Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories

by Graham Seal

  It is likely that this experience contributed to the decline of the company in later years. But so complex and diverse were the incomes and expenditures of Cobb & Co.’s interlocking business interests that it is impossible to tell. Perhaps it was just the passing of time.

  As the business aged, so did its operators. Although Rutherford lived well into his eighties, his mental health deteriorated along with his grasp of the business. The company failed to perceive the value of the motor vehicle, resisting motorisation until it was already providing smaller competitors with the essential edge, and was in receivership by 1911. The last horse-drawn coach ran in 1924.

  A vintage British and Australian television series called Whiplash was loosely based on the Cobb & Co. story, filmed during 1959–60 and first reaching Australian screens in 1961. The ‘Australian western’ series starred the American actor Peter Graves in the lead role of Freeman Cobb, though the rest of the cast were locals, including Leonard Teale, Chips Rafferty, Lionel Long and Robert Tudawali. Although a rather painful, sometimes jarring representation of colonial life, the series did help the developing Australian industry move towards more realistic depictions of its history in shows like Rush, Cash and Company and Against the Wind.

  The Long Paddock

  The Long Paddock is the unofficial name for Travelling Stock Routes, or TSRs. Mostly originating in the nineteenth century, these are official routes for droving livestock from place to distant place, with wide strips of grass at each side to allow the passing sheep or cattle to graze. Water points are available at regular intervals, although these can easily fail in times of drought. Many Long Paddocks are famous in Australian tradition, including the Canning Stock Route (established 1906–10) between Wiluna and Halls Creek; the Birdsville Track (1880s), 520 kilometres from Birdsville in Queensland to Maree in South Australia; and the Tanami Track, between Halls Creek and the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. Many of these TSRs have colourful tales to tell.

  The Strzelecki Track runs through South Australia and was established by the bushranger Harry Redford, or ‘Starlight’, who drove 1000 stolen cattle from Queensland to Blanchewater (South Australia) in 1870, selling them for a large amount of money but later apprehended for the crime. He was tried but found not guilty by a jury impressed with his outstanding journey and unintended contribution to rural infrastructure.

  One of the deadliest tracks is known as the ‘Ghost Road of the Drovers’. It’s only 230 kilometres long, but the Murranji Track runs through dense scrub from Newcastle Waters to Old Top Springs and is a shortcut between the Kimberley and markets in Queensland. Formed in 1885 and taking its last mob in 1967, the track was notorious for its difficulty of access and the frequent failure of its water supply. At least eleven bodies are said to lie at Murranji Bore and Waterhole, which is also a sacred site to the Mudburra people. In 1942, Billy Miller passed on his recollections of the track in its early days.

  In 1886… Nat Buchanan first crossed what is now the Murranji Track, going through from Newcastle Waters to Victoria River. Beginning at Newcastle Waters, the Track follows the Four Mile Creek for twenty-five miles until it reaches a waterhole, called by the drovers The Bucket. Here the Track leaves the creek and goes west, crossing a plain for about fifteen miles, after which it enters thick scrub of hedgewood and lance-wood. Thirty-five miles further on it reaches the Murranji Waterhole, which is surrounded by old box trees. This is the loneliest place I have seen in all ‘the Outback’ of the north.

  Thirty-five miles west from here the Track reaches an aboriginal ‘mickeree’ (native well). The aborigines dug these wells so that they could walk down to the water. They had a crude but effective way of timbering them. The earth dug out in making or deepening them is not piled up at the edges, but scattered about the surrounding land; the idea being not to make the wells conspicuous. Aborigines never make camp close to the water—always over a mile away in some thick patch of scrub. In walking to the water to fill their coolamons, they avoid going the same way twice, thus making no pad that would lead strangers to the mickerees.

  A further fifteen miles brings the Track to the Yellow Waterholes (native, ‘Bin-kook-wee-charra’). Nine miles west from here it reaches the Jump Up. On the 109 miles from The Bucket Waterhole to the Jump Up there were only two surface waters—that is, in the old days—which explains the aborigines’ need to guard their mickerees. To-day there is a cut line through the dense scrub, and there are bores with large tanks and pumping plants also. It is no trouble now to cross the Murranji Track.

  In 1894, when I was stockkeeping on Newcastle Waters cattle station, the blacks about the Yellow Waterholes were very hostile. Some packers from the Cook Town country were going out to Halls Creek, I recall, and, at night, when they were camped, blacks threw spears into their mosquito nets, but luckily did not kill anyone.

  In 1900, ‘Mulga Jim’ McDonald and Hardcastle were camped at the Yellow Waterholes, and, in the night the blacks attacked their camp also. A spear struck Hardcastle in the chest, but, as it was a cold night, he had two rugs and a camp sheet over him, and these stopped the point from penetrating deeply. However, the spear wound caused his death two years later.

  On Armstrong’s Creek about twenty miles west of the Yellow Waterholes, Jim Campbell and I were camped one night, when the natives let go a shower of spears at our mosquito net. The spears hit our packsaddles, but missed us! They missed because, having learned from experience, we anticipated the raid and, rigging our nets as usual, slept a little way off in the grass. That tricked them!

  Thirty-eight years ago I was working on a newly-formed station called Illawarra. The leased country held by the owners was from Top Springs to the Yellow Waterholes, so that cattle travelling the Murranji Track would traverse the station for 40 miles.

  When Ben Martin, Jim Campbell and Mick Fleming took the country up, cleanskin cattle were plentiful and very wild. We were moonlighting and running them in to ‘coachers’ and throwing and tying. Eventually we pulled a fair-sized herd together.

  Wave Hill Station was sending bullocks away, some to Queensland and some to Oodnadatta. Victoria River was also sending two mobs of cows to Kidman’s Annandale Station on the Lower Georgina. I had to pick up each mob at Top Springs and go with them through the Illawarra country to the Yellow Waterholes, a distance of 40 miles. And I had to keep our station cattle from boxing with the travelling mobs!

  With me were two blacks about 17 years of age, who, only three years previously, had been living a stone-age life and had never seen a white man. Now they were top-notch riders. They could take their place ‘moonlighting’ and could throw and tie up a beast as well as the best of us.

  The first mob I picked up was with Blake Miller, a contract drover. He had 1,000 head of cows from Victoria River Downs. After seeing him through to the Yellow Waterholes I returned to Top Springs and picked up Steve and Harry Lewis, who had 1,000 head of Wave Hill bullocks for Oodnadatta.

  Bringing down the next mob I was with ‘Jumbo’ Smith (‘Brown of the Bulls’ in ‘We of the Never Never’). Suddenly, in the darkness, the cattle rushed off the night camp. I heard the stampede, jumped out of bed, and picked up my bridle and whip. My horse was close at hand. I jumped on bare-back and raced for the lead. I put the stockwhip into the leaders and had them blocked, when one of my black boys came up. Then ‘Jumbo’ Smith (he weighed 18 stone) arrived on the scene. We put the cattle back onto camp, and at day-light ‘Jumbo’ counted them. He found that we were only two short!

  The next lot to be pushed through was a mob of 1,500 head of Wave Hill bullocks, with Jack Dick Skuethorp contract drover. Following him was Oswald Skuethorp, who had 1,250 head of Wave Hill bullocks.

  On the second day Oswald asked me to take charge of his bullocks as he wanted to stay with his waggonette to help the cook, who was also the driver. The road was rough limestone in places and very difficult for a vehicle. A wheel of the waggonette broke, as Oswald feared it might, and, worse still, as the
y were fixing it up the horses strayed away. They did not get them together until late. Putting some cooked tucker on the horses, Oswald started on in the night, hoping to pick up the cattle. However, he did not turn up. In the darkness he had mistaken a cattle pad for the road and ‘gone bush’.

  The food for the cattlemen was with the waggonette. I had my horses and packs with me, so I knocked up some johnny cakes, boiled some corned beef, and fed the men. I put two of my horses and my two black boys to help with the night watch. The next day we went on but by nightfall there was still no sign of the waggonette, the boss, or the cook. The following day we went up the Jump Up and on to the Yellow Waterholes. We had watered the bullocks and they were feeding on the small plain close to the water when we saw Oswald Skuethorp coming up with the horses and waggonette. We were right glad to see them, as the food supply was exhausted.

  It used to be assumed that pioneers developed these vital transport corridors from scratch, but recent research suggests that while this was so in some cases, many follow traditional pathways. While the TSRs are little used for droving these days, there are calls to preserve them as important elements of the environment as well as for their heritage value.

  A final surprising fact about the Long Paddock: the Bradfield Highway that crosses Sydney Harbour Bridge is officially designated as a Travelling Stock Route.

  The real Red Dog

  The earliest European visitors to the continent often commented on the many dogs they saw accompanying Aboriginal groups. When the new settlers came they soon realised the value of canine companions, and dogs became as much a part of the working stock of the land as horses, bullocks, sheep and cows. They accompanied drovers overland, keeping mobs of cattle and flocks of sheep in order. They hunted, retrieved, protected and became an inseparable part of many families. Dogs also featured in songs, stories, art and even in early silent movies, where they often appeared in the chase scenes, well beyond directorial control and simply enjoying the thrill of it all.

  Lawson wrote of the dog loaded with a stick of explosive. The famous song about whatever the dog did on—or in—the tucker box at Gundagai entered folklore, as did the wild native dog, the dingo. Dogs were often mascots in military units, the best known being Horrie, the war dog of the 1939–45 conflict, though he was only one of many fighting hounds. Dogs were an indispensible element of Australian life and are still with us as family pets, sporting beasts and the cargo in the back of country utes.

  One of the most famous dogs of recent times was known simply as ‘Red Dog’. Red Dog was a crossed Kelpie–cattle dog born in Paraburdoo in 1971, known as ‘Tally’ or ‘Blue’ in some areas of the vast distances he is said to have covered in his travels. Red Dog became a well-known, if smelly, wanderer throughout the Pilbara region. Many tales were and are told of his amazingly long and arduous journeys and gargantuan appetite, not only for food but for lady dogs as well. He was a generally loved character in the region, frequently being given lifts by passing vehicles as he made his way from one favourite feeding place to another. He even made a trip as far south as Perth.

  Not everyone liked Red Dog, though. He took, and was probably given, a strychnine bait in Karratha on 10 November 1979 and died ten days later. Red Dog was buried between Roebourne and Cossack and commemorated in a statue at Dampier, in verse, as well as in a number of books and especially in Pilbara folklore.

  In 1998, the writer Louis de Bernières travelled to the Pilbara and saw the locally famous statue. He became fascinated by the story and returned a few months later to collect Red Dog yarns still being told by the locals, turning these anecdotes into a bestselling book published in 2001. Being a writer, de Bernières naturally made an even better tale out of the legends and it is now even more difficult to tell where truth ends and fiction begins. Not that it matters. Assisted by the hit movie based on the book in 2011, Red Dog is now a household name throughout Australia, having made the leap from local legend to national hero.

  What a hound! Perhaps Red Dog could only have become such a figure in Australia with its long and strong canine tradition. The movie was a great hit here, but did not do so well overseas. But those with a commercial interest in this venture are not too worried. To date, Red Dog is the eighth-highest grossing Australian film and plans are said to be well in hand for Red Dog the Musical.

  6

  Doing it tough

  ‘The banks are all broken,’ they said,

  ‘Times will be hard and rough.

  There’s relief for the poor

  At the dole-office door

  But you’ll have to keep doing it tough.’

  Anonymous

  ALTHOUGH AUSTRALIA HAS often proved a bountiful place for many, it also has a long history of hard times. The image of the battler is a well-known one and a term that is still often heard today in relation to people who, for whatever reason, are forced to do it tough just to scrape by.

  The free selectors of the post-gold rush years lived notoriously basic lives, often subsisting on ‘pumpkin and bear’ and little else. People had to fend for themselves as far as their health was concerned and in just about every other aspect of life, work and leisure. When the Great Depression hit Australia in the 1930s, very many people who had previously held decent jobs and rented or were purchasing homes were thrown out of work and often onto the street. They coped by adopting some of the strategies of earlier generations who knew what doing it tough meant.

  Depending on the harvest

  In April 1880, a journalist for the Argus newspaper travelled through northeast Victoria interviewing hard-pressed selectors ‘where hopefulness was coupled with rough living and plenty of work’. This is what he found.

  The husband was out ploughing, behind a pair of horses, and the wife was occupied in ‘burning off’ which meant hauling small logs and boughs to the heaps of dead timber, and keeping several fires in a state of activity. The children, too small to be of any use, were amusing themselves picking up sticks, and following their mother about. They were very poorly clad all of them and had evidently not worn new clothes for several seasons. The husband was very glad to leave off ploughing to have a consultation with his friend and adviser the bailiff. He took up 320 acres in February, 1877, beginning with a capital of £200. He had fenced all the land in, and was now getting 70 acres ready for sowing. Last season the crop was good, but the season before he did not gather in a single bushel.

  Nothing looked better in the summer of 1878–9 than the standing corn but owing to the rust the grain never formed in the ear. He was depending on the harvest of 1879 for the means of clearing off liabilities and did not realise a penny. In this instance the selector had bought a stripper, on bills, in anticipation of the harvest. Having no means of meeting the bills he had to make arrangements with his storekeeper for an advance. In 1878 the account against him stood at £64 and though he sent £154 worth of corn to his storekeeper in January last, there was still a heavy balance against him in the books. The storekeeper was dealing very fairly with him, charging 12 per cent on the bills, which were renewed from time to time and threatening no pressure. The lease was due, but the selector could not take it up until he paid £96 in rent—ie £64 arrears under the licence, £16 under the lease, and £16 more coming due. Should the harvest of 1881 turn out a good one, he would be able to clear off his debts and raise enough money on the lease to carry him on for the future. Just now he was in doubt how to act. Having only paid £32 (one year’s rent), ought he to forfeit the amount, as some advised, and start afresh under the Act of 1878 paying only £16 a year instead of £32?

  So long as he was without the lease, no one except the Crown could dislodge him; but he saw no hopes of being able to pay rent, or any of his other obligations, before next February. The horses and plant were covered by bill of sale, and there was nothing on which he could just now raise any money. He bought 100 sheep on credit for £44 some time ago, but they got out through the fences, and 80 had been lost. It was likely when
a muster took place at the station that most of them would be recovered. The man he bought the sheep off would take them back, and if they fetched within £10 of what was due on them probably he would be satisfied. Sheep had fallen in price since the purchase of this flock. He had two horses before beginning to plough but one took ill and he was obliged to borrow £5 to buy another.

  This was the case of a man absolutely destitute of ready cash, with 10 borrowed months before him, no means of raising any funds, and carrying on only by the forbearance of the storekeeper, whose long bill was produced for our inspection. The first half of the account was contained in one line—’account rendered’, and the remainder filled two pages of foolscap. No item in it looked unreasonable, and the goods supplied consisted chiefly of requisites for earning on farming. The family lived in a bark hut, divided into two apartments by a partition. The inner room, where all the family slept, was not lighted by any window. Indeed, but for two doors the whole place would have been dark. A mud floor worn into holes and dusty walls with a few paper decorations, some sacks of wheat kept for seed, a wide fireplace, a kettle swinging over the fire, a table, and a piece of dried meat hanging in a smoky place—these were the only noticeable features of the interior. In the old gold-digging times rough men would have been contented with similar lodging but it could not be said that the place was a suitable one for bringing up three children, shortly to be increased to four.

  The children, being under six, were too young for school but in a year or two it would be safe to let them walk by themselves across the bush to the schoolhouse. It cannot be said that selectors in distress have failed for want of industry. Here was this one, out first thing every morning with his horses ploughing, preparing the ground for a harvest 10 months distant, and his wife (who would not be equal to field work long) helping him in the afternoons at ‘burning off’. Everything in this instance was depending on the results of the harvest of 1881, and favourable weather in the meantime—on a fall of rain at proper intervals, dry days at ripening time, a good yield, assistance in money from the storekeeper at reaping and threading (for the harvest labourers must be paid in cash) and a good market when the grain is ready for sale—a good market depending on the state of affairs in Europe as well as on the condition of things here. And when the corn is being threshed out, the storekeeper will be standing by to make sure of the bags of grain. Until his account is squared up there will be nothing available for the payment of arrears of rent or for the purposes of another season’s preparations. If anything, the facts of this case have been understated.