To Ride a Fine Horse

by Mary Durack

  So much they had achieved, but the task of pioneering a vast area inhabited by native tribes still lay before them.

  And this time, as they eased their cattle down the steep banks to drink from the great river the watchful natives, on the red cliffs above, did not stay their spears. Perhaps they sensed that these men and their mighty herd were not merely passing through their hunting grounds but had come intending to stay. A shower of long-handled, flint-topped spears came hurtling and whistling into the sprawling river bed. Pandemonium broke out as terrified beasts, some trailing spears from flanks and shoulders, floundered at the water’s edge, some plunging and milling in a maddened circle midstream. Some of the frightened horses swam the river and went galloping off on the other side. One of the men had his shoulder grazed by a glancing spear and others escaped by inches. All had agreed that to fire a shot must be a last resort and only in the extremity of life or death. This the drovers now knew to be their only chance. The leaders gave the signal. Revolvers were drawn and a sharp volley fired at the cliff top. With one last shout of rage and terror the natives dispersed and vanished from sight.

  It was a bad beginning and the stockmen realized that there was to be no peaceful conquest of this wilderness, for the tribes had declared war. Day and night they must remain on their guard, wary of ambush by day and stealthy attack by night, resorting to the old trick of rigging a camp in one place and going off quietly to sleep elsewhere. Two mornings later Long Michael removed twenty spears from the dummy swag he had set up under his mosquito net!

  To the newcomers it was not yet the home country of which the poet Jack Sorensen was to write in later years:

  ‘And sometimes on the winds that set the Leichhardt pines a-sway

  I’d hear the cattle coming down the road from yesterday—

  Coming home—the long trek over and a song would rise in me

  Such as cheered the weary drovers striving West to Kimberley

  Drought driven out of Queensland;

  Flood driven out of Queensland;

  To the dreamland, the stream land—

  My grass gold Kimberley!’

  Meanwhile Black Pat and Tom Hayes, anxiously waiting at the lonely Gulf, had run up a shack to house themselves and the precious stores. It was not long before three members of the party were on their way down the river to announce the arrival of the cattle and to return with much-needed stores and a pile of mail and newspapers. One letter had contained disturbing news of the widowed Mrs Durack who, sick with worry for her three sons and her brother, Tom Kilfoyle, had declared she would surely die if they did not soon return to prove themselves alive. They were a devoted family and it was at once decided that Kilfoyle, Long Michael and Big Johnnie should start back overland without delay. A three thousand mile journey, more or less, would be child’s play without the cattle, they said, and calculated on making it within about six weeks.

  All this time Patsy had remained at Thylungra, unable to face the final break with the home he had built and loved, the country he had brought to life out of his dreams and the natives who had been his devoted helpers. At last, however, he could find no further excuse to remain and moved with his family to Brisbane and the now completed city home. ‘Maryview’, as he had named it, was the fine mansion he had always promised his family. From its wide balconies he could look down over a circular drive from the main gates, over stables, servants’ quarters and outhouses and across terraced lawns running almost to the river’s edge.

  He at once organized a grand house-warming party that went on for several days and to which he invited friends and relatives from far and wide. Some prophesied that he would soon be off like John Costello in search of yet more new country, but Patsy declared he would henceforth conduct his affairs from his comfortable home. He had always been sociable and yearned to enjoy the things for which he had so little time in his busy life. His two brothers, Stumpy Michael and Galway Jerry, were of much the same mind and there seemed no reason why they should not enjoy the money they had made. In a very short time they and their families were at the centre of a social life of fashionable race meetings, theatres, garden parties and other entertainments.

  Patsy’s elder sons, Michael and John, came back from college at the end of the year. They had gone to school much later than most boys but they proved good scholars and had matriculated with flying colours. Patsy, although tremendously proud of their success, was shocked to hear that they planned to return to the University and study for professions. It seemed to their pioneer father as though they were throwing away all he had worked and striven for. It had cost him dear to get cattle to ‘the land of neither drought nor flood’ for which he had been seeking all his life. The Ord River country was to have been his sons’ heritage and he was astonished to find they did not want it. However, he said they had their own lives to lead and he would not stand in their way.

  And then, as so often in Patsy’s life to this time, fate stepped in on his side.

  14

  The Golden Land

  RUMOURS that gold had been discovered in the Kimberley district reached Patsy’s ears about the same time as the news that Tom Kilfoyle, Big Johnnie and Long Michael would soon be at Charleville. He and his boys hurried to meet them and to hear for the first time the full story of the overland trek.

  The travellers confirmed the whispers of gold, saying that Black Pat already had a tin of nuggets hidden under his bunk at the Gulf. It was certainly gold-bearing country and before long prospectors would no doubt come pouring in, towns would spring up and a local market would be assured for their beef.

  All this excitement, together with glowing accounts of the beautiful Kimberley country, decided the issue for Patsy’s sons. It was now not a case of whether or not they would go, but how soon they could get away.

  Returning to Brisbane, Patsy booked their passages on a ship that had been chartered for Cambridge Gulf by a group of prospectors. By the time she was to sail Tom Kilfoyle and Long Michael had returned from Molong to join them and Stumpy Michael had also decided to go along, while Big Johnnie, in company with a younger brother, Jerry, planned to return overland to Kimberley with a mob of horses.

  Patsy and his family saw the ship away and returned with mixed feelings to ‘Maryview’. Often in the weeks that followed, Mrs Patsy would remark that her husband’s thoughts were elsewhere.

  ‘I am thinking of the boys,’ he would admit. ‘They are very young and inexperienced to be starting a station on their own.’

  He worried too about Thylungra, for ever since they came to Brisbane there had been little or no rain in the far west. In fact most of the eastern part of the continent was drought-stricken and Patsy did not want to press for payment on his properties until things improved. He had planned, on leaving Thylungra, that he would return from time to time to see that the station was being properly run and the natives looked after. But he could not bring himself to go back, for he dreaded seeing the land again in the grip of drought and felt besides that his coming might unsettle the faithful natives who had grieved at the departure of the family. He had heard that old Cobby had crawled into his humpy after they left and pined quietly away, but he was sure that the younger natives would soon forget and settle down.

  Pumpkin had pleaded hard to come with them but Patsy believed it was wrong to take a native from his country and his own people and that Pumpkin would soon die of homesickness in the confines of a city block.

  One day not long after the boys had left for Kimberley he was startled to hear from the garden the name by which he was known to the Thylungra blacks.

  ‘Boonari! Boonari!’

  And there, coming up the drive, was the familiar figure of Pumpkin leading the two horses Patsy had given him as a parting gift. It was no use asking why he had come or how he had known the house, for Patsy could see by the native’s face that nothing would have prevented his following and finding them. It was only then the family fully understood that for Pumpkin they came befo
re everything else in the world and that for them he was willing to live in exile far removed from his country and his tribe.

  Pumpkin

  Patsy could see, however, that, delighted as the native was to see him, he was somewhat reproachful and hurt that he had not been called upon to go to Kimberley with the boys. Much as he loved and admired them, Pumpkin had little faith in their ability to pioneer a station in a wild land, and he was worried too about the beautiful Thylungra animals that had no doubt been left to stray to their doom at the hands of the cruel and treacherous Kimberley tribes. What did those book-reading boys know about the proper care of horses and cattle? Moreover, he had never seen them with a tool in their hands and could not imagine how they would make a house for themselves and put up yards and fences.

  Still, Patsy hesitated to send Pumpkin on his own to Kimberley, so the native bided his time, looking after the coach horses and pottering about the garden of ‘Maryview’.

  Meanwhile life in the newly occupied country was proving as lively and exciting as any fiction of the American ‘Wild West’. Jack Sorensen, the balladist, was later to write of how:

  ‘The cattlemen of Kimberley, a saddle for a throne,

  Were carving from the wilderness a kingdom of their own;

  A branding iron for sceptre, a stockwhip for a sword,

  From Wyndham past the border, from the Fitzroy to the Ord.’

  The boys’ first letters were full of exciting news of how they had brought the horses from the Gulf and pegged out the site for a station called Argyle about 160 miles upriver. The two Michaels—‘Long’ and ‘Stumpy’—had selected a site which they called Lissa-dell on the other side of the Ord, while Tom Kilfoyle and Tom Hayes had marked out another place called Rosewood adjoining Argyle.

  Riding back to the Gulf for stores soon after their arrival the boys had been excited to meet hundreds of prospectors making inland to a place called Hall’s Creek and to hear wonderful reports of the gold to be picked up there, of all the ships pouring into the gulf and the little port of Wyndham that had sprung up like a mushroom on the tidal shores. The boys hurried on to find that all they had heard was true. At Black Pat’s store goods were being exchanged for nuggets and they learned that there was a market for all the beef they could supply to the goldfields. They had already sold the first five hundred head for payment in gold and were then about to drove another mob to Hall’s Creek and see the diggings for themselves.

  As he read, Patsy was reminded of his own boyhood at the Ovens River and the unforgettable thrill of weighing out raw nuggets. He remembered that first piece of gold in the shape of a horseshoe and thought that for all the hardships of his life it did seem to have brought him luck. He had prospered in Queensland just as it seemed his boys were to prosper in Kimberley. Everywhere he went people congratulated him on the gold strike and his good judgment in taking up Ord River country that was now being hailed as the richest pasture in Australia. His spirits were riding high when a telegram sent from Darwin brought him suddenly face to face with the grim reality of the new land.

  Big Johnnie Durack, hero of the long overland trail, had been speared by the blacks! There were no details—only the tragic fact to take to the anxious mother and her family at Molong. Later they would learn how the two Johns had been riding together when a spear hurled from an ambush of long grass had struck the elder cousin from his horse. By the time young John had dismounted the other man’s horse had galloped madly off and the natives, painted, befeathered and with raised spears were moving slowly forward to the kill. Desperately the boy had tried to lift the wounded man into his saddle but Big Johnnie knew his end had come.

  ‘I’m done for, son,’ he said. ‘Ride for your life,’ and had slumped in his cousin’s arms. Seeing that he had breathed his last young John laid him gently on the ground, sprang into the saddle and galloped on. Darkness closed in and it was after midnight before he reached the camp where Big Johnnie’s brothers were anxiously awaiting their return. They had all set off at once to bury the dead man and had found the body pinned to the ground with over twenty spears.

  Word of the murder quickly went around the countryside, and mates of the popular young stockman gathered from far and near determined to take their revenge on the local tribes and teach them a lesson they would not forget.

  After all, however, it was the white men who learned a lesson from that desperate and fruitless chase. For weeks they followed the trail of the runaways from camp to camp, realizing at last that the natives, in mockery of their poor tracking ability, were deliberately strewing their path with broken weapons, flint spear heads and the bones of animals. They struck spears into the trunks of trees and dragged sticks along the ground, leading the avenging party in foolish circles and leaving them clueless at last at the foot of a perpendicular limestone cliff.

  From this time on the white men knew that their only hope of gaining supremacy over the local tribes lay in dividing their loyalty, in winning the trust and friendship of the younger men to help destroy the power of the tribal elders.

  Patsy decided he and Pumpkin must go to Kimberley at once and they boarded the next ship for Cambridge Gulf. Their arrival was quite unexpected and badly timed, they were told, for the wet season had set in and the track to the stations lay through quicksand bog and running rivers. Patsy, however, refused to wait at the gulf, for with Pumpkin and a compass he declared he would find his way anywhere and was ready to face all hazards. They left in driving rain with the five splendid Thylungra horses they had brought on the ship, ploughed through bog, swam rivers and crossed the Ord on a tarpaulin raft with the horses tied behind.

  Imagine the surprise and delight of the two lonely boys who met them at the little tent on the river that served them as a house! Patsy knew they would have had little chance as yet to put up a permanent place and realized also that in his anxiety for their education he had taught them few practical skills. He and Pumpkin started at once to build a mud-brick house with roof of thatched spinifex, yards for the stock, fences for the horses, and to plant pumpkins and melons in the rich river soil. It was like old times for Patsy and Pumpkin to be toiling side by side from daylight till dark, riding together to track the straying stock.

  The town life had not really satisfied Patsy’s energetic nature. He was happy to be at work again and to realize that he had lost none of his old strength and vigour, and he was overjoyed when stockmen he had employed on Thylungra began to turn up at Argyle. These had mostly come to Kimberley with prospecting parties, but the excitement at Hall’s Creek had waned as the easily collected surface gold began to peter out, and they had come to the stations in search of work. Before long Patsy and his boys might almost have imagined they were back at Thylungra, in the happy days of evening sports and music and practical jokes. The only difference was that none of the settlers had yet dared bring their families to this remote loneliness where the natives had been hostile from the start and where no one escaped the terrible recurring attacks of malaria fever. For himself Patsy was confident that the blacks would soon be won over if tactfully approached and that the fever would disappear as in Queensland when living conditions improved.

  A few local native boys had already come into service at Argyle, and Pumpkin had at once undertaken their training. Patsy had never encouraged the Thylungra natives to speak the popular ‘pidgin’ form of English and Pumpkin was determined that these boys would speak properly like himself. He soon became fond of his charges but would never admit that these sons of the Kimberley tribes had the intelligence and character of the Queenslanders.

  He had been at Argyle only a few months when he met a prospector on the way to Hall’s Creek with a family of Queensland natives including a bright little boy of about six years old. He soon persuaded the mother that the wandering life she led was no good for her child and that she should leave him in his charge. The woman made no conditions, but the white prospector insisted that the boy be exchanged for the horse Pumpkin was riding
and a tin of plum jam, which was a great luxury in the bush. Pumpkin had no need to consult anyone for he had as much say in the running of Argyle as the rest of them, and he knew they would all be as pleased with this bargain as he was himself. The little boy was called Boxer and was to grow up to become one of the great characters of the north.

  The little boy was called Boxer . . .

  When the new station was organized and running along much as Thylungra had done before, Patsy rode off to the goldfields. He had been sorry to hear that the goldfields’ population was falling off so soon and believed that it would come back if only machinery could be brought in to work deeper shafts. On reaching Hall’s Creek he at once pegged out a claim and set off back to Queensland to purchase mining equipment. He remembered the temptation it had been in his youth to stay on at the fields after he had made his first thousand pounds. Fortunately he had resisted it so that now he had earned the right to gamble, and could afford it—or so he thought.

  15

  An End and a Beginning

  PATSY returned the following year with his mining machinery and after a few days with his boys at Argyle, set off again to Hall’s Creek. Now, more than ever, he was anxious to find gold and bring life back to the Kimberley fields. The drought had not broken in the east and it had begun to look doubtful whether he would ever get paid for his Queensland estates. Throughout the country people were again walking off their outback properties and many feared that Australia was facing the worst depression in her history. Even Patsy had to admit that the position looked serious, but he was sure his crushing machinery would soon prove that there was as much gold in Kimberley as at Ballarat and Bendigo.