Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  When I got to Rowallan there was just enough light left for the horses to wander out into their new paddock and get their bearings. The feed seemed to slide off their bellies as they walked away from the yards. Mitchell had been drenched by several storms in the past month and with me unable to ride them I wondered how fat they might get.

  ‘At least they’ll be there when you want ’em,’ Noel said with his usual eyebrow jerk. He’d walked over from the house to unload them for me.

  The Rowallan homestead is only a kilometre from the river and has a commanding view of the town which hugs a bend in the river on the south side. It was once headquarters for a large pioneer station, but in post-war times has been cut up into farms. Billy and Annette owned the homestead block and Noel and his wife, Joan, shared one side of the old house.

  Everywhere you looked there were relics of a once gracious standard of living—stables where horses were groomed and harnessed every day; sheds built out of milled timber where a coach and two or three sulkies were parked; the original old timber yards with water troughs hewn from tree trunks. Such a place spared by time is rare in Australia’s north, because if the white ants haven’t eaten it the storms will have blown it down.

  Beyond a spacious garden at the front of the house the form of a tennis court still had a solid netted fence around it. There was little sign of the original surface. Native grasses and shrubs had claimed it all. I wondered about the past of this place, and about those who’d lived here in those ‘good old days’ long since gone. But with the horses safe at last and Noel carrying twenty-four cold stubbies, I didn’t have the mind of a poet that evening. If I am remembered for anything at Rowallan, they will admit I spared them my poetry. My father tried to write poetry sometimes and it was maudlin and I always feared mine would be worse.

  Drinking with Noel always followed the same pattern. You had to get two or three drinks into him. Then the eyebrows would start moving and he was away. He was a very interesting man with a great deal of self-acquired knowledge. Give him a brumby and he’d break it in so that a child could ride it bareback. Show him the timber and he’d build a set of stockyards so neat a cigarette paper wouldn’t fit in the joins. Such men have almost vanished and technology will not replace them.

  We were sitting in the lounge room and into about the third stubbie when he told me what had happened.

  ‘John lost his best pig dog last night. Bloody boar tusk ripped him and the bugger bled to death.’

  The dogs provided basic income for the Hamilton family. They were no ordinary paddock dogs. They were bred to pull down boars weighing one hundred and fifty kilograms, revealing a combination of crosses for bull terrier, wolfhound, ridgeback and, for sheer size, great Dane. Any one of these dogs could pull a man down and kill him almost instantly. I always followed a strict routine at Rowallan if not accompanied by a member of the family. When I arrived in a vehicle I simply got out and waited. The dogs smelt me and I spoke softly. Once acceptance seemed obvious (and that was simple enough because if you weren’t accepted then Noel wouldn’t have to feed them) I made my way slowly towards the house, talking quietly and saying any idiotic thing that came to mind.

  A successful hunting night with the dogs could realise more than the basic weekly wage—and they do most of the work. From their perch in the back of a four-wheel-drive utility they can smell a pig a kilometre away. Depending on their training, they will growl or bark to alert the driver. Conservation of energy is vital and usually one dog is released for the job. So strong is the sense of smell of these hunting dogs that one dog can close in without sniff tracking, and by instinct it will select the largest pig in the mob. Noel’s dogs will actually run past smaller pigs.

  Once the selected pig is held, a single bark every few minutes helps the operator locate the position. The dog holds the pig by the ear and his master despatches it with a knife to the throat. After basic slaughtering, the carcass is ready for delivery to the local ‘pig box’. The ‘pig box’ operator pays the hunter in cash and freezes the carcass. Most Australian game pig goes to Germany.

  ‘It seems a hell of a life,’ I said. ‘Working in the dark with a high risk of snakebite for eight months of the year. Blood all through your clothes and in your hair.’

  ‘It’s hunt or work for the railway or main roads. I reared all my boys in the bush. They hate the thought of nine to five.’

  I had reared my boys for the city. I didn’t want to, but I knew it was the best favour I could ever do for them. For Noel there was no choice. He’d managed stations and it was all his children knew. On one station they were one hundred and fifty kilometres from the nearest post office and the children were taught by the School of the Air.

  ‘They’re all good stockmen,’ Noel went on quietly. ‘No place for them anymore.’

  The kitchen door opened and Noel’s wife, Joan, came in. She always gave me a warm welcome.

  ‘We thought you’d be home last night.’

  I started to explain.

  ‘God struth,’ she laughed. ‘Camped out there on crutches.’

  Joan had done it hard all the way. She’d raised six kids and survived outback station life, yet she was always bright and full of fun. She was fond of the dogs too so we kept away from that. The youngest sons, Jamahl and John, had been booked to provide the music for one of the hotels in Roma on Saturday night.

  ‘If they don’t get their necks broken at Surat,’ Joan laughed. ‘Both entered for the saddle ride and Jamahl will probably have a go at the bareback.’

  Musicians are usually a breed of their own, often burdened with an over-sensitive attitude to life. The Hamilton men, however, are more likely to be branded with a multiple of bruises while they strum out such contradictory tunes as ‘Sweet Caroline’. Their whole approach to life was a complex one. In the film Geronimo, a US cavalry lieutenant asks an Apache warrior if he will join the ranks of the cavalry. The Apache looks at the ground and says he has things to do. The lieutenant asks, ‘I wonder what your answer would be if I wanted you for a raid into Mexico?’ When I ask the Hamilton boys to do a day’s work on a fence they are always busy. But I know if I were to ask them to run a mob of scrubbers out of the mountains, they wouldn’t wait for breakfast.

  The romance of the Australian cattle stations has possibly gone forever. Yet you can still dream about running in the horses before dawn, men saddling up when the first fingers of sunlight appear, the smell of tobacco and the clunk of the bell on the night horse. Someone reversing the lorry towards the loading ramp and the familiar rattles of every station float in the still air. No one ever spoke much at this hour. It was the boiling of the quart pots sometime later in the morning that brought everyone together. The horses, the mates—men had a sense of belonging on stations in those days, but from my observation it was always tough going for the few women that went out there.

  Today there is little work and on a purchasing power basis the wages are low. There’s not much incentive to work on remote stations anymore.

  The days at Rowallan were full of interest for me because I had never before witnessed the powerful web of an extended family. I had been an only child for many years and although Sal was brought up with family around her, they all lived in Sydney. The Hamiltons not only gave tremendous support to one another, but they formed a whole community within themselves. If any of them had much money I was never made aware of it, yet they were basically happy people.

  Noel and I would begin the day about the same time with black tea and toast. The women had long gone to the bakery. Annette managed it and Joan helped. Annette’s husband, Billy, had been in bed about three hours after baking bread and cakes all night. Noel would light a cigarette and talk about which family car he intended to repair. There were no new cars and no vehicle ever went to a garage.

  After Noel left I would read for a while, but by smoko another wave of the family would emerge—the pig catchers. Out to about three in the morning their day started just before lunch.
There’d be more tea and vivid accounts of those savage boars.

  There was no such thing as lunchtime and I hobbled out to the truck and drove to town about this time. Night calls to Sal were much cheaper, but I didn’t want to embarrass the family by leaving at night to make a phone call. There had been 100 millimetres of rain at Myall Plains; not a droughtbreaker, but the farming was going so well I suggested Sal fly up so that we could have a few days together early in February. Our wedding anniversary was on the third. Western Queensland in the height of summer was not an appealing destination, but Sal agreed.

  The thought of her coming up lifted my spirits and I went back to the doctor hoping for a better report. He told me it was a ligament injury and tried to book an appointment with an orthopaedic specialist who flew in from Brisbane once a month. The surgeon was booked out until March and I couldn’t leave the bore. Even staying with the Hamiltons worried me as it only took a storm to cut me off from the cattle.

  With school out the old homestead became the family playground for several offshoots of the Hamilton family. A car would arrive and I would look on, open-mouthed probably, as ten or twelve kids would clamber out. I think Noel quietly loved them all, but he had the knack of showing the same indifference as a bushman with a swarm of flies on his back. Sometimes the great-grandfather, Noel’s father, showed up, gave one or two a pat on the head, and with his dry humour said one day, ‘If they ask this family to leave Mitchell there’ll be no one left.’

  Every second day I went out to the bore, a drive of nearly eighty kilometres. I ran it for forty-eight hours and I turned it off for the same period. The tank overflowed each time, but it was the only way to avoid a daily trip. I had been at the Hamiltons for about a week and was heading out to the bore when the driver of a four-wheel drive waved me down. He said a drover who knew my brand had told him some of my cattle had been seen on a float parked outside a pub. He said a big mob of longhorns had been yarded and he had just looked through them hoping to spot his missing cattle. When I asked if he had seen any of mine he said he didn’t know my brand. My cattle were poll Herefords and would have been obvious.

  ‘Lot of pollie cattle in the yard,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go and look.’

  This bloke had a bit of money. Well dressed, late-model vehicle. I thanked him, but I felt uneasy. Everyone knew my cattle by now as they saw them to and from town. The cows were a little on the small side and an even deep red Hereford. I felt this bloke had seen some and didn’t like to say.

  At the bore it was the pumping shift. I kicked the engine up and drove the extra kilometres to the hut camp and the cattle yards. The first thing that put me on guard was that there was no one at the hut. The hut was always the regular camp. Near the cattle yards a tattered green tarpaulin had been pulled over a rail suspended between two pines. Exposed to the sun, it would have been hot and breathless inside. The tarp sides had been pulled out about two metres and covered at one end with hessian.

  In the yards there were about three hundred head of cattle. Without getting out of the truck I couldn’t see much except pale yellow hides and a sea of horns. They weren’t cattle I had seen before. But there were tens of thousands of hectares I had never been anywhere near.

  I sat in the truck and carefully scanned the surrounding timber. Smoke from the coals of an old fire drifted towards me. There was no vehicle to be seen and I thought maybe the campers had gone to town. No horses were saddled. The cattle looked full enough, which suggested they had been yarded that morning. In fact I had no good reason not to get out of the truck and have a walk around the yards. Yet something stopped me hopping out, and as a further precaution I placed the rifle on the front seat beside me, cocked.

  I had my eyes on the cattle, trying to see some sign of a dark poll Hereford. The dust rose, the fine decay of old manure, and I strained to see through it, not wanting to leave the truck on a crutch. I heard nothing and saw nothing. The door suddenly opened and this bloke had me half out of the truck with one jerk. It was the crutch that saved me. I kept it on my right-hand side and used it to steady myself. When this big bloke grabbed me and pulled, my waist was jammed against the crutch and he couldn’t budge me. I swung my left hand back and reached the rifle. He didn’t see it for a second and that gave me long enough to swing the barrel towards him so that the gun lay across my thighs.

  ‘Back off.’

  ‘Need money,’ he growled and let go.

  I had never seen him before. He had a week’s growth over his face, looked very dirty and I think was half drunk.

  He turned and walked slowly back to the dark space under the tarpaulin. Before he reached it an empty XXXX bottle fell softly to the ground, tossed from within. There was at least one other person inside.

  I turned the truck around and had it facing towards the track leading out. Then I got out, locked it and carried my rifle in my left hand. The crutch I had in my right hand. I didn’t think there were any of my cattle, but I had to make a point of looking. Also I didn’t expect any trouble. Whoever they were, grog was all they wanted. They had probably run out and had no money left. Still, I didn’t intend to be caught unarmed. Once I got among the cattle I began to wonder who posed the greatest threat. Some of those longhorn cows, especially those with black tips, lowered their heads and eyed me off with scared glances.

  I had a thorough look and left. No one emerged. The place spooked me and listening to the purr of the engine as it took me away was better than hearing the crowd cheer after a winner.

  Returning to Mitchell I telephoned Ken Bennett, an old family friend in Coonamble who was a semi-retired agent. Sal had told me the Coonamble district had received up to two hundred millimeter of rain and I thought there might be some agistment becoming available. The cattle were in great order and it was a pity to move them, especially at the height of summer, but I’d had enough.

  I explained the situation to Ken and he told me to ring back the following night. After the call I went back out to Rowallan where I received the usual ribbing.

  ‘We’d nicknamed you Geronimo,’ Noel laughed. ‘But you haven’t fired a shot yet. We’ll have to change your name.’

  The next evening I telephoned Ken and he had found a property that could take the lot. I immediately began to organise transport. The weather was still humid and stormy and roads were often closed for a day or two, so I deferred the move for a week hoping for fine clear weather. In retrospect I think I probably didn’t want to stop Sal flying up. I knew after the cattle left I would have to stay behind until all the stragglers were mustered and that might be another week.

  The bore routine had become very dull and Vodka Jack’s race start had never eventuated—he’d gone lame. We’d had a vet look at his hoof and it seemed like a stone bruise, but the Mitchell racetrack is the softest sand track I have ever seen. During his previous preparation at Dubbo there had been problems with Vodka. I began to conclude he was unsound.

  Far more worrying was Bill Anderson’s health. In a matter of days I noticed the trainer deteriorate and he told me confidentially he’d had a bleak report from the local doctor. While we had a cup of tea I noted his pill bottles and packets on the table. Some of them were the same as my father had taken in his final illness. Bill was such a cheerful bloke. Vodka would come right, he said. There was a race at Charleville made to order for him! I left the house feeling neither would ever recover.

  The day before Sal was due to arrive I went out to start the bore. Each day the weather seemed more humid and the scattered storms more frequent. I left early. A storm before ten o’clock was unlikely and I could be back in Mitchell by then. But as fate would have it I got a puncture on the return trip, only eight kilometres from the bore. I had two dreads in the rangelands—coming under gunfire and a truck puncture. For a few grim seconds I thought the bang was a shot, but the tyre had burst and the truck lurched to one side. From experience I knew the lurch meant both dual tyres had gone.

  I got out and found both ty
res in shreds. I had never had a double blow-out like this in thirty years of driving trucks. On those rough roads full of potholes and corrugations, punctures and blowouts were normal. My imagination needed considerable containment these days. Yet I couldn’t help thinking of that straight eye that had made Frankie a legend. A dingo’s head at five hundred metres suggested he could hit a truck tyre at seven hundred metres. If he’d fired from the top of a ridge into a head-on breeze, I wouldn’t hear the report.

  A double tyre change is a good excuse for a burst of foul language under the best circumstances. With one leg held together by a tight elastic bandage I just leant on my crutch and looked at the damage. Towering to my left was an ancient volcanic rock formation. The cliffs were as dark as black ink and with heavy cloud forming above, the whole landscape sent a shiver down my neck.

  To describe in detail how I performed this job would not only be boring, but would appear to be inviting sympathy. I was very well equipped. I carried a large block which is essential when a double lift of the jack is necessary to provide sufficient clearance for the spare. For undoing the big bolts I had a long piece of pipe. It wasn’t that bad, just a lot of heat and dust mixed up with sweat. I kept looking skyward and scanning the cliff lines. Eagles hovered above for brief periods, then continued their hunt for prey. On the ground nothing moved.

  The wheel hubs couldn’t be left by the road. One I lifted with the spare tyre ratchet and the other I bolted on beside the spare. The spare would run hot and the only way to minimise the heat was slow driving.