Daughter of the Territory

by Jacqueline Hammar

  Ken was due to ride out to help brand and paddock our cattle at Bing Bong, so in a rash moment I decided to take a lift with Jack and maybe a job with Bill for a few weeks, which would make enough money to tide us over the wet.

  So that’s exactly what I did. Two days after I was married, I was on the road droving again.

  After Jack had dropped me off and he was leaving, his Land Rover pulled up beside me and he gave me a book with heavenly pictures of palm-fringed beaches, a nostalgic reminder of an idyllic past; I remember its title as being Life and Love among the South Sea Islands. What was I, a Pisces, a water-sign creature, doing in this parched, sun-baked desert of a place?

  Bill was short-handed this late in the season and the country was very dry. I rode with the cattle all day, there was no friendly camp work with the company of a friendly cook and horse-tailer, and there wasn’t the camaraderie of the year before.

  One night the cattle rushed; next day everyone was edgy and tired, and we had to navigate a careful track around an irritable cook.

  I crouched down behind a wind-break of corrugated iron sheets that protected the fire from the strong winds tearing across the plain. The light, deep ash from the burned gidgee logs was pale grey, almost white and light as mist, and covered clothes and hair, settling in every crevice of skin. There I sat to avoid the howling wind, tears streaking through the ash powdering my cheeks—a dejected modern-day Cinderella. What was worse, my parents were unaware their only child was married. My spirits reached rock bottom. I thought of my father’s admonition never to indulge in self-pity, but I did anyway.

  It wasn’t an auspicious start to a marriage and I could only hope life and circumstances would improve. Perhaps it can be said that: ‘Greater love hath no woman than she takes on droving through the Territory’s harsh outback stock routes for her man.’

  After a few weeks’ riding in clouds of dust in the rear of the bullocks, we crossed the border into Queensland, over the Georgina River and into the town of Camooweal. In spite of the nearby river, this little cow-town had baked through too many summers to achieve any feature pleasing to the eye. It had a few tired, dust-shrouded trees, a smattering of small houses, a couple of pubs and stores, and mountains of discarded liquor bottles, along with herds of goats on its outskirts.

  I left camp here and was looking forward to a hot bath and clean hair. I wondered how I’d handle the claustrophobic feeling of sleeping indoors for the first time in five months. I’d barely set foot inside my room at the pub when the bar erupted in a free-for-all brawl, with men crashing through passageways. My closed door flew inwards and hung off its hinges almost at my feet.

  I sat on my bed, knees up under my chin, less than happy. It was quite like old times: the usual booze-induced brawl that was part of the local scene.

  I was offered a lift to Mount Isa, so I picked up my swag and departed hot on the heels of my arrival, hopefully for more peaceful climes. I arrived in Mount Isa to find there were no hotel rooms available in town. At the last hotel I approached, they told me there were no rooms, but there were four beds on a verandah upstairs. Would I care to take one of these?

  Would I? You bet I would. I moved right in, after a long session in the public bathroom. The bathrooms of bush pubs in those days rarely bore Gentlemen, Ladies, Boys, Girls, Guys, Dolls or other quaint signs of gender direction—the twain met, or hopefully didn’t meet, under the sign ‘BATHROOM’. The prospect of sharing with a wild bunch of ringers in town on a spree raised a number of questions, some too grim to contemplate.

  After scrubbing off a long accumulation of grime and bulldust, I chose my bed and retired early, clad only in minimal underwear. There hadn’t been any nightgowns in my life for quite a while, and as a lone woman in camp I’d slept in shirt and trousers.

  Early next morning I woke, stretched flat on my front, and took in the sight of a pair of large, well-worn, ornately tooled riding boots. With a cautious turn of head, I saw there were more boots under that bed. Other evidence of the bed’s occupation arose in the form of two big bare feet, one attached to a long hairy leg protruding well past the end of the bed, establishing that its owner was very tall.

  The beds were all occupied and within arm’s reach of one another. It’s a well-known fact that ringers weren’t given to the sissy conventions of underwear and generally slept naked in their swags.

  ‘Mornin’, G’day, Hi ya,’ from all.

  We all lay still and expectant, no one moving. I had an unnerving vision of three naked ringers, one very tall and hairy of leg, and myself in pink panties, all making our dignified exit along the verandah together.

  I made the first move, a ballet-like twirl that draped my body in a sheet, and departed alone, pink panties visible from the rear only.

  After a few days of shopping for clothes and other necessities, I was ready to head back to Borroloola and married life. Boarding the same small plane I’d flown in earlier in the year, I was once again a lone passenger buried among mailbags and packages. This time I was going home as a genuine resident of Borroloola, even if the residence was only a swag under the stars.

  Ted Harvey, the Aboriginal Affairs Officer, and his wife Nettie invited us to stay with them. They had a big house, no children, a dog and a large household staff. The prospect of moving in with them was very appealing—but we’d decided to make adobe bricks and build a small one-room house to shelter us over the wet, which wasn’t far off.

  We settled our camp near the spring and started work, carrying countless buckets of water to make a puddle of termite-nest mud and spinifex grass. Ken made a wooden mould to set one brick at a time. It took weeks, but it was quite encouraging to see the growing pile of bricks drying in the sun.

  We became friends with Ted and Nettie, and were regular visitors during their years there. Ted had been a wartime pilot, one of the daring young men who flew great, lumbering, often overloaded cargo planes over the dangerous mountain ranges of New Guinea. He was a keen fisherman and there was no better fishing in Australia than on the McArthur. Nettie was a city girl, and I think not one for the great outdoors.

  One night while Ted was fishing on the river in their small boat, accompanied by Nettie, he shot a crocodile. As it died, it reared up on its tail and vomited a partly digested dingo onto the boat’s occupants, at the same time as knocking over their lantern. In their frail craft, in the darkness of the wide river, the little enthusiasm Nettie had for fishing died in its infancy.

  CHAPTER 41

  Missus Ken

  Jack Bailey had become so enthusiastic about his little store-keeping venture that he’d decided to make a trip to the distant wholesale houses in Mount Isa. Because Mervyn’s sermons had implanted the notion of Christmas in the more receptive of his Aboriginal flock, Jack planned to promote the festive season and boost business. Nothing too fancy, he told us, but with Christmas not far off, he’d leave before the wet set in and add a few frivolous odds and ends to his stock.

  We gathered at the store to see him depart in his truck.

  Jack made it to Mount Isa, bought everything he wanted and set off home.

  He was found beside his truck in the middle of the road at Top Crossing of the McArthur River. He was on his knees, bent over, his head to the ground as if in prayer to a foreign god—and quite dead, possibly of a heart attack.

  Jack was buried right where he died and the road took a sweeping curve around his grave. We bush travellers gave him a salute whenever we drove by.

  So it was that, just as it had been gathering momentum, Borroloola’s general store died.

  The Aboriginal tribes living around town received government rations brought in from the Cora. On certain days of the week they came across the river in their canoes and congregated in the huge, hangar-like storeroom at the welfare centre, where supplies were brought and stored.

  There was clothing of every description, blankets, all kinds of canned and dried food, wholemeal flour, sugar, tea, baby foods and milks. To us
, living on beef and bread, the big sacks of shelled almonds put a seal on our envy.

  Fresh vegetables from the huge welfare garden, fresh beef supplied under contract by Jim Marshall, and unlimited fish, dugong and turtle. In 1958, the local Aboriginals were supplied with a more nutritious diet than most well-off people in city suburbia. These rations had been carefully compiled by nutritionists and dieticians to ensure they received all that was necessary for their good health.

  But what they received and what they wanted differed entirely. They wanted white flour, lots of white sugar and plenty of tobacco. They spent hours sifting wholemeal flour through wire gauze to eliminate the meal, refine the texture and make it as close to white flour as possible. Much of their canned goods were exchanged with Albert Morcom for extra sugar and tobacco.

  The cans of baby food weren’t popular—their recipients often threw them into the long grass of the roadside on their way back to camp. On one occasion I made quite a haul collecting the discards in their wake.

  Apart from tea, sugar and flour, beef was what they asked for. Everything else, in whatever quantities, was accessory—not ‘proper’ food. No matter what delicious tucker was offered, if there was no beef three times daily, it was a case of: ‘That’s nice, now where’s dinner?’

  Ken once asked an old blackfella working for new chums in the country if the tucker was good in his camp.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘no good. We get piggy-piggy mornin’ time, Chinaman dinner time, only blackfella night time.’ This meant porridge for breakfast, rice and vegetables for lunch, and beef at night: not the way to go food-wise, as far as any bush Aboriginal of those days was concerned.

  There’s an advantage to not having a home or responsibilities or bills to pay; if you don’t like a place, roll your swag, mount your horse and ride on.

  In those pre-wet season months, we lived in the bush surrounding Borroloola and had little knowledge of what the future held in store for us.

  We hadn’t begun to assemble our mud bricks into any sort of dwelling and the wet was fast approaching. The short, sudden ‘knock ’em down’ storms that flatten tall grass had already come crashing through as they do just before the proper wet, warning you to be prepared. These come at the end of the wet too.

  I had metamorphosed after our marriage. I was no longer Jack-a-leen as far as the Aboriginals were concerned—I was Missus Ken.

  The jetty that had floated off in the cyclone hadn’t been replaced and the Cora was soon due with the all-important wet season supplies. The captain had sent word: ‘No jetty, no unloading Borroloola stores.’ Instead he would turn around and head straight back downriver.

  With a view to improving their bank balance and to ensure the town received its supplies, Ken and Jim contracted to build a new jetty. It was to be a quick and simple job, with bush timber, basic tools, shovel, crowbar, axe and saw all they had to work with.

  Jim, a non-swimmer, was stationed on the high bank with his rifle as lookout for crocodiles, while Ken went under water to shovel out holes in the mud for carbeen-trunk pylons, each sharpened at one end to ease them in. Log decking was assembled for the finishing touch.

  In ten days the jetty was complete, just in time for the Cora’s arrival. The unloading went well, the captain was happy and the jetty was approved by all. And, thankfully, Jim and Ken were both £250 richer.

  Bill Sharpe had offered us the loan of his truck to use just before and during the wet: an offer not to be ignored. With our improved financial situation we were able to fly to Mount Isa and buy a kerosene refrigerator, a wood-fired stove and some building iron. After loading it all onto Bill’s truck, we returned to Borroloola, intending to finish our brick house and feeling rather pleased that it would have an iron roof.

  However, the Cora’s arrival had not been an entirely pleasant experience for Ken.

  When the small ship arrived at the jetty, it was a time of high activity around Borroloola. A flotilla of small watercraft, native dugout canoes and dinghies of all sizes headed downstream, all bent either on ferrying loading back to town or just sharing in the general excitement of the arrival.

  Ken hitched a ride to the jetty with Mervyn, whose small, open-cabin truck—untrustworthy at the best of times—chugged down a road boggy from recent rains and criss-crossed by streams of clay-coloured stormwater. Slow travelling broke up the drying mud-crust and left the road in an even poorer condition.

  With their few stores packed, the men started back along the track and came to a jolting stop in bog-hole after bog-hole. In the sweltering, steamy heat it fell to Ken to do the digging and pushing, while Mervyn manned the controls.

  With flagging energy and patience, Ken ventured to suggest it might be wiser to avoid the boggy sections, take a detour where possible. However, Mervyn, good Christian missionary that he was, placed trust in the Almighty to bring them successfully over the road He’d provided, and would hear no argument as he drove steadily forward into whatever lay ahead. After dealing with each hazard there was a pause for a short prayer of thanks, then they’d be off again, straight down the centre of the road into yet another disaster.

  Perhaps hoping to maintain some reserves of energy in his digger, Mervyn called a break for lunch: the sharing of a small tin of sardines. Ken had his head back and mouth open in anticipation of the meagre offering, when Mervyn called an indignant halt—grace hadn’t been said.

  For Ken, grace was not on. He wasn’t an ungrateful man but was loath to give thanks for two sardines to an uninterested Almighty, whom he felt was responsible for their miserable situation anyway.

  Mervyn was convinced their problems along the road were God’s will and lay blame fully on Ken for the troubles they were encountering.

  ‘Hardly my fault,’ Ken said, ‘you’re driving!’

  ‘It’s your fault, Ken, because the Almighty has taken offence at your blaspheming and bad language.’

  So the long, slow trip continued, Ken wondering why he hadn’t taken a canoe downriver like everyone else.

  As they came onto the outskirts of Borroloola in the dark, covered with mud, the ancient truck gave up and, with a shuddering gasp, settled down on its threadbare tyres like a tired old packhorse onto its haunches at the end of a hard day. An uninterested Almighty had belatedly taken the time to heed Mervyn’s prayers and the fuel had held out to within a short walk of home.

  Ken and I came often to visit Roger. Once while I was fussily attempting to rearrange the box on which I was sitting, he cautioned me not to upset the clusters of red-back spiders beneath.

  I could only assume his attitude to red-backs was: leave them alone and they will do the same for you.

  One hot afternoon we were sitting with Roger outside his tank home when a horseman rode into view, heading our way. On spotting him, Roger hurried inside for his shotgun, which he referred to as his ‘fowling piece’, and without a word began blasting away.

  The rider was Jack Shadforth: a big man, very fat, and not given to moving fast. He’d just swung his leg over the saddle to dismount when he came under Roger’s fire. The speed with which he regained his seat was remarkable for such a heavy man—then he was away toward the trees, riding hands and heels. Our last glimpse was of his bug-eyed, terror-stricken face peering over his shoulder.

  With a final volley for good measure, Roger sat down with a satisfied air.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Ken asked.

  ‘I sold that bastard a mosquito net and he told someone it had holes in it—can’t abide a liar.’

  Another time, Roger was unusually withdrawn and preoccupied.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Rog?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Well, you know,’ he answered, in the grave, thoughtful way he had, ‘the other night I had a little drink before I went to bed and things haven’t been the same since.’

  ‘What was in the drink?’ asked Ken.

  ‘Oh, a little White Lady, rum, some other stuff. And do you know, I had this remarkable dream. I
was in an Eastern harem, and—’

  ‘Say no more,’ said Ken, ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Rog, ‘ever since I’ve been trying to replicate this mixture and I just can’t get it right. I’ve been having terrible nightmares.’

  ‘Try giving it a break,’ Ken suggested. ‘No drinks for a few nights and the nightmares will go, you’ll see.’

  And they did, but sadly for Rog, asleep in his upturned tank in the bush, the frolics in the harem were gone forever too!

  Whenever invited to share Roger’s lunch, I found a quick peek into the pot simmering on his campfire necessary before taking on the contents, which could be any animal or vegetable one could imagine—I remember a completely uncut pumpkin bobbing among unfamiliar chunks of meat.

  ‘What’s that thing with a tail?’ I asked with studied nonchalance.

  Roger came over to stand by his bubbling pot, regarding the contents with interest. ‘It’s a goanna,’ he decided.

  ‘It’s small,’ I replied.

  ‘It’s a different kind, never tried it before.’

  I thought I detected some uncertainty as to its edibility. ‘I’ll just try some pumpkin today.’

  I can’t think why I should have been so faddy about Roger’s offering on that occasion, as I’ve eaten my way through the goanna and bird world.

  Weeks spent on a steady diet of dugong, when we lived with coastal Aboriginals while we were travelling through their country, left me ready to grow flippers. Dugong is very good to eat, its flesh streaked with layers of fat rather like bacon. The Aboriginal hunters speared it from their dugout canoes and shared their catch with us in exchange for beef. They used dugong oil on their skin and hair too.

  Add to this mare’s milk, pandanus nuts, waterlily, goose, crocodile and turtle eggs, and buffalo and camel meat, all consumed with varying degrees of enjoyment—and once, in Singapore, well-prepared frog legs and snails. (My father, in his buffalo-shooting camp in Arnhem Land, had his cook make cake with crocodile egg.) But I never could take to crocodile flesh: the decaying carcasses of skinned crocodiles left too memorable a stench for me.