A medical session took place each day on outpost radio between us and the doctor. As anyone could tune in, this could be a very public airing of your ailments for all to hear. So it was a busy and friendly medical session in those early days; after the doctor had departed the air, a voice might pop in to commiserate with the patient, or even suggest a bush remedy for what ailed him—for it had done the caller a world of good and was worth a try.
A man we all knew who lived on St Vidgeon Station, which was quite isolated then, was describing a serious problem he had with his feet to the radio doctor. Reception was poor, and he repeated loudly, ‘Me feet Doc, it’s me feet, they’re real bad, might be infected.’
‘Well old man,’ the doctor replied, ‘if your teeth are as bad as you say, I can’t see any way but for you to come into town and have them removed.’
‘Removed? Removed you say? I’ll wait until I go south at Christmas time and see a doctor down there. Over and out!’
Generally, though, we were well pleased with our medical advice. It was a good service for bush folk, especially as an aircraft could be sent in an emergency. We’d come a long way from the days when a sick man had to be taken miles on horseback or by wagon and be lucky to survive the trip.
Our newly installed outpost radio also enabled us to send telegrams, so there was no more need for driving—or riding—240 kilometres into Borroloola and back to send one, with a day or two waiting for a reply.
Hot on the heels of our outpost radio came another outback service—with our souls coming in for attention this time.
While living in our first house on the property, we bathed in the creek not 100 metres from our door. Its water came down still warm from Erekini Spring, and with flat stones handily placed by nature on which to deposit our toiletries and towels, the tumbling creek made a fine bathroom.
Late one night with everyone away and Dominique asleep, I was returning to the house after my bath, quite naked, when the headlights of a car swept high as it turned the curve in the road to our house. Some way off, to the rear of the house, we had a small yard to house two milking goats, and the best way for me to avoid detection was to make a quick dash and crouch behind the goat yard, then wait for the lights to switch off and discover who the visitor was. It couldn’t be Ken—this was no truck. I crouched, uncomfortably cold among the prickly spinifex, and alarming the goats, which took me for a dingo.
The car’s lights were switched off and darkness descended, so I decided a quick return to the creek for a towel was my best option and made a run for it. The headlights suddenly blazed on, shining like giant searchlights with my naked self at centre stage. I had a moment’s fluttery panic about what to do. A dash to the house—no, back to the creek—no, no, the house!
The visitor was Brother Paul of the Anglican Bush Brotherhood: a young unmarried Englishman who’d been educated at the prestigious Winchester School and was an ordained minister. This was Brother Paul’s first visit to Bauhinia on his ministerial rounds of a large bush parish. Having heard of a family living way out, he was quite fearless to take on rarely travelled roads in order to bring the benefits of a church service.
He had not been long in Australia, so the poor young man must have had his ministerial sensibilities shocked to bedrock by a naked woman way out bush at night, cavorting wantonly in his path like a rabbit caught in headlights—a saucy rabbit, he must have thought.
Dressed, I regained some dignity and we proceeded as if nothing amiss had ever occurred—not a word from either of us. Next day, as he’d travelled so far, I felt the least I could do was to attend his service, which turned out to be a long Anglican mass for a congregation of two people—a totally bewildered four-year-old girl and one long detached from the divine influence of the church.
The good brother had a fine folding altar that his father had made for his son’s bush work before he left England. He set it up with a certain determination, perhaps thinking prayer might help to stabilise this immodest bush person who wandered the night unclothed.
Throughout the service I intoned my responses with some smugness, for they’d been indelibly imprinted during years in our school chapel. I hoped to impress the good brother and perhaps repair my image a little.
I must say the Bush Brothers did fine work. They travelled endless miles over poor roads in the Outback, marrying, baptising, burying and just bringing comfort to people. We enjoyed their visits; they were mostly good company.
This was a long time ago, so surely Brother Paul has been rewarded with a bishopric for his good work; quite likely he is even an archbishop in a gentle church in England, for he must surely have earned his purple robes working to bring grace to the more unworthy of his bush flock.
It is an unfortunate thing God did not come to me. I invited him in on several occasions, but he thought better of it and travelled on by. However, I do ask my church-going friends to pray for me, for I know it pleases them and gives them a pious purpose. If one day I am taken with a divine awakening, it would be a great victory for them through their prayers.
In such isolated country the arrival of a traveller was always an event. Hospitality was a necessary part of bush life, to the traveller as well, and everyone gathered around to see and to hear. We would sit together late into the night, eager for news and company.
Like most cattle stations north of the Barkly Stock Route, Tanumbirini, on our western boundary, wasn’t easy to reach by motor vehicle back then. The bitumen beef road that now runs from the Barkly Highway through to the Stuart Highway at Daly Waters was just a hopeful dream for northern cattlemen, so to reach Tanumbirini by road was a long haul.
You turned off the highway at Newcastle Waters, 65 kilometres on to Beetaloo Station, a further 180 kilometres to OT Station, and finally 68 bone-jolting kilometres following the old wagon road, cleared a long time back with an old horse-drawn fire plough (a triangular wooden or metal frame weighted with a 200-litre drum of water and camp gear). This was a painfully slow trip, as I know first-hand, and not one to take for a light-hearted Sunday drive.
There were still overgrown horse pads from the plateau above Bauhinia and each year Hurtle Lewis rode on down from his lonely little homestead on Tanumbirini to spend a night with us on his way through to Borroloola for his annual spree—or ‘dronk up’, as he called it.
As he unsaddled his horse and unpacked his old packhorse, Hurtle would greet the kids: ‘Well! Here’s old Hurtle the Turtle come to see you.’
Then he’d settle down for a long night catching up on the news of the past year while we had a good dinner. He always anticipated a delectable dessert, which for him was a special treat, and made any effort on my part worthwhile. I always prepared something he would find unusual. Once, a colourful parfait I placed before him was greeted with amazed delight, and to all he met along the track, he told of the ‘puddin’ in glasses’ the Missus had made for him.
Hurtle, like all bushmen, loved to talk. In the isolation of his life there was little opportunity for conversation. Although he could neither read nor write, he was curious, and he had definite ideas of what was acceptable behaviour.
Reflecting on fatherhood, Hurtle looked with suspicion on hyphenated surnames. To him, there was an indecisiveness and an uncertainty there. ‘What for, eh? They call themselves Campbell-Jones, Armstrong-Smith—y’know, they’ve got to decide just who is the father, which one it is, no good tossin’ up between two, lettin’ people think you’re not sure. If they’re not sure,’ he advised, with confidential sympathy, ‘they should settle on one. Who’s to know, eh?’
His opinion: one father, one name; two names, anyone’s guess. I once told him I knew an Englishman with three names linked in his surname.
‘Well now! Someone’s been busy there, eh?’ he replied with a disapproving shake of his head and a quaint disregard for his own lifestyle of casual assignations along the bush bridle tracks.
CHAPTER 55
A Veritable Noah’s Ark
‘In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him, a cat that will ignore him, and a horse that will tolerate him.’
DEREK BRUCE
Over the years, pets have paw-tracked through our household in a veritable Noah’s Ark procession of poddy-calves, orphaned foals, wallabies, glider possums, dingoes, horses and brolgas—and dogs too, of incredible variety, some useful, others merely decorative. All have their special niche in our family’s memories. Without animals you are out of touch with nature and the creatures of your bush environment, and this can be a truly sad and lonely thing.
Brolgas came, some went. One old man brolga at mating time looked upon the musterer’s helicopter as competition. He hid in the saddle shed, his big body unseen. His long neck swivelled out around the door to gaze skyward, as if to say, ‘Now that’s a bird to leave well alone.’
When we drove home after time away, Brolga flew along just above us, swooping and dipping in high excitement—an airborne welcoming committee. I can tell you, that was a bird with real attitude: strutting about, shooting his cuffs and behaving in the most arrogant way.
Unfortunately, for some reason he took a dislike to our stock inspector, Peter Flanagan. When Peter rode his horse through our gate, Brolga would glide straight as an arrow toward him with obvious intent. With the horse panicking, colourful language flowing, arms flailing and the odd grey feather floating gently to earth, Brolga would swoop off, quite sure he was the victor in that skirmish, and stride about with a ‘to hell with you’ attitude, stropping his long beak warningly on stones.
Apart from brolgas, ducks, chickens, an emu named Paddington, and the odd turkey, we had no birds as pets.
I don’t like parrots—beautiful as they are. Never did. They are destructive, raucous, bossy creatures, and I was never moved to encourage one to settle in and be a pet. However, a station we often visited had a pet galah that roamed at will, even striding up and down the long dining table during meals. He was a dreadful, scantily feathered bird who, for reasons unknown, developed an unreciprocated affection for me. At lunch he would perch on my shoulder, nibble lovingly on my ear and cosily mumble parrot endearments to his stiffly unresponsive chosen love.
When a large pot of warm custard was brought to the table—the standard dessert there—the galah would perch on the pot’s edge and thrust his head completely beneath the yellow liquid. Then, with a squawk of delight, he would give a vigorous shake, splattering custard all about. A firm slap with the custardy serving spoon from our host would send him huffily back onto my shoulder to further custard-besmeared endearments. I was vaguely afraid of him, yet our hosts were ridiculously pleased by his infatuation with me, so I made no move to dispatch him. ‘Oh, he does love you,’ they would say in flattering tones.
The galah objected to my departure. With the car windows firmly closed against him, he perched on the rear-vision mirror and urgently pecked for entry.
‘Faster, faster!’ I urged Ken, who thought it all a great joke.
There the galah clung desperately, as if at the wheel of a racing motorcycle, head down in his feathery shoulders, eyes closed, feathers straining back fit to ping clean out of his body. Then, dislodged by wind, he flashed backward past my window, for all the world like a stuffed bird.
He went home—presumably to await my return.
Juno was a brindle Great Dane–staghound cross, named for the Ancient Roman queen of the gods. She roamed the hills and kept snakes at bay for twelve years.
On the days the stock camp was in, the Aboriginal boys stripped down to a naga, took up their spears and went bush for a day of hunting. ‘Can we take Juno?’ they’d ask, and off the old girl would go with the near-naked hunters.
If a portion of goanna or kangaroo wasn’t handed over for Juno to bring home to chew on, she would remember this and refuse to join in the next bush hunt, and would have to be led off with a rope through her collar.
Juno was a great hoarder. Despite living in a land of plenty, she buried caches of odd bits of things for later attention—relics of the Sunday hunt; children’s small toys; even soap, for which she had a special fondness and stole from where the girls left their towels and bathing things. On occasion she would silently carry off an egg from the fowl pen, with bulging cheeks, before carefully burying it.
On the floor of our house we had two large leopard skins which had been brought out of China by a Methodist missionary years before. Luxuriously furred, with long tails, clawed feet and huge toothed heads, and set with a taxidermist’s glass eyes. Juno would recline on these exotic pelts with the long striped tail behind her and the ferocious head between her paws, surveying her realm with the exquisite disdain of a majestic great sphinx surveying the plebeian and unworthy.
Juno regularly gave birth to large litters. When Dominique was very little, she sat through the night in her dressing-gown to aid her in delivering yet another family of pups. So the mysteries of propagation and the intricacies of birth were revealed to Dominique early in life, as they are to most children of the bush.
The dear old thing’s reflexes slowed with age, but her instinct to protect us remained alive. A king brown snake got the better of her one evening. She had a lingering death, but without obvious distress. We sat with her as she lay quietly for a long time. She gave my hand a long, slow, dry farewell caress, which said she knew nothing could be done and we were not to blame. Then she lay her head on Ken’s lap and died. And though she left us, her loving spirit lives on.
We wrapped her in a blanket and buried her in a deep grave down by the cashew trees. Ken fashioned a marker with her name embossed with welding lead.
Some years after we left Bauhinia, I was asked by someone about the lubra who was buried down by a cashew grove, close to the homestead. ‘Oh, she must have been a big woman, or maybe just very tall,’ the person said.
‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘Well, her name was Juno—it’s on her grave marker.’
So Juno lies serenely among the cashew trees, with all the respect and gravity due to human remains, and with no one to know her secret.
Should we not all strive to be the person our dogs think we are?
A beloved member of our household was a large, not overly active white bulldog. His name was Ugly Bugly and strangers were made wary by his appearance, especially the big, prominent lower teeth that protruded over his upper lip, but he had a gentle nature.
His only real activity was to awaken, as if by an inbuilt alarm, at four o’clock each afternoon. If he could have told you, he would have explained it was his bounden duty to escort, from the kitchen to the verandah, the lubra carrying the afternoon tea-tray. He stood, then—eyes lowered, stomach sucked in—portraying with an actor’s skill a starveling stray, with just an occasional deep-chested snort to remind you of his great need.
Regular visitors became concerned for Bugly if he didn’t present himself with the tea-tray. He ate and grew fatter, slept and grew lazier, and dreamed a bulldog’s twitching dreams of his ancestors’ past battles with fighting bulls and great black bears.
When we’d moved to Bauhinia from Grasshopper, we’d brought along our few hens and housed them in a very small pen close by the homestead.
A fearful cackling and fluttering woke me one night while Ken was away. In the pen I found an especially large snake, which I guessed was a python, intent on a chicken dinner. So, clad in a nightgown, with my .410 shotgun in hand and a torch gripped under chin, I entered the tiny enclosure and shut the door. If the snake escaped, his chicken dinners would continue, which was usual when a snake was onto a good thing.
With an insecure grip on the torch, and the snake much alarmed and somewhat belligerent—it darted about, paused and reared up with its neck flattened like a cobra’s—I had to duck under roosting rails and fend off frightened hens to try for a shot. I hit it!
I took the dead snake out for Ken to see on his return. It was so unusually large, a hen wou
ld have been a mere snack for it.
Next day we made the chilling discovery that my ‘python’ was a giant king brown, the biggest I ever saw!
Later we built a huge fowl pen that opened onto the running creek where the chooks could water. Each year we had 100-day-old chickens flown in. We lost some to the turtle hawks and giant snowy-white sea eagles, but were resigned to share in small numbers.
Then the chickens began disappearing noticeably faster. My father was making a rare visit at the time and found some crocodile tracks in the pen. Soon after, he caught a 3-metre-long freshwater croc who’d been enjoying a steady diet.
In spite of the eagles, hawks, snakes, blue-tongue lizards and crocodiles, we had plenty of chooks, ducks, even turkeys, and no shortage of eggs for everyone.
CHAPTER 56
Bush Race Meeting
Around 1967, Ken, Bernie Jansen, Tas Festing and John Francis, the local police officer, set about forming a picnic race meeting in Borroloola. Roads had improved, and a bitumen beef road enabled cattle trucks to transport stock to Katherine and Darwin. Bush race meetings were popular and well attended: from the tablelands and stations around came keen racing men and their entourages.
We chose emerald and white as our colours, and the jockey silks we’d ordered duly arrived in the post. The jockey Ginger McLean came down from Darwin to ride our horse, Dandy Jack, in the Borroloola Cup. Ginger’s flaming red hair made a happy contrast with the green of his silks.
I purchased a smart hat from a Sydney store. Unlike the hat my mother had hoped to wear at the Rankine races 35 years earlier, this one didn’t need to come by camel train, but more prosaically on the regular mail plane.
The big day dawned with a good crowd for our first meeting.
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