An Outback Nurse

by Thea Hayes

  More days of waiting passed by. Then one afternoon I saw Dr Holmes strolling past the window of Central Dressings, and I know that he saw me. He rang a few minutes later. ‘I’ve just received the results of your lumpectomy,’ he said, ‘and everything is fine.’

  Being paranoid, I thought, Why couldn’t he have told me that when he saw me? Is it really true? Or was the lump cancerous and he doesn’t want to tell me?

  Up to his surgery I marched. I knocked on the door and walked in.

  ‘Dr Holmes, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth.’

  He just laughed. Everything was fine—such a relief.

  Some years later, Dr Lawson Holmes was appointed as Director of Health in Western Australia.

  I never took the Pill again and fortunately the condition I suffered from does not predispose to cancer. How lucky am I?

  41

  Romance comes to Gordon

  The Negri race meetings were now held several kilometres from Nicholson, and our dongas were now clothed in hessian instead of bushes. All the stations endeavoured to build the most efficient bush camp. This was much easier now being much closer at Gordon Downs, rather than Wave Hill.

  It was at the 1966 meeting that Milton met two attractive young women, Madeline and Elspeth, who were travelling around Australia.

  ‘Do you mind if the girls come and stay at Gordon Downs for a while?’ Milton asked me and Ralph.

  ‘Of course not, we’d love to host them,’ we replied.

  I was always grateful for female company. The girls stayed for a couple of weeks before taking off for Queensland. They promised to catch up with us in New South Wales at the end of the year.

  On holidays in Sydney the following December, we had a call from Madeline and Elspeth. We made a date to meet at Taronga Park Zoo. While we were there, I happened to mention that I was about to advertise in The Sydney Morning Herald for a governess for Anthony, and I was dreading having to do the interviews.

  Madeline excitedly said, ‘Please, Thea, can I be the governess?’

  I was thrilled to have a delightful girl like Madeline coming as governess: a registered nurse and no interviewing. Perfect!

  As I’d booked Anthony into the Sydney Correspondence School during our stay in the city, by the time Madeline arrived, so had the correspondence lessons.

  While I remained in charge of the cooking, Madeline did the teaching in the schoolhouse, where her quarters were. In the afternoons she would give the boys riding lessons.

  Ralph and I noticed that Milton was continually coming into the station from the stock camp with all sorts of excuses. Some months later, he and Madeline announced that they were getting married.

  Great excitement! We started making plans for the guest list, bridal party and menu, and working out how much grog would be required. The pageboy outfits, bridal gown and bridesmaids’ dresses were made by Paula Stafford on the Gold Coast—the maker of the first bikinis in Australia. Patsy Hayes (Lynn’s wife), Betty Atkinson and I were bridesmaids. Ralph, Lynn and Sabu were groomsmen, and my sons were pageboys.

  Cudge, Madeline and I prepared food for a week beforehand. We had chooks, so there were plenty of eggs. I made 150 small pavlovas—one per guest—that melted because I didn’t have enough sugar in them; you need plenty of sugar for firmness. I had to do the lot again! By this time I was a pavlova specialist.

  There was no running to the local delicatessen; everything we were to serve came from the station—roast beef, steak, sucking pig (we ran our own pigs in a pigsty) and roast chicken, and I think we might have killed a young goat, of which there were about twenty. Plus we had an assortment of salads from the garden. The drinks, of course, came from Halls Creek, more than 150 kilometres away.

  Prominent in our minds was that the only road into the station had to cross Sturt Creek. During the long drought the creek had gone dry, but now it was fifty metres wide with only a narrow track of gravel on which to drive. If one of our guests drove off the gravel, the wedding could be delayed or we could have no guests! We asked everyone to arrive early Saturday morning to make sure they all got across well before the wedding, even though it meant putting on lunch.

  They came in droves, starting on Friday: the Vestey people, the Underwoods, and friends and family from Halls Creek, Katherine and Brisbane. No one drove off the track and all 150 guests arrived in fine time for the wedding.

  The ceremony was held beside a rock pool that we’d created between the kitchen and the homestead. The bride looked beautiful, and it was a stunning service, officiated by the United Church minister from Katherine.

  There was tons of food and plenty of grog. Everyone was happy except one guest, Swannie (the jack of all trades from Wave), who started celebrating before the service and fell asleep on a chair. He woke up an hour later, when photos were being taken of the bridal party, and asked, ‘What time’s the wedding?’

  Beds were allocated to the women, although most people slept in their swags on the lawn. I remember the lounge-room floor being covered in bodies. Many guests made merry until the wee hours of the morning, but Ralph and I had breakfast to think of for 150 people.

  While we were all together, we had a Negri committee meeting. Finally, after lunch, the guests started departing. Not all, though—some with no pressing obligations stayed a few more days. The longest-staying guest, of twelve days, was Ralph’s dear old Uncle Alec Fraser, who’d been one of ‘The Rats of Tobruk’. He was a great character with fascinating stories about World War I.

  Uncle Alec, Ralph’s grandmother’s brother, had become very well known in the seaside town of Caloundra, Queensland, where he’d moored his houseboat on Dicky Beach, an upmarket touristy area. This didn’t go down too well with the local council. Many letters of complaint were sent to the editor of the local paper, but Uncle Alec stayed put. How ecstatic Anthony, David and Jason were when I suggested we go and stay the night while on holidays with Uncle Alec in his old, rather fishy-smelling but comfortable bachelor-pad houseboat. Ralph thought I was mad—there was no way that he was going to stay in ‘the old tub’.

  The four of us had a great time when we went to stay: swimming, fishing and watching the passing parade of holidaymakers, who were fascinated by Uncle Alec’s home.

  There’s now a Fraser Park at Dicky Beach named after Uncle Alec.

  42

  The long weekend

  An invitation arrived at Gordon Downs from Jocelyn and Tim Doran, who were now managing Manbulloo Station, requesting the company of Ralph, me, Madeline and Milton at the wedding of Sue and Des, two of their staff, to be held at Manbulloo a few miles out of Katherine. Tim had been a stockman at the Ord River and Kirkimbie stations with Graham and Robyn Fulcher, while Jocelyn had been at school with Robyn. She’d come up to Kirkimbie for a holiday, met Tim and fell in love—another Outback romance.

  We left for the wedding early Friday morning. Being a good Vestey manager, very conscious of expenses, Ralph said we would all go in the one vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser ute. Great!

  Ralph drove. Madeline and her new baby, Danny, sat in the front. My three little boys sat in the back of the utility with Milton and me, plus our luggage and swags. There was no way I was leaving my children in the back without me. We drove to Wave Hill to pick up Nita Beebe—the partner of Don Hoare, a fencing contractor and yard builder—who was after a lift to Katherine.

  At Manbulloo we were accommodated at the homestead, and that night we had Sue’s hens’ party on the patio near the dining room, while the bucks party for Des was in the old store building. We girls, six of us—including Des’s sister, who’d flown up from Perth for the wedding—were drinking and chatting on the patio. Des’s sister was very conservative but quite friendly.

  We heard a sudden noise and turned to see Graham Fulcher weaving his way towards us. He plonked himself down on a chair in our midst. He then stood and said, ‘Greetings, ladies,’ and let go with a resounding fart. Not only did he do it once—he did
it several times! Robyn and I shrieked with laughter, which didn’t impress the Perth visitor at all. She was not amused.

  In the church the following day, Des’s sister sat beside me and Ralph. The organist started playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and everyone turned to look up the aisle. Initially we couldn’t see the bride, but Des’s sister could, and we knew by her gasp of horror that she didn’t approve. Then we saw the bride and knew why: Sue was dressed in a flowing gown of bright-red chiffon, scattered with white spots. The bridesmaids had the white dresses, with red spots. Des hadn’t told his sister that Sue had been married before. The poor woman never really recovered from the shock of seeing the bride in red. Of course, today no one would care what colour was worn.

  We spent the next morning swimming in the river and lying around on the sandy beach. Unfortunately we had a fright when the Manbulloo bookkeeper drove down the riverbank to the beach and nearly ran over baby Danny, who was asleep in his coolamon.

  Ralph then decided we’d better leave. But after we’d picked up Nita in Katherine and driven eighty kilometres, our ute suddenly slowed down and stopped. Nothing could be done. We were wondering what we could do next when we saw a road train coming towards us. It was Jack Beebe, Nita’s brother, in a prime mover with triple-trailers behind. He was returning to Katherine after delivering cattle to one of the stations.

  Having waved him down and secured his help, Ralph chained our ute to the last trailer and stayed in the driver’s seat, while the rest of us climbed into the first trailer, with Madeline and the baby in the cab. We took off. Wow! Talk about shocking. Dust and manure were billowing round and round; we had to bury our heads in our laps to breathe. As for poor Ralph, his ute was being thrown from one side of the road to the other. The small mercy was that no vehicles came from the opposite direction.

  After a few miles, Jack decided he’d better check on Ralph. This probably saved his life. The Toyota Land Cruiser was left on the side of the road and we all got into our life-saving road train, continuing back to Manbulloo where our beds were waiting for us. Madeline, Nita, the children and I had a sleep while the men picked up and towed the ute back to Manbullo and then had to repair it.

  Ralph was so annoyed when he found out what the problem was: someone had tampered with the rotor button while we were packing our gear. We heard later that this person wanted to delay our departure because it would break up the party. We didn’t find out who it was, lucky for them!

  The men got some sleep before we took off in the Land Cruiser again. After we’d travelled about two hundred kilometres down the Buchanan Highway, Nita cried out, ‘My suitcase is missing!’ She claimed she’d definitely put it on the ute, so back we went. Eighty kilometres later, there it was on the side of the road.

  The next drama was flat tyres when we still had more than 150 kilometres to go to get to Wave Hill. Milton and I walked the few miles to the Top Springs roadhouse. It was nearly midnight and we were thankful when Mrs Hawkes, the proprietor, greeted us warmly, offering rooms for the women and children while the men repaired the punctures.

  In the early hours of the morning we took off once again. We finally arrived at Gordon Downs just as the sun came up. There was a buzz of activity and we wondered what was causing the commotion.

  We were greeted by Popeye, Larry and all the girls. ‘Ralph, Milton, dat bushfire, him been get away, and come this way!’

  Sometimes it’s great being a woman. The poor guys had to go firefighting for the rest of the day and into the next. Ralph thought that the bushfire must have been caused by a lightning strike.

  43

  Going back to Wave

  Once again it was holiday time, so we did our bi-yearly drive to Wollongong, Sydney and Brisbane. While having dinner with the new Vestey general manager, Roy Bell, and his wife at their home at Mosman, we were told that we were being transferred back to Wave Hill with Ralph as manager, and was that okay? We’d spent five wonderful years at Gordon Downs, but we both felt we were ready for another challenge. So our answer was yes.

  Although the Aboriginal people had great respect for Tom Fisher, who’d been managing Wave Hill for twelve years, he’d had no control over the events of the walk-off. They broke his heart, poor fella! Tom and Anne had decided to retire to Kyogle where Tom originally came from.

  We went over to Wave Hill for Tom and Anne’s farewell party. It was sad to see them leave, but we caught up with them on our next holiday.

  *

  At Wave we met Gavin MacDonald, who worked as a stock inspector for the Animal Industry Branch run by the Commonwealth government, a department that supervised animal welfare and livestock movements, and collected data such as branding numbers throughout the Territory. Gavin was the stock inspector for fourteen other stations including two Aboriginal communities, and had been based at Wave for a year when we returned.

  Pleuropneumonia and brucellosis were diseases prevalent in cattle in the 1950s and ’60s. They were tested and treated, and pleuropneumonia has been eradicated up to this point. Cattle ticks were another huge problem with the Shorthorn and Hereford breeds, and plunge dips were the only answer. I found it horrifying to see cattle being shoved into a deep, narrow, long cavern filled with filthy, toxic water, and it was very dangerous for the stockmen too.

  The British Shorthorn was the predominant breed in the North back then, some with a mix of Hereford. It wasn’t until the seventies that Santa Gertrudis cattle were introduced, and the end of that decade saw the introduction of Brahman, which are not prone to ticks, on virtually every property.

  Ralph was thirty-three and represented the new look in cattle management. He’d been bred in the Territory; his father, Dick, had managed the famous Rosewood Station. Working on Wave Hill with great cattlemen like Tom Fisher and Harry Huddleston, Ralph learnt to run a station in a very smooth, efficient manner as was seen in his management of Gordon Downs. He understood the Aboriginal people and was loved by them, and could speak Gurindji and Warlpiri fluently. With the highly political situation at Wave Hill since the walk-off, Ralph was the perfect choice for manager.

  The Vestey Company had decided to rebuild Wave and make it a showplace. We would eventually have a new homestead and buildings at a new site, situated at Number One Bore, thirty kilometres away from the current quarters.

  Milton and Madeline were happy to take over the management at Gordon. With their young son, Danny, they needed better accommodation than the quarters they were living in. So our move to Wave worked well for everyone.

  I’d received a letter from a fifth-year medical student in Perth, Joanne. She had met someone who’d visited Gordon, and she’d liked the sound of it. She wrote to ask if I needed a governess, as she wanted to have a gap year from her studies. I jumped at the opportunity. Within a few weeks, Joanne arrived on the mail plane, only to be told that we were all about to leave the Kimberley and go to Wave Hill.

  Ralph had travelled over the week before on the Gordon truck with most of our gear. In the meantime, Sturt Creek had come up and there was no access by road: the only way out was by plane. The company sent their Cessna from Darwin to collect Joanne, the three boys and me. My sons were delighted about the flight but very sad to leave Gordon Downs, which we all loved.

  44

  Rat plague and the Hong Kong flu

  It felt strange going back to Wave Hill after five years. The old place hadn’t improved at all. In fact, it looked messy and unkempt. Thankfully, the old men’s quarters beside the overseer’s cottage, now known as the manager’s house, had been removed.

  Don Hoare—the fencing contractor whose partner, Nita, we’d taken to the recent wedding—had set up camp in and around the post office cottage. He thought he was kingpin until Ralph sorted him out. There was also a new bookkeeper, Beryl, a sophisticated Sydney girl who looked completely out of place; an aristocratic Englishman who was supposed to be, but couldn’t, cook; and new jackaroos and stockmen. A lot of staff changes in the past five years. And a
part from the white staff, we only had a few Aboriginal workers now.

  We were extremely busy. I did the nursing and housekeeping. Ralph, in addition to running the station and sorting out his crew, had to monitor work on the new station homestead. He and Gus Ringler, who drove over from Nicholson every week, went out frequently to check on the prefabricated buildings being constructed. The contractors had their own accommodation and cook at the site.

  To make our situation even harder, we had a rat plague that had been going on for six months or more. These rats were huge! They ate everything they could find including boots, saddles and bridles. They ran riot in the kitchen. The cook set up a large tub of water with a slippery, fat-laden plank across it and a tasty nibble in the middle; the rats would run across, slip off and drown. Some nights this caught eighty or more in the kitchen alone. And my boys learnt to shoot their slug guns at the rats when they found them in their guinea pig cage.

  All the quarters were made of corrugated iron, with an open space about eight inches between the cement floor and the start of the wall. One night Beryl wore an expensive pearl necklace to dinner, as there was a party to farewell one of the staff. Later, when Beryl retired, she left the necklace on her bedside table. In the morning it had gone. She was devastated and went complaining to Ralph that someone had stolen her pearls. Graham MacArthur, a head stockman, was sent to solve the mystery. Looking for clues, he discovered that between the two layers of corrugated iron forming the walls, there was a seven-centimetre gap—and there, sitting on the wooden wall studs, were the pearls.

  Our house, being elevated, was the only building that was relatively rat-proof. But even we didn’t escape from the wretched things. One evening Ralph and I went to retire and we could hear a rustling and scratching under our bed. ‘That’s a bloody rat, I’m sure!’ Ralph cried. ‘Someone must have left the door open.’ Dasher was mustered, and he and Ralph—armed with a broom—chased the rat around, over and under the bed, with me standing on the bed screaming. Ralph cursed and Dasher barked. Thankfully, Dasher killed it on the verandah.