To Ride a Fine Horse

by Mary Durack

  ‘The Drought came marching o’er the plains,

  The plains grew sere and parched;

  His milestones were the bleaching bones;

  Adown the road he marched.

  He drew a smoke-shroud round the sun,

  Around the moon a haze;

  He filled the west with wizard lights

  And phantom water-ways.

  He came and triumphed, struck and slew,

  And all the stricken land

  Lay gasping like a prostrate man,

  Within his strangling hand.

  The Drought came marching up the hills,

  His stride a giant’s stride,

  The herbage wilted at his breath,

  The grasses crisped and died.

  No dewy sweetness went before,

  No wind that soothes and cools;

  His red tongues searched the hidden nooks,

  And lapped the little pools.

  The waters vanished from the creeks,

  From shadowed hole and cleft;

  In all the tumbled countryside

  No little drop was left. . . .’

  The first baby born in Thylungra to Patsy and his wife was a victim of this cruel drought, his little life too frail to resist the searing heat of the desert wind. He died at six weeks old—the first of the family to rest in the little station cemetery on the riverbank.

  That any of them managed to survive those terrible times seems almost incredible, for the good season in which they had arrived was the last for nearly four years. The cattle during this period showed little increase and the pioneers instead of making their fortunes fell deeply into debt. Still Patsy, his brother and John Costello never doubted that the tide would turn for them. They believed that just as there were successions of bad years, there must be a run of good seasons to follow in which they could soon make up their losses.

  Patiently they moved their stock about the countryside as one area after another became denuded of water and grass. In the process they were discovering, naming and mapping all the tangled watercourses and landmarks of the Cooper country and pegging out vast areas on which they intended forming stations. Once a year Patsy and Costello would ride in to the nearest Queensland town to register these newly discovered areas, until they had taken up between them thousands of square miles.

  To John, Australian born, the size of their holdings meant little. It was his old mother who one day remarked that having now taken up an area almost the size of Ireland, it was surely time they stopped. She feared that although now well away from the racecourses their land hunger had become another form of gambling, and again she loudly rued the day when the madcap Patsy Durack had come riding into their lives. Still, even the forthright Mrs Costello found it hard to be pessimistic as the young people talked of the good times coming, when the lonely land would be dotted with homesteads and little towns, and peopled with friendly faces, when roads would be put through and brisk coaching services would link them again with the outside world. When the season had broken, they explained, they would send at once for friends and relatives in the south. These would have first pick of the properties and the rest of the land they would put up for sale. Always with this in view they rode the countryside, putting up stockyards and temporary shacks.

  Although both men were devoted to their families they could spend little time at home in these busy years. As the elder Costello couple lived mostly with their son’s family at Kyabra, Mrs Patsy and her three boys, Michael, John and baby Patrick, were frequently alone with the natives at Thylungra. Patsy was confident they would be safe, for although the most trustworthy natives were usually with him on the run, old Cobby always remained behind. Nothing likely to harm the white woman and her children ever escaped his eagle eye. He kept snakes, poisonous spiders, centipedes and scorpions at bay and slept at night on the homestead verandah. Sometimes, as the long drought continued, Mrs Patsy thought him over-watchful and would beg him to get from under her busy feet. She took little notice when he warned her about the bush blacks, for she knew that Cobby’s tribe and the Boontamurra had always distrusted each other.

  Once, however, as Patsy was about to leave the station, the old man approached him with great earnestness. This time it was no joke, no nonsense, he insisted, for the outside natives, at first so friendly, had begun to grumble that the white people were no longer so generous with their gifts of flour, sugar, tobacco and tea. It was no use the station natives explaining to them that the settlers had scarcely enough food for themselves and their little ones. The bush natives thought that the store was kept full by some sort of white man’s magic, just as they believed that the bush animals and plants were created through the magic ceremonies of their own tribal elders.

  This time the old man’s warnings were reluctantly confirmed by Pumpkin and other Boontamurra boys. They thought the sight of a gun put up on the wall of the homestead would be enough to discourage trouble but suggested that Mrs Patsy should also be taught how to fire it. Patsy did his best to instruct his wife, but she paid little attention and said he should know quite well how the blacks loved to work up excitement about nothing at all.

  Even when she looked up from her stove that day to see a group of tribal warriors in the kitchen doorway she was not much alarmed. She had grown accustomed to the sight of war paint, feathers and long spears and thought they had probably come to announce the beginning of a corroboree such as they often held within earshot of the homestead. It was not long, however, before she missed the usual friendly smiles and greetings. Instead the leader came forward with a scowl, demanding tobacco and food. The white woman explained that she had nothing to give them until Mr Michael and Willie came back again with the team from Bourke. There was an angry murmur as the blacks came swarming in, began looking into empty tins and throwing them disgustedly about. Cobby, who had been close at hand as usual, gave a sudden blood-curdling yell and fled through the doorway. Mrs Patsy, now thoroughly alarmed, thought he had taken fright and deserted her but in less than half a minute he had returned and thrust into her hands the rifle that had been left on the homestead wall. The six-year-old Michael, whose interest in firearms had long been the worry of his mother’s life, took the weapon quickly from her unpractised hands and cocked it for action but, terrified of what the child might do, she seized it back again. There was a sudden deafening explosion, a bedlam of frightened shrieks and a kitchen full of smoke.

  . . . the leader came forward demanding tobacco and food.

  ‘The thing went off in my hands,’ the poor woman sobbed. ‘Dear God, I hope no one was hurt!’

  ‘They all got away,’ her son said in disappointed tones. ‘You missed every one of them.’

  Neither he nor Cobby could understand the poor woman’s relief.

  ‘I’m sure they meant no real harm,’ she told her husband on his return. ‘They were hungry and they simply didn’t understand.’

  Patsy rode out with Pumpkin, now his constant companion, to find the bush tribe and try to explain the situation, but the bush blacks had vanished from all their usual camping places.

  At Kyabra the Costellos had had trouble too. Not understanding the complicated native law, John had granted protection at the station to a young girl who had married a man forbidden her by the tribe. One night the family was awakened by terrible cries from the direction of the saddleshed and, hurrying outside with a lantern, Costello tripped over the headless body of the faithful Soldier. The boy had managed to keep the attackers at bay while the young couple escaped and had then been struck down.

  Angry and grief-stricken, Costello had ridden out with Scrammy Jimmy to interview the elders of the tribe. A stone, flung from behind a boulder, caused him to fall half-stunned from his horse just as two big natives closed in on him. The agile Jimmy sprang from his saddle, split one man’s head open with a tomahawk, and while the other made off helped the white man back on to his horse. For the rest of his life Costello carried a dint in his skull from that episo
de, but the tribe afterwards allowed the young couple to live in peace.

  Still it was clear that the bush blacks were now angry with the settlers and they began to murmur that there had never been such a drought as this before. The white people had brought a curse with them and all the tribes should unite to drive them from the country.

  A few other families came to the Cooper country during this time, for it was thought that the season must soon break well and those in first would have the pick of the land. It was not long, however, before they became disheartened by the loneliness and the drought. The blacks did not welcome them as they had the first comers. Very few came forward to be station workers, and every night from the stillness of the bush rose the mournful, and to some ears ‘blood-chilling’ chant of the wild people calling on their spirits to send the trouble makers from the land so that rain might fall again.

  How long might it be, the settlers wondered, before the sullen tribespeople, wearied of waiting, took the matter into their own hands? It would not be the first time in Queensland that isolated settlements had been wiped out. So one by one, as the rainless months dragged on, the newcomers packed up their waggons and moved out, warning Patsy and John Costello to do likewise. Only these two pioneers and their families held fast to the belief in the good times to come when the stock would fatten on lush, green pastures and the blacks be friendly again.

  Only the natives rejoiced . . .

  All the same, it was not easy to smile as the dust of the retreating travellers faded into the south. Only the natives rejoiced, believing that the spirits of their dreamtime had triumphed and that very soon even these determined first comers would be on their way.

  10

  Life and Death in the Lonely Land

  TOWARDS the end of their fourth year at Thylungra, Pumpkin pointed out to Patsy how the cockatoos, swifts and martins were flying low again and the big grass spiders had begun strengthening their webs. Rain must be coming soon, he said, for although there was still scarcely a sign in the sky the wild creatures always seemed to know.

  Almost the next day dark clouds came scudding south on a driving wind. Thunder rumbled and great drops of water fell on the parched, cracked earth. The blacks on the river bank began to chant and scream with joy as they rushed to take shelter from the lightning and the sudden driving rain. Storms that had already fallen to the north had brought the mighty Cooper down with its many creeks and tributaries and the roar of the oncoming water could be heard from miles away. Stockmen rushed to saddle their horses and move the cattle to higher ground, for they knew that in a few hours the parched land would be like a shallow inland sea on which the isolated homesteads would seem to float like little Noah’s Arks.

  Stockmen rushed to move the cattle to higher ground . . .

  ‘The Wet’ had set in with its myriad insects, its blowflies, sore eyes, mildew and bog, but nobody cared about such discomforts for the receding water left behind a waving sea of succulent clover and grass. Wildflowers splashed the once drab grey plains with dazzling colour. The bush blacks came in again with peace offerings of fat goannas and kangaroo. The curse was broken and all grievances forgotten.

  A plague of locusts swept through the country, devouring Patsy’s vegetable garden in its path, flying in his face and down the neck of his shirt as he rode around, but he scarcely noticed them. His heart was singing louder than the cicadas and the returning birds, for the time had come to send south for his friends and relatives.

  ‘Things are fine around the Cooper,

  All the grass is green again,

  You must hear the frogs in Goulburn

  That are croaking on our plain!

  So pack up, stack up your waggons,

  And get out along the track,

  With your wives and kids and cattle

  And join us here, outback!

  We’ll have all the billies boiling

  And we’ll kill the fatted cow,

  For there’s plenty here for everyone

  Out on the Cooper now.

  There’ll be race meetings and contests

  And every sort of fun

  And a “Caide Milla Faltha”

  For each and every one.

  So pack up, stack up your waggons,

  And move north from Goulburn town

  With your wives and kids and cattle

  For the Cooper has come down.’

  Stumpy Michael volunteered to escort some of the newcomers for he had a sweetheart in Goulburn and planned to marry as soon as the drought broke. There was great rejoicing when he returned at last, not only with his bride, but with his beloved mother and an Irish tutor for the bush children.

  Patsy had built a little mudbrick schoolhouse wherein, from this time on, Mr Healy began the day’s lessons straight after breakfast. As folks mostly rose at daylight in the outback this meant about half past six in the morning. Time was reckoned not by clocks, but by the sun, and ‘recreation’ was always announced when the shadow of a tree in the yard reached the schoolhouse door. Mr Healy’s pupils often described to a younger generation with what bored longing they watched for that shadow as the old teacher’s voice droned monotonously on through the long, warm days. Often the tutor would fall into a doze, to be awakened with a start when his spectacles slipped from his nose and fell upon his desk. Soon, however, his pupils learned to catch the glasses in the nick of time and putting them gently down would creep from the schoolroom, returning to their places just as the shadow touched the door.

  After the freedom they had enjoyed the Thylungra children found it hard to settle down to any sort of discipline. They had never seen the outside world and could hardly understand that they would one day have to meet and compete with educated people. They had everything they wanted at Thylungra. Their toys were old waggon-wheels, bows and arrows and shanghais made for them by the stockmen, while the doting natives made them boomerangs and little fishing spears. A game of their own invention was to fill a bullock’s horn with sand which, properly aimed, would bring down butterflies and small birds on the wing. They found too a whole world of wonder and discovery in the creatures of the bush and never tired of observing their habits and seeking out their haunts.

  Every day seemed to these children to be filled with interest and excitement. Incidents that were often sore tribulations to their elders were the breath of life to the young people. Floods, when the water level climbed the schoolhouse wall, always meant a holiday and so did bush fires, when smoke and dust cast a deep gloom over their world. Then there were unforgettable times when strange things happened, such as a sudden deluge when thousands of tiny fish and frogs would come down with the rain to wriggle and hop as far as the eye could see. Plagues of locusts were another diversion, but even more exciting the occasional plagues of mice or rats that would come surging like a low-moving grey wave across the countryside. All hands, young and old, would be set to work digging trenches around the station buildings and filling them with lime to trap the oncoming armies, while waddies, sticks, pikes and spears were thrashed about in all directions. Where these plagues started and to where they disappeared was one of the great mysteries of the bush.

  Another more fearsome wonder for the bush children was a dreadful denizen of the Thylungra waterhole known as the “Tri-anti-wonti-gong’. Not until quite grown up did they realize that this monster was an invention of their mother’s to prevent their falling down the treacherously slippery banks and drowning in the depths below. And strange it was how all the children believed they had actually seen its terrible black shape and fierce, long horns and heard its unearthly bellow echoing down the riverbed.

  Very soon many other relatives, including two of Patsy’s married sisters and their families, arrived at Cooper’s Creek to claim their properties, and as the youngest brother, Jerry, was also now at Thylungra, Patsy’s cup of happiness was full. The long years of separation were at an end and life had come pouring into the empty land. The women and children mostly stayed at Thylun
gra or Kyabra while their own homesteads were going up and Patsy, his brothers and John Costello hurried from one property to another, helping and advising.

  Country not needed by their own people had been advertised for sale, bringing dozens more people outback to inspect and usually to buy. Everybody was impressed by the sight of the stock fattening and multiplying on the rich, grass plains, while buyers were further encouraged by the better conditions of a new Land Act and the improved price of beef.

  Before long the heavy weight of mortgage was lifted from the shoulders of the pioneers and they were able to lend money to help other settlers get on their feet.

  Now the big, happy parties and bush race meetings they had longed for were again part of their lives. Patsy worked hard but he liked to play hard too, and Thylungra quickly earned the name for being a great place for sport and fun. It was not long before the station was employing forty white men including stockmen, drovers, yard builders and carpenters, a blacksmith, a storekeeper, a married couple as cook and handyman, and of course old Mr Healy, the tutor.

  As 7 PD cattle and horses were now constantly on the road to market while new breeding stock was being brought in to build up the Thylungra herd, it was seldom that all these men were in at the station at the same time. Patsy always tried, however, to have the crowd home for Christmas and his own birthday, which he celebrated on St Patrick’s Day, the 17th of March. He would organize the year’s programme months ahead so no one need miss either these events or the yearly race meeting, but this was by no means an end of it. Whenever there were a few men at the homestead overnight there would be racing, jumping, stunts and practical jokes. When everyone was exhausted by these events, Patsy would start up on his fiddle and Stumpy Michael’s musical young wife on the piano they had brought from Goulburn. Then there would be dancing, singing and merry-making until all hours of the night.