Brumby Plains (10 page)

The
banded fruit dove
(
Ptilinopus cinctus
) also known as a banded pigeon, is found only in the sandstone escarpment of western Arnhem Land. It is a graceful, black and white bird about 350 mm in length, with a yellow beak and red legs and feet. It feeds mainly on the fruits of rainforest trees, such as figs. Its call is a single deep coo, or hoot.

 

A
bullcatcher
is a modified four-wheel drive vehicle used for catching wild buffalo and cattle.

 

A
bionic arm
is an invention that is mounted on the bullbar of a bullcatcher, and is operated by a winch. As the buffalo gallops alongside the bullcatcher a heavy steel arm – the bionic arm – is swung over the buffalo's neck and pins the buffalo to the side of the vehicle without hurting it. Then the buffalo is
loaded into a truck to be taken elsewhere. This method has been widely used for catching wild buffalo in the Northern Territory.

 

Buffalo
(
Bubalus bubalis
) are not native to Australia. Small numbers of buffalo were introduced to the Northern Territory from Timor between 1824 and 1843, to supply the early settlements with meat. They thrived in the Top End and quickly increased in numbers. Over the years buffalo have been harvested for their extremely thick hides, which were used in the 1880s for industrial belting, and for their meat. Today buffalo are domesticated and farmed for live export, human consumption and milk production in many parts of Australia. They still run wild (feral) in parts of the Northern Territory, but in much smaller numbers than before.

 

Strange breakfast food:
people in Darwin really do eat things like satays, curries and hot, spicy Asian foods for breakfast! Every Saturday morning hundreds of people head for the Parap Markets for breakfast, just the way it's described in this story.

I owe a big thank you to the following people who helped bring
Brumby Plains
to life: Northern Territory writers Kim Caraher and Cathy Applegate for their professional advice and comments; the Northern Territory Writers Centre for assistance with the early editing; Les Woodbridge and Wayne Miles for information about smuggling and bush airstrips (not through personal experience, of course); and my old mate Gavin Perry for giving life to one of the major characters. I am indebted to the Administrator of the Northern Territory, the Hon. Ted Egan AO, for his encouragement and his experienced opinion in some crucial areas of the story.

It's been such a pleasure to work with editors Jo Jarrah and Roberta Ivers at Random House again. Heartfelt thanks to them both, and to my publisher Linsay Knight and my agent Selwa Anthony for their
continued unqualified support and encouragement.

Finally, and most of all, my deepest appreciation and thanks to my husband Lex and my children Callum, Shaun and Ali, who make everything worthwhile.

Joanne van Os first came to the Northern Territory in 1976, and has spent most of the years since then living in the bush on stations not unlike Brumby Plains, and in remote Aboriginal communities. The characters Sam and George are an amalgamation of a lot of the children she has met out bush, including her own two sons. Joanne now lives in Darwin with her husband and daughter.
Brumby Plains
is her second book.

For more information and updates about Joanne and her books, visit her website at:
www.joannevanos.com

If you liked
Brumby Plains
, perhaps your parents will like
Outback Heart
, Joanne van Os' memoir of life in the Northern Territory with her husband, Rod Ansell, who was known by many as ‘the original Crocodile Dundee'. Here's an extract that captures the essence of life in the outback, as well as the trials and tribulations of a young, naïve woman growing up the hard way.

 

Outback Heart

From Chapter 9, ‘A Sojourn Down South'

 

We bought an old station wagon in Murgon to drive back to the Territory. We had left all our gear at Coolibah when we'd finished with the stock camp, so we headed for Bradshaw Station. Once again we had very little money, and none in sight unless we could secure a contract somewhere. After all the excitement and action of movie making, everything now seemed a bit of an anticlimax. We reached the Victoria River crossing at the end of March 1979, but our messages had gone astray and no one from Bradshaw was there to meet us. Rod fired a couple of shots in the air hoping to attract
someone's attention at the homestead, but no one came. He was never good at waiting. After an hour, he said: ‘I'm going to swim across and walk up to the homestead.'

I was horrified. Even the dogs were tied up so they wouldn't be tempted into the water. It was about 300 metres to the other side. ‘Wouldn't it be better just to drive into Timber Creek and ring the station from there?' I said, knowing I was wasting my time.

‘Nope. Be dark by the time we got back here. There's a couple of big planks of timber over there. I'm going to tie them together and push across quietly. It'll be okay.'

He got the timber ready, and then told me to get the rifle out of the car: ‘Just watch me through the scope, and if you see any crocs coming at me, blow them away.'

‘You realise you're in more danger of me shooting you than a croc getting you,' I said, only half joking.

‘You're a better shot than that. Just keep watching the water around me. I'll be back as soon as I can.'

It took him about fifteen minutes to get across
the river, but it felt like hours. I trained the scope on him the whole way across, scanning the surface of the river every few seconds for the legions of salties I was sure would appear. He dragged the planks up on the other side, waved at me, and trotted off up the bank heading for the homestead.

I put the rifle away and sat in the car. Was I a coward, I wondered, because I would rather have taken the safer route of driving back to use the phone, or was I just not prepared to take a risk which would save time and inconvenience? I did think it would be a lot more inconvenient to be grabbed by a crocodile in the middle of the Vic, though.

I was in a strange environment. It wasn't my natural place, and I was dependent on Rod to interpret it for me, because I didn't have a set of guidelines of my own that fitted. The ironic thing is, had I been on my own, I would have managed. But I had my knight in shining armour explaining it all to me, and I think I saw it as an affirmation of his love, that he was so keen to show me his world and for me to love it the way he did. I was convinced that he knew more about everything than anyone else. Rod was a natural teacher, and I was a star-struck student at his
feet. So in the end I accepted that what might have been logical in the city wasn't necessarily logical out here, and that apparently desperate measures were just part of the currency in the bush.

Our good friend Gavin Perry came out to Bradshaw to spend a few days with us. Gavin and I had become good mates since Rod introduced us. We had a lot in common, not least of all feeling totally inadequate in the bush around Rod, so I had an ally in my ‘embarrassing' city origins when Gavin was around. We had a similar sense of humour, especially a deep appreciation of
Monty Python
.

Gavin had first come to the Kimberley in 1974, and was working on a friend's grapefruit orchard when I met him in 1977. He had lived with Rod at various times, and was the perfect foil – the eccentric out-of-place Englishman to Rod's straight, outback Australian. Where Rod wore moleskins, riding boots and a hat, Gavin was resplendent in a colourful Hawaiian style shirt, shorts or a sarong, sandals and a battered straw hat if he wore one at all. He viewed the people and the culture around him with a sense of delighted astonishment that never seemed to wane, and which reminded me that there was
always another way to look at what I was seeing. Admittedly, when it came to Rod, I was not quite so objective.

We shared a love of photography, and he encouraged me to keep recording what I was seeing around me: ‘This country is quite bizarre, you know. No one will believe you if you don't take photographs. Look at bull catching! I mean, where else in the world do people
do
this stuff? Risking life and limb hurtling through the bush in these ridiculous jeeps, smashing into trees and rocks, flattening an enormous bull and jumping out to tie it up with a belt, just to sell it to the meatworks for a couple of dollars …'

One day we were helping Dick Gill to take a load of fuel across the Victoria River, and Gavin came along with us. After we had spent a couple of hours wrestling 44-gallon drums of Avgas and petrol off the truck and down the river bank and through the mud, we watched as the first load was towed across the river by a little dinghy piloted by Frank Clarke, the grader driver on the station. The drums were roped together in pairs, their tops just clear of the water as they bobbed along behind the boat, which was barely making headway against the current.
Sometimes the tide would turn sooner than expected, and the dinghy, fuel drums and the hapless ferry-man would be washed downstream, fetching up against a little island until the tide turned again.

Gavin turned to me, shaking his head, and said: ‘Where is your camera?
Why
aren't you taking photos of this? This is lunacy!'

I stared at him, not sure what he was talking about.

‘You're getting too used to all this. This is not normal. This is insane! Take photos of it!'

He was right. I was trying so hard to fit in and be a ‘bushie' that I wasn't seeing things objectively anymore. If the job required a total disregard for personal safety, and extreme physical discomfort, then that was how it was supposed to be, it seemed. Mind you, there usually wasn't another way to do it anyway.