by Cook, R
‘Cookie, here’s your bull,’ he yelled out to me.
‘Ha righto, mate, nice one,’ I chuckled back, thinking he was just winding me up.
‘This is your bull, Cookie. Come and get on the bastard,’ he shouted back.
The bull was scary as it stood snorting and raking the dirt in the chute. There was no way I was riding it. I was expecting something smaller to ease my way into the new sport.
‘Like fuck,’ I said. ‘I’m not getting on that big-arsed thing.’
‘Last chance mate or I’ll put someone else on it,’ he said, getting impatient.
‘Good,’ I replied. ‘I’m not getting on the fucking thing.’
To my relief another young bloke nominated himself and prepared to ride the bull I was so scared of. I watched as he put the rope on and tightly secured his hand. As he and the bull jumped out of the chute, it turned out the bull was dead quiet. It barely even bucked and just cantered across the arena. It would have been an ideal bull for me to get on, just to break the ice. I should have realised that if anyone knows the temperament of a bucking bull, it’s the stock contractor. Campbell had chosen the right bull for me, but I’d been too scared to get on it. The very next bull that ran up the chute caught my eye, though. It was a little nuggetty beast called Young Gun, who seemed placid.
‘I’ll get on him,’ I yelled out to Campbell, which brought barrels of laughter from everyone.
‘He’s an Open bull, Cookie,’ said Danny, one of the riders there. ‘Normally only the good cowboys get on him.’
‘Nah, it’s all right. I watched the last one, I’ll be fine to ride this bull,’ I said confidently.
Campbell also spoke up and told me the bull wasn’t for me, and I should have listened. While I persevered with my argument, Ryan stepped forward to help me and convinced his dad to let me ride. So not really knowing what I was in for, I jumped up on the rail and strapped myself to the back of Young Gun. He was an experienced bull and good at standing in the chute, not playing up as we tightened the rope. Once that gate opened, it was like letting off a firecracker as he twisted to the left and pulled back to the right. This bull knew how to buck, but I also again found a comfort in sitting there and holding on. When the eight seconds were up, I pulled my hand free from the rope and jumped off. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to the boys looking on.
‘Ah, you’ve been on heaps of bulls haven’t you? You don’t just ride like that first or second time round,’ declared one of them in disbelief.
‘I’m serious, that is the second bull I’ve ever been on in my life,’ I said excitedly, giving high fives to blokes I had just met.
I started to feel that maybe I should give this sport a try, seeing as though I had ridden two from two. So the next weekend I caught a lift with Ryan and Campbell to the Allora bull ride near Toowoomba. Travelling with the stock contractor meant we arrived early and had to set up all the yards and portable panels for the night ahead. It gave me time to psych myself up and look over the bull I had drawn that day, Hell’s Yarn. There would be no excuses this time; I knew exactly what was in store for me. I was still the novice and as usual the advice came thick and fast from the other riders on the fence, but I chose to concentrate on the simple line that Dad had provided me years earlier. ‘Leave it out there in the arena’, circled through my head. After the nod, the bull gave me a good, quick start and let me hang, throwing me from one side to the next until the buzzer blasted. Hell’s Yarn had given me a fair run and I ended up second overall. Again, I had found the experience natural, fun, exhilarating and challenging. In the space of a few weeks I became hooked and was bull riding every weekend. From that point onwards, although I rode in every event, I called myself a bull rider and started to think riding broncs was a bit like a day off. Framey would always pull the piss out of me for carrying so much rodeo gear; our vehicle was filled with saddles, rigging, bull ropes and of course my chaps, vest and spurs. Every Wednesday night I was bucking out four or five bulls and every weekend I was driving to as many rodeos as I could. I managed to win a lot of money in those early days, but the challenge came when I started falling off. That’s when I realised the sport of bull riding wasn’t as easy as I had first thought.
So my travels had led me to that event in Armidale – a tough day in the office. The blood blister on my leg was massive and it wasn’t getting any less painful. My bull ride was still to come on my arch nemesis, Sticks and Stones. I had drawn the bull eight times before along the circuit, and my record wasn’t great: one re-ride, and the other seven times he had thrown me. He wasn’t a good bull to draw because as hard as he was to ride and get covered, it was even tougher to score points while doing so. For whatever reason, I kept coming up against Sticks and Stones and he kept getting the better of me. This was my ninth chance to have a crack at him and, even though I could barely walk, there was no way I could turn him out. That was another sacred rule in the cowboy’s book. I also knew if I didn’t get on again, that might be the end of me psychologically. When the chute boss shouted my name, I hoisted my fat arse to my feet and limped over to the bucking chute while Framey came to help put the rope on the bull. I cringed with pain as they lowered me down onto the bull’s back, my legs shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t sit down properly because of the blood blister so, like I had done with Frosty, I jump-started him the second the gate creaked open. He blew out of the chute, cut a corner and began spinning before blowing out across the arena. The siren sounded and off I jumped. Finally, I had ridden time on Sticks and Stones, but I was in too much pain to enjoy the moment. Putting on a brave face, I walked out past the chutes and once out of sight, collapsed on the ground. Looking down at my legs, I didn’t need to take off my jeans to survey the damage; I already knew. My groin was so wet from where the blood blister burst, it looked like I had peed myself. I bet those in the crowd who saw my soiled jeans before I left the arena are probably still laughing.
The moment you sit in the chute on the back of an 800-kilogram bull is the point of no return. While you need physical strength and skill, you also need to be focused mentally. You can’t be sitting there thinking about something else and expect to do any good. If you think you will get hurt, then that’s what will happen. Or if you keep looking at the ground, that’s where you’ll end up. The beauty of bull riding is that it requires total control, physically and mentally, and that’s what I loved about it. Slowly, I was making a name for myself, earning championship points.
The next few years would be the biggest for me in my rodeo career. But as much as I was enjoying myself, I missed Suplejack and my family. Whenever I had the chance, I would head back home and help out with mustering for as long as I could. One day came a phone call I wasn’t expecting and had me driving home immediately.
During the mustering season, the station had a set of portable yards we would move around the property for branding and drafting. Once one paddock had been mustered, the panels, gates, branding cradle and calf race were all loaded onto a truck and moved to where they were required next. It was tough work but an affordable answer to not having permanent yards in far reaches of the property. On one of these occasions nineteen-year-old Brad and sixteen-year-old Cam, along with their friend Nathan Smith, were loading the truck when an accident happened. It was about 4.30 in the afternoon. As Brad and Nathan lifted the homemade steel calf race, Cam began reversing the truck underneath it. But Nathan slipped and as Brad tried to take the weight, the heavy contraption tipped over on top of Brad, landing on his shoulders and pushing his head between his legs. The enormous pressure shattered his first lumbar vertebra and pinched his spinal cord, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. It had all gone unnoticed by Cam in the driver’s seat of the truck, and he continued to reverse. The calf race had bounced off Brad after it struck him and somehow, having no feeling in his lower legs, he managed to pull himself away from the truck’s wheels until he lay directly beneath the tray. Cam was soon told to stop and moved the truck a
way. Initially there was no pain for Brad, only anger directed at Nathan, who he threw a rock at, hitting him in the head.
The boys found a long ‘Give Way’ sign and slid it under Brad and carried him up to the house, laying him on the kitchen table to await help. Fortunately, after about fifteen minutes, Brad started getting pins and needles in his legs and he regained movement and feeling. Of course, that’s when the pain set in. Brad described it as feeling like someone was trying to jam a football into his back. At about 11.30 p.m. the paramedics from the Tanami Gold Mine arrived and administered morphine before driving him in a Toyota Troop Carrier back to the medical centre at the site. He was later flown to Alice Springs, arriving at nine o’clock the next morning. After scans were taken, one of the nurses commented on just how lucky he was: you couldn’t slide a cigarette paper between his vertebrae and spinal cord, it was that close to rupturing. Although he had to spend three months in bed, Brad recovered well and regained full movement in his lower back. About a week into his recovery, our cousin Billy Leard had called Brad and abused him for not having spoken to Nathan, who had copped part of the blame for the accident. Apparently Nathan was so upset with himself that he hadn’t eaten since, but after Brad phoned and reassured him, the two moved on and are now even better mates.
It was great to see Brad back on his feet once he’d fully recovered and, although he was never as mad keen on rodeo as I was, he still rode plenty of bulls to really test out his healed back. He, along with Cam and I, rode in a few rodeos together at Darwin, Katherine, Daly Waters, Harts Range, Aileron and Alice Springs. We would all take an active role in helping to run the events, whether behind the scenes or out entertaining the crowd. Probably our finest act together was when Brad and I would team up as the clown to keep the crowd’s attention during breaks between rodeo events. In preparation, we ordered a variety of costumes on the internet, sparing no expense to get the classiest and most outrageous outfits. As soon as the clown face was painted or costume put on, Brad adopted a different persona; in a little while, he’d have the crowd wrapped around his little finger. With me as the rodeo announcer and Brad as the guinea pig, we would go about telling jokes and pulling small stunts in the arena. One year we went so far as to name him Carbon Neutral, in honour of the climate change debate that had gripped Australia.
‘Hey Carbon,’ I called out. ‘Earlier you were telling me you like surfing and it’s actually possible to catch a wave here in Alice Springs?’
Brad would try to answer me by yelling out towards the announcer’s box, but without a microphone it was always difficult to hear him. This actually made the skit a lot funnier as I was just able to make up his answers for him, leaving him look even sillier.
‘Where are we going to get a wave from, Carbon?’ I continued, as he ran around the arena in his seventy-centimetre clown boots, encouraging a Mexican wave from the crowd.
The grandstand came alive as everyone got involved, including the cowboys resting near the chutes.
‘You have to keep the wave going or you won’t be able to surf,’ I said, while Brad put his finger up in the air, as if testing the wind direction.
Simultaneously, my younger sister Loretta cantered into the arena on a horse towing an old surfboard with a rope tied to the horn on the saddle. Brad then tried to ride the surfboard, stacking it in the dust many times while trying to ‘catch the wave’.
But it wasn’t always just a clown costume. At one rodeo we had Brad wearing an extravagant Easter Bunny outfit. The kids loved him throwing chocolate eggs over the fence, but even more so when he was dared publicly over the loudspeaker to ride a steer. Not one to turn down a challenge, Brad climbed onto the back of a bullock still dressed as a big, white bunny with a fluffy, pink tail. He could only see out of the black gauze in the bunny’s mouth, and he had the crowd in stitches as he straightened the massive head in preparation for the gate to open. It became even funnier when he started bucking out in the arena, as with every jolt his rabbit’s head would turn slightly until it was sitting in the reverse position. It looked as though this giant Easter Bunny was riding the bullock backwards, hanging on for dear life. Poor Brad couldn’t see a thing, and he did well to last as long as he did. When he fell off, he was still trying to readjust the head to the forward position when the bullock charged him and barrelled him back into the dirt. He then clambered to his feet again with the audience applauding in disbelief. It was probably the highlight of the night for the crowd, despite the action of the bull riding.
10
FREE FALL
‘Hold on, we’re going down!’
It was only a whisper but I had somehow heard it above the thud of the rotor and the wind rushing past my window. My stomach lurched as we began dropping out of the sky. I knew it would only be a few seconds before we smashed into the ground below.
It was late September 2008, and we were on our last muster for the year. There was some excitement around the house because the approaching wet season meant that we’d soon get a break. I had a special reason to be excited. The area we were mustering had never been mustered before. Suplejack, like many stations, was massive and as yet we hadn’t been able to develop the whole property with fences and watering points. So this area in the far south-east corner remained largely untouched, although there were cattle that had wandered out there following two good seasons. The rain had filled a nearby lake. With no fences the cattle could walk off the property onto Crown land, but of course they were restricted by access to water. It was a large expanse of land, covered with a good growth of a variety of sweet grasses near the lake, and as the country rose slightly away from the water, spinifex took over. The area was heavily timbered in parts by tea-tree, black wattle and bloodwood. I had flown over the area a few times recently and decided there were enough cattle out there to warrant a muster. With the backing of Dad, I got the plan in motion by picking out sites for the portable yards and stock camp, and I had arranged two contract helicopters to fly in for the day to assist.
At daybreak, I helped brother-in-law Shane and my mate Joe Henry to load up the avgas, unleaded fuel and motorbikes onto the utes. The two Robinson R22 helicopters, which had arrived the night before, cut through the early morning silence as they roared into life. Dad sat in the passenger seat of the blue chopper, piloted by Zebb Lesley, while the other was being flown by Andrew Scott. I was happy to have two such experienced pilots working for us that day, both having mustered for us before. As usual, I took a few seconds to watch them take off, always in awe of anything that flies. Although an uneasy flier, Dad was going with the pair to help direct them to the area we wanted to focus on. Once we had loaded up the food and swags, Shane and Joe also headed off, leaving me to drive out to the airstrip where my gyro sat. This was my second gyro – I’d bought it after crashing the first the year before, in 2007. I enjoyed every time I fired up the four-stroke engine, whether it was for mustering or just a recreational flight, and this time was no different. Climbing to around 300 feet I flew straight out to the east before swinging around to the south to tail the cattle, which I could see were already on the move towards the yards. It was like the cattle had been living in their own paradise beside the lake, looking very fat and very suitable for the live export market. There appeared to be two mobs on either side of the lake and at this early stage all seemed to be walking along well. Chatter on the two-way radio between Zebb and Andrew confirmed what I had seen, as the two worked in tandem, criss-crossing the country searching for stragglers.
After covering some more ground in the gyro I decided I would fly back to where we had set up the portable yards to help Shane and Joe erect hessian cloth on our temporary yard wing. The wing is used to channel the cattle towards the gate in the yards, the hessian giving the fence line more presence and stature. With about fifteen kilometres from the lake to the yards, we had time to fix the hessian and clear the area before the cattle arrived. The desert wind was picking up when I landed, after being in the air for a cou
ple of hours, so I parked near a tree and used a rope to tie down the gyro to prevent it blowing over. It wasn’t the best weather for flying, nor was it the best weather for trying to hang 300 metres of hessian cloth on a fence. But the three of us eventually managed to tie it all down, before stopping for a cup of tea. The muster was going well. If it continued as planned, we would have all the cattle in the yards by mid-afternoon. The boys had been in the sky for three hours, Andrew flying back first to fuel up at the stock camp before Zebb also returned with Dad. I was surprised Dad had lasted so long in the sky, given how easily he got airsick. Normally, he would ask the pilot to leave him on the ground to walk for half an hour before getting back up in the sky again.
‘Maybe you should go up with Zebb this time, show him where you’ve been and what your plan is,’ suggested Dad.
‘It’ll be right, Dad,’ I replied. ‘I can just go up in my gyro, talk on the two-way and point it out from there.’