Riding out there, you were a small thing on the great empty plain; you became sick, dismounted, lay down on the dry, hard earth, with a frightened Aboriginal boy your only comfort and companion, and you simply died and remained forever—what more is there to say on it?
‘What an awful place to die,’ I said later to my father, who had known Jack.
‘Oh, not so bad for an old bushman, with cattle passing, drovers making dinner camp close by—I’m sure quite where he would have chosen to be.’
Jack became a member of bush ghost-hood, as you would expect in such a desolate place. A few travellers swore they’d experienced spooky encounters, apparently without a single bottle of rum in the pack-bags.
Over the border into Queensland, past the town of Camooweal on the Georgina River, the Territory and the Barkly were behind us. By now it was hot in the middle of the day and the cattle were tonguing as they trudged along. When we splashed through a waterhole, dozens of fish floated to the surface; they had fat yellow bellies and tasted muddy, but were a welcome change from beef.
We reached Walgra Station—the end of the line for us. Our cattle delivered in good condition, a successful trip all round. Old Snow went slowly in through the gate, as quiet as any home-raised poddy-calf. A thousand kilometres for a big lame bullock was a fair effort. The thought that he would end his days on someone’s dinner plate as a juicy beef steak was quite unsettling.
Our horses were to be paddocked at the station until the next year; they needed a spell from continuous work. Very early in the morning, Bill Sharpe’s truck accompanied the horsemen out. Horse shoes were removed, hobbles packed away, and we stood and watched them go through the gate into the vast paddock. We forgave Sweetheart and Jack, who would now be deprived of their bounty.
The first 34 horses went joyfully and cantered off out of sight. Black Leviticus was last. He stood for a moment, watching us over the fence—we could imagine this was a fond farewell, but more likely it was ‘Thank God, that’s over for another year,’ then he was off at speed to join his mates.
With horses gone way out of sight, we prepared to leave, but the truck Bill had never trusted refused to start, and no amount of tinkering by amateur mechanics could ignite the slightest sign of life.
We had no water—first law of the bush broken—and the sun was high, a hot wind blowing. Everyone had been rushing around and sweating heavily. We broached the radiator, but the strong taste of petrol only made us drier.
We settled down under the truck to wait for rescue. When our saviours came out late that night, we were parched, our tongues thick. Thirstier than we’d ever been, we had some small idea of what the early perishers had endured.
We had lived closely together for months—closer, perhaps, than in ordinary family circumstances—and had come to know and accept one another’s peculiarities. We’d slept close together in our swags, wakened whenever the watch changed, argued over trivial things when the winds blew hard and diminished our good spirits—become friends.
CHAPTER 34
An Invitation
In 1957, droving over, I returned to Brisbane. My mother was settled in her mansion by the Brisbane River, no doubt planning her travels.
I didn’t live with my mother, instead joining my friend Kay, a girl I’d kept up a casual friendship with over the years. She had bought a large old house in the outer suburbs, and six of us took up residence there. As well as me and Kay, there was Lorna—a some-time secretary, most-time party girl; a serious young country dentist bent on success in the city, with little time for gaiety; and two attractive young men who had plenty of time for fun and rented a bedsitter. Sixty years ago, the term ‘gay’ wasn’t yet applied to their life of togetherness.
It was a carefree time for me after the harsh life of droving and the years in the Junction Hotel. Apart from the budding dentist, we were all set on having as good a time as we could manage.
My father had a saying he’d borrowed from somewhere: ‘Hard work never killed anyone, but why take the risk?’ For the few months we lived there together, it was a life of no tomorrows. Looking back 60 years, the missed tomorrows were pretty mild: no drugs then, no wild nightlife in the city; even the old south coast, now the Gold Coast, had just one nightclub and two or three hotels.
Kay’s sister had lived in Paris before the war, and gave us a beautiful—if fairly worn—black dress from the House of Worth. The three of us were all pretty much the same size, so it was shared, but only on special occasions: a Worth night had to be a significant date. For a young girl, nothing beat stepping out in a Parisian ‘little black dress’. The only rule with the dress was that it had to be properly cleaned after use—and the cleaners were very expensive.
Our two young friends in the bedsit were great company. Their lifestyle was frowned upon then—in fact, was it even legal? It wouldn’t have mattered to us anyway. We relied on their opinions of our clothes and makeup, and they took up escort duties for us whenever necessary. They were two darling guys who left me with good feelings toward people whose lifestyles differ from the mainstream, for which I am grateful to them.
Throughout this fun time, I kept in touch with my mother. She rang one day with an invitation to lunch. ‘I’ve cooked a curry,’ she said. This was an amazing announcement—stunning! I tried to imagine my mother in her beautiful kitchen with its river views.
I arrived, camera in hand, to Mother who said, ‘Let’s go out to lunch. I buried the curry under the lemon tree. It looked strange.’
In 1958 city life was beginning to pall when a telegram arrived on the doorstep from Ken, the first news I’d had of him in twelve months. It had been sent from Borroloola, which would have taken a two-day ride from the Limmen.
It said: Come prepared packhorse trip.
A summons no less, right out of the blue—not an invitation to cruise the Greek Isles, or ‘bring your best threads, we’ll go Orient Express across Europe’.
Such presumption!
Would I go? Of course! The tropical and uninhabited Limmen River country was a much more attractive prospect than the stark Barkly Tableland I’d trekked the year before; besides, I’d always had a yen to see Borroloola. And a combination of Ken and Borroloola seemed pretty exciting after the suburbs of Brisbane.
‘B’r’loola,’ they pronounced it, or ‘the old B’r’loo’ or just ‘the ’Loo’.
Land of the ‘no-boot men’ was Borroloola; curious tales drifted out of there of men who’d cast off their clothes and ‘gone native’. Isolated from the outside world, they were never seen again.
In the 1950s, few travelled the lonely unsealed road to Borroloola: a station hand or two, the odd government official. In the wet season, the road was impassable; in the dry you drove in a dust cloud, with little possibility of meeting another motorist.
It was a standing Territory joke that old ringers, tiring of work in the dry, harsh inland region of northern cattle country, dreamed fanciful dreams of settling down to the indolent life of a ‘lotus eater’ in camps among the pandanus and paperbark trees along the undisturbed banks of the river in Borroloola; spending their remaining days lazily spearing fish and diving for lily roots, sharing their tobacco—and themselves—among the comely coastal lubras.
The ‘dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life’ of an old ringer’s fantasy, as William Makepeace Thackeray would have put it.
These were the no-boot men of old B’r’loola.
In the 1880s Borroloola took its place on the Territory map when it became a construction material depot for work on the OT Line. Thousands of metal poles were brought in to replace the old wooden telegraph posts, and donkey and horse teams carried them on to worksites.
The country along the McArthur River was considered one of the most distant and lawless regions of Australia. The only law in Borroloola in 1886 was that of the Winchester rifle and the Colt revolver.
With the discovery of gold in Pine Creek and Western Australia came an endless stream of prospecto
rs, adventurers and Chinese coolies—and outlaws, too. Dreaming of the golden rewards that were the promise of every digging, they came through Borroloola, then on along the Old Coast Road. They came on horseback or on foot; some pushed hand-made carts for hundreds of kilometres. They came to get rich—a damned good reason.
Many died of fever; more than were ever recorded were killed by tribesmen.
My father had come to know some of these old trailblazers, and heard them tell of a feverish dash to stake a claim on the diggings, but for the most part their stories died with them.
All this lawlessness was now past. Borroloola had settled into a lonely outpost town of few Europeans; the Old Coast Road, once bustling with travellers, was deserted, overgrown, its lonely graves unmarked.
Now I was to see Borroloola—tales were told of its legendary past, but few had actually seen it. Into a swag went my battered riding clothes, survivors of last year’s droving. With this my only luggage, I flew from Brisbane to Mount Isa, then took my seat in a four-seater plane surrounded by mailbags and packages for cattle stations on the regular mail run.
Course set north, we landed on dusty unsealed airstrips, then flew on over endless, empty land that aeons ago had been a vast sea, now with nothing to show of it but ancient, sun-bleached shells in unlikely places.
Through the haze of distance, the silver tinsel ribbon of the McArthur River snaked into view; we lost height and the river, lush with pandanus palms, its waters teaming with crocodiles, loomed larger, wider; and we came down on a bumpy strip, scattering wallabies and galahs feeding in the late afternoon sunlight.
Close to the strip stood a rambling house of old Territory style: sharply gabled roof, and wide verandahs enclosed with gauze to keep out the swarms of flies by day and clouds of mosquitoes by night. But not another building, not a person to be seen. Was this Borroloola?
I soon learned that the gabled house was the home of Ted Harvey, the Aboriginal Welfare officer, and his wife, Nettie. Built in the 1880s as a police station when one was sorely needed, its small cell, barred and sturdy, was still quite ready for occupancy if necessary.
Six months earlier, when the cyclone had marooned him on the banks of the McArthur and interrupted his ride to the coast, Ken had been on his way to Bing Bong to arrange with Jim Marshall a muster of the Limmen River country. Now it was time to put the plant together and head bush.
Along a bush track down through Rocky Creek, Ken and Jim had set up camp under spreading mango trees, giant relics of the fine vegetable garden grown by Chinese in the lively days past.
Jim was tall and rangy, toughened by years of bush work; a capable cattleman whose life held few comforts on his small station on the coast, where he lived with his Aboriginal wife, Bessie, and six-month-old son Colin.
As a sixteen-year-old in the merchant navy during the Second World War, he’d had two ships blasted from under him by German submarines. The hours he spent awaiting rescue were all the more perilous because he couldn’t swim a stroke. After the war he forsook the sea and made for the bush.
He and Ken had ridden in from the coast to stock up provisions for an extensive muster that would take them through country not travelled since pioneer cattlemen brought the first bullocks along the Old Coast Road.
In Ken’s camp was the ever-present Roy, as well as Jackinabox and his lubra, Dinah. Jack was a wiry, jockey-sized Aboriginal man from Arnhem Land. Intelligent and steadfast, he raised his hat to any Missus he met, and was devoted to Ken. Jack had suffered much as the victim of the grisly tribal practice of removing the kidney fat of an enemy; he forever bore the scars on his small, sinewy body. Like many Aboriginals who lived among us, he had acquired his ‘white-man name’ as a child around the stock camps. Though now middle-aged, he still had the brisk and lively manner of his namesake.
There were few white people in Borroloola, while the Aboriginal population was large. Many bore the aquiline features of the Malays, who years earlier had sailed the coast in their proas gathering sea cucumbers, better known in the Malay world as trepang, to be sold in Timor.
These early fishermen had set up temporary camps to boil, sun-dry and smoke their catch, and in the 1950s one could still come across enormous iron boilers, like giant witches’ cauldrons, rusting on isolated beaches. Other evidence of their visits are the majestic tamarind trees that grow prolifically along the coast. Fiery sauces were carried in hollowed bamboo; discarded seeds took root.
Of course, many of the local Aboriginals were also descended from Europeans. All of the unmarried white men in Borroloola had Aboriginal partners; with few white women in the bush, it was natural for men to form amiable, lasting relationships with lubras from local tribes, although at that time it was against the law for a white man to cohabit with an Aboriginal woman. If he was charged and found guilty, the sentence was a mandatory six months’ gaol term. It was possible to apply for permission to marry, but not encouraged.
Men who ran off to live illegally with a bush woman were referred to as Lochinvars, alluding to Sir Walter Scott’s poem: young Lochinvar came out of the west and rode off with a lady on his trusty steed. Actually, on some occasions this is exactly what happened—a girl would hide in a prearranged place in the bush at night, and the Lochinvar would ride out silently in the darkness to take her up behind him and gallop off, hoping the law and the tribesman to whom she was promised wouldn’t appear on the scene too soon.
CHAPTER 35
The Townsfolk of Borroloola
In its heyday Borroloola basked in the fame of its fine library. With no newspapers or periodicals coming in, it was a boon for miles around. But as the town’s importance waned, the books were removed. Some were stored in the old gaol, where the white ants attacked with their usual ferocity. The old tomes were soon reduced to dust, with not so much as a bookmark left for second helpings.
Borroloola also had two pubs in its early days. A rather grand hotel by bush standards had been built with Chinese labour around the same time as the police station, but hadn’t fared so well over the years: through neglect and help from white ants, it had gradually fallen apart, until the final blow was dealt by a cyclone. Its timbers had been hauled off and used for firewood, which required less effort from the easy-going locals than gathering fuel in the bush.
When Ken and I wandered through the ruins, we found evidence of fine old furniture in jumbled heaps, bedheads of brass and painted ceramics. The shattered decorative china of rum and whisky barrels lay in the shambles of what had been the bar room. What joy these things would bring to an antique dealer today.
This hotel, or what was left of it, was now owned by Tim O’Shea, that popular Irish publican in Katherine, and Jack Mulholland was the keeper of the ruins. In fact, much of the deterioration had taken place during his somewhat dilatory tenure. He was one of O’Shea’s Irish imports, and rumour persisted that a connection with the outlawed IRA had caused his hasty exit abroad.
In keeping with local practice, Mulholland was married to an Aboriginal woman called Andrea. With their children they lived a carefree life among the wreckage of the old pub, in a dwelling put together from odd bits of the ruins.
In this hut Mulholland sold a few grocery items and a little liquor from the sparse stores that came into Borroloola from the Cora. Mull would empty everything in a heap on the floor and take the labels off, so it was a lucky dip of shopping; the shape and size of a can might give clues to its contents—however, what you hoped was a can of peaches might turn out to be green beans. He would sell you a bottle of rum if you were quick about it, as stocks tended not to last.
Mull also collected and distributed mail from what had been the small meat-house behind the pub. On taking delivery of the mailbag from the fortnightly plane, he would upend it onto the slatted floor. Sometimes a letter slipped through unchecked to the delight of his goats, ever hopeful for the windfall from above. Many a long-awaited cheque was chomped up, and one’s excuse for not acknowledging a business letter was, �
��So sorry, the post office goats must have eaten it,’ which was sure to cause some interest in a faraway city office.
Although Mull wasn’t inclined to labour, and was somewhat taciturn to boot, I liked him: he was very amusing in a gruff sort of way. Over the years we often sat together on boxes under the tamarind trees and shared a pannikin of tea.
But Mull had a poor opinion of women generally, and once told me, in his thick Irish brogue, ‘They are all lyin’, deceitful creatures.’
‘You have no time for women at all?’ I asked.
‘Well now,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly.’
No doubt the numerous children tumbling about him in the dust attested to some small fondness.
Mull once told Ken he thought me the only ‘worthwhile’ woman he knew. High praise from a confirmed misogynist!
Another long-time resident was Roger Jose. He and Ken had been friends for years, so now he was to be my friend too. Although he was a white man, Roger had lived long under a tropic sun and was burned almost as black as any Aboriginal. Sometimes it was thought that he was one.
He rarely spoke of his past in the bush and it was considered bad form to enquire if personal information wasn’t offered. In the Territory bush a man’s origins were of little consequence.
Roger shared a jolly lifestyle among the ruins of the old pub with Jack Mulholland. On the rare occasion Ken had ridden into Borroloola from the Limmen, Roger had extended a hospitable hand and invited him to roll out his swag by his hut. Ken always brought along a bag of salted beef and Roger hung each piece on hooks around the outside of his hut to dry in the sun, which gave it the appearance of a German butcher’s shop.
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