I was having bloody problems all right – the bits of paper wanted to float. McCorry knew what I was doing, I’m sure. When I returned inside, the smile on his face told me. But the assurance in his dark eyes said it was okay, and not to worry. We were together now and this was the life we would build upon.
McCorry was in the homestead drafting out, or separating, the rations of flour, tea leaf and sugar that would be needed on the next muster. I was at the round yard to give the men a hand drafting out the horses. I was inquisitive to see if our resident frill-necked lizard would be there to watch us. Each time horses were brought into the yard, the ‘keeper of the yard’ would run up on his post, perch himself on top, raise his frill, and drop it down again. The Aboriginal stockmen would say that the ‘keeper’ was drafting for us. He would never leave his yard post until all the horses had been drafted out and let go. As soon as the yard was empty, the ‘keeper’ would disappear, not to be seen again until we needed fresh horses.
During that muster, I asked McCorry and Harry if I could go bull-running with whoever was chasing the rogue bulls. Both men went silent. McCorry started scratching at the ground with a twig, while Harry started kicking at the dirt with the toe of his over-sized R.M. Williams boot. The toe of the other boot was cut away, and Harry’s big toe was protruding. I could see some serious thought was going into this and I wasn’t really impressed about the amount of time they needed to give me an answer.
McCorry pulled his Log Cabin from his top pocket, took the right amount of tobacco out of his tin, slowly rubbed it around the palm of his hand, pulled out the cigarette paper, set his paper in place along it and then applied exactly the correct amount of lick along the edge of the paper. Harry found an excuse to walk away and I decided I might as well walk away too. It looked as if I wasn’t going to get an answer – not that day, anyway.
I was cross with him. I thought I was getting to know McCorry, but his refusal to answer left me stunned. I had walked 100 metres away, to where the stock-camp was set up, when McCorry sang out.
‘You can ride with Harry.’
I knew this wasn’t to be a pleasure ride and that once Harry had knocked the bulls down with the buggy, I was to tie their hind legs for him. This made my day! The next morning, I sprinted to the buggy filled with both excitement and fear. This was what I really wanted to do. I jumped in, ready to offside Harry. Looking back, I don’t think I was really supposed to make it past the first run. Since I had no instruction or preparation, they probably thought they would frighten the living daylights out of me straight up, and that would be the end of it.
No sooner had my backside hit the front seat than Harry cranked the starter and we were off with such force that he nearly launched me into space. The boys had done a run already, and fresh cattle were running into the mob from several directions, splitting and breaking off. I was on my first ‘bull run’, charging at breakneck speed with Harry behind the wheel, trying to muster these untamed cattle into the mob or knock down the ferocious ones and strap them.
Hanging on white-knuckled to the Jesus bar, a handrail running across the top of the glovebox, I was terrified that the sweat gushing from my palms would loosen my grip and the next bump would throw me out. I wedged both feet at an angle to counteract the swaying of the bull-buggy, and held on for dear life. We were winding in and out of low-hanging branches, just missing the rim of the breakaway gully, which looked more like the Grand Canyon. With inches to spare and dust flying, Harry would swing the buggy in another direction to keep the wild beast, ‘the scrubber’, heading for the claypan flat where we would take the animal down. We made the claypan flat safely; I was well and truly shaken, but still in the buggy. I was scared, but determined not to give in. Harry lapped the scrubber around and around.
Every chance the bull got, he would charge and hook the buggy with his horns. At just the right moment Harry came in and put the edge of the front bull bar in behind the old scrubber’s ribs. As he turned to hook the buggy, down he went, nice and gentle.
My job was to strap the scrubber’s hind legs together. I flew over the side of the buggy with limbs like jelly, and a metre of strong leather bull strap in hand. How the hell was I to get his massive hind legs together?
Casually Harry climbed out from behind the wheel and up onto the bonnet of the buggy. Resting his chin comfortably on his skinny black knee, he proceeded to give me instructions.
‘Grab that strap below the buckle,’ he called, demonstrating the action in mid-air. ‘Put it over one leg, wrap the rest of the strap around the other, and pull up, thread it through that buckle and pull the hind legs together.’
‘Right, got it!’ I yelled. There was no way I was going to miss; it was a case of get it right first time, or my life in this Kimberley stock-camp was over. I felt there was no place for me in the camp if I couldn’t pull my weight. I wanted to show McCorry I could be useful, that I wasn’t just a pretty face.
The next challenge was to get the coaches over to this rogue bull and remove the strap without injury. Up the scrubber jumped, every muscle in his powerful body rippling, still full of fight, his eyes wildly looking for an opening in the mob to make a break for freedom. Up close he was enormous, seemingly as big as an African rhino. But we settled him all right – success!
The stockmen were all alert, watching and waiting. We held up the mob for an hour or so and had smoko. Once the fresh cattle and the scrubber had settled, we moved on again. I had achieved my first bull run. I was relieved and proud of myself and, more than ever, ready for the chase again.
We spent the rest of the day picking up small mobs of cattle. Late in the day, Malki, one of the stockmen, and I were given orders to kill and butcher a beast – a ‘killer’ – for the camp to eat. Circling the cattle slowly, we had to select a well-conditioned, medium-weight, barren or ‘dry’ cow and nudge her gently out of the mob. As soon as we had her out and the distance was right, Malki pulled out the camp .303 and shot her dead, right between the eyes. I flew over the side of the buggy with butcher’s knife in hand, intending to cut her throat and bleed her.
‘Missus!’ Malki called, his hand out for the knife. This time he would do it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that as a kid in Arnhem Land I’d seen my dad cut the throat of buffalo to bleed them for meat for our family. I knew I was capable of this.
As the killer was being bled, Malki took the rest of the butcher’s knives out of the buggy’s glove compartment and unwrapped them from the old rag they were tied up in. Running the knives down from tail to hock, Malki and I started skinning out the killer, taking the cuts of meat as we worked our way up. The first side completed, we rolled the beast over and started again, taking everything we wanted, including the sweetbreads, curly gut and rib bones. Having fresh meat in camp would only happen every three or four weeks, so dinner would be really something.
Sundown was on us and it was back to camp. Before we drove off, we collected gum leaves to protect the meat from picking up dirt and dust in the back of the buggy. At the camp, Mary had the fire going and a flour drum of water close to the boil. Some of the stockmen were already in. Charlie and Raymond helped us unload the meat and lay it out on an old stretcher bed.
Sweetbreads and rib bones were the firm favourites on killer night, although I also liked the fine strips of belly flap and the meat around the kai bone, just off the hip. There was nothing better than warm fresh damper and chewing on a rib bone cooked gently over simmering coals, with a slight touch of salt and a pannikin of fine black tea.
The parts that we didn’t eat straight away would stay on the stretcher bed and cool through the night. The next morning, Mary and I salted it down and packed it with the gum leaves into the flour drums.
Sitting beside Harry in the buggy, the next day, with the mob poking along at their own steady pace, soaking up the wonderful warmth of our Kimberley sunshine, I thought: I love my life on the land, and I’m happy, and free to roam.
Life was never du
ll; it was peppered with exciting and fresh challenges. One day, I dreamed, I would manage and own my own cattle station. While this aspiration seemed far off, I never let it go; I had a powerful determination to follow it through. Women just didn’t run stock-camps or stations in the Kimberley back then. But I knew with McCorry’s knowledge and my determination to learn all I could from him, my vision could come true. In fact, I dreamed that McCorry and I would achieve it together.
I was jolted out of my daydream as Harry’s foot hit the accelerator. We were heading out to back up the stockmen who were running a fresh mob of cattle to the coaches. We raced up behind three wiry-looking cows and in they went to the coaches without any trouble. Now it was a young mickey’s turn. A ‘mickey’ is a young scrubber bull that hasn’t had his balls removed. Around and around him we went, dust flying, dodging anthills and overhanging branches, until we had the young bull on Harry’s side of the buggy, running neck and neck. The temptation was too much for Harry and he decided to bulldog the beast. Bulldogging is usually performed from a stockhorse, where the rider leaves his horse at just the right moment, takes the beast by the horns and throws it to the ground. A good bulldogger can make it look neat and easy. My stomach took a sudden lurch into my throat as Missy, my bullterrier, and I became the sole occupants of the racing bull-buggy.
Thank God there were no large trees or anthills directly in front. Flinging myself behind the steering wheel, my vision blurred with dust, I swung the buggy in the general direction of Harry and the mickey. I noticed that several of the stockmen had left the mob of cattle and were galloping towards me, waving and pointing. Lifting my foot from the accelerator, I was damned if I could see what was wrong until one of the men rode up close.
‘Missus,’ he pointed. Poor Missy was flying in mid-air out the side of the buggy, connected by her chain around her neck, but luckily unhurt. I made a mental note to shorten her chain right up. McCorry rode over and said something to the effect of, ‘So you’d rather lose the mob of cattle than lose the dog.’ He was blaming the men for caring more about the dog than the cattle, if only for a moment.
‘It was my fault,’ I tried to explain. ‘I should have shortened her lead.’
This was the first time I saw any sign of annoyance from McCorry. He swung his horse around and rode back to the mob of cattle. Through my inexperience, we could have lost the cattle and blown weeks of hard work.
Meanwhile, Harry had bulldogged the mickey and tied him firmly with a bull strap. Sheepishly the men turned their horses around and rode back to the mob. By sundown, McCorry had forgiven us all and we were laughing again.
The following afternoon, as we were slowly moving the mob of cattle down a creek to a wire yard we’d built on the side of a schist hill, we heard an aircraft flying low. We stopped the cattle in the shadows of the overhanging trees. It was the same 180 Cessna from the neighbouring property, Alpha Charlie Charlie, that we’d seen yesterday and the day before. Henceforth the spotter would be known, due to the regularity of his swoops, as ‘Five O’Clock Charlie’. On arrival at the homestead we were greeted with a Flying Doctor radio message from the manager of Napier Downs Station: ‘Stay out of my country or you will be in serious trouble.’
With all the stations tuned in for the galah session, this would at least give them something to talk about. As far as McCorry was concerned, it was water off a duck’s back – he hadn’t been on Napier Downs in the first place. In reply he drafted a message to Department of Civil Aviation in Derby, stating that a 180 Cessna, marking Alpha Charlie Charlie, had been flying over his country, Oobagooma, at treetop level and was this legal? He already knew that no aircraft was allowed to fly below 500 feet. The same afternoon McCorry drafted another message to Jack Fletcher, the Managing Director of the Australian Land & Cattle Company: ‘Your aircraft Alpha Charlie Charlie has been flying over my country in a dangerous manner for some time now. Please cease.’ Five O’Clock Charlie never worried us again.
Some weeks later at another draft, we had in hand about 400 head of cattle, of which about half were branded from, or owned by, Napier and Kimberley Downs. Before we left for home, McCorry and Malki would cut out these foreigners and let them go. We were holding the cattle up around a waterhole and letting them feed and have a drink before yarding for the night. The camp was nearly out of meat so McCorry drafted out an older steer, a bullock, moved him away from the mob and shot and bled him. He then asked old Yardie, our Aboriginal horse-tailer, and me to bone out the kill. As we were working on the carcass, Yardie looked up and said: ‘Horses coming, old man.’
I turned and looked in the direction his nose was pointing – the Aboriginal people never pointed a finger in the direction they wanted you to look. Sure enough, coming over the rise, still some distance away, were two riders, two packhorses and four spare horses. I was told to cut the brand and earmark out and to shove them up the beast’s arse with a stick. It was the one place police patrols failed to look!
McCorry rode out to meet the party on Lychee, a big brown gelding. One of the riders was an Aboriginal fellow we knew worked for Napier Downs. He was good with his fists and a smart horseman too. The other person was a beefy, strong-looking bloke wearing the biggest black hat I’d ever seen. McCorry asked him where the hell he thought he was going. Black hat was American. He said his boss had sent them to help muster along the boundary, to ‘tender muster’, and that they would be assisted by ‘Five O’Clock Charlie’.
Back then, with no fences, if you tender mustered with your neighbour on a boundary you would usually split the cleanskins. But these men were well inside McCorry’s country; he knew where his boundary was. Several years earlier he had accompanied Lands Department personnel into the depths of Oobagooma with their maps. They showed him what landmarks to look for. Joining them with an imaginary line, he could easily define his boundary. He did this for his own good, because as far back as the 1960s and 1970s there were ‘range wars’ on cattle properties throughout the Kimberley. The cattlemen would stop just short of taking pot shots at each other. I know McCorry enjoyed these challenges on the boundary; he had a touch of larrikinism and a good dose of scepticism about authority. On this occasion, though, he knew he was on his own land.
The stockmen from Napier Downs pulled their horses up and sat looking at McCorry.
‘Turn your horses around or I’ll gut-shoot them,’ he said. ‘Tell your boss to stay out of my affairs.’
It was a savage threat, because McCorry loved horses too much to ever shoot any in the guts. We watched the men turn their horses around and ride back over the ridge out of sight.
‘I guess they were only carrying out orders,’ McCorry reflected later. ‘If they hadn’t been so far off course, we might have asked them to dinner.’
Back at the station, McCorry and I took every opportunity to be alone together. He would pack the tucker box and the swag into the buggy, and we would drive down past the homestead to the river and spend time in each other’s arms. This was our ‘getting to know you’ time. Away from the hard work he would relax. He was a kind and gentle man. Sometimes he would patiently drive me from billabong to billabong so I could cut waterlilies for the homestead. He would sit on a log, roll a smoke, and watch me from under the brim of his Akubra with those dark laughing eyes. McCorry knew I liked the old homestead, but it was very plain and a bunch of flowers brought life into the home for me. He was beginning to understand that I would live anywhere with him.
Time at the station was precious for us, because once we were out on the run and working, we seemed to have an unspoken agreement of not touching or showing affection to each other in the presence or sight of the stockmen. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to. It just seemed the right thing to do.
Mary and I had the supply truck loaded with the swags and what we thought were sufficient rations, ready to leave on another muster. The fresh coaches were stepping out well in the lead, heads held high taking in the crisp morning breeze, while the buggy was s
itting patiently on the tail of the mob. I was in charge of the Inter, bringing up the rear. I had been watching old Yardie, a natural in the saddle like most Aboriginal stockmen. Yardie had the stockhorses in hand and sat patiently behind while they moseyed along, chomping on any juicy morsel of grass in their path. Again we were following the course of least resistance – no roads, no maps, but this time heading towards Pardaboora country, an area on Oobagooma north-east of the homestead.
As we came closer to Pardaboora, some of the young stockmen rode ahead with me and Mary to erect a temporary yard to handle some of the flightier horses. In no time the young stockmen had started on the yard, selecting a group of trees which they could ‘Cobb & Co.’ using number 8 fencing wire. To ‘Cobb & Co.’ is a bushman’s way of securing posts together to build a yard when there are no tools, only wire. Rails were made from young trees, which were ‘Cobb & Co.’d together to make a round yard. We had it in place and working in no time flat.
Large shade trees were few and far between on this part of the river. Mary and I decided to make our camp in the bed of the river where some young river gums were growing. As the cool Kimberley breeze began to blow, we dragged an old wire stretcher bed down to the creek and set it up with the pannikins and tin plates. Mary soon had the fire going and the dampers were just about ready to go into the coals. We filled flour drums with water and set them by the side of the fire. I decided I would drag my swag further up the riverbed for a little privacy, as any movement from McCorry’s or my swag during the night would draw attention.
I had no sooner pulled the strap from my swag when I heard Mary yell out: ‘Missus, come – bullock!’
Mary was walking towards the tall young river gums. In the riverbed was a big old-man bullock, eight or nine years old, decidedly lean and unhealthy looking, with a very large set of speary horns.
Diamonds and Dust Page 7