick and me had to
shoot poor old Bess. She was a good horse, but there was nothin’ for her to eat. What stock there was was in bad condition. We had to lift them all up between sticks and a chain to treat their sores. Then we let them go. Poor buggers. There was no food. Some of them were too far gone to be helped.
McQuarie said to Dick, ‘Dick, you can stop on the station. There’s plenty of seed and super. You could put in another crop.’
Dick said, ‘No fear, I’m not doin’ that. There’s a war comin’, I’m off to fight.’ Ernie left, too. They were very lucky, because they could have been shot. They came back at the end of the war and stayed with their Aunty.
I stopped with McQuarie till he was real broke. The farmers still owned him money and the bailiff was coming again. Dalgetys sold him up. They didn’t worry about the man battling on the land, they just wanted their money. And if the land didn’t come into fruition like it should, they sold you up. I finally left with Jackatee in 1913. There was no food for me then either.
We went into Nungarin, trying to find work. We’d do anything. One chap saw us in the street and asked us to help him load a truck. He gave us threepence. Threepence, for all that work! We bought some bread and ate it. We were starvin’ hungry. A big load of sandalwood came in and the storekeeper came over and said, ‘You boys want work loading that sandalwood?’
‘Yes,’ we said. We were desperate, we didn’t ask the pay.
When we finished loading twelve ton of sandalwood, he gave us half a crown. Then, we gave it back to him in his store for some sardines and biscuits, and that was the end of that. It seems like the whitefella doesn’t want the blackfella to get a foot in this world.
I had no money, no job. I was about twenty, twenty-one then. I could see I couldn’t live in Nungarin. I decided to strike out for Goomalling. There were two friends of mine who wanted to go there, too, Billy One Moon and Hunting Maggie. Hunting Maggie was blind. Billy was her husband and he used to lead her along the road with a stick. I called them Aunty and Uncle. I wasn’t in my home country and I thought if any other natives asked who I was, it would give me some protection.
