Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  This has been a story of anything but success. Ironically, had the Queensland campaign been a brilliant success with no drama the only thing I would have written was my signature on a cheque. After a suicide in our district an old farmer said to me, ‘Always count your blessings’. We couldn’t count them all.

  To pass through this world and never take a bold step for fear of rebuke and derision is to deprive yourself of the true vitality of life.

  And as for the Wild Bunch without whom this story would not have been worth writing, I have a special quote: ‘A man who dies without an enemy is neither a man of passion nor a warrior, nor will they remember him.’

  Five months after my horse spill at Claravale we went back to brand the spring calves. Smokie and I mustered them up in the ‘twenty-thousand-acre’ paddock and Sal did the cooking. The paddock had kept the cattle in magnificent order, it was well watered and we hated the prospect of having to leave, but the paddock needed a long spell before the winter. Wesfarmers at Roma found me a thousand-hectare paddock at Yuleba on a station called Bendemere, about two hundred and twenty kilometres to the south-east from Claravale, and the whole herd was roadtrained there. Soon after they arrived buffalo fly descended from the north. The flies swarm in thousands, maybe millions, and if nothing is done the cattle rub themselves raw around the hindquarters and neck. We had to spray them all with a protective chemical.

  The station was very well managed and for nearly four months Sal and I were able to forget about the herd and focus our attention on the home base. Farmers all over New South Wales were gearing up for a record wheat planting—the crop to get everyone out of trouble, or at least those who had arable land. The Coonabarabran district has large areas of grazing country not suitable for cropping and with only thirty millimetres of rain in four months the cattle and sheep producers entered the third year of drought with no reserves of stockfeed or cash. Some old pastoral families liquidated their farms and that included one holding selected in the 1850s. That awful dead-end, talked about in pubs for decades, had finally become a reality.

  At Myall Plains the feed was so sparse we had to sacrifice most of our remaining breeders. That is, those cows that had been kept at home. To add to the sting the cattle market had crashed in April. Our only hope of avoiding a terrible sale result was in Victoria. Southern Victoria was enjoying a good season.

  For Sal and me it was an opportunity for our first holiday in three years. I examined a map and saw that Wodonga was a little more than an hour’s drive from the alps.

  Geoff White provided a little paddock near the yards and we trucked the cows and calves down a week before the sale. Each morning Sal and I fed them hay out of our truck and then we took off for the day. The truck was a bit cumbersome, but in low gear it could go anywhere a car could. We tried our hand at trout fishing on the upper Murray, walked the imposing Mt Buffalo ramparts and on easy days found some delightful places: Beechworth with its yummy bakeries being the most memorable. At night we found Albury-Wodonga had live bands and on one occasion an impressive jazz performance in a smart-looking pub in Wodonga. In addition the city of Albury has probably the best cinema complex in inland Australia and wonderful restaurants. Needless to say we needed a good sale—and got one. The cows and calves were so close to the saleyards every agent in the city had an opportunity to see them and advise clients.

  Towards the end of June 1996 the herd in Queensland had eaten out the paddock at Yuleba. I was faced with an immediate sale, which would have been disastrous. Cows and calves were fetching less than $200 per unit, or one third of pre-drought prices. Once again I had to study where the rain had fallen and I contacted stock and property agent Barry McGregor at Goondiwindi. I told him the whole story and two days later he drove three hundred kilometres up to Yuleba to inspect the herd. After several phonecalls he secured three paddocks, each on different stations. None of the paddocks was large enough to carry the herd for any length of time. The herd was split into three mobs and loaded onto trucks for the fourth time. My family and I will be forever grateful to Barry McGregor, who voluntarily rescued us from a sad ending with the cattle.

  The cattle remained in the Goondiwindi district for six months. The cows had a fresh lot of calves and on the 20th January 1997 they were loaded for the final trip home.

  Of the 1472 head roadtrained to Queensland only two hundred and ninety made it home with their calves. The cows had travelled three thousand kilometres. We’d sold 1160 head of cattle through the Roma saleyards.

  Scalp I didn’t see again. He sold his station and the last I heard he had purchased a lease in the Expedition Ranges north of Rolleston.

  The Old Boy sold out and lives in the village of Amby, only a block from Smokie. I wouldn’t mind a dollar for every minute these two spend over a billy of tea in the morning and a XXXX stubbie in the evening.

  Mick Bourke I haven’t seen since the stampede at South Bore. Someone thought he had gone back out to Quilpie.

  Of the families nothing has changed, except their kids are all taller. Annette’s boy Scottie had a week at Myall Plains in December 1997. After having ridden a racehorse for the first time and climbing two hundred metres to the summit of Balagurie Split rock in the Warrumbungles I am sure he returned to Mitchell with some tales.

  In January 1996 the Campbell family from Claravale had a few days here with us as well and I remember Gil being fascinated with the fresh green lucerne in the horse paddock; something my family and I have taken for granted over the years.

  Geoff White, manager for Wesfarmers Dalgety in Albury, still telephones me occasionally. It was Geoff who saw me through the financial crisis in 1995. He knows Sal and I are busting to take another draft of cattle to Albury for sale, so that we can walk the alps again and indulge in Albury’s restaurants. But it won’t rain down there and no one wants cattle when the paddocks are bare.

  The other characters that came and went in this story I have not seen since. A lot can happen in three and a half years and I know that almost all of them have left the Maranoa.

  I have four boys: James, Richard, Nicholas and Tom. It was James who uttered in disappointment one day ‘and the horses too are gone’. It just slipped out of his lips and I said to myself, ‘He’s just named the manuscript I’ve started to write.’ James and Kari live in Sydney. James is a full-time auctioneer and knows the history of every champion racehorse since the first Melbourne Cup in 1861.

  Richard is no longer available for stockwork and his saddle is gathering cobwebs. He found his girl, Katie, who has an Irish born grandmother, in Queensland. Katie and Richard were married in March 1997 and the reception was at Myall Plains. Richard practices law in Sydney now and I get very embarrassed when he telephones me from the office at 7.00 a.m. and I answer the phone from the bed.

  Nicholas left for Canada soon after the rescue of the herd and worked as a ‘Lifty’ at Whistler. He came back with such a glowing account of the Rockies it was too much for me and I began planning a trip to Colorado. Like Richard and James, Nick cannot get home much now. However, he did make it possible for Sal and me to make a brief trip to Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico by looking after Myall Plains while we were away. Nick has a degree in Business/Tourism and works in Sydney.

  Tom has a Bachelor of Business degree and is headed, he tells me, for those cold little green islands some sixteen thousand kilometres away. For him it conjures up excitement and travelling on a shoestring. I am sure it will be. I will lose my chief tractor driver and when I am clocking up the hours in that mobile jail, maybe even I’ll think about those green islands.

  Of the horses, Circus grazes away in semi-retirement. There is a dam in the horse paddock and in the summer he rolls in the mud every day and has a tummy like a beer barrel. Malameen has been promoted to the number one stockhorse and is boss of the mob. Poor old Yarramin didn’t make it back. He died at Claravale, but he was twenty-seven years old. Only a foal though compared with another old gentleman I have here, named Cloudy
, who will have a fortieth birthday party in August 1998.

  The old dingo died but Millie and Ellie are as full of life as ever. Millie will be given a pup soon, to look after and train before she gets too old.

  The Bow-Legged Cow, veteran of the big lift, is fit and well. In 1995 she had twins; the only cow to have twins on Myall Plains in half a century. I see her regularly. She waters at the trough near the fowlhouse. She and Starlight’s bull should have got together, because they both saw more of Australia than most people. I wonder what the calf would have been like!

  banker

  creek on verge of flooding

  beast

  head of cattle

  bore

  artesian well

  boree

  native tree, acacia species; grows on the western downs and around Longreach, Qld

  boss drover

  person in charge of a droving unit

  box

  native tree, eucalyptus species, widespread

  box-up

  when two separate herds of cattle get mixed up

  brigalow

  native tree, acacia species, widespread in Qld

  campdraft, draft

  separate particular cattle from the herd on horseback

  cast for age cows

  old cows, to be sold

  (marking) cradle

  frame that holds calf during marking, also known as a crush

  (calf) crush

  see cradle

  Flinders grass

  native grass, grows throughout northern Australia

  gidgee

  small native tree of the arid zone, acacia species

  hands (horse)

  method of measuring a horse’s height

  herdsman

  stock route manager for each shire

  horse-tailer, tailer

  member of droving unit who tends the horses

  lunge (verb)

  to get a horse on the move before rider mounts. Method of avoiding buckjumping. Usually used with a horse not ridden for a month or more.

  (to) mark (cattle)

  to castrate, ear mark and brand

  mickey

  an unwanted bull; not required for stud

  Mitchell grass

  native, principal downs grass, Qld. Only grows on better soils

  mothering (cattle)

  cows and their calves that have been separated pairing off successfully when reunited

  myall

  native tree, flourishes on black inland soils

  night break

  cattle fenced off or cordoned off with tape for the night

  pad (cattle)

  cattle trail, eg to water

  pound (Qld)

  drafting yard; Qld cattle yards

  purse (cattle)

  testicle pouch

  ringer

  Qld stockman

  roadtrain

  line of linked trailers pulled by a truck, used for transporting cattle, etc

  scrubber

  beast that has gone wild in the bush

  stinker

  swamp wallaby

  strain (verb),

  strainers

  to taughten fencing wire, fencing tool

  (to) tail

  follow, watch, look after

  tonguing

  sign of overheated beast, such as frothing, tongue lolling from mouth, eg after running

  turkey’s nest

  circular mound of soil with central depression to store water that has been pumped in from bore or large dam

  weaner

  a marked calf taken off mother at 6 to 8 months

  wilga

  small, drought-resistant native tree of the inland red soil plains

  Also by Michael Keenan

  There’s little Mike Keenan hasn’t experienced when it comes to writing with authority about outback Australia. A fifth-generation farmer born during WWII and reared on a western NSW sheep station, he has lived among the people of the Australian bush for more than fifty years. He has observed the despair, the starkness, the humour and the brief glimmers of hope, all set against the backdrop of a harsh landscape. With his true stories from the bush, Keenan always aspires to awaken a consciousness of identity and the realisation that Australia is a land that doesn’t fit well with the fast pace, indifference to the environment and heedless consumerism of modern urban life.

  The Horses Too Are Gone, Mike’s first book, has sold over 36,000 copies since it was first published and has become an Australian bush classic. Since then Mike has successfully published Wild Horses Don’t Swim, In Search of a Wild Brumby and Last Horse Standing.

  Now living in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Mike continues to write about the outback and those who live there.

  For more information about Mike Keenan and his books,

  visit www.michaelkeenan.com.au