To Ride a Fine Horse (13 page)

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.

P
ATSY
returned the following year with his mining machinery and after a few days with his boys at Argyle, set off again to Hall's Creek. Now, more than ever, he was anxious to find gold and bring life back to the Kimberley fields. The drought had not broken in the east and it had begun to look doubtful whether he would ever get paid for his Queensland estates. Throughout the country people were again walking off their outback properties and many feared that Australia was facing the worst depression in her history. Even Patsy had to admit that the position looked serious, but he was sure his crushing machinery would soon prove that there was as much gold in Kimberley as at Ballarat and Bendigo.

He had been working hard for some months without much luck when a telegram from Queensland warned him that his investments were in danger. He left at once for Brisbane, confident that he would soon be able to set things right and return to his mining. His brothers, looking worn and sad, met him with the news that their financial position was now not only bad but quite hopeless, for their entire fortune, like that of so many others throughout Australia, had vanished almost overnight as panic spread and banks began to close down.

It took Patsy some time to realize that he had lost everything, even ‘Maryview', the home of his dreams,
and that he was again almost as poor as when he had arrived in Australia as an immigrant boy thirty-seven years before. His wife did her best to cheer him, saying how fortunate it was that the Kimberley property was safe, as Patsy had signed this over to his boys, and they could make a home there until times improved.

‘But I promised you, Mary,' her husband said, ‘that I would never take you and the girls to live outback again.'

Mrs Patsy smiled as though she wanted nothing more than to go to Kimberley. ‘But it will be wonderful to be with the boys again!'

It was decided at last that the two girls should be sent for a while to a convent in Goulburn, the youngest boy to college in Brisbane, while the third son, Pat, accompanied them to Kimberley.

Only a few of Mrs Patsy's own possessions now remained in the family, to go out with them in the dray over the rough bush roads to Argyle. There were a few good pieces of furniture, some glass, china-ware and cutlery, a piano from Thylungra, some precious pot plants and a crate of ducks. It was not much to show for the years of toil, but Patsy was hopeful and outwardly cheerful as he met his sons in Wyndham.

Pumpkin, in the meantime, hearing that Mrs Patsy was coming to Argyle, had found himself a young wife named Valley in the local tribe. How he managed to arrange this no one ever heard, but there she was, shy and smiling, waiting to welcome and serve the first white woman she had ever seen. Valley had relatives in the bush who soon came in to live at Argyle and help with the station work.

Pumpkin
. . .
found himself a young wife
. . . 

Soon the little place on the river became a real home like Thylungra. Crisply laundered sheets and pillowcases appeared on the beds, cloths on the table, curtains at the windows, and meals were carefully cooked and served. Patsy soon had a flourishing kitchen garden, and when the boys came in from mustering or from long journeys they could look forward to their parents' smiling welcome.

A little later Nat Buchanan brought his wife to Flora Valley Station in West Kimberley, so it could be said that there were at least two women in the district, even though some hundreds of miles apart.

Patsy's younger brother Jerry came next, bringing his wife and family to make a home at Rosewood with his partners Kilfoyle and Hayes, and when Kilfoyle soon afterwards brought his bride to the bush Patsy felt sure that in no time Kimberley would be as bright with family life as Cooper's Creek. He insisted that their pioneering worries would soon pass and that they had been wise in choosing this splendid country. The rains of monsoonal summer were proving as reliable as they had hoped and swept through deep channels that kept the flood waters from spreading too far across the countryside. There was, too, exciting colour and variety in the sweeping plains, great, palm-fringed rivers, rugged ranges and spreading trees of this Kimberley landscape, while the bird life they had enjoyed in Queensland was here in even greater abundance.

Not all, however, were as happy about the new land, for since the gold diggers had drifted away, the settlers became worried about finding markets for their beef. Cattle tick, supposed to have been brought into the Territory with imported buffalo, had begun to spread a disease among the stock. Fever raged more violently than ever and hostile tribes continued to menace the settlers and their stock. The goldfields' population, coming so quickly on the heels of the first settlers, had badly upset the Kimberley tribes,
for the prospectors, who wanted only to make money and get out, were little concerned with coming to friendly terms. Many had shot down natives without a scruple, for the slightest cause or none, so that the blacks with their primitive weapons had turned in the same way upon the whites.

Everywhere men, black and white, went in fear of their lives and Patsy was considered foolhardy and absurd when he insisted on riding unarmed to seek out the bush tribes in their camps and try to make terms with them. Patsy had never feared that any harm would come to him from the Aborigines but he began to fear that all his efforts would be in vain if the tough methods demanded by many of the settlers were to be carried out by the police.

Pumpkin at this time was more often than not away with the boys, droving cattle to the Territory goldfields, sleeping at night ‘with one eye open', as he said, for fear of attack. Even when at the station Pumpkin usually slept at the homestead rather than in the native camp, not for his own protection but because he thought all white people were inclined to sleep like logs and could easily be speared in their beds.

The wet season of 1893 was one of the worst ‘fever years' of all for the Kimberley settlers. Whites and natives all went down at intervals and Mrs Patsy nursed them tirelessly until she herself was forced to her bed. Each day she insisted she was a little better than the last and to prove it would sometimes struggle to the verandah with her sewing. One morning Valley, when bringing her a cup of tea, had found her slumped as though asleep in her chair and had gone quietly away. It was some time later before Pumpkin, who had watched her so anxiously, realized that she was never to wake again. He hurried to find Patsy, who was at work in the saddle-shed, and sank grief-stricken at his feet as he broke the terrible news.

Messengers were sent to family members at neighbouring stations and by evening all had gathered at Argyle for the simple burial in the garden near the house. It was hard for any to realize that the brave little woman was never again to greet them with her welcoming smile and many loving kindnesses, while for Patsy it seemed for a time that his own life had surely also come to an end.

Like a man in a dream he boarded a ship at Wyndham and returned to Goulburn where he and his beloved had started together on their long road into
the unknown. There his two girls, now grown-up young ladies, were ready to accompany him back to Kimberley and carry on the home their mother had begun at Argyle. At sight of their fresh young faces he knew that if the best of life was over for himself, for them it was just beginning, and his task was now to make it as smooth and happy as possible.

B
ACK
at Argyle, Patsy set to work at once on a new homestead and with the help of Pumpkin and two white tradesmen had completed it before the next wet season. It was then quite a grand place for the remote Kimberleys, being built of stone, with a galvanized iron roof, cement floors and wide verandahs paved with flat stones from the riverbed. Like everything Patsy did it was made to last and has served ever since as the station homestead.