An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  There was a different reason for M’Lis being offered Limerick.

  Dad needed to muster Junction Waterhole. The landscape was hilly and scrubby and it was a difficult muster, always. The cattle were usually wild and prone to escape, especially because they knew all the little valleys and gullies and areas to hide, and once hidden, they were incredibly difficult to find and get out.

  Limerick was considered perfect for the day because the team needed a really strong horse who was good in that kind of country. Limerick was born for that kind of country. But Dad couldn’t ride him because he had to fly. So, we all stood in awe as M’Lis lifted her small leg up into the stirrup, and swung herself up on the back of the most important horse on Bond Springs.

  We headed off as usual at daybreak. It was several hours before we reached the Junction. We followed the creek beds but it was still a long, rocky ride. Ahead of us, we heard and saw Dad in the distance, a speck of white and red dipping and diving, as he found mobs and pushed them along the creeks for us to take over when we got there. Once closer, he dived over us and shouted directions for us to all split up to maximise resources.

  M’Lis found a mob quickly and as soon as she had, they were off, escaping along the creek at full speed. She galloped after them at full speed too, desperate not to lose them. Limerick stretched out under her, snorting happily, loving the chase.

  Suddenly she heard Dad zoom overhead and his voice shout angrily out from the microphone: ‘Steady on, Lis. No galloping. He’s an old horse.’

  M’Lis was furious. ‘Why did he let me ride Limerick if he wasn’t going to let me do the job properly?’ she demanded, as she slowed Limerick down.

  If only he showed that kind of concern for us, I thought, huffily.

  23

  The Best Weekend of the Year!

  In the early 1970s Dad focused on building not only the numbers in his herd, but also the quality.

  Our neighbour to the north, John Gorey of Yambah Station, was passionate about breeding stud bulls to improve his commercial line, and Dad followed his lead. And with Mr Braitling from Mount Doreen and Uncle Bill from Hamilton Downs, plus some other station men, Dad and Mr Gorey founded the Centralian Beef Breeders Association to promote good breeding in our area.

  To look for good breeders, Mum and Dad, and Mr and Mrs Gorey, went to the Sydney Royal Easter Show to inspect the cattle. It was the biggest and most important cattle show in Australia, and Mum and Mrs Gorey packed their best clothes. We were left at home with Miss Thiele and Helen, and were quite put out at being abandoned. But Dad came back inspired. He had bought a beautiful bull called Progressor and several breeding cows from a Poll Hereford stud in South Australia, and had them trucked up.

  ‘Always buy from the breeder,’ Dad said, and he went on to buy other beautiful bulls from the same breeder for decades. ‘Keeps your breeding consistent.’

  Now Dad had the chance to show off his new cattle at the Alice Springs Show. To do that, he needed the right kind of help. He found a man from down south called Mr Browne, who arrived at Bond Springs about three months before the Alice Springs Show and took charge of training the bulls.

  ‘Mr Browne with an E’, as everyone called him, wore a jacket and tie every day with the kind of smart hat usually worn by southerners. He had a short moustache and spoke with a clipped accent. He was the most fascinating man we’d ever met. He was an expert at training cattle to walk around a ring and to be shown at their best. Mum’s precious lawn was taken over as the training ground. Every day Mr Browne, and anyone else he could round up to assist, would lead the cattle around and around. The goal was to quieten them down to make them fit for ‘showing’.

  Given Mr Browne was a man of some sensibilities, he was, naturally, horrified by us. He considered us ruffians. Even in the freezing winter we would run around at night in our pyjamas with bare feet.

  ‘These children!’ he would scold. ‘Where are their dressing gowns? Their slippers?’

  ‘We don’t have any!’ we would retort gleefully as we raced through the kitchen in noisy pursuit of one another. Our feet were incredibly tough. We could run over gravel, dirt, prickles and hot and cold surfaces like gazelles. We were tiny but wiry from all our hard work. Mum would just shrug helplessly at his comments and continue cooking.

  Charlie Gorey did not know how to deal with Mr Browne. He’d never met anyone quite like him. Mr Browne probably thought likewise about Charlie.

  But we thought Mr Browne was a magician. He could take a group of wild cattle from the paddock and turn them into quiet, well-behaved show entrants, groomed to within an inch of their life, happily haltered and walking in a circle next to him.

  Mr Browne took string off the hay bales to plait halters with which to lead the cattle around. They had the advantage of being soft, which suited Mr Browne because he wouldn’t countenance anything that hurt the cattle.

  One day Brett was with Mr Browne, putting a halter on one of the friskier steers. As they were struggling to get it over the steer’s head, it took fright and bolted. Brett’s leg got caught in the end of the halter and he was dragged along the dirt. The steer took off out of the house yard and up the hill, with Brett screaming behind him and Mr Browne yelling and tearing off after them. It was chaos. By the time Brett had worked his leg free of the halter, he was a mess. He had skin off everywhere and his little body was covered with bogan flea (the worst of prickles).

  Mr Browne stopped plaiting halters after that. Leather halters—soft ones only—took their place.

  Going to the show was a big deal. Two days before it began, the chosen cattle were loaded up into trucks to be taken on a slow, bumpy ride into the showgrounds at Traeger Park. Mr Browne stayed in a caravan nearby to guard them at night, and the next morning we were allowed to go in and help. We mucked out the yards. We helped wash and carefully brush the coats of the cattle and watched their tail tendrils flying in the breeze. We thought they looked beautiful, all brown and white and bellowing happily as they tucked into fresh water and hay.

  The Alice Springs show was held at the most glorious time of year. The mornings and nights were freezing but the days were warm and sunny with huge blue skies. To make it all perfect, the Show brought a carnival atmosphere to inland Central Australia.

  We met up with the Braitlings, the Goreys and lots of other friends. Even though we kids were still shy, we all had cattle in the show, and therefore a lot in common.

  The cattle were judged over a two-day period, and Dad couldn’t stop beaming like a proud father when Progressor received ‘Poll Hereford Champion’, and his heifers and steers second and third place in various classes. To finish off, there was a huge Grand Parade, where Dad led his beloved bull, and Brett proudly walked alongside him. Mr Browne led our other prize-winning cattle around the ring.

  Brett was allowed to lead Progressor for some of the long, grand walk, and with his big stockman’s hat over his little head and eyes, he was photographed by the newspaper, which ran a caption, ‘Little man, that’s a lot of bull!’

  We girls watched on, transfixed. What we really wanted wasn’t to walk in the show—we wanted to ride in it.

  We’d spent much of the two days gazing enviously at the show riders out on the oval. There were dressage exercises and competitions all day long, with horses and riders soaring over the gleaming red-and-white jumps. The riders looked so smart and confident trotting around in jodhpurs and coats and caps. It was as if they belonged to a different world—and they did: the mysterious and unknown world of pony club and show jumping and dressage.

  M’Lis and I knew all about this through our reading. Our favourite series at that time was Jill by Ruby Ferguson. The heroine, Jill, had it tough in her English village, but through sheer determination she had become one of the best show riders around (and beat the stuck-up, rich-kid riders). We loved her pluck.

  Then there were sisters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson, whose books were all about children having advent
ures without adults, usually hunting down the baddies and bringing them to justice. Set against a backdrop of English stables and dressage work and pony club and horse shows, their books enthralled us. We wanted to become like those kids.

  There was just one stumbling block: we only had our naughty pony Lesley and the bony, old stock horses, none of which were really show material. I wasn’t as confident a rider as my storybook heroines, but we were so inspired by those books, and the horses and riders we’d just seen at this show, we thought anything was possible. So, we started begging Mum and Dad to let us ride in the following year’s show.

  Mum said, ‘We’ll see. We’ll ask Dad.’

  Dad said, ‘Depends on how good you are.’

  That was Dad’s default position. Even on his birthday, when we made him cards and gave him little gifts, he’d say, ‘I don’t need cards or presents. I just need you kids to be good. For Mum.’

  We’d nod dutifully. Being good was definitely a day-to-day matter. A year of being good was just too hard to wrap our heads around.

  In the meantime, now the cattle work was over we wanted to go to the sideshows, which were big and noisy and filled with people. There was a merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel and clowns with gaping mouths you could throw a ball into to win a soft toy and, best of all, fairy floss.

  We couldn’t wait to go.

  Mum said we could go—under her supervision.

  ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight, either,’ she said firmly. ‘If you get lost in there, I’ll never find you again. But first, go and get money from your father.’

  By now, Dad had retreated to the grandly titled Members’ Bar. The bar was hidden away under the grandstand and children were not allowed in there. But we dived in, focused on finding Dad before the doorman found us. The bar was awash with noise and the smell of rum and beer. The concrete floor was sticky and men were standing five-deep at the bar. It was a maze of hats and boots. There were no women.

  We found Dad in a corner. He looked resplendent in his smart town hat, smart blazer, smart Longhorn trousers and polished town boots. Mr Gorey and Mr Braitling and he were laughing over some joke. His eyes were sparkling, as they always did when he was happy.

  ‘’Scuse us, Dad, can we please have money for the sideshows? Mum sent us.’

  Dad put down his glass and hunted in his pockets. ‘What about this?’ He fished out coins, then a fistful of notes. We grinned in delight, grabbed them and stuffed them in our own pockets.

  ‘Thank you, Dad. Thank you!’ We hugged him and raced out. Dad was tough, but at times like this, always generous.

  Dad was a strange contradiction. He was born just before the outbreak of war, to parents who lived through the Great Depression, and so he was incredibly frugal. Like his mother, who had cupboards full of brown paper bags and pieces of string, he kept everything that could be reused, reworked or reimagined. He pulled nails out of boxes and straightened them so they could be used again. He kept the same big, square calculator on his desk for thirty-five years. If he ever saw food not eaten on a plate, he was furious. He could not abide waste in any fashion.

  But at times like this, he didn’t stint on letting us have fun too.

  Tearing back to Mum, we chorused, ‘We’ve got money! Let’s go!’

  Mum allowed us to buy the pink, feathery fairy floss and crunchy toffee apples, which were sickly and delicious, and hot dogs with sauce that ended up all over our special white show shirts. We rode on the carousel on wooden horses that went up and down to wonderful music, and bought tiny wands that swirled in the breeze. It was heaven.

  For us, the fun of the show included staying with the Braitling family overnight in their sprawling house on Babbage Street. It was like being on holiday. In fact, we were now one big extended family. Whenever we left the station for an event, the Heaslips and the Braitlings went together.

  With Mr Braitling, Dad was always able to unwind and laugh, which he rarely did at home. They were like brothers.

  Mrs Braitling would say, with a wry grin, ‘They’re uncontrollable when they get together! But oh, such good men, nonetheless!’

  We loved Mrs Braitling very much. She had brown, curly hair, a dimple in either side of her cheek and a ready laugh. She and Mum were like sisters.

  Mum always sparked up when they were together. No wonder. Mum missed her girlfriends, and she and Mrs Braitling were able to talk about all the same kinds of issues and challenges that drove them both crazy. Mostly husbands, staff and kids.

  We were great friends with the Crowson family, too—Faye and Brian, and their five children, Billy, Johnny, Catherine, Andrew and Annie. They lived hundreds of kilometres north on Montejinni Station.

  They invited us, and the Braitlings, to join them at Katherine Show, which was held several weeks after the Alice Show, and to our delight, Dad said yes. The men would use the chance to look at the cattle and markets in the north. Dad was always exploring new sales opportunities, ever keen to expand his options.

  There was something extra exciting about it all for M’Lis and me, too. We had found out that Mr Crowson had wooed Mum back in the 1950s, when she was a governess at Hamilton Downs. Mum had even considered staying up there with him, until the call of her childhood sweetheart (Dad) finally lured her back to South Australia.

  ‘Brian was a gorgeous man,’ Mum had told M’Lis and me, who’d hung off every word of the story. ‘But he was a Catholic. Back then it simply wasn’t done to marry between religions. Besides,’ she’d sighed, ‘I’d known Dad since I was thirteen and he was the one for me. And Brian then met Faye, who was also Catholic, and they were the perfect match.’

  We thought this all terribly tragic and romantic. We were also fascinated that since returning to the Territory, Mum and Dad, and Brian and Faye, had all become great friends.

  So, when I first met Billy, their eldest and my age, I thought it was practically written in the stars between us.

  ‘Hello,’ I’d said breathlessly and then spent the whole day staring at him. He was handsome like his father, with a gorgeous smile and gorgeous eyes, and I was smitten and decided we would get married. I told him about my plans, but he did not share them.

  ‘Is she always this bossy?’ he asked his mother,

  I was undeterred; I knew we’d meet up again.

  So, there we were, a month later, flying into Katherine. The Heaslips and Braitlings in their Cessnas, and the Crowsons in their low winger with Montejinni Station written in bright red right across it.

  On arrival, it was bedlam. The motel had rooms in one long line that seemed to go on forever. Each family had a room or two. With thirteen children and six adults, the noise was at crescendo level.

  The mothers decided it was time to let down their hair. Mum and Mrs Braitling especially believed they’d earned it after putting up with Dad and Mr Braitling at the Alice Show. The afternoon we’d left Dad and Mr Braitling in the Members’ Bar was pretty much the last time we saw either of them again until the end of the show. They’d done what all bush blokes did when they came to town—got on the grog with their station mates, and left the women to do everything else.

  ‘Right,’ said Mrs Crowson, ‘I’m getting out the brandy bottle!’

  Mrs Crowson was feisty, smoked holding the tip of her cigarette up in the air, and swore deliciously. We were in awe and rather afraid of her.

  On the first night, we had a barbecue outside the motel. The men drank beer and told stories. The women drank brandy in little glasses. We were allowed lemonade. I tried to sit as close to Billy as I could.

  I also gazed a lot at Mrs Crowson throughout the night. She wore a tight, short white dress and long, white boots. She yelled at any of us if we stepped out of line. She seemed unafraid of anyone or anything. No wonder Mr Crowson fell for her.

  The next morning we woke to find Mrs Crowson outside the rooms, stirring big pots over the barbecue burners, and still smoking vigorously. She was wearing a yellow blouse over yellow pe
ncil slacks and seemed even feistier than the previous night. She’d been up for hours cooking porridge, and when she shouted, ‘Line up!’ we all jumped to attention.

  Grabbing our bowls, we did as we were told. I was intrigued, holding out my bowl to be filled. I’d never tasted porridge before, even though it appeared regularly in Enid Blyton’s books, not to mention Goldilocks, and this was my great chance. To my disappointment, it just seemed gloopy and had a funny taste.

  ‘I don’t like this, Mum,’ I whispered. It wasn’t ‘just right’, as I’d expected. But Mum had no time for such sensitivities. She was feeding Benny and he was throwing his food around.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing else. Eat it and be grateful. Think of the starving children in India,’ she said crossly. Then she added, ‘We’re at someone else’s place. Use your manners.’

  Finally, we all got through the porridge, and headed to the show. Soon we were running around with our new friends, stuffing ourselves with toffee apples and fairy floss, and scoring a few rides at the sideshows. I even forgot about wanting to marry Billy for a while.

  When it was over, Mr Crowson announced, ‘Okay, kids, get your bathers. We’re going to have some fun!’

  Brian Crowson was the most jolly man we’d had ever met. We hurried after him as he directed us to a number of vehicles. ‘Hop in,’ he instructed with a broad smile, and soon we were tumbling out at the Low-Level Crossing on the Katherine River.

  The Low-Level Crossing was made for fun. It was a part of the Katherine River that was safe for swimming, and had a beautiful, white sandy beach and shady trees. It looked like a cross between the sea and a billabong. We swam and splashed and played for hours. It was so different for us. We swam in the creeks at home if there was rain, or in the tanks if they filled up, but our water at home was brown and muddy—and often we had none at all. This river was clear and sparkling.