The Outback Wrangler

by Matt Wright

  For a couple of seconds there was a tense stand-off as the two eyed each other. Holly made the first move. She took a cautious backward step. The goat snorted, leapt up on his back feet and charged. Holly dropped the bowl, screaming. She ran towards the gate, but the goat was onto her in a flash. Holly turned around to meet the attack and managed to grab the animal by his horns. She was running around the yard backwards for at least two minutes, not daring to let go. Somehow, she managed to manoeuvre the goat towards the gate. With all her strength, she pushed him back and then rushed out, slamming the gate in his face. Once she was safe, she flipped me the bird. It was the best entertainment I’d had in a long time.

  * * *

  Errol was doing well as a chiropractor but he liked spending money on his boats. His enthusiasm for boating never waned, despite the fiasco with the 50-foot Clipper. He bought a 25-foot Haines Hunter Cat with a pair of 250-horsepower Mercury engines on the back. This was one powerful boat, and he loved any opportunity to take her out.

  One Easter, we put the boat on a trailer and took it over to the Yorke Peninsula, a popular holiday destination about three hours from Adelaide. Jono came along for the ride. We launched the boat and headed out to Seal Island, just off Althorpe Island, a craggy rock about 10 kilometres off the coast. It was a beautiful day for boating – barely a breath of wind and the water was dead glassy. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Or so we thought.

  To get to Seal Island, you have to cross the Strait. This is a deceptively dangerous stretch of water, full of unseen reefs and submerged sand banks. Even on clear days, you can count on a decent swell rolling across the shallow water. These are waters where even seasoned old salts can get themselves into trouble.

  Errol wanted to go diving for crayfish near one of the reefs. I thought it was a bloody stupid idea. That part of the Australian coast is notorious for great white shark attacks. But he wasn’t going to be talked out of it. About a mile from Seal Island, Errol drew up alongside a reef. Jono and I were sitting up at the bow of the boat, our legs dangling over the front. I remember looking down and observing the colour of the water change suddenly from dark blue to aqua. The next second, we could clearly see the bottom.

  Mum was the first to sound a warning. She started shouting at Jono and me to get back from the bow.

  ‘Look at that!’ said Jono, lifting up his arm.

  He was pointing at a huge 35-foot wall of water. It was moving fast. Jono leapt to his feet and grabbed hold of the front railing with both hands. I made for the safety of the stern of the boat, but was caught halfway. I managed to grab hold of a handle on the roof of the cabin as the bow dug into the face of the wave. The boat reared upwards the moment it met the wave. I remember going vertical, hanging on tight with one hand as the boat was nearly stood on its end.

  Errol had slowed us down. He should have sped up so that we could have pushed over the wave. We slid down the back of the wave and smashed into the reef stern first. I ended up at the bottom of the boat and started sobbing. Jono scrambled back, drenched from head to toe, his eyes as big as saucepans. It was an absolute miracle we didn’t capsize, but we weren’t out of danger. The wave had pushed us abeam of the oncoming swell, the position of greatest vulnerability in heavy seas. And another massive wave was building.

  ‘Get us the hell out of here!’ we all roared at Errol.

  Smoke was billowing out of the left engine, which had taken the brunt of the force when the boat was speared backwards into the reef. Luckily, the other engine was still operating. After floundering around on the reef for a few more seconds, Errol gave his remaining engine full throttle. We managed to get away, seconds from disaster.

  That was the end of the holiday. Mum was dark on the whole situation. For a while, I thought she was going to call it quits with him again. But it didn’t turn out that way.

  Some of Mum’s mates put me in a horse’s bridle near our place in Second Valley, South Australia. Even as a toddler I had to be restrained!

  Mum gave me this five-foot carpet snake for my ninth birthday. I named him Solomon and he grew to 11 feet before dying just after I turned 20.

  Sitting at the the bow of a yacht off the coast of Cairns with my hero, Jerry. Jerry’s passion for the outdoors was infectious.

  My early years were full of adventure: horse riding, fishing, swimming and driving mini four-wheel drives were all in a day’s play.

  3

  My Mum, the Bow Hunter

  Imagine all the pioneering women throughout history who changed the world by breaking boundaries. My mum Marie is like them. She has always challenged convention and stepped out of her expected role to create opportunities for herself and her kids. Her skills as a naturopath are legendary. She has got me through some nasty bugs over the years from Ross River virus to dengue fever.

  In many ways, she was ahead of her time. Well before ‘organic’ and ‘super food’ became buzzwords, Mum was into eating wholefoods. She spent hundreds of dollars on organic vegetables. God, if only I had known that all the buckwheat and activated food I was being fed would be trendy one day. I could have made an absolute mint!

  Not many mums are capable of doing what mine has done. Whether it was ceramics, horse riding, camping, cooking, diving, spearfishing or gardening, Mum has mastered everything she has put her mind to. She approaches life with an open mind, is a great lateral thinker, is a superb problem solver and possesses an uncanny sixth sense.

  But of all the things for which Mum is known, bow hunting is probably top of the list. She was the best going round. I’d always hear stories from her friends about her amazing feats with the bow and arrow. The story of her shooting the rabbit is a yarn her friends still talk about to this day. I wasn’t actually there but there are photos to prove it.

  The story goes that she was out hunting with friends in the dead of night, trying to catch a decent pig for dinner the next day. They weren’t having much luck. But there was no shortage of rabbits bouncing about. Mum suggested killing a couple of rabbits for tucker instead. Everyone laughed, and not at the thought of having rabbit. Rabbits are small, fast and will bolt if you get too close. Even at the best of times – in clear weather with good visibility – that makes them very tricky game for a bow hunter. At night, successfully bow hunting a rabbit is nigh on impossible.

  Mum’s friends didn’t even take her suggestion seriously. While they were debating what to do, Mum had drawn her bow and shot an arrow. Everyone turned to follow Mum as she walked towards her target. There, in the middle if the grass was a rabbit on its side with an arrow right up its bum. In near pitch darkness, Mum was able line up her target from over 40 metres and hit it with no worries at all.

  Mum’s mates loved telling me how good she was with the bow. But I didn’t need anyone to tell me she was a gun. I saw it firsthand. I’ll never forget the day Holly and I were jetty-jumping in Second Valley. The sun was setting and the beach was empty. Mum had been swimming and got out of the water to go to the car. She came back with her bow in hand and I remember asking her what she was doing.

  ‘Do you two want to have dinner on the beach?’ she asked.

  Holly and I looked at each other, intrigued. Mum came up next to us on the jetty. She leant over the water, took aim at a big fish darting between the pylons and loosed an arrow. She handed me her bow and jumped into the water, coming up with a huge fish, the arrow speared through its gills. That was pretty cool. We ended up lighting a fire near the water and having the fish on coals for dinner.

  Mum was a deadeye dick. She had won a whole bunch of awards and there were trophies hanging on walls and sitting on shelves around the house. But to my mind, she never got an award for her greatest feat of hunting – the day she took down the biggest feral pig I have ever seen.

  It happened on a camping trip on Kangaroo Island. I was about 11 years old at the time. As always, Jono came along. Located off the South Australian coast, KI – as the locals call it – is the third-largest island along Australia
’s coastline. The island is 4500 square kilometres of open woodland, farms and small deserts, rimmed with some of the country’s most pristine beaches. The natural barrier of the sea has supported a biodiverse and incredibly fragile ecosystem. Like so much of Australia, the modern world has thrown up some challenges for the native species on the island. Of all the problems, there are none bigger than feral animals.

  Feral pigs are a disaster for this country. They are highly adaptable creatures, capable of surviving in searing heat and freezing cold. They can live pretty much anywhere, provided they are within a day’s march of water. They aren’t fussy eaters, either. They will devour anything, from small mammals and larger newborn mammals to nesting birds and eggs. In the absence of their preferred food, pigs will use their nose to burrow into the ground for plant matter and invertebrates like worms and insects. For this reason, there are parts of Australia, particularly up north, that look like they have been taken to by a backhoe. Wild pigs not only threaten native species, they are a constant headache for farmers. Given that a sow typically delivers a litter of six piglets twice a year, the problem is getting worse and has spread to the islands off the mainland.

  Wild pigs are just one of many challenges facing the people and native animals of KI. The island’s pest problem is a classic example of how the nuisance of escaped farm animals can quickly escalate to a full-blown catastrophe. Today, cats, goats and deer roam free, threatening the island’s rich biodiversity. Back in the late 1980s, pigs were the major problem. It was on this camping trip that I discovered that pigs not only threatened native species, they were also incredibly dangerous to humans.

  We were staying on a private property with a couple of other mates, Daryl and Rudy. Daryl was getting into the bow hunting with mum. We all loved it, particularly Mum. For a hunter, there was plenty of game that needed to be culled.

  We’d been camping for three days straight. It was the depths of winter and a stiff southerly blew a chill from the Antarctic that kept the mercury low. The weather didn’t dampen our spirits. We were having a blast. We hunted pig and goat each day, butchered up our kill and then cooked it over the campfire. It was a throwback to the good old days up in Cairns. But on the third night, the trip took a turn. The hunters became the hunted.

  Daryl suggested we go spotlight hunting. We hooked lights onto our old Range Rover four-wheel drive and drove around in a low gear on the paddock. Jono and I were standing up in the back, manoeuvring the lights around, searching for any signs of pigs. Whenever we saw something we would shout out to Mum and Daryl, who were up in the front of the four-wheel drive. Our beams lit up different animals, but they scampered away too quickly for Mum to get a shot away. After an hour, Daryl pulled the car over.

  ‘The sound of the engine is scaring them off,’ Daryl said. ‘Time to go on foot.’

  I asked Mum if I could take the .22 rifle. She said I could, provided I handled it with care. She made me recite the usual rules: keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction; be sure of the target and what is beyond it; and keep my finger off the trigger until the target is acquired. Once Mum was satisfied, Jono and I headed down a slope.

  ‘Don’t go too far,’ Mum said.

  I had the rifle cradled across my arms and Jono was holding a high-powered torch. It was a beautiful, clear night. The moon lit up undulating hills crisscrossed with fences marking out paddocks. Barely a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees. It was so quiet we had no trouble picking up the telltale squeal and snort of a litter of pigs. I grabbed Jono’s arm and we both got down on a knee. Jono panned across the landscape, searching for the source of the sound.

  ‘There they are,’ he whispered, playing the beam of light over three pigs burrowing their snouts into the ground about 50 metres away. About 10 metres behind the pigs stood a cow minding her own business. It was a strange sight to see feral animals sidled up so close to a farm animal. Something wasn’t right. An alarm bell was ringing, but I didn’t heed the warning. That was a big mistake.

  I raised the rifle and laid one of the pigs across my sights. The pig was looking straight at me, transfixed by Jono’s torch. I remember the lessons Mum had taught me: keep my breathing steady and shoot between heartbeats. The adrenaline must have been pumping because my shot completely missed. The crack of the rifle shot sent the pigs scurrying. I swore loudly as I watched the pigs disappear into the night.

  ‘What’s that cow doing?’ asked Jono.

  The cow had turned to face us and started to run at us.

  ‘That’s not a cow!’ I said, my mind barely registering what my eyes were seeing. It was a massive boar and it was charging.

  ‘Shoot it!’ Jono shouted.

  I brought the rifle up and squeezed the trigger. Although the boar was moving quickly, the animal’s sheer size made it an easy target. The boar squealed, confirming that the bullet had hit the target. But the animal’s layer of fat and hefty shoulder pads acted like a bulletproof vest. The shot only succeeded in stirring him up more. I fired again, aiming for the boar’s head. Once again, the boar squealed. I might as well have been throwing pebbles at him. The boar had closed to within about 20 metres.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Jono shouted.

  ‘Run!’

  We both leapt to our feet and turned for the car. Mum and Daryl had obviously heard the gunshots because the spotlight was trained on our position. Mum was shouting out to us, asking if everything was okay.

  ‘We’re being chased!’ I shouted back.

  Neither of us dared look back. But I could hear the heavy breathing of the animal, hot on our tail.

  ‘Move out of the way!’ Mum called out.

  I was close enough now to see that Daryl was standing next to Mum and had shot an arrow. We heard another high-pitched squeal but it must have lodged into his shoulder pad, because he wasn’t slowing down. Jono and I split apart, opening up the target for Mum. I heard the twang of the bow and the whisper of the arrow as it sliced through the night air, followed by another terrible squeal from the boar.

  I threw my head around, expecting the animal to have crumpled to the ground. Instead, he was still charging. Mum was nocking another arrow.

  ‘Keep running!’ Mum shouted as we bolted past her.

  ‘Get up here!’ Daryl shouted. By this time Daryl was kneeling on the back of the four-wheel drive, with his arms hanging over the side. We both leapt up on to the back tray with Daryl’s help. Mum had managed to slip another arrow into the boar. It was a brilliant piece of marksmanship. Mum was hitting her target without a spotter to light the boar up. Not that it made a difference. The boar was enraged. And he was rapidly closing in on her.

  Mum turned and legged it for the four-wheel drive. She was only 10 metres from the truck, but the boar wasn’t letting up, five metres away and closing. Mum dived through the open back door. The boar took his final steps before launching after her. Mum pulled the door shut just in time. The boar cannoned into the side of the car. Jono and I were standing up alongside Daryl on the back when the boar collided with the car. The force of the collision knocked us off our feet.

  ‘Stay down!’ Daryl said to us, worried that if we stood we might topple off.

  ‘Everyone all right?’ Mum called out.

  Daryl shouted back that we were fine. Jono and I scampered to the side of the tray to get a look at the boar. It was an incredible sight. This was a proper razorback, a big round keg of fat and muscle with a mane of raised fur running down its back. His tusks had been ground away to nothing, which suggested that we were looking at an old animal. I could see Mum’s two arrows poking out of his big shoulder pad, but the extent of the animal’s wounds was unclear. The collision with the back door had left the animal dazed. He stood still alongside the truck, his snout occasionally dropping low to the ground. We were all expecting him to keel over any second. In fact, the opposite happened. With each passing moment, he regained strength.

  After a couple of minutes, the pig took a few tentative st
eps. We started to follow him in the car and every time we got close he’d have another crack at the side of the vehicle. It was like he was looking for a way in. He turned around in frustration and started walking away.

  ‘Looks like he’s packing it in,’ I said.

  I could not have been more mistaken. The pig was just warming up. He turned around and charged. He launched into the side of the car, smashing into the back door. The car shuddered with the blow.

  Mum quietly opened the door on the other side of the car with her bow and swapped places with Daryl who hopped into the driver’s seat. As the pig lugged his massive weight back to get a run up, she slipped another arrow into his side. He bucked and squealed, pivoting around and running back into the side of the car.

  Eventually, the pig started to weaken and walked off towards where Jono and I had first seen him. Mum managed to get out of the car and followed quietly in the shadows as we held the light on him; he was making a break for the thick scrub. It was crucial that Mum got a good kill shot in the side of him. She was able to go wide and get herself in front of the 300-kilo animal. Mum propped up behind a massive gum tree and waited until the time was right, then drew her bow and let the last arrow fly with perfect precision. The arrow speared in behind the shoulder blade and with a couple more steps this huge beast finally toppled over. After a few moments, Mum walked over to inspect the animal. She had an arrow at the ready to put him out of his misery. She tentatively nudged the animal with her foot. But he remained motionless. Blood was already pooling from his nose and under the carcass.

  When Mum sounded the all clear, Jono and I went to have a look at the big animal. His tusks might have been worn away, but he still had a nasty set of fangs. Jono and I were lucky we didn’t trip up when we were running away from him. Had either of us done so, those teeth would have torn us apart. At the very least, he would have broken a few of our bones. That was evident just from looking at the back door of the four-wheel drive. The pig had shattered a window and caved the door in.