Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  ‘I think I am finished,’ he said quite clearly. There was a pleading in his eyes. All my life I had a misconception that the aged face death with resignation. It’s not true. Life is all we have. To go swiftly and suddenly is a blessing akin to birth.

  I don’t know what I said that day. Very little I think. As I turned to leave his room he asked me to say goodbye to my mother. In my distress I had completely forgotten about her. That was the last thing I ever heard him say.

  I loaded the three stockhorses we had left. The previous two years had been tough, no spare cash and we had made do with the old horses.

  Mrs Brown was the first up the loading race. Dad had raced the mare in partnership and had allowed his partner to pin (register) the name. I always thought it sounded boring called out in a race, but ever since the film Her Majesty, Mrs Brown came out, I’ve wondered if I was missing something … I had ridden her in a race and won. I thought she had a lovely disposition and one autumn I was asked to join some southern highland graziers on a ride over the Victorian alps. I took her and Circus. I was told we would ride along vehicle tracks, take it easy and be sure to bring seven bottles of whisky. With eight riders that made a total of fifty-six bottles of whisky. I have always told myself I have no brains, because that was the signal to pull out. Despite a premonition on the very first camp, I stuck with them out of loyalty to the bloke who had invited me. The track we followed was the one the brumby catchers used in the early days. At the notorious ‘staircase’ (an exposed, very steep spur) Mrs Brown became very frightened and I refused the group leader’s order to dismount. Everyone else had, but I have a deep love of horses and if the danger was indeed extreme I believed I had an obligation to stay aboard. The poor mare had never seen much else but a racecourse. She fell and we parted company in mid-air. I don’t recall any part of the fall. I remember picking myself up and on the very steep slope below me Mrs Brown struggled to her feet. She shook violently and she had lost some skin. The next few hours remain vague in my mind. There was a heavy fog and the mare was very lame.

  The whole ride was a nightmare and haunts me to this day. To save the mare I had to hunt her down the mountains with a stick. The group leader carried a revolver for horses that didn’t make it. I got her home and after a month’s veterinary attention she slowly recovered.

  The next on to the truck was Malameen—an eight-year-old retired racehorse. He was seventeen hands and a big sook. All the ladies loved him and there were frequent offers to buy him. I told him often he had the looks that befit a Melbourne Cup winner, but alas he had little heart for racing. Malameen won six races on the flat and in 1992 I took him to Adelaide to go over the hurdles. I think the decision was doomed from the first day. The old station truck broke down in the desert between Broken Hill and Peterborough. In desperation I tried to hail the Indian Pacific Express. Seeing me there, holding a horse beside the railway the train driver probably thought I was a madman. I simply wanted him to telephone the Adelaide trainer. Needless to say, the train didn’t stop. Perhaps it was an omen: he jumped beautifully in pre-training but then pulled a tendon.

  Last on was old Yarramin. A bay like Malameen, he was twenty-six years old. He was the only one left from our packhorse team of the 1970s. When the cattle industry crashed in the 1970s, Sal and I ran packhorse tours into the Warrumbungle Mountains. Yarramin was so quiet he may have tolerated a cracker lighted off his rump. Half Clydesdale, he never greeted the judge on the racetrack, but he was a character. He had an insatiable taste for bread and became so frustrated on an overnight tourist camp he picked up a pack, in which he smelt bread, with his teeth and dropped it on the camp fire. One could not assume it was his solution to getting at the bread, but it can’t altogether be ruled out.

  It was after midnight when I arrived at Amby Creek. I bypassed the railway yards as too much hay had to be given to the horses if they were locked up. The Old Boy had let me put Circus in his ram paddock. There was only a pick, but at least they were free and I carried enough hay to feed them properly once a day.

  The ram paddock joined the cattle yards where I had to unload. Before I even stepped from the truck I could see Circus coming in the half moonlight. There was a chorus of whinnying and Mrs Brown nearly knocked me down in her rush to leave the truck. I fed all four in a large holding yard. There were only a few hours of the night left, so I slept in the truck. I woke very stiff and tired to the sound of the Old Boy’s voice. He had bacon and eggs on and never had it smelt so good. I drank the scalding tea I love so much and listened to his latest jokes. An hour after sunrise there was a breeze coming through the front door.

  ‘I am sick of this easterly,’ he said. ‘It blows up their fannies and puts them right off.’ I was getting used to his sense of humour.

  It wasn’t until after breakfast he told me the big news. ‘The police have been here Mick.’ He looked concerned. ‘They got nothin’ out of me. I was away.’

  ‘Someone must have seen me with the mare.’

  ‘They grilled Smokie for an hour. Evidently the drover bloke came next day to pick them up and that mare was lame.’

  On the way to Mitchell I dropped in to see Smokie. He had told the police he didn’t know anything about the mare I rode. They knew he was lying, but were forced to accept it as no charge could be laid against him.

  In Mitchell I went to see the herdsman and got more bad news. (In Queensland the herdsman is the person in control of travelling stock within each shire.) Five thousand head of cattle had been dropped on the stock route west of Roma. Another four thousand were still to come. Grain in northern New South Wales had become temporarily unavailable. In desperation, cattle owners had pooled their herds and contracted drovers to walk them on the best available stock routes. He said the mobs were all heading west and if I went onto the stock route I could be up against a tide of cattle.

  ‘Try the back roads,’ he suggested. He was a very decent bloke and I discussed with him the various camps and watering points. He warned me, however, that one day’s walk from Amby took me out of his territory and from that point he could do nothing.

  I left the herdsman’s place and parked the truck in the main street. I felt exhausted and totally indecisive. There was a sign ‘Coffee’ and next door a newsagent. I thought if I read the paper and had some coffee things might get better.

  A young woman with long fair hair brought the coffee and sandwiches.

  ‘Sorry I’ve been so long. Been so busy this morning.’

  In the adjoining room was the bakery, which was the principal business.

  ‘Time’s not a problem for me today.’

  ‘You’re lucky. In this shop there’s never any time.’

  ‘I am just stalling,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘When I leave here I’ll probably be arrested.’

  ‘Oh God, what have you done?’ she asked with a burst of laughter. She had such laughing eyes I couldn’t resist saying it, although it was mischievous.

  ‘I borrowed a horse.’

  ‘Well it’s not every day I get. to serve Ned Kelly!’

  She confirmed my impression that Mitchell is a friendly little town. If a lonely stranger chose to settle there it would be their fault if they were not accepted in the community within days. The town nestles into a bend on the Maranoa River and has one of the river’s largest natural waterholes, free of all the carp problems now so chronic in western New South Wales.

  Reluctantly, I left the town before lunchtime and went back to Amby Creek. Before leaving I collected my travelling stock permit from the Shire Office. if I waited, the stock route would be eaten out.

  I was having that long cup of tea with the Old Boy when the police arrived. It seemed the Old Boy had a horror of them and he half fell over leaving the kitchen for the rear of the house.

  I walked outside and the police officer asked me if I was Michael Richard Keenan. I wanted to say I was William Munny from Missouri, but I realised the occasion was very serious and simply nodded.

>   ‘I have a warrant for your arrest,’ he said soberly.

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Using a horse without the owner’s permission.’

  ‘You can arrest someone for that!’

  The officer explained to me that the charge under law was similar to taking a car. To me it seemed like taking someone’s lolly and getting six over the backside.

  No bail was required on the condition I didn’t leave Queensland before the court case. The officer thought I would face the magistrate at Roma on 18 October.

  To call upon any experience that may have helped me predict the rigours of droving I had to go back to 1958, when my father had sent me out with an old drover known as ‘Senator’ Cooper. He was a big man with a beard. It was difficult to tell where his tangle of white hair ended and his beard began. On top of this lion-like spectre sat a high top hat. I never saw it off him. He travelled about in a double-harness horse-drawn wagon. With the canvas pulled over the top, it was straight out of Arizona, 1885. The one thing which destroyed such a colourful fantasy was the sheep. We were droving sheep and snotty-nosed crossbreds are the pits on the road.

  In those days the stock routes of New South Wales had big reserves and we had settled into one called the Bluebush on the Castlereagh River between Gilgandra and Mendooran. The place teemed with wildlife and I loved every minute of it. The big black goannas fascinated me. They would come creeping into the camp like miniature dragons drawn by the smell of cooking. Every day Senator said we were going to have one for dinner. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or revolted. He must have had a chuckle or two, the old-timer, because I never woke that he was pulling my leg.

  Senator not only knew the history of the river, but he had been a part of it. Just near the camp was the shell-like remains of the Mawby homestead where the Breelong blacks had slaughtered nine women and children. The chief of the band, Jimmy Governor, proved to be the most elusive Aboriginal outlaw in Australian history.

  ‘Every man that could ride a horse was looking for them,’ Senator stated from his bed in the wagon, probably about one o’clock in the morning. ‘They killed them with tomahawks. There was real fear in the countryside. You see they could run fifty miles in a day. Drop a roo and eat it raw. White man was no match for them.’

  Wide-eyed, I would ask Senator many questions.

  ‘In 1925 I saw Roy Governor shot at a thousand yards. Wounded, mind you. He was a nephew of Jimmy. They hated the whites, them blacks.’

  ‘What happened to Roy?’ I asked.

  ‘Released after a few years. There was a bit of sympathy, believe it or not. Some reckon homesteaders brought it on themselves.’

  Jimmy Governor had been educated and very well brought up by a childless white couple. He was torn between two societies, and finally rejected by the white people.

  ‘They say he tried, poor bugger,’ Senator would mumble on. ‘Even married a white girl. It was when they rejected her he went berserk. And of course the young Aborigines living on the missions saw him as a hero. They were oppressed and given no future. That’s why a handful jumped the mission and followed him.’

  One by one the murderous band was either shot or hung. The manhunt for Governor went on for three years. In the peaceful bush setting I found it difficult to imagine such violence.

  Senator rambled on about the past well into every night and one morning we both overslept. The sheep had gone, pushing down the night break. The whole three thousand had crossed the river which never carried much water and headed south along a creek into the Goonoo forest. It took days to find them all. I remember the heat and the long hours in the saddle as easily now as old Senator remembered the events of 1901. Any romantic notions I had about droving were destroyed when I was just fifteen.

  There are no wagons today. The modern drover has a lorry with a stock float, a caravan towed by a small truck (usually a diesel-powered Toyota or Nissan), a couple of motorbikes and several horses. Depending on the size of the mob, most units are operated by three people. Two do the stock work and one cooks and moves camp. Women have become just as much part of the scene as the men. In some cases family units do the lot.

  The big droving outfits are elaborate and fascinating to observe. The first sign of movement on the horizon is the horses. There may be up to twenty of them. They precede the cattle, as they must have the best of the feed to be kept strong and in good physical shape. A man will be seen riding along with the horses and he is known as the horse-tailer.

  Perhaps half an hour will slip by before the first beast appears. If you watch a mob over a few days a leader becomes apparent. A sensible leader is a blessing; a rogue a nightmare. Within a minute of the leader appearing the whole horizon will transform into a dark mass. When four thousand head converge over a rise in the distance it’s like the advance of a giant army. If the mob comprises steers and bullocks a horseman on either side will be seen near the lead. On a stock route there won’t be much excitement for them. But in the big mustering camps of the Gulf Country these men are hell riders. If the lead bolts they rein in at nothing. In the west of the USA someone, a long time ago, wrote a song about the lead riders—‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’.

  Behind a big mob will be four or five horsemen. One of them will be the boss drover. He’s usually last and in the middle. Most of them become legends within their own lifetime. They are the grass generals of the interior.

  For the first six days we walked the cattle due east to the village of Muckadilla. Nick had arrived on the bus with a friend, Rupert. The young man had never ridden a horse. I put him aboard Yarramin and he was riding competently within twenty-four hours. He was tall, strong and very willing. The questions were never-ending and when he met the Old Boy on the first day I knew he was in for it. I was holding a mug of tea and cringed when one question came up.

  ‘There’s no toilets out there.’ The Old Boy’s eyebrows shot upwards. ‘Never been in the bush before son?’ he said knowingly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just go behind a tree. Then when you get back to the truck you’ll see a rope hanging off the side. Everyone uses it.’

  Smokie wasn’t much better. Rupert’s initiation with him was in a pub at Mitchell. Smokie started with the blokes he’d punched out over the years. After several beers the bars from Muckadilla to Quilpie had been awash with blood at one time or another.

  ‘I’ve never heard people talk the way they do out here,’ Rupert said to me quietly that evening. I could see he was quite distressed. He was a gentle young man who never once became agitated or even irritable.

  ‘It’s a lot of hot air,’ I remember saying to him. ‘There are some terrible fights over women. The rest of it’s just grog talk.’

  It was at the Muckadilla bore we struck the first lot of trouble. Three kilometres from the bore I rode ahead on Circus to see if we could go in for water. I knew there was a boss drover ahead of me with two thousand head and on the limited intelligence available I thought I could get to the bore first, let the cattle have two hours on the fifty-metre trough and pull back onto a road running south. While waiting for Nick I had done some reconnaissance in the truck and found magnificent feed south of Muckadilla. If I could slip in for a drink twice a day the cattle would freshen up before the final stage to Roma. I had wanted to go the back way to Roma, but three graziers had denied me water. In 1991 and 1992 we had Queensland stock all over New South Wales and I know everyone helped as much as they could. The saying ‘The further west, the friendlier the people’ is a myth.

  When I got near the bore there were cattle as far as I could see. The reserve at Muckadilla is one of the best on this great arterial stock route. Five hundred hectares in size, it comprises mainly creek flats. It was every drover’s dream to camp here and be left in peace. The one condition not found on stock routes, however, is peace. By regulation cattle must walk six to ten kilometres a day, depending on availability of water. The local herdsman monitors every mob and if a drover fails to
comply he can be ordered off the stock route. To spend a few days feeding on a non-stock route road I had to obtain special permission.

  Circus was very thirsty and he had a long drink while I thought the position over. By the creek I saw a truck and two caravans. Four saddled horses were tied up under trees. With some misgiving I decided to ride over and discuss the possibility of a drink for the cattle.

  The dogs let everyone know I had arrived. The stockmen were all having a midday camp. They had probably started moving the cattle at 4.00 a.m. Presently a tall swarthy bloke of about forty stepped out of one of the caravans. I made some effort at a greeting, but none came from him.

  ‘I’ve got thirsty cattle,’ I said. ‘Can you clear me a passage for about an hour?.’

  He just looked at me—a stern, summing up sort of stare. I was instantly pleased I hadn’t dismounted.

  ‘You won’t tell me what to do,’ he muttered in a threatening voice.

  ‘I don’t intend to. Just want a drink.’

  ‘I’ll be leavin’ in the mornin’. You get yer drink then.’

  The other stockmen had appeared by this time. They all came out and just stood, eyes to the ground. To my right was another caravan and beyond it the fireplace. An iron tripod had been erected and some billies hung over the flame. An older man had appeared from nowhere and he lifted a billy off a hook and poured the hot water into a large dish.

  There was nothing to say in the face of such hostility. On the bush telegraph they knew all about me. An owner on the road with his cattle. A little mob—less than six hundred head—just enough cattle to be a nuisance on the stock route. And here he is in person, the little bastard, asking us to get on our horses and move the cattle away from the water.

  Only a kilometre from the water I found Smokie at the lead. Sometimes cattle can smell water over a long distance. The leaders of our mob were mostly rogues and too smart for their own good. If they knew about the water Smokie may not have held them. In fact all the cattle had their heads down in the grass.