Another driver, in one of the ancient trucks that Uncle Dick somehow kept running, held together with nothing but baling wire, was again on the arduous trek out along our road, when the vehicle went over one too many large rocks, came down with a sickening clunk and ended up with a broken axle. When the truck was overdue, Charlie was up in the air on a search and rescue … well, maybe just the ‘search’. He swooped low over the truck and soon ascertained it was a breakdown, dropped yet another famous message, telling the driver to stay put, then he flew back to the homestead to dispatch Uncle Dick out there. Dick returned and said the truck had a broken axle, but he had a spare so he would take it out and repair the truck. Dick made the unfortunate remark that the ‘bloody young pup was probably driving too fast’. This made Charlie see red. He jumped into the plane, flew out to the stranded truck and dropped the driver a note which simply read, ‘You’re fired!’
Around Charlie, pandemonium reigned in the air and on the ground. There were continual problems, breakdowns, staff leaving, arrangements delayed or just completely forgotten. To this day, I am not sure if it was bad luck, lack of funds, bad equipment, untrained staff, or having a cattle station run—oops—commanded by a frustrated, would-be fighter pilot … maybe it was all of these things. Whatever, the result was devastation, a constant seemingly hopeless situation, that bumbled and stumbled from one fiasco to the next.
It was not out of the norm for the cattle trucks to arrive at the yards and find no cattle to load. On many occasions, the stock camp would ‘down tools’ and walk out because of one of Charlie’s outrageous demands. The muster would be delayed until more unsuspecting stockmen arrived and picked up the pieces. But Charlie would regularly forget to notify the trucking company of the delay. Trucks would arrive at the appointed time and find the yards empty. Often the drivers would find themselves on a horse, whether they could ride or not, out in a paddock, with the girls (out of school again), the cook-cum-teacher-cum-nurse-cum-typist, namely me, on horses, racing around the paddock rounding up cattle, while Charlie swooped around the sky shouting orders at us out the window.
As one stockman put it, ‘Missus, I don’t mind the rough conditions, I don’t mind riding a half-broken mad horse. I don’t mind working for a bloke that doesn’t know what he’s doing most of the time; I don’t even mind all his crazy ideas. But I don’t much like the idea of getting my head chopped off by a propellor blade while riding a horse, mustering cattle. Wild cattle ain’t the danger out here!’
But sometimes, not often, there were unexpected bonuses in working for Charlie. Peter Per, Uncle Dick’s assistant hooch-maker, drinking mate and deputy mechanic, left the station for the umpteenth time after Charlie made him mad. He applied for a job in Darwin at one of the big hotels. The job was fairly cushy after Bullo, taking care of the swimming pool filtering machinery, plus various garden-tending duties. There were hundreds of applicants. The manager was interviewing the long line of men. He asked their name, where they had worked last, and a few other questions, took a phone contact and told the man he would be in touch. This was done without lifting his head or looking at the man. He knew the reason most of the men were applying for the job was to be near the grog, and that was their only qualification. Per was no different in this respect, but he was also a mechanic.
Peter Per finally reached the desk. He was asked his name, age and occupation in rapid fire, then where he worked last. When he replied Bullo River the manager stopped writing and looked up for the first time. ‘How long did you work for Charlie Henderson?’
When Peter told him six months, he was hired on the spot.
Charlie stayed at the hotel when in Darwin, and the manager knew him well. He said to Peter, ‘Anyone who can stay in Charlie Henderson’s employ for six months is the man for me!’ Such was Charlie’s ‘impossible to please’ reputation.
9
* * *
DENNIS THE PODDY CALF AND ROSA THE GOANNA
Charlie was not the only character in the Outback, there were many, many characters, and some of them had tails. One of the first animal characters I came across was a poddy calf (an orphan calf hand-fed on powdered milk from an early age). They are called poddies because they develop a large tummy or ‘pod’ in the first year due to not getting their mother’s milk.
This calf, when I met him, was close to six months old and was quite large; he had been taken care of by the cook who was on the station the year before we arrived back from America. The poddy only liked women, it seemed; he charged many of the stockmen, so he had spent a very neglected and unhappy period between the cook’s departure and my arrival. But when the children and I arrived and started paying him attention, he very quickly became our pet. He took a very particular liking to me, and followed me everywhere—and I mean everywhere. This was not difficult to achieve; the shed still had no outside walls, so he could wander almost anywhere inside. I was safe in the toilet as that door had a bolt, but he could head-butt the bathroom door open, and did so many times, trying to join me in the shower. He was called Dennis the Menace for very obvious reasons.
One of his favourite pastimes was licking any sleeping stockman he could find. Most of the men slept on their swags rolled out on wire bed-frames with folding legs. Many a time in the dark of the night a muffled, disgusted, complaining voice would shout, ‘Get the f… out, Dennis!’, usually followed by the crash of a folding bed collapsing on the cement floor. Dennis, having licked a face, would then put his big head down and give the bed a gentle nudge, sending it and occupant flying. The stockman would set up the legs of the bed again, after finding something large and heavy to throw at Dennis. But Dennis would wait until the man was comfortable and then nudge the bed again. If a gun had been handy, Dennis would have had a very short life.
When he tipped the scales at eight hundred pounds (over three hundred and sixty kilograms) it was becoming a bit hard to keep him in the house garden. The stockmen complained about not getting any sleep, and I had lost many a meal when Dennis had walked through the kitchen and helped himself to food set out on the table for the stockmen. But one of the final deciders was his dislike for the plane. If anyone left the gate onto the airstrip open, he would be out there in a flash to attack the plane. Often I just managed to call him off when there were only a few yards between his horns and the fabric side of the plane. Luckily he was instantly obedient and would swerve away from a full charge to come loping back to me in long bouncing strides just like a dog. But I wasn’t always there at the last moment and one day he managed to score a hit. The little plane ended up with two perfect horn-holes mid-centre of the fuselage.
This was one major reason for Dennis to be banished to a distant paddock. But the final cause of his being sent away was his obvious dislike of Charlie. I think why he always tried to charge the plane was because he knew it was connected with Charlie. When Charlie was around he was always shooing Dennis out of the house, so Dennis didn’t like Charlie or anything to do with him. His very favourite occupation in the evening was to wait for Charlie to leave the bedroom for the long trek to the bathroom. Dennis would then take up position in front of the bedroom door, protecting me inside. When Charlie returned, Dennis wouldn’t budge and Charlie would have to chase him away with a lump of wood, or ask me to call him away. As Dennis grew bigger, it was mostly me calling him away, as it was very dicey for Charlie to bluff Dennis with the piece of wood: Dennis would lower his head with every intention of charging. When this practice extended to the early hours of the morning, every time Charlie went to the toilet, that was the last straw. I would be awoken from a deep sleep by Charlie shouting to me and abusing Dennis. I’d stagger sleepily to the door to find a Mexican standoff—Dennis with head lowered and pawing the floor, emitting a low rumbling moan, and Charlie, usually stark naked, with a lump of wood in hand, trying to get Dennis away from the door. One of them had to go, Charlie or Dennis.
Charlie was content just to get him out of the garden and away from the plane, so
it was agreed Dennis could be put in the river paddock on the other side of the airstrip, across from the house; I could go and visit each day and talk to him. The first few weeks were terrible; he stood at the fence looking across at the house and bellowing all day. If I walked into the garden, the noise increased. He wouldn’t leave the fence to graze, so he became thinner and thinner. The advice was, ‘Don’t go over and talk to him, and he will start behaving like a normal bull.’ I stayed away, and out of sight as much as possible. Gradually he left the fence and started eating; after a few months he was behaving normally. I could even visit him each afternoon with special titbits, and he would not bellow his head off after I left.
However, he disgraced himself when I was away in Darwin for a few days. He slipped through the gate onto the airstrip and once more damaged the plane; also badly roughed up one of the stockmen trying to protect the plane. The writing was on the wall for Dennis. Charlie knew how much I loved this crazy bull and he waited until I returned to tell me he had to be banished to a distant paddock. This was not all plain sailing, however. Dennis still would not go anywhere near the other cattle; he was totally convinced he was human and flatly refused to even let them near him. So I pleaded with Charlie to let Dennis stay close to home long enough to find new friends before being banished. Charlie solved this problem very quickly by putting a load of cows in his paddock and before long Dennis discovered what being a bull was all about. He wandered off down the flat with a bunch of cows, heading for a distant paddock, and was so engrossed in his new role he didn’t even give me a farewell bellow when I called his name.
Poddy calves became a part of my life; every year we found orphans; when it was a bad season, or the rains were late, we always had many more poddies. The girls came rushing into the kitchen one day and told me there was a new poddy tied to the coconut tree. They had found it all alone, no cows in sight, in the paddock they were mustering. They asked me to give it a drink of milk and said they would take care of it later when they had finished the muster; then they were gone out the door at breakneck speed.
I sighed, stopped peeling the stack of potatoes for thirty people for lunch, mixed powdered milk in a bucket, and headed out to the coconut tree near the back gate. There, standing under the tree, was this small, angelic picture of beauty and innocence, long satin ears, large liquid chocolate brown eyes, and a cute black button nose. There it stood, tied to the tree, head hung low, swaying on its long gangly legs. My heart melted looking at this forlorn lost animal. I approached, quietly crooning soft words to it as I held out the bucket so it could get the smell of the milk.
Its head jerked up as it sensed me approaching; it took one look at the offered bucket, let out a blood curdling b-l-a-r-r-r-r and charged me. The long rope whipped out at an alarming rate as this tiny frail-looking creature hit the bucket and me with surprising force. With plenty of slack in the long rope and its full weight in forward flight, I went over backwards, completely unprepared for such a vicious attack. The bucket of milk upended all over me.
It had been a bad day, and my temper had not been far from the surface; this certainly saw it burst out into the open. I staggered to my feet, spluttering milk and wiping it from my eyes. The calf, its tongue hanging out, was standing panting, where the rope had stopped short its maniacal wild charge. Ignoring it, I was about to head for the bathroom to wash the milk out of my eyes: milk baths might be good for the skin, but my eyes were starting to sting. As soon as I moved, however, the crazed animal darted in the opposite direction. The rope was now wound around my legs; I grabbed it and pulled the calf towards me, so I could get some slack to free my legs. Again it did its bloodcurdling b-l-a-r-r-r, charged and knocked me off my feet, trampling right over the top of me in its insane dash in another direction. The rope cut into my legs as the calf came to a shuddering halt again.
My temper really took over at that point, I am ashamed to say. I gave the rope a tremendous yank, which pulled the calf right off its feet, and I was able to get my legs free. We both got to our feet at the same time. It charged again, but I was ready: I pulled in the rope, picked up the calf and threw it over the barbed wire fence next to the tree. After it gained its feet, we both stood there for a few minutes, panting heavily. When I was sure I hadn’t hurt the poor thing I headed once more for the shower, tears streaming down my face from my smarting eyes and from sheer frustration. I told the calf it could wait until the girls came home for its drink; I wasn’t going anywhere near it until it learned a few manners.
When the girls did come home, they asked what the calf was doing on the other side of the fence. I told them they didn’t want to know; by then I was thoroughly ashamed of my actions. But the calf didn’t seem to have suffered from its short flight, and a week later I again had to feed it while the girls were out mustering. It walked up meek as can be and started sipping the milk out of the bucket, but I didn’t relax my guard for a moment. In the next few weeks, though, I had to admit the girls had trained it well and it became one of the quietest and best behaved poddies in the group, but never a favourite of mine.
Luckily my temper didn’t do any harm that time. But on one other occasion when it got the better of me the results were a little more drastic. The piggery was growing in numbers and the expanding fencing just couldn’t keep up with the demand. On many occasions the pigs would break through the temporary fencing and be free to roam until the girls rounded them up, locking them back into their run. One afternoon they broke through the fence while the girls and I were in the schoolroom working hard, and headed straight for my vegetable garden. The garden had the normal barbed wire fence around it, which kept cattle and horses out, but was useless against roaming pigs. The girls finished school and exploded outside to adventure. I had plodded laboriously into the kitchen to start dinner, when the children exploded back in the door to tell me the pigs were in the garden.
I grabbed the straw broom and raced out the door. This was a regular confrontation and when the pigs saw me approaching, waving the broom, they were off around the other side of the house. I cut back and waited at the far corner, knowing they would come past me to get back to the pig pen, the safest place for them, at that moment. As the mob rushed by I wound up and let the broom fly with a mighty swing. It whistled and whooshed through the air and hit one pig with such a force that it broke its leg. The startled pig began screeching and going around in circles, one leg hanging uselessly from the knee joint. The rest of the pigs headed for the piggery at the speed of light.
The children looked with amazement and wanted to know how I did that. I was so upset I burst into tears; I had only wanted to scare it, not break its leg. The pig wouldn’t stop screeching and wouldn’t go away, which didn’t help matters. The girls led me to my bedroom, assuring me the pig knew I didn’t mean to hurt it; they would go and get one of the stockmen to help. I had a good cry and after washing my face decided to go and set the leg, or do something for the poor animal. But when I arrived back at the spot with the first-aid kit, the pig was gone. The stockman had shot it and taken it down to the abattoir to be processed. This set me off crying all over again.
The pigs caused me to lose my temper regularly. One less comrade didn’t stop the raiding parties or slow them up in the least. Until the day we closed the piggery, much to my delight, they performed regular raids day and night on any part of my garden. If the vegie garden was out of season, they would just uproot the lawn. A ploughed field would greet me in the morning, where the night before a lawn had been. But the most devastating raid of all time happened one night when the entire populace of the pig pen, down to the smallest piglet, staged an all-out commando raid on my entire garden.
Along the bedroom side of the house I had planted thirty banana trees; a friend had brought the young plants out from Kununurra. A lot of work went into digging holes, fertilising and watering, to get them to glorious, ten-foot-high, green, healthy specimens. Every morning when I woke up I sat on the side of the bed and looked at my l
ovely growing banana trees, while I stretched, and generally talked myself into starting the day.
One morning I looked out the window and stopped stretching; I looked, blinked and looked again. There were no banana trees; thirty-three-metre tall banana trees were gone! I checked to see if I was lying on the right side of the bed; maybe I was looking out of the wrong window … I oriented myself and confirmed I was looking out of the right window. Where were my banana trees? I quickly dressed and rushed out to where last night had stood an orchard of healthy trees. All that was left were thirty holes where the pigs had dug down and even devoured the roots after they had eaten the trees to ground level.
There wasn’t one scrap of evidence of a leaf, limb or trunk; it was as if a giant vacuum cleaner had just sucked up each tree, roots and all, leaving only the hole. If you didn’t know an orchard of trees had stood there ten hours ago, I don’t think you could be convinced of the fact. I was so amazed I didn’t even lose my temper. Although I had to admit a few hundred pigs make a good imitation of a vacuum cleaner.
That was the last time I ever planted a garden. I gave Charlie a list of requirements for an animal-proof garden and said I would not plant another thing until a fence was built and all the pigs were gone. Well, the pigs were gone four years later, but the enclosed garden area was never built so I refused to waste my time planting vegetables for the cattle, horses, goannas and birds. I waited fifteen years but never got my garden.
Some of My Friends Have Tails Page 13