Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I remember saying. ‘All you’ve seen are drunks, scrub and half dead cattle.’

  ‘The heat too,’ Richie said dryly. ‘I’ve never felt the bite of the old 110 degrees before. All part of the Maranoa experience.’ He paused and braced himself to really rub it in. ‘You know Dad, you really have found paradise out here.’

  I felt it when he left. I never saw him much. Boarding school provides opportunities for children, but in many ways it shatters family life. The little boy who was always one step behind me had gone a long time ago and was nearly a lawyer destined for Sydney.

  I had decided to fence off the black hole and had to wait in Mitchell for fencing materials sent specially from Roma. When I got to Mt Kennedy another mob of cows was standing in the stinking mud, trying to get a drink. I am sure what moisture they did get was toxic. Two calves were dead and more were going to die. The temperature soared that day, compounding the extreme dehydration. Some of the cows wobbled about as they walked to the bore. I was forced to carry a two-litre container of water. I drank every ten minutes and if a cow tried to break back and I had to run, I soon found myself doubled up, inhaling air that was like a blast from a furnace. I had to play games with myself: hang in for another five hours, came a voice from the white glare, then that thing will drop out of the sky and there will be nine hours of no sun. Lovely cool hours of only 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

  For the next two days little mobs of cattle drifted in from the gorges and the high tableland country. They were famished and I walked each lot to the bore. The spring had also been turned into a mud pit, with too many cattle seeking a drink.

  I had to move camp once again. Cattle I had already taken to the bore were reappearing at the black hole and that was when I woke up to the dingoes. Early each morning it was possible to see their tracks beside the trough.

  There was quite a bit of company about. A dead calf nearby had attracted several goannas. I watched with interest the order of seniority. A big black goanna had first go after sunrise. Like a miniature dinosaur it would furiously tear the flesh out and swallow it whole in one gulp. Back went the head, neck muscles expanded and the rotten meat more or less fell into its stomach. When the black goanna left, a more slender sand goanna would run in. This fellow was very wary and if I appeared would scuttle away, whereas the black goanna would watch me, motionless, raised at full length on its front legs.

  The other visitors were the rat kangaroos. The striped little marsupials would go into the mud for a drink and get stuck. Normally reliant on native shrubs for moisture, these creatures had been driven by the extreme heat to find water. To get them out I had to build log bridges across the mud. They growled when I grabbed them by the scruff of the neck. And odd as it may seem they were stiff, as though cold. Under the surface the black slime remained cold, reflecting the heat away. I had to wash them in camp water before releasing them. They are shy, elusive creatures and when the weather returned to normal I didn’t see them again.

  I managed to get the fence up in a day. In searing heat it is sometimes better to have something to do. Provided you drink plenty of water and keep your body covered, 115 degrees Fahrenheit will not do you any harm. It’s just very uncomfortable. The following days I found more difficult. I went looking for cattle that might have needed help. In extreme temperatures the ground moves. It’s an illusion of course, but sometimes my feet didn’t seem to touch down when they should have.

  There were tracks of a great variety of animals, some of which I never saw. The eastern scrub turkey I saw only twice, but I cut their tracks every day. Dingo tracks were everywhere. It was the pup season and I would get glimpses of a bitch and two or three pups. The locals told me attacks on calves were rare at this time of the year. The pulling down of calves in the heat took too much out of the dingoes and they settled instead on the stalking of small game at night. However, I still had some weak calves and I heard them take a calf one night. The mosquitoes were bad after sunset and to get away from them I had to crouch almost over the camp fire and keep my face to the smoke. On this particular evening I was working on an early dinner so I could go to the tent and escape them.

  The first sound seemed to almost grab me—a chilling primeval outburst in a gorge. Something had hold of this calf and it bellowed its heart out. I had lost my glasses at Muckadilla and I am nearly blind at night. I stood there helpless. It went on for five or ten minutes and then a cow—its mother—called all night for her calf.

  It’s hard to have a rational conversation with many people in the bush about dingoes. In the highlands of central Queensland the dingo is a vital component of the ecosystem. Remove the dingo and much of the area would soon be overrun by swamp wallabies, known locally as stinkers. They have no value in the meat trade and control rests entirely on the landowner. But if dingo populations rise too much they begin to hunt in packs and will do a lot of damage. It’s not what the dogs actually eat. It is the biting. Their teeth are covered in deadly bacteria and the bites turn septic.

  In an ecological debate perhaps the most important observation is the absence of foxes in the dingo habitat. In New South Wales the fox has wiped out every ground-dwelling bird except the plover, every small marsupial except the possum (and they now only exist in specific areas) and the once common goanna has become very difficult to find. In the dingo habitat many of the small creatures of the bush still survive. If our native wild dog causes losses of a million dollars a year in Queensland, the combined effort of the fox and the feral pig in New South Wales would incur losses in excess of ten million. In addition to the export losses are the environmental consequences. Foxes are voracious eaters of frogs. Frogs in turn eat mosquitoes. The mosquitoes carry Ross River fever which is now endemic in the western river towns of both Queensland and New South Wales. There may be no connection, but the suspicion is enough for concern. A lot more could be done to eradicate foxes.

  Mike on Circus at home on Myall Plains.

  Millie, veteran of the Queensland adventure, with her pup by the half-dingo Caramel.

  Mike on Vodka Jack (third from the front). Leg injuries mean this might have been Mike’s last race.

  Sal in the Snowy Mountains, October 1994, while inspecting stock routes. A brief holiday from care.

  Mike with three of his sons at Claravale stockyards. L-R: Richie, Nick, Mike and Tom.

  Loading weaners at Mount Kennedy for agistment at Jerilderee.

  Roadtrain bound for Myall Plains. The weaners had two weeks’ rest there before continuing south.

  Approaching the pass, Mount Kennedy. This gives some idea of the wilderness of the area and the isolation of droving.

  Typical droving camp. Each day the truck would be driven to the next campsite to set up in readiness for the horsemen who would slowly bring the cattle along.

  Scalp was a crack shot and made money from shooting dingos for the bounty.

  The dingos are ‘scalped’ and the skins taken to town as proof of the kill.

  Mustering at Muckadilla bore.

  Not a Wild West posse, simply the end of a long day in the saddle.

  Newly repaired water trough, Mount Kennedy. The trough was supplied from a fiberglass tank.

  The black hole at Mount Kennedy where some of the cows, desperate with thirst, were trying to drink toxic mud.

  Tableland camp, winter 1995. Sal, Richie, Nick and Tom all helped out on this trip.

  Cranking up the old diesel engine, Mt Kennedy. Pre-World War II equipment is still to be found in the Outback.

  Selling the cows from Amby Creek, Roma sale yards, January 1995.

  Smokie branding at Claravale. The calf is held in the cradle while the brand is applied.

  The old year passed by and the truck wireless kept me in touch with current news. It had taken about a week to educate the last of the cattle away from the black hole. I got to know some of the cows and I called them super-optimists. On the way to the bore they broke away from the rest and walked u
p to the black hole fence. They’d have a long look, nostrils flared for the smell of water and then with a flick of the tail it was back to the bore trail.

  I moved camp back to the bore. The black hole camp I’d shared with the goannas. They have an extraordinary sense of smell and knew I had some goodies in the tent. I left a plate by the fire one morning and when I returned the boss goanna—the big black fellow—ran away with it in his mouth. I had to chase him and he only dropped it when he reached the foot of his tree.

  It was about the sixth day of January, 1995, and I hadn’t had time to check the boundary. At this time of the year even moderate days were still hot, but nothing like the heatwaves that came and went in cycles. With the cooler temperature it seemed a good opportunity. Diesel was low and the cows and calves at Amby Creek needed checking. If I checked the boundary at Mt Kennedy I felt I could leave for a day and a night.

  Circus and Yarramin were never far from the bore and Yarramin made his usual camp inspection when I moved back. He would eat anything and to feed him was fatal, for he would wait outside the tent and get his legs tangled in the tent ropes. The boundary inspection would have been a lot more pleasant on Circus, but some of the country was so rough and steep it wasn’t worth putting a horse through it.

  Walking west from the bore the country was heavily timbered with lancewood and ironbark. The trees sucked the moisture and left little for grass. The only grass belonged to the wire grass family, unpalatable for cattle. I didn’t expect to see cattle tracks in this country and when I did I stopped and examined them. A mob had gone through, probably thirty to forty head. They had been driven fast and ran packed tight, knocking down brush and snapping branches from trees.

  I followed the tracks for about three kilometres, tracking backwards. I reached the western boundary and here the mob had been driven along the fence. The fence led over a sandstone ridge covered in wattle and dropped into a ravine, flat at the bottom and under head-high kangaroo grass. Halfway across this narrow strip I found the fence down, where the cattle had been turned in. I didn’t see any horse tracks and didn’t expect to. The horsemen would have crossed somewhere else and wiped the tracks leading to and away from the fence:

  To confirm my suspicions, I had in the past few days seen some strange cattle among mine and simply assumed they’d got in from somewhere. They hadn’t got in. They had been driven in.

  Another two kilometres on I found the fence down again. Logs had been laid across the wire and a couple of wooden posts had been lifted out of their holes, which would not be difficult in sandy loam soil. Clearly men rode these ranges and stole cattle.

  I moved slowly, looking for horse tracks, and by mid-afternoon had only gained the far north-east corner on the basalt tablelands. I saw no more tracks and in the high country the fence was in good order.

  It was a long walk back to the bore. Half a kilometre out I could hear the labouring chug chug of the diesel engine. I had become fond of the noise and its echo through the timber, for it was more than an echo of sound; it was a vision of flowing water, healthy cattle and security. The sight of a strange vehicle by the tent was not so welcome.

  It was an old model vehicle with a trayback and sides. Vehicles have never interested me much, but at a quick glance it might have been a Land-Rover, popular in the sixties. The driver stood near the front of the vehicle, looking down towards the bore where a group of cows and calves was filing through the gate into the access paddock. He didn’t see me coming and wheeled around when he heard my boots crunching the eucalypt leaves.

  ‘Jesus—yer give me a fright!’ he burst out, forcing a smile. He was about my height, but had a powerful look about him, a sleeveless shirt exposing deeply tanned, sinewy arms. There was a litheness, about everything he did, even when he pulled a cigarette packet from his shirt pocket.

  We shook hands and I asked, ‘You from about here?’

  ‘Not too far away. I’m a station manager.’ He made no further effort to introduce himself.

  ‘Similar country?’ I asked. With strangers it was always the weather or the country. I always prefer to talk about the country.

  ‘Rougher,’ he replied.

  ‘This is better than it looks,’ I said. ‘The tablelands are covered with the biggest expanse of bluegrass I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Oh yes it’s beautiful on top. The gorges that drop off it would worry me. Do you think you’ll ever find them all?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to leave them for long.’

  ‘You can’t leave them for a day.’ His grim reply jolted me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a bad bunch that come and go. The soft name given to ’em is the Wild Bunch. Other names are less flattering.’

  ‘Sounds like they rob banks and snatch payrolls!’

  He shot me a knowing look and smiled wryly. ‘They’re not much better. If it wasn’t for air surveillance these blokes would be right into it, although none of them have Butch and Sundance’s charisma.’ He paused and looked at me steadily, his jaw set like a man about to deliver very bad news. ‘There’s no thanks for this sort of thing, but someone has to tell you. You’re a deadset sitter. They hit Claravale station a few weeks back and not a beast sighted since. What was most alarming was their boldness. They cut out what they wanted and ran ’em straight past Scalp’s yards.’

  ‘How many?’ I was truly shaken.

  ‘Forty or fifty head.’

  ‘That their biggest coup?’ I was trying to convert the new threat into dollars.

  ‘Oh no,’ he almost moaned, shaking his head. ‘They’ve knocked off up to a hundred head in a single raid.’

  ‘Impossible,’ I declared. ‘You can’t run off with a mob that size.’

  ‘In the heavy pine and lancewood yer never see ’em. You might run a three-day camp before you know yer short. You’ll learn. Wait until yer go to round ’em up.’

  ‘Scalp should have told me,’ I said. ‘The stock route would be better than this.’

  ‘My bet is he couldn’t get you here quick enough. Once here yer stuck. Someone’s gotta run that big old bastard of a diesel for water and he’s away pullin’ scrub. You’ve become his minder and he gets a cheque every month to boot.’

  ‘Minder!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Call it what you like. Big place north of here employs a gunman. Anyway Scalp’s got a thousand head scattered about and while yer watchin yer own I guess he thinks his are safe enough and he can go pullin’ scrub and forget ’em. They water everywhere on springs and dams. He’s given you the dry country. But in a drought like this one yer lucky to get it.’

  ‘I had planned to have a week or two at the bore and if there were no problems pay someone to run the engine and go home.’

  ‘No one’s goin’ to come out here. Plenty of brave men around the pubs of a night. But try ’em next morning.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘I could make it worth your while.’

  ‘It’s hard enough watchin’ me own back on forty thousand acres.’

  I breathed deeply. This was bad news. Far worse than I could ever imagine—I could hardly take it in. ‘It’s that bad is it?’

  ‘You ride with yer gun, sleep with it and when yer squat behind a tree you have it in reach. These blokes’d shoot a hundred cows just to get the hundred unbranded weaner size calves. They have credit on demand and use bills for toilet paper.’

  For some moments his phrases seem to echo in my mind. It was as though I had slipped into a nightmare and was waiting for that jolt when you’re suddenly conscious of your own snore and with that you’re back in the comfortable, safe real world.

  A sprightly bunch of cattle trotted through the timber to the access paddock and the water. They were led by a big framed cow. Her calf was one of those frolicking in the rear. She caught the scent of the camp fire and stopped. The calves, too, stood motionless. Their communication was instant. The discipline beyond the new world of humans. Then she swished her tail ba
ck over her rump, tossed her head once with delightful arrogance and walked on. They didn’t trot again.

  ‘You been under fire?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah—twice,’ he muttered and nodded vigorously. ‘It’s when they’re drunk. They don’t aim. Bullets skip on the dirt and slam into tree trunks. It scares the shit out of yer.’

  ‘If you did that back home there’d be a squad of police on the scene in thirty minutes.’

  ‘No police. Yer leave ’em out of it. They won’t find ’em for a start and if they did they’d find unarmed stockmen looking very surprised and sympathetic.’

  ‘I’d call them just the same.’

  ‘That night they’d shoot yer horses. If you had a house they’d burn it.’

  During the next half hour he related the little he knew about the Wild Bunch. The identity of some was so obscure they might as well have been faceless. The one feared most was ‘Frankie’. Accused of everything short of murder he nursed a grudge against the world and drank heavily. By the time he had finished his story more cattle had drifted in. Some trotted and some walked. Each little group had a matriarch and she made the decisions. After they drank they wandered into a patch of brigalow and mingled with other groups. Some cows would lock heads, light-hearted gestures of territory—that’s my shade, not yours. The little charades went on all day.

  I had begun to feel very hollow in the stomach. I asked this bloke if he’d like to try a reheated johnny cake. He still hadn’t volunteered his name and after all he had told me I gathered he didn’t want me to know. The cakes were palatable enough with jam and fresh billy tea and we talked for a while longer. I listened to him carefully; for a comment, slip of the tongue—anything that might suggest exaggeration and rumour, but his story didn’t change. I had to plan for the worst possible scenario. In fact I hardly noticed him go. He had left me with a lot of thinking to do.