The Call of the High Country

by Tony Parsons

  After they had inspected the horses they were left in no doubt that Tim knew his business. The stallion was magnificent and as quiet as a lamb. He was a bay with a white star on his forehead and two white stockings on his hind legs. There were two lovely mares – bay in colour, like their sire – and chock-full of quality.

  ‘Beats me how a fella could pick between those mares,’ Andrew said. ‘I hate having to try and pick the best.’

  ‘The boss said that I was to run some cattle in if you want to try the mares,’ the overseer said as Andy and David inspected the two mares in Tim’s big horse yard.

  Andrew shook his head. ‘No need for that. If Tim picked these mares out for us, there’s no need to try them. He’s spot-on with horses and he knows what we’re looking for. Either mare would be right.’

  The overseer nodded. ‘I reckon you’re right. They’re a bonzer pair. The stallion gets them like that year in, year out.’

  Finally, Andrew let David make the selection. The mare he chose seemed to be a slightly freer mover than her mate but there was almost nothing between them. She had a peculiar-shaped blaze on her head, which he liked, and a great pair of eyes. David thought she looked to be clever. They loaded the horses, threw in some hay and chaff, and took off.

  But they weren’t heading home to High Peaks just yet. There was one more session at the hospital with Tim. It was hard to say goodbye, and tears were brought to the eyes of even those three hard nuts.

  ‘What a way for a bloke like Tim to end up,’ David said as they drove out of Rockhampton.

  ‘If you mess about with young horses long enough, you’re sure to get hurt, but it beats me how a horse by this stallion could be so mean,’ Andrew said and scratched his jaw.

  ‘It wasn’t a horse by this stallion, Dad,’ David corrected him. ‘It was a mate’s horse. Tim told me all about it while you were out of the room. I just don’t know how Tim will handle being an invalid,’ David said.

  ‘Nor me,’ Andrew agreed. ‘I suppose you realise that this stallion could bring us in a fair bit of money if we stand him?’

  ‘Gee, Dad, I haven’t got time to mess about with a heap of outside mares. I think we should use the horse for our own mares and keep his progeny exclusive.’

  ‘It’s just that he isn’t a young horse. If we were going to stand him, we should do it fairly soon,’ Andrew said.

  ‘I don’t have the time for that sort of thing, and you can’t go playing about with mares in your condition. I want to win that National before I do anything with horses. If we mate our best mares to this old fellow, we’ll have young horses ready for handling in about three years’ time. That should be just about right for me.’

  ‘More important right now is the question of where we are going tonight,’ Andy said.

  ‘Somewhere north of Toowoomba, I reckon.’ They had packed their swags and cooking gear because they knew they would need to camp out on the way home with the horses.

  It was almost dark before David spotted the creek he had seen on the upward trip. While David walked and fed and watered the two horses, Andrew collected kindling and branches for a fire. It was cool enough to enjoy the fire’s warmth, and after they had cooked and eaten a rough but filling feed of steak and tomatoes, they climbed into their swags and lay back, well satisfied with the camp they had made.

  ‘If we could get away real early, we could be home tomorrow evening,’ Andrew suggested.

  ‘That would be a big day for you, Dad. It’s a good ten hours’ drive from Toowoomba to home.’

  ‘If we can get away by four, we could do it easily, even with a halfway stop to let the horses off,’ Andrew said.

  ‘We can give it a go, but if you’re feeling tired, let me know and we’ll camp. Mum said that I wasn’t to push you in any way,’ David said.

  ‘I’ve got a very good idea what Mum would have told you,’ Andrew said, grinning.

  He was nearly back to what he was, David thought. Andy couldn’t work like he used to, but he had all his wits about him. It was just great to be able to talk to him again.

  They were up at three a.m. and left just after four. David drove and made several stops so the trip was as easy as possible for Andrew and the horses. They stopped for lunch at a good-sized creek north of Glen Innes. The horses had a decent drink and nibbled some of the fresh grass along the creek.

  ‘That should do them until we get home,’ David said. ‘You okay, Dad?’

  ‘Never better, Davie.’

  When they reached Tamworth, David rang to let his mother know where they were.

  It was still light when they arrived back at High Peaks, and Anne and Kate were standing near the horse yards waiting for them. David embraced his mother and Kate, who were both obviously relieved to have them back.

  ‘Is Dad all right?’ Anne whispered in David’s ear.

  ‘Right as rain, Mum.’

  The two men slept soundly that night, and David was up at six next morning. He had his usual toast and cup of tea and went out to give the dogs their early morning run. He was currently working on a dog from Belle, whom he had called Jack. Jack had been sired by a son of his father’s great old dog, Ben. Jack looked like being a fair three-sheep dog, although he was not a world-beater. He was a dog to put some polish on while he waited for Nap’s pups.

  Andrew had suggested taking Jack to a Maiden Trial.

  ‘You wouldn’t be disgraced,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. I don’t think he’s good enough to cart about. I can do a lot better.’

  ‘Look here, David. Mum and I have been talking and we reckon it’s about time you had a spell. Why don’t you take a few days off and drive down to Canberra and just have a look at the National? You’ll get a good idea of the standard of the dogs and the layout. You could learn a lot.’

  David thought about his father’s suggestion and decided that it was worth taking up. He rang the secretary of the Sheepdog Trials Association and booked a caravan on the ground. He wouldn’t enter a dog, not even Belle, but would simply go as an onlooker.

  When he finally took off, he left behind a very relieved family who had never before been able to persuade him to take time off.

  He was full of trepidation about negotiating Sydney and handling its traffic, but he took his time, and with the aid of a meticulously marked map from Kate he finally made it to the southern outskirts of the city. He hadn’t driven in such traffic before and wondered how people could endure it day in and day out. He drove at his leisure and tried to look at everything he passed. The variation in country amazed him; and none was more surprising than that around Gunning. He had heard about the high prices paid for Yass and Gunning wool and expected that it would be green and lush like New England. The hard, flinty nature of the country around Gunning surprised him, but he supposed that it was a factor in the production of the very clean wool for which Gunning was famous.

  He drove to the Canberra Showground from Yass and did not have to negotiate Canberra itself, although his mother and Kate had instructed him not to come home without seeing the city. David decided to wait until the trials were over before becoming a tourist.

  He arrived at the showground towards evening of the second day of competition and saw that most of the caravans seemed to be occupied by triallers. There were dogs everywhere; some were locked in small mesh crates or on the backs of utilities and some were staked out beside vehicles. He was disappointed not to bump into anyone he knew that first evening on the ground.

  The next morning the first dogs were working quite early. He had stayed in bed an hour longer than usual, and had heard the first handlers and their dogs being called while he was cooking his breakfast. There had been a fog across the whole showground and some of it persisted as he saw a black and white dog being walked through the gate onto the ground. He was in no hurry, as he knew there would be plenty of dogs to watch over the next few days. It was ideal having a caravan on the ground because it was a snug place to get out of
the wind, which could be very cold indeed.

  After breakfast he found a seat in the stand behind the casting peg and settled down to watch the dogs. Some of the names of the handlers working these dogs were familiar to him. It was not until nearly lunchtime that he saw anyone he actually knew. The first was Harry Marchant, who had several times worked dogs at their local trials. Harry was working a young kelpie and border collie-cross he had trialled at their last local event. Unfortunately it wasn’t doing very well at the National. It was short on its cast and came on to its sheep too quickly. David marked it down on his list and penned in some remarks for his father.

  Most of the dogs were border collies, although a lot of them looked as if they had a splash of kelpie blood in them. There were not many of the heavy-coated Old Country-type border collies he had expected to see. The highest score for the day was 91 out of a possible 100, and while David felt that although most of the dogs were well handled, very few had exceptional holding ability at the obstacles. They seemed to be over-commanded, as if their handlers had either taken the initiative out of their dogs or they were not confident enough of their dogs’ abilities to allow them to demonstrate natural cover and holding traits. Only two kelpies worked that first day of David’s stay, and both of them overworked and consequently stirred their sheep too much. One kelpie scored 72 and the other 68. David knew he could do much better than this.

  The next morning he bumped into Harry Marchant, who was walking a dog round the ground’s perimeter.

  ‘G’day, David. This is a surprise. Never seen you in these parts before. Where’s your dogs?’

  ‘At home. I’m here on a bit of a holiday, actually. First one I’ve had since I left school.’

  ‘You should have your dogs here. I’ve told a lot of people about your kelpies.’

  ‘I’ll come back in a year or two and bring some dogs.’

  ‘That’s great. I’ll look forward to it. Now I have to go and walk this dog, David. I’ll look you up later on.’

  Harry spread the word that David MacLeod was on the ground, and several kelpie handlers came and introduced themselves. Harry had told the southern triallers about David’s exploits, like winning a trial at the age of ten. David and Andrew had been only names to most of the interstate kelpie men so they did not pass up the opportunity to meet the son of a legend.

  Talking to these handlers filled in most of the morning so David did not see all the dogs work their rounds, but that afternoon he saw a familiar figure get out of a green Ford utility: Bruce McClymont. McClymont went straight across to where David was standing.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were coming here, David,’ he said. ‘No dogs?’

  ‘No, just come for a looksee. It was a last-minute decision.’

  ‘It’s great that you’re here, anyway. Come and meet Mona. I’ve told her a lot about you, and she sure loved Nap.’

  David was taken across to the McClymont caravan where he was introduced to a strapping, dark-haired woman who seemed to take an immediate liking to him. David was sat down and given a huge afternoon tea, and then found it hard to get away.

  From that afternoon on, David hardly had a minute to himself. If he was not with someone watching dogs on the ground, he was in someone else’s caravan drinking tea. His early nights had also come to an end, as he was expected to join Bruce or one of the other triallers for a yarn late into the night.

  Despite the sidetracking hospitality, David did manage to see a lot of dogs, and these included dogs owned by nearly all of the major sheepdog figures of the time. He noted their techniques and the way their dogs worked, or were allowed to work, and stored all these observations away for the future. The scores crept up as the better dogs worked, and the top dog was on 96 when the Open Trial concluded. The top-scoring dogs had to work in the final and the cut-off score was 92. That meant that only four points separated the top-scoring dog from the lowest-scoring finalist. With so few points separating them, any of the eight finalists could have won the National.

  A bitter wind began to blow as the first of the finalists came out to work. The first thing David noticed was that the sheep became more difficult to handle. They did not stand and wait for the dog as a lot of the sheep had done in the first round. They walked or trotted into the wind in the manner of sheep down through the centuries. This meant that a dog had either a short cast on one side or a long cast on the alternate side. This posed the most interesting trialling he had seen since he had arrived on the ground.

  In between the first and second finalist, he ran back to the caravan for a warmer coat and then resumed his seat behind the casting peg. The wind blew all that afternoon and it became progressively colder as the other dogs worked. One dog crossed while casting to the short side and only two dogs scored above 90. The border collie that won the trial was, in David’s opinion, a very good dog with a tonne of strength. It also had the ability to roll sheep in at the obstacles. The old chap who worked this dog gave it more leeway than most of the other handlers did. He seemed to have confidence in the dog’s ability to do the job. David felt it was a pleasing result.

  At the end of the day David took several pictures of the course. It was too cold to hang about for long, and he was on his way to the van when Bruce McClymont caught up with him.

  ‘David, you must have dinner with us tonight.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you, Bruce, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘I insist. I want to talk dogs with you. You’ll probably be off in the morning.’

  David shook his head. ‘I promised Mum and Kate that I’d have a look at Canberra. I’m told it’s a weird place to get about in but I’ll give it a go.’

  ‘I’ll take you around myself. I’ve been several times and know my way about. Mona and I will take an extra day and show you the main places.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but you don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to. It’s a very interesting place and I suspect a lot has changed since I was there last. You simply must see the War Museum. It’s inspiring, absolutely inspiring.’

  After dinner that night McClymont wanted to talk. He wanted to know what David thought of the dogs he had seen and how they compared with the MacLeod kelpies.

  David, like his father, was loath to praise his dogs to other people. They were tough bushmen who believed in letting their dogs and horses speak for themselves by their performances. But McClymont kept pushing him to make a comparison.

  ‘Bruce, what you’ve got here at this trial is a collection of the best trial handlers in the country; a lot of good handlers working a lot of well-educated dogs. It’s a very professional operation. If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think any of these dogs have any more natural ability than our dogs. I like a dog to work more naturally than a lot of these handlers allow their dogs to do. Some of them have taken a lot of the natural ability out of their dogs. They wouldn’t be any use in our country where a dog has to think for itself. But you do win trials with push-button dogs, and that is what these handlers are after.’

  ‘Do you still think you can win the National?’

  ‘Yes,’ David said very calmly. ‘I will win it, or at least give it a big shake.’

  He made this pronouncement without any trace of bravado, but in such a quietly confident manner that McClymont felt that perhaps the young fellow really could pull it off.

  ‘But first I have to get another couple of good dogs and then take them around the country, getting them used to strange grounds.’

  ‘My own view is that I wouldn’t swap Nap and Belle for any dog I saw here, except maybe the winning dog. When they work, they take your breath away,’ McClymont said.

  ‘You’re just a biased kelpie breeder,’ David joked. ‘What it boils down to is that talk is cheap. Anyone can talk up a dog. In my book, a dog has to do the job against other dogs to be considered a top dog. I came down here to have a look at the dogs and the course so that I would have a better idea
of what’s ahead of me. I know now. I’ve seen some good animals, but if my dogs could handle the strange conditions, they could do anything. So it’s up to me to see that they get acclimatised.’

  ‘You be sure to let me know when you’ll be back here.’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  The next day David had his tour of Canberra, with Bruce and Mona as tour guides, and the morning after that he headed for the Sydney suburb of Kogarah, where he stayed a night with his grandparents.

  He arrived back home at High Peaks at lunchtime the next day. Most of that afternoon and evening was spent yarning with his father about the trial and what he had seen in Canberra. It had been an interesting trip and he felt all the better for having gone. Most importantly, he felt that his dream was one step closer to becoming a reality.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The day Belle whelped her litter to Nap, David stayed close to the house and regularly checked to see how things were going. At the end of the day Belle had given birth to six pups. David knelt down and examined them one by one. The sexes were even: three males and three females. There were red and tans, blue and tans and one fawn and tan female. Fawns were not favoured, not only because of their usually poor coats but because sheep did not work as well for light-coloured dogs. Sheep were inclined to be more curious about these dogs and ‘drew’ on to them. This often meant that a light-coloured dog had to be very ‘strong’ to shift sheep. If this happened in a three-sheep trial, it could cause problems. Andrew had never retained a fawn or a fawn and tan pup and, because of the difficulties with their coat, David did not intend to either. He knew that Shaun Covers, who was working on a big property on the Cassilis side, would take a Belle pup irrespective of colour, so that left him with five pups. He would keep all five and run them on to pick the top pups out of them.

  By the time they were four weeks of age, the five pups were reduced to four when a huge wedge-tailed eagle snatched one up in its claws. Anne heard the dogs barking furiously and ran out of the house just as the pup was being taken skyward. If she’d had a rifle in her hand, she would have tried to shoot it, but the eagle would have dropped the pup, which would have killed it anyway. Two males and two females remained.