Kings In Grass Castles

by Mary Durack

  Here was a flat world of little shape or colour, sparsely timbered, faded under torrid skies to dusty yellow and grey, unrelieved by mountain peak or range, and where even the water in the broken river holes was the colour of clay. Sometimes, knowing they might find no firewood before the day’s end, they carried timber from camp to camp.

  The letter telling of their coming had been still awaiting some erratic mailman when they got to Bourke so the dust of the buggy and the following waggons brought the Costellos running in excited surmise. Of what intriguing speculation and ecstatic surprise the party lines and pedal radios have deprived the bush in our enlightened times! There was no through track past Warroo Springs so these could be no mere travellers on some lonely trail north. Could it be that they had come at last?

  ‘I believe that was one of the happiest moments of my life,’ Grandmother told her children, ‘to find my parents, my dear brother and his family safe and well in that lonely place.’

  After the embracings and the tears, the babble of questions, and exchange of news, there were rapid plans to make, for the ‘permanent’ springs on Warroo had almost given out and only the hope of their relatives’ coming had prevented their moving on already to a good waterhole John Costello had discovered some 200 miles north-west across the border.

  ‘Of course we would have to strike another drought to start us off,’ Costello said, ‘but it can’t go on much longer and when it breaks we shall all be on clover.’

  Since there was no hope of ‘selling out’ in such times it was simply a matter of getting out—abandoning to the wilderness the work of two and a half years, of mustering and packing and moving on with their goods and chattels and stock. There was a great outcry among the few native families that had attached themselves to the station and quickly become used to the white man’s ways and his good food. One young fellow whom Costello had named Soldier because of his fine physique and upright bearing had amazed the newcomers by a natural gift for handling horses. It was he who had gone with Costello to the good water on Mobel Creek, a camping place of his wife’s people, so when the time came for moving on Soldier, his wife and two or three other relatives accompanied them.

  The three hired teamsters, three of the stockmen and the cook returned from Warroo Springs, leaving a party of nine white men, three white women and three children to start off across the border. There was John Costello, his wife and child, his benign old father, his staunch but irascible mother, his brother-in-law Jim Scanlan and one stockman named Jack Farrar who had stuck to them on Warroo Springs. In Grandfather’s party there was, besides himself, his wife and brother Stumpy, two hired stockmen and the two little boys, my father and baby Uncle John. This time native riders helped with cattle and horses, leaving the white men free to manage the waggon teams. Great-grandmother Costello ‘manned’ one buggy and her capable daughter-in-law the other, while Grandmother took charge of the little ones.

  How many besides the blacks had been before them in this trackless land since the explorer Gregory, in ’58, had discovered Mitchell’s splendid Barcoo River to peter out into the shallow channels of Cooper’s Creek? The Burke and Wills party had passed through the locality in ’61. Landsborough had crossed it in search of them and they had themselves come part of the way in ’63. A few thin lines of penetration in a vast, empty land. Here and there they passed the bleached and scattered bones of their own perished stock. There was more feed and water now than on their previous journey but as they pushed north from the border it was seen that drought was again closing in on Landsborough’s pastoral paradise. Grass grew sparse and bad water thick with green slime lay in dwindling holes. Before the stock drank they drew off buckets for their own use, boiled and cleared it a little with a mixture of gidgee ash and Epsom salts; but fever and dysentery were already upon them and in heat rising to the limits of human endurance sick women nursed their fretful children while sick men fended for the precious stock.

  The leaders must have wondered now, as did my own father in after years, how they had dared bring women and children into such a situation. Even explorers would have had more chance than they of rescue in a final extremity, for settlers put no time limit on their reappearance. Any who knew of their intention to move on from Warroo Springs would have had little idea of their possible destination. They were responsible to themselves alone, at the mercy of unpredictable tribespeople and an even less predictable land. Obsessed with an ambition to be first in an area that so far settlement had shunned, they had ventured into this pitiless country for the second time, confident that such a drought as they had struck before could not occur again so soon. Now once more before them stretched the parched, colourless plains, dotted with sparse and ragged timber, scarred with the sun-baked courses of shallow creeks where the only signs of life besides that they brought with them were the gathering flocks of hungry crows and eaglehawks, the erratic whirlwind spirals that darted with furnace breath across their trail or over their midday camps, scattering the fires, leaving a heavy scud of dust, dry grass and brittle leaves.

  If this were fiction it might be said that I had at this stage overstepped the bounds of credulity and descended into bathos in having a child die in such a scene. But this is stark truth and it was here that the Costellos’ sturdy two-year-old, wasted almost to a skeleton over the fevered miles, died pleading for water in the unquenchable thirst of delirium. They told how at the last he had roused himself in his mother’s arms and smiled as the waggon jolted through mirage on the blistering plain: ‘Water, mummy. Water!’

  They dug a grave on the banks of the Bulloo River and placed above it a rough wooden cross, soon to be dispersed like the bones of their dying stock by the ravages of flood and wind.

  The ‘good hole’ on Mobel Creek lay between drooping, flood-tattered paperbarks and raggy coolibahs where flocks of parrots ard white cockatoos clustered and cried. The water was opaque and uninviting but it was good water for a drought year and there was enough pasture to indicate promising possibilities. It would be ‘sweet country’ after rain, they said, and if, because of limited permanent water, it might not sustain a large herd, it was suitable at least for a temporary place. They ran up slab huts and a post and rail yard, ‘tailed’ the stock and watched out for the return of the blacks who had fled the water on their approach.

  Knowing that if the natives turned against them everything could well be lost, they had sent Soldier and members of his family to make contact and explain that the white men would kill cattle for them provided they left the stock alone. Soon groups of natives came straggling in, received their beef, laughed, made unintelligible but seemingly friendly comments and set up camps on the far side of the waterhole. One good-humoured, grizzled-haired fellow with a bone through his nose and a body ornate with tribal scars at once attached himself to Grandfather and was given, along with the name of Cobby, a shirt and trousers, a hat and a pair of stockman’s boots. He picked up the rudiments of English with surprising speed and although not young soon learned to ride a horse and tail cattle. Being ‘Mr Durack’s boy’, as he called himself, he brought his section of the tribe to the station side of the creek with the crowd from Warroo Springs.

  ‘I don’t know how you can stand the sight of that terrible old Cobby,’ Grandmother told her husband one day. ‘Several times I’ve caught him lifting the mosquito net to peer at the baby and I don’t like the look in his eye.’

  ‘But Cobby was sent by my Guardian Angel,’ Grandfather said, ‘in the very minute I was praying for protection for the lot of us.’

  Grandmother remained doubtful for although probably more deeply religious than her husband she was sceptical of the intimate terms on which he conversed with the hierarchy of heaven, and wondered how, while the family prayed to God and all His saints for rain, Grandfather could bring himself to promise the blacks an extra ration of tea, sugar and tobacco if they succeeded in influencing their tribal spirits to the same end. Grandfather felt no evangelical mission to the Aborig
ines. He displayed a keen and respectful interest in their beliefs and religious practices and related in exchange simple legends of his own faith so that his own particular ‘boys’ would call upon St Patrick in times of stress and St Anthony to help them track lost horses.

  The family was not many weeks on Mobel Creek when the Costellos’ second child was born—the first white baby of the Bulloo district. They christened her Mary, but the blacks called her Burtnagala—little girl of Burtna, their own name for the Mobel waterhole.

  Rain fell like a benison with the coming of the child. The Bulloo ran overflowing its tributaries and soon the grass sprang sweet and succulent on the parched plains. The settlers watched the flanks of cattle and horses swell to curves of wellbeing and contentment, realising how truly Landsborough had described this as a country of swift, almost miraculous change.

  The horses that, for all the ravages of the blacks, had increased considerably on Warroo Springs were soon again in wonderful condition and fearing they would quickly run wild and become a nuisance Costello decided to take a draft of 200 down to Adelaide where horses were said to be bringing a good price.

  There were few details available of what lay between Mobel Creek and the settled parts of South Australia, but from his study of the explorer Gregory’s track in ’58 Costello knew that a creek—the Strzelecki—ran, when it did run, almost due south into Lake Blanche—part of Eyre’s shimmering horseshoe of salt lakes. From there, he reasoned, a drover should find water enough in scattered creeks and soaks to see him to more reliable country south of Lake Frome. Undismayed by the prospect of some 860 trackless miles to market, he set out with his brother-in-law Jim Scanlan, his boy Soldier, and another Warroo native called Scrammy Jimmy.

  They cut across from the Bulloo one hundred miles west to the Wilson River to find that selections there had been taken up at about the same time as the family came to Mobel Creek. Canbar East, Canbar West, Lubrina, Nockatunga, were tiny outposts in the wilderness where pioneer settlers S. D. Gordon, Alex Munroe and Pat Drynan were battling like themselves. Cheered on their way they struggled down the fitful stream of the Strzelecki and into the desolate sandhill country, the land of lost men. The thirsty horses, mostly unbroken and more imaginative than cattle, stampeded at mirage, quivered with fear of strange waters, started at shadows, thundering off night after night in moonlight frenzy. Young Soldier, with his uncanny understanding of the ways of the horse, galloped with his master, breakneck, to turn the lead of the frightened mob.

  Three weeks to Lake Blanche, a month from there to Lake Frome and Wilpena Creek, they nursed the animals along, until they fell gradually into the hard rhythm of the track, taking up their self-selected places—the big black stallion always in the lead, paces ahead of the rest, others on the wings or in the body of the mob, the weaker bringing up the rear. Gradually they moved through more closely settled districts to Kapunda, north of Adelaide, where, not a beast short, they clattered through the dusty streets to the saleyards in the first week of 1868.

  Costello interviewed the young auctioneer, Jenkin Coles—knight of later years—telling how he had travelled down on an unsurveyed route of over 800 miles.

  In his auctioneer’s stand Coles told the story of those horses and their drovers. The animals were all of thoroughbred Arab stock from around the Murrumbidgee, Lachlan and Wollondilly Rivers—a region already renowned for producing horses of great hardiness and spirit. They or their forebears had travelled north, nearly 1,000 miles to the Bulloo, had survived the drought to thrive on the grass and clover of a good season. Their hoofs were inured to rough travelling. Heat held no terrors for them. They had the speed of thoroughbreds, the intelligence and hardihood of brumby strain—in short the makings of superb Australian stockhorses.

  The crowd was so stirred by Coles’ eloquence that the horses averaged £15 a head and Costello and his companions found themselves overwhelmed with hospitality.

  Hailed everywhere as ‘The Queenslanders’ and congratulated on the news which they heard only on arrival at Kapunda, of a gold strike at Gympie in the new colony in September ’67, Costello decided that the tide of family fortune had turned at last. With a cheque for £3,000 he changed his mind about making back over the dreary desert route. It would be more expensive but quicker in the long run, he reasoned, to ship men, stockhorses, gear and all from Port Augusta to Sydney, covering the 1,072 sea miles in comfort in about ten days, making inland for Goulburn to see the folks and returning to Queensland by the New South Wales track. So the two stockboys, Soldier and Scrammy Jimmy, who three years before had never seen a white man or worn anything more than a hair belt, a bunch of feathers and a nose bone, found themselves plunged into a bewildering world of busy thoroughfares, big buildings, noise and confusion all about something they would never understand. Costello, watching their reactions with interest, was surprised to find with what seeming sang /Void they accepted the white man’s world. The sight of the ocean surprised and excited them more than any of the wonders of man and where they had walked, not greatly impressed, through the streets of Adelaide, they stood on the sea-front gazing in awe at this immense water, vaster than any inland river in a big flood year. Running forward, they threw themselves down to drink and jumped up spluttering in disgust:

  ‘Him chalt!’

  From that moment the sea held no charms for them. It was useless—no good to drink, and horrible to travel on. They huddled in their blankets, sick and cold, moaning that they were about to die, so that Costello and Jim Scanlan had constantly to encourage and cheer them for fear they would.

  ‘It was a lesson to me,’ Costello admitted. ‘I’d take a blackfellow anywhere short of hell on land, but never again on sea.’

  In Sydney they rallied at once and in smart stockmen’s outfits strode the streets with their white masters, again less curious of the sights and crowds than was the white population of them, for Aborigines of this type were now no common sight in Australian cities.

  A curious crowd watched them pack up and ride out of Sydney on the Goulburn road, a mere step and a jump of 136 miles to these seasoned travellers, with the mountains and forest country awakening the lively interest and wonderment of the native boys.

  Word had gone ahead of their coming and family and friends had flocked to meet them in Goulburn, hungry for news from the far north. There was Great-grandmother Bridget with the wide-eyed Mary Anne Bennet, and her youngest, Jerry, yearning to be off with these heroes to the new land of adventure. The Scanlans, Pat and Mick, were there to greet their brother Jim and this man Costello who had taken their sister into the wild, lost land. Sarah and Pat Tully had come with their family laden with parcels to be taken to the dear ones in the north and Poor Mary Skeahan to tell of how Dinny had every confidence in his latest deep shaft on the Adelong, and little Anne, the school teacher, to be teased about her diary and the young man John Redgrave who remained so attentive.

  Costello registered the Mobel holding of about 40,000 acres, paid his cheque into the Goulburn bank, handed around some £5 notes and answered all protests with a breezy wave of the hand.

  ‘The drought’s broken and they’ve found gold at Gympie. They said it would take a miracle to set Queensland on her feet and here it is!’

  11

  A LAND LOVED BY BIRDS

  The year 1868. Patsy Durack and his brother find Thylungra on Kyabra Creek and return there with their own and the Costello family.

  Grandfather loved to tell the story of his coming to Thylungra and his hunch about the birds. Although there were parrots, cockatoos, some duck and an odd pelican to be seen on Mobel Creek, great flocks passed over from time to time making for the north-west.

  ‘They’d all be down here,’ Grandfather reasoned, ‘unless they knew of something better farther on.’

  Patiently he had questioned old Cobby and the other blacks:

  ‘Good country out that way?’

  ‘You-eye, country all right, only here more better.’


  This Grandfather took with a grain of salt, knowing that no native will admit any country being better than his tribal heritage.

  ‘Plenty water over there?’

  ‘Can’t finish’m.’

  ‘What about blackfellows?’

  ‘No good. Proper wild fullas that way.’

  ‘How far this good water?’

  Thin arms swung to wide horizons. ‘Oooo long way—two-three mile—might be fifty.’

  ‘About fifty miles?’

  ‘You-eyes. Might be t’ousand.’

  ‘How many days’ ride? How many sun go down?’

  ‘Oooo mob. Not too many horseback.’

  ‘You reckon you can show me this good water?’ Grandfather asked Cobby. ‘You been there before?’

  This put the old man on his mettle. He knew all about this country—everything. As ambassador of the Murragon tribe he had often visited those carpet snake Boontamurra people who camped on the big Kyabra waterholes where there was fish and game all the year round. He could take him all right. He had a mother-in-law and a few other ‘little bit’ relatives over there but they were wild people. You had to look out for them, keep your hand on your gun. From the beginning of their short association Cobby had been so thrilled and fascinated by firearms that Grandfather had had to keep them locked away for fear the curious fellow would someday try one out for himself.

  ‘No gun,’ Grandfather said, for he had strong views on riding armed into the black man’s country. ‘Only maybe that shotgun in case we need some tucker.’

  So, while Costello was on his way south with the horses, Grandfather, young Stumpy Michael and the native Cobby had set off for the camping place of the wild Boontamurra and the great flocks of wild birds. Flopping untidily in the saddle, reins flapping, old Cobby led off with confidence, sixty-five miles north up the sprawling course of the Bulloo to somewhere about the site of the present town of Quilpie, then away a hundred miles to the north and west until the low eroded slopes of the Grey Range, drab-coloured as their name, dropped away behind and in front stretched the mighty Cooper plains. The black man’s arms embraced the vast horizons as he turned smiling in his saddle. Here were the pastures of a grazier’s dream—Flinders, Mitchell, button, kangaroo and blue grasses, while gidgee, boree and coolibah trees made scattered shade and lignum sprouted succulent shoots along the courses of winding creeks and gullies. The foliage of these trees seemed stunted and thin to the unaccustomed eye. Not yet could the stranger find beauty in their supple hardiness, elegance in the dainty fan-like spread of boree branches limned against the sky, grace in the lithe growing lignum, swaying under the weight of perching birds. Here and there, dazzling red against a hard blue sky, were sandhills composed of fine quartz grains—monuments to a long-lost Cretaceous sea. The travellers made camp at the foot of one of these, under a gidgee that would remain, in years to come, a landmark beside the well-travelled track—‘the Durack tree’.