I pulled in behind the old Commonwealth Hotel. It had a bistro dining room with a bar, but the thought of a quick meal was secondary. I have a passion for old hotels. I love to walk out on the wide timbered verandahs and look out on the streets below. Sometimes I try to imagine what the scene may have been a hundred years ago—the sulkies and the drays, horses tethered on every corner and women in long frocks and feminine hats.
Today, however, was business. I booked in and before going to my room I telephoned Sal. She had received three phone calls in response to the ad in the Western Star. Two were from drovers and one from a farmer who had some feed. The farmer had some sorghum stubble which didn’t sound adequate for a large mob. All three lived in the Roma—Mitchell districts.
I decided to have a meal first and then go into the bar and see if I could find a few cattlemen. If you ring someone for a reference they are often reluctant to say much. In bar talk you ultimately get the good or bad news. The most difficult part is introducing yourself to strangers without feeling like a pain in the backside. On this occasion I looked around the bar and saw mainly young people in large groups. There were some middle-aged men from the town, a few pairs of old men and not too many farmers. There was one group of three. They wore western hats and one was dressed particularly well. Another was tall, lean and sunburnt; he was a stockman. The third had his back to me.
I bought a beer and introduced myself. I explained I was from New South Wales and in urgent need of cattle feed. I didn’t wish to raise the names Sal had for me immediately, so I asked them about the stock routes. They were very helpful. The well-dressed man owned two properties. He said the feed south and east of Roma was too frosted. He advised me to head west towards Mitchell. The district had received heavy rain in the late summer.
The four of us talked for a while. I steered the conversation to droving and got what I wanted. The first bloke to ring Sal was capable enough, but drank heavily. On one occasion he was sacked in the middle of a job. The other was thought to be southern Queensland’s best drover. To allow drought stock unbroken access to feed he was known to supervise camp riding at night. That was the old practice, but stock routes mostly follow the roads and with bitumen and fast cars it takes a game operator to leave cattle loose overnight.
The farmer no one seemed to know. Or if they did, they were careful not to say.
I didn’t stay too long. They were old friends and I was a stranger. I was travel weary anyway and when I woke next morning I walked out onto the verandah. There was a hint of spring. After the freezing tablelands several hundred kilometres to the south I felt keener than ever to place the young cattle up here. I telephoned the drover and he was available. The fee was $1800 per week. For a small mob that was expensive. He explained that whether the mob was small or large he had to assemble a complete droving unit and I accepted that. That left the farmer. I contacted him and he offered to show me the paddock as soon as I could get there. The property I went to was near Amby. It has since changed hands and to respect the privacy of the new owners I have elected to call it Amby Creek. The village of Amby is about twenty-five kilometres east of Mitchell on the railway line.
The spectacle that confronted me that morning was a mixture of Saltbush Bill and Ronnie Barker all wrapped into one. I picked my way through scrap iron, stripped engines and rusted drums to meet a short, white-haired man in his sixties. Despite his steel blue eyes he was friendly and smiled a lot; I warmed to him immediately.
We had to drive out to inspect the sorghum stubble. He told me to hop into what must have been Toyota’s first model and while I waited he poured a little petrol directly into the top of the carburettor and hurriedly lowered the bonnet. To my surprise the old girl fired. The first kilometre out was red dirt and stone. All we had to do was put a bit of Mad Max gear on and we might have driven straight out of the film.
Much of the downs country has become the western sorghum belt. In marginal rainfall it is a high-risk crop, but if it fails to make grain it can be baled for fodder or eaten off with cattle. If the rain comes at filling time (when the grain develops) it’s a bonanza—relatively small farmers have been known to harvest a quarter of a million dollars in grain.
We reached the sorghum paddock and the stubble was everything I had hoped for. The butts were still green and there were patches not harvested due to the small heads. Beyond the sorghum was a paddock of Mitchell grass. The Old Boy—that was instantly my private name for him—showed me how to assess the grass’s value by scrunching the dry grass in his hands to shell the seed. If there’s still seed in the grass it means protein for the cattle.
There was only one dam to water the stock. Considering the time of year it seemed to have plenty of water. If required, he said, there was a bore two kilometres away that only required a few minutes work to deliver water.
The Old Boy was naturally keen to get the cattle. He was a sheep man and wool prices were rock bottom. I had to make a decision on the spot. With the back-up of the Mitchell grass I had good feed for a month and maybe holding feed for another three weeks. In that time it might rain. The overall fee was approximately $750 per week, or more than $1000 below the cost of a drover. Reluctantly, I took it. If I went home empty-handed, the cattle would be trucked to Victoria and a bad sale was inevitable.
We headed back in the Mad Max machine and the Old Boy invited me in for smoko. He lived as a bachelor in the kitchen of an old neglected homestead. Living with him was a very smart rat. Everywhere I looked—kitchen table, plastic containers and old books—were signs of the rodent’s teeth. Sometimes the rat shared his bed, he told me. He said he was beside himself and asked if I had any suggestions. I asked him for a rabbit trap and a piece of bacon.
During smoko I asked about neighbours. My father had sent cattle to the Bourke district the year before and we had lost cattle to a neighbour there. The stock squad would be the first to agree that ninety percent of all missing cattle go over the boundary fence.
The Old Boy said they were all good people. One man was very mean and I quietly asked him what he meant.
‘You want to know how mean he is,’ he said with a boyish grin. ‘It’s my guess he wraps a bandage around it so she only gets an inch.’
I had an instant picture of the definition being written into the English dictionary. There was nothing left to be said. He got me an old rabbit trap and I prepared the rat’s execution.
The most economic form of transport for stock is the roadtrain. A roadtrain is a standard semitrailer towing another equally as long. From bullbar to trailer end they are more than forty metres in length and therefore can only be safely used on major inland trunk roads with low traffic rates. In New South Wales, trucking firms cannot bring them east of Narrabri and Dubbo. Due to the tableland nature of the country, Myall Plains was out of bounds and I had to apply for special permission to bring the trains in from Gilgandra. Where livestock are concerned I find most people are very co-operative. Special permission was granted for daylight hours.
The other lucky break for the week was a man to help us. We had begun feeding grain to the cows and Sal and I struggled with the bags. Sal operated the silo chute and I lifted the bags onto a one-tonne truck. After about twenty bags my back would get that numb feeling and she would have to help me. This bloke from Mendooran threw them onto the truck like plastic bags full of paper. I could barely see his face for beard and had my reservations. He was a happy bloke. Nothing was ever any trouble and Greg remained with us for most of the drought.
The day the roadtrains arrived was cold and sleety. One Queensland truckdriver looking out onto the Warrumbungles thought he had made it to the southern alps. My sister Rosemary brought Dad down for his last look at the cattle and that was his last trip to the station yards ever. He was pleased and we all desperately hoped the next few weeks would be brighter for him.
The plan was for me to drive to Queensland ahead of the roadtrains and arrange a paddock for unloading. The Old Boy’s yards did n
ot have the facilities for a roadtrain. Instead, I had to find a spot where the cattle could be safely jumped off. Horsemen too had to be present. Cattle are very disturbed when they leave a truck in a strange place and the mob should be held until the last one has come off.
I figured I would have to tail the mob for two or three days before I could return home. Tailing is simply keeping the mob together and observing they all go to water. For this exercise I took the dogs with me. They sat in the four-wheel drive like people. Caramel always had the front seat. An aged half-dingo, he had a travel addiction. His only connection with livestock was eating them, but he did save me from severe hypothermia on one occasion. I had fallen from a kurrajong tree in the Capertee valley, and suffering from amnesia I wandered in the mountains for nearly two days. At night I held this fellow against my chest for warmth. Behind me was Millie, a type of kelpie known as a black barb. She hated travelling, but she was the lead runner and without her no control was possible. At the other window sat Ellie, probably one of the most beautiful black kelpies I have ever seen. She had never seen an emu and when one ran across the road near Mungindi her excited reaction was most amusing, her paws scrabbling at the dashboard as she tried to launch herself through the windscreen after it.
Two well-known cattlemen from Roma did the horse work. The three roadtrains were backed into a long ditch and the unloading was simultaneous. Immediately the last beast was off, the horsemen took the mob about three kilometres to the dam. The poor things were very thirsty and they gulped the water until their bellies spread beyond any shape of pregnancy.
When the cattle began to feed out, a problem emerged that I hadn’t foreseen. On the red stony country there was a green pick. About ten millimetres of rain had fallen on the property the night following my inspection. The Old Boy had told me about the rain, but the possibility of a green pick had never entered my head. It was fresh, tasty and of little value, as the cattle would burn more energy chasing it than they could gain from eating such minute quantities. The senior stockman, a man older and more experienced than myself, thought they would rapidly lose weight. He advised me to employ a stockman to camp with them for a fortnight and tail them onto the sorghum stubble. To my relief he agreed to do it for the first two days while I looked for someone.
It seemed the dogs wouldn’t have to do anything to earn their holiday. They did at least save me the bother of travelling to Mitchell for accommodation. Being slight in build I feel the cold, so I had the three of them to warm me in the four-wheel drive. My dogs are never chained and therefore very clean. To keep the air fresh I fed them tinned food only once a day. My meals were no problem. The Old Boy had the kettle on twenty-four hours a day, and with the rat eliminated by the trap I had set, the kitchen table had everything from corned beef to scones.
Trying to find someone to camp with the cattle and tail them made me feel like a detective. I eventually found a bloke in Yuleba. Dick was in late middle age and out of condition. He had a broody look about him and he spoke with a quiet confidential manner. His horses were a mongrel lot and I wondered whether his old Bedford truck would make the journey. He asked me in for coffee and I accepted as I couldn’t make my mind up. His wife clinched the job for him. She was a strong, no-nonsense woman and I had immediate confidence in her. Men of the bush are often the reverse of what they seem upon first meeting. Invariably, their lives have been hard and disappointments frequent. They judge all strangers with great reservation. ‘What’s this bastard on about’ you can see the words written across their eyes. Their women, however, reveal the quality of their lives in a matter of minutes. With this family, life had been tough all the way.
I left the little farm, with hobbled horses all over the place, feeling a little uneasy. The dogs hadn’t given their approval either. There was no tail wagging, just noses pressed hard to the windows and deep growls. Under normal circumstances I would have insisted on references and stayed another two or three days. Short of not turning up, I couldn’t see how the man could fail to be of some help. The Old Boy offered to watch the cattle as well. I left uneasy all the same.
Buying a Coke at every truckie stop, I pushed it through the night and made it home about three o’clock on a Saturday morning. I stepped out onto the drive and the chill of mountain air hit me and my breath floated away. There was not a sound. No owls or night birds of any description. I left the door open for the dogs and there was not even a raised eyelid. The four-wheel drive was soft and warm and outside was only an hour from frost. I left them to it and walked carefully along the cement pavement. There was no moon, just the stars in a cold black sky, but so clear was the air the light permeated the atmosphere and I could see every door and window. I opened the back door and closed it quietly. Inside there was still some faint light. I removed my boots and tiptoed to the hall. Sal was waiting in the lounge room between the bedroom and the bathroom. Her long white nightie seemed to absorb light. It was as though the cotton garment was suspended by invisible thread. I couldn’t see her. I simply extended my arms and she was there, hand against my chest and her invisible lips on mine.
‘It’s so quiet,’ I sighed at last.
‘Now you know how I feel when you’re away,’ Sal whispered, ‘and soon you will be gone again.’
Sal let me sleep in for a while. I woke towards mid-morning to a cup of tea and toast.
‘You and I feed today,’ she said. ‘Greg’s got something on.’
‘How’s the lopping?’ I asked.
‘About ten days left. After that the trees are too far from water.’
I raised myself on my elbows and looked out the bedroom windows. There are three of them and a door studded with small square panes opening onto a verandah. The room was full of light and it seemed somehow wrong to be in a bed. Beyond the garden, frost-burnt and dry, the paddocks had a fallow look. It was as though it were late autumn and we were waiting for the big rain to sow wheat.
‘Just to cross the border lifts your spirits,’ I said, taking in the scene grimly.
‘I know,’ Sal said quietly, looking out the windows and onto the same scalded paddocks. ‘Wait till we start the feed run.’
Sal is medium height and slim. She wears her dark brown hair to her shoulders and carries her age better than most women of her vintage. She is one of those women who left the teenage years a little on the plain side and with womanhood bloomed into beauty. So often the teenage beauties fade before middle age. Maybe it’s nature’s way. In a mystical sense I believe nature to be a great leveller, as though ordained by some intangible power.
I got up, pulled on some clean clothes and walked into the office to go through bills. Halfway through them I lost concentration and moved into the billiard room for no particular reason. It is a room so full of character. A man’s room, yet designed by a woman, my mother. I always look on the room as her creative achievement in life. It wasn’t because there was a full-sized billiard table dominating the room. Anyone could set that up. It was what she had done with the rest of the room. If I were simply to say there is a sporting bar at one end with high stools and a host of racing photographs it would conjure up an image of rakish masculinity, but it hadn’t been finished off like that. With a painting here and there and some fine pieces of china, Mum had balanced the room with a feminine presence as well. When we moved in, Sal introduced her paintings and prints. We didn’t change the room and never plan to. It did me good to walk around it. It made me feel, more than realise, there was so much to lose. Failure could never be accepted or entertained.
By late morning Sal and I were on the feed run. Sal drove the one-tonne truck and I unloaded the bags. Each bag I simply emptied onto the ground and within seconds several cows formed a ring around the little pile of wheat. The trick was to get the feed out as quickly as possible. While I emptied one bag Sal drove forward about ten metres so that each pile had that space in between. Some of the cheeky cows kept following me. They would take a mouthful and then run with me to the truck,
the grain spilling out of their mouths. We take for granted the huge variation in human intelligence, but I have no doubt the same extremes apply in the animal kingdom. In this instance, a handful of cows had worked out that pushing and shoving for a few mouthfuls was not the way to go. Instead, they were first upon every fresh pile and had the last two or three piles to themselves until their cousins down the feed line followed through.
There were four mobs to feed and it took us about three hours. The slowest part was the travelling back and forth to the depot. The property is about two and a half thousand hectares and one feeding spot was four kilometres from the depot.
Feeding the last mob I felt a push against my backside. I turned and saw at once the cow had no fear of me. There were just those lovely, soft, expectant eyes. I moved to her side and glanced at her rear legs. One leg was distinctly bowed. In 1992 a large heifer calf had attempted to jump out of the calf crush leading up to the marking cradle, and she had twisted her leg so badly she was unable to stand for three weeks. I erected an umbrella over her and watered and fed her for that period. She came to accept me as her protector, and now she was coming to me again for help. There was milk in her udder too. ‘Where’s your baby?’ I said. She just flicked one ear and slapped her tail backwards across her thigh, as though to say, ‘Where do you think?’ Along with all the other newborn calves, it was planted somewhere up in the basalt ridges. A lot of calves had been born and they were left in little groups, always near a tree. In most instances one cow remained as a minder.
‘We should give her a name,’ Sal exclaimed from the cabin of the truck.
‘I wouldn’t,’ I remember saying. ‘She’ll be lucky to survive.’ My subconscious mind had already named her though. She became the Bow-Legged Cow and during the next two years I often found myself looking carefully through the mob until I saw her.
Horses Too Are Gone, The Page 3