by Mary Durack
It was July 22, 1886, Father’s twenty-first birthday, when, the cattle mustered and handed over, he helped weigh out £1,200 in raw Kimberley gold for 7PD bullocks at £17 a head, and cows at £15. He never forgot the thrill of it.
What wonder there was little building or organising in that wild year of gold when one never knew who next was to turn up with a string of packs from the Queensland side. The three young stockmen, Mick Byrne, Tom Connors and Jas Livingstone, whom Grandfather had started from Thylungra with horses seven months before, arrived at the Behn claiming to have ‘duffed’ a tankard from every pub on the route and to have vowed to drain one for every ten miles travelled when they got to the gulf. They were still celebrating when Father met them in Wyndham some weeks later, ‘its having taken them but a short time to see both the miles and the mugs in duplicate.’
By August, Cousin Big Johnnie Durack had turned up again with his brother Jerry Brice, a string of horses and some cattle purchased in the Territory, and the two set off at once with my father behind a mob of bullocks for the fields. The track was still peopled with prospectors coming and going between Wyndham and Hall’s Creek but the first headlong race was over and travellers had time for a yarn. Father asked the same questions of everyone they met, presumably for the amusement of recording their varied answers.
‘How many diggers would you reckon, all told?’
Romanticists hazarded 10,000, others nearer 5,000. ‘Officials’ had made tally of 3,000 but laid no claim to accuracy, for the miners had quickly spread over a 300-mile radius, coming from all directions, and getting out whichever way the Customs were least likely to catch up with them.
How much gold had been found? Nobody knew. How many prospectors had died or been speared on the track? Who could say?
At one stage, noticing an abandoned pack and tracks leading off towards the hills, they followed and found the scattered remnants of a man that the wild dogs had got to first. How many like him? God only knew.
They passed men dollying madly in the creek beds while their mates lay crazed with fever under rough bough shades. One of them told the drovers:
‘We take it in shifts. Maybe we’ll be down tomorrow and some of the others will be up, if they’re not dead. The fever’s like that—if you live through the worst of the attack you’ll be down one day and up the next.’
Jock McPhee’s camp was on the outskirts of the shanty town at Hall’s Creek where the main body of diggers had pitched their tents or brushwood shelters among the stunted trees and spinifex of the turbulent hills. The sight of beef on the hoof caused a stir of excitement among the meat-hungry men who had made short shrift of the first consignment of ‘killers’. The beasts were slaughtered and butchered in the open field while the diggers crowded round, took their meat warm from the vendor’s hand and crossed his gory palm with gold or the rough and ready ‘shin-plasters’ of the bush.
The cattle men, reared in a tradition in which certain appearances were kept up under all circumstances, were surprised that so many, even those of educated and aristocratic background, should have thrown all conventions of dress to the wind, ‘many going shirtless in the blazing sun, their tattered trousers more resembling kilts being in rags about the knees.’ But there was no clothing then to be bought at the fields and the stoutest moleskins were soon in tatters from the sharp rocks and prickly scrub.
‘Many living like niggers,’ Father wrote but that was merely a current figure of speech, for no blacks ever existed in such a litter of empty tins, filthy rubbish and feverishly upturned earth.
It is hard to ascertain, [he continued] what quantity of gold has been found to date or how many have struck it rich as most of the gold discovered is said to have been smuggled out to avoid duty. Most I have spoken to seem none so cheerful of their prospects. Many have never been in the bush before and had no idea of the conditions they would meet with. It was a surprise to them, on arrival in Wyndham to find they must track so far overland to the fields and few had any means of conveyance save their legs. They complain most bitterly of the heat, flies, bad water, fever and dysentery. Some believe the alluvial to be petering out already, others that they have not started upon the real gold as yet. I could hazard no statement except that I never thought to encounter so great a collection of mixed humanity as have gathered here from the four ends of the earth.
On their return journey Father and his cousins camped on the Bow River with a party of sadly disillusioned prospectors. ‘What wouldn’t we do to that misleading liar Carr Boyd if we could lay hands on him!’ they grumbled.
Their chance for vengeance came that night when into the camp rode the big Carr Boyd himself, hailed the party breezily and produced a bottle of rum from his packs.
‘It’s all very well to offer us rum now,’ one of the sullen men remarked, ‘when we nearly perished for water on the way out.’
But no one ever got the better of Carr Boyd. Only ignorant fools perished of thirst in this country, he declared, for wherever you went there were crows hoping for some bones to pick and where there were crows there must be water. You had only to feed them a piece of salt bacon and they’d lead you in a beeline to the nearest rock hole.
Father, always fascinated with a flamboyant character, used up four pages describing Carr Boyd.
Never, [wrote Father] have I heard such a string of tall stories as he regaled us with, and yet told in such a manner that only on reflection did one doubt their veracity.
Already, under the name of ‘Pot-jostler’, Carr Boyd’s Munchausen Kimberley tales were appearing in Queensland papers and although he staunchly denied authorship his style was unmistakable.
Soon the bitter complaints had given way to good fellowship and Carr Boyd, on his haunches in the firelight, was charming the company with ‘Queen of My Heart’ and ‘Come into the Garden Maud’ in his melting baritone. When the cattle men left in the morning he had convinced the diggers of a splendid new reef near the Elvire River and they were rolling their swags in excited haste.
28
SETTLING IN
The years 1886 to 1887. Lively times in Kimberley. Big Johnnie Durack is speared by the blacks. A punitive expedition. ‘The wet’. Letter from home. Fever. Patsy Durack arrives and begins to build. White labour versus black. A new recruit. Patsy Durack visits the goldfields. First Wyndham race meeting.
Never, in all the years since, was there so much life and so much death on the rough bush tracks, so many callers at the station shacks. Even Father’s brief comments on daily happenings reflect the excitement, variety and general disorganisation of the times, for no ‘pattern of life’ had yet been established in Kimberley.
‘Tailing’ horses and cattle occupied a great deal of time and in the process they were becoming familiar with their country. They rounded up and branded the new-born calves and expressed keen satisfaction at the rate of increase on the rich Ord river pasture. They put up a few ‘rough yards’ on their run, pegged out horse and bullock paddocks for the future, but as yet made no attempt to fence and for the rest were in and out from the gulf and across to the goldfields.
As long as Father was in the saddle going from one place to another, whether or not there was any practical necessity for the journey, he felt his time was being well spent. He was ‘pioneering’, ‘empire building’. He had begun to cultivate an auburn beard and had, to his surprise, grown another inch in his twenty-first year, making him just six feet. Young John was shorter and still quite beardless and looked to his elder brother to make all the decisions. The two were devoted companions and at night sat together with their books, fighting off the insects that flocked to the light of their flickering kerosene lamp, while outside the still, warm bush pulsed with its unseen life and sometimes, throbbing from the hills like a muffled drum, came the sound of the black man’s didgeridoo.
To and fro from their tent and bough shelter on the Behn River rode stockmen and prospectors, police and government officials from the fields, these last confi
dent bearded men in tropical topees and riding togs like the pukka sahibs of India that some in fact had been.
A delightful evening in company with C. D. Price, R. Wolfe. E. Baynes and Arthur Forbes. A lively flow of conversation and some wit…Forbes quite a brilliant artist causing much amusement with his sketches of gold-fields personalities—undoubtedly a rum lot…
Arthur Forbes, then warden of the goldfields, was the son of a British colonel who had retired to Western Australia with his large family. The water-colour sketches and cut-outs which he scattered throughout the North-West from Roebourne to Wyndham provide some of the most vivid impressions we have of these colourful times.
A party of Afghans came through with a camel team en route to the fields and travelling with them a woman:
…presumably quite young, though could not see much for her copious veil. Remarked that as she was the first woman ever passed through this part and the first ever on the Ord I should put her name on record, but she would not give it, saying airily to put her down as ‘The Mountain Maid’. Much regretted she would not wait for a meal or even a cup of tea.
‘The Mountain Maid’ threw up a shanty hotel on the fields and later followed the diggers’ trail to the Nullagine to fade from sight with a string of camels headed south for the Nullarbor—one of the countless, lonely pilgrims to each new shrine of the great God Gold. Hall’s Creek in these times was no place for women, except a few such intrepid characters as old ‘Mother Kelly’ with her scurrilous tongue and her heart of gold and ‘Mother Dead Finish’ with her noxious brew, lurking in her Dunham shanty to waylay returning prospectors. Legends grew up about the ill-gotten nuggets that rattled in her bulky corsage and she was found one day with a knife in her back and the clothing stripped to her waist.
Wyndham became gayer and wilder as the year went on. Gold was in brisk circulation and champagne flowed freely among the diggers, stockmen and business people of the town. Father, on his visits to collect mail and stores, wrote brief understatements of the lively scene.
Oct. 30/86. Strolling through town reading ancient history. Plenty of ‘hurrah’ fights going on. Too much champagne. Got life insured by Mr Hamilton. Deposited gold in Mr Baynes’ safe. Auctions two in a day…
31st. Town land sold today by Mr Stone, Govt. Resident, having realised £3600 odd, £2000 worth of Wyndham town blocks purchased by an English syndicate. Mr Ranford today presented with two nuggets of gold value about £120…
Ranford, returning from his survey of the gulf rivers, was piqued to find that so many shanty hotels, stores and shacks had been set up at what he had intended as a temporary landing place. He suggested that the inhabitants now began putting up more seemly and permanent structures on the official site, but the makeshift port was voted ‘good enough’ until the future of the fields was established. In fact few of the inhabitants cared a fig for the future of Kimberley. They had come to make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time and thereupon to leave the sweltering, mosquito-infested little town with its feet in the mangrove mud for good and all.
Not yet the days when a flock of charming young women with ‘honeyed tones and beguiling smiles’ would draw the station boys to town on the flimsiest excuse. Father was relieved to turn his back on the gulf in November ’86 and to make back upriver to the camp on the Behn. He found the place deserted with a note from the two Johns, brother and cousin, informing him they had gone after straying horses and that the others were mustering towards Lissadell. For the first time since his arrival in Kimberley, perhaps for the first time in his life, Father found himself alone except for the blackboy Tommy. Even in later years, accustomed to long, lonely days and nights in the bush, he hated to find himself the sole occupant of a lonely station.
Nov. 17. There is an uncanny and desolate atmosphere about the camp, [he wrote]. I set to work to mend some packs but do not know when I have felt the hours hang so heavily, with no sound but the melancholy note of a few crows and the wild cries of the cockatoos…
Nov. 18. Still anxiously expecting someone to relieve this monotony and do not relish the thought of camping alone again tonight. Last evening Tommy drew my attention to a chain of fires all along the range as far as the eye could see. He appears disturbed and says it is a signal of some sort, though I think more likely a bush fire having caught a long line of spinifex, giving a weird illusion of mountain villages lit up for some festivity. Do not know what can be keeping Duncan, the two Johnnys and Charlie away so long…
Nov. 19. Passed a very lonesome day anxiously expecting somebody home…Just dark and could hear the occasional knock of a bell coming from upriver, did not know who they were until, to my surprise, I saw it to be M. J. Durack (Long Michael), Jerry (Brice), brother Johney, Duncan and Charley. Asked me did I hear the dreadful news—cousin Big Johney has been speared by the blacks and they had just come from burying him yesterday—a horrible affair…
The two Johns had been riding after horses near the Rosewood boundary on the fateful day. The spear had flashed out of the long cane grass on the riverbank but the doomed man had galloped on 300 yards before he slumped and fell to the ground.
Behind them a group of blacks stood as though deliberating among themselves, then began moving forward slowly, spears set in their throwing boards. Uncle John drew the small Colt revolver from his belt but the dying man restrained him.
‘Don’t fire, Johnny. If you lose your horse you’re a goner too.’
‘You’ll be all right. I’ll take the spear out and get you up in front.’
‘No—I’m done for, son. Ride for your life.’
With the dead man limp in his arms the boy glanced again to where the blacks stood, straight and stiff, bodies slashed with white paint, heads bedecked with feathers and fur ornaments, spectres of inhuman vengeance. He laid the body on the ground and mounted the horse that stood quivering in terror, with its rein over his arm. It was dark when he reached the musterers’ camp on the Ord and gasped out his terrible tale.
Back in New South Wales, an Irish mother, polishing up the silver in her country hotel, put her hands to her head.
‘Something has happened to Johnnie. It is no use keeping it away from me. We will never see him again.’
Three weeks later the news, sent by ship to be telegraphed from Darwin, reached Molong, but it had swept through Kimberley like wild fire:
‘Big Johnnie Durack’s been speared by the blacks!’
From the gulf and the goldfields, mates—Barney Lamond, Jack Horrigan, Connors, Livingstone and the brothers Byrne—came riding to Argyle to show their respect in the only way they knew. Big Johnnie had been a hero to stockmen of Cooper’s Creek and the overland trail and the shock of his death hardened their hearts to steel against the blacks.
The avenging party, police, ‘special constables’ and black trackers, rode to the scene of the murder where the dead man’s brothers had buried him the following day. The body had been disinterred, pounded with heavy stones and the crushed remains pinned down with spears.
Angry men rode the ranges and the plains, following tracks that led to a deserted camp strewn with broken weapons, flint spear-heads and the bones of wild game and kangaroo. Mockingly, the blacks had left a clear trail to follow with spears stuck into tree trunks and kylie sticks thrown down where the trail might be lost to poor trackers over stony ground. Down into steep creek beds, over stony ranges, clay-pans, spear-grass plains, the tracks wound on until footprints mingled with the half-moon impressions of horses’ hoofs. The young trackers pointed, shamefaced:
‘This same way where we been before.’
They had been brought in a circle on an exhausting four-day ride, but still the tracks led on enticingly only to vanish at last under a thirty-foot perpendicular of limestone cliff.
The party broke up in disgust and whether further more successful reprisal measures were taken for this deed can never be known. The conspiracy of silence that sealed the lips of the pioneers added colour to the r
umours that spread abroad so that whereas we know they took much rough justice into their own hands they were no doubt less devastating to the local tribes than was sometimes said. ‘Punitive expeditions’, like brumby musters, took a great deal of time and organisation and in that wild land where ranges and impenetrable gorges formed so ideal a refuge for fugitives they returned from such projects, as often as not, completely defeated. One lesson they learned from this chase, however, was that ‘treachery’ on the part of the blacks must be met with ‘strategy’ by the whites. The straight-out ‘nigger hunt’ would get them nowhere, for even with the help of trackers no white party was a match for the nimble-footed tribespeople who as surely as their dogs could smell the ‘cuddjabah’ and his horses on the wind. Nor could white men then be confident which side of the fence their trackers were on.
Towards Christmas the wet came in with blue flicker and forked dazzle of lightning, a rumble and cymbal clash of thunder that shook the plains and echoed back from the hills. Heavy rain fell on a labyrinth of creeks and gullies that sent the rivers roaring to the gulf. Kimberley changed in a week from gold and red of sun-bleached grass and scalded plain to a steaming, green land, splashed with the sudden colour of wet-weather flowers and white swamp lilies, quivering with heat haze, screaming, buzzing and droning with its multifarious wild life. Fragrant, creamy blossoms broke among the luxuriant foliage of the boabs and small, sweet flower clusters foamed on the cajuputs. Ranges, opalescent blue and rose in ‘the dry’, glowered indigo dark against tumbled skies and the grey tree trunks turned bold black as though splashed with tar.