Chapter 13

Raging Bull

Billy Corcoran

The closest most nine-year-olds come to danger these days is when battling Sauron’s forces or walking the haunted Paths of the Dead. But then armed with a joystick and the dexterity that comes from hours playing computer games, not even characters from The Lord of the Rings video game pose a real risk to a kid. The chance of falling off their chair as they fight the dark forces in Middle Earth is about as hazardous as it gets for a child these days.

There certainly were times when hazards lurked everywhere for children: when a child could go to work on the docks or down the mines, and occupational health and safety was a phrase yet to be invented; when seat belts in cars and bike helmets were considered overkill.

These days we are so attuned to the risks of work places and modern life in general that we are reluctant to let kids ride a bike at all, let alone without a helmet, in case they fall off and hurt themselves. The rest of the time anxious parents keep an eagle eye on their offspring, often protecting them to the point of paranoia. When it comes to letting them wander on their own we wrap our children in cotton wool for fear of the dangers that lurk out there ready to harm them.

So it can be surprising and unexpected to us when the table turns and the adult becomes the vulnerable one and the child becomes the protector. That is not what is meant to happen. We protect our children, not the other way around. When children respond as an adult and save us from a dangerous situation it is so unexpected, so uncharacteristic. But it is also a source of great pride to have raised a child who exhibits heroic qualities and pays you the ultimate compliment of saving your life.

It certainly is for Greg Corcoran, who on a foul wintry day in 1994 found out just how much his son Billy loved him. Greg, his wife Cathy, Billy and his two sisters Sally and Kimberley lived in the central Victorian countryside in the hills of the Pyrenees range not far from the tiny hamlet of Amphitheatre. Greg was a sales rep for a pipe company but also owned a farm running beef cattle, which kept all the family busy.

Billy and his two sisters grew up there with all the trappings of an idyllic rural life open space, clean air, small country school, close friends and the freedom to wander the landscape carefree and happy. But there was also work to be done; helping mum and dad with the cattle, making sure animals were fed and healthy. And so with the freedom came a degree of responsibility.

It was a blustery wintry day, 22 August, when Billy was coming home from a friend’s house with his mum. It was after school, the late afternoon light beginning to fade and as they bowled along the narrow country road, they saw Greg coming the other way, who motioned to them to stop.

Greg was going to draft some cattle and wanted Billy to lend a hand. Being cold, wet and windy Billy wasn’t too keen. He wanted to get home to watch TV and just relax. But after some badgering he reluctantly agreed to go and jumped in his dad’s car. The pair drove on to the cattle yards which were in a paddock away from the house and prepared to draft some of the cattle. Greg told Billy to grab a stick or two from under a tree to use on the cattle while he carried on in the yard sorting them out.

He sauntered off to a tree under grey clouds and a buffeting wind and fossicked around looking for the right-size branch to break into a handy stick to control the cattle. Cattle get a little spooked when it is windy and a nice-sized stick is often a bit of insurance when you are standing between a beast and his escape route.

As he absent-mindedly poked about under the trees, Billy heard a chilling scream ring out from the yards. He spun around to see his father in the yards in the middle of some cattle spiralling around and down onto the ground. Billy bolted for the yard to see what was happening, vaulting the rails, but Greg was yelling at him to stay out. He was on the ground, and towering over the top of him, just centimetres away, was a wild-eyed snorting Hereford bull, head down ready to charge.

The Corcoran’s yards were of the modern circular type made from steel and designed to make cattle flow and handle easier. Greg was pulling a gate around the circle, pushing the cattle up as he went. But one of the bulls doubled back and tried to charge a steer on the other side of the gate. Greg became the meat in the sandwich, pinned against the gate between the two beasts.

The massive bull hit Greg smack in the middle of his chest as he faced him, sending him crashing to the ground. That was when he yelled out, bringing Billy to his side. But the nine-year-old ignored his father’s calls to stay out and jumped down to where he was lying stunned and winded.

After the initial contact the bull had lumbered up to the other end of the pen but was soon back pawing the ground, wide-eyed, panicked and ready to turn again on his human foe. Greg, barely able to subdue his terror, found himself unable to move. He had lost all feeling in his legs, immediately assuming the worst and that his back had been broken. But his more immediate worry was the 600 kilograms of quivering mass of muscle and bone hovering above him, about to finish the job it started.

‘Soon as I hit the ground the bull decided he was going to have me for sure,’ Greg told a news reporter. ‘He started to come at me to try and gore me and Billy came through the middle rail and started hitting him with a stick.’

Standing between his dad and the bull, Billy, with stick in hand, jumped up and started belting the brown and white beast.

‘The bull is trying to get me and Billy is swinging like he had a baseball bat. On one of the hits he was lucky enough to get him in the eye and so the bull turned around and pushed his way up to the other cattle up the front of the pen,’ Greg said.

With the bull’s head down and threatening to charge again, Billy wielded his stick repeatedly, belting it across the nose and breaking the stick before it finally retreated. Billy threw a stick at his dad for him to defend himself with and then forced the bull to turn around, chasing it back to the far end of the pen.

Billy jumped back over the rails to get to the gate in front of the cattle so he could let the rogue bull and the other cattle in the pen out. He heaved on the iron gate and opened it, letting the cattle out away from Greg. But at the last second the bull turned around again and headed back to Greg. Seeing what was happening Billy ran back to his father, grabbing the second stick and again started flaying the huge beast.

‘The bull decided to come back over and have another go at us,’ Greg said. ‘I really thought I was gone. He had the length of the yard to charge at us and as he did Billy hit him a couple of times with the stick and forced him back.’

Again his stick broke into two useless short lengths. The bull, snorting and pawing, faced Billy square on. Now stick-less, Billy lashed out with his feet, kicking it in the nose, and waving his arms and jumper in a desperate bid to frighten the monster off.

At last the bull stopped, spun around and this time bolted through the now open gate at the other end. Billy swung the gate shut, he and his father safe at last. Luckily Greg’s car was there and he had a mobile phone, so Billy called up his mum. ‘Mum, get an ambulance up here quick! Dad’s been hit by a cow. He’s bust his back.’

Billy’s scouting experience came to the fore and he knew it was important to keep his father warm until help arrived. Billy drove the car up to the rails to provide a bit of a windbreak for his Dad. ‘He grabbed a rug from the car and an old horse blanket and laid it over the top of me and cuddled in,’ Greg said. ‘He said he wasn’t going to let me get hypothermia, and stayed with me until Cathy arrived.’

Cathy, by now in a blind panic, rang the ambulance only to be asked if it was a hoax. Struggling to believe what she was hearing, she said of course it wasn’t. The voice at the other end of the line replied that it was just that kids had been ringing the station with hoax calls and they had to be sure.

Exasperated, Cathy slammed down the phone and raced out to the car and headed for the yards. Once there she rang again, this time successfully. But it was 45 minutes before the ambulance turned up.

Unable to move or even feel his legs Greg was convinced the bull attack had broken his back. This was why he had yelled at Billy to stay out. He was worried that he would suffer the same fate and feeling that, because he was paralysed, he would not be able to do anything to help.

As the father and son lay waiting for what seemed an interminably long time and fearing the worst, Billy told his dad not to worry, he would be able to run the farm now.

‘He had all these decisions made before the ambulance had even arrived,’ Greg said. ‘It was a gutsy effort. We do not give children enough credit for what they are capable of.’

But despite their fears Greg would be permanently disabled from the crushing injury, his paralysis turned out to be only a temporary spinal concussion. After five days in bed he was able to move again.

There is little doubt Billy saved his father’s life. Because of the spinal concussion that made him immobile, Greg would not have been able to flee the bull and without Billy there it would almost certainly have continued to gore him. A man or woman is no match for an angry quivering mass of muscle and bone who feels threatened by you.

Luckily the bull was hornless which probably saved his life as the sharp tips of a rampaging bull’s horns can penetrate a body like a dagger. Even without horns their massive heads and forequarters can toss a human like a rag doll or smash them up against railings or other immovable objects. Deaths from bull attacks are not uncommon in Australia.

 

There is probably no love more pure, more unconditional than a child’s love for their parents. When you ponder what it is that can drive a nine-year-old boy to stand between his father and a raging bull there can be no other answer. Anyone who has handled cattle and had a face off with one that has gone feral can tell how terrifying it can be.

Billy, now in his teens, said he does not ponder too much about what he did and how he managed. It was nothing simpler than a boy’s desire to protect his much-loved father. All he could think about was getting into those yards to help his Dad. He wanted to stop him being hurt and he didn’t have time to think to be scared.

‘I love Dad and I didn’t want him to get hurt. Dad was just laying there; he couldn’t do nothing. I had to do something, I couldn’t just sit there and watch.’

But Billy, as most farm kids would be, was well equipped for the job. He had been around sheep and cattle all his life, his parents had taught him how to handle them and so he understood well their behaviour. He knew that if they baulked and would not move you just had to keep at them because they will give in. If you hesitate they will take advantage of that. Seemingly with this in the back of his mind Billy knew that if he just kept badgering the bull it would back off.

He doesn’t remember any sense of danger. He was so intent on chasing the bull away he could not think of anything else and could hardly even recall his father’s pleas for him to stay out. But fending off this attack still required enormous courage. ‘Any father would be proud but I’m over the moon with his whole effort,’ Greg said.

Cathy said the event strengthened the bond even more between Billy and his father.

His experience with livestock since he was a boy plus the talks they had listened to at school, Cubs and Scouts about first aid had prepared him well and highlights the importance of training even in small children, Cathy said. Billy remained incredibly calm and collected through the whole episode. He never lost his presence of mind particularly after the bull had been sent on its way.

Cathy said she thought kids do not get enough credit for what they know or can do. You don’t realise how much they take in, she said. ‘I’m really proud of him. I really am. But I don’t want to tell him too often, in case he gets a big head.’

Asked if it had changed him as a person Billy’s dry reply is ‘It made me a lot more wary of cattle, that’s for sure.’

 

Billy was awarded the Scouts bravery award and the Royal Humane Society’s Clarke silver medal and its Rupert Wilks trophy, a special bravery award for children under 12.

But Billy’s adventures did not end there; he went on to have several more encounters with charging cattle, saving his mother in similar circumstances a few years later. Billy, his mum and sister Sally were pushing some cattle through a gateway when the cow turned around and charged at Cathy, who was on a four wheel motorbike, flipping her and the bike over, pinning her underneath.

Billy again came to the rescue, grabbing the cow by the tail, and yanking it away from his mother, now sprawled on the ground. As he chased it round, the cow then proceeded to turn her attention to Billy. He jumped over the sheep yard fence while his sister on horseback chased the cow away.

On another occasion Billy got between a very protective cow and her calf. The cow chased him and launched him over a fence like a scene from Blazing Saddles.

Cathy said for a while after his awards Billy was pretty impressed with himself, and thought himself invincible: until these two incidents with the cows. ‘That brought him back to earth pretty quickly,’ she chuckled.