To Ride a Fine Horse (5 page)

A new law, known as the Robertson Act, drawn up by a good man anxious to give the small settlers a chance against the often greedy big holders, had come into force in that State. All sorts of people had come flocking in to take advantage of the easy terms offered by the new Act. Some who honestly tried to clear and cultivate their land were defeated by a succession of bad seasons. Others came with no intention of trying at all, having hit on the idea of making such nuisances of themselves that the established holders would be forced to buy them out. Many of these so-called ‘free
selectors' connived with the big holders merely to run up homesteads on their blocks while the original owners went on using the land as before. This state of affairs, known as ‘dummying', not only ruined the good purpose of the Act but encouraged all sorts of other evils. Many of these ‘dummy' selectors soon turned their shacks into grog houses and assisted horse and cattle thieves with wholesale plunder, while other free selectors built up herds of cattle overnight by ‘duffing' or ‘moonlighting' them from established holders. A well known ballad of the times tells the story very well:

 

‘When the moon has climbed the mountains and the stars are shining bright

Then we saddle up our horses and away,

And we yard the squatter's cattle in the darkness of the night

And we have the calves all branded by the day.

 

Chorus:

Oh my pretty little calf,

At the squatter you may laugh,

For he'll never be your owner any more;

For you're running, running on the duffer's piece of land,

Free selected on the Eumerella shore.

 

If we find a mob of horses when the paddock rails are down,

Although before they're never known to stray,

Oh, quickly will we drive them to some distant inland town,

And sell them into slav'ry far away.

Chorus:

To Jack Robertson we'll say,

You've been leading us astray,

And we'll never go a-farming any more;

For it's easier duffing cattle on a little piece of land,

Free selected on the Eumerella shore.'

 

Bushrangers, for a time all but wiped out, became thick on the roads again so that no traveller was safe. These bad types included numbers of Irish from poor-houses and such institutions, who gave a bad name to the many good, hard-working Irish families, and Patsy and his brother-in-law felt that the happy, friendly spirit of earlier times was almost dead. They wanted desperately to get out, past the ever encroaching fences, the squabbling bush townships, the vicious little drinking houses, out of reach of the thieving dummy selectors and bushrangers—and start afresh.

Landsborough and Buchanan told them that although the empty land to the far north of New South Wales was subject to droughts and was in many ways a hard country, they believed that those brave enough to take it up would soon make their fortunes. Properly handled, their cattle and houses would survive the bad times, and as the country revived almost miraculously after rain the stock would quickly fatten and bring a good price. They should not be discouraged to find the country at first in a poor state for in a good season there could be no richer pasture land in Australia, perhaps even in the world.

E
ARLY
in June 1863 the little party set off from Goulburn with one hundred horses and four hundred head of breeding cattle. There was Patsy, slim and upright on his fine stockhorse, John Costello with his merry laugh, his quick springing step and already a beard like a young bushranger, and Stumpy Michael, a quiet good-looking boy, still beardless and with little experience as yet in the bushmanship for which he was to make his name.

Another of the party was Jim Scanlan, already reckoned a good Australian stockman although no more than five years out from County Clare. Then there was Darby Durack's brother-in-law, young Tom Kilfoyle, a veteran of the droving tracks at twenty-one, and besides all these relatives, a German cook and a typical Australian stockman named Jack Horrigan, bandy-legged through riding from childhood, trousers tucked into high-heeled elastic-side boots and wide-brimmed hat fastened under the chin with a strap.

In two and a half months they had reached the little outpost town of Bourke and had travelled, following the rivers, about six hundred miles. Here they found that a number of parties had lately settled in the far north-western corner of New South Wales and others had moved in over the Queensland border to the northeast. This party struck out on a fresh route to the north-west, up the Warrego, across the Cuttaburra
and on to the sandy, treeless plains of the Paroo. Here, just south of the border, was fair country and what looked like permanent springs. There was too little grass, however, so they established a depot and leaving most of the horses in charge of the other three, Patsy, John Costello, Stumpy Michael and Jack Horrigan pushed on with the cattle.

The drought that held the northern part of New South Wales in its grip, and that they hoped might improve as they moved on, instead grew steadily worse. Sadly they trailed their cattle through dusty mulga scrub and over parched bare plains, until they realized they could take the stock no further before finding water. Scouts riding on ahead found a little in the Bulloo River and returned to bring on the thirsty stock, but already some of the horses were falling in their tracks and had to be shot where they lay.

The suffering cattle smelt water on the wind from a mile away and broke into a frenzied stampede. Four men on weakened horses stood no chance of wheeling them as they plunged forward to the river, trampling fallen beasts to pulp under their hoofs. Half were drowned while the rest drank until they nuzzled the mud and were too exhausted to pull themselves from the bog. The heartbroken drovers had to shoot them before moving up the river to find more water for themselves and their poor horses.

Desperately they pushed on, for although their stock had perished they were still hopeful of finding better country and so making their hard trip worth while. On some stages of their journey they had seen signs of native camps and had ridden warily, on the look-out for an ambush and the sudden flash of spears
from the scrub. The natives had probably been watching them all the time, wondering what these poor foolish white men were doing in a country where only the black people knew how to live, for as the party moved on into an even more waterless waste a little group of black figures came towards them out of the mirage of the blistering plain. All were naked except for belts of woven hair, the men carrying their bundles of long, thin spears and throwing-sticks, with emu feather head-dresses or dangling circlets of dingo tails to whisk away the flies as they went along. The women wore armlets of possum skin and necklets of kangaroo teeth or small human bones—the remains of drought-born babies that had been killed and eaten, to be born again, they believed, in some better season. One or two carried little ones, surprisingly fat, and gazing up from curved bark coolamons swung about their mothers' shoulders.

John Costello and Jack Horrigan, who had had previous experience of Aborigines in their natural state, knew that, coming towards them openly, in company with their women, they had no wish to make trouble, and might even be of some assistance. Surprisingly, the leader of the band greeted the travellers in a few quaint words of English which he was later found to have learned from the only surviving member of Burke's party two years before. This was a man named King, whom the blacks had taken at the point of death and cared for until found by a search party. Seeing now that the white men's tongues were swollen and turning black with thirst the natives led them without delay to a little rocky outcrop where, under
a cover of brushwood and stones, was a well of stagnant but precious water. Later they came with food—fat yellow grubs dug up from the roots of the mulga trees, a black goanna lizard to be roasted in hot ashes with hard little cakes made from the pounded seed of the nardoo, a little mud-growing plant that left its fruit-cases in the hardened ground. Repulsive as it sounds, it was a feast for the starving men, who revived quickly and began asking about the country further on. The black leader shook his head, and scowling, pointed with his chin to the south.

‘Go!' he told them and then pointed to the northwest. ‘That way—no water. Nussing!'

They were about to do as he advised when a flight of parrots went wheeling overhead towards the north-west, and believing this to be a sure sign of water in that direction the white men decided to push on. From this it will be seen how much it meant to them to find this new country. They lived on crows and by sucking moisture from a succulent plant known as parakeelia but found little water for the horses, and when all but two had died they realized their foolishness in having gone on so stubbornly.

The blacks had disappeared, but it could be seen from the smokes of their fires that they were never far away. It was only when, in a desperation of thirst, they shot their last horse and drank from its jugular vein that the blacks appeared again. Realizing that the foolhardy strangers had given in at last, they led them back, resting from time to time at the secret little reservoirs of this arid land, until at last, from down the course of a dry creek, came the welcome sound of a horse bell. Members of their party had come in
search of them with beef and tea in their tucker bags and canteens of water on their backs.

The blacks had vanished before the rescue party came in sight, not expecting any thanks or reward, but both Patsy and Costello vowed that they would never forget the kindness of these primitive people in their hour of need.

It might well be thought that Patsy and Costello would have learned a lesson from this experience, but already they were talking of what the parched country must look like in a good season, when the grass was green, the running rivers full of fish and the land abounding in wild game.

‘I still believe,' Patsy said, ‘that drought or no drought those birds were heading for a good home out there to the north-west.'

Costello agreed. ‘We can't have it said we were beaten the first try.'

As usual Patsy composed a song to suit the occasion. He tells the story of a drover who perished with his cattle in just such a drought as they had left behind and whose ghost was sometimes to be heard wailing eerily as he drove his ghost mob on in the desolate drought wind.

 

‘Cheerily sings the drover

With his stock so fat and sleek,

Up to the border and over

His fortune for to seek.

 

Merrily sings the drover,

For with luck upon his side,

There'll be Mitchell grass and clover

And creeks ten miles wide.

Dismally sings the drover

For himself and his luck fell out,

But still he rides on like a lover

Into the arms of the drought.

 

Mournfully sings the drover

As his stock die one by one,

Wild dogs and eagles hover

And bones turn white in the sun.

 

Wearily sighs the drover

As he lies him down on the plain

To sleep with his swag for a cover

'Til the grass springs green again.

 

Eerily wails the drover

When the drought wind sweeps the sky

And men say “Hear the plover!”

As he moves the ghost mob by.'

A
FTER
their marriage, early in 1865, John and Mary Costello prepared to set out again to the far north. They had taken up a block in the spring country between the Warrego and Paroo Rivers, just south of the Queensland border. The season was then said to have broken well in the north and they thought this would at least be a good place on which to start, though, later on, they thought they might expand into better country.

John's mother had protested but she soon saw that her son was not to be put off. The thought, however, of the brave young couple going off alone into the wilderness had been more than either she or her husband could endure and they decided at the last to leave a manager in charge of their own property and accompany them.