Kings In Grass Castles

by Mary Durack

  Grandfather and his brothers had arrived in good heart although business was not then so flourishing in Queensland. Droughts and the low price of wool were causing lack of confidence, pastoral affairs were at a standstill and the Queensland Co-operative had not yet paid up. Still there was hope of a better season and better prices next year, while newly discovered artesian water pointed to the possibility of a big basin underlying the Cooper properties. If this proved true they need no longer fear ruin from drought and the company should soon be able to settle its account. Meantime the three brothers had continued to invest in land around the city, for many considered values would rise still higher as a result of the extension of pastoral leases and a wider use of the artesian flow.

  Grandfather had now formed a syndicate called The Argyle Downs Gold Mining and Quartz Crushing Company, had purchased in Sydney for the sum of £700 a plant of machinery soon to arrive in Wyndham, and was now to visit the fields again and select a promising claim.

  There was news of racing activities and growing families. Stumpy Michael’s eldest boy Ambrose and Grandfather’s third son, Pat, were both soon to leave college and come to Kimberley. Galway Jerry’s eldest, young Patsy, six years old, had the makings of a first-class jockey, which, since he had horses in his blood, his father thought would be a better life than that of a stockman. The women, in their comfortable homes, led the pleasant, easy lives they deserved after their pioneering years, but Grandmother missed her sons sadly and prayed constantly for their safety.

  There were merry times at Argyle during the few days all were together:

  July 30: Today worth chronicling since Father, Uncle Jerry, Long Michael and Jim Minogue up all night playing cards and were this morning suffering a recovery, since Bacchus reigned supreme…

  Stumpy Michael left for Lissadell with Long Michael. Grandfather, Uncle John and Jim Minogue, despite the effects of their ‘Bacchanalian frivolities’, set off for the fields and Father, rather smugly brisk and clear-headed, started with a mob of cattle to the gulf.

  The town was at this time suffering a reaction from over-optimism.

  Wyndham [he writes], does not appear in the most flourishing state from the fact of so much bad money in circulation, and business people very chary having been often bitten in taking cheques of would-be millionaires.

  The town has now formed a Cricket Club, at present all the rage, in fact indulged in to excess being played every afternoon until ‘majestic Sol’ disappears behind the waters of the Indian Ocean.

  The town was a buzz of discussion about the murder of the teamster Barnett, the reported killing of a few cattle and horses in east Kimberley and many sheep on the western side. Isadore Emanuel, as chairman of the Kimberley Pastoral Association, had succeeded in bestirring the authorities to reinforce the police in Derby, but, to the indignation of the settlers, some police officers were attributing extensive loss of sheep less to the wholesale depredations of the blacks than to dry seasons and straying due to the size and understaffing of the properties. These ‘misleading statements’, the settlers declared, were caused by reluctance on the part of the police to patrol dangerous areas, for it was plain to see the blacks were not only trying to burn the settlers out of the country, but were stealing or killing sheep faster than the grower could breed them. Personal deputations to Alexander Forrest resulted in his proposal of an expedition of special constables ‘strong enough to resist, subdue and leave a lasting impression on the aborigines…’

  No sooner was this news released than the steady trickle of criticism against the northern settlers became a flood in the southern press. Letters, some three and four columns in length, told of atrocities and massacres of natives throughout the entire north-west of the State. Replies, some in hot denial and some in forthright defence of the allegations, filled further columns. ‘Onlooker’, endeavouring to throw the cool water of reason on the fierce dispute, wrote saying unfortunately the Aborigines were doomed in any case. To this the Catholic Bishop Gibney bent the full blast of his Irish eloquence:

  ‘The aboriginal races of Australia are doomed to disappear before the advances of the white man.’ So say the well-groomed armchair philosophers, talking of a matter with which they have no practical acquaintance. ‘Doomed to disappear!’ Blessed phrase! Over how many bloody outrages, over what an amount of greed on the part of some, weakness on the part of the Government, and apathy on the part of the public does this convenient euphemism throw a thin but decent disguise. Our blackfellows do, indeed, seem fated to disappear but not because of any inherent inability to adapt themselves to the conditions of civilisation. Nor is it solely, nor chiefly because the easily-acquired vices of the white man prove fatal to them. Their misfortune is that they stand in the way of unchecked spread of flocks and herds. Insatiable earth hunger and monstrous unscrupulousness are main factors in that process of ‘removal’ of which they are the victims. They disappear rapidly on the outskirts of civilisation because in such a situation the white man is practically beyond the cognisance of the law, shoots straight and shoots often…

  He was requested, in reply, to go out himself among the Kimberley tribespeople, ‘protected by nothing other than the word of God’ and see how he fared. The writer may have been unaware that this taunt was directed at the same man who in 1880 had entered the blazing inn at Glenrowan where Ned Kelly and his band had taken their final stand, in order to render the last rites to the dying outlaws. Nor did he hesitate in taking up the challenge, for not long afterwards we find him out in the wilds of Beagle Bay and Cape Leveque, unarmed and surrounded by tribes of Aborigines, selecting the site for a Trappist mission.

  Disappointment was expressed throughout the north when, owing to the protests of so many ‘uninformed sentimentalists’ in safely settled areas, Forrest’s motion was thrown out. What, demanded the bush people, was a handful of pioneers, menaced by savage tribes hundreds, perhaps thousands strong, supposed to do? Were they to admit defeat, clear out and give the country back to the Aborigines, or quietly turn the other cheek, confident that ‘sweet reason’ would at length prevail while their relatives and friends were murdered and their stock destroyed?

  Young Jim Durack contributed to the discussion with a string of verses dedicated to his late brother Big Johnnie, ‘feloniously slain by the Kimberley blacks’. In no less than 100 rhyming couplets he poured forth his opinion of all outsiders so ignorant as to suggest that the black man might have a point of view.

  The counter-jumper with his well-oiled head

  Who measures ribbons for his daily bread

  and ‘the civic merchant’

  Passing his days in comfort ease and peace

  Guarded by the metropolitan police

  came in for his bitterest scorn.

  You who tread safe the city’s beaten tracks,

  May well believe in kindness to the blacks.

  Would you still hold your dusky friend so dear

  If he was dodging round you with a spear?

  Suppose yourself by great and wondrous change

  Camped in the heart of some dark mountain range…

  Would not a deadly rage upon you creep

  When tired, distressed and much in need of sleep,

  You dare not close your over-wary eye

  Because you know to do so were to die?

  Young man, before you judge another’s case

  In fancy put yourself in that man’s place…

  How else than cold the lonely stockman’s heart

  Who sees his horse lie slain by savage dart?

  Picture the frenzy on the squatter’s brain

  When speared bullocks dot the spreading plain,

  Or how the solitary traveller feels

  When round his camp the sneaking nigger steals…

  No suppliants they save who would disguise

  Their bloody purpose from their victim’s eyes…

  Thoughtless he turns towards his waiting hack,

  Too late—too late!
The spear is in his back…

  Ah who shall judge the bushman’s hasty crime

  Justified both by circumstance and clime?

  Righteous the hate with which the soul is filled

  When man must slaughter or himself be killed…

  Although his verses would no doubt have lent more weight to the other side of the argument, young Jim’s indignation at the city critic was not unjustified for whatever principles men professed while 1,000 miles away, once in Kimberley they all more or less subscribed to the philosophy of ‘us or them’. A way of dealing with the situation was extremely hard to impose from the outside and as long as the insiders, black and white, went in fear of their lives there could be little hope of a reasonable relationship.

  At least a temporary compromise was reached in a decree that the law, not the individual, must deal with erring blacks. Any white found guilty of murdering an Aboriginal must suffer the supreme penalty in the same way as black murdering white. But the decree was no more than a pious statement of principle. No native brought to justice in Kimberley was acquitted nor was any white found guilty on a charge involving the treatment of an Aboriginal.

  To satisfy the outcry of the inhabitants after the death of Barnett and others, sentence of death was passed on several natives sent to Fremantle for trial. These were returned to Hall’s Creek so that justice could be carried out on the spot and as many of their countrymen as possible gathered in to witness the execution and take heed therefrom. But after all the moral was lost on the blacks. Some laughed and applauded, believing the hanging to have been staged for their entertainment. Others shrugged in disgust at the white man’s perverted sense of humour. One of the condemned men had gripped the rope with his strong teeth and refused to fall, but though some of the assembled diggers cried out that he should be cut down and let go, the law stood firm, until the fellow dropped from exhaustion.

  Police were from now on to patrol the outlying areas and ‘apprehend’ suspected murderers or cattle-spearers. As it would be impossible to hold them otherwise, when being brought in to trial they might be chained, together with native witnesses, but not ill-treated. For cattle-spearing offences sentence of flogging might be passed and the culprit at once turned bush with his sorry tale and bearing the marks of the lash. In this way it was hoped that many might learn from the experience of the few and much trouble and suffering be saved all round.

  In this, however, it was soon to be seen that they had miscalculated both the character and calibre of the enemy, for when an Aboriginal has passed through the tests of tribal initiation he is not only a man of proud physical endurance but a man of faith.

  30

  NEMESIS

  The years late ’88 to ’91. Horse thieves on Argyle. The Ruby Queen. Dissatisfaction on the fields. Financial ruin. Mrs Patsy Durack comes to Kimberley. Family life at Argyle and Rosewood. Depression in Queensland. Death of Tudor Shadforth. Ulysses and Boxer. The Buchanans in search of markets. M. P. Durack and T. Kilfoyk droving to the Territory. Conditions at Pine Creek. Aled Meith. Return to Wyndham.

  Pumpkin was the mainstay of the station on Behn River. Stockman, horse-tailer, blacksmith, butcher, gardener and general handyman, he gave for love and pride of being a good man, of everything he had.

  Pumpkin up the Creek after some horses got away in hobbles. Back this evening bringing in the Grey Stallion and his mob…

  Pumpkin down the Ord after cattle and horses…went in at the junction to try a crossing and got swept down, himself and mare managing to swim across.

  Pumpkin repairing yard damaged in a recent fire…

  This man of the Boontamurra tribe of Cooper’s Creek owed no loyalty to the ‘myall blackfellows’ of the north. They were no countrymen of his, and relentlessly he rode their tracks, reporting where they had chased and sometimes speared cattle and horses.

  With all the death bones of the Mirriwun tribespeople pointed at the heart of this stranger who looked like an Aboriginal but thought and acted like a white, Pumpkin did not sicken or fail, but continued to ride the plains and gullies, his eyes on the ground ahead looking out for blacks. One day, riding after cattle with Father, he observed a maze of horse tracks on a patch of red soil.

  Pumpkin, [Father wrote] was convinced from what we saw that the persons in possession were making good their escape and insisted we follow them…Being now quite certain of his theory we rode into camp of police sergeant camped nearby in pursuit of his regular rounds and together we followed the tracks into a pocket, nicely hidden away as the thieves no doubt had thought. They turned out to be no other than…on their way to the fields there to sell our horses at a good price, cross branded. They were hastily putting away the remnants of a meal when we came upon them. A daring project that would no doubt have succeeded but for Pumpkin’s sagacity.

  The sergeant escorted the downcast little band into Wyndham where the men stood their trial and served a short sentence. Local juries were loath to find white men guilty in those days, since no one knew when he might be up on a similar charge himself or thrown in close association with a man he had helped to convict. Spartan-like, the disgrace lay more in being caught red-handed than in the actual crime, for many who would not have stolen money if their lives depended on it thought of the appropriation of stock as part of the game. This tendency became more marked as time went on and a number of tough Queensland stockmen with no capital began to drift into Kimberley and take up small holdings around the larger estates. One of these horse-thieves in fact later became a small squatter who stocked his run almost entirely from his ‘poddy dodging’ exploits.

  Meanwhile Grandfather had thrown himself wholeheartedly into his mining venture at Ruby Creek. His brothers returned to Queensland, Stumpy Michael with power of attorney in the handling of his affairs, but Grandfather, with headquarters at the fields, remained for over twelve months. He spent much of this time moving to and fro from the gulf, up to Darwin to purchase equipment, and over to see how things were faring at Argyle, his claim meanwhile a hive of activity, with two full-time engineers at work on the ten-head battery, men in the shafts, well sinkers and carriers bringing supplies and equipment from the gulf at £50 a ton. This charge was considered reasonable since at the height of the rush in ’86 the price had been £100 a ton. He had twenty-five men, including carriers, on his books over this period, among the ‘permanents’ his cousin Jerry Brice, son John, Barney Lamond, Jim Dillon, Jim Minogue and Tom Pethic. The last was one of many around at this time who signed their name with a cross and when travelling with a companion who knew no more of letters than himself was one day searching for some pepper among the many tins and bottles in their supply waggon. Unable to read the labels it seemed they would have to break open every tin until they came to the right one, when Pethic suddenly had an inspiration.

  ‘I’ve ’eard there’s a hell uv a lot of “P’s” in pepper, mate,’ he said, ‘and P’s the one letter I know on account of it’s being at the start of me own name.’

  From this clue the pepper was quickly identified.

  This homely old bushman dismissed as hopeless namby-pambies all such as Father and Uncle John who ‘read books and wore pyjamas’.

  ‘What did you want ’em learned in a school for?’ he asked Grandfather. ‘That tripe ain’t gonna help ’em round up the poddies.’

  Grandfather trained a couple of racehorses for meetings in Wyndham and on the Behn River in July ’89, when all the young bloods and many of the Wyndham ladies flocked to Argyle for three glorious days and nights of racing, sports and revelry. To Grandfather, gatherings of this sort were an essential part of life, not a mere sideline as they became for his sons in the worried absorption of their business lives. Up to this time wherever Grandfather went the joy and zest of life followed on his heels. Bush shacks became homely rendezvous and lonely outposts were peopled with lively, laughing, singing, hard-riding folk. If things were going well he found cause to celebrate, if badly, all the more need for ‘a bit of sh
inanakin’ to keep up morale. His capacity for enjoyment was as unlimited as his energy.

  There were still intermittent bursts of life at the fields, but as the year went on and even Patsy Durack, with his machinery and staff of experienced men, had failed by a long way to cover expenses, the drift towards the Murchison became a steady stream. With the obvious decline in the goldfields the West Australian government, in the grip of depression, began to reconsider its intentions of carrying our further public works in Kimberley. Spirits dropped and the general outlook was bleak. Everyone complained bitterly of the climate, the fever, the lack of government interest and the blacks, the blacks, the blacks.

  There was something of desperation in the way Grandfather continued doggedly to pour money into his Ruby Queen show as the wet of ’89 closed in. News from Queensland was really disturbing by this time. There was nowhere any confidence in the future of the State and land values had already begun to fall. The Queensland Co-operative, far from being able to pay up, was now in worse financial straits.

  When a telegram came from his brother Michael asking him to return at his ‘earliest convenience’, Grandfather reluctantly paid off his men, stacked his machinery under canvas and hurried to catch the first ship from the gulf. Anyone travelling to Hall’s Creek may still see the remains of Patsy Durack’s plant—the better part of £5,000 worth of machinery in rust and ruin where he left it that day in December ’89

  He returned to nemesis. It was difficult to realise at first that everything was gone, a lifetime of assets carefully built to spell security. After his return from Kimberley the year before, Stumpy Michael had speculated further, no doubt recklessly, in land and land shares on behalf of both himself and Grandfather. The land shares were a swindle. Land values dropped to zero and the whole of Queensland, and much of Victoria and New South Wales, were teetering on the edge of financial ruin. The general smash came in ’91, but Grandfather and his brothers and many besides were already ruined a year before. The Queensland Co-operative went out of business. Thylungra and Galway Downs passed into the hands of the Union Bank. Clamouring creditors closed in on every side, bailiffs moved in on Grandfather’s house at Albion while his brothers, forced to sell their properties at Archerfield and Ipswich, raised a mortgage on their Kimberley interest with which to carry on. Grandfather, having signed Argyle over to his sons, had no asset left on which to raise anything at all. Only the few possessions in Grandmother’s name survived the holocaust—a few pieces of furniture and some wedding presents. The rest were spirited away. With a little money of her own, Grandmother took her two girls to Goulburn, hiding from them the starker facts of their father’s destitution, and left them in the care of the Mercy nuns with whom she had been at school.