To Ride a Fine Horse

by Mary Durack

  If you want to build a hut to keep out wind and weather,

  Stringybark will make it snug and hold the shack together;

  Greenhide, if you use it well, will make it all the stronger,

  Just tie it up with greenhide and it’s sure to last the longer.

  Stringybark will light your fire

  Greenhide will never fail yer,

  Stringybark and greenhide

  Are the mainstay of Australia.’

  Patsy was proud of that first little Dixon’s Creek homestead, but he promised his family that some day he would build them a fine mansion and they would ride in carriages and dress in the height of fashion. His sisters believed that everything he said would come true and worked almost as hard as himself. They were all good riders, especially little Sarah, who had been so delicate. Australian life had agreed with her and she had grown strong and bright and spent as much time as possible stock riding with her big brother.

  Their Uncle Darby, who lived on the adjoining selection, was afraid that young Patsy might be riding for a fall, with his two properties, his mortgage to Mr Emanuel, and all this rushing about. He thought he should settle down quietly, pay cash for everything, and clear his land for agriculture as he was doing himself. Darby also said he was going to bring his sons up to be good practical farmers, not like so many of the younger generation who were forever galloping off after wild stock or droving cattle to some waterless wilderness. He now had three sturdy boys, whose lives, had he but known, would be spent doing exactly those things of which he disapproved.

  Patsy himself would have liked to have some land under crop but he felt the time had not yet come for successful agriculture in Australia and that he would do better to use his properties for grazing stock. Already the land he had purchased had begun to seem too small for him. His herd was increasing and the crown land he had been able to use at first was quickly being taken up by other small settlers.

  He had now registered 7 PD, his ‘lucky number’ and his initials, as the brand for his stock and just as he had been so confident about his pot of gold, he began to feel sure that somewhere on the vast continent there was a great stretch of country on which his 7 PD stock would graze and multiply.

  Sometimes he would talk with drovers who had returned from taking stock to the north or the far west or had brought sheep or cattle from distant areas for sale in Goulburn. From these he heard of the great empty spaces waiting to be taken up ‘past the last man out’. Then he would grow restless and impatient to strike out for himself where no white man had set foot before. Indeed he might have done so then and there if fate had not stepped in. But this is a story he best tells himself in a rhyme he called ‘The Boy from County Clare’:

  This boy he came from County Clare

  And nothing to his name

  ’Til a horse he found in the Goulburn pound

  Then he was in the game.

  Some gold he dug where the diggers delved

  But he turned his horse again,

  For the gold of his heart was the gold of the grass

  That grew on the Goulburn plain.

  “See how a Squire am I,” he sang,

  “With credit at the store,

  “And gold a-mounting in the bank,

  “And who should wish for more?”

  But as he sang a voice he heard

  From far, far away

  And never felt he half as rich

  From that very day.

  “Ride boy, ride, for the bush is wide

  “And if your heart is stout

  “There is a kingdom for a song

  “Where all the roads run out.

  “A kingdom for a song, boy,

  “A kingdom for a sigh,

  “Where scattered tracks of nomad blacks

  “Stretch out to touch the sky.

  “Such rivers and such seas of grass

  “And little price to pay!”

  But all the streams of his fair dreams

  Were far, so far away.

  And what was at the end of them

  But longing for to gain,

  When the gold of his heart was the gold in the hair

  Of a girl on the Goulburn plain?’

  5

  Romance Steps In

  MARY COSTELLO was only fourteen years old when Patsy met her and decided then and there that he would one day make her his wife. She was the daughter of well-to-do station owners, who had also migrated from Ireland and later taken up land about ten miles from Dixon’s Creek. Their two children were both Australian born, but whereas the son, John, at sixteen years old was already considered a splendid young stockman, rider and horsebreaker, the parents had scarcely let their cherished daughter out of their sight. She was a pretty, gentle little girl and her mother at least had no intention of ever permitting her to marry a struggling bush settler. It was impossible, however, to prevent her meeting Patsy from time to time, as he and her brother, with their mutual love of horses and horse racing, were firm friends. They both rode at the Goulburn race meetings and as Patsy was the elder by four years Mrs Costello was sure he was encouraging her son to become a gambler and a ne’er-do-well.

  When the first little band of nuns came to settle in Goulburn, Mary was at once packed off to boarding school, where she remained for two years, and was thereafter taken to stay with relatives in Sydney.

  Patsy immediately began to find good reasons for visiting the big city. He attended all the stock sales, purchased stud cattle and horses and turned up at social functions where he would be likely to meet the girl of his dreams. Mary’s mother disapproved as strongly as ever, but her father could not long resist the happy personality of the determined young Irishman. At last it became clear to all that this was true love, for neither Patsy nor Mary had eyes for any other and it had to be admitted, even by Mrs Costello, that they made a handsome young couple.

  They were married in the spring of 1862, at Tea-tree Station, the Costellos’ station home. It was the biggest bush wedding of the year, and with so many riders, traps and buggies on the road people said it looked like another gold rush. Those were the days when women wore crinolines, and men, almost always with flowing beards and moustaches, wore coloured waistcoats and flowing cravats. The little girls dressed like miniatures of their mammas and the boys in checked pantaloons, tight-fitting trousers, peaked caps or ribboned boaters.

  It was a merry gathering with much dancing, singing and merrymaking. Patsy declared it to be the happiest day of his life, and true it was that his gentle bride was always to remain for him as lovely and beloved as on their wedding day.

  Not long after their marriage, Patsy and Mary went to Sydney, accompanied by John Costello and Patsy’s seventeen-year-old brother, whom they called ‘Stumpy Michael’ to distinguish him from other family members of the same name. Patsy had taken up a block of land for his brother and wanted to purchase some good stock to start it off.

  It was at the sales that they met two great Queensland stockmen and explorers, William Landsborough and Nat Buchanan. Patsy and John Costello knew of them both by repute, having read a report of their recent discovery of the Camooweal district and several big rivers flowing south from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Landsborough was now agent for the land he had opened up and was anxious to find settlers bold enough to start pioneering untried country hundreds of miles from civilization. It was not long before he realized that here were just the sort of men he was looking for, for apart from their natural love of adventure and longing to push out past all established frontiers, they had other reasons for wanting to leave the now closely settled districts in New South Wales.

  A new law, known as the Robertson Act, drawn up by a good man anxious to give the small settlers a chance against the often greedy big holders, had come into force in that State. All sorts of people had come flocking in to take advantage of the easy terms offered by the new Act. Some who honestly tried to clear and cultivate their land were defeated by a succession of bad
seasons. Others came with no intention of trying at all, having hit on the idea of making such nuisances of themselves that the established holders would be forced to buy them out. Many of these so-called ‘free selectors’ connived with the big holders merely to run up homesteads on their blocks while the original owners went on using the land as before. This state of affairs, known as ‘dummying’, not only ruined the good purpose of the Act but encouraged all sorts of other evils. Many of these ‘dummy’ selectors soon turned their shacks into grog houses and assisted horse and cattle thieves with wholesale plunder, while other free selectors built up herds of cattle overnight by ‘duffing’ or ‘moonlighting’ them from established holders. A well known ballad of the times tells the story very well:

  ‘When the moon has climbed the mountains and the stars are shining bright

  Then we saddle up our horses and away,

  And we yard the squatter’s cattle in the darkness of the night

  And we have the calves all branded by the day.

  Chorus:

  Oh my pretty little calf,

  At the squatter you may laugh,

  For he’ll never be your owner any more;

  For you’re running, running on the duffer’s piece of land,

  Free selected on the Eumerella shore.

  If we find a mob of horses when the paddock rails are down,

  Although before they’re never known to stray,

  Oh, quickly will we drive them to some distant inland town,

  And sell them into slav’ry far away.

  Chorus:

  To Jack Robertson we’ll say,

  You’ve been leading us astray,

  And we’ll never go a-farming any more;

  For it’s easier duffing cattle on a little piece of land,

  Free selected on the Eumerella shore.’

  Bushrangers, for a time all but wiped out, became thick on the roads again so that no traveller was safe. These bad types included numbers of Irish from poor-houses and such institutions, who gave a bad name to the many good, hard-working Irish families, and Patsy and his brother-in-law felt that the happy, friendly spirit of earlier times was almost dead. They wanted desperately to get out, past the ever encroaching fences, the squabbling bush townships, the vicious little drinking houses, out of reach of the thieving dummy selectors and bushrangers—and start afresh.

  Landsborough and Buchanan told them that although the empty land to the far north of New South Wales was subject to droughts and was in many ways a hard country, they believed that those brave enough to take it up would soon make their fortunes. Properly handled, their cattle and houses would survive the bad times, and as the country revived almost miraculously after rain the stock would quickly fatten and bring a good price. They should not be discouraged to find the country at first in a poor state for in a good season there could be no richer pasture land in Australia, perhaps even in the world.

  6

  North of the Border

  EARLY in June 1863 the little party set off from Goulburn with one hundred horses and four hundred head of breeding cattle. There was Patsy, slim and upright on his fine stockhorse, John Costello with his merry laugh, his quick springing step and already a beard like a young bushranger, and Stumpy Michael, a quiet good-looking boy, still beardless and with little experience as yet in the bushmanship for which he was to make his name.

  Another of the party was Jim Scanlan, already reckoned a good Australian stockman although no more than five years out from County Clare. Then there was Darby Durack’s brother-in-law, young Tom Kilfoyle, a veteran of the droving tracks at twenty-one, and besides all these relatives, a German cook and a typical Australian stockman named Jack Horrigan, bandy-legged through riding from childhood, trousers tucked into high-heeled elastic-side boots and wide-brimmed hat fastened under the chin with a strap.

  In two and a half months they had reached the little outpost town of Bourke and had travelled, following the rivers, about six hundred miles. Here they found that a number of parties had lately settled in the far north-western corner of New South Wales and others had moved in over the Queensland border to the northeast. This party struck out on a fresh route to the north-west, up the Warrego, across the Cuttaburra and on to the sandy, treeless plains of the Paroo. Here, just south of the border, was fair country and what looked like permanent springs. There was too little grass, however, so they established a depot and leaving most of the horses in charge of the other three, Patsy, John Costello, Stumpy Michael and Jack Horrigan pushed on with the cattle.

  The drought that held the northern part of New South Wales in its grip, and that they hoped might improve as they moved on, instead grew steadily worse. Sadly they trailed their cattle through dusty mulga scrub and over parched bare plains, until they realized they could take the stock no further before finding water. Scouts riding on ahead found a little in the Bulloo River and returned to bring on the thirsty stock, but already some of the horses were falling in their tracks and had to be shot where they lay.

  The suffering cattle smelt water on the wind from a mile away and broke into a frenzied stampede. Four men on weakened horses stood no chance of wheeling them as they plunged forward to the river, trampling fallen beasts to pulp under their hoofs. Half were drowned while the rest drank until they nuzzled the mud and were too exhausted to pull themselves from the bog. The heartbroken drovers had to shoot them before moving up the river to find more water for themselves and their poor horses.

  Desperately they pushed on, for although their stock had perished they were still hopeful of finding better country and so making their hard trip worth while. On some stages of their journey they had seen signs of native camps and had ridden warily, on the look-out for an ambush and the sudden flash of spears from the scrub. The natives had probably been watching them all the time, wondering what these poor foolish white men were doing in a country where only the black people knew how to live, for as the party moved on into an even more waterless waste a little group of black figures came towards them out of the mirage of the blistering plain. All were naked except for belts of woven hair, the men carrying their bundles of long, thin spears and throwing-sticks, with emu feather head-dresses or dangling circlets of dingo tails to whisk away the flies as they went along. The women wore armlets of possum skin and necklets of kangaroo teeth or small human bones—the remains of drought-born babies that had been killed and eaten, to be born again, they believed, in some better season. One or two carried little ones, surprisingly fat, and gazing up from curved bark coolamons swung about their mothers’ shoulders.

  John Costello and Jack Horrigan, who had had previous experience of Aborigines in their natural state, knew that, coming towards them openly, in company with their women, they had no wish to make trouble, and might even be of some assistance. Surprisingly, the leader of the band greeted the travellers in a few quaint words of English which he was later found to have learned from the only surviving member of Burke’s party two years before. This was a man named King, whom the blacks had taken at the point of death and cared for until found by a search party. Seeing now that the white men’s tongues were swollen and turning black with thirst the natives led them without delay to a little rocky outcrop where, under a cover of brushwood and stones, was a well of stagnant but precious water. Later they came with food—fat yellow grubs dug up from the roots of the mulga trees, a black goanna lizard to be roasted in hot ashes with hard little cakes made from the pounded seed of the nardoo, a little mud-growing plant that left its fruit-cases in the hardened ground. Repulsive as it sounds, it was a feast for the starving men, who revived quickly and began asking about the country further on. The black leader shook his head, and scowling, pointed with his chin to the south.

  ‘Go!’ he told them and then pointed to the northwest. ‘That way—no water. Nussing!’

  They were about to do as he advised when a flight of parrots went wheeling overhead towards the north-west, and believing this to be a sure sign of w
ater in that direction the white men decided to push on. From this it will be seen how much it meant to them to find this new country. They lived on crows and by sucking moisture from a succulent plant known as parakeelia but found little water for the horses, and when all but two had died they realized their foolishness in having gone on so stubbornly.

  The blacks had disappeared, but it could be seen from the smokes of their fires that they were never far away. It was only when, in a desperation of thirst, they shot their last horse and drank from its jugular vein that the blacks appeared again. Realizing that the foolhardy strangers had given in at last, they led them back, resting from time to time at the secret little reservoirs of this arid land, until at last, from down the course of a dry creek, came the welcome sound of a horse bell. Members of their party had come in search of them with beef and tea in their tucker bags and canteens of water on their backs.

  The blacks had vanished before the rescue party came in sight, not expecting any thanks or reward, but both Patsy and Costello vowed that they would never forget the kindness of these primitive people in their hour of need.

  It might well be thought that Patsy and Costello would have learned a lesson from this experience, but already they were talking of what the parched country must look like in a good season, when the grass was green, the running rivers full of fish and the land abounding in wild game.

  ‘I still believe,’ Patsy said, ‘that drought or no drought those birds were heading for a good home out there to the north-west.’

  Costello agreed. ‘We can’t have it said we were beaten the first try.’

  As usual Patsy composed a song to suit the occasion. He tells the story of a drover who perished with his cattle in just such a drought as they had left behind and whose ghost was sometimes to be heard wailing eerily as he drove his ghost mob on in the desolate drought wind.