by Mary Durack
This was strange country to the Queenslanders, for although the lush tropical growth of the coastal route modified as they turned south and west it nowhere reverted to the flat prairie lands of the other side. Vast plains there were, but broken by flat-topped ranges, folded and creviced and bathed in wild, strong colour. Open, park-like vistas of white gums, boabs, bauhinias, nutwoods and cork trees gave place to tea-tree thickets and bulwaddie scrub. Creeks and rivers, fringed with palms and spreading wild fig and Leichhardt pines, twisted through rugged hills and ridges and broad volcanic valleys where the lava flows of ages past had left sandstone outcrops jutting like ancient ruins, or straight-topped, sheer-sloping island masses of spinifex-covered rock above shining seas of grass. The bird life, for the most part, was common to that of western Queensland and the north coast, the flashing shrill parrot flocks, cockatoos and wild duck, finches, jewel-bright, wild turkeys, brolgas, eaglehawks and crows. Oddly, however, kangaroos and wallabies were not as numerous as in later years, for the new order was to suit them well.
Of all the weird, wild stages they had travelled none was more fearful or memorable than that through the canyon cliffs of Wickham Gorge where rocks rose sheer from the winding river, leaving a narrow pass for the complaining herds. Hardened as the cattle were to rough going, they were soon footsore fom the broken stones on which they slipped and stumbled through the echoing ravine. They bellowed their misery while the drovers’ steadying voices and cracking whips made such a confusion of sound that only the utmost skill could prevent disaster.
Through the nightmare pass and over the Rudolph Range the route was more than ever confused with meandering waterways and scrubby patches where cattle and horses became lost, sometimes irretrievably. All signs of a previous mob had vanished under the quick, rank growth of a wet season, and even though Weldon and the two native boys had been through before the going was slow.
Grandfather’s notes record that £20 was paid at this stage for services rendered by one Jock McPhee. Like many another whose name crops up in every journal and memoir of the time, the threads of this hardy bushman’s story cross and recross the paths of better documented pioneers and here he was opportunely to pilot the cattle over a difficult pinch across the Victoria-Ord River divide.
From Black Gin Creek the route ran on to the Ord River fall, down the Stirling to the Negri, through the beautiful limestone spring country later to form the Vestey property of Mistake Creek.
Yarns swopped along the way were of McPhee’s adventures droving cattle, exploring, prospecting about the tumbled hills and river beds, of Ned Weldon’s trip through with Nat Buchanan’s party twelve months before, and how they had left Bob Button in charge of the vast raw holding with the gentle English name of Plympton St Mary, later more appropriately ‘The Ord’.
There were stirrings of life around Kimberley apart from the arrival of the sheep men in the west and the cattle men in the east. During the year a government party had been sent up to report on the possibility of gold, and was said to have been favourably impressed.
About the same time William O’Donnell and William Carr Boyd had surveyed the lower Ord for the Cambridge Downs Pastoral Association that planned to start a sheep station on the gulf—while surveyor Johnston had a party blazing trees and driving in pegs around the upper reaches of the big river. In fact, although Weldon and McPhee could hardly have known it then, Johnston’s party was at that time camped near the Behn River, as one of their number had slipped on a mountain slope and broken his leg. They had put up a timber barricade as protection against the blacks and named Stockade Creek and Mount Misery after their long, uncomfortable camp, besieged by blacks, plagued by mosquitoes and flies. Years later one of the entertainments to which we subjected visitors to Argyle was to take them to the top of Mt Misery to see Johnston’s peg and to point out the charred stumps of his stockade on the creek below. From the dome-shaped mount, the vista of sweeping Mitchell grass plains, dotted with grazing cattle, and the misty blue of the O’Donnell Ranges tumbling into the Ord River gorge has always seemed to me one of the loveliest on earth.
The drovers were cheered to hear that there were now some ten other white men in east Kimberley, that there was talk of gold and more stock coming in. Their spirits needed a lift like this, for the last stores procured at the Roper depot had almost gone. Flour, dried fruit, jams and condiments had cut out on the Victoria, sugar and tea had been rationed for weeks. They scrounged the bush, like the blacks, for wild honey and armed with yam sticks dug for edible roots which they boiled in beef water or roasted on the ashes. They chewed pig weed and lily roots as they rode along, hoping to cure the Barcoo rot which harassed them as persistently as bouts of fever that made every mile’s ride an agony and sometimes halted the party for days at a time.
But what delight there was when the Negri junctioned into another broader stream and Tom Kilfoyle pointed out a tree marked ‘D24’!
‘In case it means nothing to you fullas,’ he said, ‘Stumpy Michael Durack marked that tree in September ’82 when we’d been a whole month looking for this ruddy river.’
It was three years later almost to the day when Long Michael carved his initials ‘M.J.D.’ and the date ‘Sept. 25, ’85’ on the gnarled, broad trunk of a boab at Red Butt above the Ord to mark the end of the long road. Others of the party followed suit and the historic tree became a favourite landmark and camping site on Argyle until it was razed to the ground by lightning in 1937, the year Long Michael died.
The 7,520 head that left the Cooper had dwindled to less than half, only the hardiest and luckiest animals having survived the ordeals of the track to drink Ord River water and fatten on Kimberley grass. Their zig-zag trail had covered a good 3,000 miles over which the estimated droving cost was £20 a head. This figure, which included wages, provisions, equipment and stock losses, brought the total cost of the trek to something over £70,000.
The mobs would move off now to their different runs, Long Michael’s lot across the river to Lissadell, Kilfoyle’s to Rosewood on the Territory border, Pat Moore’s and Big Johnnie Durack’s remaining on Patsy Durack’s country along the east side of the Ord.
Long Michael told how he then rode thirty miles downriver to find a crossing and a station site, camped without a fire and hobbled his horses without bells in fear of the blacks whose fires blazed on every range. Next day blacks appeared on the high red banks above the river and sent a shower of spears into the sandy bed where the cattle were drinking at the waterhole. A shot or two dispersed them and no harm was done, though Ned Weldon claimed a hair’s-breadth escape and the incident put the settlers on their guard.
The months to follow were a helter-skelter of chasing and trailing stock, trying to keep the mobs apart, branding calves, running up temporary yards and bough shelters to serve until permanent homestead sites had been selected. The first need, however, was supplies and a few days after arrival Patsy Moore and Duncan McCaully rode off downriver and over the white salt marsh hoping to find Black Pat’s provision depot on the gulf.
Black Pat, hammering away at the mangrove rafters of his store, saw the riders and packhorses half a mile off, threw down his tools and hurried to put the billy on to boil.
‘Well, Pat, we got here.’
‘How many head came through? Everyone all right? Did you save the alligator cow?’
Over strong tea and damper thickly spread with jam they exchanged experiences since parting at the Wickham two months before.
Pat told how he, Tom Hayes and Jack Brown had chartered the barque Lorinda Borstil at Darwin, and come to the gulf with three Chinese cooks, one for the store and two ‘on order’ to Kilfoyle and Long Michael. Anticipation of a gold rush following the promising report of geologist Hardman had prompted them to bring not only stores, but mining equipment, which they unloaded at the gulf two days after the drovers rode onto the Ord.
The Captain of the barque had looked pityingly at the men, surrounded by their goods on the desolate m
angrove-skirted gulf.
‘Pat,’ he said, ‘you look heartbroken.’
‘And that was how I felt,’ Black Pat admitted, for all their rosy hopes had seemed suddenly absurd. Not only was their situation intolerably lonely and remote but their camp seemed actually besieged, with native fires dotted for miles along the gulfs edge and surrounding hills. After all, they had come purely ‘on spec’. What if the overlanders had met disaster on the last stage of the journey, for indeed they had hoped to see one or two members of the party already waiting at the gulf when they arrived? What if all the predictions of prospectors and settlers soon to pour into Kimberley had been foolish optimism?
The immediate need for finding fresh water, however, allowed no time to brood. About three miles away they located a small pandanus spring from which they carted water in buckets, coolie-fashion. They made a canoe from the scooped-out trunk of a boab tree which they used in bringing mangrove timber from one of the gulfs islands. In this unique craft they had also made short voyages of exploration. They had caught turtles and dug their round, soft-shelled eggs from the warm sands, and from these the Chinese had concocted strange and delectable dishes.
But they had not, after all, been more than two days at the gulf when the steamer Otway arrived to pick up surveyor Johnston and his men, who trailed in about the same time from their miserable sojourn at Stockade Creek.
Thought of hungry mates upriver allowed the drovers no more than a night’s spell and they were off again with Tom Hayes who was anxious to join his partner Tom Kilfoyle.
Shortly after his arrival at his partner’s camp on the Ord, Hayes returned to the gulf in company with Long Michael, Big Johnnie and Willie MacDonald who, arrived at the Ord shortly after the Durack party, was riding in for stores.
By this time another store had gone up on the gulf, the proprietor, one August Lucanus, a colourful character, ex-Territory trooper with tales to tell of rough justice dealt out to murdering or cattle-spearing blacks, of the Territory gold rushes and the crude little mining towns that followed them. Now, tales of a new and bigger gold rush to Kimberley had inspired him with the idea of getting in first with a store for the prospectors, and he had gone into business with W. K. Griffiths of Darwin who sent stores around by the schooner Ellerton while Lucanus rode overland from Katherine to the gulf. In later years Lucanus in fact claimed to have been first to put a store up in east Kimberley, but his memory failed him here as is seen by comparison with contemporary records.
Odd prospectors had begun to make inland and in November the steamer Catherton brought Billy O’Donnell, his black companion Pompey, who had been to England in the black cricketers’ eleven, and one Jamison to join William Carr Boyd in pioneering a track through the unnamed Ord River ranges in case of a sudden influx of gold-seekers.
Letters from home had arrived for the overlanders, among them one from a sister of Big Johnnie, Long Michael and Black Pat. Their mother, normally so robust and optimistic had, it seemed, worried herself almost to death over her sons and her brother, Tom Kilfoyle. She had lately become obsessed with the idea that some terrible misfortune had befallen them and said she would not believe they were all alive and well until she saw them again with her own eyes. Surely, the girl begged, once they had reached their destination, they could come home, if only for a few weeks?
It was obvious that Black Pat could not abandon the store on which not only his future but the incoming settlers were dependent, but Big Johnnie and Long Michael determined to leave for New South Wales as soon as possible. Returning to the Ord they consulted their Uncle Tom Kilfoyle and the three decided to return overland by a short cut through Newcastle Waters to the border town of Camooweal and down through Cloncurry and Longreach to Roma, a mere 1,600 miles. At Roma they could leave their horses and take coach for Molong in New South Wales.
‘With a bit of luck and hard riding we could be there in ten to fourteen weeks,’ Kilfoyle reckoned.
So early in January ’86 the three men left the Ord to prove to the folks at home that they were alive and well.
26
MEANWHILE IN QUEENSLAND
The years 1884 to 1886. Young Michael Durack returns to Thylungra. Patsy and Stumpy Michael Durack form the Queensland Cooperative Pastoral Company. Land purchased for a Brisbane home. Michael returns to college with cousin jack Skeahan. Payment deferred. Goodbye to Thylungra. Sarah Tully takes a stand. The new house completed. Mr Healy leaves for Ireland.. Rumours of gold in Kimberley. Tom Kilfoyle, Long Michael and Big Johnnie Durack meet their cousin Patsy in Charleville. The Rajputana sails for Cambridge Gulf with young Michael and John Durack, their uncle Stumpy Michael and others.
Grandfather’s decision to take his eldest son from college early in ’83 had caused him much heart-searching, especially in the light of Dr Gallagher’s regret. Back at Thylungra after meeting his brother Stumpy Michael on his return from Kimberley he had written to his sons:
Thylungra.
Feb. 1883.
Dear Children,
I cannot tell ye how much there has been to do since my return more even than I thought of before and I have had to reconsider my decision to leave ye at school another year dear Michael as The Rev. Dr Gallagher has suggested. I am sorry I will have to ask ye to come home on the next coach north after ye receive this letter and that ye will not compleat yere examination that would fit ye for the University. I had not in mind for either of ye the law or the classics for a career of which Dr Gallagher has spoken to me but would have yere names associated with pioneering of new country as is in the blood dear children, and yere people always on the land as others are associated with professions such as doctoring and the Law which is not in yere blood.
I should acquaint ye that I have gone into partnership with Cousin Johnnie in 300,000 acres and stock in Kimberley and this is to be a separate property to the one which I have taken for ye both and also Pat and Sunny when they are older. There is a limit of about 1,000,000 acres to what one holder can take up in W.A. and also a limit to what ye may hold of river frontages but we can later take up pretty well any area we desire and divide into different properties in the name of a company as has been done in Queensland and within the law. This country I would have for yereselves and in yere own names for to run in yere own way as ye will be men soon and must be standing on yere own feet. We shall come to a business agreament for the purchase of the Kimberley property from me upon certain terms so that it will not be said ye have been pampered and everything come to ye for nothing, the aisy way.
This is as I would have it, dear children, but if it is the will of God and the considered judgement of yere teachers that ye go for the professions then I will be standing down but at this time with all the arrangements to be made for getting the cattle on the road and running the stations at the same time as my other business I must have Michael at the first chance.
Your loving father,
P.D.
The learned headmaster of St Pat’s had been prepared to admit that the boys had made good progress in those three years but refused to concede that they had, in their father’s words, their ‘education completed’.
‘The boys stand only on the threshold of learning,’ he had pointed out, ‘but they show a great aptitude for study and it is my opinion they are both more suited to the professions than to station life.’
Father himself, like many youths of the same age, had no singleness of purpose at this time. His years at college, after the first agonising months of homesickness, had been happy and rewarding. His studies interested without entirely absorbing him and as the son of a wealthy pioneer squatter he had enjoyed a certain schoolboy prestige. As time went on he and his younger brother had not lacked for holiday invitations to the homes of well-to-do schoolmates in Sydney and Melbourne and on prosperous country estates. The little mud-brick homestead at Thylungra, for all its homely charm, was a mere hovel to the fine mansions they visited. People were impressed by the area of the Durack holdings on Coope
r’s Creek but the boys felt that they would no doubt be sadly disillusioned to see the flat, grey plains of that arid west. The rivers too sounded splendid enough in terms of length and of breadth in flood, but what of the drought years when the isolated waterholes dwindled to reeking puddles that trapped and held the dead and dying stock?
Brief glimpses of city life had shown them a world in which people attended theatres and fashionable race meetings, discussed books and music and made seemingly easy money in comfortable offices. By comparison the social life of the bush had begun to seem something of an uncultured rough and tumble and stock rearing in the far outback a crude means of livelihood. On the other hand my father’s inherited energy and zest for life and movement found outlet in the hard riding, open air station life and he was happy enough to return to the excitement of the big musters and all the plans for the overland drive. Naturally the romance of numbering in that expedition appealed to him strongly but his father’s need of help was more urgent than the party’s need of men. Although more reserved than most of his relatives, my father was, like them all, happiest when with his own. He was deeply devoted to his mother and to the two little sisters who now regarded him with the awe they would never really lose for him. Although he berated his brother Pat as ‘an ignorant young hooligan’ he was proud of the lad’s precocious stockmanship and the good looks he promised, and he believed as fervently as his parents that the baby Jeremiah—‘little Sunny’—was a budding genius. His brother John, probably his only really intimate associate, remained at St Pat’s and the two exchanged letters over this period. In September ’83 my father wrote from Thylungra:
Cher Frère,
Writing in great haste as you can imagine from my last. The parties have all got off now but all here still pretty busy. Father trying to be in two or three places at once as usual and nearly the whole management of this place and Galway has fallen to me pro tern. It is no easy job especially as the water position on both places pretty poor this season. Only hope we are not in for another bad drought and that the cattle get to the gulf without delay. We are shifting cattle onto the big hole up the creek already and some of them beginning to look poorly, but the sheep look all right and we turned off a good clip.