by Mary Durack
It would seem that the decision was already made, for the Emanuels preferred the safer and quicker project of bringing sheep by sea to that of droving cattle overland, and saw brighter immediate prospects in shipping bales of wool to market than in droving or shipping beef on the hoof. On the other hand, although Grandfather and his brothers had been for some time experimenting with sheep on Thylungra, they had never been really interested in the ‘woolly-backs’. Men accustomed to working cattle found the handling of sheep a tame occupation, while the fences that patterned the sheep men’s properties were traditionally anathema to them. They knew all the risks connected with droving big mobs over what was probably a greater distance and a harder track than men, even in the time of Moses, had ever succeeded in taking livestock before, nor were they unacquainted with the fact that at least two parties had already lost all their cattle in the attempt. They had, however, supreme faith in their own experience and organisation. They were not out to break records. They would, if needs be, camp for months on end, even at risk of overstepping the time limit, rather than push doggedly on through hopeless drought. Better, they reasoned, to save the stock and argue the case out afterwards, for even the august Lord Kimberley could hardly prove impersonal enough to foreclose on an overlanding party making so epic an effort to stock the new country.
More cautious men might well have been daunted by the lack of existing markets at the end of the long trail, for the population potential of the north was limited, and the Kimberley district was after all the last outpost of the sparsely settled Cinderella colony whose resources were too small to develop even its more fertile and temperate south. Grandfather and his associates, however, readily dismissed such worries. If they had waited until the way was safe and the markets assured, they argued, they would still have been on their cocky-runs around Goulburn.
So, in a few strokes of the pen, the Emanuels became heirs to the vast flood plains of the Fitzroy and to the spinifex and pindan of the desert margins, and the Duracks to the rolling basalt downs and rugged quartzite ranges of the Ord.
Grandfather could hardly contain his excitement at this new acquisition and found hard to understand the lack of enthusiasm displayed by some of his relatives for this new promised land or neither drought nor flood.
‘It’s not a property I’m offering you,’ he told Sarah Tully and her husband. ‘It’s a Principality!’
‘But as if the Cooper wasn’t far enough out already!’ his sister protested.
‘Sure and the Ord seems a long way from anywhere now,’ Grandfather agreed, ‘but the towns will be moving out there soon as they have moved out here and there’ll be coaches running and railways in no time atall.’
‘But we’ve made our homes and buried our children here, Patsy,’ Sarah reminded him. ‘Why should we be wanting to start again just as we all begin to do so well where we are?’
‘Because I’ve a feeling we’re in for a run of bad seasons,’ Grandfather told her. ‘Michael, Jerry and I have our interests widespread enough to tide us over a bad spell but smaller holders have been wiped out here before and they’ll be wiped out again.’
Sarah set her lips in the determined line that hard years had drawn on her weatherbeaten face:
‘We’ll not leave the Cooper, Patsy, not though the drought wipes every beast off the Wathagurra run. We’ll hang on and see it through until the good Lord sends us rain.’
Dinny Skeahan, at the first whisper of ‘auriferous country’, had pencilled his name across an area of rock and spinifex in the vicinity of Hall’s Creek but Poor Mary, having at last got a roof over her head on the Rasmore block, refused to consider it.
So eager was Grandfather to see the Kimberley country for himself that he toyed for a while with the idea of taking ship to Cambridge Gulf, burying there a quantity of iron rations for the droving party on arrival, riding down the Ord to the Negri Junction, mapping as he went, and surveying a stock route from there to the Victoria River. No one besides Grandfather, however, seems to have considered that the journey would fulfil any useful purpose. The rations, even if buried in tanks, would probably be discovered and disposed of by the blacks long before the overlanders arrived, and the West Australian Government was supposed already to have sent out a party to survey the Ord. The scheme died a natural death not so much because Grandfather was talked out of it as for the fact that he had too much else to do.
The surviving records, lists of equipment, memos, odd agreements with one and another, incomplete as they are, often ungrammatical and clumsily worded, may well convey a general impression of muddle but there was actually nothing of the kind about Grandfather’s activities over this period. In fact he was now operating at the height of his powers as a man of vision combined with extraordinary organising ability. He felt confident, by everything he had learned over the years, that Kimberley offered the greatest possible security for the future. Here was the land of permanent water, regular rainfall and abundant pasture where they need not live in constant fear of pending ruin. He was planning now not for himself but for his sons, nephews, cousins and any other of his friends and relatives who shared his confidence. He was planning broadly but with minute attention to detail.
Volunteers for the big trek had not been hard to find, but the organisers realised that the success of the project depended largely on the skill and personality of the leaders. They would need to be not only trained stockmen and experienced bushmen but should have the ability to hold a party together and a reputation for reasonable temperance. It was decided that, since they might well be two years or more on the road, the task must lie with the single men and that the cattle should travel in four mobs under separate leaders representing the different combinations of interests.
Galway Jerry had undertaken to see a mob of Thylungra breeding cattle, jointly owned by himself and Grandfather, over the first stages of the journey, when he would give over to Grandmother’s cousin Patsy Moore.
The same Jerry was also in partnership with Tom Kilfoyle and Tom Hayes who were to tail 2,000 head of cattle to stock a jointly owned holding near the Territory border.
Darby Durack’s eldest son, Big Johnnie, was to lead a mob of 2,000 head to a property tentatively named Forrest Vale around Spring Creek, an Ord River tributary. He was to be partner with Grandfather in this piece of country, and owned a third share of the 2,000 head of cattle, half of which were to stock an adjoining property which Grandfather had taken up for his sons.
Grandfather’s affairs were by this time so widespread and complicated that the old free and easy style of business ‘understandings’ and home-made agreements had given place to a new order of legal deeds. These were drawn up on tough parchment and consisted of page on page of redundant clauses and provisos written in finest copperplate and costing eight guineas apiece. They were, as Grandfather said, ‘pretty well everlasting’ but few of the legal documents so well preserved in his fire-resisting waterproof tin box were applicable to the future and served as nothing more than an illustration of the fate of so many of man’s best laid schemes.
Big Johnnie probably never had time to study the ponderous agreement drawn up just before the cattle left, stating that
…the said Patrick Durack and John Durack, of Thylungra Station in the colony of Queensland, graziers, shall carry on the business of partnership on those leasehold lands known as Forrest Vale situated in the district of Kimberley in the colony of Western Australia comprising several blocks containing three hundred thousand acres or thereabouts and that the said John Durack shall devote his whole time and attention to the said partnership business and shall conduct and carry on the same with all due diligence, attention and sobriety…
At all events, Forrest Vale proved to be one of the less fortunate blind stabs made at the map of Kimberley and Big Johnnie, after a brief glimpse at its rock and spinifex expanses, was content to leave it to the blacks.
The following letter shown me after the death of Stumpy Michael’s eldest son Am
brose in 1955 indicates that Grandfather promised him a share of the cattle then on the way to Kimberley:
Thylungra,
30th August 1883.
This is to certify that I, Patrick Durack, has gave Half of 1270, twelve hundred and seventy head of cattle now started for Western Australia in charge of my brother Jeremiah to Patrick Angus Ambrose Durack my Nephew and the said Patrick Angus Ambrose Durack now minor his Father is to look after the above mentioned twelve hundred and seventy half of them which I now give to the above mentioned Patrick Angus Ambrose Durack. His Father Michael Durack or his trustees will give the above mentioned half to his son with increase added as soon as he is 21 years of age.
PATRICK DURACK.
Ambrose’s father, Stumpy Michael, had taken up for himself and his family a big section of the country traversed between the Dunham and Bow Rivers. The wealth of Lissadell, however, was not for the first white man who laid claim to it. Stumpy Michael was at this time arranging for his cousin Long Michael to drove 2,000 head of cattle to its rich river frontages.
Long Michael and his two brothers, Black Pat and Jerry Brice, had been for some years managing Mooraberrie Station on the Diamantina, a property Edward Coman had acquired from John Costello. Hard years and many setbacks lay behind these young men who as children on Dixon’s Creek had spent a deal more time at scrub bashing and fencing than at schoolwork. As boys they had knocked about the country with teams and droving plants, gaining experience but gathering little moss, while their first bid for a holding of their own on the Castlereagh had petered out in the terrible drought of the early seventies. In western Queensland they had made names for themselves as tough, resourceful stockmen, often bringing cattle down the arid Birdsville track into South Australia and they had set their hearts on one day purchasing Mooraberrie for themselves. Two light seasons on the Cooper, however, and a drought on the Diamantina brought their schemes to an abrupt end with a blank foreclosure on the property early in ’83. The brothers, having handed over stock and property on behalf of their employer, prepared to ride off when the bank inspector challenged their possession of a few head of horses.
‘These happen to be our own private property,’ Long Michael told him.
‘You can prove that in Court,’ the inspector snapped.
It was the last straw for Long Michael.
‘Never mind about the Court. I’ll prove it to you right here.’
A backward glance as he and his brother rode off revealed the infuriated bank official shaking a vengeful fist as he rose from the dust.
‘Well boys,’ Long Michael said, as they turned their horses’ heads towards Thylungra, ‘it looks as though it’s cousin Patsy’s Principality for us after all.’
At Thylungra he accepted the position of head drover for his cousin Stumpy Michael who offered him, by way of incentive, one-third of 2,000 head of cattle. Having engaged his drovers, including his brother Black Pat, he then led off along the Barcoo River to collect the cattle Stumpy Michael had purchased from Mount Marlowe Station, about 100 miles north of Kyabra Creek. From here they planned to cut across to the Thompson River to meet up with the other parties then also about to set out from Thylungra and Galway Downs.
I knew Long Michael and Black Pat only as old men, but even in their eighties they were upright, lean and tall with the fine aquiline features and distinction of bearing that marked all the thirteen children of Darby Durack and his wife Margaret. Long Michael was still subject to attacks of malaria first picked up on the Territory track and he attributed his deafness to the quinine he had taken in regular doses ever since. His stammer and the fist poundings that went with it gave emphasis to his statements and as the family acceded him the longest memory as well as the longest legs he usually had the last word in arguments about the ‘early days’. Towards the end of his life he returned to Kimberley, a rich and lonely old man, to visit the scenes of his youth and it was only then, sitting with him on the river bank at Argyle, while he taught me to smoke the porous root of a cajuput, that I really listened to the story of the now legendary trek and to please him set down certain details that he considered important. ‘Never trust hearsay,’ he told me. ‘They always get it wrong. And never mind the adventure. The hardest part about the trip was the b. .lasted monotony!’
There was a fever of excitement and activity around the Cooper as the big mobs were mustered, the droving plants and equipment made ready for the track and the stockmen’s roles assigned. Many would-be overlanders had ridden hundreds of miles to present themselves at Thylungra while others turned up at Archerfield, Stumpy Michael’s place outside Brisbane, asking to be put on. For the most part only relatives or stockmen of known reputation were recruited but a few more or less new to the droving game somehow got in. Among these were George Rae, a runaway seaman, Bertie Belcher, son of the headmaster of the Goulburn Grammar School and his mate Frank Cooper from Tarago. A nephew of Belcher, to whom I wrote for information, told me that his uncle had joined the trek after learning that his fiancée had eloped with a naval officer. ‘The tradition in such cases, of going out to shoot lions in Africa,’ he wrote, ‘being beyond Uncle Bertie’s means, he simply downed tools and went to Queensland to go with the Duracks.’
It has not been possible to list all members of the overlanding party, since some who started dropped out along the way to be replaced by others. The following extracts from Grandfather’s notebook, however, sets out the four parties, the stock in hand and at least some of the men who started out with them.
June 12 1883. Cousin Big Johnnie leaves Thylungra on today with two thousand head of breeding cattle, brand 7PD in which he holds with me one third share according to our partnership. With them is starting:
Johnnie Durack, (drover in charge.)
Bertie Belcher,
Frankie Cooper,
Harry Barnes
Will Blake (for part of way.)
J. Storier (to the Thompson river)
In hand…2000 head.
June 14th 1883. My brother Jerry leaving from Galway Downs with one thousand, two hundred and seventy head of Thylungra breeding cattle, brand 7PD, held in partnership between himself and me. With this party is starting the following men, (Mick Skeahan and Dick, black boy, to return with him in about six weeks and Patsy Moore is to take charge).
Jerry Durack
Patsy Moore
Mick Skeahan
George Rae
Charlie Gaunt
Dick (black boy).
In hand……1270 head.
Tom Kilfoyle and Tom Hayes is starting from Galway Downs with two thousand head held in partnership with brother Jerry to stock country also in partnership. With them to date, to go as far as the Thompson or thereabouts is:
Mick Brogan
Steve Brogan
Jim Minogue
Two others (?)
In hand…2000 head.
On July 29th 1883 cousins Long Michael and Black Pat started from Mt Marlowe on the Barcoo where they have purchased two thousand two hundred head of cattle for brother Michael, one third in partnership with Long Michael. They took on with them the fifty young bulls I had bought from Pollak and Hogan of Comeongin and they are to catch up with the other cattle on the way. With them is travelling so far as I now know:
Cousin Long Michael
" Black Pat
John Urquart
Bob Perry
Jack Sherringham
In hand (with bulls)……2250.
Total cattle left on road for Western Australia in these four mobs……………… 7,250 had
Horses with all four parties………………… (approx) 200 "
Working bullocks with teams………………… 60 "
On May 16th 1883 Cousin Jerry Brice Durack left for Sydney with a mob of five hundred bullocks from Thylungra and Galway Downs in fair condition. Expects return about six months time.
The last entry reminds us that while young breeding cattle were being set on the road for We
stern Australia bullocks were being despatched as usual to southern markets. It will be noted also that young Jerry Brice undertook this droving contract while his three elder brothers were on the road to Kimberley where he was later to join them.
The detail connected with the organisation of the big trek is indicated by lists of equipment and random memos in these old Thylungra notebooks. The following items were purchased for Big Johnnie’s party:
GOODS PURCHASED FOR GOING ON ROAD TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA
A first-hand account of how he rode into Galway Downs as the party was packing up for departure was given us by an old man who as a boy of eighteen had joined the overlanding party. There were horses in the yard, he said, a big mob of cattle in hand on the flat and everyone moving briskly with a clinking of harness and spurs. While making his way to the homestead for the usual traveller’s handout of bread and beef, the young stockman met Galway Jerry bustling from the yard in answer to the urgent clanging of the breakfast bell. Thirty years old, slim and agile with his merry blue eyes and cheery whistle, the youngest of the three Thylungra brothers had the reputation for being a keen sport, a bush wit, an expert tap dancer and altogether—in the old man’s words—‘a bit of a lad.’
‘Hello kid!’ he said, ‘Come in and have some grub. You look as if you could do with a square meal, whoever you are.’
‘Me name’s Gaunt,’ the boy told him.
‘Suits you pretty well too,’ the boss laughed. ‘How did you manage to get so poor?’
‘I been droving in the Territory with Buchanan,’ Gaunt said. ‘Nine months’ hard tucker and hard riding. A bloke was a fool to take it on.’
‘What about a droving trip to Kimberley, two quid a week and plenty of good, clean fun?’ he was asked.
‘If you’re not joking,’ the boy said, ‘I’m game.’