Next day dawned with clear skies; the sun shone on the devastation. A whistle tooted—there was the Cora, slowly making way up the cluttered river.
‘Where’s the jetty?’ the skipper called through a loudspeaker.
‘You passed it downstream, trailing a bronco rope!’
All stores, apart from a few packages, were for the Aboriginal Welfare Settlement. ‘Well!’ said the skipper. ‘Who’s going to unload? No one to unload, we head right back—don’t you want your stores?’
‘Nothing for me on board,’ Ken answered, ‘but we’ll get the load off.’
The fuel drums were lowered into the mud; the boat’s hatch covers went on top. Between the three of them, 40 tons of loading were manhandled up the steep, slippery bank. Just as the last box was set down, a flotilla of Aboriginal canoes arrived with men ready to unload!
Twenty-five years later, Ken met Mick again, and with their reminiscences came thoughts of the cyclone. Mick remembered: ‘As they lowered a sack of salt on your shoulders, Ken, you sank to your thighs in mud.’ Some of our youthful years may have been misspent—but hey, we were strong!
CHAPTER 32
Jackie’s Gone a Drovin’
In 1957, seven years after her return to Newcastle Waters, my mother decided to sell the Junction Hotel.
We had stood by in admiration and awe as Kurt Johansson’s first road-train came rattling in across Newcastle Creek and pulled up in an almost perfect circle. The swansong of droving was written all over it.
So, after 25 years of owning this old watering hole, Mother sold out and went to live in the gentler environs of the south. My mother was rich! And she deserved every hard-earned penny.
Old Territorians never really die: they just fade into history books, or evolve into larger-than-life characters when tales are told about them around campfires. My mother became that harder-than-granite Missus who’d controlled the wild men travelling cattle through the old Murranji Track.
She bought a great stone pile of a mansion on a Hamilton hillside, overlooking the Brisbane River. In place of cattle herds there were passenger liners, and sturdy little tugboats with fine brave names of Fearless, Faithful and Forceful chugged back and forth. Mother had her great house converted into six large apartments, and on that elite suburban hillside, among the elegant houses, she raised an ornate house sign with the name ‘Murranji’.
‘Moo-rang-gee,’ her neighbours mispronounced it. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Bush frog,’ she told them, which was a close enough translation for city folk. They retired in utter bewilderment—why would anyone name a fashionable city house ‘frog’?
For the next 30 years, encumbered with multi-labelled trunks, hatboxes and dilly bags—never one to travel light—Mother journeyed all over the world, playing bridge on many of the great ocean liners. After long periods without sending me so much as a postcard, she would emerge out of countries I’d never heard of. Once she rode down from the hills of a distant place on a mule.
Between travels she drove into Brisbane for consultations with her long-suffering stockbroker, and to check on the diligence of the unfortunate bank manager in charge of her finances.
‘Cattle drive’ is an American term; here you go ‘droving’, ‘on the road with cattle’ or ‘travellin’ cattle’. And ‘stampede’ isn’t in the drover’s vocabulary; when cattle take wild, headlong, out-of-control flight, it’s termed a ‘rush’.
With the pub about to be sold, I decided I’d take on a season’s droving.
‘Droving!’ my mother shrilled. ‘You must be mad—months on the road, sleeping on the ground in the dirt and dust. You’ll never see it through.’
I knew most of the drovers on the road and I decided to join Bill Sharpe’s camp. I’d known Bill for many years. He was a gnarled old man who had been a packhorse drover for much of his working life. Now he owned a truck, although the pack-bags and the odd mule still ran with the plant—just in case! Bill didn’t have a lot of confidence in his truck, or his driving skills.
We were to spend seventeen weeks on the road, travelling a little over 1000 kilometres, with 1500 head of Victoria River Downs’ bullocks bound for Walgra Station in Queensland.
Wages were agreed upon. We met in Katherine to drive out to Victoria River Downs and take delivery. On the trip out, we camped one night on the road—Bill in the back of his truck, me on my swag out on the ground nearby.
In the morning, the ground around my swag was churned into a deep track of powdered dust, about half a metre wide and dense with the paw tracks of an unknown number of dingoes. They had clearly been padding dizzily around for a long time, deciding whether to eat the body within their circle. I’ve spent many nights on the ground with dingoes harmonising in groups beyond; that was the one time they checked me out at such close quarters and with such obvious intent.
Bill took delivery of his cattle at Victoria River Downs. Pleuro inoculations completed, contracts signed, and the bullocks were our responsibility. We would travel about 15 kilometres a day, depending on water. We made our first move forward—only about 1000 kilometres to go, but what is 1000 kilometres in a Territory so big?
In the mob was a big, pure white bullock, very lame, hobbling along on the tail end. ‘Cut him out, leave him behind,’ someone said. ‘Oh, he’ll drop out soon enough,’ came the response, ‘probably before we reach the boundary.’
There were six of us in camp. An Aboriginal man named Cloud, a known unreliable, rolled his swag and crept off in the night just a few days out, but the rest of us were still there nearly five months later.
It was essential to make a good delivery, because losses weren’t paid for. Any bullock picked up along the way in good condition was a handy killer—no point killing one of your own.
The cattle were watched through the night by men on horseback. Each man took a watch of about two hours, singing as he rode around the mob. An Aboriginal man might chant corroboree, although he was more likely to have a wider store of memorised popular songs than anyone else in camp. Some men had good voices and a large repertoire; those with lesser talents might recite poetry in a loud voice, or only muster a monotonous repetition of a few words, interspersed with a whistle or two and a ‘Yo bullocks!’ thrown in here and there, just enough to calm the cattle and ensure they didn’t take fright and rush.
Six o’clock sundown, this was drovers’ time. Toward sundown our bullocks fed up close to camp and settled down for the night. Our campfire lay between us and the resting cattle, a barrier that would hopefully cause a panicking mob to veer away from camp in a rush—though hair-raising stories are told of night rushes that took off right over the fire and destroyed camps.
The horse-tailer readied horses for the night, saddling and tethering them, and he took first watch. The boss drover took the last, or daylight, watch; he then woke the horse-tailer, who went out and brought in the hobbled horses, ready for the day’s work.
In stock camps where cattle are yarded at night, with no watch necessary, men might sit around the campfire to talk for a time; on the road they usually took to their swags early. But sometimes, when first-time drovers sat among flickering shadows, hats low over their eyes, tense and quiet, an old drover would tell of times past; of the unmarked graves that lie under the yellow dust of the track; of touchy, unsettled cattle, easily set off in heart-stopping flight. The crack of a twig, the clattering of stirrups and saddle flaps when a tethered horse shakes itself, loud sounds in a quiet night, and the cattle would be off in a sweeping whoosh, more vibration than sound, like rolling thunder blanketed by distance.
An old hand coming off watch would make straight for the warmth of the fire, create a shower of sparks as he pushed a burning log back on with the toe of his boot, and nestle the billy-can down among glowing coals. Catching the drift of uneasy talk, he’d give a bark of derisive laughter, but not without a glance out over the humped shapes of cattle in the starlight. He would yawn, stretch his arms wide as if to en
compass the cattle and all the Territory beyond, then into his swag.
After leaving Top Springs of the Armstrong River, we headed into the Murranji Track. The drover and pastoralist Nat Buchanan had pioneered this route in the late nineteenth century, cutting off some hundreds of kilometres from the old cattle trail through Katherine, Willeroo and Victoria River Downs.
But the Murranji had been one of the most hazardous cattle trails anywhere in the world, an ill-famed dry stretch of a couple of hundred kilometres, with only two natural waterholes that receded to mud late in the season. It was strewn with the graves of travellers whose waterbag had run dry or who had been caught unawares by a tribesman’s spear. At Murranji Waterhole there seemed to be eleven graves, although my father said more.
The scrub was impenetrable for miles. Bullwaddy, the namesake of my family’s old friend, is an ugly grey bush that sprouts scraggy limbs from its base, interweaving with its neighbours to form a solid cat’s-cradle hedge, referred to in old Territory journals as hedgerow or hedgewood. It was this dense, tight barrier of Bullwaddy—along with forests of Lancewood, which shatters into sharp bayonets under rushing cattle—that made progress so difficult for John McDouall Stuart’s exploration parties.
Through this crisscrossed mess of scrub, the wind whines at night, a soft moaning sound that can gather to a shrill howl. When the bushes twisted and sighed, all the sinister tales of this old cattle trail would come to my mind.
In almost every written account of the Murranji Track, a well-known verse is set down. The poet is unknown, but was surely one who had travelled this lonely route, for the poem acknowledges the fortitude of old drovers and the illusory fears that came in the loneliness of the night—for if one were ever to be touched by the spookily romantic tales of old bushmen, this was the place for it.
Wild dogs howl and hedge-wood groans,
A night wind whistles in semitones,
And bower-birds play with human bones
Under a vacant sky.
The drover’s mob is a cloud of dust,
The drover’s mob is a sacred trust
Where the Devil says ‘Can’t!’ and God says
‘Must!’
Out on the Murran-ji.
Hedge-wood writhes in the dark o’ night,
Ant-hills glimmer a ghostly white,
The cattle are galloping mad with fright
From where the dead men lie.
The drover’s mob is a fateful trust,
The life of a ringer less than dust,
When God says ‘Can’t!’ and the Devil says
‘Must!’
Out on the Murran-ji.
Then in 1923, Syd Peacock sank the first bore on the track for the government, 30 kilometres west of Newcastle Waters. (Syd had a daughter, Lucy, and a son with the catchy name of Percy Peacock.) Twelve bores followed, each 30 kilometres apart; drilled and equipped with windmills and holding tanks, they stretched west across the Murranji to the Armstrong River. A wide track was burned and cleared through scrub. By the 1950s the route was no longer so hazardous, but it still had its problems.
When we came onto the Murranji at Top Springs, our cattle were fresh, restless on camp, quick to take fright, and this country was notorious for the drum-like echoing sound of the ground where there was underlying hollow limestone. Even in daylight a rush was possible here, so a good drover was ever alert and ready for the unexpected.
There was also the dust to contend with: since trucks had begun churning through, the track was ploughed into bulldust as soft and fine as face powder, a metre or so deep for long stretches. It was a hazard for cattle on trucks; many suffocated in the billowing clouds. I recall Charlie Schultz of Humbert River Station losing 30 head of big bullocks on trucks through Murranji dust.
At last we emerged into Newcastle Waters. For the first time I was enclosed in the dust cloud of incoming cattle, instead of a spectator on the hotel verandah. We travelled across Newcastle Creek, awash with memories of life in the old pub, then out onto the Number Seven bore to camp and dip the cattle for tick.
We were now on the stock route that stretched across the wide grassy plains of the Barkly Tableland without a tree in sight; out there, it’s said, you can see the curve of the earth on the horizon. The nights were still and very cold, but with the sun came the south-east winds, blowing constant and hard.
Northern sunsets are spectacular and dazzling, but the coming of daylight on those great empty plains is something to remain forever in a drover’s memory. In that magical moment before real dawn, a silvery light appears with the stars still in the sky, the left-over moon pale and unheeded—‘piccaninny daylight’, we called it in the bush. It stirred you to leave the warmth of your swag, to revive the dying coals, put the billy-can on and get the horses in.
Where distant earth met sky, a sliver of sun peeped over the curved edge of our world and hung there a moment, testing the safety of a westward journey. Then hard bright light burst forth with a suddenness you could almost hear, and the day was there before you.
CHAPTER 33
Droving Across the Barkly Tableland
Much has been written about droving. Lately it has become a popular undertaking to bring a mob of cattle through stock routes in order to mark some pioneering anniversary or another. Young horsemen, would-be drovers, take on a few days on the road, recite Banjo Paterson, sing rollicking songs around the campfire, tuck into damper cooked on the coals, and sleep in swags with quaint modern additions to the old Birkmyre and blanket, then wax lyrical about the joys of the open road.
While I think it’s good for young Australians to experience something of old outback life, let me tell you, ‘It ain’t like that!’ There is little romance in droving. A real droving trip is slow, dreary and dirty. Unlike in the movies, when you mount your horse before sunrise and move the cattle, there’s no stirring background music to give that uplifting mood of glamourous adventure—there’s no ‘Yipee-ki-yay, move ’em along!’ Don’t believe a word of that.
On the open plains of the old Barkly Stock Route, the drover’s horse trudged slowly into the fierce south-east wind that blew back the bulldust stirred by thousands of hooves. The cattle plodded forward; the weather was freezing, the pace slow; the drover crouched low in his heavy coat, hat over eyes, bandana across nose and mouth. He had the look of an old bushranger, his grin exposing teeth outlined in dust, his hair stiff as a bottlebrush.
A bath was a quick dip in a freezing turkey-nest dam, late at night—or there was no bath at all, as was most often the case. Some, I know for certain, completed the four-month-long trip without so much as a toe dipped in water.
In the dry cool months, what we call the ‘morning glory’ clouds sweep down from Cape York. The early morning sky of the Barkly Tableland fills with huge rolling cylinders of dense cloud that can be more than 1000 kilometres long, descend as low as 200 metres and soar 300 kilometres into the heavens, like giant, furiously tumbling and curling surf waves.
As the clouds pass over, the sky darkens and a cool, unnatural wind curls like a dervish around you. You catch your breath at the bizarre grandeur of it. Can such a wonder be seen anywhere else in the world? I feel rather sad for those who haven’t experienced our morning glory. How it must have terrified the old Aboriginals of the plains.
As we progressed across the Barkly, the cattle grew quiet and at night settled closer to camp. Old Snow, our lame bullock, was still trailing the mob. He lay quite close to our fire, his big white body clearly visible in the light.
Behind us by a few days, another drover with Victoria River Downs cattle, Eric Rankin, had a packhorse plant. While his wife rode with the cattle, his two children were strapped into a pack-bag on either side of a quiet horse; their small freckled faces peered out as they were driven along to the next camp.
We had 35 horses with us, some with very distinctive personalities.
There was Little Peanut: a bit flighty on a cold morning, that one.
Old
Fireman: a top night horse, he knew what was expected of him when cattle took off in a midnight rush.
Sweetheart and Jack: the thieves, terrible nuisances around camp and always alert for a camp oven of setting bread, which they devoured hurriedly with long streamers of elastic dough unravelling after them. Cold curry, custard, damper—all welcome fodder to those two. No bag of flour could be left out at night without two ghostly white-powdered faces peering from the darkness.
Big Tony: one of Bill’s old packhorses. Sometimes with everyone in camp and not a tree or shrub in sight, I would mount Tony bareback for a ride out yonder to take a toilet break. A lot of careful thought and no end of suggestions were given to this situation by the men.
‘Carry a little bush, Jack,’ someone might suggest. ‘We won’t look.’
‘I don’t care to be silhouetted against the horizon like one of those Balinese shadow puppets,’ I might answer, and Tony and I would clump off into the far distance like the last of the surviving explorers.
Right before the wet season, the cold, hard winds stop and the Barkly is enshrouded in searing heat. This country has had its share of men who’ve died of thirst. It’s a pitiless place to ride when withering in scorching temperatures; both man and horse have little time to live without water. Vast lakes that lift the spirits and quicken the pace dissolve into the shimmering haze of a mirage.
Perishers have scratched final messages on billy-cans, leather, anything to hand. In 1893 David McKay perished within the 80-kilometre stretch between Alroy Downs and Brunette Downs stations, and left a tragic note of farewell to Hutton, the Brunette manager, which ended: ‘Good-bye old friend, I am off.’
Out across the open plain, a shadowy smudge, far in the distance, gradually took the form of a grave, well-marked and enclosed with a rail. Boomerang Jack Brady lay there—his was not a death from thirst, though. Malaria was Jack’s undoing. His grave was such a lonely thing: it stood stark and forlorn, silhouetted against the horizon. I sat beside it awhile and gave Jack some thought.
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