An old bush rogue once said to me: ‘To be classed as a true Territory ringer, you must have shot a crocodile, dodged [stolen] a mob of cattle and bunked down with a willing young queie [girl].’ He failed to qualify, he said, as he was such a poor shot he’d never hit a crocodile.
My mother described these men, who came through with cattle or for an annual break from the big stations out west, as ‘a race apart’.
There was no organised entertainment, no cinemas, no opportunities for sport; they carried no radios and had limited contact with outsiders. There was the occasional bush race-meeting to enjoy—Brunette, Nigri, VRD (our abbreviation for Victoria River
Downs)—although it wasn’t always possible to attend at that time of year with cattle-work at its peak.
Theirs was a preoccupation with the ability to ride, drink, fight, know cattle and horse flesh—always wanting to do it better than the next man, risk something more dangerous. Limited though it may seem, these were the things that made up their lives, and to do them well were their credentials.
Their stories of reckless riders of the bush would fill a book.
‘Remember when Cammy Cleary rode that buckjumper with a glass of rum in his hand—never spilt a drop, mate.’
‘How about that time at Newcastle Waters when we was all on the grog. We put up that bit of a yard with a few saplings, down there in front of the pub, y’know, and we rode them unbroken horses, just for the hell of it. Old Bill got his arm broke but it weren’t nothing. Good times we had, eh?’
‘Were you there when Ken Hammar rode Folly at the Brunette rodeo? That was one wild ride, mate. They wouldn’t give him the prize, reckoned it was an exhibition ride on the feature horse—but he got it, by God.’
One might ask them, ‘Why do you do these things?’
They would chuckle, shake their heads at you. ‘Don’t you know?’
It must always have been so, wherever men and horses gather together, doing things just for the doing.
CHAPTER 30
Travellers on the Murranji Track
A part from drovers, cattlemen and stock inspectors, there was a steady and varied stream of travellers passing through the Murranji to and from the west in dry seasons of the 1950s. They included the Quilties; Rod and his brother Basil Underwood; and Des Leigh, who owned Inverway Station—he was a good friend and always settled in for a long chat.
Ted and Dave Fogarty visited too. Dave conducted a good part of his courtship with the woman who became his wife, Joyce, over the open galah session on the outback radio. The progress of their romance was followed with as much interest as a modern soap opera.
Bill Tapp, another visitor, was a young man working with Bill Crowson on Montejinni Station. Fellow Territorians, let me tell you, in those early days Bill was a teetotaller. Yes, it’s true! He never touched a drop. Sometimes he’d sit at the bar with a lemonade, while he and my mother would endeavour to correct all the wrongs of the cattle industry, the ‘native situation’ and anything else of local interest. Bill soon became a successful cattleman who bought Killarney Station and made a fine Territory showplace of it.
Bill died too early. His wife June is another of those wonderfully worthy women of the Territory who has worked indefatigably for the less fortunate youth of Katherine town community, and has always taken a keen interest in the problems and successes of local endeavours. They have a large and handsome family, successful in the local cattle industry.
Not everyone who came out of the Murranji came by horseback or motor car.
One morning just on daylight, a strange sound filtered out towards the Ridge. Approaching sounds from that direction were usually of stockwhip and cattle, or heavy trucks ploughing through bulldust. But this time, from out of the Murranji, came of all things, a motorcycle, with two persons crouched low, and so coated with bulldust to be unrecognisable.
Everyone up and about gathered around full of curiosity.
Out of the wilderness they came, fleeing an irate and abandoned husband. They jolted to a stop outside the pub, no time to spare for a shower, or food. First some fuel, then a solid shot of rum was rushed out while they were still there on the road. Then they were off in a flurry of Ridge gravel, like grand prix riders—to where, we did not ask. How they managed to plough through miles of deep bulldust with their small motorcycle we could not imagine, there was no time for questions.
All day we listened for their pursuers, and with shaded eyes stared up the track, our protective lies as to their arrival, departure and direction taken at the ready. But not one came and we assumed they had made a safe getaway.
‘Well Goddamn!’ my father said, ‘I’ve seen everything come and go on that track, naked myalls with a fist full of spears, their lubras and dogs. A fella pushing a wheelbarrow heading west, for the gold; cattle, donkeys, horses and wagons, but never before have I seen an eloping couple on a motorcycle.’
Polly (the lady on the motorcycle) was a daughter of the Cole family, early pioneers of the Kimberley. She was sister to Sandy Cole who, with his partner Ginty Gorrie, sank a number of the Territory’s bores—those lifesaving watering places throughout a dry country for stock and man alike.
Polly’s father, Tom Cole (not to be confused with Tom Cole, Territory author), pioneered the Canning Stock Route in days when only Aboriginal people knew how to travel a dry country.
The Cole family grew up among the Aboriginal tribes of the Western desert, and Polly was expert at performing their dances and songs. I have never seen the ‘Emu Dance’ performed better or with as much flair and authentic skill by any Aboriginal dancer.
Her mother was Mabel Bridge, for whom Mabel Downs Station was named early in the Kimberley story.
In 1890 the Bridge family made a slow two-year journey west from Queensland with their two children. They travelled a thousand miles in a wagon, with another baby born on the road. Mrs Bridge was the first white woman to cross the Murranji. Her daughter, Mabel, a child at the time, toted her rifle and took turn to guard the camp.
The naked Aboriginal people of the region were hostile, and protective of their watering places, but they were entranced by these fearless children and befriended them as they made their way through the old Murranji country, took them to water, and were beguiled by the strangeness of them.
Their iron sheathed wagon wheels ground slowly on through the stony ridges of the West, and into the sun-seared splendour of the Kimberley. Mabel Bridge married Tom Cole. Polly and Sandy were two of their eight children.
Tom Cole was the first man to take cattle through the Canning Stock Route, many years before Wally Dowling took it on. Later still, in 1941, the Lannigan brothers came through with cattle; it was always a rugged track depending on wells to water their stock.
When Tom married Mabel, her father Joe Bridge, who owned Mabel Downs, gave them 500 bullocks as a wedding gift and in 1911 Tom took them through the Canning to Wiluna in Western Australia, a six-month droving trip. He found the bodies of Shoesmith and Thompson on the tracks, killed two weeks earlier by some Aboriginals. He buried seven men there: the two white men, a half-caste and three Aboriginal men. He enclosed their graves with timber rails.
The hardship endured by this pioneering family, and others like them, who came with so little and left so much of their spirit within those who followed, are, I feel, often overlooked by historians for the more flamboyant forerunner of the Outback—those who rode in behind great herds of cattle to take up vast areas of country, and were well supplied with funds to build comfortable homesteads to settle their families.
The Cole family is still flourishing out there among the ancient hills that will never be bled white by a scorching sun, but blaze a savage red under rain, fade to dusty ochre in the dry, and where distorted old Boab trees squat with age-old patience, reaching their skeletal leafless fingers high to vaguely clutch at skittishly fleeing Kimberley clouds.
These gnarled old debil trees have stood for silent centuries in this red land of
the Aboriginal people where now gold, pearls and even diamonds flourish in a land of cattlemen.
My friend Sandra Berlowitz, Mabel’s granddaughter and a niece of Polly’s, is a wonderfully loyal daughter of the West and is ever willing to extol the wonders of her beloved Kimberley. Her daughter, Kylie, and grandchildren too, are very much fixtures of outback life and still steadfastly hold the fort of family traditions. May they ever prosper out there among the wicked red hills of old Kimberley.
Then there were visitors we didn’t know personally, but who were prominent figures. Titled Englishmen came to view family properties and were expected to rough it like everyone else. Authors, artists and politicians of various merit came from faraway cities. The American author James Michener passed through to Victoria River Downs and wrote of those he met in the bush.
Cattle buyers, hawkers and government employees also paid visits—anthropologists, too. The latter came in their quest to learn more of the Aboriginal people, bringing out their tape measures to wrap around the heads of boys, who later waited in vain for their new hats to arrive.
When the anthropologists gathered the old men of local tribes together to record tribal names and skin groups, some of these old men weren’t above having a little fun with these strangers. They gave names of private parts of their anatomy and uses these could be put to, finding this hilarious, a great joke on the gubmint (government) men. Perhaps there are still recorded names of skins and family that are viewed very seriously, but would make you blush if you knew the truth. My father never did tell, and the old men returned to camp chuckling in high glee.
Roy Edwards and Dinny Connors owned Newcastle Waters Station, some thousands of square kilometres in size. The Ridge township was settled within the station boundaries, and their homestead stood right on the edge of town, a short walk to the Junction Hotel.
Roy had no children, and his estranged wife was Ida Edwards (nee Ashburner), who had been a matron of the pre-war Darwin Hospital. She had been a friend of my mother’s, so Roy presented himself occasionally, when in residence, to take afternoon tea with Mother.
Although a gentleman and a wealthy, much-travelled man, Roy, in the manner of the true Territory eccentric, came to tea in beautifully laundered white shirts, entirely without a back to them, their frayed edges starched to crisp perfection; shining white shoes without the toes; and, to support his trousers, a child’s skipping rope, artfully knotted around the waist, wooden handles dangling.
Mother never raised an eyebrow; Roy, thus clad, elegantly took a formal afternoon tea.
Much later he remarried—hopefully his eccentricities were contained.
The Walkers came through, vacation-bound, every two years, and each time their arrival was an occasion. Joe Walker had managed Ord River Station since long before the town of Kununurra was born. We always had a late night, catching up on the news of the past two years.
For my benefit, Mrs Walker would array herself in her impressive diamond jewellery and, in the poor light of our old generator, show how it had glittered on the dance floor at the Negri race ball. I was delighted with this display and quite thrilled when I was permitted to bedeck myself and flutter about.
On one visit the Walkers told a harrowing tale about two of their Aboriginal workers. The couple were asleep on the back of their truck with their newborn baby tucked in between them. They awoke when the mother felt her infant slipping steadily away and down her leg. A huge python had its jaws clamped firmly around the baby’s face and was moving off with its prize. They rescued their child, but tribal law forbade the snake be killed and it was set free.
The infant was brought in to Mrs Walker, who found that, apart from deep wounds to his face, he was none the worse for the experience of almost becoming a snake’s dinner. It can never be said that life in the bush was without a variety of incident, and it was the women on the stations who dealt with much of it.
Joe was a first-class cattleman and loved the station where he spent so many years. He had a repertoire of bush poems and always gave a rendition of what he called the ‘Ord’ poem whenever he had an audience.
O, Heavenly Father, if you please,
We pray to Thee on bended knees
That you and your blessed son, Our Lord
Will keep the ‘cockies’ off the Ord.
O paralyse the duffer’s hand
When he lifts up his flaming brand
Keep poddy-dodgers from the glen
For Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.
Now, O God, forgive our sins,
And may every cow on Ord have twins.
Noel Healey was a strong and heavy-set man with thick, unruly grey hair. His manner was gruff, his conversation alive with earthy language, with no thought to who was present. My mother found him uncouth and didn’t like him, but my father had great respect for Noel.
They had been friends since the early 1920s, when my father had come to pick up a singed and dejected Noel by the side of the road. His brand-new truck, which he’d just proudly brought through town, had caught fire and was beyond repair. ‘I saw a spark,’ he told my father, ‘and only had time to throw my swag off before the fuel drums on the back went up. Went up they did, with not a thing to salvage.’ The two men remained friends all their lives.
Like most bushmen, Noel was a jack of many trades. He carried early loading over long, deserted tracks. Later he set up a roadhouse with a liquor licence on his Dunmarra Station, beside the main north–south road.
He also had two daughters, Patsy and Nancy, whom I’d known forever. Nancy was old-time Territory all the way through: a hard-case character with a heart of gold. She was generous, drank hard, swore imaginatively and cooked like a French chef.
Nancy’s husband, Stewart Somerville, had owned and operated the Argent Hotel in Mount Isa during the war years. The elevated prices of liquor and the continuous stream of servicemen ensured that at war’s end they had accumulated sizeable wealth, and they retired south to enjoy the good life. They took up residence in a grand hotel, attended theatres and big city race meetings, and generally lived like the millionaires they were reputed to be.
Together they bought a large, luxurious yacht and named it NESS, Nancy’s initials. No shod foot was permitted on its pure white decks, not even that of the US vice president, who spent an evening aboard. One fine summer’s day, the NESS set sail out of Sydney, bound for Nouméa, where a dinner party was scheduled to take place at the Australian consul’s house on the night of their arrival. As they neared port, the French pilot came on board to guide them in through navigational hazards, as was the custom and the law. Soon after, without warning, the NESS foundered and went down in minutes—they were shipwrecked! No one was ever sure how this happened; there were those unkind enough to suggest its sinking wasn’t entirely accidental.
They were rescued from the sea and taken straight to the consul’s dinner party, still in their sodden clothes. It was reported that they did not appear unduly perturbed by the loss of their beautiful boat. But the pilot wasn’t fully licensed—a simple thing, easy to overlook, but crucial in their quest for an insurance payout.
With funds much reduced, they had no choice but to abandon their lavish lifestyle and return to the Territory, where they ran Dunmarra Station and roadhouse. They remained there for years, and Dunmarra became an inviting oasis for travellers on that dusty road before bush motor cars were air-conditioned.
Nancy presided there, generous and popular as ever. She had no children and made much of all the young people around the bush, black and white. Her friends ranged from the scruffiest old tribesman wandering in from the bush to sit by her kitchen door, to high-profile southern visitors. Everyone loved her.
An Aboriginal girl who had grown up in Nancy’s family came back to work in the Dunmarra house. Later she became pregnant and ignored repeated urgings to check into hospital. She insisted that Nancy deliver her baby in the bush fashion—not an appealing prospect for someone without skills in this direc
tion.
When it came time to for them to leave Dunmarra, I was in my early twenties when I went up from the Ridge to say goodbye. Nancy had few clothes, little more than the trousers she was wearing. She pressed into my hand the remains of a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle and, generous to the end, insisted I take this last luxury item.
Several years later I visited her in Townsville, where Stewart, who had always been a very dapper fellow, was reduced to running a pie cart. The Catholic nuns called in regularly to collect food donations for charity; Nancy always had a basket of good things she’d made for them—cakes, jams, et cetera. She decorated her basket with vegetables, all artistically carved into the shapes of little men, whose private appendages were very apparent and out of proportion. The nuns found it a great joke, enjoyed the art work and thought her extremely clever.
On one very hot day of our visit, the Catholic priest called. Nancy welcomed him in, saying, ‘Come in, you old bastard, take that dog collar off and have a cold beer.’ He often stopped by and, I feel, enjoyed these visits quite a bit more than the sedate afternoon teas of the genteel ladies of his parish.
Nancy Healey Somerville, Territory born and bred. All sorts came out of this country. These were just a few of the many people of the old Outback who passed through the dusty track of the Murranji into Newcastle Waters. They remain clearly and warmly in my memory.
At Newcastle Waters we were surprised to find that missionary, Charlie, had come among us and intended to stay awhile. He and his small group were well known both by praise and ridicule. Some thought his teachings might do good in such a godless settlement as the Ridge, but most found his group self-serving, with a Christianity pretty much tailored to their own taste. Charlie’s beliefs were never clearly defined, but in them Charlie fervently believed.
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