The Outback Wrangler

by Matt Wright

  ‘Get it out!’ she shrieked.

  It took about an hour to coax the bloody thing outside with a broom. The bat was so scared it shat everywhere. The smell lingered in the school corridors for over a month. The teachers were not impressed. I was forbidden from bringing bats to school but that was the extent of the punishment. They knew I had made an honest mistake.

  When I was not at school, my life was one adventure after another. Mum had joined a bow-hunting club. Every other weekend we’d head out to Fitzroy Island, a picturesque little place located about 30 kilometres off the coast of Cairns. We’d go snorkelling around the island’s coral reef or explore the island’s rainforest before camping overnight.

  Other times we’d head off with a group of Mum’s mates to some remote river. While the parents would be off hunting feral pigs, the kids would be floating down the river on tubes, having a ball. If we weren’t canoeing or boating, we’d be searching for lizards, pythons, frogs and turtles. At night, someone would tell stories around the campfire as a slaughtered pig was turned on the spit.

  One of the members of the club was a French-Canadian by the name of Jerry. He became a sort of father figure to me. I hero-worshipped the bloke. He was fit, muscly, and a skilled hunter. Jerry and I both shared a love of wildlife. He believed that all animals could be approached and handled, no matter how dangerous. During a trip we did on the Great Barrier Reef, he demonstrated this no-fear attitude and deep understanding of animals. We spotted a tiger shark circling the boat and were warned to stay out of the water. Without hesitation Jerry jumped in, swum under the shark and held onto it, gliding peacefully through the water. I was in awe – I wanted to be just like Jerry.

  He taught me that the trick with animals is to remain calm, understand their behavior, and stay out of their strike zones. It was Jerry who first tutored me in how to catch venomous snakes, and lucky he did.

  Things got a little hairy one night when I was left to my own devices and went exploring. I found what I thought was a python under some outside shelving. I put my wrangling skills to work and began pulling what turned out to be a seven-foot snake, twice my size. It wasn’t a python, either. I was holding onto an eastern taipan, one of the deadliest snakes in the world.

  I called for help. Mum came barrelling out of the unit. She started screaming the moment she saw the deadly snake dangling perilously close to my body. The snake was getting seriously pissed off, too. I couldn’t let it go for fear that it would turn around and nip me. I ran out, away from the unit, and flung the snake as far as I could. Mum came up behind me, took me around the waist and lifted me back inside to lock me up. Lesson learnt.

  * * *

  Looking back, my guess is that Jerry had a huge thing for Mum. I kind of wished something had developed between the two of them. He had a lot of time for us kids and a lot of knowledge to offer. He exemplified everything I now think a good father should be. He was encouraging, open-minded, and showed me that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

  By this time, Errol had been out of the picture for a while. But Mum and Errol had never got divorced. It turned out that they were talking again, trying to work things out. It was more complicated than just an emotional connection. Mum’s professional future was tied up with Errol’s. She had been finishing up study in acupuncture and naturopathy. The big plan was for Mum to open up her own clinic with Errol, who was a qualified chiropractor and talented naturopath.

  Sure enough, when the school year was up, we packed our bags and returned to where it had all started – South Australia. A kid as young as I was generally accepts the decisions and choices a parent makes. But that didn’t mean I was happy about going back.

  Side by side with my sister Holly. It’s fair to say we got on each other’s nerves growing up, but we’ve always been great mates.

  2

  Second Valley Kids

  Mum and Errol bought a property in Mount Compass, about an hour’s drive south of Adelaide. On the face of it, this was a good place for a kid like me to grow up. There was a lot to keep me entertained – acres of space to roam about and we had horses, chooks, a big fat pig and a hotheaded billy goat. There were also snakes and lizards everywhere.

  Moving to Mount Compass meant reconnecting with my old man, who lived with his new family in Second Valley, a drive of 40 minutes from our place. It was strange to see Dad again. Holly and I basically had nothing to do with him the moment Mum and Errol took us up north. Suddenly we were back in each other’s lives.

  Dad grew up in the foothills of Adelaide, where his family made a living from owning a string of pubs. His parents named him Elliot Bruce Wright, largely because they liked the wordplay after you initialise the first two letters of his name – E. B. Wright, as in ’Eee be right. The joke is lost on most people because Dad has always gone by the name Bruce.

  I never met my paternal grandfather. He died from a stroke when Dad was 15, leaving my Nanny Brownie to raise him on her own. Nanny Brownie was an exceptional woman. She was cluey as hell and the second female pilot to get her licence in South Australia, flying Tiger Moths back in the days when you were mad to step into one. She always wanted to fly in the RAAF during the war but was never allowed. She was a local hero and some of her personal belongings are still on display in the Longreach Hall of Fame.

  Nanny Brownie kept company with some pretty high-profilenames, too. As a lifetime member of the Mount Osmond Golf Club, she played with Sir Donald Bradman and his wife. Sir Donald taught Dad to bowl. He’d put a penny on the middle stump of the wicket and let Dad keep it every time he knocked one off. This must be where Dad developed a love of cricket.

  Dad is your classic Aussie bloke: a man who likes to keep things simple. He is a diehard supporter of the Norwood Football Club and Adelaide Crows, loves fishing, cricket and, above all, kicking back with a cold home brew at the end of the day. Dad is practical, resourceful and a good problem-solver. For these reasons, he was Second Valley’s go-to person in an emergency. If a fire needed to be put out or people were stuck on the cliffs or someone risked being drowned at sea, everybody knew to call Bruce. His innate ability to get out of sticky situations is something I’ve inherited.

  Dad was a shearer and wool-classer before he retired. He’d work down the southeast coast past Broken Hill, up to the west and then back to his shearing shed in Delamere. After he and Mum got together, they moved to Dad’s family holiday house in Second Valley. It was a short-lived relationship. My folks divorced when I was 18 months old, so I don’t remember them being together. Following their separation, Mum had full custody of Holly and me. She moved us to Deep Creek, into the pine forest where she broke in horses to support us.

  Dad was constantly on the move with travel commitments and, after our move to Deep Creek, we barely saw him. That all changed when we moved back to Second Valley. Holly and I caught up with him every other weekend. Holly would stay with Dad and I’d stay with my mate Jono, whose folks lived two doors down. Although I was under Dad’s care, I spent most of the time with Jono, getting up to mischief. But one thing Dad and I did do together was fish.

  Both my old man and Jono’s dad were fishing mad. They would go fishing together with their mates whenever they had the chance. All of us kids would excitedly go to bed the night before, already in our bathers, and wake at first light to the sound of the tractors pulling the boats down to the water. It seemed like every father in the community would be communicating over radio, getting people organised for the day of fishing. After a quick stop to the general store for 20-cent lollies, an armada of boats would push off from the beach, everyone hoping to catch a big one. Once we were out on the water, we’d troll for squid, then use squid heads to catch snapper and squid tails for whiting. There was never a day we returned without the boat full of fresh fish.

  I’ll never forget this one particular time when a resident shark began frequenting and circling the bay at Second Valley. The shark had been spotted a number of times and there
was a general concern that it would have a crack at the kids who regularly swam off the beach. Locals asked Dad if he could do something about it. Dad had the perfect solution.

  He went out in his boat with a couple of sealed 20-litre drums that had been baited up. He anchored the drums and then returned to the shore, parking the boat on the ramp for quick access. For the next three days, Dad sat on the couch watching the cricket while intermittently checking the drums through his binoculars. After a couple of days, Dad saw one of the drums being pulled under. He bolted the door shut, went out in the boat, and brought the shark in. The town was relieved and Dad made sure he ate what he’d killed. Everyone on the street was eating fish and chips for dinner for the next week!

  I respected my old man. But even after we returned to South Australia, I didn’t really have too much more to do with him. He had remarried and created a new life. Even on those weekends when Mum dropped Holly and me off at his place, I barely saw him. I spent the whole weekend at Jono’s house.

  Jono and I were like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, always looking for another adventure. We’d roam around everywhere, getting up to all sorts of antics. One time we walked the 15 kilometres to Cape Jervis. That was a long way for seven-year-olds and I copped an ear-bashing from Mum when we returned home after dark.

  But the real fun was with animals. On a weekend camping trip with Jono’s family on the south coast, I decided to bag a couple of dangerous pets. After filling up a bucket with scorpions, we went looking for snakes – it was the perfect place to catch them. That part of Australia is absolutely full of brown snakes.

  The eastern brown is the second-most venomous terrestrial snake in the world, the taipan being the most venomous. The bite of a brown snake will bring on diarrhea, vomiting, renal failure and sometimes cardiac arrest. According to the statistics, an adult human has a 20 per cent chance of dying if they are bitten and don’t receive medical attention. The odds are worse for the young and the elderly. This is not an animal to be treated lightly.

  I’d been warned about brown snakes, but I wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. Jerry had said that provided you handle a snake with care and confidence, you have nothing to worry about. I caught three browns on that trip, making sure to stay out of the animal’s strike zone, just as Jerry had taught me. They were only small ones – two feet long at most. They were still big enough to give me serious problems if I got bitten, though. I put them in the bucket with the scorpions and draped a towel over the top of them.

  Mum came and picked me up on Sunday night and she asked about the bucket. I told her Jono and I had just caught a couple of lizards. I rested the bucket on my lap, having every intention of watching it like a hawk for the two-hour drive back to Mount Compass. I hadn’t counted on how tired I was. At some point along the way, I nodded off. Next thing I remember I was looking up at Mum who was gently waking me up.

  I sat bolt upright. The bucket was gone! It had fallen onto the floor of the car. I waited for Mum to turn her back before I inspected the bucket. Luckily, it had fallen on its end, trapping the snakes inside. Most of the scorpions escaped in the fall because there were only a couple left. Either that, or the snakes had eaten them.

  Mum grabbed the bucket and I was too scared to tell her what was really inside. We walked to my room and mum unknowingly tucked me in with a bucket of brown snakes at the end of my bed. First thing the next morning, I heard an ear-piercing scream. Mum had woken up early to do the weekend’s washing. There she was, loading up the washing machine when a juvenile brown snake came up the passage to meet her.

  Mum lost her shit. She came running into my bedroom, screaming at me to get out of bed – she knew straight away it had come from my bucket. I was a good sleeper as a youngster. I’d sleep into all hours and it often took a lot to get me out of bed. Mum knew that I wasn’t going to move just because a brown snake was scurrying about the house.

  She ran back into the laundry and managed to trap one of the snakes in the bucket. But she didn’t know there were two more of them roaming free. When I eventually staggered out of bed, the house was in an uproar. Everyone was furious. I got the absolute third degree from Mum on the dangers of brown snakes. I told her to calm down and asked casually if she’d caught the other two. The look on her face was priceless. She couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing.

  ‘You better damn well find them before I get home today!’

  I had no luck the first day. Fortunately, the snakes didn’t make an appearance in front of any patients in the clinic Mum and Errol had set up in the house. I eventually caught one the following morning. It had found its way into the kitchen. It took a couple of weeks for the third snake to turn up. Errol made the discovery. He was sitting on the toilet when he felt something brush past his leg.

  ‘Matt!’ he roared. ‘Get down here and catch this bloody snake!’

  Following this ordeal, Mum and I struck a deal. She would let me keep the snakes in a pit that I dug out the back of our house provided I didn’t catch any more. I agreed to the deal and then broke my end of the bargain.

  Even at a young age, dangerous animals had a real hold on me. They just fascinated me. I continued catching snakes and adding them to the pit. Mum was none the wiser until she got a call from one of our neighbours. People had seen me lifting up discarded pieces of corrugated iron and dead logs in search of snakes. I caught some big fellas, too – five or six feet long, in some cases.

  Mum was terrified that I’d get myself killed. But she knew that no amount of yelling was going to keep me away from snakes. I was drawn to these animals like a magnet. So she tried to broker another deal. If I agreed to stop catching brown snakes, she’d buy me a carpet python when I turned 12. It was a temp­ting offer – a carpet python is a non-venomous snake that can grow up to 13 feet in length. But I wasn’t prepared to wait for three years so I managed to barter her down to my next birthday, which was only a couple of weeks off.

  On the morning I turned nine, Mum came into my bedroom and handed me a large shoebox. I opened the lid and pulled out a five-foot beauty. It was the greatest gift I’d ever been given in my life. I named the snake Solomon and kept it as a pet until it died around the time I turned 20.

  * * *

  The horses were another highlight on our farm at Mount Compass. My favourite was a big Cleveland Bay thoroughbred named Dolly. She was bred for racing but never made it to the track. Mum got her for a song, but told us not to go near her. She was a powerful and temperamental old mare.

  One day, Holly goaded me into taking a ride on her when Mum was out. I was the sort of kid that never knocked back a dare. We saddled her up and on I leapt. It was all going smoothly at first. I walked her around for a bit, feeling completely relaxed. Dolly seemed fine. That was until my sister crept up behind us with a whip and gave the horse an almighty whack across her flanks. Dolly reared up and then bolted. Before Dolly and I disappeared over a hill I caught sight of my sister clutching at her sides in hysterics.

  I pulled hard on the reins, but couldn’t pull her up. We careered across the paddock, clearing fences and logs. It was all I could do to stay on her back. The horse was fast approaching a road, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a car driving along – fast. We were all on a collision course.

  I screamed at the horse to stop, tugging and pulling at the reins as best I could. It made no difference. Seconds from disaster, the driver hit the brake, the car screeching to a halt right in front of us. Dolly was undeterred. She pinned back her ears and leapt over the bonnet. As we landed, I was catapulted out of the stirrups, somehow managing to stay on by grabbing hold of her neck. Dolly galloped around for a few minutes as I pulled myself back on to the saddle. After she calmed down I turned her towards home.

  My sister was still falling on the ground in fits of laughter. She thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. I didn’t ride much for a while after that little episode. I was absolutely filthy at Holly, but I wasn’t a tattletale. Holly
and I were always at each other growing up, pulling these sorts of stunts. A few months later, I had my revenge.

  Next to the old shed on our property was a sheep yard. Errol had electrified the gate to keep Klondyke, our big old family pig, from burrowing out under the fence. Mum didn’t like having electric fences with kids running around, so Errol kept it permanently switched off. But he never dismantled the mechanism. It was a simple matter of flicking the switch and – zap – back on it went. A brilliant little scheme popped into my head.

  The sheep yards were home to a whole lot of our farm animals, including my old billy goat with its big horns. The goat was a real handful, charging anyone who dared to approach. So Errol chained him up to a post in the middle of the yard. Every day, one of us would have to go down and feed him. On the day it was Holly’s turn, I leapt into the sheep yard and unchained the goat. Before going to get my sister, I went into the shed and electrified the fence.

  ‘Holly,’ I said, doing my best to keep a straight face. ‘Errol says you’ve gotta feed the goat.’

  ‘You do it.’

  ‘Nah. It’s your turn.’

  Holly let out a sigh, stopped doing whatever she was doing and went to fill up the goat’s bowl with water. She wandered down to the yards with the bowl, happily singing to herself and completely oblivious to me stealthily following behind. When she got to the gate, she laid the bowl on the ground and then touched the fence. I reckon I saw her hair stand on end before she launched backwards and started howling. I could barely keep my feet on the ground I was laughing so hard.

  Holly turned around towards me and roared. She knew exactly what I had done. Not that she could really complain, not after the stunt she had pulled with the horse. She went into the shed, turned off the electric fence and entered the yard with the bowl. Once she was within 10 metres of the goat, she stopped in her tracks. Something was wrong. The goat was not where it was supposed to be. He was unchained!