A Fortunate Life

by A B Facey

  We followed the track north-east for the next eight days – to a point north-east of the Ophthalmia Range – covering a little over one hundred miles. From the Ophthalmia Range, we turned direct east towards the sunrise, then five days later we came to a rabbit-proof fence.

  This was the first rabbit-proof fence built across Western Australia, to prevent rabbits from migrating into the stock and wheat portions of the state. This fence was a failure and two more fences were built further south. We had passed through them earlier in the trip. They were shorter and only fenced in special sections. There were gates all along at intervals for travellers to pass through. The Government built these fences and employed boundary riders to take care of them and to see that the gates were properly shut. This fence was the starting point of our long drive.

  32

  THE DRIVE BEGINS

  We had two days to wait until we took over the first lot of cattle. Near where we made our camp there was an old boundary riders’ camp and a windmill. Arthur said the windmill was pumping water from a bore. Artesian water came up through a two-inch pipe into a large tank and from there into water-troughs for the stock. The flow into the troughs was governed by a stopcock so that a plentiful supply of water would always be there.

  The two days we had to wait were just what we needed, and we rested most of the time. The only ones that had to do anything, apart from Arthur and I, were the men who took turns in looking after the horses and mules. They also re-shod them. Arthur and I got the meals. My job was to find wood and sticks and I also gathered dry cattle manure. We used this to keep our fire burning as the dry manure would smoulder and keep alight. In the morning we would have red-hot ashes, and when we started them up with small sticks and wood, we would have a good cooking fire in a few minutes.

  As well as the problem with the brumbies, we were now pestered by thousands of pink and grey cockatoos. The men called them galahs – they also called them many other things, of course. I’d never seen anything like them before in my life. They would bite holes in anything, even the leather saddles and straps. We would wash our clothes and hang them out to dry on a bush, and these birds would make big holes in the shirts or anything else. They got so cheeky and bold that one of the men had to get a rifle and shoot a few of them to frighten them away.

  About eleven o’clock on the first day of March, the first lot of cattle were taken over by the Boss – some two hundred and twenty of them. All sorts and sizes; bullocks with large, wide horns, and cows of all kinds and colours. They were in very poor condition. Arthur said that they had come off scrub country and would soon pick up on the good grass on our way down the coast. We all had an early midday meal, then packed up and started on the drive.

  Arthur rode his horse and led the mules Indian file as before. I led the spare saddle horses the same way.

  Arthur, who was actually my boss, explained how and what we had to do while on the drive. He said, ‘We will go ahead of the cattle early in the mornings each day and prepare a meal. There are fourteen of us altogether so our job won’t be easy. The stockmen will have their meals in relays. The first lot are those that were out night herding. They have their meal first, then the others. Then they all go out and start the herding and we clean up and cut sandwiches for each man for the day. One of the drovers gets them and delivers them. Then we pack everything up and set off and find a place to camp that night. As the herd gets bigger our job gets harder.’

  Arthur explained that, as our stocks of food got low, the Boss would go to the nearest station and get more. The stations kept plenty of supplies on hand, so we could always get fresh meat as well as flour, potatoes, baking-powder, and home-made bread and butter. (The Boss was well-known to the station owners and their wives, and they always knew within a day or so of the herd passing and made bread.)

  Arthur also told me how the drive was carried out. ‘We always have scouts out in front of the herd and on both sides. This is done so they can look out for station cattle and drive them well away from the herd. The scouts out in front are always about a mile ahead so the station cattle can’t hear the herd or smell them. The scouts have to change their horses often as they do a lot more travelling than the drovers. They can’t rest their horses like the drovers or allow them to feed along at the same pace as the cattle.’

  Arthur reckoned that we had the best part of two and a half thousand miles to travel from where we started until we reached Geraldton. This was because of the winding route we would have to take. ‘As the crow flies, the distance would be somewhere around one and a half thousand miles. We should make good time for the first few weeks,’ Arthur said, ‘but after that it will be slower, as there would be a big mob from Mundiwindi Station which we should reach in eighteen days or so.’

  With a small herd the average distance travelled was about twelve miles a day, but a large herd slowed the pace down. Arthur estimated that we would be about three and a half months getting to Geraldton. I asked him how many head of cattle we would finally have to deliver, and he said any number between fifteen hundred and three thousand. He said that the Boss expected to pick up from eight stations en route – some of the stations helped one another to do their mustering and branding and brought their cattle in together. That way the Boss sometimes got a lot more than he expected.

  So we started on the afternoon of the first of March. I still hadn’t much idea of what to expect, and if I had known what was ahead of me, perhaps I would not have ventured.

  I liked all the men; the black men particularly were nice and helpful. The five white men frightened me when I listened to their terrible stories about wild blacks. My Grandma had read to me when I was a small boy about a gang of blacks in Victoria or New South Wales who went around killing people (their names were the Governors, Jimmy and Jacky), and this made me scared.

  For the next two weeks we settled into our job. The cattle were good travellers and we did several miles that first afternoon. Arthur and I were most of the time together; the only time we saw the others was at night and early in the mornings.

  My pony, Dinnertime, and I got along fine. She was never far away from me, and she seemed to know that everything was strange to me and kept close. We sometimes let her off the tether unhobbled at night, and she would graze around not far away, then come as close as she could to where I slept, and lie down to rest. I thought this was wonderful. The men noticed it and called her my ‘girl’. The Boss said he had never seen anything like it in his life. He remarked to me one morning, ‘That pony loves you, Bert.’

  The men, black and white, hadn’t shaved since we left Mullewa and all had beards. Darkey used to cut their hair but none of them had brought a razor. They all trimmed their beards but they looked like a wild mob. I used to get Darkey to trim my hair but I had no whisker troubles.

  We had been on the drive for two weeks, travelling about twelve miles each day and were south-east of the Ophthalmia Range, when we got our next lot of cattle. Arthur and I had passed around the herd one morning – through a beautiful valley with a small creek in the middle of it – and travelled some distance, when we came across a large herd of cattle being driven by several station hands. One of the men came to meet us and asked how far back the herd was. Arthur told him that they would be along in about two hours. The man told us that the cattle were from Mundiwindi Station and two other stations further south. There was nearly five hundred head all together, a mixed lot, most of them young, about one and a half years old.

  My biggest worry at that time was finding somewhere to start a fire for Arthur to do the cooking. I used to gather any dry sticks or wood that would do for making a fire, and also dry cow manure. I had two bags tied together hung over one of the spare horses, and I would put anything suitable I came across into them.

  We were having hot, sultry weather and the sky was sometimes overcast. Near the end of March we met up with another small herd of cattle. They came in from the north, about one hundred and fifty of them. Arthur used
to estimate the numbers and he was never far out. He was very pleased with the way things were going and said that the next lot of cattle we met would be at the Ashburton River, a little over a week away.

  The weather became even hotter and the overcast skies had gone. By the time we reached the Ashburton some of the cattle were feeling the heat and our progress had slowed down to about eight miles a day. During the midday heat some of the older cows didn’t like leaving the shade of the large granite boulders and the small trees in the valleys.

  Arthur and I arrived at the Ashburton River on the second day of April, and waiting on the other side, was a fairly large herd of mixed cattle. The river here was very wide but the water was shallow. One of the stockmen from the other side came across to show us how deep it was. Arthur and I waited until our herd came up. It was about ten o’clock in the morning when it arrived. One of our men rode into the herd as it was bunched up near the water, lassooed a cow and pulled her out into the clear. Another one of our men got behind the cow with a whip. Then the first man tied the end of the lasso rope to the horn of his saddle and pulled the cow towards the water. After a few cuts with the whip the cow was persuaded to go into the water and hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when the herd commenced to follow. An hour later they were all on the south side of the river and by the time we got across, the new cattle and our herd had mixed.

  The man in charge of the cattle gave our boss a piece of paper with the particulars, then he and his men rode away. The herd was now about eleven hundred head. Arthur and I moved on to prepare a camping place for the night. We found a nice spot some four or five miles further on. Arthur said that he thought that that lot of cattle had come from a station called Ashburton Downs.

  Arthur, besides doing the cooking, had to attend to shoeing the horses and mules whenever they required it. He was an expert at this. I learned a lot about shoeing horses and many other things about them, such as what to watch when they were feeding on natural grasses, and the type of scrub that was not good for them to eat. Some of the scrub would make the horses scour badly and they would go off their feed, become lifeless and get very thin.

  After crossing the Ashburton River we headed south-west towards the coast and Hamelin Pool, some three hundred miles away. Ten days on from the Ashburton we would reach the Lyons River, which was only a small water-course, Arthur told me. Arthur estimated that we had travelled three hundred and eighty to four hundred miles since we had taken the first cattle. To the north, in the distance, we could see the Capricorn Range, and to the south was the Augustus Ranges.

  It was now past mid-April. The country we were crossing was more open and flatter than usual. There were a few granite outcrops, some very large anthills and an occasional clump of huge granite boulders. These boulders stood hundreds of feet high, like statues, as if there had been a flood that had washed all the earth away from around them.

  The sky was overcast and a gale was blowing. Arthur said he thought we were in for some rain. As the clouds became lower and darker, we could hear thunder in the distance and see flashes of lightning. We made camp that night near an outcrop of granite boulders where we would be able to keep dry should it rain. A small valley just beyond the boulders, with a sharp rise at ground level beyond that, would be a good place to bed the cattle for the night. They would be protected from the wind. Arthur told me this when he picked the spot and he said that rain didn’t bother cattle unless they got a fright. The herd came in at about sundown.

  The Boss was very pleased with the camping spot. He said that the weather looked ugly and we might have a rough night. I managed to get a good fire going for Arthur with the sticks, wood and dry manure I had picked up along the way. Arthur cooked a nice stew. The cattle settled down early as they were very tired. The Boss had made them travel faster because of the weather, and they had covered a good twelve to thirteen miles that day. This was the usual pattern adopted by experienced drovers when the weather was threatening: make the cattle as tired as possible to calm them down.

  Leaving three men to ride around the cattle, the rest came in to camp. They had our stew, then three men rode out and relieved those riding the herd. It was getting very dark and the thunder and lightning were more frequent and close, and very loud. Arthur and I cleaned up our pots, billys, enamel plates, and soon we were all very tired, so we rolled into our rough beds on the ground.

  The men out herding the cattle would have two hours on, then they would be relieved. This was so they would all get a break of six hours to sleep. Arthur and I didn’t do any herding but we had to look after the horses and mules during the nights. Nights like this one, we couldn’t let the horses off the tether, so we had to shift them two or three times to be sure they got plenty to eat.

  About midnight Arthur called to me and we shifted the tether ropes for the second time that night. Arthur put some more dry cattle manure onto the fire and we went back to our beds. The storm was very close.

  The next thing I knew, Arthur was shaking me violently saying, ‘Come on, the cattle have stampeded, we will have to go after them.’ I ran to Dinnertime and saddled her, and rode her towards what I thought was the cattle charging through the bush. The thunder and lightning were terrific. I followed the sound I was sure was the cattle – it seemed to be a crashing, galloping noise. The rain commenced to come down in bucketfuls – I was wet through to the skin but I was sure I could hear the cattle, so I kept going. The lightning was flashing every few seconds but I couldn’t sight the cattle. I had no idea in what direction I was travelling. All I knew was that the storm and I were going in the same direction, and as the storm was from the north-west, I must be going south-east.

  33

  LOST

  The rain continued and daylight came. There were no cattle and I couldn’t find any tracks. I came across a high ironstone hill so I tied Dinnertime to a bush and climbed up to the top, about two hundred feet, to see if I could see where I was. It was still raining and there was running water everywhere. I was sopping wet and freezing but climbing up the hill warmed me up a little.

  All I could see from the top was mountainous looking country in all directions. The sky was thickly covered with dark cloud. It was impossible to see the sun so I had no idea what way I was going. So at last I knew the worst. I was lost. I was also cold, wet and very hungry, and I was frightened.

  I scrambled down to my pony, climbed on her back and gave her her head. I had been told that if you get lost while on horseback, you should give the horse its head and it will take you home. But this theory was no good with Dinnertime – she took me where there was plenty of feed and she fought for her head to eat it. I let her eat as much as she wanted and I walked for a time to get the warmth back into my legs and body. Then I rode to the top of some high hills, but still to no avail.

  The rain was tumbling down. It hadn’t let up since the cattle broke. And now it was getting late – the sun must have set without me knowing. I felt very scared but I didn’t panic. I kept Dinnie going until we came to a gorge with large granite boulders on each side. There were large caves running up under the boulders, big enough for a horse to walk into.

  It was nearly dark so I decided to camp there for the night. I unsaddled Dinnie, and tethered her near the cave (we always carried tether ropes on the saddles). Thank goodness I had the rope because without Dinnie, all would be lost for me – I had to be sure she couldn’t wander away. I put the saddle down in the cave to use as a pillow, and covered myself with the saddle cloth. I lay there listening to the rain still pelting down outside. Dinnie pawed the ground and came inside the cave and lay down to rest. I felt happy about this and some of the fear left me. After awhile I went to sleep.

  When I woke it was daylight and still raining. Dinnie was standing in the mouth of the cave. Outside there was a lot of running water, the gorge had a stream running through it like a little river. I was still wet and cold. The sun was completely hidden so it was impossible to know which way to go. I was u
nable to tell north from south, or east from west. After giving Dinnie a longer tether rope so she could reach some grass, I sat thinking what to do. I remembered that the storm had been travelling from north-west to south-east when I left the camp, but what about the wind changing? If I could only see the sun I’d get some idea.

  I watched Dinnie cropping grass and noticed the sort she liked best. I thought, if the grass is good for Dinnie, it is good enough for me. I put some in my mouth and chewed it. The juice tasted nice but no matter how hard I tried to swallow the grass, I couldn’t. I tasted the leaves of some of the scrub. Most of these were awful but I found one scrubby looking bush that was nice to eat – it had a salty taste.

  When Dinnie stopped eating, I saddled her up and set off to try and find some place or person. I rode all the rest of that day towards what I thought was the west. I rode up on to high hills and peaks along valleys, but the only things that I saw alive were kangaroos by the hundreds, a few emus and a few wild horses. Not a sign of anybody or any made place. Not even a track or an old road.

  As the day drew to a close the rain was getting less, but the sky was still overcast. The rain stopped just before dark. The wind stopped too and everything was still and quiet. I stopped and listened. All I could hear was a dingo howl and another answering in the distance.

  I wondered where I would stay the night – I didn’t like the idea of travelling in the dark.

  Water was running everywhere in all directions. At least I had no water troubles. It would be terrible to be lost like this with no water. Dinnie was in clover; she didn’t seem to mind if we were lost forever.

  I came across a very thick patch of scrub and decided to camp there for the night. The scrub was wet but it was too dark to look for something better. To get warm I stood with my body close to Dinnie – she was lovely and warm and she didn’t mind. After awhile I broke off a pile of scrub and made a place to lie down. I was very hungry now as well as cold and wet. I again used the saddle for a pillow and put the saddle cloth over me. I piled some scrub underneath me and I also put a pile of scrub up on top of the saddle cloth. I tethered Dinnie and spent my second night alone.