An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  Dad took his sixteen-millimetre movie camera and captured the Low-Level adventures on film. Looking back, we saw images of numerous children jumping and laughing in the water, the three young mothers in their bikinis dipping their toes in and running after the little ones (Benny and Annie being the main two), and the two other fathers cheerily raising their stubbies to the camera and laughing.

  We loved watching Dad’s movie reel for years afterwards.

  We felt like one big, happy family, everyone momentarily suspended from the stresses and strains of bush life.

  24

  Wild, Wonderful Bush Get-Togethers

  The Katherine Show weekend reflected changing times in the bush.

  Despite our families living so far apart—the Braitlings near the Western Australia border, the Crowsons near the Queensland border, and us in Central Australia—we were able to get together because each family had a plane.

  There was a reason for this. From the late 1960s onward, bush people had been looking at ways to minimise the many downsides of the isolation they faced, and at the same time Cessna was heavily marketing its planes to the bush. It was a match made in heaven. With an increase to the Elders GM or Dalgety overdraft, many bush families could acquire top-wing Cessna 172s and 182s, which were light and perfect for mustering, or occasionally, the heavier and faster lower-wing Beechcraft, which was better for long distances.

  All they had to do then, apart from pay off the overdraft, was learn to fly them.

  The pilots were mostly men, but women like Mrs Braitling flew too.

  We would often hear Mrs Braitling’s voice calling, ‘Echo Foxtrot Whiskey, can you read me, Delta Quebec Golf?’ when we were out flying with Dad, and we’d all shout out, ‘That’s Mrs Braitling!’

  I longed to be brave like Mrs Braitling and another wonderful lady called Thelma Pye, who lived nearby and flew like a daredevil.

  The other great thing about planes was that they expanded the ways bush people could get together and socialise. We would overnight at friends’ stations when flying to Witchitie; we could fly to the Braitlings for New Year’s Eve, and the Katherine Show each year was now possible. Then there was the ‘fly-in’ weekend.

  Once a year, people with planes were invited to fly to Dalhousie, a tree-lined, hot natural spring that sat on Mount Dare Station in the middle of nowhere.

  For an entire winter weekend, bush people would enjoy warm waters and cold beers. But the hosts, June and Rex Lowe, had one stipulation: children were not allowed.

  ‘Sorry, darlings,’ said Mum. ‘It’s too dangerous to have children around such a deep spring. The Lowes are just being careful. You could fall in and drown.’

  ‘But Sandra and Donna are allowed to go.’

  ‘Sandra and Donna are their daughters! Mrs Lowe couldn’t leave them home all by themselves all weekend, now could she? Besides, they’re quite grown up now.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  The long-suffering Miss Thiele and Helen were instead given the unenviable task of looking after us while our parents headed off. Our hearts plummeted as we heard the roar of DQG taking off and then disappearing into the sky until it was a speck. We were used to going everywhere with Mum and Dad and felt lost and lonely without them. The weekend dragged, and we took it in turns wondering what it would be like to sit up to our necks in hot water in the middle of the freezing desert.

  On Mum and Dad’s return, Dad said there had been thirty-two planes there.

  ‘Gee! I wish I’d seen them,’ said Brett, who really loved planes by now.

  ‘I’ll show you on Saturday night,’ promised Dad.

  When Saturday night came, Dad put up a little white screen in the sitting room and connected his camera. We sat cross-legged on the floor, impatient for action. In minutes, the whir of the camera delivered us thrilling images of a place up until now forbidden to our eyes.

  ‘Oooh!’s and ‘ahhh!’s filled the room.

  There was sand as far as the eye could see (‘the Simpson Desert,’ Dad explained), then a huge billabong fringed by trees came into view. There were images of people jumping in and out of the waters and waving to the camera, before running back to the campfire and wrapping themselves in towels and thick jumpers and trousers. There was Mr Braitling shaving next to his tent, grinning and brandishing a bottle of beer. Next, Mr Crowson was charging him with a bleached set of cattle horns on his head. Dad was applying a branch fashioned into a branding iron to Mr Crowson’s rump. They were all laughing uproariously.

  There were also shots of a smiling Mum with little Benny wrapped in many layers (he was allowed to go because he was too young to report back on what happened there); and of Mrs Braitling and Mrs Crowson, each looking glamorous in pencil trousers and sipping brandy (‘To warm up,’ Mum explained).

  There were also many shots of daredevil aeroplane activity during the day.

  I thought of the old pilots’ expression Dad had taught us: Eight hours from bottle to throttle.

  At the fly-in, it seemed there were very tight margins.

  Wondrously, all bush kids were invited to the Central Mount Wedge Cricket Match.

  Bill Waudby, or Wallaby Bill as he was affectionately known, was a gentle bear of a man, with a big moustache and stomach to match. He ran Central Mount Wedge, a cattle station several hundred kilometres to the north-west of Alice, and was a cricket enthusiast. Every year he hosted a cricket match ‘to promote communications and camaraderie in the pastoral industry’ (I read that in the local paper).

  Wallaby Bill had the perfect spot for it, too—a big, flat plain, just down from the homestead, on which he graded a huge oval pitch. There was nothing around the oval; no fence, just a bit of scrub. But he built one large gate. It wasn’t attached to a fence (because there wasn’t one), but the cricketers had to walk through the large gate to get on and off the oval.

  ‘Adds a bit of the big-smoke effect,’ he once remarked. ‘People will be more respectful.’

  He also painted a sign marked ‘BAR’ and hammered it into a gum tree next to the pitch. Then he built two long drops covered in hessian over the other side of the hill. He declared the area in working order and sent out invitations. Cattlemen versus the stock and station agents along with any other associated ‘townies’, as we called them.

  The two-day game was played over a weekend, with a day each way for travel, and the winners would receive a big silver potty, into which beer would be poured, and all the winners would have to take a big gulp. The winning team’s name would be engraved on the potty and it would appear the following year for the next match.

  There was a strict dress code. All the cricketers had to wear whites (where some of the bushies got them, nobody knew, but no allowances were made). Bill Waudby arranged for soft blue caps to be made for all the bush players, with ‘CMW’—Central Mount Wedge—embroidered on the front. It was an honour to be invited to participate in the game. If you didn’t abide by Bill’s rules, or wear the cap correctly, you weren’t invited back the next year.

  Given Mount Wedge was so far from Alice, we always flew to it, as did a lot of other station people. Anywhere from between fifty to a hundred people arrived: cricketers, their wives, governesses and children, all milling about with swags, vehicles and cricket gear.

  We loved Mount Wedge. From start to finish, it was an enormous thrill.

  One of the best bits was flying into the match. Dad would duck down through the Mount Wedge ranges in DQG, head towards the oval, then drop into a steep dive to buzz those out there already practising. Through the windows we could see people fleeing, faces upturned, mouths open. We’d shriek, Dad would yell at us, and we’d cower in response: same routine, every time. But he would land DQG short on the nearby strip as lightly as a feather, with a wicked grin, and we’d tumble out, shouting and laughing once more.

  No one could dive as well as Dad.

  In the distance, we would see a cloud of dust and Bill’s old ute trundling down to collect us, and the
festivities would begin.

  The first night was full of revelry as everyone caught up and made camp, food and lots of merry. We were off playing with the Braitling and Martin kids the minute we arrived. Some had driven in, some had flown, but we were all like extended family.

  When Dad got dressed for the match the next morning, we hung around to watch, such was our excitement in seeing him don his ‘special whites’. They were the same whites that he’d worn when he lived down in the Flinders Ranges and played cricket there, and so we believed they were imbued with something special. Mum had washed and pressed them in advance and it was quite a ritual as he put them on.

  When Dad was called up to bat or bowl, we hung over the gate, cheering him on. He hadn’t played since he’d lived down south, but he still had the touch, with a flick to the wrist in his spin, and the capacity to make big runs. We were incredibly proud of him. ‘That’s our Dad,’ we’d say to each other with huge grins as he’d send a ball flying for six into the scrub.

  While the men played cricket, the women ran around looking after the children, and then loyally stood on the sidelines when their husband went in (or came out).

  In between times, we kids continued to make our own fun. We darted in and out of the nearby mulga trees, created games and visited our mothers only when we were hungry or thirsty. It was always hot but we didn’t care.

  Mrs Braitling was in charge of the bar under the tree. That was her domain for the weekend, year in, year out. There were eskies everywhere. Mrs Braitling stocked beer, rum and soft drink, usually lemonade and Coke. For at least the first day, she had enough ice to keep the drinks fairly cool. By the second day the ice had melted, and the beer was lukewarm, but by then nobody cared. She did a roaring trade.

  At the edge of the pitch sat a dead mulga with many branches sticking up into the air. As blokes emptied their bottle or can, they would shove them onto one of the branch ends. In the end it looked like a beer tree, framed against a huge blue sky.

  If we were good, we were allowed a soft drink or two. After a hot, busy time playing, when we finally stumbled in for food, we would clamour for the sweetness of the (otherwise) forbidden drink.

  Everyone brought their own tucker, which was pretty much the same for every bush family: cold roast beef and corned beef, dry white bread, tomato sauce, fritz sausage slices and tomatoes. Mum always made sure we had fruit, so there were apples, and because it was usually winter she would have mandarins and oranges from the Peterkins’ citrus trees in Alice. Lots of people grew lemons, oranges and mandarins in Alice Springs, and the fragrance in backyards was beautiful. As was the juicy sweetness of the orange segments we pulled out and sucked from the fruit.

  The match was invariably fiery throughout, replete with sledging and dubious umpire decisions, much laughter and backslapping, and the odd brilliant catch or run. Little boys like Brett and Matthew would hover, waiting for the opportunity to race after a ball, and then throw it back as though they were one of the team.

  The nights were freezing. Everyone set up swags and made fires and there was a huge barbecue as the sun went down. The nearby ranges would glow with a deep red before turning orange, purple and then inky-black. By then, it was dark, and so we sat around on swags and played music. We loved it when Ted Egan came out, as he often did, because he was a great cricketer and played for the townies.

  He would pull out his empty Fosters carton and start tapping away and sing our favourite songs, including ‘The Drinkers of the Territory’. We’d all join in, especially for the chorus, knowing that our parents couldn’t stop us swearing in that moment. Joy! Ted always had a mischievous grin as we yelled out the word ‘bloody’ at the top of our voices.

  Bill Waudby, our host extraordinaire, aka Wallaby Bill, was given his own verse. We loved it.

  I went to visit a mate of mine

  A run called Wallaby Bill’s

  It was at Mount Wedge, right on the edge of the spinifex and sand hills

  When I produced a bottle of rum and asked if I could stay

  Bill said, ‘Oh mate, let’s shut the gate, and throw the bloody cork away’

  Hey!

  They’ve got some bloody good drinkers in the Northern Territory …

  Most of the time, I had Benny with me. I looked after him wherever we went and whenever I could. But as the evening wore on, the mothers would descend, and hustle us into our swags. There were twelve swags in a row, all lined up so the mothers could account for everyone. Benny slept close to me. We would drift off to sleep under the stars, listening to Dad and Mr Braitling singing ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ and ‘Goodnight Irene’. We felt completely safe and cosseted and all was well in the world.

  At the conclusion of the match the next day, there would be a presentation. Each team had their photo taken in front of the large gate. If the bushies won, we cheered and cheered, and hung around all the fathers, who would be in great form. If the townies won, we clapped politely, then turned away and went back to our games.

  Best to avoid the fathers at that point.

  Again, it was always a tight ‘eight hours from bottle to throttle’ timeframe from the end of celebrations to the time everyone flew out the next morning. But we knew Dad was the best pilot in the world and that he had a special twenty-four-hour pilot’s watch on his wrist.

  Squashed back in the plane, we’d watch his focused eyes, his sure command of the throttle, and hear him call out on the radio, ‘Delta Queeee-bec Golf ’, as he lifted us safely into the air. We’d watch until Mount Wedge was a speck in the distance and our eyes grew tired; then we’d sleep as Dad flew eastward towards the Bond, landing us safely at home, each and every time.

  25

  ‘We’ve Got Visitors, Mum!’

  Even when there wasn’t a bush event on, Mum always had an open-door policy for people near and far. This was especially important for those families who didn’t or couldn’t fly. When bush families (usually the mothers) took the long trek into town by car, Mum welcomed them into Bond Springs to stay with us overnight. It gave the mothers the chance to wash off the dust and tiredness of the long trip, and it gave Mum the chance to connect with girlfriends. Mum would feed them up and they would sleep in comfort and then head off on their last leg to Alice, restored.

  We knew that driving in from out bush could be dangerous. Almost all the women had station wagons to carry their kids. They weren’t very roadworthy vehicles, so the trips were long and difficult. There were often breakdowns, and always flat tyres. Most of the roads weren’t sealed and they were all badly corrugated, and sometimes the cars had to drive up and down the banks of sand dunes that served as roads. When the car was full of children, it

  could be a hairy ride. If the car broke down, they were in trouble, because very few people came along that way, out in the middle of nowhere.

  One evening, Mrs Braitling arrived with Mrs Martin from Mount Denison.

  ‘Have we had a trip!’ she exclaimed, staggering into Mum’s kitchen. ‘We broke down last night. Had to camp. We had no food, except a couple of eggs I collected from the chook yard just before I left home. So, we lit a fire, and I took the hub cap and filled it with a bit of water, put it over the fire, and put those eggs in it. Best boiled eggs we’ve ever eaten!’

  Mum rushed to whip them up a hearty supper.

  One of our favourite visitors was Marie Mahood.

  She would drive for a whole day with her children from Mongrel Downs Station, way, way north-west of Alice Springs. Sometimes it would take her two days because she’d camp overnight. Either way, she would invariably arrive on dark, exhausted. She’d climb out of her car and, hands on hips, exclaim to Mum, ‘I’ve just driven over six hundred kilometres on dirt roads today and this road into Bond Springs is the roughest road of all!’

  Marie Mahood was a gutsy, smart and witty woman who endured the toughest of lives on Mongrel Downs and still kept her sense of humour. She wrote stories about all the hilarious incidents of their is
olated life and her very resilient children Kim, Bob, Tracey and Jim. Icing on the Damper was perhaps her funniest and most famous.

  Our poetry and readings in the bush always included Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson. Marie’s eldest daughter Kim reworked the much-loved and amusing Mulga Bill’s Bicycle into a poem about her father. She called it Joe Mahood’s Motorbike. It was side-splitting and brilliantly clever.

  The poem was circulated around School of the Air, and I loved it so much that I memorised it. Then I went on to write my own version about Mike Kimber’s Motorbike—a wild, bad and mad machine down at Witchitie that had thrown Mike off. I put my poem in the post to the Kimbers and wrote that I hoped ‘they would enjoy my rendition’. Margaret wrote back and said that while Mike was still recovering from the dangerous bike, they certainly had, thank you.

  Our lives changed yet again, most wonderfully, when I was nearly ten. The Gemmell family came to visit the Bond and ended up staying for two and a half years. Aunty Jill and Uncle Pete Gemmell were long-term friends of Mum and Dad from Adelaide. Mum called them the ‘glamour couple’. Aunty Jill was tall and slim, with gorgeous silver–blonde hair she wore either twirled high into a French roll or straight and flicked out at the ends. Uncle Pete was dark haired and dashing and lots of fun. They had two children, Adam and Sharon, who were younger than me, and we loved them. More kids meant more chances to play. Uncle Pete was a builder and Dad needed help, so everyone was happy when they decided to stay.

  The Gemmells moved into a tiny wooden cottage set back from the road entrance to the homestead. It had two floors—well, the second one was only half a foot up from the first, but I thought it marvellous. It was our first experience of a two-storey house! It was also on stilts to keep it safe from snakes.

  While Sharon scampered around with Benny, Aunty Jill taught Adam his Correspondence School lessons from the cottage. She wore pencil slacks, fitted tops, lipstick and looked like a model, day and night. Adam came down to the ‘big house’—the homestead—every day to speak to his teacher Mr Jamerson on the radio and shared School of the Air lessons with us.