Old Days, Old Ways

by Alex Nicol

  This was a young lady straight out of Sydney. There was no way of contacting her new husband. She was miles from town and he had the only family vehicle. She can be forgiven a mild panic. Her only hope was a neighbour, an old confirmed bachelor whom she’d met only once.

  There is a god—the man was at home, and he answered the phone. ‘Don’t panic,’ he told her. ‘The important thing is to keep calm. I’m on my way, and you’ll be at the hospital in no time. Now, do you know what sort of snake it was?’

  She couldn’t be sure. She thought brown.

  ‘A couple of things to do straight away,’ he said. ‘Where’s the bite?’

  ‘On my toe.’

  ‘So, can you scarify it? Take a razor blade and—’

  ‘No, no, I couldn’t cut myself,’ she protested.

  ‘Then you’ll need a tourniquet,’ the old bloke told her.

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  ‘So, apply a tourniquet and relax. I’m on my way. You’ll be okay. Oh, and stick your leg up on something. Keep it up in the air.’

  The young lady followed his instructions to the letter. The nearest thing she could find that would make a tourniquet was the cord of a new Holland blind shading her windows, so she used that.

  And that’s where her saviour found her: her foot resting on the window sill, a blind cord around her toe and a shower cap on her head.

  DUNLOP

  Mr Murray owned Dunlop Station out on the Darling. Dunlop was the first shed in Australia to adopt machine shearing. Its shearing board was reputed to be a hundred yards long. Riverboats loaded scoured wool straight from the station’s jetty for transport to the spinning mills in England. It was the Australian wool industry in a time capsule, and Mr Murray held the keys.

  Yes, he said, he would be pleased to welcome me. I couldn’t get out to Louth and across the river quickly enough.

  It would be very wrong to describe Mr Murray as ‘patrician’. That term conjures up images of strong aquiline noses, for looking down—but in country where the ‘characters’ are big, loud and larger than life, he stood apart. He was quiet, reserved and, in the truest sense, a gentleman. He had a calmness about him that said, ‘I know who I am and I’m comfortable with that.’ He called me ‘Mr Nicol’ and we had tea.

  In the 1960s, Dunlop Homestead was cool, dark and substantial, but its glory days were a hundred years behind it. Mr Murray showed me old photographs, from a time when the staff had been numerous enough to populate a small town. They were grouped around an ornamental lake in front of the house. The manager and his lady reclined in a punt. On the banks, employees were carefully grouped according to rank. They were all there, right down to the local Aboriginal ‘king’, complete with brass breastplate, and the Chinese cook and gardeners. For the record, the ‘king’ had precedence over the Chinese cook and gardeners.

  Records were presented next. Details of thousands of rams—that’s right, thousands of rams—joined the flock in one season.

  He wanted to show me the plans of the elaborate irrigation system that a hundred years earlier took water from the river and used gravity to irrigate the acres needed to grow the feed, to make the chaff, to feed the hundreds of horses that worked the place.

  And he had a collection of curios he’d found. He weighed a stone axe in his hand and mused sadly about the size and strength of the man who’d used that, compared with the Aborigines around these days. There was a small, square bottle blued from years of exposure to the sun. ‘It’s an opium bottle. Opium used to be part of the wages—like tobacco, you know.’

  I ventured that it must have been tremendously isolated at that time.

  ‘For the old people, for the children,’ he said, and talked about the coach and train trip needed to get to and from school in Bathurst.

  I had the tape recorder loaded and ready to go, so I put it on the table between us and suggested that I’d like to get some of his memories on tape.

  ‘Oh, I’d rather not, Mr Nicol. I’ve heard people talk on the radio before and they’ve been critical of those who’ve come before. I don’t think that’s right.’

  He talked about the ‘old people’, those who’d lived and worked on Dunlop all those years ago, as if they were still about the place somewhere and could hear what he said. It would be disrespectful to talk about them when they couldn’t defend themselves. My pleas were in vain.

  ‘Would you like to see the shed?’ He led me through what really were the remains of a small town. ‘Most of the staff went to the First World War, and then, of course, we had soldier settlement.’

  That obviously pained the old man. Not because it meant the breaking up of an iconic property, but because it changed forever the way the country was managed—and, he feared, changed it for the worse.

  Uniquely, some of Dunlop was freehold country, and that was sacrosanct, but much of the station was leasehold and so was broken up for soldier settlement after the war. Mr Murray lamented the resultant separation of black-soil country from red-soil country. ‘It completely changed the system of management, which had been to stock the black country in the good seasons, rest it in the tough times, and take advantage of the feed that showers will bring on the lighter red soil.’

  He blamed the breakup for the degradation of the country, the increase in scrub. The country no longer had the chance to rest; ironically, though there were now more properties, there was fewer stock.

  He stopped at a jumble of rough wooden frames. ‘Pack-saddles for camels,’ he told me.

  ‘They don’t look too comfortable,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, the poor brutes suffered. They decided on the standard size of a bale of wool as the load that a camel could carry, you know. Bull camels would carry the bales of locks. Goodness knows how much some of those weighed. They used to say that so long as a camel could stand up with the load, he could carry it. Sometimes they’d heat up great branding irons and brand the camel until he lurched to his feet—very cruel. Sometimes the drivers would come onto Dunlop with camels rubbed red-raw by those pack-saddles—big open wounds. They’d beg green sheepskins and stitch a piece into the wound.’

  ‘Ha, early skin grafts,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’ Cruelty to animals was obviously something that didn’t sit well with Mr Murray.

  It’s difficult to describe what I saw in the Dunlop shed. Everything said, ‘Look at me. I have been glorious.’ The board really was a hundred yards long. God, the men who must have shorn there. Jackie Howe, the Bradman of shearers—did Jackie Howe shear here? Which was his stand?

  Dunlop on the Darling in 1886—a time capsule of the wool industry.

  There was room to shear thousands of sheep under cover. The wool bins weren’t bins; they were chutes that dropped the wool straight down into waiting drays to be carted to the scour. Looking down the chutes, you could see the rub marks made by the wheel hubs on the uprights. All the wood was polished with the years of wool grease it had absorbed.

  I wondered what this place would have been like during shearing. A hundred shearers. There must have been close to a thousand people employed in and around this shed. Wool production on an industrial scale.

  And look at it now. The corrugated iron was as thin as an old man’s skin. Years of abrasive western winds were wearing it away.

  THEY’RE RACING

  There’s a history of horseracing in my family. Great Uncle Herb stood as a bookmaker on the Flat in Sydney—and ran an SP business on the side. My father was a professional punter at the age of fourteen.

  My grandparents were concerned that their only son hadn’t brought a report card home. A query to the good Marist Brothers brought the response that you couldn’t report on someone who hadn’t been to school. Dad was getting his education at the track. If you asked him how much you stood to win with five bob on a nag that came home at 6/4, he could do that in a flash.

  My grandfather took Dad by the ear and apprenticed him (apparently you could then) as a
grocer at Mark Foy’s. He brought his pay packet home every week. Well, every week until he had a run of bad luck.

  The track had a terrible fascination for him. He told us kids how you could go from being flat broke to getting a stake to go to the races.

  First, you get some ‘store money’. Before the days of credit cards and hire purchase, the big retailers would issue ‘store money’—a token you could spend in that store and nowhere else. Then you use this store credit to buy a couple of nice shirts. Take the shirts across the road, still in their wrapping, to ‘uncle’ at the pawnshop. Pop the shirts for half their value, and there you are—you’re off to the races. If you got very lucky, you could pay for the store money and get the shirts back.

  A family story goes that the cops raided Uncle Herb’s SP business one day. Granny, a very gentle Irish lass, grabbed the betting slips and popped them into the gozunder—the chamber pot—and then slipped her knickers down and sat on them. It would be a very brave constable who’d disturb a lady in that situation.

  Time was when you got three classes at the races. Put up your money and you got into the Paddock; down a step, you’d queue to get into the Ledger. The Flat was for the hoi polloi, and that was where Uncle Herb called the odds. He used tell the tale of a regular customer who’d use her wedding ring for collateral for a sixpenny bet in the last race. If luck was with her, she’d be back for the winnings; if not, she’d turn up on Tuesday with sixpence to redeem the ring. It was that sort of a place.

  Herb was around when they ran pony races in Sydney. The ponies ran in divisions depending on their height—14.1 or 14.2 hands. They were an anathema to the establishment, and inspired some imaginative schemes. Herb told of trainers rasping hooves down to make the height divisions, and he’d laugh till the tears ran down his face as he described one of the last races held for the tiny horses.

  It was a two-horse race, and neither wanted to win. That’s putting it mildly. Let’s say neither could afford to win. The further the race went, the more obvious that became, and the more desperate the jockeys. Halfway down the straight, with the punters venting their disapproval, one jockey slipped from the saddle and crashed to the track. That should do it.

  Left in front and with the winning post looming, his companion did the only possible thing. He pulled up, dismounted and went to render aid to his fallen comrade.

  Life for both, and a police escort to safety.

  A PARTING GIFT

  No one wanted the Fab Four to go, but time was up. They decided that they’d like to host a dinner party for the people who’d been so kind to them. They’d do the cooking. Nanda and Nuri presented Diana with a list of ingredients, and she scoured town in an attempt to find them. An Italian friend came to the rescue, opening her cupboard. ‘You’ll never get any of that in town,’ she said.

  Nanda, of course, would cook a curry. Nuri offered chicken stuffed with fruits and baked inside a coating of rice. The men would cook too—they’d produce their national dish, dhal.

  Nanda cooked at her host family’s house. Nuri worked away in our kitchen, and the men got in the way. Anything and everything went into their dish and, as with the sorcerer’s apprentice, things rapidly got out of control. Thank the lord Diana had a large jam pot, because we were going to have plenty of dhal left over. Their contribution complete the men returned to the pub to ‘dress’ for dinner.

  It snowed quite heavily the night of the farewell. Nanda was brilliant in her sari, and her curry was unlike anything I’d ever tasted. Nuri’s chicken was beautiful, despite her protestations that it should have been cooked in a clay oven. The dhal was indescribable.

  The party was in full swing, but the men were absent. I’d forgotten. It was snowing. I should be at the pub to pick them up.

  Then they swanned into the room. They’d walked four or five blocks through the snow, and for the first time they were dressed in what might pass as their national costume – snow-white tight trousers, a little white jacket and a black cap.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I should have been at the pub to pick you up. You must be frozen.’

  A patronising smile, and in unison they opened the front of those little white jackets to reveal a ribbed kapok-filled undershirt. Look and learn, boss cocky.

  There were speeches, of course, and gifts. Vimal and Lahani’s gift was unusual. ‘Tell me, Alex, how long is it you can make the sex act last?’ they asked.

  I had to confess that I’d never timed myself.

  ‘We are giving you some pills that will make you last at least half an hour.’ They were beside themselves.

  ‘Please, don’t bother,’ offered Diana.

  There were real tears and hugs next day at the airport.

  The next year I was summoned to Sydney to give the introductory remarks to a new intake of Colombo Plan students. We had learned, and no longer did we throw groups together willy-nilly. Now students were encouraged to choose their partners for the bush trip.

  At cup-of-tea-and-a-chat time, I was approached by one of the smallest men I’ve ever seen. He was about five feet four but looked to be no wider than a foot across the shoulders. In Australian parlance, he would have been five stone four wringing wet.

  ‘You are Mr Nicol?’

  ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘Mr Vimal and Mr Lahani are asking me to ask you if you are remembering them?’

  ‘I do—very well indeed.’

  ‘They are asking me to give you this gift.’ He handed over a small bottle of pills.

  The Kama Sutra with a ‘best by’ date. Some people never give up.

  ‘Have you been told where you’re going for the next three months?’ I asked.

  ‘I am going to Wagga Wagga. Are you knowing Wagga Wagga?’

  ‘I know Wagga Wagga very well. And have you decided who is going with you?’

  He beamed and turned to introduce me. ‘These three fine ladies are looking after me.’

  Behind him were three huge African women wearing beatific grins.

  WATER WAR

  A heated local controversy is the most difficult thing local media outlets have to deal with. It’s simple if the challenge comes from outside the community—you’re expected to back the locals. But what happens when the community is divided against itself?

  Three times during my stay at 2CR the station dealt with serious issues that divided the community. In the most serious case, the way the community reacted spoke volumes about how the bush had changed.

  Don’t let anyone tell you that farmers are conservative. Farming is a high-risk business, and the best farmers are among the most innovative businesspeople I know. When markets turned against the traditional grazing industries in the 1960s and ’70s, those innovators were quick to see the potential value of irrigation in previously dry country. Suddenly there was considerable interest in the water available from the Macquarie River and, more importantly, from the skein of creeks and off-takes of the river that netted the country around Warren and Gulargambone.

  Burrendong Dam on the Macquarie was a fact of life, but long before irrigation water from the dam had been allocated, groups of farmers began cooperatives to set up mini irrigation areas downstream. In many cases, considerable amounts of private capital were invested to construct weirs and earthworks; some of these sparked disagreements between neighbours over whether the crop or the stock had the right to the water. On more than one occasion, mysterious night-time explosions destroyed a carefully constructed earthwork.

  At the radio station, those of us reporting the development were scrambling to keep up with geography as the rights and wrongs of water flow from such mysterious places as the Marebone Break were debated. Those geography lessons landed me in a row with the New South Wales Minister for Environmental Control.

  An irrigators’ delegation gathered in Dubbo to hear the minister outline how water from Burrendong would be allocated. I was nearing the end of my training period at Orange, and was trusted to report on what really w
as a fairly complicated business.

  The press was barred from the minister’s meeting with the irrigators. He’d address us after he’d spoken with them. I couldn’t claim to be an expert, but by then I had at least a working knowledge of the byways and waterways that would be involved. From the irrigators I collected a detailed account of what had been promised.

  The press conference was a much simpler affair. I asked some questions and the minister’s answers seemed to be at odds with what the irrigators had just told me. I pressed, but the press conference was wound up. The next morning, when I put my interview with the minister and with the irrigators to air, the differences were obvious.

  Within an hour, Graham White, the director of the ABC’s Rural Department, was on the phone. The minister was not happy. He was demanding that I be dismissed. Graham wanted the offending interviews on his desk, now.

  Graham supported me. As far as he was concerned, I’d filed an accurate report—but there was a cost. The minister was demanding that, at the very least, I should be disciplined and moved.

  ‘You’re due for a move to your own region, and I was about to move you,’ Graham told me. ‘You understand that can’t happen now. No reflection on you. The minister has told me that he’ll never speak to the ABC again. I’ve told him that’s unfortunate because there’ll come a time when he’ll need the ABC.’

  I stayed in Orange.

  SLEEPER CUTTERS

  My memory says it was a horse and cart. Common sense argues that this was the 1960s, and people didn’t go to work on horses and carts anymore. I’m sticking with memory.