A Fortunate Life

by A B Facey

  I could see no hope of getting away for the time being so I carried on. My clothes were getting very ragged and my feet got frozen every morning because I didn’t have any boots. I had no overcoat either, and sometimes, on wet days, I would be soaking wet-through all day.

  I had my ninth birthday while I was there. I don’t think the old lady or her family knew, but I knew that dear old Grandma would remember, and didn’t I wish I was with her. I didn’t get any letters. This puzzled me as Grandma never missed wishing me a happy birthday and had always given me some small present to remember it by. But this ninth birthday, nothing.

  As the weeks and months passed by, I got to know the cows more, and the sheep all seemed to know me and we all became very close friends, I got to like all the animals. The pony that Bob gave me had been taken away and sold. Old Albert told me about that.

  The weather became warmer and the grass began to dry off. This meant more work for me as the stock had to be watered out of a soak with a small bucket tied on to the end of a rope. It was nearing Christmas 1903.

  One day the boys came home with another mob of horses, and about twenty head of cattle of all ages and sizes. They had with them two blacks and two other men. The whites were cousins, old Albert told me. The day after they arrived they started roping the horses and getting them used to being handled.

  First they would put a rope around a horse’s neck and tie it to a post. The rope was made into a slip-knot, so that when the horse pulled back it would pull the rope tight and choke itself and fall flat on the ground. When this happened one of the men would run over and pull the rope loose so that the horse could breathe again. In a few seconds it would recover enough to get up. Sometimes a horse would try it again, but generally once was enough to teach them that they had no hope of getting away, and from then on they could be led easily on a rope.

  After a horse had completed this first lesson it would have a saddle put on it, then one of the men would get onto its back while it was still tied to a post. The men got a horse used to this by getting off and on a few times. Then they would put a bridle on the horse, force the bit into its mouth, and fasten a long, thin, strong rope to the bridle on one side. With this in place they would make the horse run around in circles, first to the right and then to the left. This is what they called mouthing, and was to make the horse know that when the rein was pulled tight on one side of the bit leaving the other side slack, it was to go that way.

  These men were experts at roping and breaking-in horses. When the animals were all broken-in they were branded with a branding iron. (The brand was registered in the old lady’s name. The cattle that they handled were also branded.) When this was finished the men drove the horses to the nearest market to be sold.

  About two days before Christmas the boys came home, and on Christmas Eve the old lady’s daughter, and two granddaughters came, along with several other women and girls who were strangers to me. They were soon busy preparing a Christmas feast. Old Albert told me that they did this every Christmas time. He said that on Christmas Day there would be hell to pay as they would all get drunk and they usually ended up in an all-round brawl. Late Christmas Eve, cases of beer, rum, wine and whisky arrived.

  It was very hot at this time of the year and that night all the men and boys slept in the shed on the floor or on a haystack, and the women and girls had the house. The next morning everyone was up early and they all helped me with my work. After breakfast I took the sheep out to graze, arriving back near midday. The spree was in full swing and the men were all getting too much to drink.

  Then dinner was ready and we all sat down to eat. They had arranged a long table to seat about twenty. Dinner had only been going about ten minutes when one of the men, who was unsteady on his feet, fell and knocked one end of the table over, breaking crockery, glasses and bottles of beer and spilling drinks. One of the other men called him a ‘so and so’, then an argument started and the others joined in. As old Albert had said, a brawl started, and the women all took sides. I grabbed a plate with plenty of good food on it and as many of the cakes as I could carry, and got out. I went down behind the shed under a nice shady tree and finished my dinner.

  The yelling and swearing up at the house was awful. The men were fighting, knocking each other down, women and all. I had never seen people carry on like this before. And then some of the visitors commenced to get their things and leave. Some were too drunk to harness up their horses, some went and lay under a shady tree and went to sleep. I looked after the watering and did my jobs and kept out of the way as much as possible. Old Albert was drunk also.

  One of the Aboriginals came to see me and said he would help me. He was the first black man I had talked to. At first I was not too happy but he seemed to be nice and he said he didn’t touch any grog. So we became good friends. He was about twenty years old and he told me he hadn’t had any schooling. He told me to call him Charlie. He could do almost anything with horses and he milked the cows for the old lady. He said that she had locked herself in her bedroom when the brawling had started and wouldn’t come out until it was over. He said he had been working with the boys on and off for about three years. I asked him what wages he got and he told me that they gave him a few pounds every time they sold a large mob of horses.

  We went together to the house after Charlie had done the milking and things had quietened down, and we found men and some women lying around, some inside and some outside, all hopelessly drunk. We got some food and Charlie filled a halfgallon dipper with milk. We took the food and milk down to the stable and had our meal. Then we lay on some hay and slept the night there. It was very hot weather so we didn’t need any covering. We slept in our clothes.

  Next day was a day of sore heads. All the visitors had gone and things were very quiet. Charlie helped me all day and I felt for the first time since I left Uncle’s place that I had a friend. We had breakfast with the old lady and the midday meal also. She never mentioned anything about the brawl. Alec was the first of the boys to appear. He had two badly blackened eyes and bruises all over his face, with bits of skin knocked off his knuckles. Jack could not be found and Jack’s wife was missing too. Then Bob came out and he was as bad as Alec. The other black man had cleared off and Alf and his wife were also missing.

  For the next few days the men did nothing, only lay around until all their bruises and scars were better. As the New Year came, all those that were missing came back, a few at a time, and by the third day in 1904 everyone seemed to have forgotten Christmas Day. They were planning another trip away to get some more horses and cattle.

  Charlie was a real pal to me. He helped me with the watering and with the cows and feeding the pigs, and I began to think that what I had been told about the blacks wasn’t true. You couldn’t have had a better mate. I hadn’t met anyone, apart from Grandma, Uncle, Aunt and my brothers, who helped me and showed me so much. Charlie told me he didn’t know who his father was and that his mother had died when he was born, and he had been brought up in the bush with the wild blacks.

  A few days later the boys all went away again. They always said they were going kangaroo shooting – they all had Winchester 44 rifles – but I had never seen any skins brought home, only horses and cattle. So the old lady, Albert and I were the only ones left.

  The weeks went by slowly and I was now in rags. I still hadn’t been given any wages and had no boots. I patched my trousers with bag whenever a hole wore in them or they were torn. Then one day a few weeks later, Old Albert had been to town, and he brought home for me two pairs of trousers to fit a boy of about ten. I was only nine and they were too big for me although I was big for my age. Old Albert bought them out of his possum skin money. He said it pained him to see me so neglected, with no clothing. He said he would have bought me some boots but he didn’t have enough money. I felt grateful to the old man. When he was sober he was very good to me.

  My work was much the same: looking after the sheep, bringing the cows in and turnin
g them out when milked, feeding the pigs, hauling water for the stock and getting wood for the house.

  The old lady did her cooking on an open fire. She made what was called damper and that was our bread. She used to put so much flour in a large dish, then so much baking powder, then salt, then mix it well. Then she would add so much milk when there was plenty, and water when the milk wasn’t plentiful, and mix the lot to a soft dough. Before she added the liquid she always built a big fire and waited until it burnt down to a hot ash. Then she would scoop out a large hole in the middle and when the dough was ready, place it in the hole and cover it completely with hot ashes, leave it about forty-five minutes, then scrape off the ashes, and the bread, or damper, would be pulled out with a shovel. The damper was always round and about four inches thick and usually eighteen inches across. A damper this size would last for about three days for the three of us. This kind of bread was beautiful to eat.

  The boys had been gone about twelve weeks and the nights were getting very cold. The old lady hadn’t heard from them and Old Albert said that they hadn’t been away that long before. I heard him say to the old lady that something must have gone wrong. I asked what he meant by ‘something going wrong’, and he said they may have had an accident or something, or perhaps they were sick. I never took much notice as my work was much lighter when we had only two or three horses to water, but I would have liked Charlie to come back.

  Then one day, about three weeks later, a man came on horseback. At the time I was handling water at the soak. He rode up to the house and the old lady came out with Old Albert. The man got off his horse and Albert led it over to the water-trough for a drink. The man stayed talking to the old lady. Old Albert said to me, ‘That man is a policeman. If he asks you about horses or cattle tell him you don’t know anything about them.’ He said, ‘The boys are in trouble. The policeman says those horses and cattle they have been bringing home, well some of them have been stolen and he is here to find out as much as possible about them.’ Well I didn’t know where the animals had come from or where they went, so there wasn’t much I could say.

  The policeman stayed with us that night but he never mentioned anything to me until next morning. When I was putting the cows into the yard he was there, and he asked me my name and where I had come from and how long I had been there. I told him. Then he asked how many cows they had when I came and did I see, at any time, many horses and cattle. I told him about the horse-breaking and branding. He asked me if any of the men had told me not to say anything if I was questioned and I told him no. I never said anything about the warning that Old Albert had given me. He then asked me how they treated me, and I told him rotten. I said the old man Albert was nice and treated me fine and I told him about the new pants he bought me. The policeman then asked what they would do to me if they thought or knew what I had told him. I said that they would half kill me, that they and Bob were very cruel. He said, ‘Don’t worry, they will never know and thanks, you have given me a clue.’

  I asked the policeman if he ever went near Uncle’s place and he said that his district didn’t go that far. I said that I would like to get word to my Grandma to come and get me, as they were not paying me my wages or giving me any clothing or boots and the work was too hard. He promised to try and get word to Grandma.

  After breakfast the policeman got on his horse and rode off. I went to the house for something and the old lady was crying. Old Albert told me that Alec and Jack were in gaol and Bob and two of their relations had gone bush until things cooled down. He said that Charlie had also cleared out with the other black man called Ben. They had gone back to their tribe.

  Weeks, then months went by and winter came. It was a very wet winter and very cold. It was late in September, about three weeks after my tenth birthday when Alec and Jack came home. They never talked about where they had been. The old lady told me that Bob and two of her daughter’s sons were doing a big clearing contract for some new settlers and that Alec and Jack were going to work with them. They were only home for a week.

  After they had gone I heard the old lady and Albert arguing about the boys. Old Albert said they would do it again, and the old lady said they had a bad time in gaol and she didn’t think they wanted any more of that. But Albert said, ‘That’s what you said last time.’ So by what I had heard I knew they had been in trouble before.

  The old lady (which was what she was called by the family in her absence, and Mother in her presence), must have been short of money, because two weeks after Alec and Jack had left to join Bob, three men came. Two were on horseback and the other was driving a wagon with four horses attached. They came late in the afternoon. One of them spoke to Albert and they then unhitched the horses from the wagon and turned them out into the paddock with the two saddle horses, and stayed the night.

  Next morning there was good news for me. The old lady had offered some sheep, cattle and pigs for sale and the three strangers were new settlers who had come to see the stock with a view to purchase. Albert and the old lady showed the men the stock and after a lot of bargaining they purchased all the cows except four, all the sheep except fifteen, and the only pigs that were left were three sows with litters only a few days old. This made my work much lighter. The pigs were loaded into the wagon, to which the men had attached railings so they couldn’t get out. Then one man on horseback drove the cattle away and the other man drove the sheep away. I asked Old Albert why the stock was sold and he said that the boys hadn’t sent any money home, so the stock had to be sold so we could live.

  I had an easy time for the next few weeks compared to what I had been doing.

  About three weeks before Christmas, Bob, Alec, Jack, two of the old lady’s grandsons and four other men came home for hay-cutting. Cutting hay was a slow and painstaking job. It had to be done by hand with scythes, and we had eight men each with a scythe, and six or seven men, women and kids tying the cut hay into sheaves and putting the sheaves into stooks.

  There was a severe thunderstorm just before we started cutting the hay. A flash of lightning struck the ground at the bottom end of the paddock of oats and travelled through the whole forty acres leaving a track some ten yards wide, the shape of a huge snake travelling. This was a most unusual thing. The track went black in two days and a lot of people came to see the freak, huge winding black track like the letter S.

  7

  A CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

  The grandsons who had come with the men were George, who was eighteen, and Bill, who was sixteen. Bill and I got on well but George was a bully, always ordering me around. I didn’t like him. Bill used to help me, and one day I asked him if he knew about Alec and Jack being in gaol. He said he did. Then he said, ‘Serves them right. They have been stealing horses and cattle for years.’ Bill said that the old lady was no good and he didn’t like her. He told me that she had never been married but had lived with a man called Alf, and he was his (Bill’s) mother’s father. When Alf left her Old Albert came and lived with her and he was Bob’s father and he was the only one who stopped with her.

  When he had told me this Bill said, ‘Now you know the truth about them all don’t tell anyone that I told you. My mother told me all about them. She said that none of them had ever been to school.’ He continued, ‘As soon as I’m old enough I’ll get away from here, and you should get away too if you can, they are a lot of drunken robbers.’

  Bob and Alec took two horses in a spring-cart and Bill said they were going to town for supplies. Town was thirty miles away. That night I couldn’t sleep, thinking about what Bill had said, and I made up my mind to get out of that place as soon as I could. Bill and I often talked of getting out. He told me I would have to be very careful because the boys were all good trackers. They had learnt from the blacks who they had lived with at times. Alec got speared through the leg for interfering with a woman once and the blacks had been after Bob several times for the same thing.

  When Bob and Alec returned from town they had the cart loaded
with stores and cases of grog. Bill remarked that there would be another brawl on Christmas Day, as it happened every Christmas.

  He was right. A day or so before Christmas Day the relations and friends came and the women set to work cooking and getting everything ready. Then on Christmas Eve Bob called them all together and told them that this Christmas there wasn’t to be any trouble. He said, ‘Let’s forget the past and show that we can have a good Merry Christmas without any brawling.’

  When there was a crowd stopping the night I had to sleep in the back of the stables on bags of chaff and corn, or a pile of empty bags. This time Bill came and slept there with me. On Christmas Eve we talked for a long time after we had made our beds. Bill suggested that we hide some of the grog. He pointed out that by doing this there would be less to drink and it would help to stop any brawling. He said, ‘It is only when they get very drunk that they brawl.’

  After we had talked about this we decided that we would hide some of the grog. Bill said he knew where it was because he had seen Alec and Bob putting it in the large hessian cooler used for the milk.

  The cooler stood out on the back verandah. It was very large and had a container on top that would hold about eight gallons of water. There were strips of bag running from the water down the hessian sides and the water soaked up into these, then onto the sides of the cooler making the inside very cold. Being outside on the verandah in the fresh air made it cooler still. The bottom shelf was packed with the drinks for Christmas Day.

  Bill and I agreed that when the lights up at the house went out, and we were sure that everyone was asleep, we would carry out our plan. Bill said, ‘If they find out some is missing they will never expect us to be the ones who took it.’ I asked, ‘Where do you think we should hide it?’ Bill suggested that the top of the stable roof would be the ideal place because it was covered with about twelve inches of straw.