by Cook, R
After a few months, I had been feeling more comfortable living at Suplejack and enjoying the work with Grandad, but there were changes happening at the station and things weren’t about to get easier. Grandad had suffered a stroke a couple of years earlier and the work on the station was catching up with him. An agreement had been reached with my parents to take over the management of Suplejack, with my grandparents maintaining a half share in the business. These were confidential discussions at the time and have remained so ever since. All the Savage boys had a turn of living and working at Suplejack but none found it a suitable life for their respective families. The fourth Savage child was Letty (my mother), who had fallen for the fencing contractor Bill Cook when he had turned up at the station all those years ago on a trip around Australia. Mum had left school in Alice Springs after Year 11 to return to the station to help Grandad. Her dream was one day to become a veterinarian, but the huge distances to the nearest university held her back. Her heart was also in the bush, so the idea of living in the city was very daunting. Instead Mum worked alongside her brother Jamie at home and would often ride the bronco horse in the yards at branding time, lassoing the calves as the men scruffed them. Then one evening a dark and handsome bloke rolled through and swept her off her feet. He was a fit and active workaholic; she was a slim, attractive brunette with similar interests to his.
In 1975, the couple moved to manage a virgin block called Larranganni on the Western Australia and Northern Territory border, drawn in a ballot by Dad’s father, my grandad, Tom Cook. By coincidence the block was not far from Suplejack Station on the edge of the desert. Mum and Dad were married at the same time and had Tiani and Lilly while they were out there. There were three blocks on offer in the ballot and Larranganni was the worst in terms of pasture quality. It was unsustainable sandy country with no substance to the grasses, and buffel seed thrown out by Grandad Cook wouldn’t establish. They would have gone broke feeding supplement to the cattle, so after three years they made the sad decision to strip all the infrastructure and improvements they had brought with them, taking the fences, windmills and tanks, and handed the lease back to the government with a polite ‘thank you, but no thank you’. It was a hard time for the young family as they returned to Clermont in Queensland.
Now, in 1997, the Cook family was on the road again, this time moving to join me in the Territory. Mum and Dad sold Rakaia at Miles, packed up all their possessions in a truck, Troop Carrier and Land Cruiser ute, and started out on the 3000-kilometre trip. The brightly coloured tarps covering the loads on the truck and ute made the convoy look more like a circus than a house-moving operation. Dad drove the Cruiser, while Mum drove the Troop Carrier and Dad’s leading hand in his contract fencing business, Gordon ‘Gordy’ Coward, drove the truck. Having jobs of their own, Tiani, Lilly and Sonia stayed in Queensland, while Brad, Cam and Loretta all came along, to soon continue their schooling as distance education. Grandad had warned me of the family’s imminent arrival about a week beforehand and, while I was excited and relieved to some degree, I was also nervous about my future role on the station. I had spent the last three months being in charge of myself, as directed by Grandad. Quickly picking up the bore-run routine, the names of the paddocks and which cattle were held where, I figured I knew a fair amount and was someone of importance. But if I thought Dad would release me from the proverbial ‘dog house’ when he arrived, I was mistaken. He wasn’t holding a grudge, but I had let him down and had a lot of work to do to make it up to him. Despite the tension between us, Dad had bought me a stock saddle as payment for my three months of work. However, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a bit of fun with me first. We were still unpacking the truck from their trip when Dad called me over to reveal my new saddle. Unzipping the saddle bag, my heart sank as I was looking at something that should have stayed in the 1960s. I was almost wiping away tears when he burst out laughing and pointed out my actual saddle, resting on the bench. A fantastic Australian-made Sid Hill Barcoo Poly stock saddle, with leather of a rich mahogany colour catching the sunlight. It was a nice surprise.
From day one, we were in ‘let’s go to work’ mode. Often darkness still engulfed the station with the stars high in the sky as Dad, Gordy and I sat up at the breakfast table, the kerosene lantern, with its distinctive buzz, lighting the room.
‘Gordy, I’ll get you to go out and start the pump at Olympic bore,’ said Dad, beginning to outline his instructions for the day. ‘Then we’ll get stuck into the bullock paddock fence.’
It took me by surprise, as Gordon had never even been to the Olympic bore before. But Dad was still not acknowledging me nor mentioning me in the daily plans. At the end of the list of things to do, he simply said, ‘Rob, help Gordy.’
It was another challenge for me to deal with. I’d been used to being my own man at Suplejack, knowing what was what, and now I was being put back into the ‘little boy’ category again.
Big Gordy, as he became known to the family, was a typical larger-than-life character in every sense of the term. Raised in the Emerald region of Queensland, straight out of agricultural college he answered a fencer’s assistant advertisement in the paper and was hired immediately. Starting on the fence line as a seventeen-year-old, he was quickly introduced to Dad’s work ethic, running all day, sleeping when it was dark and going back to work at daybreak. He fondly remembers those times as ‘Bill Cook’s weight-loss program’ – he lost sixteen kilograms in six weeks. There wasn’t much chance to talk a lot with Dad – they exchanged about ten words a day – but it didn’t take long for Gordy to understand what was required. Over the next five years he worked on and off for the contract fencing business, and was back on board when the Territory prospect called. Gordy had earned a level of respect from my father, which made things even trickier for me to get things right with Dad. As a sixteen-year-old know-it-all, I was green with envy at the working relationship Dad and Gordy had. Perhaps the worse confrontation between the two of us was when we were moving some cattle into the Eight Mile yards using two of the station’s old Toyotas. They were buggered old machines that barely ran, but lacking motorbikes, they were the next best thing for moving stock from one place to another. Gordy was having trouble edging an old cow along the fence line and as I stopped to watch, he ran straight over the poor thing. Eventually the cow, which was uninjured, staggered to its feet and ran along with the rest of the mob. I was furious and drove straight over to Gordy to tell him what I really thought.
‘You useless, cruel, fat bastard,’ I screamed at him. ‘Why the bloody hell did you run over that poor old cow?’
Gordon looked at me as though about to punch me. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he replied angrily.
‘You’re bloody useless, mate,’ I said, continuing my rant. ‘I should get you out in the paddock and run over you to see how you like it!’
‘Whatever,’ said Gordy, jumping out of the car. ‘If you’re such a smart man, you drive it then,’ he went on, slamming the door.
I had earlier, as I’d done many times before, raced Gordy down to the shed to get in the better of the two station utes. Having spent little time in Gordy’s vehicle, I didn’t know just how bad the brakes were. After swapping vehicles, it took me about two minutes to find out. I was chasing an elusive cow and overshot the mark so I started pumping the pedal but there were no brakes. I slid it back a few gears as I ploughed towards the fence. Thinking quickly I swerved and used a bloodwood tree to stop the runaway car because I knew how much repair work would be involved if I was to take out the fence. Hence I realised my dummy spit wasn’t warranted and worked up the courage to apologise to Gordy.
Just as a young father learns to become a strong and supportive parent, in many ways I was slowly learning how to be a respectful and grateful son. It was probably unintentional that Dad’s iron-fisted ways constantly had me reflecting on my own behaviour. Perhaps one of the reasons I was so hung up on what Dad may or may not have thought of me was because I knew w
hat he really thought of his father. A few years earlier, the family had visited the station at Christmas time and we brought Grandad Cook along with us. Sometimes he would come on holidays with us, having lost the love of his life, Margaret, in 1993. My paternal grandfather was a kind and thoughtful man, tall, with broad shoulders. He was always smiling and seemed to have an endless adoration for his grandkids but he also liked to have a bit of fun with them as well. Whenever an opportunity arose to start some mischief, Grandad would find a way to playfully tease or cheekily jibe a child for a laugh. In the dawn of my teenage years, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time around him, but I knew he loved to ruffle the feathers of an unsuspecting kid. Maybe he wasn’t expecting my smart tongue one day, when I made a wisecrack and backchatted him. My belligerence took him by surprise and without responding, my Grandad simply left the room. It wasn’t long before Dad arrived to vent his disgust.
‘My father is my mate,’ said Dad angrily. ‘I don’t let people talk to my mates like that.’ He went on, ‘If I ever hear you speak to my father like that again, you better look out.’
His reprimand and the example of a great son–father relationship that he set were the beginning of an ideological thought process deep in my subconscious. I can only imagine, despite making decisions that would suggest the contrary in the future, that this is where my desire was born to become best mates with my dad, just like he was with his. There were still some rough times ahead, though, not least of all in the stock camp where it was just Dad, Gordy and me working full-time. We did rely on Mum and my younger siblings on occasion, when we were really busy. Brad and Cam were forever racing through their school work under a torch late at night and early in the mornings so they could join us for a day’s work. Later in the season, Lilly also moved over from Queensland and joined the family out mustering.
During the early days after Dad’s arrival, I got my first real taste of what work meant. If I thought working on the fencing plant was hard at Miles, I’d seen nothing yet. Dad was a man on a mission; he had taken on a station in need of significant development and he wasn’t going to have a day off to sit and think about it. The three of us were working eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. There was no enjoyment and it was a hard slog. I had told Dad where to go once before, and I was determined not to do it again. I had to stick by him through work and earn his respect back. Perhaps no other son of any other father could have tried as much as I did in that year. My problem, in hindsight, was that I was a self-absorbed sixteen-year-old who couldn’t be told anything – I didn’t agree with the saying ‘You can’t put an old man’s head on a young man’s shoulders’. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. No matter how fast I rammed a steel post into the ground, it wasn’t fast enough. It didn’t matter how hard the horse bucked, if I got dusted it was my fault. I had the feeling I could not impress him. The tension and ongoing feeling of unworthiness culminated one evening when Dad responded sarcastically to a comment I’d made. I couldn’t take any more, so I grabbed a bottle of rum, walked outside to the front lawn and, sitting on a chair, started drinking straight out of the bottle. I suppose I had figured that I could drink my sorrows away. It wasn’t long before Mum walked outside too.
‘How are you going, Rob?’ she asked.
I had always been able to talk to Mum about my problems and she was familiar with my usual rant about Dad’s opinion of me.
‘So do you really think the rum will help?’ she asked, getting annoyed with my insolent behaviour.
‘Oh well, at least this way it doesn’t hurt so much,’ I replied, taking another swig from the bottle.
This was enough for Mum; she had seen and heard enough. She reminded me there were always two sides to every story and that not everything was about me. Mum always seemed to know what to say and when to say it. I mumbled something in response, not wanting to accept that she was right.
‘Wake up to yourself, Rob,’ she told me sternly, taking the rum bottle from me.
Mum warned me that rum was incapable of fixing any problems, and sent me to bed. Her parting words were simple but held much value: ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’
6
SLOW REDEMPTION
Mum was trying to get Dad to ease up on me. She could see how effective his silent treatment had been and was sure I had learnt my lesson. But Dad wasn’t done yet. He could see the work that was ahead of him on Suplejack and didn’t have time to deal with the minor problems of a sixteen-year-old know-it-all. He would work me until I dropped to prove a point. If I busted a finger under a fence post, I received no sympathy. There were no excuses. It didn’t matter if I was tired, I was to tell myself I wasn’t and get back to work. The morning was only as cold as I thought it was. Dad had plenty of comebacks to my whingeing.
‘Shit, I’m hungry and thirsty, Dad, I need a break,’ I would say.
‘Oh bullshit, think about that poor rock over there,’ he would point out. ‘Does he get a drink? No, he doesn’t, he just has to lay there.’
It didn’t matter what I thought I needed, he would encourage me to change my mindset to be tougher, and on we would go. Several of my friends asked me why I stayed there, as I was only being paid $190 a week, but I didn’t want to leave. I so admired Dad’s work ethic and wanted to be just like him; if only I could somehow convince him that I hadn’t meant what I’d said in Queensland.
I had long moved out of the main house and was now living with Gordy over at the single men’s quarters. There wasn’t anything, really, to be happy about in the move, except for the extra space I had. The quarters consisted of an old white donga with five small bedrooms, each with a window and an old bed. A couple of steps led to each room from the outside. My bed was of an old design, made of springs and steel, with one end propped up with a couple of milk crates. The glass in the window was broken, so there little chance of escaping the oppressive heat. Sometimes I would throw my swag up on the roof of the quarters in an attempt to get just a little respite, hoping for a slight breeze to come my way. On the really hot nights, a breeze rarely blew.
The living space wasn’t much, but it soon became my home and I tried some simple renovations whenever I found spare time. I decided I needed a veranda, or ‘lean-to’ as they are known, out the front of my room, so I went and borrowed the big chainsaw in the shed and started cutting up some mulga. With some rails and a couple of beams, I managed to stand them and bolt the frame together. A few old sheets of tin finished off the rustic-looking pergola and I even added a homemade table and chair. I was proud of my work and would spend as much time as I could having a drink under the shade, or of course, in my outdoor bathtub.
Perhaps I should have spent more time replying to the letters I was receiving from schoolfriends. The mail plane would come once a month and drop off any small deliveries as well as the station mail. It was good to have contact with the outside world, but the mail was very slow. If two letters were sent weeks apart, sometimes the second letter would arrive before the first. Note passing in class was very popular during my time at school, so letter writing was not a foreign concept. This was well before the boom in email. Most of my friends were still at school and had never been to the Territory, so I was seen as a bit of an adventurer living in the wilderness. They would write to me and ask basic questions like what’s the countryside like, or what does a camel turd look like. It was fun to reply when I remembered to. Usually I’d be furiously writing a letter as the mail plane was circling the homestead, knocking out as many words as I could before racing down to the airstrip to hand it to the pilot. Sarah was a constant letter writer, and she suffered most from my disorganisation. Often she would simply receive a few lines with the sign-off ‘Gotta go, love you. Bye’, but sometimes I put more time into them. We had broken up, so Sarah was just a friend, but a special friend who I wanted to keep close. I was allowed occasionally to call my friends for a maximum of three minutes. If I abused the privilege then it was taken away, so generally letter writing was my s
afest option.
The first twelve months on the station had come to an end and I had not left the property. It was a tough year and the amount of work that Dad, Gordy and I had done was immense. Maybe it was the way I had stuck to it that made Dad see a little bit of light in me. Perhaps I wasn’t as big a disappointment to him as I thought. Whatever the reason, he had slowly begun including me in conversations and giving me the chance to speak. I was even occasionally asked what I thought about a particular work plan. They were small yet promising steps to keep me encouraged and to stop me from walking out the door. Dad had suggested I enrol at the Katherine Rural College and take on a traineeship. I was interested and, realising I could have a future as a ringer, I moved to Katherine in January 1998 to tackle Certificates I, II and III in beef production. My eldest sister Tiani, who had been visiting the station for Christmas, drove me there, 700 kilometres to the north-east of Suplejack. Katherine is known as the cross-roads of the Top End, as the main highways there extend west to Western Australia, southeast to Queensland or south to South Australia. It is a hub for supplying goods to cattle stations and Indigenous communities and a residence for the Tindal RAAF base.
I should have realised as I was dropped off that studying at the Charles Darwin University Rural College, twenty kilometres north of Katherine, was going to be no different from being at school. But I wasn’t to blame for a delay in getting started on the course. I had picked a hell of a year to be in town – a onein-100-year flood caused destruction and mayhem on Australia Day. The campus was not affected itself – being some distance from the Katherine River we were right on the edge of flooding – but the Stuart Highway was cut on both sides of the town, leaving us, along with the rest of Katherine, stranded. Yet I was there with a group of young blokes and we were determined not to let the water ruin our fun. Using one of the boys’ cars we drove about ten kilometres towards town before we could go no further. Leaving the car on the side of the road, we then walked the remaining distance, using the roof of a car stuck in the water at one point to negotiate a crossing. Eventually, we made it to the river itself at the railway bridge, and using the gangway poles sticking up out of the water, we guided ourselves across. The brown, swirling water was incredible; one slip and we would have been lost downstream forever. It was unimaginable just how much water was passing by the town, with the height of the river at the bridge reaching eighteen metres. At that time the main street had not gone under water, so we scurried to the closest pub and bought a carton of beer. Knowing we probably didn’t have much time, we hurriedly re-crossed the river and began our return journey to the college. It was a long walk, as plenty of drinking got in the way of progress, but we made it in the end. That flood would redefine Katherine forever, wiping out so many houses and businesses that a lot people simply left town for good; of course, others stayed to rebuild. Even now, many years later, memories of that terrible event are very close to the surface for those resilient residents who had to endure the flood, particularly as each wet season approaches.