An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  Tanya Heaslip was raised on a cattle station in Central Australia during the 1960s and 70s and learnt about the outside world through the Correspondence School, School of the Air and storybooks. She spent many hours dreaming of the overseas lands depicted in those studies and stories. Tanya went on to become a lawyer but never stopped dreaming. In between practising law, she travelled to many of those lands, and has since written about her travel experiences in Alice to Prague, published in 2019. Tanya lives in Alice Springs with her husband. She is the Regional Vice President of the NT Writers’ Centre.

  First published in 2020

  Copyright © 2020 Tanya Heaslip

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 977 2

  eISBN 978 1 76087 426 1

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Cover design: Christabella Designs

  Image credits: Girl (Heaslip family collection); background (Shutterstock)

  To Dad—for everything

  Contents

  Prologue: The Cattle Duffers

  1 Where It All Began

  2 Cattleman—Har Hup, There!

  3 Our Very Own Palace

  4 ‘I Belong That Country’

  5 Dick and Dora, Nip and Fluff

  6 Four Good Men

  7 ‘Delta Queeee-Bec Golf’

  8 Thank You, Adelaide Miethke

  9 No Mic Fright for Me

  10 The Importance of Being Strong

  11 Loss

  12 An Outback Lifeline

  13 Buckjumping on the Bond

  14 Learning to Ride

  15 Bush Art and Animals

  16 Bush Music

  17 DQG in Full Flight

  18 Characters

  19 Mrs Hodder and Tall Tales

  20 Jane Joseland—My New Friend

  21 Charlie Gorey and Bush Work

  22 Mind Over Matter

  23 The Best Weekend of the Year!

  24 Wild, Wonderful Bush Get-Togethers

  25 ‘We’ve Got Visitors, Mum!’

  26 All the Games That We Could Play

  27 Eeyore John Wayne

  28 Everard Park

  29 More Show Adventures

  30 Writing and Music

  31 It’ll Take the Time It Takes

  32 Bush Life—Lost and Found

  33 The Nightmare of Shearing

  34 My Last Year

  35 Remember the Bullocks

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The Cattle Duffers

  ‘Cooeeeee!’

  The call ripped through the hot, still air. I swivelled in the saddle, hands tight on the reins, straining to catch the direction of the sound. My skewbald mare Sandy moved restlessly under me, her ears pricked, sensing my anxiety. To the west lay a rocky rise, shrouded by blue-grey mulga, but if the sound had come from behind the rise it was impossible to tell. Behind me a dry creek bed dropped away to the south, lined by river gums wilting in the afternoon heat. There was no sign of anyone there. Nor did it seem a likely hide-out.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted in return, ‘Cooeeeee!’ The words hit the low hills and reverberated back, while above a hawk rose high into the vastness on the currents of a willy-willy. Like my shout, the hawk was soon a speck in the emptiness, swallowed by the big, blue bowl of sky above. Sweat ran down the back of my thin cotton shirt. The sun burned my arms. Time was running out.

  ‘Cooeeeee!’ I tried again desperately.

  Then I heard it, in bursts, through the thicket in the direction of the southern fence. ‘Tanya—over—here!’

  I then realised it was M’Lis’s voice, followed by the sound of stockwhips cracking and the thunder of hooves beating through the bush. Perhaps the cattle were breaking away to the rocky outcrop, which would give them cover until they reached that fence. I looked over to what lay between here and the fence. Long, low, flat mounds of red earth sweeping towards the glint of wire in the distance, potted throughout with rabbit holes, treacherous for horses. One misstep and they could break a leg. My sister was calling for help and that route was the best way to head off the mob. But I couldn’t risk Sandy going down a rabbit hole. So, I took a deep breath and leaned low over Sandy’s neck. We came up straight and fast along a cattle pad, a narrow, dusty track created by cattle meandering to waterholes over the years. It ran across the side of the hill, which was a slightly longer way. Soon my ears were filled with the sound of Sandy’s hooves and my pounding heart. I kept swivelling.

  ‘Here!’ M’Lis’s voice came to me through the scrub. Then I glimpsed her crouched over a grey horse, hat flattened on her head, flying in pursuit of the fleeing cattle. Behind her came her friend Jacquie, standing high in the stirrups of her horse, UFO, her blonde ponytail swinging wildly.

  ‘Where are the others?’ I called frantically.

  They should be nearby. We were a team with a job to do. I just hoped they were covering the flank on the other side of the hill, stopping the cattle being driven down there. But I couldn’t see anyone in this hilly, scrubby corner. Out there, unseen, was my little brother Benny on his grey pony, Lesley, and our friend Donald on his bay gelding.

  In the distance I knew my brother Brett, and Jacquie’s brother Matthew, would be heading our way. He’d have my friend Janie with him, as well as another great horse rider, Joanne.

  But now everyone seemed lost in the blur and brushlands.

  ‘They’ve got them!’ M’Lis’s voice came out in frantic bursts through the thick trees. ‘They’re getting away! You take the fence side … we’ll cut them off before they reach the creek.’

  Our one, desperate job today was to stop the cattle duffers.

  Sandy and I cut towards the south, then plunged down towards the length of Kangaroo Flat, focused only on turning the mob. They had a lead on us and I knew we were struggling to make up the gap. If we could stop them reaching the creek, we’d be in with a chance. Where were Benny and Donald?

  We knew that the cattle duffers had stolen Dad’s cleanskins—young cattle that had not yet been branded—and were now driving them hard towards their own bush hide-out. And the duffers knew the best secret gorges or wild scrublands to push the cattle into. We knew what they’d do if we didn’t stop them. They’d build makeshift yards to trap the stolen cattle. Next they’d brand the cleanskins with their own illegal brand and sell them on. And for all we knew, they had some of Dad’s best branded steers, and were intending to cross-brand them too. While the steers wouldn’t be as easy to sell, cattle duffers were cunning and clever and usually found a way to persuade the right kind of people to buy.

  We couldn’t let that happen. We were here to protect Dad’s cattle—all of them—at any cost. There was no time to waste.

  Then, as one, M’Lis, Jacquie and I were both out onto the open flat—past the rabbit holes, racing across the gibber stones, nothing in our minds now but the safety of the mob, and the protection
of the herd. It was now or never to get the cattle out of the clutches of the duffers and herd them back to safety. Our destination still seemed far away. A long, low washout stretching north to south on the eastern end of the paddock, across the dry creek, and then a scramble up the flinty hill that squatted in the middle of the paddock. It was a wondrous hill, we thought, and many years ago M’Lis, Brett and I had named it House Hill.

  House Hill boasted a 360-degree view of our world, including the homestead that sprawled away in the distance to the north. On the very top of the hill sat a solitary prickly orange tree. It had defied the droughts and the desert winds year after year, its bark rough and sturdy and its incongruously green leaves pointing defiantly to the high blue sky. We were so proud of the orange tree. So proud that, many years before, we’d crowned it Home Base. That meant freedom and safety for the cattle and us.

  ‘Hey, Tanya!’ A shout came from behind me and I glimpsed Benny and Donald pointing towards the top of House Hill, then heard the crack of more stockwhips.

  Through the air came the cackle of evil; the sound of wild, whooping laughter. It was the cattle duffers above us, galloping side-by-side along the crest, thrusting their arms in the air in victory, pushing the cattle ahead of them.

  ‘Nooooooooo!’ I shrieked but my voice was lost in the wind, my tongue now raw with dust and salt from sweat.

  Brett, Janie, Joanne and Matthew were the cattle duffers today and they were getting away with the precious herd. Dad’s livelihood depended on us getting the cattle back.

  Suddenly ahead of us, there it was—the slim gap between the gum trees that disguised the entrance to the washout and the creek. I flew through it, just as Brett and Janie came around the other side, with Joanne and Matthew riding pincer action. Then, just in time, M’Lis was also there, and Donald and Benny, and it was a race to the top of House Hill.

  It was a whirl of horses galloping, nostrils flaring, hooves hitting the flint of the rocks, and our hearts banging in our chests. The air was filled with the sound of cracking stockwhips and shouts of ‘Har hut there! Hut hut! Walk up bullocks, walk up! Get ’em out of there!’ With fierce determination, M’Lis, Benny, Donald and I swung around in a loop to cut off our enemies before they reached the orange tree.

  ‘Home free!’ Benny’s voice came out in gasps as he reached out his fingers to touch the rough bark. He was only five and this had been a huge ride for him, clinging to his pony as he’d followed Donald. But he’d begged to come out with us to take on the cattle duffers this afternoon, and Mum had said yes, if he was good and if he was careful, and if we looked after him. Luckily, he’d stayed on his horse, because once we were all in full flight, it was every rider for themselves. And now he was the first to reach home base, winning the game for our side. I reached across from my mare to hug him, and saw his eyes big and shining as he gazed up at me delightedly from under his over-big hat.

  ‘You did it, Benny!’ Eldest child to youngest, I was as proud as punch.

  The remaining mob raced to a dead heat, yelling at the tops of their voices.

  ‘We won!’

  ‘No, we won!’

  ‘You cheated!’

  ‘No way, we got here fair and square, and we got those cattle back!’

  ‘Not a chance! We’re ready to truck them off to the border!’

  And so it went on as we slapped each other’s backs and circled our horses around to cool them down, breathing heavily, the sweet smell of horse sweat rising up from under the tangled manes and saddle blankets.

  Brett and Janie, Joanne and Matthew each had Mum’s black-and-red headscarves tied on their hats to denote they were the cattle duffers. They pulled them off, waving them in the air like pirates. But the rest of us weren’t having it. There were more fists in the air and shrieks. Eventually, when we all managed to stagger off our horses, we agreed it was a dead heat, and the cattle could be returned safely to their owner.

  Of course, in reality, there were no cattle.

  All the cattle on our station were precious and Dad would have personally hung us upside down in a tree if we’d used them in our games.

  But we didn’t need real cattle. They were as vivid and alive to us as if we’d had a full mob at our disposal. Our imaginations easily filled in the gaps. Besides, when we weren’t playing our favourite game of cattle duffers, we were mustering or working with cattle in the yards, so we had no difficulty visualising those beautiful beasts as we flew to protect them, up and down the Horse Paddock, as we had today. Each time we played we alternated roles, but I secretly thought Brett and Janie, Joanne and Matthew had played the baddies rather brilliantly this afternoon.

  It was so wonderful having friends with us.

  For the rest of the year, it was just us four kids: me, M’Lis, Brett and Benny.

  But these school holidays, Jacquie and Matthew had come in from Mount Doreen Station, nearly five hundred kilometres away towards the Western Australia border.

  Janie, Donald and Joanne had arrived at the start of the holidays, too. They’d ridden their horses out from Alice Springs along the winding, narrow creek beds to get to us. It was a long, full-day trip. We’d met them halfway in a hidden tea-tree gorge, a perfect horse hide-out. There were no adults involved in our daytrip, no communication with any parents—just bush savvy and the total sense of adventure we kids instinctively carried as we rode through the hills to meet one another.

  The nine of us had then headed to Dad’s stock camp. Now, two weeks later, we had successfully mustered and branded all the cattle, they had been trucked off to market, and we had been given this one free day—the last day of the holidays—as a reward.

  The Horse Paddock was our own special space. All the other station paddocks housed cattle, and were used for grown-up purposes, but this one was next to the homestead, reserved for horses, and we’d unofficially claimed and named it as our own.

  We were never too old for playing cattle duffers, our favourite game, even though it wasn’t easy. First, we had to fetch the horses, which meant walking out several kilometres through the bush and rocky hills to find them, and once we had done that, we needed to throw a bridle over those we caught, and ride them bareback to the yards. Then we’d saddle them up, after which we would return to the paddock for action. The preparation could take hours and we’d usually be gone from late morning until dark. Fortunately, the horses didn’t seem to mind; ears pricked, eager, obedient. I often thought they loved the chase as much as we did. And Mum was just pleased we were out of her hair, active and occupied.

  As I dismounted Sandy, I looked up to the mountain ranges rising high behind the creek line, and my heart twisted painfully. Next year I would be gone from this beautiful place that was my home, a place where I felt strong and where I belonged. Where the games we played made sense, and the person I was fitted in, and was normal.

  After the next school holidays, I was off to boarding school. It was a girls-only school, sixteen hundred kilometres to the south in a city called Adelaide. Mum had already bought the maroon tunic uniform, belt, white shirt, tie, stockings and lace-up shoes. They were hanging in my cupboard. I’d tried them on, but the collar felt tight, the tunic was itchy, the stockings scratched and the shoes pinched. I’d never worn such strange clothes before and I couldn’t imagine wearing them all day every day. So, I took them off quickly and just hoped they would feel better when I was actually there.

  Part of me was excited. I’d read all the Malory Towers and Twins at St Clare’s books, as well as Nana Heaslip’s 1920s Girl’s Own Annuals. In these books, boarding school seemed a very jolly place. There would be midnight feasts, grave and wise mistresses to help me along my way, caring prefects to inspire me, and adventures with other girls in tunics. It was also the chance to immerse myself in books and study, which were already my favourite things in the world to do.

  But I was also fearful. Boarding school was a life as far removed from mine as imaginable. I had only ever worn checked shirts, jeans
and riding boots to school. And my schoolroom was a little stone building next to the homestead, where I did Correspondence School lessons with M’Lis and Brett, and spent half an hour a day on the two-way radio with School of the Air. Next year, Benny would take my place in that schoolroom. I couldn’t imagine not being in my small sanctuary, where I studied happily with my sister and brother. I had never sat in a real classroom with other kids. I didn’t even really know any city kids, just bush kids, who all rode horses and lived my kind of life.

  What if things went wrong? What if I was sad or scared? What if, just by some unhappy chance, the mistresses and prefects weren’t as kind and wise as they were in all the books?

  Mum would be so far away. She wouldn’t be able to make things better with just a kiss and a smile. I would only be able to tell her about my new life through weekly handwritten letters (or telegrams in emergencies). I had never lived away from Mum or my family or my home. I didn’t know how I would survive without them. They were my whole world.

  I roughly pushed the vision away and wiped my eyes with the back of my grubby hand. I refocused on the Horse Paddock, this place of freedom.

  ‘C’mon!’ said Brett. ‘Time for some water. We’ve earned it!’

  Water was our most precious commodity, and Dad never let us drink too much. If you ran out of water, you could perish. He constantly told us that we should learn to do without, so that we would become tough, rather than vulnerable. Dad’s lessons were hard, because he wanted us to learn to be hard too, to make sure we survived in this arid landscape.

  So, we always saved sips from the hessian water bags that hung off our saddles for when we really needed them. That was usually intermittently during the day and when we were close to finishing work—or in our case today, at the end of our game.

  But today we weren’t far from the homestead, and Dad wasn’t here, so we allowed ourselves long, luxurious gulps to wet the dust and dryness in our throats. Then we poured a small pool into our hats and held them under our horses’ noses, so they could lap up the remaining drops. We—horses and kids—would have a long and proper drink once back in the house yards. Luckily, unlike on a long muster, they weren’t far.