An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  That was Mum and Dad’s first dance with semi-independence. There they built a house and water tank, out of bricks and cement they mixed themselves. Mum continued to look to the north and longed for the life of freedom she’d once had there.

  When we asked her, ‘When did you want to go back?’ she said without hesitation, ‘The moment I left.’

  Mum said that I often cried at night. Nothing she did could pacify me.

  ‘It was terrible. I was following the old rules,’ she told me. ‘We were told we were only allowed to feed our babies at certain times. I had all this milk ready to give you but I was told I wasn’t allowed to. You were so hungry and I was so distressed.’

  I would hold my tummy at that point, looking at her anxiously.

  By the time I was about sixteen months old, Mum couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘At about two o’clock one morning, I was desperate,’ said Mum, her face flushed at the memory. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. So, I wheeled M’Lis in her cot into your room. She was two months old. I said to you, “Here we go, Tanya, here’s M’Lis.”’

  I took one big, choking breath, and stopped crying.

  And I didn’t cry at night after that. Hunger aside, I was obviously waiting for my sister soulmate to arrive. We were inseparable from that moment on. We shared a room for the rest of our childhood. We were like twins. Mum made our clothes, which were identical, and we didn’t go anywhere unless we were together.

  We did look very different, though: I had a blonde mop and M’Lis had dark curls. I was a serious-faced and serious-natured child, while M’Lis was merry, with bright sparkling eyes and a happy grin. She brought fun and companionship into my life. When Brett came along, with his earnest blue eyes, I looked after them both, taking on the protective role of eldest child. We three were like puppies, rolling and scrapping together, and over time I learned what they needed to be happy and safe.

  In the meantime, Mum and Dad’s new life at Witchitie was busy. Dad spent most days mustering sheep on horseback. He would kill one animal each month for food and hang its carcass in the meat house, some distance from the house. Mum had a kerosene fridge and cooked over a wood stove. Every morning, her first job was to light the wood stove, which was a battle, then put the kettle on to boil. Inside the kettle were three bottles of powdered milk, bobbing away. We were like baby birds, lined up inside the nest with our mouths open and cheeping noisily, waiting for the next feed.

  Every afternoon Dad chopped wood for our ‘donkey’ hot-water system (a forty-four-gallon drum and woodfire) that heated water for baths. Next to the house was a ‘Freelite’ windmill that gave us thirty-two-volt power in the mornings and evenings—if there was wind.

  Mum and Dad planted trees and a lawn. We had picnic teas on the lawn and played games where Dad threw us up in the air. We were so little, and Mum said we laughed and laughed as Dad held us up, our baby faces filled with happiness, our eyes shining.

  Dad built a little office at the back of the Witchitie house where he kept his accounts and wrote in his work diary every evening. His father and uncles and grandfather before them had done the same. The diaries dated back generations, crammed with details about stock and prices and the weather; a living record down through the years so that each could compare seasons and rainfall and mutton and wool prices and sales. The Heaslip men never missed a day.

  Dad was very proud of his diaries. Whenever we asked him about something important that happened, he’d say, ‘It’s all in the diaries,’ and pat them confidentially. ‘One day, you’ll get to read them.’

  ‘Tell us how you got to Bond Springs, Mum!’ We always wanted more.

  ‘Well, in 1964, Bond Springs came onto the market. The drought was terrible and the Chisholms, who also owned Napperby Station to the north, were selling it.’

  By now, Bond Springs held only 150 skinny cows, boasted no permanent waterholes or springs (despite Mr Bond’s mistaken belief when he named the lease back in the 1800s), and had never been run as a standalone property. Elders GM and all the locals said that, despite being eighteen hundred and thirteen square kilometres in size, it was unviable on its own, and needed to be run alongside something much bigger.

  ‘Dad did the figures and worked out we could run it with Witchitie. And—best of all—it was next door to Hamilton Downs!’ said Mum, as though that had settled matters.

  Dad told us he persuaded Elders GM to lend them most of the money to buy it. Papa Heaslip, and Dad’s Uncle George, agreed to loan Dad the rest.

  ‘I had to pay them the going interest rate of the day, twenty per cent,’ he said, with a wry grin. ‘No free handouts for family.’

  But Bond Springs nearly didn’t happen at all.

  The government also had to agree to the sale, because it was a leasehold block on Crown land, and the government were the ultimate owners.

  ‘But the government was thinking of turning Bond Springs into a park because of the drought,’ said Dad, frowning, when he told me this story many years later. ‘We had to wait about six months, while they went backwards and forwards between departments. Finally, they decided to grant the lease. But it came with a kicker: we had three years to make all sorts of improvements and meet their strict rules, or at the end of those three years they’d take Bond Springs back. We’d be given nothing for our investment, either. We’d have to return to Witchitie, with our tails between our legs. It was a big risk for Mum and me.’

  Especially at a twenty per cent interest rate.

  Friends and family were worried at the time, too, just as they had been when Mum went up there in the first place. They said Dad had no experience with cattle—only sheep—and that was true. He’d never lived in Central Australia. True, too. Mum had worked there for several years, but as a governess, not running a property. It was a four-day drive to get to Bond Springs from Witchitie over rough, corrugated dirt roads. Communication was limited to telegrams and letters.

  But Mum and Dad were ‘young and bulletproof ’, as Dad would later say, believing hard work would solve all problems. Mum said, ‘In those days, obstacles were just something to jump over,’ and Dad added, ‘We never considered we might fail.’

  And Mum was happy. We’d ask her, ‘What was it like to get back to the Territory at last?’

  ‘Heaven,’ said Mum, and a smile always lit up her eyes. ‘I’d come home.’

  2

  Cattleman—Har Hup, There!

  People said that Dad was not a big man, but he was a giant to us. He filled every space he entered; owned it, commanded it. Mostly he marched about, giving orders or asking questions. But when he relaxed, he grinned a lot. His eyes would sparkle and twinkle, right at us, and we couldn’t help but grin back. It always made us feel everything was right with the world when Dad was happy. Before bed, he would recite a nonsensical ditty about farm animals called, ‘Bed, Fred in the Shed,’ and kiss our little cheeks with his stubbly one. When we grew up, we’d recite it back to each other, thinking it the most comforting, happy poem ever.

  And years later, if we begged hard enough, Dad would tell us about the early days on Bond Springs.

  Like bringing cattle in for the first time.

  ‘That must have been exciting, Dad,’ we said, looking up at him, eagerly.

  ‘No, it was a necessity,’ said Dad, reminding us right up front that his story was about work, not excitement. ‘We had to introduce good breeders and quickly rebuild the herd because a hundred and fifty skinny cows weren’t going to help us keep our lease.’

  ‘Ah,’ we sat back.

  ‘There were no cattle to buy around Alice because of the drought. Elders agreed to extend the overdraft and we bought cattle from Adelaide and waited for the drought to break. It was a tense time.’

  ‘Of course,’ we nodded dutifully.

  Mum added, ‘Rod and Judy Hodder managed Bond Springs for us in the first year. They really helped us.’ She turned to us. ‘It meant Dad could go between Witchitie and the Bond, and I could mos
tly be at Witchitie. It was easier not to travel such distances with you little ones.’

  Mum and Judy were old friends from school in Orroroo, so it was a good outcome for everyone. Best of all was when Rod sent news by telegram to Witchitie in late December 1965, telling Dad that summer rains had broken the ten-year drought in Central Australia.

  ‘Huge relief,’ Dad confirmed, and Mum smiled at him and the memory.

  On 23 January 1966, a further telegram from Rod led to Dad scribbling in his diary: ‘Some more rain, now feed. Rod says 400 cattle can go up now!’

  ‘That was a lot of cattle to get to Alice, so I took Papa Parnell with me to help,’ explained Dad. ‘We loaded the cattle on the Ghan at Maree. Left about ten-thirty at night. It was still thirty-eight degrees inside the goods compartment, stinking hot.’ Dad shuddered. ‘That’s where Papa and I spent the trip, close to the cattle.’

  Later that night, Dad crawled out onto the little steel lattice landing that ran along either side of the train to get some relief.

  ‘I tied my left hand and left foot to the side of the landing posts so I could have a bit of a camp, and not fall off.’ He told us those ties kept him safe. ‘Miracle I survived that trip.’

  After a long three-day journey they arrived in Alice Springs late at night, and it was ‘still stinking hot’. Rod Hodder was waiting. He’d brought two horses through the back hills and creeks. The horses were poor but they were all Rod had available. He and Judy had also driven in the station’s little old green Land Rover, packed with a tucker box, swags and feed for the horses.

  ‘The plan was to camp the night at the yards, then next morning drive the cattle through the outskirts of Alice and into the hills, then on to the Bond Springs boundary,’ said Dad. ‘The creeks met there, just before some old wooden yards. We were going to spell the cattle there overnight, then push on to Bond Springs the next day. Papa would follow behind us in the Land Rover.’

  Dad paused. ‘I didn’t know the route, hadn’t seen any of this country, had to rely on maps from the Lands Board, and Rod, who didn’t know the country either …’ He was anxious from the start, and it seemed he had good reason to be.

  To start with, the cattle and horses ‘just wouldn’t travel’. That wasn’t surprising. The cattle were exhausted from the train journey and the heat, and unnerved by the new landscape and the sight of houses. Soon, Dad and Rod’s big overland trek was behind schedule.

  There was another problem; one that Dad could never have predicted. A storm was building. Central Australia had been in drought for so long that people were desperate for more rain. But today of all days?

  ‘I can recall the exact moment I heard the first thunder crack,’ he told us.

  We could imagine the cattle, already fatigued and disorientated, snorting, the whites of their eyes showing panic. Dad said the light was fading and he was worried. The last thing he needed was for the mob to stampede.

  ‘Push ’em on!’ he shouted to Rod. ‘Got to get ’em to the boundary, over the creek. Can’t lose ’em now.’

  As Dad told us what happened next, we could see and hear it all—a whir of sounds: stockwhips cracking, the men yelling hoarsely, cattle bellowing in fright, horses whinnying in fear, thunder banging all around them. Then, we could smell the first drops of rain. Sweet and heavy. It must have been terrifying as the water fell out of the sky, almost blinding them.

  ‘By the time we got to the creek, it was already flooded.’

  The cattle came to a forced halt, milling manically around the creek’s edge. The water was rising fast, pounding and roaring in their ears.

  Dad told us he forced himself to concentrate on Plan B.

  ‘We’ll have to hold ’em here, and keep ’em safe through the night.’

  Temperatures plunged. Dad said he and Rod were starving and freezing. But Papa couldn’t get through, so there was no food, no swags and no time to sleep, anyway. The rain was still hard and lightning sent jagged flashes through the sky. Dad and Rod moved around and around the mob, soothing the cattle, trying to hold them together in one group. They were shivering in their saddles, with soaking clothes and aching bellies; it was a long night.

  As the light of dawn finally struggled through the drizzle, Dad could see that the creek was now well and truly flooded. But despite the horrors of the previous night, they still had the mob pretty much in one group.

  ‘The relief was overwhelming,’ Dad said. Now they just had to keep them all in the one place until the creek went down.

  By mid-afternoon, the clouds had cleared. Steam rose off the wet land. The water in the creek had dropped. ‘Righto,’ Dad decided. ‘We’ll have to swim ’em across.’

  With much cracking of stockwhips and shouting, they coaxed their unwilling and exhausted horses and the cattle down into the brown, murky water. It was still a risk. They didn’t know what was underfoot, and both the horses and cattle could slip, become entangled in branches or knock into obstacles, and drown.

  But Dad didn’t dare stay any longer. There was a greater risk he would lose them all if he didn’t get them to the other side, and soon.

  ‘Har hup, there! Walk up!’ Crack! Bellow. ‘C’mon cattle, move it through!’

  Dad and Rod drove the mob through the muddy water, yelling, pushing, with fear in their throats.

  ‘It seemed to take forever,’ Dad told us, and he never exaggerated anything.

  Dad said that just when he and Rod thought they couldn’t go on any longer, the cattle and horses hit the bank. From there they struggled up the other side to high ground. Within half an hour, the men had them inside the wooden yards beyond. They collapsed off their horses.

  ‘Hell of a journey,’ Dad later wrote in his diary. ‘Hard job. Horses had had it. Men had had it. But looked as though we got most of the cattle.’

  Dad was not only a man who never exaggerated, he downplayed everything, so his words showed what a hard time it must have been, especially as he considered what he might have lost. But when we asked him in person, he simply repeated, ‘Hell of a journey,’ and that was that.

  It was hard to get any more detail out of Dad. He’d exhausted himself and his memory going back to that traumatic day. I did read in his diaries that it took another two days before he and Rod got the cattle to the homestead yards. Papa was waiting. Dad recorded in his diary: ‘Amazing result—only nine short in a total count of 365.’

  Dad didn’t write in his diary about the hunger, fear or exhaustion—or the fact the weather was quickly blazing hot again—but went on for the next two weeks to set out in detail how much rain had fallen from that wild downpour, the next round of mustering, numbers for drafting and branding, and notes of a quick trip to Hamilton Downs.

  Then, three weeks to the day after he arrived, he and Papa caught a ride with an Elders GM representative back to Witchitie. Mum was waiting anxiously for him, as she’d received no news during that time. She remembered falling into his arms with relief.

  They were so young, I thought. Just over twenty-five, three little ones, and such pressure not to fail.

  There were more challenges ahead. Dad had to keep buying more stock to rebuild the herd now that it had rained. But he didn’t want to go through the difficulty of bringing cattle up from south again, so he bought the next herd of cattle locally.

  ‘Luckily there were some big rains out to the west in early 1965, and some months later the Braitlings from Mount Doreen ended up selling nearly a thousand Poll Herefords,’ he told us, when next we begged for more stories. ‘So, we put in an offer to buy part of the mob.’

  Dad was happy about this purchase because the beautiful brown-and-white Poll Herefords were the breed he wanted to develop. He’d been told they were tough and resilient in outback conditions. And he’d already become friends with Wally Braitling, from Mount Doreen, to the far north-west of Alice.

  Dad had met Wally, and his gorgeous wife Barb, when he first came to Alice. Mum was close to them, and the four immediately
became great friends. That cattle purchase would also be the first of many business ventures between Dad and Wally.

  But that cattle droving trip too nearly ended in disaster.

  It was a five-hundred-kilometre trip. Midway, an unexpected storm hit, just as it had done during Dad’s trip. The cattle stampeded and the stockmen feared they’d lose the lot. But as the cattle headed into the ranges, they hit a corrugated dirt road. Awash with rain in the evening light, it looked like a river. The cattle hadn’t seen a river before—the drought had been so long and harsh—and they baulked, terrified.

  That moment gave the stockmen the chance to cut off their escape route. But the cattle were stirry and unsettled from then on, and the stockmen ‘didn’t take their boots off ’ for the rest of the trip.

  It took another week and a half for the mob to reach the boundary of Bond Springs. Dad (who’d come up from Witchitie), Rod Hodder and four young Aboriginal stockmen rode to meet the mob at Corkwood Bore.

  ‘Rod hired the young blokes from the Mount Nancy camp in Alice,’ Dad remembered. ‘We knew we needed more men for such a big job.’

  Dad hadn’t ever worked with Aboriginal stockmen before, but he knew they were renowned as natural horsemen and cattlemen. He thought he might be able to engage the stockmen on a muster-by-muster basis if they wanted the work. They did.

  It took all day for the six of them to ride from the Bond Springs homestead to the western yards. They arrived just before dusk, the air full of dust and the cattle bellowing. Dad said he felt overwhelming relief as, just on dark, the mob were herded into the yards and the gates shut tight.

  He bought nearly eight hundred cattle, extending the Elders GM overdraft yet again to do so.

  ‘It was another big gamble. We needed more rain so we could fatten the cattle and sell them. It was a big race to meet the lease conditions of three years, and pay back our loans to Elders and Papa and Uncle George. Every step of the way, we could have gone broke.’