An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  On another occasion, we had a stock camp cook who looked like Moses, complete with flowing white hair and white beard.

  He went to sleep every night on the ground without a blanket or swag, so that the cold would wake him up at 3 a.m. and he would be ready to cook the camp breakfast. We thought it incredible that the snakes, ants and dingoes didn’t get him. He wasn’t quite as terrifying as Tommy Burrows, but he was not to be messed with.

  Another time, Mum’s Uncle John came to us. His wife, Aunty Eileen, had died after a long illness, and he was very sad. ‘How about a stint as cook in the camp?’ Dad asked him, and we couldn’t believe our luck when he said yes.

  We called him ‘Mon Oncle’, which we thought was terribly amusing, and pronounced it ‘Mon On-cluh’, which we thought even more amusing. He had an enormous stomach and an enormous snore at night, which would shake the ground around us.

  We loved Mon Oncle because he was so much fun to be around and had a great sense of humour. This was unusual for a camp cook; in the bush, cooks had the reputation of being drunken and grumpy, and very often both. Mon Oncle, in contrast, would be up at 4 a.m. to prepare breakfast every day, cheery and bright, and over our steak, bread and sauce, he would give the camp ‘a thought for the morning’, usually something like ‘Be brave’ or ‘Respect others’.

  Mon Oncle was very strict about his camp. He set it up perfectly, everything in its place, and we were not allowed to touch anything—he ran it like Fort Knox.

  One night, there were so many cattle we had to take turns night-watching them. Dad had brought in a few extra stockmen to help out, and at 2 a.m., a couple of the new boys snuck across to Mon Oncle’s camp and stole the billy to make a cuppa. They built a little fire under the fence, tied their horses up with the reins looped over the fence and their arms, and then sat back and relaxed, waiting for the brew to boil.

  Suddenly, an apparition appeared out of the blackness. The apparition kicked the billy over, shouting furiously, and water from the billy spurted onto the fire.

  ‘Ahhh!’ the two young stockmen screamed, thinking it was an Aboriginal Kadaitcha man. They leaped to their feet and the horses pulled back, whinnying in fright.

  One of the horses pulled back so hard he dragged one of the blokes under the fence, with the reins still wrapped firmly around his forearms. That bloke was scraped and bloodied quite badly.

  No one messed with Mon Oncle’s camp again.

  Mum and Dad vetted anyone who came onto Bond Springs. Grog was forbidden in the stock camp. My parents had been scarred by the problems alcohol had caused in the late sixties and Dad was determined to take total control over who came onto the property and what they did when they were there.

  Dad didn’t have a bookkeeper. Despite not having been good at school, and now self-taught in pretty much everything, Dad did all the books himself, right down to the last cent.

  ‘If we’re not in control of our life, someone else will be,’ he’d say, ‘and they won’t have anything good in mind for us.’

  Bloody bureaucrats, communists and socialists.

  But one day I discovered there was an even worse type of person to be worried about, when Dad marched in to lunch after a long bore run. His face was set, his lips tight. Instead of sitting at the head of the table as he usually did, he headed straight to his office. He didn’t look at any of us, not even Mum.

  We panicked. Had we done something wrong?

  ‘Is everything all right, Grant?’ Mum rushed after him. ‘Don’t you want lunch?’

  They were gone a while. Eventually they came back together. Mum looked at her feet. Dad stood with his hands on the back of his chair. We sat at the table in silence, too scared to eat.

  ‘The stallion’s been shot.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In the Corkwood yards.’

  Knives and forks clattered onto plates. Our beautiful thoroughbred stallion? Who’d sired Limerick and the other beautiful colts and fillies now making up the stock camp plant?

  Dad pursed his lips. ‘Stallion obviously went in for a drink. Some low-down, stinking, mongrel bastard’s got to him.’

  That was about the worst swearing we’d ever heard from Dad.

  Who? Why?

  Dad shrugged, helplessly. ‘Somebody trespassing on the Bond, thought it would be fun, who knows the mind of evil?’

  Then he picked up his hat.

  ‘There goes our future colts and fillies,’ he said, and walked out.

  Low-down, stinking, mongrel bastard.

  I started adopting a serious disposition whenever I was with Dad, steeling myself for news of what latest disaster was about to explode. I realised early on it would never do to appear frivolous or disrespectful about life. There would always be something hanging over us like a ticking clock and we constantly had to be on our guard, could never truly relax. I certainly knew that we were to be grateful for what we had, while we had it, and to show it where possible.

  Every now and then I overheard Dad and Mum argue about money.

  It was a juggle for Mum to ensure that all the staff were properly fed to her standards within Dad’s ever-tightening budget. One day, when the money argument seemed particularly heated, that old deep, dark anxiety started churning away inside my stomach again.

  Eventually I grabbed Mum and whispered, ‘Mum, we can live on Vegemite sandwiches, no problem. Will that help?’

  She laughed and ruffled my hair. ‘It’s all fine, my darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about things like this.’

  I ran away relieved, hoping that was the truth. Because it was just too hard to be a grown-up, and I didn’t want to think about all those things anymore. So, I returned to my books and my place of happiness.

  Not long after that discussion, Mum came home from town and said, ‘I have a record that I think you’ll like, Tanya.’

  She handed me a brand-new LP and I stared, agog, at the cover. There was a picture of a beautiful ballroom with shining floors and high ceilings. Around the ballroom, young women in long, blue gowns adorned with sashes were in the arms of handsome men dressed in what Mum told me were ‘black tie and tails.’

  ‘These pieces of music are called “The Viennese Waltzes”,’ said Mum, as she put the record on. ‘And Vienna is the capital of Austria, where The Sound of Music was set.’

  I thought my heart might leap out of my chest as the record introduced me to Strauss waltzes, particularly “The Blue Danube”. Its sweeping, soaring violins and the thrill of its falls and crescendos transported me back to The Sound of Music and its ballroom scene.

  ‘Come on!’ said Mum with a smile, and took me in her arms. ‘You and I are going to dance.’

  The kitchen was so hot that I resisted at first. I could smell a roast cooking in the oven and flies were buzzing angrily at the window. Mum’s curls frizzed at her forehead, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, hoping I could match her steps.

  Mum was in fact a wonderful dancer. She and Dad were dynamite together on the dance floor, but they rarely had the opportunity to dance anymore. Not in the same way they used to when they were young, in their life before Bond Springs with all its responsibilities and worries. So, Mum appeared determined to make up for lost time. She whirled me up and down the kitchen, turning me around and under, laughing as we dipped and twirled. Swept up in the violins, I was transported to another time and place.

  By the end, my beautiful mother was shining all over and her eyes were sparkling. I hadn’t seen her look like that for a long time.

  ‘There!’ she said, smiling softly as she took off the record and put it back in its cover. ‘There!’

  And even though I wasn’t sure what ‘there’ meant, I was filled with childish happiness at witnessing Mum’s joy, and thought it could only be a good thing.

  Mum and I would continue to dance to Strauss’s waltzes. M’Lis joined in, too. She loved the music as much as I did. Mum, M’Lis and I would dip and curtsy and swirl. We tried to
get Brett to dance with us but he wasn’t interested. He was a bush kid at heart, happiest outdoors, driving in the Land Rover, walking up to the cattle yards, watching the stockmen break in the horses, and riding.

  It didn’t occur to me that it was perhaps odd that I connected as strongly with The Sound of Music and Strauss’s waltzes as I did with Slim Dusty and Charley Pride, not to mention our very own Ted Egan. They represented completely different worlds. But I felt utterly at home in each. It was as though I had a foot in each camp and such a thing was utterly normal. It gave me yet another happy place to go to in my heart and mind.

  Stories, books, daydreaming, music—and now dancing.

  19

  Mrs Hodder and Tall Tales

  Mrs Hodder continued to encourage me on School of the Air. She was very clever and thoughtful, and constantly surprised us with her knowledge of our bush life. As far as we were concerned, she just knew everything.

  She was also good at dealing with unexpected and scandalous tidbits from students. There were always quite a few: stories about the governess and the ringer, or the bookkeeper who’d got on the grog in town and hadn’t been seen since, or whose racehorse had been swapped with whose to win the next bush race meeting.

  Mrs Hodder knew that a lot of parents were listening in. Bush people were so isolated that any kind of gossip was seized upon and enjoyed—some adults wouldn’t go back to work until the stories were over, if they were very good.

  ‘Good morning, Jacquie, at Romeo Juliet Papa,’ Mrs Hodder would commence cheerfully. ‘What exciting things have happened at your place on the weekend? Over.’

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Hodder,’ Jacquie’s voice from five hundred kilometres away dropped in and out through the static. ‘Dad’s very cross … we lost the cattle … we were late for the trucks … and Dad said that …’

  In the background was more noise. It sounded like Dad was still cross.

  ‘Poor Jacquie,’ M’Lis said. ‘It’s hard to hear her. Reception’s always so bad out at Mount Doreen.’

  But Mrs Hodder could hear Jacquie better than we could, with her big wireless in Alice, and knew just what to say. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, quickly restoring order. ‘I hope things get better for Dad very soon. Now, let’s quickly move to, say, Robin and Stephen at Phillip Creek …’

  I’m sure some of the adults were equally sorry they couldn’t hear more of Jacquie’s story. Grown-ups were always very interested in what cattle were being mustered where on what station, how many cattle were being trucked off to market, prices received, and comments from the stock and station agents who oversaw the sales.

  Children would happily share what they’d heard the Elders agent tell their dad, or what the Tanami Transport road train driver reported to the head stockman, or what the Dalgety agent whispered to mum as he thanked her for the special cake she baked for his arrival.

  These stories would lead to Mrs Hodder coughing discreetly and moving the conversation on as soon as the student had stopped speaking.

  ‘That’s marvellous, Johnny,’ Mrs Hodder would say, brightly. ‘Thank you for telling us the story of Mum wearing her new bikini at the dam. I think we’ll now hear from Simone out at Amburla. Eight November Hotel, how is your horse today, Simone? Over.’

  Sometimes there was no way to cut a student off if they were really letting loose with some tasty news, like the next time that Johnny reported that Mum’s bikini actually fell off at the dam.

  ‘Goodness me, Johnny, that must have been chilly for poor Mum. Now, Tanya at Nine Sierra Victor Uniform, you’re next. How are M’Lis, Brett and Benny? Over.’

  Benny used to toddle in with me when I was on School of the Air. He was fascinated by the sound of the voices and the music coming out of the radio. Often he would try to join in, and when Mrs Hodder heard him, she would exclaim, ‘And an extra special clap from the studio for Benny Heaslip out at Bond Springs! Well done, Benny.’

  Then, of course, there was the weather, the most important topic of station life. Rains, floods and fires were talked about endlessly.

  One of the great events for bush people were the annual campdrafts, gymkhanas and bush race meetings. We waited impatiently all year for these weekends to come around. People for hundreds of kilometres gathered in the middle of nowhere to camp for several days and compete against each other on horseback.

  The campdrafts allowed horse and rider to show off their mustering skills by cutting a beast out of a mob and working it through a difficult course in a very short time. Gymkhanas were all about horse and rider skill over different courses. And the races allowed the best horses to gallop around a dirt track, like Dad had done with Limerick back in Alice Springs. Throughout, people drank huge amounts of rum and VB beer (all hot), danced all night to Slim Dusty on a concrete slab under the stars, and played the odd game of cricket on the dusty flat.

  And that was just the men.

  These weekends led to fights, romances and too much grog, all of which we bush kids watched in fascination. Then we happily reported everything back to Mrs Hodder after the weekend.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hodder,’ Sally reported enthusiastically from three hundred kilometres away to the east. ‘Our housekeeper is getting on the first mail plane out, she says, because the stockman from north that she had her eye on got full on Bundy and went off with a governess from somewhere else. She hasn’t stopped crying since we got back. Mum’s cranky and Dad’s headed for the stock camp, because he said things were a bit chilly at home. Over.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Hodder in her best deadpan voice. ‘Well, you’ll just have to be a very helpful girl, and help Mum with all the housework, won’t you, Sally? Over.’

  Mrs Hodder would quickly try to steer the conversation out of dangerous waters, keenly aware that half the Territory was tuned in to this conversation about the housekeeper’s demise.

  After each campdraft, gymkhana or bush race meeting, there would always be colourful events to report. You take a handful of people living isolated lives for months on end, put them together with a group of other people living equally isolated lives, mix them up for a rocket-fuelled weekend, and Mrs Hodder was guaranteed great stories.

  And these stories could go on for several weeks, as children reported stories of their mums trying to get the dads and the ‘rest of the useless staff ’ dried out and back onto the straight and narrow.

  The School of the Air was where I met Jane Joseland from Everard Park Station, more than six hundred kilometres of corrugated dirt road to the south of Alice. We were in the same School of the Air grade and quickly became best friends over the air.

  The first time I heard Jane was when she called in one news morning to proudly report that she had come third in a gymkhana event at the Finke race meeting.

  ‘Splendid effort, Jane,’ said Mrs Hodder, encouragingly.

  There was some noise at Jane’s end until she added, ‘Dad said to say that there were only three of us in the event.’

  Mrs Hodder didn’t miss a beat. ‘How splendid for everyone, Jane. Well done!’

  I thought Jane’s achievement was the cleverest thing ever. I hadn’t yet started riding in bush events and couldn’t imagine being so brave as to do so. I conjured up in my imagination Jane as a fearless young warrior. As it transpired, that described her perfectly.

  When we were not telling stories over the air, we made them up at home.

  Best of all were our night-time tales. M’Lis and I shared a bedroom at one end of the passageway, and Brett and Benny shared one at the other end. After lights out, Brett and Ben would sneak down to our room and squash into our beds and I would create stories of outback families (whispered, of course, because we were meant to be asleep).

  The families of my stories were always fighting blazing bushfires, fixing broken-down bores, worrying about droughts, scrub-bashing in old Land Rovers to find a wild bullock, working with drovers under starry skies or calling in the Royal Flying Doctor Service to save the life of someone
who had been crushed in the yards by a mad scrubber bull.

  M’Lis and Brett were a rapt audience and I was very strict. If anybody spoke or interrupted my stories, they had to go back to bed. Benny was only little (still wearing plastic pilchers over his nappies) and he made the most noise.

  ‘Shh, Benny!’ we’d all hiss. ‘If you’re not quiet, they’ll hear us.’

  ‘They’ could have been Mum, Dad or Miss Thiele. Any one of them meant trouble.

  ‘Snuggle in with me, Benny, and be quiet.’ I’d pull him in close, and off we’d go again.

  Best of all were our School of the Air night-time plays.

  Being the eldest, I bagged the right to play Mrs Hodder. (I’d learned the word bagged from The Secret Seven and liked it very much.)

  And so I would begin: ‘Good morning, everyone, this is Mrs Hodder. Now, today we’re going to hear from Brett at Bond Springs. Good morning, Sierra Victor Uniform. Brett, are you there? Over.’

  Brett would gallantly respond: ‘Good morning, Mrs Hodder. Yes, I can read you loud and clear. Over.’

  After a while, we all changed roles. Brett was cast regularly as Mr Ashton (the headmaster), or Mr Walker (a new and very funny School of the Air teacher) or Dad. M’Lis and I played everyone else, including School of the Air classmates, Mum and governesses. Sometimes M’Lis and Brett played our neighbours; the Gorey kids from Yambah Station, or the Hayes kids from Undoolya, or even Simone out at Amburla, two stations to the west.

  There was always some sort of Hanrahan-type problem to fix.

  ‘VJD, this is Sierra Victor Uniform, do you read me?’ M’Lis’s voice would cut through the static urgently. ‘We have a problem out here with a bushfire burning out of control towards the boundary of Yambah Station. Over.’

  M’Lis rarely got to play Mrs Hodder, though. I claimed the right as the eldest child and storyteller.

  ‘Come along!’ I’d respond in my best, bright, no-nonsense Mrs Hodder voice whenever M’Lis complained. ‘Buck up now, everyone!’