During that two hours it took to change the tyres the cloud cover dropped, dark and menacing like a tropical monsoon. I had ninety kilometres ahead. The racetrack teaches you to weigh probabilities. I should go back to my camp and dig in. But Sal was already in Sydney. I wanted to be at the Roma airport.
Thirty kilometres down the track I had to pull up and consult a district map. A storm had broken to the south. Streak lightning struck the ground to a sound like cannon fire and the very darkness of the cloud foretold raging torrents down every creek enveloped by the storm. My only hope was the east. The map showed a track running east for about seventy kilometres. It formed a junction with a road running north to Injune and south to Roma.
I had been on a short section of the road before, as it was the back road to Roma. The track passed through heavy black basalt soil—five millimetres of rain and any conventional-drive vehicle would clog up with mud. I had to take the back road to Injune. It kept close to the ranges and hopefully away from the black soil.
I struck a big storm at the top of the low divide. The soil was grey with a high component of sand. It was a matter of keeping the pace up. Sometimes I hit sheets of water so hard the lateral spray reminded me of that from a speedboat. Down one slope a car was bogged right in the middle of the road. There was nothing I could do for the occupants, and if I stopped I too would be bogged. I dropped a gear and gave the engine full bore. The last glimpse I had of the car was the occupants diving over into the back seat. In the rear-vision mirror I saw a wave of mud engulf the car. I wanted to say Roma airport at all costs, but knew I would never see those horrified faces again.
I reached the junction and there was so much mud over the windscreen I couldn’t read the road sign. If I slowed down I’d stop. Taking the turn was risky. If the map was accurate Roma was to the right, some eighty kilometres to the south-east. I spun the wheel to the right, went into a broadside, wiped out the sign and somehow straightened. Another twenty minutes of wild driving and the road was suddenly dry and dusty. I drove on and only thirty-five kilometres from Roma recognised Sandra (my cousin) and her husband’s property, Kooyong, on the right. I had never come to their place from the north and didn’t realise this was their road. It had been nearly a month since I had bought two bulls from them. I pulled in through the gate.
‘Why didn’t you come to us?’ Sandra cried, after I briefly explained the crutch.
‘Mitchell was far enough,’ I said. ‘The bore still has to be run and no one else will do it.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘No, it’s not that bad,’ I said seriously. ‘The worst that’s happened to me so far is a drunk trying to pull me out of the truck. It’s the rumours that are scary. They reckon Frankie got so drunk one day he started to see things and fired bullets into tree trunks, gateposts and any lump of rubbish with a bit of size. Someone came into town and said he was shooting at anybody he could find. That’s how it starts. Starlight never fired a shot in his life, but by the time the storytellers had done with him he’d held up more coaches and banks than Billy the Kid.’
We went inside and they wouldn’t hear of me going straight to Roma. If there was a storm they would make sure I got to the airport. In fact I was to take their car.
Sandra cooked one of her delicious meals and was genuinely upset I hadn’t gone out to them after the accident. The truth was, of course, I didn’t know it was going to rain and provide three or four days of surface water.
The storms kept away from the Roma area and next morning I took the truck in for tyre replacements after I had met Sal. I arrived at the airport half an hour early.
I couldn’t have looked worse. A badly bloodshot eye, hair that hadn’t been cut for three months and a crutch under one arm. It was hot outside the waiting room, but I chose to wait under a tree and listen for the aircraft. I felt agitated and almost cursed aloud when a private plane broke the silence for a warm-up. The pilot taxied out onto the main runway and I wondered whether he knew the big one was about to come in. The baggage collector had arrived and he didn’t know either. I had everyone worried for nothing and then enormous headlights appeared low on the northern horizon.
Clearly, the Flight West pilots were taking no chances with the little plane on the runway. The pilot of the private plane taxied to the side and I found myself trembling. I wondered what the hell had gone wrong with my nerves.
The plane landed and the engines were shut down. The door opened, up went the staircase and I waited. She would be the last off! I couldn’t remember when I had been more pleased to see her.
‘Heavens, look at you,’ Sal said, shocked. She hadn’t even made it off the tarmac.
‘Welcome to Rome.’
The lame joke didn’t go over. Sal had voiced second thoughts about the trip during one of our telephone conversations. It was the heat that worried her. She said that if I swapped the ‘a’ on the end of Roma for an ‘e’ she would come.
‘Rome’s a hot place too,’ I had told her, but she knew I had never been there.
‘Oh, it’s beautiful. Full of history and culture.’
‘There’s a distinct culture here,’ I countered.
‘I’m sure.’
Now Sal gave me a kiss; a quick one as though I were some distant relative. I could see she was instantly troubled by my injury. I realised too, for the first time, how disturbed she had become by the prolonged nature of my Queensland campaign. Everyone had desperate problems directly related to the drought, but no one else that she knew of had been forced into a six-month separation.
‘I don’t know what I expected,’ Sal said, while we waited for her suitcase and the hot wind blew her hair everywhere. ‘It’s as flat as Coonamble and probably twice as hot.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you to a coffee shop that Double Bay couldn’t beat.’
The coffee place was part of a plant nursery so it was surrounded by hundreds of pot plants. The green and lush atmosphere of this little corner softened Sal’s mood and we began to discuss the future.
I have presented an austere image of Sal on this occasion, but she had every justification to be thoroughly fed up with the Queensland campaign. She had nursed my father in the final six weeks of his life, organised the feeding of the whole herd for two months, overseen the trucking arrangements and when the last truck had departed she still had one hundred and fifty cows to feed. In addition were the constant needs of three boys at university. I had it tough in a different way. It was mostly interesting up here and sometimes a bit of fun. Sal’s end of the bargain had been boring and lonely.
There was lots to talk about and the proprietor of the nursery-coffee shop must have been wondering whether we intended to sleep there as well by the time we left. I telephoned the owner at Southlands Station, right near Mt Kennedy, and he said the roads would be passable next day. For the moment the weather had cleared and it looked like the mustering and the loading would go ahead as planned.
By the time the truck was ready for collection from the tyre place, we were both feeling the humidity. In February southern Queensland’s as hot as anywhere in Australia and for a brief period the northern Wet moves as far south as Moree in New South Wales. The only escape from the discomfort of this weather was Sandra’s garden. By planting native trees Sandra had created a green oasis and with the garden straddling one of the highest ridges in the district a breeze always found its way there. Sal was immediately inspired by this thirty-year effort and after walking through the garden all trace of resentment towards this vast country evaporated. In addition, Sandra and Bill gave Sal a warm welcome and they will never know how grateful I was. When we set off next day Sal was eagerly looking forward to seeing the cattle and the country. Bill offered me a vehicle, but I explained quietly that I felt safer in the truck.
On the two-hour trip out to Mt Kennedy only one station homestead could be seen from the road.
‘It’s so isolated,’ Sal exclaimed. Yet Sal has a quick eye for beau
ty and when we crossed the dingo fence and entered the rangelands she instantly fell in love. I tend to see landforms and trees, but not much else. Sal gets exasperated sometimes and says I don’t even see a flower if it’s thrust in my face. At least I’d noticed that in the sand-based soils of the Carnarvon outcrops there’s a wide variety of plantlife. When we arrived at the bore I started the engine and we walked up one of the sandstone escarpments.
There had been a storm across Mt Kennedy, but once again not enough to fill any of the billabongs. The main effect of the storm was a brief drop in temperature up in the range, which is about three hundred metres higher than Roma.
At the old base camp we boiled the billy and ate the sandwiches Sandra had cut for us. I never said it to Sal, but I hadn’t wanted to take her there. I knew when she left I wouldn’t be able to camp there again—her memory and presence would be too strong. I took little comfort from the arrangements in place for moving the cattle. It was the Wet now. Deep down I knew I needed a degree of luck to get out.
We took the long road back to Bill and Sandra’s via Mitchell. First stop was Bill Anderson’s place. We sat down for the long cup of tea, but the horsetrainer was quiet. He wasn’t well and his face had an ashen look. Vodka hadn’t improved either and the younger horse looked sour and fed up with his yard. We knew his family was deeply concerned about Bill and we didn’t discuss the horses much.
The next stop was the ‘switchboard’. Annette’s days were long and very busy, but she took fifteen minutes off and had coffee with us. If Sal hadn’t realised it before, she certainly knew now that Mitchell had become a second home for me. I had developed a strong attachment to this area and I think this may have been disquieting for her. The truth was I wanted to get home and I simply made the best of a difficult situation.
Any woman would have felt the same anxiety that Sal had experienced. Living with agisted cattle—like I was—was unheard of. The situation at Mt Kennedy was more than abnormal—it was bizarre and belonged in the nineteenth century. The vital role I played in the survival of the cattle was slammed home to Sal, on her third day. We had to go back out to turn the bore off. It was a stinking hot day and a beast had broken a trough rail and the broken piece had fallen onto the float. The trough itself sat like an island in a flood of water. I had to cut another rail and leave the engine running. The next day Sal was to catch the plane home, so we couldn’t stay at the camp.
‘When will you come back out?’ Sal asked as we drove away.
‘Tomorrow. Only enough diesel to run the big engine until tomorrow evening.’
Sal was silent for a long while. The heat had sucked in the storm clouds again from the north. Tomorrow looked ominous.
‘What if it rains? Big rains?’
‘I can’t hold the agistment at Coonamble. Even if I can’t get the cattle out,’ I paused and took her hand, ‘I’ll be home soon.’
Next day there seemed to be no sunrise, as though time stood still and that period of light soon after dawn never developed. A darkness filled the whole northern sky. Word came through that Longreach and beyond were cut off. We left early for the airport.
‘I’m so glad I came,’ Sal said, looking miserable. ‘You’re hopelessly stuck here and no one would believe it unless they saw it all.’
The flight from Charleville landed on time and the engines were only turned off long enough for the extra passengers to board. Sal was fighting back tears and I felt a sense of loneliness so deep I had never before experienced it. I waited to watch the plane, but within seconds it soared through the cloud ceiling.
For the next five days no one moved on country roads unless the highway ran past their front gate. I made it back to Sandra and Bill’s, but only just. The rain came in cyclic squalls—sheets of water followed by brief periods of rumbling heavy cloud cover and no rain.
I had no choice with the Coonamble agistment. If I held it I had to pay for it. Most of New South Wales remained in drought and plenty of graziers were looking for feed, especially in the central west. Reluctantly, I made a phone call and released it. I had no idea when I would get the cattle out. Of particular concern to me now were the weaners or the big calves. The cows had survived a terrible twelve months and needed relief from their young ones in order to recover before the next round of calving.
With nothing much to do but read, write letters—sometimes to people long forgotten—and gain unwanted weight with Sandra’s fine cooking, I telephoned all the local agents about a paddock for the weaners. Within forty-eight hours I had a paddock at Surat to inspect. It sounded so good I didn’t think two hundred weaners would mark it and when a Mitchell agent told me about a small mob of cows and calves he had for private sale I agreed to inspect them as well.
Staying at Bill and Sandra’s was like an interval at a cinema screening a long-winded western movie. The only difference was I didn’t want to go back in as the second halves of western movies are always the bloodiest. Sandra kept reminding me it was good for my nerves to rest. She did, however, spare me by not saying, ‘Good for your nerves to be rested before you return to hell.’
Despite being as comfortable as I could be anywhere else in the world other than home, I began for the first time to feel totally cut off. For the moment the cattle represented the engine of the whole family estate business. Failure in Queensland spelt bankruptcy in New South Wales. I had been down that road once and now had an overwhelming fear of it. I’d never understood why English gentlemen shot themselves if left destitute by the wheels of fortune until I went close to the brink myself. It is a living death and perhaps worse than death to know that you have failed and the world turns its back on you. I would stay in Queensland as long as it took to secure our future, but I wanted to go home.
By the time the road out to Mt Kennedy was dry enough for a truck it was mid-February 1995. This time the big Wet had arrived. A billabong near the base of the plateau was full and the black hole had overflowed. The foul stinking water had been flushed out and replaced with fresh run-off. With slightly cooler weather entrenched since the big rain, I estimated the surface water would last about six weeks.
I bled the old diesel and started it. Despite the surface water a lot of cattle were still watering from the trough, but I expected them to gradually drop off as more and more of them became aware of the billabong and the black hole.
Enough surface water for at least six weeks gave me an opportunity to rethink my position. I could go home for a little while. If autumn rains fell in the south I could move the cattle back home. The problem was leaving them unattended. Two months ago I would have considered it unthinkable; now I felt a certain acceptance from those who appeared to live on the edge of the law. It was also time to get things into perspective. There was an opportunity to put a large area of Myall Plains under wheat at minimum cost and I couldn’t achieve that sitting around a central Queensland bore. And more important was the family. Sal had been left alone long enough and the boys would begin to wonder whether their father had left home for good.
Before I left Mt Kennedy it would be essential to take the older weaners off. I expected to draft off a hundred and fifty of these, in addition to about fifty older steers. It meant another week of waiting and watching the weather. The road out from Mitchell was still too wet and cut up for heavy transport.
I used Rowallan as a base again. The road was in such a bad state, ten millimetres of rain would cut me off and I had got sick of the camp. With time to spare I went down to Echo Hills near Surat to inspect the agistment. On the way I called in to see the owner of the Surat Hotel. Agents had advised me he had two properties and grass available. What I didn’t know was that he was so sick with cancer he had only a couple of weeks to live. Like most dying people he desperately wanted to live and how he found the courage to prop himself up in bed and discuss my problems is beyond me. In cities the plight of others often never even reaches next door. The bush culture embraces everyone. He had heard about my story and wanted to he
lp. I don’t think money was an issue, although naturally I would have paid him the standard rate. I thanked him and left. If Echo Hills didn’t suit I was to contact him.
South of Surat the open downs give way to sandhill country. Low red escarpments, no more than thirty metres in height, form a barrier to the vast plains of box and mulga in southern central Queensland. It looked to be good sheep country, but for cattle I had reservations until I saw the paddocks.
The red base soils of this terrain were the most fragile I had ever seen, principally because it had been undisturbed for millions of years. The earth’s rich soils manifest from volcanic activity and the advance and retreat of ice sheets over the ages. Here there had been nothing, except wind, sun and the leaching effect of rain. Bad farming practices in these areas can decimate an environment within twenty years. The owner of Echo Hills, Ken Slaughter, had assessed this country from the start and put in place contour banks and large dams for water storage. Reducing the flow of dry creeks in floodtime is essential or they spill over and carve out scores of extra gullies. In every paddock, belts of trees had been left for shade.
Ken was one of those quiet achievers we sadly don’t hear enough about. Typical of this stamp of man, he had few words; almost all his energy went into creative activities. He had two paddocks available for agistment. The summer feed was halfway up the door of Ken’s four-wheel drive and lush. It would not only carry the weaners and steers for a couple of months, but possibly fatten them. I still had an offer of forty cows and calves at Augathella and I told Ken. Like most western graziers he was conservative and thought I would have to move the cattle in May. I was keen to make up losses from the Roma sale.
The cows and calves were on a property about one hundred and ninety kilometres north-west of Mitchell. I had heard just about every family was doing it tough in this area and this place was no exception. The husband was away working with the wife at home alone. The cattle themselves were evidence of hardship, as only the very oldest of the calves had been marked and they were nearly as big as their mothers. Most of the calves were bulls and at least eight months old. They were three-quarter-bred Santa Gertrudis and marking them was going to be no picnic. Over the years I had marked a lot of overgrown bull calves and using penicillin I never lost one. These young bulls had weight. The market was strong and this mob looked like a quick turn-over. The Santa-cross cows were unjoined, but I had two bulls spelling at Amby Creek.
Horses Too Are Gone, The Page 21