Kings In Grass Castles

by Mary Durack

  I have put up a yard on Galway since Uncle Jerry left—Pumpkin and Kangaroo offsiding. Did I hear you say ‘Doing most of the work, I bet?’ Well, I have taken the skin off both hands and they have now hardened up.

  It looks as though it will be ‘goodbye’ for me as far as the studies are concerned. Have been reading Goldsmith and thinking of the old school, and shall I say, not without a sense of nostalgia. Sometimes I would like to think I was going hack. I have not mentioned it to Father as he does not seem to want to talk too much of the immediate future just now. I don’t think he knows what to do for the best. Dear mother says that whatever happens she will not be parted from her Muscovy ducks and the best of her pot plants which will be left to die in any other hands. I often play the piano to her and the girls and Sunny and they do not notice the mistakes nor that I make up most of the bass myself.

  Old Mr Healy continues dotty as ever but pretty well and sometimes think we will probably have him with us for the rest of our lives even though he feels convinced the Irish question will never be solved until he gets back to set them on the right road. His conversation is much of the Phoenix Park murders of last year. Father keeps his fund going for the Irish Land League and will have nothing said against Parnell. He is much distressed by the news he gets from home though from what I can read of it the Irish are not helping the situation by their behaviour. Tell me all the news when you write and have you seen any more of Jim’s pretty sister? No need to envy me the girls’ Governess Miss Quirk. She is all prunes and prisms.

  Your fond brother,

  MICHAEL P. D.

  No doubt the responsibilities with which be was entrusted at this early age developed in my father the habit of authority that formed much of the background of his personality. From that time onwards no one besides Pumpkin ever appears to have disputed his decisions. The faithful Aboriginal recognised only one master and although his attitude to the boys he claimed to have ‘grown up’ was protective, respectful and affectionate, they remained always ‘the young fellows’ who still had plenty to learn. It would be some years before my father came to realise the degree of his dependence upon this stalwart and capable retainer, and longer still before he could recount with amusement the brush they had soon after his return from college to Thylungra. Very much the young laird in well-fitting breeches, polished leggings and spurs, he had devised a series of signals on the iron triangle that served as a station dinner gong—three for Pumpkin, four for Willie, five for Kangaroo and a sustained clanging for general assembly. Pumpkin disliked the innovation and feigned deafness. He never argued. He simply failed to co-operate when his own ideas differed from those of his young master.

  ‘Fetch me that black stallion, like a good fellow,’ Father told him one day. ‘I’ll give him a try-out on the bullock muster today.’

  Pumpkin disapproved of a small sharp type of spur Father effected at this stage and had no intention of letting him ride the stallion that was his pride and joy. He brought up another horse on the pretext that the one wanted could not be found and when sent back with instructions not to return without it finally reappeared leading the stallion which had developed an unaccountable limp. When this disability recurred each time he elected to ride the horse Father became suspicious and found on examination that the limp was caused by a few strands of hair passed under the shoe and wedged tightly in the cleft of the hoof. He turned on the black man indignantly.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this? Don’t you reckon I can handle this horse?’

  ‘You can handle him all right, young fulla,’ Pumpkin said. ‘I’m only thinking about the horse—that’s all.’

  Later the youth complained to his father: ‘Seems to me you’ve let old Pumpkin have too much of his own way all these years. He’ll be telling us how to run the station soon.’

  ‘He’s been doing that ever since we came to Thylungra,’ Grandfather chuckled. ‘Maybe that’s the reason we got on here so well.’

  When the cattle were about nine months along the road to Kimberley Grandfather believed he had hit upon the solution to the problem of how to have his cake and eat it too. While on a business trip to Brisbane the inspiration had come in the form of a half-jocular enquiry from a business acquaintance who had previously asked for first option on Thylungra if he ever decided to sell out.

  ‘Well, you old beef baron, I hear you’re going to build yourself a mansion in the city at last and you’ll be sending your sons over to the Ord River. Isn’t it time you decided to let somebody relieve you of a few of your burdens?’

  ‘I’ll admit the whole thing’s getting a bit much for me,’ Grandfather replied, ‘but as far as the Cooper’s concerned it’s a matter of sentiment. I cannot bring myself to sell my interest in this country that I brought to life as though it were no more than a matter of cash.’

  ‘Then why not a syndicate?’ his friend suggested. ‘There are plenty others, besides myself, interested in getting a foothold out there. If we were, perhaps, to combine forces…?’

  In less than a month the deal was finalised and the Queensland Cooperative Pastoral Co Ltd formed. It was to be a powerful combine ‘to carry on in Queensland and elsewhere in Australia the businesses of stock and station holders, sheep, cattle and horse farmers, breeders and graziers’. The company was to ‘purchase the stations known as Thylungra, Galway Downs and Sultan in the district of Gregory South; of Tongy in the Maranoa district, of Buckingham Downs in the district of Gregory North…of a butchering business and certain freehold lands situated in or near Roma; and also of the Forrest Vale run situated in the district of Kimberley, W.A., together with the cattle, sheep and horses depasturing on the said station runs.’

  The estimated number of cattle on Thylungra in January 1884 is stated as being 30,987—an astonishing increase on the pathetic 100 head that first came to Kyabra Creek in ’68!

  The agreement was drawn up between ‘Patrick Durack of the first part, Michael Durack of the second part, Richard Wingfield Stuart, Henry Benjamin, Cyril Selby, David Benjamin, Reginald Arthur Whipham and Richard Newton of the third part’ by which those of ‘the said third part’ were to pay ‘those of the first and second parts’ the sum of £160,000 for coming in on the spoils of their pastoral empire.

  This seemed to Grandfather the ideal compromise, for by maintaining his share in the syndicate he was keeping faith with the Cooper district while being relieved of the full burden of its responsibility. He could visit Thylungra with a proprietary interest any time he wished without being tied down to dates and obligations. Losses sustained over the seemingly inevitable drought periods would be shared while he should continue to receive handsome dividends from good seasons. His agreement with his cousin Big Johnnie had left him free to make any business arrangements deemed advisable for the land they held in partnership in Kimberley, so he had thrown in the untried Forrest Vale run on Spring Creek for good measure, his other Kimberley holdings having already been signed away in favour of his four sons.

  Galway Jerry had preferred to be bought out by his brothers rather than join the syndicate and was promptly paid £20,000 of the down payment of £30,000 made by the incoming shareholders, who, despite the company’s declared half million capital had asked for a year’s grace in which to make final payment. The remaining £10,000 Grandfather paid at the same time to his brother, Stumpy Michael, who had been appointed as a director of the Queensland Co-operative Company.

  Reluctant still to sever his close relationship with Cooper’s Creek, Grandfather lingered on, dallying over plans for his Brisbane house, ‘putting things in order’, waiting for messages about the progress of the cattle. It would seem that having travelled so far with such undeviating clarity of purpose he now hesitated, on the brink of a new phase, wondering ‘Where next?’

  In July 1884 my father wrote again to his brother in Goulburn:

  I do not think Father seems so well lately. I think the sooner he leaves Thylungra now the better but he appears irritable when I a
sk him whether he has quite made up his mind when he will go or what he wants me to do when they have all gone. Whether I am to stay here, go to Kimberley at once or return to college I do not know and am in a state of uncertainty as to the future. Somehow a lot of the life seems to have gone out of this place since the cattle got away and so many of the old hands left for Kimberley. There is not the same excitement about sports and race meetings since Uncle Michael and Uncle Jerry left and I miss old Duncan McCaully and all the others who have gone. I hear cousin Mick Costello has gone to the Territory with Uncle John and they have some splendid country on the Limmen River. Aunt Mary and the children will be back from Ireland soon and are going out there and Aunt and the girls will be the first white women ever in those parts.

  Well John, I was nineteen last week so time is getting on and I would not like to think the years would drift by in this undecided way. I wish Father would make a clean break now and be done, for although there will be some regrets at leaving the old home where we all grew up I sometimes think the Cooper is going back now rather than forward. We need rain badly and the blacks say there is to be a real drought though please God they are wrong. Poor Pumpkin professes great sorrow at the thought of the family leaving and Father has promised him the black stallion, Ebony, and the bay mare, Forest Maid and another colt that he was supposed to be sending to Kimberley. I don’t know what Pumpkin would want with horses of his own as he rides anything he likes on the station and seems to have an idea he owns the lot. He may not enjoy such freedom in the future, but no doubt he will get used to it…

  Pumpkin had asked most earnestly to be allowed to accompany the family to their new Brisbane home but Grandfather held to his belief that even so exceptional a native would fret and sicken away from his own country. The case, he explained, was not to be compared with John Costello taking blacks from Kyabra to his station on the coast, for the town property they were going to was little bigger than the Thylungra kitchen garden. It would be just a big house on a small piece of land with other houses all around it. There would be no more than a few buggy horses and no cattle or sheep whatever. Pumpkin, whose wife had died a few years before, returned sadly to his lonely humpy and Grandfather believed the matter finalised. In this, however, he had not truly estimated a devotion that was stronger than the ageless ties of race and country and a determination equal to his own.

  For his beautiful block on the high bank of the Brisbane River at Albion Grandfather had paid £8,000, a price indicating the inflated land values of that time. Grandfather considered it a bargain, however, since inferior blocks had been selling for as much as £10,000 at auctions in Brisbane. Eventually, having great faith in a Jewish name, he engaged an architect by the name of Cohen and building began on the spacious colonial home with its wide verandahs and elaborately balustraded balconies. A grand mansion in its day, it appears from existing records to have cost little more than £2,600 furnished, which further indicates the lack of balance between land values and other contemporary costs.

  At the end of ’84 Grandfather made a sudden, rather unexpected decision. His son Michael must return to college for another year.

  ‘But Father,’ the boy protested, ‘I’ll soon be twenty! Surely it’s too late to go back now?’

  Grandfather, however, had made up his mind.

  ‘No, son. I was reluctant to take you away when I did and it has been troubling my conscience since. You might after all have wanted to go on to the University as Dr Gallagher suggested. Now you must go back, get your final exam and make up your own mind what you really want to do.’

  No doubt, since his son’s return from college, Grandfather had wondered at times how this rather reserved and bookish boy who had little in common with the romping, ‘chiacking’ young fellows of the Cooper would settle to life in a possibly even tougher community. Grandfather might have felt more at ease had his son been given to youthful peccadilloes, if he had had to warn him off the drink or censure him for hard swearing, but this was never necessary. The boy was not a prude but his attitude to the cruder or lustier side of life about him was that of spectator rather than participator. As later becomes apparent from his letters and journals he had the capacity, even when actively involved, of regarding the drama of life rather as a member of the audience. Hardy and not easily tired, he was by no means afraid of work but his fine-boned hands somehow lacked a natural aptitude for handling tools and working timber and Grandfather teased him that his ‘fingers were all thumbs’ with a saddler’s needle.

  So, to the delight of Dr Gallagher, Father returned to his Alma Mater at the beginning of ’85 and settled back into college life with remarkable ease. With him had gone Poor Mary Skeahan’s boy, the thirteen-year-old Jack, whose education had so far consisted of occasional shared lessons with his Thylungra cousins. Young Jack himself saw no purpose in education at that time and his only ambition was to get across to Kimberley as soon as possible. After a month or two of inward rebellion he decamped one night via the dormitory window and made his way back to his father who was then runnng the mail for Cobb and Co. between Charleville and Adavale. Dinny chastised his son for throwing away his golden opportunity, consoled himself in traditional style for having fathered a waster, then gave the reins into the boy’s considerably more capable hands and settled down to sleep the long miles away on top of Her Majesty’s Mail.

  At Thylungra the season continued drier than the last and the promised date for final payment from his associates in the Queensland Co-operative slipped past. It was a further six months before Grandfather could bring himself to press for settlement and his reply from the Acting Managing Director ran as follows:

  Brisbane,

  Sept. 1885.

  …I beg to acknowledge receipt of your account for disbursements since the 1st Jan. 1884.

  Owing to the continued dry season it is still inconvenient to make final settlement and I trust you will again let it stand over for a short time when I shall have the pleasure of giving you a cheque for the amount of £130,000 to which you are entitled…

  Grandfather returned the letter carefully to its envelope and placed it among the other documents in his little tin box.

  In October the Thylungra children with old Mr Healy and the prim little Irish governess Miss Frances Quirk went off to stay with their Uncle Galway Jerry and his family at Moorlands while Grandmother and Grandfather finalised their long-drawn-out packing up.

  In November, after receiving news of the arrival of the cattle on the Ord some eight weeks previously, there was no further excuse to hold Grandfather to Cooper’s Creek. Managers had been engaged long since for both Galway and Thylungra and the ‘heavy stuff, including the piano, the big trunks of household goods, the iron safes in which Grandfather locked his money and his best Scotch whisky, Grandmother’s cheese presses and a few pieces of treasured furniture made by Great-great-grandfather Michael, had already gone ahead. The place seemed deathly quiet since the children had left and most of the rowdy young stockmen were either in Kimberley, on the way there or making hell for leather to a new gold strike at Croydon. Earlier in the month Grandfather had watched the last of the old hands, Mick Byrne, Tom Connors and Jas Livingstone, ride off with forty head of Thylungra horses for his holdings on the Ord. Noticing the sadness of his eyes, Grandmother had exclaimed:

  ‘Why, Patsy, I believe you’d like to be off with them yourself!’

  ‘Maybe if I was sixteen years younger, Mary,’ Grandfather replied, ‘as I was when I first came into this country—with the best of my life in front of me.’

  ‘But you got where you wanted, my dear,’ Grandmother reminded him. ‘You’ve made money.’

  ‘Was it for the money then?’ Grandfather asked. ‘Now that it has come I cannot be sure.’

  It puzzled his wife how a man who had done so much with such speed and efficiency seemed almost incapable, at this stage, of any action whatever. Often she would find him sitting quite still, not even pretending to read a newspaper or
plait some strands of greenhide as he had liked to do when not otherwise employed.

  Occasionally he would rouse himself as though in sudden decision and would stride purposefully down to the stock yard. Pumpkin would see him coming and be there before him.

  ‘You want the buggy horses, Boonari, sir? You go to Brisbane now?’

  ‘I have been thinking I may first have to see how they are getting along over on the Ord.’

  ‘You can’t go by meself, sir. I got my swag ready any time. Tomorrow might be?’

  ‘I don’t know, Pumpkin. I’m just wondering. Do you think they can get along all right on their own?’

  ‘I dunno. I s’pose they got to learn just like me and you.’

  ‘You reckon they wouldn’t thank us for meddling, eh?’

  The accusation of interfering with other people’s lives, so often levelled at him by his mother-in-law and sometimes by Dinny Skeahan, in his cups, had never much troubled Grandfather before. He had shaken off their remarks with an impatient shrug.

  ‘And where would they be now if I had left them to make a mess of things? I tell ye I’ll be happy the day they are all on their own feet and making a success of their own affairs.’

  ‘But it is a matter of opinion whether yere own ideas are always the best,’ Mrs Costello would retort.

  Grandfather would not let her have the last word on this point.

  ‘If it is no more than a matter of opinion, then another man’s ideas may be as sound as my own, but when it is something I have carefully worked out and to which they have given no more than a passing thought, then why should I not be telling them?’