by Haynes, Jim
Waratah replied, ‘Thanks. Same to you. Goodbye.’
Captain C.G. Phillips of the Clan McIntyre stated at the inquiry that he kept sight of the Waratah for several hours after passing. The seas were now rolling, producing whitecaps, but visibility was improving.
He testified that the Waratah pulled about 10 miles (16 kilometres) ahead of the Clan McIntyre, and ‘appeared to be perfectly upright and to be in no difficulty, steaming rapidly’.
At 9.20 a.m., the Waratah altered course, picked up speed and disappeared from sight into the mist. What happened after that remains a mystery to this day. The Waratah disappeared completely.
Captain Phillips told the inquiry something very odd.
‘Some hours after I had sent the signal to the liner,’ he stated, ‘I was standing on the bridge when I sighted another ship, a sailing vessel. There was something strangely old-fashioned about her rig. I’m not a superstitious man, but I know my seafaring lore. The rig of the vessel immediately brought to mind the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The phantom ship held me spellbound. It disappeared in the direction taken by the Waratah, and I had a feeling it was a sign of disaster for the liner.’
Searches were conducted by three British navy cruisers and two different ships were hired by relatives and the shipping company to conduct exhaustive searches. The Blue Anchor Line chartered the Union Castle ship Sabine to conduct a search, which covered 22,500 kilometres, and relatives of the Waratah passengers chartered the Wakefield and conducted a search for three months in 1910.
All types of strange theories were put forward. Spiritualists in Australia and South Africa made announcements about the fate of the vessel based on messages supposedly given to them from those who died on her.
The inquiry was unable to come to any conclusions and, although it made negative comments about some of the company’s practices, it did not attach any blame to the Blue Anchor Line.
Wrecks found and supposed to be the Waratah in 1925, 1977 and 2001 all proved upon investigation to be other ships. Emlyn Brown, who spent twenty-two years searching for the wreck, said in 2004, ‘I’ve exhausted all the options. I now have no idea where to look.’
The most plausible theory is that the Waratah was hit by a giant, freak wave that rolled her over outright or stove-in her cargo hatches, filling the holds with water and pulling the ship down almost instantly. If the ship had capsized or rolled over completely, any buoyant debris would have been trapped under the wreck, explaining the total lack of any bodies or wreckage.
Waves of up to 20 metres in height occur in that part of the Southern Ocean and the cruiser HMS Hermes, while searching near the area of the last sighting of the Waratah, encountered waves so large and strong that she strained her hull and had to be placed in dry dock and repaired.
So, despite the long and thorough searches, and subsequent search expeditions over the years, the disappearance of the SS Waratah without a trace remains unexplained today. Nothing was ever found.
The Curse
The Waratah was named especially to please her prospective Australian customers. She was designed and built for the Britain to Australia run and several Australian newspapers enthused about the very Aussie name of this new ‘state of the art’ vessel when she was launched.
They may not have been so enthusiastic had they researched the name before writing so effusively about it.
In 1848, a sailing ship named Waratah bound for Sydney sank off Ushant, and thirteen lives were lost. In 1887, not one but two ships, each named Waratah, sank off Sydney within months of each other.
Two years later, following a cyclone, the newly built Waratah from the port of Fremantle, sank off Cape Preston in the Pilbara, with the loss of all crew and, just five years later, yet another trading vessel named Waratah was lost on the coast of northern Australia.
Lucky Jim
Mr James Hardy missed his berth on the doomed ship not once but twice. In London’s Daily Mail he wrote:
On the morning of June 26, 1909, I took a cab to the docks at Sydney, Australia, to catch the S.S. Waratah, due to sail to England. Bounding a corner a wheel came off and my vehicle collapsed. I missed the ship, which sailed with my heavy baggage, but I decided to catch her at Melbourne. The day before the Waratah left Melbourne I received an urgent telegram from a friend informing me he was leaving Sydney that night and he must see me before I sailed. When he arrived next morning his business proved so vital that once again I missed the Waratah.
JH
THE SPEEWAH
ANONYMOUS
The Speewah is a legendary sheep station which lies ‘outback’, ‘beyond the black stump’, ‘back o’ Bourke’, ‘west of sunset’, ‘in the land where the crow flies backward and the pelican builds her nest’. At any rate, the Speewah was so big that when the wood-and-water-joey went to close the gate to the house paddock, he had to take a week’s rations, and the jackaroo who was sent to bring in the mustering horses that were hobbled in the horse paddock was often gone for three months.
When shearing was on, which it always was because the flock was so big it took a year to shear, the shearers’ cook needed a good horse to get around the frying pan. The boundary riders had to change their watches when they passed through the different time zones. The flocks of galahs were so big that when they took fright in a rainstorm no rain hit the ground for several hours.
The station known as Speewah is three hundred miles across,
But every mile there’s dams and huts where travellers can doss.
There’s fifty sheep per acre and they’re lambing all the year,
There’s twenty million sheep on Speewah, or something very near.
We’re off to the Speewah in the Never-Never Land,
Way across the Cooper and beyond the belt of sand,
We’re sick of always travelling along the same old track,
So we’ll make a break for Speewah in the land outback.
Although there’s twenty million sheep that wear the Speewah brand,
You’ll never find a dozen dead in all the Speewah land,
They always pay the union rate a pound-a-hundred pay,
And if the sheep are wet or not it’s up to us to say.
We’re off to the Speewah, see us step it out,
Off to the Speewah where there’s never any drought,
Where the fleeces are fine and the sheep are tough,
We’ve stuck around the other stations for long enough.
There’s plates of ice-cream in the shed, and on the hottest days,
Shandies with a foamin’ head are handed round on trays.
So give us just a kiss or two and wish us luck ahead,
In six months we’ll be safely through or else we’ll all be dead.
We’re off to the Speewah where the work’s all right,
With a grand piano playing in the hut at night.
A pretty girl to play it, too, with golden hair,
We’re off to the Speewah, where they treat you fair!
CROOKED MICK
Crooked Mick of the Speewah was larger than life—he grew so fast as a kid his mother tried to slow his growth by ring-barking his legs, which left him with a bad limp, but didn’t stop him growing. He could out ride, out shear and out swear any stockman, shearer or bullocky.
According to Alan Marshall, who documented the yarns and legends of this mythical Aussie, the legendary heroes of American folk tales, such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, are just sissies when compared to the men of the Speewah. Crooked Mick would sooner have a fight than a feed and, when he did eat, a normal meal was two sheep, or one and a half if they were the Border Leicester ration sheep used on the Speewah.
Mick’s mother was a drover and a remarkable woman. One night, she was camped in her tent when she received a visit from a stranger. All she could recall, or would recall, in later years, was that he had a very thick bushy beard and a great sense of humour.
The stranger only stayed a few minutes and it was such a trivial
event that she forgot all about it, which is quite understandable given that her work was so hard and her responsibilities so great, and there was a drought on. She only remembered the event suddenly and quite vividly nine months later when she was riding a bucking horse she was attempting to break in.
Crooked Mick was born on the back of that bucking horse and, although the brave woman was startled, she managed to stay on until the happy event was complete, and she was then thrown. Crooked Mick, however, stayed on the horse’s back and completed the ride, bringing the beast to a standstill and then riding back to collect his mother.
When he was fully-grown, Mick’s feet were so big that he had to go outside to turn around and it took a full bullock’s hide to make him a pair of slippers. He was a heavy smoker from an early age and usually one jackeroo was employed full time in cutting tobacco and filling Mick’s pipes.
In the shearing shed, no one could come near Mick’s output. He worked so fast that his shears ran red hot and he used half a dozen pairs of shears at a time, with five pairs cooling in a pot of water while he used the sixth pair. He’d usually finish his tally by the end of the breakfast run. It took three wool pressers to handle his daily clip, and they had to work overtime at the end of the day to manage it.
When shearing was over, Mick would spend his time fencing with his dog for company. Firstly he would cut brigelow posts, which he did with an axe in each hand to save time. His dog would scout ahead and mark the best trees by tearing off patches of bark so Mick could easily recognise them, which meant he didn’t have to stop walking as he used the two axes. Then the dog would run back and carry the posts to the fence line and drop them at the appropriate places.
Once the posts were cut and placed, Mick would start on the fencing. The dog would run ahead and calculate the correct places along the fence line for the posts, keeping the line absolutely straight and digging the first openings for each post. Then Mick would follow with a crowbar in one hand and a shovel in the other and complete the holes without breaking stride. The dog then doubled back and dropped the posts in and Mick would fill in and tamp down each post as he walked back to the station in the opposite direction going home.
Things are pretty big on the Speewah. Crooked Mick was once driving a mob of sheep through the bush on the Speewah when suddenly it became as dark as the inside of a black dog. For over a week, he kept moving those sheep through darkness so deep he couldn’t even see them. His dog would do a round trip, circle the mob twice a day and come back and bark three times to tell Mick they were all accounted for.
Suddenly the light flickered and then came back on again. Mick was puzzled, and when he looked back he saw that he had been moving the mob of sheep through a hollow log.
JH
SHEARING ON THE SPEEWAH
ANONYMOUS
I had a relation on Speewah Station,
He told me what he’d seen there,
I won’t deny it sounds a lie,
But then, I’ve never been there.
But I did hear it takes a year
To ride across the station,
It’s quite a ride ’cause it’s as wide
As a European nation.
The shearing shed, my relation said,
Was mostly made of stone.
It stretched a week along the creek,
It’s length was never known.
Each catching pen for the shearing men
Was large beyond all reason.
He lost a pup once penning up,
And found its bones next season.
The boss of course had to ride a horse
Up and down the board,
And when he’d passed the rousies laughed
And cheered with one accord.
For well they knew, that cheeky crew,
He wouldn’t be back for days.
They could laugh and play all through the day,
Or just sit back and laze.
It took a drought to make the shed cut out,
There were so many sheep there.
A million rams, twice as many lambs,
The musterers had to keep there.
This yarn is tall, no doubt at all,
But that place is pretty rough.
So, if you go, you ought to know,
Those blokes are really tough.
HEAT
LENNIE LOWER
Boastful remarks have recently come from the vicinity of Parkes. Eggs have been hatched in the heatwave, without the aid of the hen.
‘A householder gathering eggs, found that one had rolled from the nest into the sunlight. It was perfectly fresh, but cooked.’
Stay those ‘Oh, yeah!’s. We have been in places where it was so hot that men’s moustaches burst into flame. Elderly gentlemen with beards were razed to the ground.
On our poultry farm new-laid incandescent eggs were always on deck. The fowls had to do their laying on the run. Every time we heard a cackle we had to rush out with a bucket of water to put the hen out.
You don’t know anything about heat. Many’s the time we had to crawl inside the stove to get a bit of coolth.
People going to the city would find themselves stranded in the middle of the bush, owing to the railway lines melting and running off down the embankment.
Then there was the girl who went out in a muslin frock, which burst into flames as soon as she got out of the shade. After that the whole male population of the town joined the fire brigade. We, yourself, walked about for a fortnight carrying a ladder, and always seemed to be in the wrong district.
We believe that things became much worse later on, but in the meantime, with the rest of the wealthier people, we had biffed off to the Sahara Desert for the winter sports.
Shortly after that we were frozen to death in Egypt. We always were unlucky.
THE LEGEND OF THE OOZLUM BIRD
W.T. GOODGE
It was on the Diamantina where the alligators grow,
And the native’s allegations ain’t particularly low.
He was old and he was ugly, he was dirty, he was low,
He could lie like Ananias, and they called him Ginger Joe.
He was ‘wood-and-water joey’ at the ‘Jackeroos Retreat’,
Where the swagmen and the shearers and the boundary riders meet,
And he ‘pitched a lot of fairies’ but the best I ever heard,
Was McPherson’s trip to Sydney on the famous Oozlum Bird.
‘You can talk about yer racehorse and the paces he can go,
But it jist amounts to crawlin’, nothink else!’ said Ginger Joe.
‘And them cycle blokes with pacers, you can take my bloomin’ word
They’re a funeral procession to the blinded Oozlum Bird!
‘Do yez know Marengo Station? It’s a way beyond the peak,
Over sixty miles beyond it as you go to Cooper’s Creek.
I was cook at Old Marengo when McTavish had the run
And his missus died and left him with a boy—the only one.
‘Jock McPherson was his nephew, lately out from Scotland, too,
Been sent out to get “experience” as a kind of jackeroo.
Well this kid of old McTavish was a regular little brick,
And we all felt mighty sorry when we heard that he was sick.
‘But, McTavish! Well, I reckon I am something on the swear,
But I never heard sich language as McTavish uttered there!
For he cursed the blessed country and the cattle and the sheep
And the station-hands and shearers till your blessed flesh would creep!
‘It was something like a fever that the little chap had got,
And McTavish he remembered, when he’d cursed and sworn a lot,
That a chemist down in Sydney had a special kind of stuff
Which would cure the kiddy’s fever in a jiffy, sure enough.
‘So he sent me inter town upon the fastest horse we had
So that I can wire Sydney for th
e medsin for the lad.
They can send it by the railway and by special pack from Bourke;
It would take a week to do it and be mighty slipp’ry work.
‘Well, off I gallops inter town and sends the wire all right;
And I looks around the township, meanin’ stoppin’ for the night.
I was waitin’ in the bar-room, that same bar-room, for a drink,
When a wire from McPherson comes from Sydney! Strike me pink!
‘I had left him at Marengo on the morning of that day!
He was talking to McTavish at the time I rode away!
And yet, here’s a wire from Sydney! And it says, “Got here all right,
Got the medsin, am jist leavin’, will be home again tonight!”
‘Well, I thought I had the jim-jams, yes I did, for, spare me days!
How in thunder had McPherson got ter Sydney, anyways?
But he’d got there, that was certain, the wire was plain and clear!
I could never guess conundrums, so I had another beer.
‘In the morning bright and early, I was out and saddled up,
And away to break the record of old Carbine in the Cup,
For I made that cuddy gallop as he never did before,
And, so-help-me-bob, McPherson was there waiting at the door!
‘And the kid was right as ninepence, sleepin’ peaceful in his bunk,
And McTavish so delighted he’d made everybody drunk!
And McPherson says, “Well, Ginger, you did pretty well I heard,
But you must admit I beat you—’cause I rode the Oozlum Bird!”
‘He said he’d often studied science, long before he came out here,
And he’d struck upon a notion, which you’ll think is mighty queer,
That the Earth rolls round to eastward, and that birds, by rising high,
Might just stop and travel westward, while the earth was rolling by!
‘So he saddled up the Oozlum, rose some miles above the plain,
And let the Earth turn underneath him till he spotted The Domain!
Then he came down, walked up George Street, got the stuff and wired me,