When the cyclone that finished off the old pub raged through the town, Roger’s little hut whirled off with it. He gathered sheets of iron from the debris, erected another basic dwelling and cyclone-proofed it by encircling it with a barrier of fuel drums filled with earth. But when fears of another cyclone spread, Roger moved the pub’s 20,000-litre corrugated-iron water tank on to a rise of ground some way off, and he and his Aboriginal wife, Biddy, settled their home within. She had succeeded her sister as Roger’s wife, and was well aware of her exalted station as chatelaine of the tank on the hill.
A doorway was cut into their tank, covered with a flap of hessian, but there were no windows. Roger and Biddy were deathly afraid of spirits and the debil-debils that lurked in darkness—the less access they had to the home, the better.
Over the years Ken and I came to know Roger well, probably better than anyone else did. Apart from his unusual home, he was an ordinary man of the old bush. But an aura born of his lifestyle grew up about him and drew the attention of tourists, who were always alert to the unusual. The few travellers who ventured to Borroloola were directed Roger’s way, to have a chat and see his novel homestead for themselves.
After a lifetime of exposure to true Territory eccentrics, I didn’t find Roger so bizarre. He enjoyed his chats with the travellers, and could hold his own in any company and conversation; he was well read and had opinions on everything.
He’d once spent time in the Alice Springs gaol for supplying liquor to an Aboriginal man. He quite enjoyed his stay there and found the cooler climate a nice change; however, he was less impressed with the paucity of the tobacco ration and felt a greater generosity in that direction would have rounded off an otherwise enjoyable break from his humdrum bush life. When time came for him to depart, he regretted leaving the care of his vegetable garden to someone else.
Years before, another reclusive resident of the local bush Albert Morcom had been a busy Territory hawker, continuously travelling as he sold his usual array of country goods. Then he’d been seduced by the prospect of joining the lazy lifestyle of Borroloola, and settled down in a little iron shack, close by the river. He did a little dealing with the local Aboriginals, exchanging tobacco and sugar for fish and bush tucker.
Albert was an educated man. He spent much of his time writing to people all over the world, sending off specimens of dried bush flowers and presenting himself as living a much more exalted lifestyle than he actually did. In mango season, Albert’s largesse knew no bounds. He would send someone off to collect mangoes from trees in the old Chinese gardens, and large, heavy boxes of fruit were sent off to his Australian pen friends, who received huge bills for airfreight on stringy mangoes that they could happily have done without.
Albert was a fund of tales from the past, with racy snippets from the lives of some of our most respected elder citizens, not to be recounted here. His memories were also dotted with wistful reminiscences of his conquests of ladies long gone.
He would have had me believe that the name Borroloola came about when the wild men of the past rode into town and demanded to borrow Lulu. All quite untrue, of course: Borroloola means ‘place of paperbark tree’, and indeed they do abound there, reaching great height and girth along the springs and waterways.
Albert supported a heavy build-up of grime on his person, which to my eyes seemed to grow alarmingly fast for someone who spent his days doing nothing. He would just sit in his reclining chair outside his little hut, where he kept a watchful eye on the few who passed by, with special attention to the groups of giggling young lubras who were well aware of his interest.
Every couple of years when boredom set in, or he felt the need of a little attention, Albert took to his bed with a vague illness. The medical plane was summoned to take him to Darwin Hospital, where the unfortunate nurses were required to give him his very first bath since his last visit and shave his matted beard—and, on one visit, cut off his flannel vest because hair had grown through and become a permanent armour.
He returned after these hospital visits physically refurbished, and in the best of spirits settled back into his old routine of observing his small world from the rickety chair outside his humble home.
Blind Paddy was another notable resident. He was the most Irish of men, with an accent still as heavily flavoured with auld Ireland as it had been all those years before, when he’d stepped forth from a ship onto Territory soil while en route to somewhere else and never returned on board.
Very old and perpetually bad tempered, Paddy was a genuine hermit who had seen it all, every aspect of Territory life—although by the time I met him, unfortunately he could barely see at all. But his old reputation as a pub brawler still hovered about him; when he was drunk, his sight wasn’t so bad that a well-aimed bottle wouldn’t connect with an unsuspecting victim.
It seems the Territory was always well-supplied with wild Irishmen. Someone got it right when he said, ‘God gave the Irish whisky to prevent them ruling the world.’
Close by our camp, in dense scrub, was a small corrugated-iron shed. This was the home of Mervyn Pattemore the missionary, his wife, Leanne—one of the two white women in town, as I was travelling there, not a resident then—and their three fair, angelic-looking children, delivered into this world of isolation by Mervyn himself. They lived a frugal life and the local wallabies regularly turned up on their dinner table.
Their religious group was small, so Mervyn had restricted funds to educate children from the Aboriginal camp. It was an uphill battle to maintain regular attendance; I gave the project little hope for success, although Mervyn would never entertain such negativity. He was a good man, God-fearing and selfless, always kind and hospitable, and totally alien to and quietly disapproving of Borroloola’s unconventional and un-Christian scene of that time.
Mervyn was inclined to quote scriptures and give eternal thanks to the Almighty for his harsh and frugal existence. Nobody, it seems, ever received credit for anything they gave to him: whether cash, food or something else, it was always a special gift from God—hallelujah!
I’ve read of these men that they gathered together to argue the merits of English literature and air their talents as poets. This could hardly be true. Roger and Mulholland were friends, but they both disliked Albert; Paddy disliked most everyone, and wouldn’t have sat discussing the merits of anything. They were all wary of Mervyn and his fervent Christian teachings.
But it’s true that although they were aloof with strangers, once you were accepted into their special fold these men were entertaining company, with incredible tales to tell of the Territory’s boisterous past. To sit with Roger and share his boiled wallaby certainly beat taking lunch in a smart city restaurant.
CHAPTER 36
Under a Wide and Starry Sky
The journey was only about 60 kilometres from Borroloola, but it took us two days’ riding with horse plant to reach the coast where Jim and Bessie lived on his small station. Their house was a rough shed in the grassy dunes above the beach, with a wood-fired kitchen stove, a greenhide bed and not much else. No one I ever met knew how the station acquired the name Bing Bong; maybe, as was often the case, a mispronounced Aboriginal name became permanent.
Dinah, myself, Jackinabox, Roy and Ken settled our camp some way off; we slept in the usual fashion in our swags by the open fire. Although days were always hot, the coastal nights were quite cold. At that time of year it almost never rains, but daylight comes blanketed in dense fogs that leave moisture dripping from the trees. Rivulets ran into the folds of our canvas swag covers; you could awaken with a very damp head unless, turtle-like, you stayed completely under.
Because of the heavy screen of fog in the dimness of early morning, the horse-tailer relied on the horse bells to muster. But the bells would have to come off as we progressed into the wilderness; we would be mustering wild cleanskin cattle and the sound of bells can be heard for miles on still night air.
Preparations took close to two weeks befo
re departure. Horses needed to be broken in and shod, gear repaired, and greenhide (untanned cattle skin) hobbles and ropes made; several of our pack-bags were also made from greenhide, as it was cheap, durable and in constant supply. There were four working horses for each person and eight pack mules loaded with everything: branding irons, axes, shovels, shoeing gear and rolls of hessian for temporary yards.
Certainly we weren’t overloaded with tucker, as we killed our own beef, so we just needed coarse salt for preserving meat, a few potatoes and onions that would need careful rationing, a little rice, flour and dried hops to make yeast for bread-making. We rendered our own fat in the camp oven for cooking. Overall, we considered ourselves well provisioned.
At the height of all this activity, Ken had the misfortune to become poisoned—how, no one knew. His condition deteriorated alarmingly and we feared he would die. With no motor vehicle or radio we had to rely on our own limited medical resources, with ‘limited’ being a generous assessment.
Jim possessed an ancient bush medical book with a sketchy diagram of how to assemble an emergency stomach pump, and he searched through his work shed for suitable bits and pieces. He came up with some tubing and an old-fashioned stirrup pump that had served time spraying weed killer and cattle tick. With light from a kerosene lantern flickering in the wind, we assembled our equipment on the ground beside the patient, who was rolling about in terrible pain.
Dinah, superstitious woman that she was, disappeared into the bush to be well away, fearing a death was imminent. Bessie and the boys sat silently around the fire, watching us.
I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Suppose the tube should enter a lung instead of his stomach?’ I asked.
‘I’ve drenched plenty of horses,’ Jim answered, flourishing his apparatus about authoritatively. ‘It’ll be right.’
He seemed confident and I was in dire need of a confident associate right then, especially as I was to operate the stirrup pump.
‘We’d better let him know what to expect,’ I said, and tried to get Ken’s attention with a brief explanation.
‘You’re going to what?’ he croaked between groans and retching.
‘Pump your stomach, make you feel better,’ I replied.
His eyes opened wide as realisation dawned; he drew his knees up to his chest and rolled away from us and off his swag. ‘Like hell you are,’ he moaned, before attempting a feeble escape on hands and knees.
‘Better leave it,’ I said.
Jim was reluctant to disassemble his creation and seemed disappointed; he had given the whole thing a lot of thought.
Soon after, some uncanny sense of averted disaster brought Dinah back to sit by the fire.
As for the patient, I think fear of the treatment shocked him into an early recovery, although he was a bit weak and shaky for a few days. He wasn’t as appreciative of our medical efforts as I thought we deserved. ‘You should be grateful,’ I told him huffily. ‘We were trying to save your life.’
Preparations were progressing well and there wasn’t a great deal to do in camp, so I took a four-pronged fish spear and went down alone to the beach, hoping to provide a change in our dinner menu of beef and more beef.
I struck fishy gold in no time with a pile of fat mud crabs, so many my bag overflowed. I took off my trousers, tied a knot in each ankle and stuffed them with the remaining crabs, then drew the belt at the waist tight, making a neat bag.
Flushed with success, I decided to try for a fish as the tide was starting to turn, so went into the water with all the confidence of an expert spearman. Tides sweep in fast there; although I was still in shallow water, I soon found myself with a deep, fast-running channel cutting me off from shore and, to set the scene, a not-so-small shark cruised lazily along its length.
I felt a prickle of fear. I was stranded in the sea, my only companion a shark, and soon the sun would set. I imagined everyone at the camp coming up with a different theory of my disappearance. Would they search for me before or after feasting on the crabs? The crabs! If I didn’t get back to shore soon, the incoming tide would wash them clean away—an entire afternoon’s effort lost.
Holding my spear in what I imagined to be an iron grip, I took the plunge at the extreme end of the sandbar on which I was stranded. I made a diagonal approach to shore, going with the flow of the channel.
The water was neck-deep, flowing fast. I forgot about the shark. If I’d had to swim I’d have been swept out for sure, but strong legs, the spear for an anchor and a will born of panic took me almost the length of the beach to reach rocks at the far end, just as light faded.
I sat cold and shivering on the rocks, looking out to sea. The shark had gone; only the white ruffles of choppy waves flickered in the poor light. I walked back to camp and sat dripping by the fire; the men hadn’t yet returned.
Later one of the stock boys rode down to collect my crabs. He returned at full gallop, empty-handed and very agitated, with a disturbing tale of a body lying on the beach: ‘Must be dead man, proper dead, might be drowneded, leg bin stand up proper stiff pulla.’ My trouser legs, of course, were filled with crabs.
No one was particularly interested in my daring swim, especially not with 40 mud crabs for dinner.
Here the heart wasn’t so much bent on adventure as it was on the economic rewards from a successful cattle muster—but there was an element of adventure, as there must surely be in such an undertaking.
On the day of departure, the newly broken horses were inclined to play up and gave bucking shows in the yard before settling down. Not a lot of time was spent breaking in a horse in this situation; these men had complete confidence in their ability to handle any horse, and knew it would settle with work. The wild cattle would be more difficult to handle, so we were driving twenty coachers—quiet bullocks—to steady them as they were mustered.
There seemed no limit to the country we could muster; to the west and north-west was vacant Crown land, thousands of square kilometres of it, scattered throughout with cattle that had never set eyes on humans. No fences, no roads, no man-made bores or wells, but numerous springs among the river systems of the Roper and Limmen.
Each day we were up before daybreak for a quick breakfast of corned beef, left-over curry or fresh beef if we’d recently killed. The horse-tailer mustered the horses and mules that had been hobbled out to feed the night before. The men would then pack the mules with the heavy gear, saddle their horses and let the cattle out of the yard—a touchy business with cattle mustered the previous day, as a beast might break out and cause general panic. It took time before they would settle and move forward. And if hessian was used for a yard, it needed to be taken down, rolled up and packed, a bulky item to balance on top of a packhorse.
While the letting-out was in progress, Bessie, Dinah and I finished packing and mounted our horses, then held the spare horses and packed mules back. When the cattle settled and the men were moving them off, we drove the horses forward and followed, keeping some distance in the rear.
When wild cattle were spotted they were rounded into the coachers. This usually entailed a wild gallop, with breakaways pursued and thrown, the usual procedure with wild cattle. Galloping up close to a beast, the rider left his horse, hit the ground running and grasped the tail; the beast then turned to challenge, but with a sharp sideways pull on his tail, he lost balance and fell to the ground. The upper hind leg was jerked up to ensure he lay flat, then his hind legs were crossed and bound together with a wide leather strap, usually all in one smooth motion.
These straps were generally carried around the waist. Some strapped them around the thigh, or even bandolier-fashion across the chest, although there was danger there: a horn could become entangled in a chest strap.
Sometimes fresh horses, unused to their rider leaving the saddle at a gallop to throw a beast, would bolt off in fright. Jim devised an anchoring method whereby two short, lead-filled pipes were carried on either side of the horse’s withers in leather pouches and at
tached by a third leather rein to the bit, then released as the rider left the saddle.
There was no shortage of scrub bulls—huge, defiant old beasts with enormous heads and wide, hairless circles around their eyes where flies had feasted and tormented them, adding to their fearsome appearance. As they turned and trotted out to do battle in the hard sunlight, the dust rose in sharp, flame-like puffs from their great backs.
When thrown, the thick, sweeping horns of these wild old warriors were sawn off—with a short saw, carried on the saddle—and the cavities packed with teased rope steeped in tar, called oakum. This kept flies away, and acted as a disinfectant and healer. The bull was then castrated on the spot.
Here he was then, blood from the dehorning streaking his wild-eyed, dusty face, snorting froth and long tendrils of saliva from the heat of the chase, waiting for the coachers to be brought up; then, hurriedly unstrapped, he joined the mob, often furiously rampaging throughout, charging and attacking all in his path.
If this kept up he was thrown again and knee-strung: the ligaments above the knee severed by a knife. This didn’t hamper walking or even trotting, but a gallop was out of the question. Sometimes repeated defiance wasn’t worth the trouble and the beast was let go, hopefully to be picked up in a later muster and sold as a stag or big bullock.
Treatment was certainly harsh, but a matter of survival for man and beast.
There was no market for bull meat then—that was to come in the 1960s with the American demand for hamburger beef. Throughout the Territory, thousands of these old scrub bulls were simply shot to control numbers. On Victoria River Downs Station alone, 5000 bulls were shot just the year before the bull-meat market came into operation.
It took a lot of skill and practice, not to mention guts, to face up to and throw a ton of sharp-horned, belligerent feral bulls. Galloping over hard, pot-holed ground in sharp limestone country, leaping off a speeding horse, the men took their lives in their hands every day. Just one misjudgement could mean instant death or, worse, a bad goring in isolated country with no help at all. A good horse was sometimes lost, disembowelled by a vicious horn, and there was poor reward. Cattle prices were low, markets scarce, but this was our life out there. It was a dangerous life too.
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