RUMOURS that gold had been discovered in the Kimberley district reached Patsy’s ears about the same time as the news that Tom Kilfoyle, Big Johnnie and Long Michael would soon be at Charleville. He and his boys hurried to meet them and to hear for the first time the full story of the overland trek.
The travellers confirmed the whispers of gold, saying that Black Pat already had a tin of nuggets hidden under his bunk at the Gulf. It was certainly gold-bearing country and before long prospectors would no doubt come pouring in, towns would spring up and a local market would be assured for their beef.
All this excitement, together with glowing accounts of the beautiful Kimberley country, decided the issue for Patsy’s sons. It was now not a case of whether or not they would go, but how soon they could get away.
Returning to Brisbane, Patsy booked their passages on a ship that had been chartered for Cambridge Gulf by a group of prospectors. By the time she was to sail Tom Kilfoyle and Long Michael had returned from Molong to join them and Stumpy Michael had also decided to go along, while Big Johnnie, in company with a younger brother, Jerry, planned to return overland to Kimberley with a mob of horses.
Patsy and his family saw the ship away and returned with mixed feelings to ‘Maryview’. Often in the weeks that followed, Mrs Patsy would remark that her husband’s thoughts were elsewhere.
‘I am thinking of the boys,’ he would admit. ‘They are very young and inexperienced to be starting a station on their own.’
He worried too about Thylungra, for ever since they came to Brisbane there had been little or no rain in the far west. In fact most of the eastern part of the continent was drought-stricken and Patsy did not want to press for payment on his properties until things improved. He had planned, on leaving Thylungra, that he would return from time to time to see that the station was being properly run and the natives looked after. But he could not bring himself to go back, for he dreaded seeing the land again in the grip of drought and felt besides that his coming might unsettle the faithful natives who had grieved at the departure of the family. He had heard that old Cobby had crawled into his humpy after they left and pined quietly away, but he was sure that the younger natives would soon forget and settle down.
Pumpkin had pleaded hard to come with them but Patsy believed it was wrong to take a native from his country and his own people and that Pumpkin would soon die of homesickness in the confines of a city block.
One day not long after the boys had left for Kimberley he was startled to hear from the garden the name by which he was known to the Thylungra blacks.
‘Boonari! Boonari!’
And there, coming up the drive, was the familiar figure of Pumpkin leading the two horses Patsy had given him as a parting gift. It was no use asking why he had come or how he had known the house, for Patsy could see by the native’s face that nothing would have prevented his following and finding them. It was only then the family fully understood that for Pumpkin they came before everything else in the world and that for them he was willing to live in exile far removed from his country and his tribe.
Pumpkin
Patsy could see, however, that, delighted as the native was to see him, he was somewhat reproachful and hurt that he had not been called upon to go to Kimberley with the boys. Much as he loved and admired them, Pumpkin had little faith in their ability to pioneer a station in a wild land, and he was worried too about the beautiful Thylungra animals that had no doubt been left to stray to their doom at the hands of the cruel and treacherous Kimberley tribes. What did those book-reading boys know about the proper care of horses and cattle? Moreover, he had never seen them with a tool in their hands and could not imagine how they would make a house for themselves and put up yards and fences.
Still, Patsy hesitated to send Pumpkin on his own to Kimberley, so the native bided his time, looking after the coach horses and pottering about the garden of ‘Maryview’.
Meanwhile life in the newly occupied country was proving as lively and exciting as any fiction of the American ‘Wild West’. Jack Sorensen, the balladist, was later to write of how:
‘The cattlemen of Kimberley, a saddle for a throne,
Were carving from the wilderness a kingdom of their own;
A branding iron for sceptre, a stockwhip for a sword,
From Wyndham past the border, from the Fitzroy to the Ord.’
The boys’ first letters were full of exciting news of how they had brought the horses from the Gulf and pegged out the site for a station called Argyle about 160 miles upriver. The two Michaels—‘Long’ and ‘Stumpy’—had selected a site which they called Lissa-dell on the other side of the Ord, while Tom Kilfoyle and Tom Hayes had marked out another place called Rosewood adjoining Argyle.
Riding back to the Gulf for stores soon after their arrival the boys had been excited to meet hundreds of prospectors making inland to a place called Hall’s Creek and to hear wonderful reports of the gold to be picked up there, of all the ships pouring into the gulf and the little port of Wyndham that had sprung up like a mushroom on the tidal shores. The boys hurried on to find that all they had heard was true. At Black Pat’s store goods were being exchanged for nuggets and they learned that there was a market for all the beef they could supply to the goldfields. They had already sold the first five hundred head for payment in gold and were then about to drove another mob to Hall’s Creek and see the diggings for themselves.
As he read, Patsy was reminded of his own boyhood at the Ovens River and the unforgettable thrill of weighing out raw nuggets. He remembered that first piece of gold in the shape of a horseshoe and thought that for all the hardships of his life it did seem to have brought him luck. He had prospered in Queensland just as it seemed his boys were to prosper in Kimberley. Everywhere he went people congratulated him on the gold strike and his good judgment in taking up Ord River country that was now being hailed as the richest pasture in Australia. His spirits were riding high when a telegram sent from Darwin brought him suddenly face to face with the grim reality of the new land.
Big Johnnie Durack, hero of the long overland trail, had been speared by the blacks! There were no details—only the tragic fact to take to the anxious mother and her family at Molong. Later they would learn how the two Johns had been riding together when a spear hurled from an ambush of long grass had struck the elder cousin from his horse. By the time young John had dismounted the other man’s horse had galloped madly off and the natives, painted, befeathered and with raised spears were moving slowly forward to the kill. Desperately the boy had tried to lift the wounded man into his saddle but Big Johnnie knew his end had come.
‘I’m done for, son,’ he said. ‘Ride for your life,’ and had slumped in his cousin’s arms. Seeing that he had breathed his last young John laid him gently on the ground, sprang into the saddle and galloped on. Darkness closed in and it was after midnight before he reached the camp where Big Johnnie’s brothers were anxiously awaiting their return. They had all set off at once to bury the dead man and had found the body pinned to the ground with over twenty spears.
Word of the murder quickly went around the countryside, and mates of the popular young stockman gathered from far and near determined to take their revenge on the local tribes and teach them a lesson they would not forget.
After all, however, it was the white men who learned a lesson from that desperate and fruitless chase. For weeks they followed the trail of the runaways from camp to camp, realizing at last that the natives, in mockery of their poor tracking ability, were deliberately strewing their path with broken weapons, flint spear heads and the bones of animals. They struck spears into the trunks of trees and dragged sticks along the ground, leading the avenging party in foolish circles and leaving them clueless at last at the foot of a perpendicular limestone cliff.
From this time on the white men knew that their only hope of gaining supremacy over the local tribes lay in dividing their loyalty, in winning the trust and friendship of the younger men to help destroy the power of the tribal elders.
Patsy decided he and Pumpkin must go to Kimberley at once and they boarded the next ship for Cambridge Gulf. Their arrival was quite unexpected and badly timed, they were told, for the wet season had set in and the track to the stations lay through quicksand bog and running rivers. Patsy, however, refused to wait at the gulf, for with Pumpkin and a compass he declared he would find his way anywhere and was ready to face all hazards. They left in driving rain with the five splendid Thylungra horses they had brought on the ship, ploughed through bog, swam rivers and crossed the Ord on a tarpaulin raft with the horses tied behind.
Imagine the surprise and delight of the two lonely boys who met them at the little tent on the river that served them as a house! Patsy knew they would have had little chance as yet to put up a permanent place and realized also that in his anxiety for their education he had taught them few practical skills. He and Pumpkin started at once to build a mud-brick house with roof of thatched spinifex, yards for the stock, fences for the horses, and to plant pumpkins and melons in the rich river soil. It was like old times for Patsy and Pumpkin to be toiling side by side from daylight till dark, riding together to track the straying stock.
The town life had not really satisfied Patsy’s energetic nature. He was happy to be at work again and to realize that he had lost none of his old strength and vigour, and he was overjoyed when stockmen he had employed on Thylungra began to turn up at Argyle. These had mostly come to Kimberley with prospecting parties, but the excitement at Hall’s Creek had waned as the easily collected surface gold began to peter out, and they had come to the stations in search of work. Before long Patsy and his boys might almost have imagined they were back at Thylungra, in the happy days of evening sports and music and practical jokes. The only difference was that none of the settlers had yet dared bring their families to this remote loneliness where the natives had been hostile from the start and where no one escaped the terrible recurring attacks of malaria fever. For himself Patsy was confident that the blacks would soon be won over if tactfully approached and that the fever would disappear as in Queensland when living conditions improved.
A few local native boys had already come into service at Argyle, and Pumpkin had at once undertaken their training. Patsy had never encouraged the Thylungra natives to speak the popular ‘pidgin’ form of English and Pumpkin was determined that these boys would speak properly like himself. He soon became fond of his charges but would never admit that these sons of the Kimberley tribes had the intelligence and character of the Queenslanders.
He had been at Argyle only a few months when he met a prospector on the way to Hall’s Creek with a family of Queensland natives including a bright little boy of about six years old. He soon persuaded the mother that the wandering life she led was no good for her child and that she should leave him in his charge. The woman made no conditions, but the white prospector insisted that the boy be exchanged for the horse Pumpkin was riding and a tin of plum jam, which was a great luxury in the bush. Pumpkin had no need to consult anyone for he had as much say in the running of Argyle as the rest of them, and he knew they would all be as pleased with this bargain as he was himself. The little boy was called Boxer and was to grow up to become one of the great characters of the north.
The little boy was called Boxer . . .
When the new station was organized and running along much as Thylungra had done before, Patsy rode off to the goldfields. He had been sorry to hear that the goldfields’ population was falling off so soon and believed that it would come back if only machinery could be brought in to work deeper shafts. On reaching Hall’s Creek he at once pegged out a claim and set off back to Queensland to purchase mining equipment. He remembered the temptation it had been in his youth to stay on at the fields after he had made his first thousand pounds. Fortunately he had resisted it so that now he had earned the right to gamble, and could afford it—or so he thought.
