Kings In Grass Castles

by Mary Durack

  In charge of the horses were the bride’s brother, Donald McInnes, and Stumpy Michael’s devoted black boy, Willie.

  Looking back through the years, it always seemed to Kate Durack to have been a happy and romantic trip, with her husband, now a personality of the Bogan River stock route, everywhere greeted with friendly words and congratulations, his wife and mother warmly welcomed.

  After over three months on that thousand-mile track there had been at last the excitement of arrival at Thylungra where Grandfather had worked fanatically to have a new pisé house, a hundred yards from the original homestead, ready for the young couple. That arrival was remembered by my father mainly because his grandmama had brought in her trunk a few oranges which although pathetically shrivelled from those long weeks over the arid plains were the first fruit, other than wild berries, the bush-reared youngsters had seen.

  The family at Thylungra now numbered three boys, Michael, John and Pat, and a daughter Mary, named after the first child who had died at Dixon’s Creek. Grandmother’s small figure was growing roundabout in its tightly fitting bodice and full skirts, her fine skin, once her mother’s pride and joy, roughened by wind and weather, but her small hands, for all the work they did, still soft as a girl’s.

  Thylungra, now shaded with bush shrubs and wild creeper, the flagged floors daily washed and swept down, starched chintz at the shuttered windows, the rough bush furniture spread with crisp linen, everything smelling cleanly of strong caustic soap and river water, the dripping canvas water bags swinging from wire hooks, the big white station cups rattling in their saucers announcing the next cup of tea, was now a haven in the hard land. Grandmother made a creative art of her homely hospitality and had expended herself in preparing this welcome. There were exclamations of wonder and delight at the feast she produced—the kangaroo-tail soup demanded by Grandfather, fish from the now brimming Kyabra Creek, spiced and pickled beef, home cured bacon and ham from pigs that had mightily increased and were now running wild among the Cooper channels. She had mastered the delicate art of extracting rennet from the carcasses of calves for making cheeses which she kept in store with a variety of queer sausages that festooned the rafters between hanging bladders of lard while the greenhide shelves below groaned under rows of pickles and preserves, some from the produce of the kitchen garden, some from wild oranges and bright red rosellas that grew along the river bank. But although a woman of many parts she discounted any talent in herself and her respect for her ‘clever’ sister-in-law amounted almost to awe. Her brother’s wife, Mary Costello, could discuss world affairs with the best of them while Kate Durack was always ‘brilliant’ in Grandmother’s eyes. When some of the bride’s seascapes were hung on the mud walls of her dining room Grandmother stood before them in speechless admiration, and she listened in rapture to Kate’s patient practising on the piano that Grandfather had brought 600 miles from Brisbane as a wedding present. In all the years, although she helped deliver their babies, rejoiced and grieved with them in the ups and downs of their close-knit family life, Grandmother was never entirely at ease with either of these ‘gifted’ relatives.

  The sight of their first tutor, Mr Healy, had sent the children into paroxysms of suppressed mirth, but Grandfather, though not himself without apprehensions of the old man’s suitability, had insisted that he be treated with the respect due to a scholar and a member of the depressed Irish aristocracy and his rambling discourses ‘attended to’. Only Great-grandmother Bridget found much in common with the quaint old Irishman and the two would talk together in their native Gael and weep for the wrongs and sorrows of their country. They even managed to trace, in the Irish way, some far distant form of relationship, and the kindly old lady was able to assure the sceptical of the validity of Mr Healy’s claims to aristocratic lineage. Had she not herself, on a girlhood visit to cousins in Kilkenny, seen the stately grey battlements of Paulston Castle, his birthplace?

  Dubiously the carefree bush youngsters had watched every stage in the erection of the school house with its mud walls and thatched roof. ‘School’ began shortly after breakfast in the morning and, in the absence of a clock, ended when the shadow of a gum tree in the yard reached the schoolroom door. Every day, at this sign of blessed relief, the cry went up:

  ‘The shadow’s at the door, Mr Healy! The shadow’s at the door!’

  In the warmth of afternoon the old man would doze over the lesson, to waken with a start when his heavy spectacles fell upon the desk. His pupils soon learned to catch the glasses as they fell, set them gently down and go about their own devices, returning in time to announce the end of the school day:

  ‘The shadow’s at the door!’

  ‘Ach! God bless my heart and soul,’ Mr Healy would exclaim, waking from a long, sound slumber, ‘and I upon the point of dozing!’

  The tutor’s rule of three, his eternal pothooks and long prayers could hold no interest to compete with the activities of stockmen at the yard, the blacks at the waterhole. The children’s toys were of their own and the blacks’ devising—boomerangs, old waggon wheels, bows and arrows, shanghais, curved bullock horns filled with sand with which to stun small birds and butterflies on the wing. Born to a world of wonder and discovery, they learned the habits and haunts of bush creatures, sought out hidden clutches of duck eggs in nests of grey down, found where the grebes built and laid their spotted eggs upon fragile rafts.

  Few days passed without excitement of some sort, from ordinary station happenings to extraordinary nine-day wonders that Great-grandma Bridget was inclined, like the blacks, to attribute to sorcery. There was the time when a deluge of tiny fish and frogs fell from heaven with the rain, and another occasion when a horseman galloped into Thylungra with news that a vast rodent army was on its way towards the homestead. The rats had come surging in a low-moving, grey wave, tumbling, struggling and squeaking into the lime-filled trenches that had been hurriedly prepared, the rearguard clambering over their fallen leaders, to be met on the other side by an onslaught of waddies, pikes, sticks and spears. Thousands of the creatures were destroyed, but many escaped to continue their blind, hungry march. No one knew where they came from or where they disappeared.

  Then with the good season had come the big grass fires that could be heard from miles away, their centres marked by masses of soaring, smoke-blinded birds. The men would return from fighting the flames, blistered and blackened, with singed beards and the soles of their boots charred through.

  After the breaking of the long drought life on Cooper’s Creek became more lively every month. Grandfather and John Costello had no difficulty now in disposing of the land they had taken up ‘on spec’ and there was an animated coming and going of buyers and settlers. The saying that they had thrown open between them an area larger than the map of Ireland, or some 35,000 square miles of country, was taken with a grain of salt by this generation, until we found, on closer investigation, that it could not have been far from the truth. The combined area of registered holdings that can still be identified, and which I have sketched as accurately as I am able, amounts to over 17,000 square miles, or nearly eleven million acres. Of this, over 13,000 square miles was taken up by John Costello, whose son Michael listed and located most of the properties and their purchasers.

  Moving about the countryside like the wandering Jew, Costello made tracks from the New South Wales border to Charleville, north and west to the head waters of the Diamantina, naming creeks and landmarks, even, unwittingly, a township, a remote outpost in the mulga scrub. One hundred miles west of Stoney Point, now the township of Windorah, he had one day carved his initials on a bauhinia under which he had struck camp and soon the tree became a landmark.

  ‘Strike out ’til you hit the “J.C.”,’ men would say when giving directions to travellers. Later someone started a grog shanty on the site, a store followed, and soon a pub. It became a coaching stage, later officially named Canterbury, but even when the tree had disappeared it was never known locally as anything el
se but ‘the J.C.’.

  Farrar’s Creek, a Diamantina tributary, he named after his head stockman, Jack Farrar, to whom he later presented the well-grassed property of Carawilla.

  Out west on the Diamantina he had registered by this time the big holdings of Monkira and Davenport Downs and up along Farrar’s Creek, Mt Leonard, Daru, Mooraberrie, Morney Plains, Currawilla, Congabulla, Connemara, as well as Keerongoola on the western side of Kyabra.

  No such list was kept by Grandfather’s family but his notebooks and cheque butts are full of scattered references to blocks of land taken up under many names no longer in use but which must have covered all told somewhere near the same area.

  Random entries of land registered up to this time, often referring to blocks simply as ‘country’, and sometimes spelling the same place in a variety of ways, are jotted in this wise:

  Thylungra (sometimes spelt Thylyoungra). S. M. and N2 registered in Tambo 1st June ’71.

  Cornwall, 1st June ’71.

  Mt Orthievan, same time.

  Cumbroo E. and W. March ’72

  Four big blocks Cooper’s Creek country Nov. ’72

  Bunginderry for the Redgraves

  Bulgroo, Stoneleigh and Kaffir to join Thylungra. ’72.

  Eucobodalla block June ’72.

  Wathagurra for P. and S. Tully. ’72, in Tambo.

  Rasmore registered Charleville for Skeahan July ’73.

  Galway Downs for brother Jerry 19th May ’73 (this country stocked May 13th and taken up Tambo on 19th).

  Worcannia in Charleville Nov. ’73.

  Whynot, Mongalo and Count blocks ’73.

  Registered Warrabin, Bodalla, Copai, Earlstoun and Markavilla (no doubt the present station of Nickavilla).

  Tallyabra, Wallyah, Yambutta and Old Kyra now taken up.

  Westbank and Sultan blocks now registered Charleville.

  Country for Coman registered ’73.

  Taken up for self and brother Jerry Lough Isle, Lough Neagh, Lough Derg and Wallinderry blocks.

  Durack Downs and Durack Plains adjoining Galway registered ’74.

  Kangaroo country for brother Michael.

  Maughereaugh, Middle Arm and Mount Shannon for self and brother Michael ’74.

  As many of these blocks are now difficult to identify, measurement is not possible, but the original Thylungra holding, comprising the Bulgroo, Stoneleigh, Kaffir and Westbank blocks, all taken up by the end of ’72, covered an area of some 3,000 square miles.

  The establishment of Charleville brought communication thirty miles closer than the nearest previous lands and telegraph office at Tambo, a 200-mile ride from Thylungra. The Cooper settlers had been jubilant at this evidence of approaching civilisation and the ride to Charleville to post letters and register country became a regular jaunt for Grandfather. One of my father’s earliest memories was of his solitary mounted figure disappearing with a single pack into the scrub, to reappear some days later heralded by long-drawn cries from the blacks’ camp.

  ‘Ayeee! Boonari come up, Missus! Boonari come up now!’

  Friends and branches of the family, mostly from the Goulburn area, were now constantly arriving in big parties to take up the selections picked out for them, and often the Thylungra and Kyabra homesteads were filled to overflowing. These were brisk, noisy days of men riding together to stock country and put up homesteads, women cooking, sewing, gossiping, scolding and warning their children against getting in the way of horses’ hoofs, slipping in the waterhole, interfering with hornets’ nests, falling out of trees or fondling the blacks’ dogs.

  Early in ’74 Dinny and Poor Mary Skeahan and their three remaining boys had arrived with Sarah and Pat Tully and their surviving brood of six. Eager to cover the distance as quickly as possible, Sarah Tully had insisted that the birth of her third son, little Francis, at Parkes near the Bogan River Gates had held them up no more than four days. Their arrival at Thylungra had been celebrated in fine style with the green banner of Ireland’s abundant welcome, ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’, fluttering from the homestead roof. Grandfather had offered the Rasmore run to the Skeahans but whether the prospect of a settled place was really anathema to Dinny, or whether he was genuine in stating that he would take on contracting jobs until he had built up enough capital to develop it, Poor Mary and her boys remained at Thylungra while Dinny went off on the roads with teams and fossicked about in the dry beds of lonely rivers. Betweentimes, when he took on the building of a yard or a pisé homestead, his wife went along with him, making a home of sorts in an open tent, her tired voice calling him back to work when he seemed to have downed tools for too long.

  ‘Where’s your sense, woman?’ Dinny would expostulate. ‘Can’t ye see I’m looking to make your fortune?’

  ‘Never mind the fortune,’ his wife would protest. ‘Just a steady living and a roof over our heads will be heaven to me.’

  But Dinny had forsaken his deep shafts in the Adelong only when news spread south in ’73 that fine opals had been dropped on around the Bulloo River in western Queensland and that these hitherto unpopular stones were now fetching a fair price. Obsessed with his search, it was not long before he was encouraged by finding a few good specimens.

  ‘See there,’ he said, holding them so that the light flashed from the shattered radiance of the rough gems. ‘How’s that for wasting time?’

  But Poor Mary refused to look at the lovely stones.

  ‘Take them away, Dinny. As if we have not had enough bad luck without you must tempt providence with the devil’s toys.’

  Her sister Sarah Tully shared this superstition of opals and when, not long afterwards, some prospector she had treated for sore eyes presented her with a bag of dazzling specimens she had tipped them into the running creek.

  Now settled at Wathagurra, soon to be renamed Ray Station, Sarah was happier than she had been for many years.

  ‘This is our home now no matter what lies in store,’ she said. ‘We’ll live and die here, the lot of us.’

  ‘And if Sarah says so,’ her husband sighed resignedly, ‘then that’s an end of it.’

  Sarah said their homestead should be built with a welcoming face to Thylungra so that she could watch from the front verandah for her brothers. Her husband argued that it should be built facing east to the morning sun rather than into the fierce heat of afternoon and the prevailing desert winds. Sarah said ‘Stuff and nonsense’ so the homestead faced west and the green flag fluttered high whenever the Thylungra horses were sighted at the turn of the creek.

  Two of Great-grandmother Costello’s sisters, Mrs Hammond and Mrs Moore, with their husbands and families were settled on adjoining properties while Great-grandmother Bridget at Thylungra now had all surviving members of her family around her except Anne Redgrave whose husband battled on, hoping his mine on Bumbo Creek would soon finance them into the Queensland property. In July ’74 he wrote to Kate and Stumpy Michael at Thylungra of his wife’s death at Moruya.

  …Poor Annie did not see the child for she died two hours after the little fellow was born. She had complained for three months before of a pain in her side and it gradually grew worse. The doctor said that no medical skill could have saved her, or that had she recovered from her confinement she would have gone out of her mind. So you can see God willed it for the best and she is happily free from this troublesome earth. But to write of her death is almost more than I can bear with still the picture of her living form before my mind. Father Garvey told me when I asked him to say Masses for her that she did not need them. She was already in Heaven he said. You two are the child’s sponsor’s. I christened him John Patrick. He is such a fine, big child and is in the care of the good woman who lived next door to us at Moruya—a Mrs Williams. She is so frightened anything would happen to him that he is constantly under her watchful eye.

  Annie spoke to me two months before she died about you taking the child if she was not to come through. I promised her I would send him to you, but tried to cast from
her mind all thought of dying…Others would take him but he must go to you for poor Annie’s sake, though I am quite at a loss how I am to get him up to you…

  I am still mining at Bumbo Creek, but am doing no good and would be ready to leave at any moment but for the child.

  I am trying all the most likely spots to see if they will pay us at all…

  A little later he wrote again in reply to Kate’s suggestion that he take the baby to her mother’s home. One gathers that Redgrave was now quite broke and had at last lost all faith in his mining venture.

  I am sorry to say I am doing no good in the claim and what is more I never shall…

  But the little boy is a fine fellow and the pride of Moruya. He is just like poor Annie as you will say when you see him. Scores of people call to see him every week because he is the child of one they so much respected. The good woman he is with has paid great attention to him and will be heart broken to lose him now as her own little boy was drowned two months ago.

  I would start north with Coman, who very much wants me to go with him, if only I had the good fortune to sell my interest in this show, which I have so far failed to do.

  The measles are very prevalent in Sydney, with scores of young and old dying weekly and in Moruya they are very bad. I am afraid of my boy getting them and hope God will spare him to me, for he is all I have in the world…