An Outback Nurse Read online

  At the time very fire-conscious, Frank jumped up to put it out with his hat. There were cries from the crowd, ‘Sit down, you stupid bastard!’

  It tasted fabulous. It amazed me that anyone would even think of creating something so exotic in such unbearable heat.

  The next day we all played cricket on the flat outside the police station: Team Cattle Station versus Team Police Station & Settlement. We had a very enjoyable and happy day, with young kid goats running through the cricketers.

  During the wet season when the stock camps were closed down, everyone was employed doing maintenance in and around the station. I had a chance to really get to know the men and hear their stories about Wave Hill and its characters. Here’s one story Tony Clark told me, which happened before I arrived.

  Peter Morris had been over to France to purchase a Percheron stallion to increase the size of his wagonette and bronco horses. He’d also bought, in Australia, two thoroughbred colts—one by Wayside Inn and the other by Newtown Wonder, two very well-known thoroughbred stallions. His three new horses arrived at Wave Hill together.

  Mr Morris was flying around the Territory and intended to call in to look at his horses, so that morning Tom Fisher sent Jim Tough and Tony Clark down to repair and paint the stables, where Treve, the jet-black Percheron, was housed.

  Jim was painting the stables and yards white. (The company only ever provided two lots of paint, white or red!) Treve was in the yard where Jim was working, and the stallion kept poking his big head in the path of Jim’s brush, until Jim accidently painted a white stripe down Treve’s forehead.

  Tom picked Mr Morris up from the airfield and brought him down to the stables. By this time Treve was over in the corner of the yard. The stallion wandered towards the two men, who were talking to each another, when suddenly Mr Morris turned around, looked at Treve, and then went right off.

  ‘I’ve been had! I didn’t buy a baldy horse,’ he exclaimed. Baldy horses have thick white stripes down their foreheads.

  Tom walked off in disgust as Jim tried to explain to Mr Morris exactly what had happened to Treve.

  Just then, around the corner came Lynn and Sabu, riding flat out on the two precious, expensive new thoroughbred colts, almost knocking Tom and Mr Morris over. Tom said to his boss, ‘I try to keep these boys out in the stock camp. That way they only get into half as much trouble.’

  17

  The engagement party

  It was February and Ralph was still at Limbunya. Heavy rain had been falling off and on since November. Every time Ralph attempted to come back to Wave for our engagement party, the Victoria River or Gills Creek would be the deterrent.

  One morning at breakfast, Tom Fisher suddenly announced, ‘I think this weekend we’ll all head over to Limbunya for the engagement party.’

  Great excitement! The whole station started preparing. Graham Johnson, the droving overseer, had gone on holidays and very conveniently left his truck at Wave Hill. The following day we all piled into or onto the truck and Land Rover. On the way we picked up Molly and Basil, together with Jill and Ian Booth.

  Limbunya Station was mostly open downs country, lightly timbered, and we passed a huge crater on the way. The buildings were new, shiny corrugated iron on short stilts, with big verandahs and surrounded by lawns and newly planted Poinciana trees.

  When we reunited, Ralph and I felt embarrassed with everyone looking on. I was also aware that Heather Russell and Betty Crabbe, the two bookkeepers at Limbunya, had been getting on extremely well with Ralph: I think I was a bit jealous. However, everyone had come for an engagement party, including me, and that’s what we were going to have.

  Self-consciously, Ralph presented me with a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring, which we’d selected together from the catalogue of an Adelaide jeweller.

  Formalities over, the two of us were able to relax and enjoy ourselves in the supportive company of our friends. It was a thoroughly fun party.

  The next day the boys got into hijinks on the lawn. Trying to outdo one another, they engaged in feats of strength, somersaults, press-ups and arm-wrestling, all of which amazed and amused me.

  Then the time came for us to head back and, sadly, Ralph and I were again parted. I had to leave him in the company of those two lovely girls!

  Congratulatory telegrams from friends and family in Wollongong, Vancouver and Sydney were waiting for me on my arrival at Wave.

  It was exciting—but I longed for my fiancé’s return.

  18

  The horse muster

  Late in February Tom Fisher asked me if I’d like to come on the horse muster. I said yes—but I didn’t know what I was in for! I hadn’t been on a horse since I’d fallen off Codeine in Lynn’s camp. Grabbing a blanket and pillow and a change of clothes, plus the old toothbrush, I joined Tom and we drove out to the Ferguson Paddock near Mount Possum, south of the station.

  All four camps were ready and waiting. Tom’s horse and mine—Codeine!—were being saddled up. I walked up to Codeine, rubbed her nose gently and, as I stroked her neck, whispered, ‘Please behave, Codeine . . . please, like a good girl.’

  I desperately wanted to learn how to ride, and I didn’t want to be a nuisance, asking for advice all the time. So up I got and we were off. I rode with Gunna and Colin. After two hours that felt like twenty, my bum had become very tender from bouncing up and down in the saddle.

  Then I saw Lynn galloping towards me. ‘Put the weight on your bloody feet,’ he called, ‘not on your arse!’ And he was gone.

  What a difference it made. With my weight on my feet, I could even stand up in the stirrups. We were mustering through these huge horse paddocks, very rough in parts with rugged hills interspersed with stony creeks, masses of water to cross, and thick scrub.

  All the stock camp staff were required there that day to ensure a successful muster. We found dozens of horses and they seemed to know the right thing to do as we pushed them on. I was feeling quite exhausted and couldn’t wait for the lunchbreak. How I was going to ride all afternoon, I didn’t know.

  I’ve never been so pleased to see the end of a day. When we arrived back at our camp, I was feeling like death. Sitting around the campfire, eating stew and damper and drinking billy tea made us all feel much better.

  As beautiful as it was to sit under a stunningly starlit sky, chatting by the glow of the campfire, we all soon retired, exhausted. My bed was just a patch of dirt about twenty metres from the fire. I tried lying on my side, then on my back. I got up and dug a hole for my hip. I literally tossed and turned all night—was I glad to see the dawn! An early cup of billy tea was the rejuvenator to get us all going again.

  The horses were brought back to the station yard where Tom Fisher drafted the ‘horse plants’: five horses to a man, plus five to be used exclusively for night watch of the cattle. This meant that they were tied to a tree at night with their saddles and bridles on in case of an emergency such as a cattle rush, when the beasts get a fright and literally stampede, taking everything in their path.

  At the mustering, the mares, foals, geldings and pensioners all went through the round yard to determine their status and then were sorted out. Foals were weaned and branded, and castrated if appropriate. Mares were allocated to a particular stallion’s paddock. Pensioners were put together in their own paddock to end their days in retirement after years of hard work.

  Each stock camp took its horses for the season. One by one, the animals were ridden in the round yard to see how well they bucked. The really dynamic buckjump horses were kept for the upcoming annual rodeo at the Negri Races. The young colts were ridden every day and sometimes tied to the mules and led around against their will; this helped to quieten them. The quieter horses went to the young horse tailors or the older men, while the rough horses ended up being stock horses or were used to pull the stock-camp buggy.

  The next job was to shoe every horse, and this took a few days. A three-quarter circular steel plate was nailed to the ou
ter shell of the hoof to protect it from rough stony ground.

  Before going from the yard out to the stock camps, the pack mules and horses had to be tied up and loaded with food rations, coarse salt for the corn beef, a bag of sugar, camp ovens, billy cans, an anvil, spare horse shoes, and swags of clothes and toiletry items. Usually there was one pack animal per person in the camp.

  Each camp had its own buggy drawn by horses or mules to carry everything else the staff needed. There would be four to six mules or horses harnessed into the shafts of the buggy. On board lay a great heap of gear—swags, utensils, saddlery—and bags of potatoes, onions and salted meat. And sitting on top there’d be a favourite cattle dog, the cook and some of the horse tailors.

  Once the stockmen were ready on their horses, off they went to their respective camps.

  19

  The drover

  Ralph finally returned to Wave Hill in April. It was wonderful to have him back and be able to talk about our future together. While he’d been away I’d started to have some doubts. Were we really made for each other? He was gone for three months, longer than the time I had known him. But when he came back, I knew I loved him and it was all meant to be.

  Not long after, the drover Mick Coombes, with four Aboriginal stockmen, came to Wave Hill to take three hundred head of bullocks. Mick and his men would be bringing them across the Murranji Track and down to Helen Springs Station. Here they’d be fattened before moving on to Queensland. The Murranji Track, sometimes called ‘the ghost road of the drovers’, was a travelling stock route or authorised thoroughfare for the walking of livestock from one location to another. It was pioneered by Nat Buchanan in 1881, as was the Barkly Stock Route.

  The night before Mick and his team were due to leave, we all went out to Schules Yard, eight kilometres away, to watch the cattle through the night, before handing them over to the drover the following day. This was to get the beasts in practice for staying together and to help prevent a rush.

  In pairs, we took turns walking our horses around the mob of cattle. I went with Ralph, of course, riding Codeine who behaved herself. It was imperative to keep the mob quiet, no disruptions, so we sang quietly as we worked.

  Only Tony refused to sing: ‘I’ve got a lousy voice.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ everyone agreed.

  So he recited one of Will Ogilvie’s poems from Saddle for a Throne instead.

  The atmosphere of the stock camp captured the true heart of the Territory for me. In the camp, on a beautiful moonlit night, there was the gentle lowing of the cattle, the jangle of the Condamine bells around the necks of the mules, the Aboriginal stockmen chanting in their native tongue, and dear old Codeine plodding along in time to their rhythm. Around the flickering campfire, the boys would be telling stories.

  Ralph told an incredible collection of hilarious outback tales involving people, animals and birds. We had to control our laughter in case we caused a stampede.

  The next day the drover and his men left with the herd, and we wished them luck. They needed it: there was one vital water source on the Murranji Track. If the droving team found that it was dry, they had a 177-kilometre trek to reach water. That was why their stock route was considered the worst of all.

  This would have been one of the last droving trips from Wave Hill, as road trains took over in 1965.

  20

  Wedding at Limbunya

  Rod Russell, one of our stockmen, was transferred to Limbunya just before Ralph’s return. Rod became quite smitten by Heather the bookkeeper. Not long after this bit of gossip reached us there came word of their engagement. Then Ralph and I had a letter asking if we would be bridesmaid and best man.

  The Australian Inland Mission padre, Stuart Lang, married Heather and Rod. Ray and Pat Jansen, the managers of Limbunya, hosted the wedding. Quite a few of the boys from Wave came over with us, together with Molly and Basil, our friends from the police station, and old Clarrie Wilkinson.

  Clarrie was a retired Vestey manager. He’d worked on most of the properties in the Territory and the Kimberley since 1914. He was eighty years of age when I met him, and Vestey allowed him to stay on any station he chose for as long as he liked. He was a mine of knowledge about the region and the company properties. Around the Ord River in one year he’d supposedly shot fourteen thousand brumbies and feral donkeys. He told great stories about the old days.

  One of the stations he’d managed was Sturt Creek, ninety kilometres south-west of Wave. Clarrie told us about the homestead being made of stone with six- by six-inch holes in the walls at shoulder height: enough space to allow a gun to be fired out, but not enough for a spear to be thrown inside.

  The wedding at Limbunya was a very happy affair—a beautiful bride, a touching service—and at the end Clarrie announced in a loud voice, ‘She’s got the hobbles on him now!’

  Ralph and I were very impressed by Heather and Rod’s sensible decision to get married on the station without all the hoo-ha of a wedding down south, which we’d have had to organise from the Territory. The couple then spent their honeymoon at the Negri Races in Western Australia.

  Back at Wave Hill there was no more time to think about weddings—the races were nearly upon us! We were expecting important visitors. John, Lord Vestey’s cousin, had been a jackaroo under Tom Fisher at Wave Hill, and he was coming over to introduce his Australian-born wife, Gay.

  I was quite horrified at the proposed accommodation in the visitors’ quarters for our VIPs. Most of the rooms were like dormitories, with steel beds lined up along the walls. There was only one that was at all suitable, and it had walls of flywire gauze! I decided to curtain these walls with material out of the store. Not a great choice was available: head cloth or floral seersucker. Luckily the latter looked pretty against three of the walls.

  Unlike everyone else, Tom wasn’t so keen on the Negri Races. A couple of years earlier, as starter of the horses, he’d been insulted by Tommie Swan, an old employer of the Vestey stations, who’d said, ‘Tom, you couldn’t start a mob of chooks off a roost.’ Since then he’d refused to go back and wouldn’t allow any of his staff to attend either, until that year.

  Before arriving, John had let Tom know that he’d love to go to the famous races, as he had never been before, so Tom gave in and lifted his ban. Most of the staff took off for the Negri the day before John and Gay landed, leaving Ralph, Tom and I to host that morning. Ralph and I were soon allowed to take our leave, while Tom promised our guests that he’d bring them over the following day.

  21

  My first Negri

  I’d heard so much about previous Negri Races that I was curious and excited to find out for myself how they worked. The Negri was one of the best picnic race meetings in the north, with horses put into training months beforehand. They were grass-fed: no grain was to be given to them. However, a few trainers didn’t follow the rules and this upset the honest ones.

  Each station had its own race camp. My first year, Wave Hill’s camp was one big bough shed with a tarpaulin roof to accommodate about fifteen people, divided into small rooms with walls of branches. Some weeks before, one or two of the stock camps had been sent over to set everything up. The stockmen had cleared our campsite of long grass, put spinifex and branches around the walls of the bough shed, and collected firewood. Every year improvements were made to the facilities. In later years we had hessian for walls instead of branches. The camps became bigger, with large dining-room, kitchen and barbecue areas, and separate bough sheds for married couples, single women and single men.

  In 1961, the racecourse was around twenty kilometres from another Vestey property, Ord River Station, near the Linacre River: 240 kilometres from Wave Hill. Earlier the races had been held near the Negri River, hence the name. These sites are in the same area as the Bungle Bungles, where the spectacular eroded remains of a mountain range now attracts thousands of tourists every year.

  I was the only woman in the Wave race camp that first year, and my room
was next to old Clarrie Wilkinson’s. Every morning he’d awaken us with, ‘Who’s for a nip of rum?’ That was the start of his day, each day at the races.

  On the first evening of the week-long race meeting, Ralph and I went up to the bar area where a refrigerated truck loaded with alcohol had just arrived from Wyndham. All the men were there, but Ralph bypassed them to take me over to where the women were chatting. We were warmly welcomed by these lovely ladies, most of whom were managers’ wives: Robin Hill, Mary Jones, Mrs McLachlan, Pat Jansen, Dawn Watts, Peg Underwood from Inverway, and others I can’t recall. I was introduced to them all. Then Ralph said, ‘I’ll see you later!’

  ‘You’re not going to leave me here,’ I said. ‘I want to go to the bar with you and have a drink.’

  He was horrified. ‘You have to stay with the women. You can’t come drinking with the men!’ He started to walk away. Just then Graham Fulcher, who worked on Ord River Station, came along with his fiancée, Robyn Kirk, also from Sydney. Robyn felt the same as me. We didn’t want to be anti-social towards the women, but we did want to enjoy the company of our menfolk on that first evening.

  We started a new trend: Women can drink at the bar with the men!

  Tom brought John and Gay Vestey over to the races the following day, but they stayed at Ord River Station. During the course of John’s visit, the boys pinched his rather pucker velour Akubra, and each station’s custom-designed branding earmark was clipped into its brim. The hat looked a masterpiece. Unfortunately the boys got nervous about the possible consequences, so they threw the hat in the campfire. John was so disappointed when he found out, as it would have been a great memento of his trip to all the Vestey stations.