Next morning a light film of frost clung to the tents, lay along logs in fine powder, formed little crusts of ice on the plates left out to dry, and in the washing bucket a dirty block of ice was stuck to the bottom.
Johnny had woken at some stage and all I could see was a crumpled quilt in the back of the truck. I didn’t expect him for breakfast and when I woke the boys I whispered to them to be quiet. I was worried Johnny might decide to come and delay us.
I suggested Sal wait for me at the camp, giving her an opportunity to cleanup after breakfast. I thought Johnny and Tina would sleep in. Sal and I had made a rule that no one apart from myself was to be left alone in the camp.
Carrying a last piece of toast to the four-wheel drive, the boys piled in and we set off for the bore. We chatted about horses until the final kilometre. Would we just see trees and black dirt, or a cluster of red hides as we neared the bore? With enormous relief I saw Scalp on a grey horse and he had about thirty head of cattle pushed up against the gate. Another swerve of the four-wheel drive and there were all the cattle—a patch of red against the green backdrop of the forest. It may have only been a small thing in the broad spectrum of events, but seeing those cattle still yarded that morning was another victory over the odds. I had a roadtrain already on the way from Dubbo and I had enough horsemen to drive them to the yards.
‘Where’d you find them?’ I asked Scalp.
‘They were here. Come in for a drink and blocked by the gate. Rogues though—night drinkers. When they saw me they tried to break.’
I opened the gate and we put the little mob through. The boys caught and saddled their horses and together we discussed how six hundred head of very hungry cattle might be held together during the initial stages of the drive.
Richard and the big bay got the worst position—holding the lead away from the steep country running to the plateau. Nick and Black Cotton were posted at the lead on the south side. Scalp was to turn them as they came out and Tommy was to run them out of the small paddock. In fact Tommy didn’t have to do much as the cattle charged through the gate and everybody was instantly galloping. If the gate at the pass was left open again the lead might bolt and take days to track down. I drove quickly back to the camp and collected Sal. I had a feeling Johnny might leave immediately he woke and I was right. Sal was happy and not the slightest bit nervous. She had the camera bag out.
‘There’s no time for photos,’ I said anxiously.
‘Oh yes there is. Even if the cattle stampede there’s time for photos.’
I began to think of at least ten reasons she was wrong, but the topic of photography rubbed a raw nerve and I had as much chance as a jockey trying to tell the steward he didn’t push the favourite over the rails. Minutes later we arrived at the pass.
‘Mum told me one day,’ Sal said as she attached the telescopic lens, ‘to cherish the few years you have your children. They’ll be grown up and gone so quickly. There’ll be days when it all seems like a vivid dream.’
‘Did we ever get photos of them on their ponies?’ I thought maybe I’d taken a camera on one ride.
‘I was so busy I never knew where that old camera was.’
Sal set out for the craggy cliffs that overlooked the road leading to the pass. I couldn’t leave. When the tail was in sight my job was to open the gate and let the bunched-up cattle go. Richard and Nick couldn’t risk riding in to open the gate. On Richie’s side a bolt for freedom would take the mob to the high plateaus and a canyon beyond. On Nick’s side a deep scrubby ravine dropped away to the west, just beyond the little hump that formed the actual pass.
Sal didn’t have much time up her sleeve. The cattle had walked quickly and I saw the dust a few minutes before I heard the mooing. Some cows and calves constantly communicate with one another and others amble along in silence. Before the lead poked their white faces over the pass I saw Richard high up. He was taking no chances. I couldn’t see Nick and it was then I heard the scramble. There was the distinct thud of rocks bouncing down a steep slope and I could hear the snapping of brittle undergrowth. There’d been a break and I felt helpless. If I walked over to have a look I would spook the lead. It must have been three minutes, then there was a surge through the herd. They were coming over the pass at the trot and I flung open the gate, hopped into the four-wheel drive and sped away. If the lead couldn’t pass through the gate, Richie alone had to hold them.
Weeks later the photos Sal snapped told the little story of the break. All hell had broken loose and Nick, Tommy and Scalp had to gallop to the summit of a sandstone escarpment to turn back fifty breakaways. With some spectacular riding, they got them all back, while Richie managed alone to hold the rest of the mob. Maybe we did miss those early photographs, but Sal certainly made up for it that day.
The mob went through the gate quickly and Richard and Nick galloped forward to take up their positions. Tommy’s bad-eye mount was behaving, but I never saw his ears forward. Scalp rode over to me.
‘We’re makin’ such good time I know a patch where we can hold up for dinner. Bit of good grass. Give ’em about three hours.’
‘Track in there?’ I asked. ‘I could drop the water and lunch.’
I was going to take the lunch to the yards before I left, but I knew the boys would be ravenous hours before they got there.
Scalp said there was and dismounted to draw a dirt map. We left immediately, picked up the overgrown track and found the burnt stump Scalp had mentioned. By the time Sal and I left for Mitchell I could feel the tightening in my stomach. Time was the enemy and I was lagging behind.
At Mitchell I went to see a mechanic who had helped me out on a number of occasions and he agreed to work on the supply line engine provided I took him out. We went on to Roma and called at a business which specialised in fibreglassing. The manager thought he could fit me in some time in about a week. I hammered the urgency hard and when I explained exactly where I was with the cattle his attitude softened.
‘That’s bad country to be in,’ he said, shaking his head. He was in his sixties with snow white hair and the lines in his face suggested a lifetime of toil. ‘It’s never been any different in my time.’ He paused and glanced through the door into his large shed where several men were working. ‘How many gallons did you say?’
‘Thirty thousand.’
‘I’ll do it. We’ll leave at three o’clock in the morning.’
Everything was set for the deadline. Scalp said he could spare one drink for my cattle from his horse paddock dam. He thought he had only a few weeks left for his horses, then the lot would have to be bushed into his mountain country. After the horse paddock, I was relying on water from the old bore.
Before leaving Roma Sal and I both had a shower at the Commonwealth Hotel. The simple things we take for granted sometimes become monumental when they are denied. A quick coffee at ‘Double Bay’ also helped fortify us for the trip back to the rangelands.
The boys hadn’t long started the drafting when we arrived at the yards. The roadtrain was due at five o’clock and by six o’clock it would be dark. The horses were still saddled.
‘We’ll have to break the rule,’ I said to Sal. ‘Be seven o’clock before we’re finished here.’
‘I’ll be right,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll get the fire going and prepare dinner.’
I took Sal to the camp which was only five kilometres away and when I left I didn’t think I’d be long. I wanted to see the roadtrain driver, explain the permit conditions and give him his border crossing papers. The boys could do the rest and come back to the camp with Scalp. It didn’t occur to me the roadtrain driver might get lost. Fortunately he didn’t panic and after a closer examination of his map he found the correct road. I tied a bit of old sheet to a steel post to mark the track he was to turn into. It was about six-thirty when he arrived. Loading young cattle in the dark is usually difficult and the driver looked exhausted. He had covered the nine hundred kilometres from Dubbo without a sleep, and not used to ten hours in the saddle the boys were very tired. I decided to stay.
Roadtrains are loaded from the side and with older cattle it works well. Weaners, however, baulk when they get to the door. They see the confined space and don’t like it. We had to work hard to load that hundred and seventy-three weaners. Fortunately, the bulls walked on as though they were frequent travellers. They were poor and destined for hand feeding. As the train eased away from the loading ramp I contemplated the superhuman effort the driver would have to demand of himself to steer forty metres of vehicle, loaded with a hundred and eighty head of cattle, across the vast plains for another nine hundred kilometres. He didn’t expect to reach the border until 4.00 a.m., when he planned to snatch three hours sleep before the border inspector opened his office at seven o’clock.
We all watched the train leave. It was an awesome sight; enough lights for a city arcade creeping along a track too rough for a pedal bike in a forest already enveloped in darkness. The driver wasn’t young. He was grey and balding and the last we saw of him was a tiny head through the cabin window.
The horses were the next job. The boys and Scalp led them to the horse paddock dam for a drink and then let them loose in a yard with some hay. It must have been about eight o’clock when we headed for the camp. Scalp declined my invitation for dinner. He said he had to go to Injune.
About a kilometre past the turn-off to the yards we saw the four-wheeler bike on the side of the road. There was someone on it and as we got closer we saw it was a woman with hair across her face. It was Sal. She was wiping tears from her eyes and looked very distressed. Obviously she had been trying to find us, but didn’t know how to turn the bike lights on.
‘A man arrived in a car.’ Her voice was weak and frightened. ‘I jumped on the bike. He followed me. He had the lights on me and I didn’t know what he was going to do.’
I led her to the four-wheel drive. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Cowboy hat and beard.’
‘Something he did must have frightened you.’ I felt very concerned.
‘He just looked like a wild man,’ Sal said miserably. ‘He didn’t do anything wrong. He had a carton of beer under his arm.’
It was a reflex reaction. Any lone woman would have reacted the same way in this territory. It was my mistake. I should have briefed Richard on the paperwork and left it to him. It’s often hard to admit the truth to yourself, but I knew I’d wanted to be where the action was.
Obviously Frankie had found the camp during the day and thought if he contributed a case of beer he would be welcome. It was most unfortunate.
The incident dampened the spirit of the camp that night. It was a good example of the effect of rumour and innuendo. Fear seemed to stalk every valley and range.
‘You’re quiet tonight Dad,’ Tommy said, soon after his mother had gone to bed. ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’
‘It’s a sledgehammer dose of rejection for Frankie. When society rejects a man, most crumble. Others harbour the hurt and wait. Frankie is one of those who wait.’
‘But if he’d come back we’d have made him welcome.’
‘I know. Problem is he doesn’t know it.’
Next morning we all left the camp together and I dropped the boys at the yards. Their job was to water the cows in the horse paddock and walk them towards any feed they could find, but not in Scalp’s horse paddock. That had to be saved for his horses.
Sal had recovered completely. We had a huge day ahead of us and before driving eighty kilometres into Mitchell to meet the mechanic I drove to the tank to see if the fibreglassing had started. It had more than started. The base was already done and they were working fast, upwards from the bottom. The fibreglass is applied in liquid form and an intricate meshing system holds the liquid in place while it dries. The powerful chemical smell made me feel lucky as I walked away. Ideally the tank needed two or three days to thoroughly dry, but the old bloke knew I couldn’t wait and instructed me to pump just enough for the cattle to drink.
In Mitchell the mechanic, Clayton, was waiting for me and we drove out again. While he set to work with his spanners I started on the plumbing. The polythene pipe between the bore and the supply line engine had been trampled by cattle long ago. I had no illusions about the supply line. Once the water began to push up after being absent for two or three years I expected a lot of repair work.
About two hours later I saw Clayton packing up his tools. Sal was sitting on a log, reading. She closed her book and we both converged on the engine. This was the last serious hurdle.
‘Valve’s in bad shape,’ Clayton said grimly. He picked up the crank handle and tried it. He was strong and surprisingly fit for a mechanic. It wouldn’t start.
‘You can’t order parts for this thing,’ he said despairingly, for he understood what it meant to us. ‘They can be engineered. There’s a place in Toowoomba.’
There was no time for a salvage job. We had to go to Roma again—three hundred kilometres there and back. We dropped Clayton on the way and arrived in Roma about midday. The boys had no lunch with them as we had arranged to have it together. It was an awful feeling, but we had entered the desperate stage now. Worse still, when we didn’t turn up they would be worried and anxiety would increase as the shadows lengthened.
There was no shortage of pumps in Roma and I selected one within a few minutes. I would have to pump directly out of the supply tank at the bore and it leaked. There was no quick alternative.
A box of sandwiches, a hundred litres of diesel for the big engine on the bore, petrol for the new pump and we set out again for the rangelands. We were both exhausted more from worry than the actual hours on the road or bent over machinery.
The boys were moving the cattle towards the yards when we arrived and they were famished.
‘We began to think the worst,’ Nick joked. ‘Shoot-out at Nug Nug camp.’
I boiled the billy and gave everyone coffee. I laced mine liberally with rum. It was four-thirty and I knew most of my work would be by lantern and torch light.
It would be boring to relate the next eight hours. Sometime after midnight I had water flowing into the fibreglass tank. There were five ruptures in the supply line which stretched for nearly three kilometres. With only a torch the line was still quite easy to follow as the original ripper had left a narrow mound of dirt covered by dry grass. It was a very private victory. I crawled into the tent beside Sal, put my arm around her and fell into a deep sleep.
We all woke a little more relaxed. My sole job for the day was to turn off a stopcock at the bore. The pumping in the early hours of the morning would have provided enough for the first drink, but I didn’t want to stop the big diesel. I intended to fill the supply tank and use a piece of rag to stem the leak.
The boys were up early, keen to see the cows with their heads buried in virgin grass. The heifers and steers transported back from Echo Hills had not done at all well, because they were still growing. There wasn’t enough of them to fill a roadtrain and even if there was I would have had to hand feed them at Myall Plains. I had a lucerne paddock there for the weaners. It was dry and touched with frost, but they would recover from the separation stress which lasts about a fortnight. Then they were bound for Jerilderie.
The morning wasn’t quite as uneventful as I had hoped. The cattle were so thirsty that when they ran onto the trough they broke a rail protecting the ballcock, which in turn pressed the float into the water, and by the time I saw it half the water I pumped during the night had been wasted. However, the fibreglass showed no sign of deterioration under premature filling, so the broken rail was nothing more than an irritation.
I thought the boys would ride back to the yards after watering the cattle and over the next three hours I began to realise the days of my youth were a long while ago. They had a snack at the camp and headed north-west into escarpment country none of us had been in. When they came back they spoke of a deep gorge with perpendicular cliffs and an imposing flat-topped mountain which they thought may be the mesa named by Leichhardt in honour of his accompanying surveyor, Edmund Kennedy.
‘There’s a track through the gorge,’ Richard said. ‘Some years ago it was graded.’
‘Great camping site,’ Nick added. ‘Be in the shade for at least half the day.’
‘We’ll climb that peak tomorrow,’ Tommy cut in. ‘Reckon you can manage it Dad?’
‘If you’re willing to wait long enough.’
The scene I wanted to see was the cattle in the burnt country. I’d measured the paddock from the four-wheel drive as about three thousand hectares. The burnt country itself may have been five hundred or more hectares and between five and six kilometres from the trough. It was tempting to push the cattle out onto the feed the second day, but milk would be inflaming their udders now that the weaners had been removed and for the next three days about half the cows would hang around the gate. Already a few had eaten their fill and were mooing their heads off. Their big babies should have been taken off weeks ago. When man doesn’t intervene the big calf is chased away when the new one arrives. I’d just have to wait to see the cattle shoulder-high in buffel grass.
Richard had a heart-warming fire going before sundown and the one good thing about our frequent trips to Roma was the ice. We could all have a cold beer and another steak on the barbecue. The whole operation was doing the boys a lot of good. That sickly, pallid colour so common among students studying into the early hours had given way to a tan. It was beginning to seem like the past ten years had been wiped aside. They were boys again, free of the unquenchable pressure of modern society. Sal, too, I thought looked much younger. She was revelling in having the boys virtually by her side, twenty-four hours a day. Tableland camp may not have been a homemaker’s dream, but it was a mother’s dream. We had one away—James, our eldest. The city had claimed him years ago. An auctioneer, he lived in a tough world. A whinging farmer, sick of everything—work, droughts, bad prices—need only have one day beside my eldest boy and he would kneel by his bed every evening and be thankful he still had a farm.
Boys chat endlessly to their mothers. There’s an instinctive bond that lasts forever. The dad, I feel, just needs to be around. All the boys had undertaken studies at university that I couldn’t talk about with them. I admired them immensely, for I felt about as educated as the fringe dwellers of the rangelands. I could pluck a few words out of the air, maybe, but that was the end of it.
We were into the second beer, just on dusk, when Scalp arrived with more beer.
‘Now don’t you go runnin’ off into the bush, Sal,’ he shouted jokingly from his ute.
The boys and I smiled, but Sal was embarrassed. Scalp had got out quickly and closed the door. I didn’t see the other two figures in the fading light until they also got out.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Jenny said to me, coming forward with Clara. ‘Scalp doesn’t ring me very often. When he did I said I was sick of the place. Wanted to get out in the bush.’
I introduced everyone and said to Scalp, ‘You’ve seen Frankie then.’
Scalp looked uncomfortable and Jenny answered for him.
‘I would have run too, don’t worry. There was a woman held out here. When she got away she had bruises down her neck from the point of a gun barrel.’
‘They got him though. He’s gone.’ Scalp kept his eyes averted and I had an instant gut feeling the offender hadn’t gone too far.
‘It was very bad luck with Frankie,’ I said. ‘In fifteen minutes we’d have all been here. We’d have given him dinner and drunk with him.’
‘Yeah, well Frankie ought to have realised that too,’ Scalp replied. ‘He’s at war with the world at the moment. Ike’s comin’ back. Gonna go trackin’ cleanskins.’
‘More like men,’ Jenny butted in with her husky voice.
‘He’s spoilin’ for a gunfight with that bloke who’s had Josie stay with him.’
It seemed a shocking conversation in front of the little girl, but when I looked at her I could see she was taking no notice. She was as used to it as other children are to playground games. I think she was much more interested in the boys.
Jenny and Sal got talking with a glass of red wine and I mixed a soft drink for Clara, who sat close by her mother. She was naturally shy, and far too young for the boys to even look at twice.
‘You’ve got the water on,’ Scalp said, with a grin. ‘Been wantin’ to get it on myself. No money.’
‘The whole thing cost about four and a half.’
‘Put it down to agistment,’ he said.
There was an awkward silence. Richard was intrigued by the old graded track.
‘There’s a deep gorge out the back,’ he said. ‘The road through was once graded.’
‘It was an access road at one time,’ Scalp confirmed. ‘The station was burnt out.’
‘Bush fires?’ Richie asked.
There was a pause and Scalp knew what we were all thinking. ‘That bloke got what he deserved. Nothing to do with me, but can’t say no more.’
It seemed close to the heart and I erected the griller over the fire.
‘You goin’ to stay with the cattle, Mick?’ Scalp asked suddenly.
‘My mother’s very ill. Soon as they’re settled we’ve got to go back.’
‘I start weanin’ next week. I can watch the water that week. Week after that I am gone—scrub pullin’.’
‘Will you ring me the day you go?’ I asked.
‘Yep.’
After dinner Sal suggested a card game and a circle was formed on an old rug. Everyone knew five hundred except me, so I used my knee as an excuse and went to bed. They played until midnight and Scalp and Jenny retired to the ute. Clara fell asleep by the fire and later Sal placed a quilt over her. It was a relaxed few hours, but deep down there was disquiet and at the end of the day Scalp’s problems weren’t so far removed from mine.
I pumped water through the night and then stopped the big diesel to check the oil. It had used a couple of litres and I had to drive down to the south bore and pick up a drum that had four or five litres left. The oil was going to be a problem, I thought. When I arrived at the south bore there were nearly twenty cows watering at the trough. I’d been worried about the cattle grid on the road, but I’d thought it too wide for the cattle to cross. They had jumped it alright and gone all the way back looking for their calves. I looked in the supply tank and there was enough water for some weeks. A small lot would probably find a bit of feed, so I decided on the spot to leave them be. I think I was getting very stale about the whole exercise. I went back, topped up the oil and kicked the engine up for another two days of pumping.
Back at the camp the boys were ready for a mountain day. It took me back to those adventure hikes we’d done so often in the Warrumbungles when they were young.
‘Kennedy put his initials on that peak,’ Scalp said, before he, Jenny and Clara left. ‘On a slab of rock right at the top.’
That was all we needed. We were all going to climb it. I wasn’t sure how I’d go, but if it came down to elbows and hands I intended to keep going.
The track in wasn’t too bad. The boys knew where it turned off and it soon became apparent a conventional-wheeled vehicle had used it several times since the last heavy rain in February. The gorge had nothing like the grandeur we were used to in the Warrumbungles. It was wild though and the thought of camping in it as a bushwalking base had great appeal.
Beyond the gorge towered the mesa. From top to bottom it was no more than one hundred and fifty metres and the upper cliff line was more a jumble of eroded crags. If I went slowly I knew I could do it. Sal stayed back with me and the boys surged ahead. By the time Sal and I made the summit they had been looking for Kennedy’s initials for more than half an hour. We couldn’t find them. I am sure the explorer’s initials are somewhere on one of the escarpments. They may be on that mesa too.
The following day we walked the cows to the burnt country. The boys spread out on horseback and Sal and I did as much pushing as possible from the four-wheel drive. When they hit the feed (and I use that word because that’s the effect it had) it was like gazing across four hundred statues. It was a wonderful sight and when we got back to camp later that afternoon Sal popped a big beef roast in the camp oven and I opened a bottle of red wine. The ice had melted, but the stubbies were still cold and the boys were soon thinking and talking ‘south’. We had done all we could. It was time to go.
The boys rode the horses back to Claravale and we all left for Roma. I believe pleasure in life is totally tied up with where fate lands you. One hundred and sixty kilometres from Roma with the four-wheel drive churning the dust like a tank, the ultimate pleasure for the five of us was the prospect of a hot shower at the Commonwealth Hotel.
We didn’t stay more than a day in Roma. Nick caught up with a few mates he’d first met nine months before and Richie and Tom had their first insight into western Queensland culture. On a Friday night at least two live bands strum their way into the early hours of the morning. Young stockmen from as far west as Charleville and as far north as Tambo come to Roma for a fun weekend, their theme song ‘The Boys from the Bush are Back in Town’. A woman once said to me in a southern city, ‘There’s no men my age left here.’ I told her to pack her bags and head for western Queensland. Apart from basic clothes, I told her to take only a shotgun for the over-keen and a hat for the sun. Over a cocktail she gave me that sceptical look. Sal didn’t believe me either until one night I took her into the bar at Muckadilla. There were station managers, ringers, drovers, shooters and bums. It is a bar where everyone mingles and by midnight everyone’s drunk. In the space of three hours Sal had one direct proposal and I was asked by another man if I would loan her for $500. I would be the first to agree that a lady from the city would have to smooth off her suitors’ rough edges out here, and no one would envy her the task.
To paint Roma as a bawdy frontier town, however, would be inaccurate and offensive to most of the population. It is a small town by provincial standards, yet the extent of the services provided is extraordinary. The standard of living is as high as anywhere in Australia. Cinema entertainment is equal to the best in Brisbane or Sydney. The supermarkets stock everything a sophisticated housekeeper could think of. But most important are the people. You can still leave your keys in the ignition in Roma.
It was the end of the best two weeks I had experienced in Queensland. We’d done all the work as a family and it was terrific to see the boys get so much out of it. Two weeks in the outback and the colour was back in their faces and they laughed a lot.