by Graham Seal
Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the Queensland side. They were horsemen and had two packhorses. At the last camp before Bourke Jim’s packhorse got disgusted and home-sick during the night and started back for the place where he was foaled. Jim was little more than a new-chum jackeroo; he was no bushman and generally got lost when he went down the next gully. Bill was a bushman, so it was decided that he should go back to look for the horse.
Now Bill was going to sell his packhorse, a well-bred mare, in Bourke, and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales were over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best ‘barracker’ of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill. Seven pounds, reserve.
Next day Bill turned up with the missing horse and saw Jim standing against a veranda-post of the Carriers’ Arms, with his hat down over his eyes, and thoughtfully spitting in the dust. Bill rode over to him.
‘Ullo, Jim.’
‘Ullo, Bill. I see you got him.’
‘Yes, I got him.’ Pause.
‘Where’d yer find him?’
‘’Bout ten mile back. Near Ford’s Bridge. He was just feedin’ along.’
Pause. Jim shifted his feet and spat in the dust.
‘Well,’ said Bill at last. ‘How did you get on, Jim?’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Jim. ‘I sold the mare.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bill. ‘How much did she fetch?’
‘Eight quid;’ then, rousing himself a little and showing some emotion, ‘An’ I could ’a’ got ten quid for her if I hadn’t been a dam’ fool.’
‘Oh, that’s good enough,’ said Bill.
‘I could ’a’ got ten quid if I’d ’a’ waited.’
‘Well, it’s no use cryin’. Eight quid is good enough. Did you get the stuff?’
‘Oh, yes. They parted all right. If I hadn’t been such a dam’ fool an’ rushed it, there was a feller that would ’a’ given ten quid for that mare.’
‘Well, don’t break yer back about it,’ said Bill. ‘Eight is good enough.’
‘Yes. But I could ’a’ got ten,’ said Jim, languidly, putting his hand in his pocket.
Pause. Bill sat waiting for him to hand over the money; but Jim withdrew his hand empty, stretched, and said: ‘Ah, well, Bill, I done it in. Lend us a couple o’ notes.’
Jim had been drinking and gambling all night and he’d lost the eight pounds as well as his own money.
Bill didn’t explode. What was the use? He should have known that Jim wasn’t to be trusted with money in town. It was he who had been the fool. He sighed and lent Jim a pound, and they went in to have a drink.
Now it strikes me that if this had happened in a civilized country (like England) Bill would have had Jim arrested and jailed for larceny as a bailee, or embezzlement, or whatever it was. And would Bill or Jim or the world have been any better for it?
Henry Lawson was realistic enough to recognise that mateship was often something that grew in the glow of a drink or three, once stating: ‘The greatest pleasure I have ever known is when my eyes meet the eyes of a mate over the top of two foaming glasses of beer.’
Mateship is most frequently linked with another Australian characteristic, usually known as anti-authoritarianism, though more flowingly expressed in the phrase ‘Jack’s as good as his master’, sometimes followed with ‘if not better’. Again, the origins of this attitude can be traced to the convict era, through the relationships between bosses and workers in the bush, in factories, on building sites and wharves, as well as a dislike of uniformed authority in particular and regulation in general. Most famously we find it in the reluctance of Australian volunteer soldiers in World War I and after to salute their officers, the subject of endless digger yarns. Again like mateship, this idea is sometimes considered to be a myth.
A glorious spree
Australia’s long love affair with the grog begins with the ‘Rum Corps’ in colonial New South Wales and extends to the present. Along the way have been told many beery tales of mammoth sprees and monumental hangovers. The balladry of the bush overflows with references to alcohol, much of it ‘sly’ or illegal. The ‘hocussed’ or adulterated shanty grog took down many a shearer’s cheque. A famous example occurs in the traditional song ‘On the Road to Gundagai’, where a bloke named Bill and his mate make the mistake of camping at Lazy Harry’s sly grog tent on their way to Sydney with the season’s shearing wages.
In a week the spree was over and our cheque was all knocked down So we shouldered our Matildas and we turned our backs on town. And the girls they stood a nobbler as we sadly said goodbye, And we tramped from Lazy Harry’s on the road to Gundagai.
In vain did the forces of law and order try to police and control the sly grog trade. Colonists mostly insisted on their right to a drink and the grog quickly became an element of the ‘fair go’ ethos, as events at Pakenham demonstrated in 1879:
An interesting raid was made by the revenue officers of the Shire of Berwick, on Wednesday last, on a number of unlicensed shanty-keepers, who for some time past have been carrying on an illicit traffic in liquor in the neighbourhood of a large quarry near the Gippsland railway, about seven miles from Berwick, from which metal has been obtained for the Oakleigh end of the line. At this place a large camp of quarry men and stonebreakers has been formed consisting of about 100 tents and shanties of all kinds and descriptions, and as there are no public houses in the locality sly grog-selling is carried on to a great extent.
It came to the knowledge of the Revenue officers a few days ago that a large quantity of spirituous liquor had been sent up to the camp and having determined to take some action to put a stop to this illicit traffic, the revenue inspector, Mr. Robinson, visited the place on Wednesday last, accompanied by the inspector of licensed premises, Mr A. Cartledge, and three mounted constables, and made a sudden descent on the camp before the casks and cases containing the liquor could be removed or secreted by their owners. At the first place which was visited, that of Mr. R. Stout’s, about a dray load of stock was seized and placed in a dray which had been provided for the occasion.
In the meantime a large number of the navvies had assembled, and seeing the state of affairs commenced looting the shanties and grogshops in spite of the efforts of the police, who endeavoured to roll back the casks into the tents as the mob took them out, but of course were outnumbered, and the result was that casks of bottled beer and cases of brandy, whisky, &c. were smashed open and rifled. By this time the mob had increased to about 100 persons, and an assault was made on the police by a party armed with pickhandles, sticks and other weapons, and the police were rather severely handled—so much so that they had to produce their revolvers, and the revenue officer’s party took advantage of the tranquilising effect which this manoeuvre produced to retire from the camp.
The scene that ensued baffles description; yelling and screaming the mob either stoved in the ends of the casks and opened the cases and removed their contents for immediate consumption, or took them away into the bush for a future occasion. It is estimated that about £30 of spirituous liquor was taken or destroyed by the mob, including the dray load, which the inspector had seized.
Not surprisingly, the police were planning to summon the known rioters to court.
The Greenhide Push waltzes Matilda
Our unofficial national anthem had humble origins as a ditty knocked up by ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Christina Macpherson at Dagwood Station near Winton in 1895. In those days, people entertained themselves and the opportunity to sing a new song around the piano was highly appreciated, especially when it was such a rousing lyric and tune as that of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Almost as soon as the song was composed it flew off into oral tradition around northeast Queensland. It was sung with gust
o in that part of the country long before it was the popular piece it has since become.
Just how popular the song was—in at least one of its different versions—is conveyed in an account of events at Hughenden race time in April 1902. All the young bloods in town organised a procession along the main street. They called themselves ‘the Greenhide Push’ and they were armed with the then-new hit, assisted by the local newspaper, which had thoughtfully printed up the lyrics on flyers and had them posted around town. Old Queensland hand Fred Archer was there and recalled the scene over forty years later:
They got the Salvation Army’s big drum, some cornets and tambourines and the black boys’ gum leaves. The streets were crowded with people. The drum boomed, wild notes came from the cornets, tambourines clashed—all in the theme song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
The crowds on the footpath took it up, horses started to buck and throw their riders, the black boys thumbed their mounts and beat them with their wide-brimmed hats. They yelled and so did everyone else. The drummer was down but couldn’t care less, he still continued whacking the drum—boom-boom. Bucking horses were everywhere. Finally, the procession reached the Great Western-Hughenden Hotels and such horses as were under control were tied to hitching posts.
Tall, lean men in white Canton riding trousers, red shirts, riding boots and long-necked spurs were among the crowds that milled through the hotels, thumped the pianos, roared ‘Waltzing Matilda’ from beginning to end, over and over again, in parlour, bar and verandah, while excited horsemen rode into the middle of the singers and took up the chorus…
And so the party went on for hours. The following day the makeshift band was placed on a wagon and dragged around the town to play the song wherever they stopped. In the evening mounted men galloped through town firing guns in time with the music: ‘This they kept up till they reached the police station, yelled out for troopers 1, 2, 3, then laid whips to their horses and bolted…’ Not surprisingly, the local police were unimpressed with this larrikinism. Such roistering scenes are difficult to imagine today, especially with the inspiration being a song. It was an age when the sung and spoken word was still a powerful form of conviviality and communication, assisted in this case by high spirits, grog and the irresistible urge of the Greenhide Push to call out the police using the anti-authoritarian lines of the song.
The Bunuba resistance
On the morning of April Fool’s Day 1897, the outlaw Jandamarra was shot dead outside his cave hideout at Tunnel Creek. The man who shot this feared scourge of the settlers was another Aborigine known as ‘Micki’, a police tracker. Jandamarra had led the remnants of his people in a prolonged resistance through the rugged region of Western Australia’s northwest.
Australia’s vast and mostly arid northwest had been largely ignored until the 1880s, when its almost infinite acres attracted sheep and cattle farming and its seas an embryonic pearling industry. As settlement increased, the newcomers increasingly encroached on the traditional lands of the many Indigenous groups in what would become known as the Kimberley region. Some of these groups resisted; others seemed to fade away as the frontier pushed relentlessly north and east. The Bunuba were not inclined to simply walk off their land and nurtured an ongoing resistance that eventually produced their hero.
Jandamarra was already approaching initiation age when his country became the object of commercial and political interest. At around eleven years of age he was taken into employment on a local station to be trained as a stockman. Jandamarra appeared to be the ideal type for such conversions, quickly excelling at the necessary skills and eventually also becoming a crack rifle shot. Although he was unusually short for a Bunuba man—they were typically six foot or more—he had great speed and agility, leading to the settlers nicknaming him ‘Pigeon’. Working and living in the company of the settlers caused Jandamarra to grow up without being initiated into the spiritual secrets that would rightly have belonged to a Bunuba man, so although Jandamarra would come to know his country, its gullies, hills, trails and caves intimately, he was never fully a man in Bunuba society.
None of these matters worried Jandamarra, it seems. He was content to work for the settlers and even to become a blacktracker or adjunct member of the police force and take part in tracking down other Aboriginal men and women wanted by the law.
Meanwhile, resistance to settlement continued. Stock was speared, supplies stolen and whites attacked by one or usually small groups of Aborigines. The settlers reacted with violence based on fear as much as racism, and attack led to counterattack as Aborigines sought to stem the unstoppable advances of the settlers and the settlers sought to ‘disperse’ the Aborigines so their stock could graze the grassland and drink from the waterholes.
A noted Bunuba warrior of the time was a man named Ellemarra. Through the late 1880s he offered fierce and ongoing resistance to the settlers, often being arrested but usually escaping again. So dangerous did Ellemarra become that the settlers called for ‘the whole tribe of natives inhabiting the Napier Range to be outlawed’. Ellemarra was among the most wanted of the resisters and Jandamarra, caught between the worlds of white and black, formed part of a police party sent out to bring him in, effectively going against his own people. Ellemarra was flogged and imprisoned. He eventually escaped again but was recaptured and chained with a group of other Aboriginal prisoners. But again, possibly with the help of Jandamarra, Ellemarra managed to break his chains and escape.
Now Jandamarra had to again take part in tracking down Ellemarra, under the command of a policeman named Richardson. Jandamarra led the policeman to his countrymen and they were captured in late October 1894, the largest haul of resisters the police had yet netted. Richardson delayed returning with them in order to gain a greater allowance for being on active duty. It was a fatal mistake. The Bunuba men naturally placed pressure on Jandamarra to let them go and acknowledge his true Bunuba identity. Eventually Jandamarra accepted their argument, released Ellemarra and shot Richardson dead while he slept. The two men then released their comrades, took the guns and ammunition and disappeared into the bush. They soon raised a large group of Bunuba and engaged in a large-scale battle with police sent to track them down for the murders of a number of settlers in November. Ellemarra and a number of Bunuba women were killed in the shooting and Jandamarra seriously wounded. He managed to escape, evading the pursuit through his unparalleled knowledge of the country. An undeclared war was in progress, which would make Jandamarra a great hero to his people and their struggle.
While Jandamarra was in hiding, recovering from his wounds, the government sent police reinforcements to the Kimberley as quickly as was possible at the time.
The police had almost convinced themselves that the Bunuba resistance was broken when rumours of Jandamarra’s survival were confirmed in May 1895. Jandamarra and the Bunuba now conducted a guerrilla war; police continually came across the outlaws’ tracks, only to lose them in the rocks and ravines.
The Bunuba people also employed the characteristic tactic of using outlaw sympathisers. Misleading the police with false information was effective and had the advantage of making the police look like fools, further demoralising them in their futile hunt for Jandamarra and his now small, mobile band.
In October 1895, Jandamarra became over-confident and failed to post a guard around his camp, and the police surprised him and his band. Employing his legendary agility, Jandamarra disappeared into a convenient cave, but most of his band was captured.
Over the following months Jandamarra concentrated on harassing and demoralising police and settlers by demonstrating his mastery of the country and of stealth. He robbed storehouses, visited police camps at night and shadowed police patrols, always ensuring they knew he had been among them. Jandamarra, the uninitiated man, now came to be seen by his own people as a lawman, an individual with great spiritual authority and great magical powers. He was said to be able to turn himself into a bird and fly away from the police. He was also said to be invulner
able because his real spirit was hidden at his hideout, and it was only his animated body that crossed his country to taunt the police and the settlers.
This went on for many months, including the besieging of the police outpost at Lillimooroola station, immediately below the limestone cliffs that marked the easily defended edge of Bunuba country. Towards the end of 1896 the settlers began forcing their cattle deep into Bunuba land, effectively going behind Jandamarra’s front line. The Bunuba resistance went back into action with psychological warfare and attacks on settlers. The police cranked up their attempts to end the conflict, committing more atrocities against the Bunuba, but had no more success than in their previous attempts.
But within the police ranks was a secret weapon. An Aboriginal member of the force named Micki was from far outside Bunuba country and had no loyalty towards Jandamarra’s fight. The Aborigines also considered him to have magical powers. On 23 March 1897, Micki was solely responsible for capturing five of Jandamarra’s band. Jandamarra attempted to free his comrades but was badly wounded. He was pursued through the ranges as he struggled towards his hideout cave at Tunnel Creek, 30 miles east. He made it back inside the cave through one of its many secret entrances, but Micki was waiting for him outside the cave’s main entrance. The two lawmen faced each other with Winchester rifles. Jandamarra missed and Micki’s shot sent him hurtling down a 100-foot cliff. The police reached the scene, confirmed the body was that of their feared foe and then chopped the head from the torso with a tomahawk. It was reportedly despatched to adorn the trophy wall of a British arms manufacturer.
The Bunuba resistance was finally broken with Jandamarra’s death, but his legend lived on, becoming a powerful oral tradition in the Kimberley. It has also been the subject of several books and is being turned into a feature film.