To Ride a Fine Horse (7 page)

One bright-faced youth brought up a large perch
. . . 

Cobby interpreted this as meaning good water that never dried up and Patsy, trying in vain to pronounce the word in the rolling native way, could get no closer than ‘Th-lungra,' Later he wrote it as ‘Thylungra', and that became the name of the station they were soon to make their home.

He and his companions returned to Mobel Creek with tidings of good pasture, permanent water and friendly tribespeople, and when John Costello returned from his droving trip to South Australia they packed up and moved on to their promised land.

We can imagine the surprise of the natives to see the cavalcade of horses, cattle, waggons, carts and buggies moving across the plain, but this time they came running forward in welcome, believing that a splendid new age of plenty had begun for them. The youth who had brought the fish from the trap embraced Patsy with tears of joy, asking Cobby to explain that he was a long dead elder brother who had suddenly ‘jumped up' a white man. The boy seemed honestly to believe this and was to remain to Patsy a true and loving brother from that day forward. His native name was ‘Burrakin', but Patsy could get no nearer to that than ‘Pumpkin', by which name the boy was always afterwards known.

It was agreed that the natives should continue to gather when they wished at the Thylungra waterhole and that any who liked to help the newcomers would be fed, clothed and looked after. A number expressed themselves eager to assist and so soon became part of the big Thylungra family, with white man names such as Kangaroo, Jimmy, Willie and Jackie. Some of the women, fascinated by the little white children, offered
to help about the camp—and later about the house. As the white people did not interfere with their tribal lives this seemed a happy arrangement all round. Indeed it was often remarked that blacks and whites at Thylungra always regarded each other not as servants and masters but as friends.

Exploring from Thylungra, John Costello found another splendid site about twenty-five miles upstream and here he built the station that he called Kyabra.

Soon the little homesteads and yards went up beside the waterholes, the stock spread out over the broad plains and about the tree-fringed gullies and creeks of the Cooper channel country, one day to be regarded as some of the richest fattening country in the world.

I
MAGINE
having to ride five hundred miles to the nearest shop! It sounds far-fetched, but in those early years in Western Queensland all stores had to be brought by bullock team from the little town of Bourke, south of the border. The settlers tried to provide for six or nine months at a time, for even if the team was not delayed by bog or flooded rivers it was always a three months' journey there and back. Although they had come to Thylungra fairly well stocked up, they knew, almost as soon as they arrived, that it was time the team was on its way again.

Stumpy Michael and a native boy named Willie completed the long journey in good time, but a gold rush had broken out in Queensland just before and prospectors had bought up all the supplies to be had in Bourke. There was nothing for it but to push on another one hundred and fifty miles south to Wilcannia. Nor was this the end of their difficulties for on the return journey some of the team bullocks died from eating poison bush and others had to be purchased. The new animals, being poorly trained, panicked on a steep decline and broke a waggon shaft. It was six months before the team got back to Thylungra and during this time the family had been able to get no news whatever. They were sick with anxiety both for the safety of the travellers and because the station storehouse was almost empty. They were living
on nothing but beef, an occasional fish, kangaroo or wild fowl and some pumpkins that Patsy had managed to grow.

Lack of rain was another cause for worry. Terrible duststorms swept over the parched land and the heat was almost past human endurance. It was soon to be seen that the settlers' most dreaded enemy—drought—was again gathering its forces against them. The poet Roderic Quinn has described very well the process of this deathly march all too familiar throughout Australia.

 

‘The Drought came marching o'er the plains,

The plains grew sere and parched;

His milestones were the bleaching bones;

Adown the road he marched.

 

He drew a smoke-shroud round the sun,

Around the moon a haze;

He filled the west with wizard lights

And phantom water-ways.

 

He came and triumphed, struck and slew,

And all the stricken land

Lay gasping like a prostrate man,

Within his strangling hand.

 

The Drought came marching up the hills,

His stride a giant's stride,

The herbage wilted at his breath,

The grasses crisped and died.

 

No dewy sweetness went before,

No wind that soothes and cools;

His red tongues searched the hidden nooks,

And lapped the little pools.

 

The waters vanished from the creeks,

From shadowed hole and cleft;

In all the tumbled countryside

No little drop was left. . . .'

 

The first baby born in Thylungra to Patsy and his wife was a victim of this cruel drought, his little life too frail to resist the searing heat of the desert wind. He died at six weeks old—the first of the family to rest in the little station cemetery on the riverbank.

That any of them managed to survive those terrible times seems almost incredible, for the good season in which they had arrived was the last for nearly four years. The cattle during this period showed little increase and the pioneers instead of making their fortunes fell deeply into debt. Still Patsy, his brother and John Costello never doubted that the tide would turn for them. They believed that just as there were successions of bad years, there must be a run of good seasons to follow in which they could soon make up their losses.

Patiently they moved their stock about the countryside as one area after another became denuded of water and grass. In the process they were discovering, naming and mapping all the tangled watercourses and landmarks of the Cooper country and pegging out vast areas on which they intended forming stations. Once a year Patsy and Costello would ride in to the nearest Queensland town to register these newly discovered areas, until they had taken up between them thousands of square miles.

To John, Australian born, the size of their holdings meant little. It was his old mother who one day remarked that having now taken up an area almost the
size of Ireland, it was surely time they stopped. She feared that although now well away from the racecourses their land hunger had become another form of gambling, and again she loudly rued the day when the madcap Patsy Durack had come riding into their lives. Still, even the forthright Mrs Costello found it hard to be pessimistic as the young people talked of the good times coming, when the lonely land would be dotted with homesteads and little towns, and peopled with friendly faces, when roads would be put through and brisk coaching services would link them again with the outside world. When the season had broken, they explained, they would send at once for friends and relatives in the south. These would have first pick of the properties and the rest of the land they would put up for sale. Always with this in view they rode the countryside, putting up stockyards and temporary shacks.

Although both men were devoted to their families they could spend little time at home in these busy years. As the elder Costello couple lived mostly with their son's family at Kyabra, Mrs Patsy and her three boys, Michael, John and baby Patrick, were frequently alone with the natives at Thylungra. Patsy was confident they would be safe, for although the most trustworthy natives were usually with him on the run, old Cobby always remained behind. Nothing likely to harm the white woman and her children ever escaped his eagle eye. He kept snakes, poisonous spiders, centipedes and scorpions at bay and slept at night on the homestead verandah. Sometimes, as the long drought continued, Mrs Patsy thought him over-watchful and would beg him to get from under her busy feet. She
took little notice when he warned her about the bush blacks, for she knew that Cobby's tribe and the Boontamurra had always distrusted each other.

Once, however, as Patsy was about to leave the station, the old man approached him with great earnestness. This time it was no joke, no nonsense, he insisted, for the outside natives, at first so friendly, had begun to grumble that the white people were no longer so generous with their gifts of flour, sugar, tobacco and tea. It was no use the station natives explaining to them that the settlers had scarcely enough food for themselves and their little ones. The bush natives thought that the store was kept full by some sort of white man's magic, just as they believed that the bush animals and plants were created through the magic ceremonies of their own tribal elders.

This time the old man's warnings were reluctantly confirmed by Pumpkin and other Boontamurra boys. They thought the sight of a gun put up on the wall of the homestead would be enough to discourage trouble but suggested that Mrs Patsy should also be taught how to fire it. Patsy did his best to instruct his wife, but she paid little attention and said he should know quite well how the blacks loved to work up excitement about nothing at all.

Even when she looked up from her stove that day to see a group of tribal warriors in the kitchen doorway she was not much alarmed. She had grown accustomed to the sight of war paint, feathers and long spears and thought they had probably come to announce the beginning of a corroboree such as they often held within earshot of the homestead. It was not long, however, before she missed the usual friendly smiles and greetings. Instead the leader came forward with a scowl, demanding tobacco and food. The white woman explained that she had nothing to give them until Mr Michael and Willie came back again with the team from Bourke. There was an angry murmur as the blacks came swarming in, began looking into empty tins and throwing them disgustedly about. Cobby, who had been close at hand as usual, gave a sudden blood-curdling yell and fled through the doorway. Mrs Patsy, now thoroughly alarmed, thought he had taken fright and deserted her but in less than half a minute he had returned and thrust into her hands the rifle that had been left on the homestead wall. The six-year-old Michael, whose interest in firearms had long been the worry of his mother's life, took the weapon quickly from her unpractised hands and cocked it for action but, terrified of what the child might do, she seized it back again. There was a sudden deafening explosion, a bedlam of frightened shrieks and a kitchen full of smoke.

. . .
the leader came forward demanding tobacco and food.
 

‘The thing went off in my hands,' the poor woman sobbed. ‘Dear God, I hope no one was hurt!'

‘They all got away,' her son said in disappointed tones. ‘You missed every one of them.'

Neither he nor Cobby could understand the poor woman's relief.

‘I'm sure they meant no real harm,' she told her husband on his return. ‘They were hungry and they simply didn't understand.'

Patsy rode out with Pumpkin, now his constant companion, to find the bush tribe and try to explain the situation, but the bush blacks had vanished from all their usual camping places.

At Kyabra the Costellos had had trouble too. Not understanding the complicated native law, John had granted protection at the station to a young girl who had married a man forbidden her by the tribe. One night the family was awakened by terrible cries from the direction of the saddleshed and, hurrying outside with a lantern, Costello tripped over the headless body of the faithful Soldier. The boy had managed to keep the attackers at bay while the young couple escaped and had then been struck down.

Angry and grief-stricken, Costello had ridden out with Scrammy Jimmy to interview the elders of the tribe. A stone, flung from behind a boulder, caused him to fall half-stunned from his horse just as two big natives closed in on him. The agile Jimmy sprang from his saddle, split one man's head open with a tomahawk, and while the other made off helped the white man back on to his horse. For the rest of his life Costello carried a dint in his skull from that episode, but the tribe afterwards allowed the young couple to live in peace.

Still it was clear that the bush blacks were now angry with the settlers and they began to murmur that there had never been such a drought as this before. The white people had brought a curse with them and all the tribes should unite to drive them from the country.