Kings In Grass Castles

by Mary Durack

  Costello, famed for his unerring sense of direction, was appointed leader of this expedition. Where Grandfather used his compass all the time, Costello seldom needed his, never when he had once covered a track and this was no mean feat over these vast, almost featureless inland plains. He could make back so precisely over his former tracks that his horse once put its foot on a compass he had previously dropped. He would display the dinted case with pride. ‘How’s that for a deadline now?’ ‘If ye’d the sense to dodge about a bit as I do,’ Grandfather teased him, ‘ye might have had your compass back intact.’

  Both Costello and Kilfoyle were already familiar with the early stages of the route that wound for about 150 miles north-west along the Lachlan and up the Bogan River to its junction with the Darling some 200 miles due north. They made eight to ten miles a day over good country, the cook with his dray moving on ahead to strike camp, the horses following and the cattle bringing up the rear. Sometimes they camped for a day or two while the route ahead was examined for water and grass and men from scattered sheep and cattle runs dropped in on the camp for a yarn and to make sure, in passing, that they did not linger too long on the station waters. It was a dry year around the Lachlan and as the settlements fell behind and the track swung in a half turn down the Darling the outlook did not improve.

  They were two and a half months to Bourke, last outpost of New South Wales settlement, where the explorer Thomas Mitchell, seeking the destination of the big river in 1835, had built his little fort against the blacks. Only lately gazetted as a frontier township, Bourke already promised to become a thriving centre. Its two enterprising storekeepers and three publicans predicted that it would soon be the Mecca of settlers, drovers and teamsters for hundreds of miles around. Almost every week another party went through, some to occupy land in the far north-western corner of New South Wales, others into Queensland, mostly via the Darling to the Culgoa, but when the Costello–Durack party cut out north-west they made fresh tracks

  Feeling their way up the inconsistent stream of the Warrego and across the Cuttaburra, they moved on to the sandy, treeless plains of the Paroo into an area of seemingly permanent springs which they judged to be fair horse country but of little use for cattle. Here just south of the border they established a depot and left most of the horses in charge of three men whose instructions were to follow their tracks if they had not returned within a certain time. John Costello, Grandfather, his brother and Jack Horrigan then pushed on with the cattle, hoping to find better country a little farther to the north-west. Instead the outlook grew steadily more arid and desolate as, now about 150 miles past Bourke, they trailed the cattle through dusty mulga, gidgee and brigalow scrub, over parched plains broken into a crazy pavement of widening cracks.

  Sixty years later my father and I travelled through this country in just such a drought, when hot winds stirred up a gritty film of dust, whirlwinds reared spinning, red columns against a cloudless sky and at evening the sun seemed to float like a huge, pale balloon above a desolate horizon.

  ‘This is how poor Father first saw this country,’ my father said. ‘What a heart he must have had ever to come back to it!’ and he recalled the story as he had heard it many years before.

  With two dry stages behind, they had come at last to the drover’s ‘point of no return’. Scouts rode on ahead, located a little water in the Bulloo River and returned to bring on the thirsty stock, though by this time some of the horses had fallen in their tracks, and had to be shot where they lay.

  The frenzied cattle smelt water on the wind from a mile away and broke into a 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 frantic hoofs. Half were drowned in the milling turmoil, while the rest drank until they nuzzled the mud and then bogged, exhausted, too weak to pull themselves out. The drovers, forced to shoot what perishing stock remained, moved on up river and found a little water for themselves and their horses.

  Only those who know the undying optimism that drives the seeker of gold or land will understand how practical men could find themselves in such a plight, how, gripped now with the doggedness of desperation, they plodded on another thirty or forty miles in the awful face of the drought. Their stock had perished, but if they found good country on ahead they could return for more when the season broke.

  A patch of parakeelia, with succulent leaves and stems, provided a little moisture for men and horses as they plodded on, their hopes reduced at last to the discovery of a little water to sustain life.

  Salvation lay in a party of blacks, striding like lean giants through the waters of mirage, dwindling as they drew near to the meagre proportions of the desert people. The men, naked but for belts of woven hair, emu feather head-dresses or dangling circlets of dingo tails to brush away the flies, carried bundles of long, thin spears and throwing sticks. The women wore armlets of possum skin, necklets of clustered kangaroo teeth or small human bones—relics of drought-born babes, killed and eaten to be born again, they reasoned, in better times. One or two carried little ones, surprisingly fat and gazing mutely from bark coolamons swung about their mothers’ backs.

  As though sensing the helpless and sorry plight of the travellers, the warriors laid down their arms and stood quietly as the white men came on. Astonishingly one spoke a few words of garbled English and was later found to have been in contact with King, the sole survivor of Burke’s party of two years before. Words, however, were scarcely necessary. The lives of the white men and their horses, with tongues swollen and turning black from thirst, lay in the hands of these people whose lot they might at other times have pitied or despised. They led the white men to a low, rocky outcrop and there, removing a cover of brushwood and stones, disclosed a well of stagnant water.

  Later they brought food—pinkunnas, fat yellow grubs dug from the roots of the mulga, black goannas to be roasted in hot ashes with little hard cakes made from the pounded flour of the nardoo—a feast for starving men. They revived rapidly and began to question the blacks about country farther on. The leader shook his head, scowled and jutted his chin to the south.

  ‘Go! Go!’

  But whether or not the advice to return was given in concern for their safety, the white men, encouraged by a flight of parrots to the north-west, decided to push on. They ate crows and kangaroo rats, sucked moisture from parakeelia, but they found no water and soon there were only two horses left. They called and signalled for the blacks whose smoke fires had followed them, but nobody came. They found a pack saddle, half covered in sand on the bald plain, and inferred it to be one abandoned by Burke on his hurried death march over these same hungry plains. When the last horse was near death they shot it and drank from its jugular vein—the last desperate measure of perishing men. It was only then they turned back and suddenly the blacks were there again.

  ‘Go?’

  Heads nodded and white teeth flashed in dark faces. There was another well in a limestone outcrop not far away. More lizards and nardoo cakes, and a sign conference in which the blacks agreed to accompany the travellers, showing them the hidden waters until they rejoined their people.

  One of the party, about to move on, dipped his leather water bag into the well. Instantly there were lowered brows and upraised spears, for the blacks were masters still in this timeless country where life was sustained by a stern discipline of mind and body uncomprehended by the white. These little reservoirs in an arid land had succoured the traveller from time beyond memory and were a sacred tribal trust, not to be camped on for unnecessary time, their contents never to be carried away. The water was tipped back and following the example of the blacks, the white men placed pebbles under their tongues.

  From well to well they plodded south on blistered and swollen feet, until one morning the blacks had vanished, their tracks pointing north-west to the horizon, while from far down the course of a dry creek came the faint, hollow knocking of a horse bell. They sent up
a smoke signal, fired a shot and presently riders and packs appeared out of the dust.

  The time agreed upon for the return of news had elapsed and stockmen who had remained at the depot had set out in search. They carried flour, tea and hard ‘jerked’ beef in their tucker bags, but the water in their canteens was low and when these were filled and the horses watered for the return journey, the little native well was drained dry.

  And already men were saying of a people whose lives had been pared and restrained to a system of survival remarkable among all races on earth—‘The blacks have no thought for tomorrow.’

  9

  OF PLANS DEFERRED

  The years 1864 to 1867. Family events and tragedies. Political and sectarian strife in New South Wales. The flood of ’64. Marriage of John Costello and Mary Scanlan and their departure for the north. Depression in Queensland. Patsy Durack makes preparations for the northward trek.

  Incredible as it may sound after the experience they had just survived, both Grandfather and John Costello were resolved before they got back to Goulburn not only to return as soon as possible but to bring their families. Their heavy losses of stock and equipment were a bitter blow to family resources but they were somehow confident that when the current drought had broken they could soon retrieve their losses. Grandfather, for his part, was convinced that had they been able to continue in the direction of the flying birds they would have come upon good permanent water. Most of the surviving horses they had been forced to leave, running wild, below the border. Here, provided the blacks left them alone, it was thought they should do well enough until their return when they could have a grand horse muster and dispose of the increase for a small fortune.

  Still, they had not reckoned on the barrage of family opposition that met their plan. Mrs Costello avowed that she and her husband would advance not a penny more on their son’s wildcat schemes. Tea-tree was a good property and there he must settle down. The three Scanlan brothers were behind her at this stage and refused to sanction young John’s marriage to their cherished only sister while he entertained the idea of returning with her to the desolate and lonely north. Grandfather’s position was complicated too, for the little daughter, Mary, born shortly before his return did not seem robust enough to survive an expedition of this kind. Family troubles crowded in on all sides. One of the little Skeahan boys had been fatally injured by a horse and another died of ‘a fever’ within a few weeks. Poor Mary had come home with her grief and her remaining two sons while Dinny, weary of battling on the drought-stricken selection he had been persuaded to take up near Lambing Flat, talked of defying the family and trying his luck in a deep shaft on the Adelong River.

  About the same time news came from Sydney that the second sister, Margaret Bennet, had taken ill of ‘a chest complaint’ that had haunted the family since the famine years and Grandfather, in a frenzy of worry, went post-haste to fetch her home with her baby Mary Anne. As her husband’s work had kept him so much away, Margaret had lived with his relatives in the formal atmosphere of an English household where both her religion and her friendly, outspoken Irish ways were little understood. She had pined badly for the boisterous hugger-mugger of family life, for the riding, romping and banter, the bluster of Irish argument, and the intoxication of her brother Patsy’s quick enthusiasm for new schemes. It was thought that the dry inland air would soon restore her strength but she continued to decline as the weeks went by and the dress she had started to make for the Christmas races became her shroud when they crossed her hands on her rosary and braided her long fair hair for the last time.

  There could be no prolonged wake in an Australian summer, but Irish families, determined to wring every ounce of emotion from ‘the tragedy’, came flocking from miles around with offerings of food and drink and blessed candles to burn beside the bier. The keening and the praying went on for a day and a night while the distracted husband pleaded with the family to turn ‘the barbarians’ away.

  ‘But it is as she would have expected it,’ Grandfather told him, ‘for if these are barbarians then so was she.’

  Anxious to remove his child from this environment, John Bennet announced that he would take her to his own family, but Great-grandmother Bridget would have none of it.

  ‘And have her reared a Protestant!’ she exclaimed. ‘Over me own dead body!’

  The Irishwoman, entrenched in her stronghold, won the first round of this classic and long-to-be-disputed issue, in which neither party could in conscience give way to the other. A host of well-meaning busybodies took up the cause on either side and Grandfather found himself embroiled in the only type of argument that was really anathema to him.

  Already religion was at the bottom of most personal and political issues in the colony, the cause of frequent riots and fights. With every shipload of immigrants came a further influx of southern Irish, with a mingling of derelict and weak-willed falling easy prey to the temptations of the Free Selection Act. The prevalence of blackmail and perjury, the number of poor and disillusioned Irish now ‘dummying’ for big holders and turning farm-houses into grog shanties were used by political zealots in sweeping generalisations on the degeneracy of the Irish race and the iniquities of ‘papism’. The fine radical spirit of Ireland found itself in the ironical position of supporting the more moderately conservative leaders since the left-wing elements led by Henry Parkes and Dr John Dunmore Lang embodied a bitter hatred of their faith.

  Parkes had emigrated from Birmingham a few years before the discovery of gold in New South Wales and through his support of the anti-transportation movement had won a reputation for vigorous leadership. Unfortunately for the Irish, however, he had grown up in an overcrowded industrial area where labour problems had been aggravated by an influx of hungry and dispossessed from across the channel. British workers in the inevitable fight for self-preservation stirred an ancient anti-papism into a living fire which many, like Parkes himself, carried with them to vent upon the Irish in the new land.

  In the late fifties open conflict had broken out on the education issue, with Parkes espousing the State school system divorced from sectarian influence and the Irish keenly supporting a policy of education combined with religious instruction. For a few years all sects came in behind the vigorous campaign of Catholic and Anglican Churches, but in the face of bitter opposition Parkes, then Premier of New South Wales, established his first secular public schools in 1866.

  Still the fight raged on, complicated by inter-sectarian prejudice and strife, disrupting the harmony of every community. It was now no mere land hunger that pulled Grandfather and Costello to the empty north but a wish to start afresh where they could find wholesome expression of true Irish life and personality.

  The drought years broke in the winter of ’64 and the Mulwarrie came down in a mighty flood, drowning stock, sweeping through the settlements right into the streets of Goulburn. Life over the entire district was disorganised while families more fortunately situated took in the straggling bands of refugees. The house at Dixon’s Creek was filled to overflowing with friends and relations whose homes were temporarily under water.

  Grandfather’s sister Bridget Scanlan had been giving birth to her third child while the water level rose steadily up the walls of their shack and big Pat stood by urging his wife to get up and swim for it.

  ‘I tell ye it’s drowned we’ll be, woman, if we stop here another mortal minute.’

  Poor Bridget, helpless in her extremity, expostulated: ‘It’s not so much that I won’t get up as that I can’t, but if it’s scared you are there’s nothing to keep yourself.’

  No sooner was the child born than Pat wrapped it in a blanket with its mother and swam them all to safety.

  After the confusion and excitement of the flood came the marriage early in 1865 of Pat Scanlan’s sister Mary to John Costello, with Father MacAlroy, who had presided at so many of the family weddings, again officiating.

  Mary Scanlan, the serene-looking girl from County Clare
who had pioneered a selection with her brothers, was a fine rider, an efficient hand with stock and a crack shot with a rifle. She had besides the reputation of being ‘an authority’ on world affairs and local politics and contended that it was more important to know what was going on outside than to keep one’s eyes constantly bent on household tasks. Before the marriage Great-grandmother Costello thought such views unwomanly, and the bright, wide-spaced gaze and confidence with which Mary Scanlan would discuss the affairs of the day a sign of unseemly boldness. Later on, when Mary became her daughter-in-law and the mother of her grandchildren it was a different story and Mary’s virtues and intelligence were lauded to the skies.

  No sooner were the couple married than the subject of the north country again raised its ugly head and the bride, far from shrinking from the prospect of such a pioneering adventure, urged it wholeheartedly. They were eager to make a start at their previous depot below the border and later expand into the new colony which was said still to be flourishing, albeit on borrowed money. It seemed a good sign that private investors were now following the example of the government which, with finance from London, continued its programme of public works and its wooing of immigration with glowing promises and advertisements in striking capitals:

  WANTED: YOUNG MEN FOR QUEENSLAND!

  For a time old Mr Michael Costello had done no more than vaguely shake his head over the ‘beautiful, lovely horses’ abandoned to their fate up north, but at last, no doubt under pressure from the young people, he quietly took action at the Lands Office. For a down-payment of £25 he obtained title to the lease of 32,000 acres between the Warrego and Paroo Rivers at that time occupied by a tribe of wild natives and a mob of near-brumby horses. He then wrote out a cheque for £3,000 to see his son on the road north with two hundred head of cattle, fifteen horses, two waggons, a dray, a bride, brother-in-law Jim Scanlan, two extra stockmen and a cook. Grandmother Costello was beside herself, berating in turns her husband, her son and any other relatives within earshot: