Outback Heroines

by Sue Williams

  On finishing school, Janelle decided she’d like a profession where she could help people, and at age 18 went off to Rockhampton to train as a nurse. Then she applied for jobs in a number of Outback towns, as she thought they’d offer the kind of excitement she was looking for – and she knew she definitely didn’t want to go to a city. She took a position in Alice Springs for a year, and stayed for four. ‘I loved it,’ she says. ‘The mountains were gorgeous, the sunrises and sunsets were spectacular and there were a lot of traditional Aboriginal people. It really felt like the Outback.’

  Back then, in 1978, Alice wasn’t much more than an isolated, little dirt township, a real frontier place, and the nursing work was enormously challenging. There were plenty of accidents, fights and stabbings, and there were a lot of babies born prematurely, all of which toughened Janelle to the point where she was ready for anything. ‘I remember one man being stabbed outside a service station and half his intestines were hanging out,’ she says. ‘I was trying to wash him – and them – and trying to make everything sterile, ready for a surgical procedure. Another man had pretty bad burns. He didn’t have much skin left so we had to dose him up with morphine and scrub the burns so that they’d heal slowly without too much scarring. There were also abandoned babies, and if we couldn’t find the mother and persuade her to take the child back, we’d have to send them to Adelaide for fostering.’

  The flat she’d rented in Alice had an interesting condition in the lease: whenever a certain truck driver came to town, she was told he liked to sleep on the couch. Luckily, Janelle took to him from the first time she met him, and they soon became a couple. He started talking of marriage only a couple of months after they’d met and, just four months on from that first sleepover, she finally accepted his third proposal. She married Blue Pugh, a South African who’d arrived in Australia in 1961 at the age of five, and quit her job to go travelling with him. ‘He seemed really country and Outback to me, and really Aussie, even though he wasn’t,’ says Janelle. ‘While he’s originally South African, even back then he was about the most Australian person I’d ever met! We had an instant connection and he treated me like I was very special. He stood out as a gentleman in a rough environment.’

  Blue had a contract with the legendary Kidman dynasty, who created the world’s largest pastoral empire that, at one stage, covered 3.5 percent of the entire continent. They were stationed at Anna Creek Station, the largest working cattle station on earth at 24 000 square kilometres – bigger than Israel – and Janelle joined him, usually to take cattle to market in Adelaide. She loved the freedom of the open road, and learnt to drive a road train too, so she could take over in case of emergency. They then bought the road train and started their own business, driving for Anna Creek and other Outback properties. It wasn’t easy, however. They spent a lot of money having a heavy-duty crate built for carrying big bullocks but, on only their second trip with it, this time out of Pandie Pandie Station along the Birdsville Track, the truck hit a dust hole in the road and the trailer rolled. ‘It was pretty devastating,’ Janelle says. ‘We could only sit and look at our investment in pieces on the side of the road.’

  While they had the truck rebuilt, Janelle decided the time was right for her to get a job too, and for the couple to stop living out of the truck together. So they bought a small, rundown house for sale in Marree, in the north of South Australia at the start of the Birdsville Track, in the early 1980s, just as the old Ghan railway line running through the area was being pulled up to be replaced by a new line on another route further west, and the telegraph line was being taken down. Marree looked condemned to become a ghost town, but Janelle loved it and welcomed truck drivers and passing station hands to stay at her house on their way through. ‘She always had a houseful of people she was looking after,’ says her friend Samantha. ‘There’d be people passing through and young guys in need of accommodation and she’d feed them and look after them and often help pay their bills too. She helped so many people. She’s got such a big heart, and she’s never idle.’

  Janelle did some nursing at the local clinic whenever she was needed, and also worked at the nearby hotel. ‘That was lots of fun,’ she says. ‘You meet a lot of characters and they’re all kinds of legends in their own environment, basically. It was quite a wild time in the Outback then. There weren’t a lot of resources or communication, and everyone mixed in together; it was a real community.’

  The couple kept a pet pig in their backyard but made sure it was fenced-in so Muslims wouldn’t see it and take offence, as there was still an Afghan contingent in the town, descended from the old cameleers, with Marree being home to Australia’s first-ever mosque. Nevertheless, many of the schoolkids passing on their way home insisted on donating uneaten lunches to the pigs, and the little corner store passed on any spoilt goods.

  With properties in the area continuing to destock, however, as part of the national Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign aimed at eradicating the diseases from Australian cattle, in 1983 Janelle and Blue decided to move to Katherine, 320 kilometres southeast of Darwin, where stock appeared less affected. There, they put a small donga on an 8-hectare block and Blue worked for another trucking company while Janelle helped out at a health food shop and ran a restaurant at a nearby homestead. Seeing the potential for tourism, she also started running tours in the area, mostly crocodile-spotting trips, which finished off with homemade stew and damper and stories around the campfire.

  ‘She has a phenomenal capacity for hard work,’ says Pip Hannon, a New Zealand local councillor and former restaurateur who met her while in Katherine on a six-year stay in Australia. ‘Back then, the Northern Territory was the last frontier, but she was amazing in the way she adapted to each new challenge. Her endurance levels were extraordinary, but all the time she was still always sparkly, dynamic and great with people.’

  In 1987, Janelle and Blue had their daughter, Rainé, but, with Blue working away on the trucks so much, he started missing many of her childhood milestones. ‘He missed her getting teeth, talking and walking and things like that, so we decided to try to find something we could do together so he could be at home more,’ says Janelle. The boss at his transport company had just bought a wildlife park, so the pair moved there to work.

  ‘We worked hard and very long hours,’ Janelle says. ‘We had the phone for animal rescue at our house, so were on call 24 hours a day, too. We got very enthusiastic about wildlife and loved working with them, although visitors to the park were always asking, “So how come all your animals seem to have legs or wings missing?” The answer was that we tried to rehabilitate all those we could, and only keep those we knew wouldn’t make it in the wild.’

  At any one time, they might have been raising six little baby bandicoots in pouches at the house, and caring for young wallabies and injured kangaroos and snakes. Rainé was still a toddler, and one photo shows the little girl beaming, wrapped completely in one of the snakes.

  But when the boss finally asked the pair, on top of everything else, to set up a crocodile park, they decided they’d rather do something like that properly for themselves, rather than squeezed in among all their other duties.

  At that, they moved back to Katherine, and spent a year researching what they’d need to set up a crocodile farm, and the feasibility of a farm in what was then a fledgling industry. Two leading crocodile scientists helped them write their application for a crocodile licence, and they started searching for a suitable home for them all.

  Coolibah Station covers 85 hectares of spectacular escarpment and river country, close to the Gregory National Park. To some Australians, it will look instantly familiar: much of the iconic 1955 Australian movie Jedda was filmed there. It featured as the property of the white station owners, who adopt the baby of an Aboriginal woman who’s just died in childbirth. The little girl, the Jedda of the film’s title, grows up staring out of the window at the high ridge that Coolibah faces, and a country that, to her, obvious
ly means freedom. The film was the first Australian feature to be shot in colour and the first Australian movie to be shown at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, with Charles Chauvel the first Australian director to be nominated for the Palme d’Or. In the movie, Coolibah is renamed ‘Mongala’.

  As soon as Janelle set eyes on the place, she fell in love. ‘It was everything I’d ever wanted,’ she says. ‘As a child, our family home was on the top of a big hill, so I always wanted to live near a mountain, and to have the river and water and fishing as well was a bonus. The river brings its own challenges but that adds to the lifestyle, really. You have the place to yourself in the wet. There are never unexpected arrivals because they need to call you to pick them up by boat if they want to visit.’

  The Victoria River is both a great life-giving friend to the region and a treacherous enemy. Running 560 kilometres until it reaches the Timor Sea, it’s the longest river in Northern Australia, dubbed by one early explorer ‘Australia’s River Nile’. Even outside the wet season, it can make life tough. All the shopping has to be done in bulk and brought over during the dry season as it’s too easy to lose everything with the rain and fast-rising river. Even visiting Janelle outside of the wet is a nail-biting endeavour. The causeway over the river is frequently underwater, and visitors phone Janelle and Blue to meet them at the start, so they can follow their vehicle closely, since it’s impossible to see where the sides of the narrow strip end, and the fast-flowing river begins. A workman recently drowned after his truck was swept off the causeway by the current and he failed to surface again. It seems, at Coolibah, there’s danger at every turn.

  ‘Well, often it’s not the crocs that are the most dangerous things,’ says Janelle. ‘We know not to underestimate them. But it can be so many more things. It can be bacteria in the water or in the swamps where they live and we collect eggs from, or the mosquitoes and diseases. Then there’s the machinery and knives. We’ve had more injuries from them than we’ve had from the crocs.’

  These days, Janelle and Blue live in their airy and comfortable homestead, although it still has a concrete floor studded with drains in case of floods. Phoebe the bull-terrier is a frequent visitor, as is Bully, the family’s pet buffalo, as well as half-a-dozen horses. There are usually two or three overseas workers staying too, as part of the Willing Workers On Organic Farms, or WWOOF, program, working in return for food and board and a cultural experience. In Janelle’s garden, she grows vegetables, fruit, herbs, chillies and lime leaves for the Thai and Vietnamese dishes they both love.

  Rainé visits as often as she’s able, taking a break from her own life working with her partner in their cattle mustering business. In 2010, she appeared on the reality Outback TV show Keeping Up with the Joneses as a neighbour’s resident jillaroo, and in 2012 won a Northern Territory government award for rural and regional initiative for her research on improving the cattle industry. It was for that awards evening that Janelle had her nails done.

  ‘You wouldn’t normally see her like that at all!’ laughs Rainé. ‘But she’s an amazing woman. She’s a fabulous role model for me, and for women generally. She proves that girls can do anything they want to. I really admire her.’

  Janelle’s certainly not short on admirers. At the Northern Territory government’s Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, crocodile technical officer Vicki Simlesa says Janelle runs an exemplary operation. Of the nearly 250 000 crocodiles on farms in the Territory, she believes Janelle’s are among the best cared for. ‘It’s a really isolated operation but it’s a great set-up,’ she says. ‘It can be pretty dangerous stuff, but Janelle’s very resilient and really cares for the animals. I have an extreme amount of respect for her. She keeps her animals happy and healthy, and is an extremely powerful woman.’

  Blue remains absolutely devoted to her. When he first met her, he says she didn’t have a lot of self-confidence but that’s grown over the years as she’s met every new challenge and shown herself capable of anything. ‘She’s put up with an awful lot of things over the years that other women wouldn’t,’ says Blue, now aged 58. ‘But we’ll drive out into the bush, hundreds of kilometres from anywhere, and she’ll still be quite at home. She never really needs, or wants, to go anywhere near a town. She’s a rare breed. She always said she wanted adventure. She certainly ended up in the right place!’

  The trips into the bush are mostly for ‘pet-meating’ (killing wild animals to bring them back as food for the crocodiles). Although it’s hard work, they treasure the time they can spend alone together out there. ‘While there’s not much time for relaxing, it’s just great to be camping in the Outback,’ says Janelle. ‘It’s so beautiful and can be so quiet. I usually take a 44-gallon drum cut longways, with legs, so I can have a hot bath at the end of the day to relax my muscles. I light a fire underneath it to make it hot, and sit on a rock so I don’t burn my bum. It’s heaven!’

  One time, they went fishing and saw a kangaroo jump into a particularly croc-infested part of the river and swim across to a little island in the middle. He made it, and they breathed a sigh of relief. Then, when he realised there was no grass on the sand, he jumped back in and headed back to where he came from. ‘But just before it reached the bank, a huge croc goes up to it, throws the kangaroo up in the air, and spins it around,’ says Janelle. ‘Crocs prefer to eat kanga­roos head first, instead of starting at the feet and tail. So it tossed it up, turned it around and then took it. It was an astonishing sight.

  ‘And it reminds you what an extraordinary life we live here in this part of the Outback. We love living here. We’re very lucky in Australia to still have such wild places.’

  2

  BEAUTY ON THE INSIDE

  Belinda Green, Cowra, New South Wales

  Belinda Green is sitting on the sofa of her stone cottage, nursing two tiny joeys that were retrieved from the pouch of their dead mother after the animal was hit by a car. Tucked into a little cloth bag on her lap and warmed by a hot water bottle, they’re only a few months old, about the size of large mice – except for their long, spindly legs – and it’s touch and go whether they’ll live.

  But if Belinda’s determination is any measure, it’s odds on for their survival. She’s leaning over them, intently feeding them specially prepared lactose-free milk formula via a tiny syringe. It’s a painstakingly slow process, but she seems to have infinite patience. When they’ve had enough, or are perhaps exhausted by the effort, she carefully lifts them out of the bag and wipes their bottoms. She then places both the joeys into a fresh pre-warmed bag, into which one instantly pees.

  ‘Ha!’ she laughs, apparently delighted that all is well with their digestive systems at least. ‘How predictable was that?’ She then transfers them both carefully to another clean bag, lifts them out one at a time, and massages baby moisturiser into their smooth, hairless bodies.

  ‘Their skin dries out so easily,’ she explains. ‘They take a lot of care but I’m hoping these two are going to make it.’ As if on cue, one lifts a tiny paw and places it on her hand, his liquid dark eyes gazing unblinkingly up into hers.

  Her face softens. This may have been the woman who once had the world at her feet, voted Miss World and acclaimed as the most beautiful girl on the globe, but today, far from the glamour and social whirl that once ruled her life, she says she just couldn’t be happier. She credits the Outback with once helping to save her life and, in return, she’s doing her best to pay that favour back.

  Belinda Green. (Photo by Kristy White)

  If there’s ever a moment in life that proves a turning point, Belinda Green experienced hers at the age of just 20.

  Standing on a stage in the Royal Albert Hall in London in the 1972 Miss World contest, she waits nervously with a crowd of the world’s most beautiful women for the judges to announce who is the fairest of them all.

  Much to her surprise, she’s made it through to the semifinals as one of the top 15, and then into the final seven. She can barely be
lieve her luck. Even one of the crowd favourites, Miss USA, Lynda Carter – who would later go on to become US TV pin-up Wonder Woman – hasn’t made it this far. Belinda stands off-centre on the stage in her royal blue swimsuit, watching the contest near its conclusion, as if in a dream.

  When she’d arrived in London from Melbourne two days before, she hadn’t even had a pair of silver sandals to wear for the line-up and had refused to buy any. ‘It would be a waste of money,’ she explained to her chaperone. ‘I just wouldn’t get any wear out of them back in Australia.’ In the end, the chaperone bought her a pair. Even that day, she’d seemed quite unprepared. At the rehearsals, her name was one of those plucked at random from a hat and she was asked to perform something for the other girls to tide over a delay while technicians fixed a piece of faulty equipment. Totally thrown, she’d ended up singing ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’, complete with a silver tray doubling as a wobble board, and then demonstrated an Aboriginal dance. Her singing voice was so poor, and her movements so ungainly, the other girls were bent over with laughter, and congratulated her for being such a brilliant comedian. She hadn’t intended it to be a comedy act at all.

  But now, as she stands nervously with the other women, the compere finally appears in the spotlight with his list of names, and an expectant hush falls over the crowd. ‘In fifth place . . . Miss India!’ The applause thunders throughout the Royal Albert Hall as Malathi Basappa is presented with her blue sash. ‘And in fourth . . .’ Belinda can hardly believe her ears. They’ve picked her! But as she goes to walk towards the compere, she sees one of her competitors stride out. Oh! It had been Miss Austria they’d called. She feels her face burning as Ursula Pacher receives her sash, and hopes no one has noticed.