An Outback Nurse Read online

  In the middle of another night we heard a crunching sound—a rat had chewed halfway through the wooden front door. It was trying to get out! Who knows how it got in?

  At the height of the plague, a new domestic, Pauline, arrived. When she heard about the rats and saw her room next to Beryl’s, she became quite hysterical. ‘No, I’m not staying here. I want to fly out—now!’

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ Pauline was told, ‘the next plane doesn’t come until next week.’

  Fortunately for Pauline, Ralph and I had purchased a caravan on our last holidays. We offered it to her as a rat-free living space.

  We’d seen this caravan for sale in Wollongong and thought how wonderful it would be to have on the road rather than camping. We could stop for smoko, lunch, dinner; we had a bed each night. The trouble was that instead of six days travelling back to the station, it took ten as the caravan was heavy to tow. And I wasn’t happy when the radiator boiled on the very steep Toowoomba Range and we had to stop. After it cooled down, Ralph said that I’d have to push the caravan to help get it going, which I did, but then I had to run beside the vehicle with my door wide open, Ralph calling, ‘Jump in! Jump in!’ By this time I was screaming, ‘Stop!’ But he couldn’t, so I shut my eyes and jumped. Never again! I didn’t care much for the caravan after that, but at least it suited Pauline.

  The rat plague continued until the CSIRO produced plastic containers that dripped a poisonous liquid, which I think contained warfarin. They were like self-feeders for the rats, and the liquid caused anaemia and a slow death. In the beginning the rats even ate the containers, but gradually, as numbers decreased, they just consumed the poison. Finally they had all gone. The plague at Wave Hill was over after two horrible years.

  Joanne lived with us in our house and taught Anthony, then David, with lessons from the Sydney Correspondence School.

  Sometime in 1969, the Hong Kong flu arrived. Joanne and I would do the rounds before school commenced each morning. We checked temperatures and gave out paracetamol and cough medicine. I don’t think anyone went on antibiotics, but they were there if needed. We would visit the men in the jackaroos’ and men’s quarters, then see all the sick Aboriginal workers at the hospital, and finally go back to our house where Ralph was ill.

  Everyone on the station, even some of our visitors, got the flu, except Joanne, the children and me. Joanne and I were so busy we didn’t have time to get sick!

  Our house was in a line with the corrugated-iron post office cottage. There was another cottage—where Ces Farrow and his wife had once lived—set between the two. It had been unoccupied for several months.

  One day we were having lunch in the main dining room when we heard a great commotion from the Aboriginal workers outside. ‘Ralph, fire, quick, dat donga up dere, him go up!’

  We all raced out to see what was happening. It was the middle cottage, and it was in flames. Within ten minutes it had burnt to the ground.

  Everyone scratched their heads. ‘How’d that happen?’

  Some thought my boys, playing with matches, might have started it. The comments didn’t worry Ralph—but a good thing I didn’t hear them.

  45

  Visitors for Vincent

  After the walk-off in 1966, there were only three Aboriginal employees left at Wave Hill, including Brisbane Sambo and Chisel the woodchopper.

  With no Aboriginal stockmen, the cattle work had to be done with white contractors. We needed help at the station and in the stock camps, so Ralph went down to Daguragu, the settlement at Wattie Creek, to see Vincent Lingiari and request some Aboriginal staff. Vincent and Ralph had always been great mates. Another friend of Vincent’s was also visiting that day, Ted Egan.

  Ted sent me this story in an email:

  I was at Daguragu in 1969, having a cup of tea with Vincent Lingiari. A little boy called, ‘Motor car coming!’ Sure enough, a utility arrived. Driving it was Ralph Hayes, manager of Wave Hill Station. The strike was at its peak, and enmities quite strong. I thought, This will be interesting.

  Ralph Hayes and Vincent shook hands cordially and exchanged a few words in the Gurindji language. I knew Ralph and shook hands also, but then retired some distance away, as it was none of my business. It was obvious that on a personal level they got on very well, which was not surprising as they both had worked on the station for many years and obviously had high mutual respect. After about five minutes of ‘How’s your family?’ type discussion, Ralph said, ‘Old man, I’ve got a big problem. I’ve got eight hundred head of cattle on [he named the bore] and the windmill’s busted. If I can’t move the cattle they’re going to perish, but I’ve got no men.’

  Here was the opportunity for Vincent Lingiari to strike a critical blow, but his concern was only for the cattle. He called over to three young fellows: ‘You, you, you, go over to the shed and get saddles and bridles. Go with Ralph to move his cattle.’

  They did so. Ralph Hayes drove off. I said to Vincent, ‘That was interesting.’

  He gave a little smile and said, ‘Yeah, we gotta look after the white fellas in this country.’

  This was in 1969, and a little later one hundred Aboriginal workers—both men and women—were at Wave Hill Station until we left Wave in 1979. This is a little-known fact. They were paid the award wage and were very happy working on the station for Ralph and the Vesteys.

  What a great man Vincent was. He had a lot of time for Tom Fisher—in fact, all the Aboriginal employees did. As for Ralph, he and Vincent had a strong affinity for each other. They’d worked and lived together in the stock camp ever since Ralph first arrived in 1955.

  In 1959 Ralph had a bad fall from his horse in the stock camp, where he and Vincent were working, and lay semiconscious on the ground. Vincent cried over him, ‘My poor boy, my poor boy!’

  46

  Making a showpiece

  Roy Bell, the new general manager, asked me if I’d like to go to Sydney and buy all the furniture for the new Wave Hill Station. Of course I said yes! I was thrilled. I spent all my spare time studying interior design magazines and taking many trips out to the new station to get measurements. Then I flew down to Sydney.

  The Menzies Hotel was fairly new, and that is where I stayed. Every morning the buyer for the Vesteys, Mr Bill Davis, picked me up in a taxi to go shopping. We went to Mark Foy’s, Grace Brothers and David Jones. There seemed no limit to what I could spend, as the company now wanted Wave to be a show piece for the Vesteys in the Territory. I was in my element.

  The ‘in’ colours that season were black and orange. I chose black leather lounges and chairs, two orange-and-tan leather reclining chairs, and a beautiful coffee table of varied turquoise-coloured tiles. I also bought a teak bar and stools with orange leather seats, and a dining-room table with twelve chairs matching the stools. To finish the rooms off, we purchased white curtain material with an Egyptian design down the side, plus a couple of wool rugs. I hoped I might be able to buy several paintings to go with the decor, but that was going a little too far with Lord Vestey’s money, so I bought them myself and still enjoy them.

  Not only did I buy for the homestead, I also had to purchase furniture for the overseer’s and mechanic’s houses, plus the visitors’ quarters.

  After a fortnight I was pleased to get home. I was actually sick of luxury accommodation and gourmet food! But of course, it had been a great experience spending money on quality goods with no hesitation, and it was lovely to catch up with my friends.

  However, on returning home, I was shocked to hear that Joanne was leaving.

  ‘Thea, I’m sorry,’ she told me. ‘I wanted to stay till the end of the term, but now feel I can’t trust myself.’

  Being the only young white woman on the station, Joanne had become very desirable to several of the stockmen. She’d been courted by one in particular, and that was the reason she wanted to leave.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m really sorry too. You’ve been a wonderful help, but if that’s the reason, I thi
nk it’s probably best you go.’

  Joanne went back to her medical studies. I heard she became a well-known anaesthetist in Perth, some years later.

  *

  Ralph needed a trustworthy overseer, so he rang his good friend Tony Clark, who’d been a head stockman at Wave and best man at our wedding. He was working on a property near Goulburn, but accepted the position. We were so pleased when he and his family—his wife, Sue, and daughters, Bronwyn and Sally—arrived just in time for Christmas.

  On Christmas Eve, Don Hoare, a delightful rogue, entertained all of us at a party at his house with his partner, Nita. They put on a very nice meal of roast chicken and vegetables, and I commended them. Next morning there was chaos in our kitchen: the five chickens that had been killed, plucked and put in the fridge the day before were all missing. We knew where they’d gone—eaten last night at Don’s dinner party! He wasn’t even sorry. Thank goodness we had the Vestey ham, which still came routinely.

  Our cook at that time was a well-educated Scottish bloke, John, whose father had given him a one-way ticket to Australia. Although he was a pretty ordinary cook, he was a talented artist. He played the bagpipes and owned a beautiful metre-long English hunting horn, which he sold to me—I have it to this day. He also sold me his painting of a large tree near the creek below the homestead that has my boys’ names carved into the trunk.

  After Sue and Tony Clark arrived, Sue showed interest in the cooking position. Ralph made John the cook for the Aboriginal kitchen, which was situated behind the store and outbuildings. The Aboriginal staff loved his cooking. But John was asked to leave when Ralph discovered that he’d been using the kitchen as a sly grog shop. He’d buy flagons of wine for two dollars and sell them for five. He had to go and I have no idea what happened to him.

  When Ralph replaced John with an Aboriginal cook, the staff bailed up and refused to eat food from one of their own. They had to put up with an Aboriginal cook or go without—they didn’t starve. Later we found a suitable cook.

  The new station was finished at the beginning of 1970. Sue and Tony were the first to move out, into their overseer’s house. Sue took over the cooking in the palatial kitchen. There was a main dining room at one end, then the large kitchen and a huge coolroom, followed by a second dining room for the older white workers, with the cook’s quarters at the other end. Everything was stainless steel. They had a mixmaster, toaster, bain-marie and mincer, all modern.

  It was the wet season when we all moved from the old to the new Wave Hill. In the wet the staff either went on their bi-yearly holidays or stayed at the homestead where there were heaps of jobs to be completed.

  The women supervised their own gardens, often starting with cuttings from their neighbours; these were placed in a bucket of water in a dark spot to shoot. We had an excellent vegetable garden on one side of the house and an orchard on the other. We grew beautiful grapefruit (no sugar needed!), oranges, lemons, grapes and pawpaw. The soil was so rich because our new station was built on the site of an old cattle yard near the bore.

  My ‘garden boy’ was Cudabiddi, a delightful Aboriginal man. He dug the vegetable gardens, I planted the seeds, and he looked after them. He did a wonderful job. The vegetables, grapefruit and oranges were so good that we won many prizes at the Katherine show.

  Cudabiddi also trimmed the hedges around the house: not with an electric trimmer but with a pair of shears. They were always perfectly done, flat on top and flat on the sides.

  I had great plans for a paved smoko area, which I found in the Reader’s Digest Handyman, and for a front fence made of two stone walls with a garden in the middle. For this project I was allotted Cudabiddi and Algie, and David Herslett, a stockman. Forty-two years later, David told me that he pulled out from the job because I was being too particular. But I got the front wall and it looked great!

  Ralph and I, with help from the gardeners, planted an avenue of poinciana and tulip trees from the entrance of the driveway, down past the cottages to the homestead. Tulip trees are quite large, and native to the United States; their flowers are pale green or yellow and have an orange band at the base. Poinciana grow from five to twelve metres and have a flamboyant display of red flowers. In the house gardens Ralph and I planted several varieties of shrub. Both trees and shrubs were brought all the way from Bundaberg, Queensland.

  The Vesteys wanted a show piece and, within a few years, that’s what Wave became. You would drive down the gorgeous avenue of trees to a circular driveway in front of the homestead. Here you could see the lush orchard on the right, and the smoko and barbecue area in front of the dining room.

  Within two years all the trees were three metres tall, and red and yellow blooms added to the harmony of the new Wave Hill.

  47

  Great additions to the station

  In Katherine, Sabu married the new Wave Hill nursing sister, Dorothy Dwyer, whom I’d gone to school with in Wollongong. He officially changed his name to Peter David Singh at Dorothy’s request, which was very difficult for us to remember as we’d always known him as Sabu. The three Hayes boys were the best man and groomsmen, and Madeline, Patsy and I were the bridesmaids. It was a lovely wedding in the old corrugated Catholic church in Katherine.

  Sabu came back to Wave in 1971 as contract musterer and Dorothy did the nursing. Their caravan was parked near the domestic quarters, just opposite the clinic. We three couples—Tony and Sue, Sabu and Dorothy, Ralph and I—had a great social life together: hosting dinner parties, playing records, and dancing to Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. Dot made delicious Indian curries and we enjoyed many of them sitting out in their marquee beside the caravan.

  *

  We were pleased to hear in 1972 that Lord Vestey, his cousin Edmund and Edmund’s father-in-law were coming for a visit to see the new station. Since my job interview with Mr Alan Perry in 1960, I’d learnt a lot more about the wealthy, aristocratic Vestey family.

  Before World War I, the Labor government was looking for a large company interested in producing beef, and willing to take up large tracts of land in the Territory and Kimberley on long leases for minimal rents. The Vesteys accepted and ended up with an area larger than Tasmania.

  In 1939, Captain William Howarth Vestey, son of Lord Vestey, Third Lord Baron, married Dame Nellie Melba’s granddaughter, Pamela Armstrong. They’d met a few years before in Australia. It was a love match between the granddaughter of the Empire’s greatest voice and the grandson of the Empire’s greatest fortune. Pamela bore William two sons: Sam in 1941 and Mark in 1943. William was killed in action in 1944. At the age of thirteen, on the death of his grandfather, Sam succeeded as Third Lord Baron.

  We found the Vesteys a good company to work for, and very easy to get on with. Sam was a charming, handsome gentleman. He was thrilled with the new station complex, so I suggested the only thing missing was a swimming pool. ‘You are so right, Thea,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure we can do something about that. Ralph, haven’t we got a spare water tank?’ Foiled again, I thought.

  But we got our swimming pool in the form of a 40,000-litre corrugated water tank. Thank you, Lord! The whole staff helped in preparing the enormous hole in the ground, lowering the tank into it, sealing, painting, and even building a shade area with seating beside it. Construction took weeks, with the work done mostly on the weekends. And, of course, a pool party followed.

  We added chlorine each day and emptied the water out by pump once a month or so, and everyone joined in to clean the pool. Well, not everyone—someone had to hand out the beer. Matt, the mechanic, took on that job.

  Sam Vestey only stayed a couple of days. We didn’t talk about the walk-off. It was up to him to bring the subject up, and he didn’t with me. He might have with Ralph, but we were just employees.

  An addition to our new station came from Brisbane.

  Milton’s telegram read:

  I’m taking the truck to Brisbane. Anything I can bring back for you?

  ‘Ralph, here
’s your chance to buy a pianola,’ I said. ‘Cudge will find one for you.’ Ralph had often talked about Grandma Fraser and the wonderful evenings the family had spent singing around the pianola.

  Cudge bought a Beale pianola with one hundred rolls thrown in, and Milton brought it back on the truck. Unfortunately, on the day he arrived at the turn-off to Wave Hill from the Buchanan Highway, we’d had a couple of inches of rain. The dirt road from the highway was slippery and muddy, and halfway in was Five Mile Creek. It was also still raining.

  Ralph mustered up everyone he could find to go out to help. They went in four-wheel drives plus the tractor. The pianola was a very beautiful, highly polished timber machine that had to be manoeuvred with kid gloves. How, without causing any damage, they lifted it from the truck to the four-wheel drive, then carried it on the hazardous trip into the station, I will never know.

  There was a rush to the homestead; all the girls came up from the camp when word got around. Everyone wanted to see this wondrous thing that Ralph had bought. We had the perfect place for the pianola, just inside the double doors of the lounge room. Everyone tried to squeeze in. Ralph chose a roll, inserted it, sat on the highly polished stool and started to pedal. You should have seen the looks of amazement on the faces of not only the Aboriginal but also the white staff. Peals of laughter followed when Ralph and those close enough to read the words on the roll started singing ‘Oh Danny Boy’.