by Mary Durack
‘Cheerily sings the drover
With his stock so fat and sleek,
Up to the border and over
His fortune for to seek.
Merrily sings the drover,
For with luck upon his side,
There’ll be Mitchell grass and clover
And creeks ten miles wide.
Dismally sings the drover
For himself and his luck fell out,
But still he rides on like a lover
Into the arms of the drought.
Mournfully sings the drover
As his stock die one by one,
Wild dogs and eagles hover
And bones turn white in the sun.
Wearily sighs the drover
As he lies him down on the plain
To sleep with his swag for a cover
’Til the grass springs green again.
Eerily wails the drover
When the drought wind sweeps the sky
And men say “Hear the plover!”
As he moves the ghost mob by.’
7
Into the Unknown
AFTER their marriage, early in 1865, John and Mary Costello prepared to set out again to the far north. They had taken up a block in the spring country between the Warrego and Paroo Rivers, just south of the Queensland border. The season was then said to have broken well in the north and they thought this would at least be a good place on which to start, though, later on, they thought they might expand into better country.
John’s mother had protested but she soon saw that her son was not to be put off. The thought, however, of the brave young couple going off alone into the wilderness had been more than either she or her husband could endure and they decided at the last to leave a manager in charge of their own property and accompany them.
Patsy would also have liked to join the party with his wife and baby daughter, but the child became ill, and he knew she could not have survived a journey to the lonely north. He waited, hoping that she would become stronger and in the meantime two sturdy sons, Michael and John, were born. Still the little girl did not improve and it was not until after her death, at three years old, that the family decided at last to join the Costellos at Waroo Springs.
They had heard from their Costello relatives that settling in had proved difficult. The seasons had not been very good and some of the springs they had thought permanent were drying up.
At first the natives had given no trouble, but later they had taken to chasing and spearing the stock and had killed one of their stockmen while he lay asleep in his swag. None the less a few natives had drifted in to the homestead and were making good stockmen. One in particular, whom they called Soldier, was an outstanding native, very tall and straight and a splendid rider. This boy had become devoted to the family and had told them that there was better country and some splendid, big rivers somewhere to the northwest. John Costello suggested that when Patsy and the rest of the family joined him they should abandon Waroo Springs and move on together in search of this promised land.
Soon the family in Goulburn was ready for the northward trek, with their two covered waggons with bunks inside that could be folded up when not in use, two drays full of equipment and stores for the journey. Everything they possessed was to go with them, including their furniture, their Irish linen and lace, their silver, china and glassware, for this time there was to be no turning back.
Patsy’s greatest sorrow was parting with his mother, who was forced to stay behind with her youngest, unmarried daughter and little son Jerry. It was arranged that she should divide her time between Darby Durack’s family and her married daughters until, when a permanent settlement had been made, they might all move north to be together.
It was in June 1867 that the family cavalcade moved out of Goulburn to catch up with the stock already started north along the Lachlan in charge of hired stockmen. Mrs Patsy, with the two-year-old Michael and the baby John, travelled in the buggy with her husband, while Stumpy Michael and another assistant brought on the heavier waggons. At night the entire party camped together, fires were lit, and billies, cooking pots and camp ovens in which bread had been rising on the way came rattling off the cook’s waggon. Every man took his turn at watching the cattle while the others gathered at the fire, and sometimes Patsy would liven the party up by playing his fiddle and by making up rhymes of his own to sing to well-known tunes. Soothed by the sound of music and voices the cattle would graze peacefully, some edging close to the camp and throwing themselves down within a few yards of the fire.
‘Merrily sings the drover
With his stock so fat and sleek,
Up to the border and over,
His fortune for to seek. . . .’
The first stages were fairly easy travelling, over wheel-made tracks and past farms and stations, and they would sometimes stay a day or two with hospitable bush people, who were touched to see the little family forging on into the never-never. They would stock up at bush towns, that grew sparser as they went along, until two hundred miles north of Goulburn all signs of settlement petered out and they followed a compass course through more or less trackless bush.
They reached Bourke after about three months on the track, and having stocked up with stores for the last time, moved north-west to the Costello station between the rivers. We can picture the joy of that reunion, all the questions and exchange of news. The young Costellos now had a two-year-old son to compare with Patsy’s eldest Michael. They were still full of hope and good cheer, but as little rain had fallen in those parts for a long time Costello was anxious to move on to a big permanent waterhole he had discovered on Mobel Creek, over the Queensland border.
‘We can make a depot there for a while,’ he said, ‘and after rain we can move out and find still better country further west.’
As there was no hope of selling out in such times it was simply a matter of packing up, mustering the stock and abandoning the little bush homestead to the wilderness.
The boy Soldier and a few of his relatives came along with the family when they set out at last into the trackless land. There was a little more feed and water than on their previous, ill-fated journey, but as they pushed north of the border they could see that the drought was closing in on them again. The heat was almost unendurable and before long most members of the party became sick through drinking stagnant water.
At this stage Patsy and John Costello may well have regretted bringing their women and children into this desolate place. They could expect no help from the outside world and knew they were completely at the mercy of the season and the unpredictable black tribespeople. In these times it is hard to believe that men took their families into this unknown land, and it is hard even to write that the Costellos’ little son actually died on this desolate journey and was buried in a lonely grave beside the track.
Still they struggled on and at last reached their temporary destination on Mobel Creek. The waterhole, between tattered paperbarks and coolabahs, was the colour of mud, but it was good water for a drought year and there was just enough grass about to keep the stock going for a little while. The men put up slab huts and a yard, watched their stock and soon got on good terms with the local blacks, who came shyly in to look at the strange newcomers and their children.
An old man with a long bone through his nose . . .
One fierce-looking old man with a long bone through his nose and many tribal scars on his body at once attached himself to Patsy, quickly picked up a little English and even learned to ride a horse and tail the cattle. Mrs Patsy was frightened of him at first, especially when she found him one day lifting the net and peering at her baby son. She was sure such a terrifying looking savage could be up to no good, but later on she realized that old Cobby, as they called him, had taken them to his kindly heart and would risk his life to protect them.
Not long after their arrival at Mobel Creek a baby girl was born to John and Mary Costello. Then, like a blessing from heaven,
the rain came at last, filling the rivers and tributaries and bringing sweet, new grass to the bare plains. The stock fattened quickly on this good pasture and John Costello decided to drive a mob of two hundred horses to sell in South Australia. It was a journey that only the most skilled and confident bushmen could have undertaken, for most of the 800 mile journey was still unexplored and certainly no one had ever dreamed of taking stock that way before.
As helpers Costello took his wife’s brother, Jim Scanlan, and the two faithful Waroo Springs natives, Soldier and Scrammy Jimmy, and they proved an excellent team. Their route lay west to the Wilson River, south down the broken watercourse of the Strzelecki to Lake Blanche and Lake Frome and thence to the stock market at Kapunda, near Adelaide. They set out as though such journeys were very much a matter of course, but when they reached their destination without the loss of a single beast people could hardly credit they had come that hazardous distance from Queensland’s arid west. They were received like heroes and people for miles around turned up to the auction sale. Their horses brought £15 a head, which, multiplied by 200, was a small fortune in 1868. They were jubilant as they set off for their home in the wilderness, wondering whether, by now, Patsy and his brother had found the better country for which they had meantime gone in search.
8
Thylungra
ALTHOUGH there was good water in Mobel Creek, the settlers had remarked that few birds gathered there compared with the great flocks often seen flying to the north-west. Patsy had questioned the blacks about it but they would shake their heads and mutter about unfriendly tribespeople.
‘Very bad blackfellow ober dere,’ Cobby warned him, though he admitted at last there was a big waterhole in that direction and that he had several times visited the treacherous Boontamurra, or Carpet Snake people, who camped around it. He explained that as he was the bearer of important messages from his own tribe, the Murragon, they had not dared to harm him. That was the native law, but they were not likely to be so forbearing of other strangers.
Patsy, who had learned that most natives had little good to say of other tribes, took no notice of this. In his own experience he had always found the wild people friendly and helpful if approached in the right way and was not at any time afraid to go among them. Unlike many white men of the times, he would never ride into or near a native camp with a lethal weapon, for he believed that the best protection against attack was an attitude of confidence and trust.
Seeing that he was determined to go in search of this waterhole to the north-west, Cobby at last offered to go along as guide, and with Patsy and Stumpy up the winding course Michael led off one day up the winding course of the Bulloo River. The land seekers did not know how far they would have to travel, for Cobby had no idea of distances in the white man’s terms.
‘Fifty mile; five hundred; might be five t’ousand,’ he had told them in answer to their anxious questions.
They had gone about sixty-five miles up river when the native turned his horse to the north-west. Gradually the white men found themselves surrounded by tremendous plains dotted with dazzling red sandhills rising steeply against the sky. About one hundred miles from the Bulloo they climbed one of these hills and gazed around them in wonderment.
‘You didn’t tell us about this beautiful grass country, Cobby,’ Patsy exclaimed, but the native, who despised not only the Boontamurra people but, their tribal territory, had gone off in pursuit of a lizard.
Far to the west a winding smudge of dull green timber marked the course of a river, towards which, despite further warnings from their guide, they rode briskly on.
It was sundown as they approached the big waterhole, from which came a tremendous clamour of wild birds. Parrots, water fowl and flocks of teal wheeled overhead with egrets, ibises, herons, pygmy geese, great white pelicans and grey-winged brolgas.
The horses moving thirstily forward suddenly drew back, trembling, and their riders knew they had caught the scent of the wild people whom experience had taught them to fear. Patsy and his brother dismounted and handing their reins to Cobby walked towards a recently deserted camp fire, their hands raised in a peace signal they had learned from the Mobel blacks. Almost at once the foliage of the river trees began to shake and the people of the Boontamurra slowly appeared.
Men, women and children, although all decorated with patterns of white ochre and decked with feathers, seemed curious but shy, not at all like the fierce, unfriendly people they had been warned about. Some, gaining confidence, came forward to peer at and some even to touch their strange visitors. A few of these two hundred assembled tribespeople had seen white horsemen before but had taken them for extraordinary creatures, part human, part animal, like the centaurs of ancient legend. This time they had been astonished, watching through the timber, to see the apparitions fall apart, each into two pieces, and to find that one of the parts somewhat resembled a man like themselves.
Soon Cobby, having assured himself that the reception was a friendly one, began telling the astonished natives of how this new kind of man had come into their country and wished to share it. They were good people, Cobby assured them, and brought many things to the black man’s advantage. He smacked his lips, describing the white man’s beef, flour, tea, sugar and tobacco. Patsy he introduced as ‘Boonari’, which meant a great man and a brother, after which many of the Boontamurra people came forward and introduced themselves with friendly smiles. One bright-faced youth drew Patsy to the water’s edge and, plunging his spear into a trap made of stones and fibre net, brought up a large golden perch.
‘Thillung-gurra,’ he said, laughing and pointing to the waterhole.
One bright-faced youth brought up a large perch . . .
Cobby interpreted this as meaning good water that never dried up and Patsy, trying in vain to pronounce the word in the rolling native way, could get no closer than ‘Th-lungra,’ Later he wrote it as ‘Thylungra’, and that became the name of the station they were soon to make their home.
He and his companions returned to Mobel Creek with tidings of good pasture, permanent water and friendly tribespeople, and when John Costello returned from his droving trip to South Australia they packed up and moved on to their promised land.
We can imagine the surprise of the natives to see the cavalcade of horses, cattle, waggons, carts and buggies moving across the plain, but this time they came running forward in welcome, believing that a splendid new age of plenty had begun for them. The youth who had brought the fish from the trap embraced Patsy with tears of joy, asking Cobby to explain that he was a long dead elder brother who had suddenly ‘jumped up’ a white man. The boy seemed honestly to believe this and was to remain to Patsy a true and loving brother from that day forward. His native name was ‘Burrakin’, but Patsy could get no nearer to that than ‘Pumpkin’, by which name the boy was always afterwards known.
It was agreed that the natives should continue to gather when they wished at the Thylungra waterhole and that any who liked to help the newcomers would be fed, clothed and looked after. A number expressed themselves eager to assist and so soon became part of the big Thylungra family, with white man names such as Kangaroo, Jimmy, Willie and Jackie. Some of the women, fascinated by the little white children, offered to help about the camp—and later about the house. As the white people did not interfere with their tribal lives this seemed a happy arrangement all round. Indeed it was often remarked that blacks and whites at Thylungra always regarded each other not as servants and masters but as friends.
Exploring from Thylungra, John Costello found another splendid site about twenty-five miles upstream and here he built the station that he called Kyabra.
Soon the little homesteads and yards went up beside the waterholes, the stock spread out over the broad plains and about the tree-fringed gullies and creeks of the Cooper channel country, one day to be regarded as some of the richest fattening country in the world.
9
The White Man’s Curse
IMAGI
NE having to ride five hundred miles to the nearest shop! It sounds far-fetched, but in those early years in Western Queensland all stores had to be brought by bullock team from the little town of Bourke, south of the border. The settlers tried to provide for six or nine months at a time, for even if the team was not delayed by bog or flooded rivers it was always a three months’ journey there and back. Although they had come to Thylungra fairly well stocked up, they knew, almost as soon as they arrived, that it was time the team was on its way again.
Stumpy Michael and a native boy named Willie completed the long journey in good time, but a gold rush had broken out in Queensland just before and prospectors had bought up all the supplies to be had in Bourke. There was nothing for it but to push on another one hundred and fifty miles south to Wilcannia. Nor was this the end of their difficulties for on the return journey some of the team bullocks died from eating poison bush and others had to be purchased. The new animals, being poorly trained, panicked on a steep decline and broke a waggon shaft. It was six months before the team got back to Thylungra and during this time the family had been able to get no news whatever. They were sick with anxiety both for the safety of the travellers and because the station storehouse was almost empty. They were living on nothing but beef, an occasional fish, kangaroo or wild fowl and some pumpkins that Patsy had managed to grow.
Lack of rain was another cause for worry. Terrible duststorms swept over the parched land and the heat was almost past human endurance. It was soon to be seen that the settlers’ most dreaded enemy—drought—was again gathering its forces against them. The poet Roderic Quinn has described very well the process of this deathly march all too familiar throughout Australia.
