Читать книгу The Drover's Daughter - Patsy Kemp - Страница 9

DIRRANBANDI 1956

Traditional land of the Kooma people

Dad was offered a job at Dirranbandi to manage a station for a month while the manager, Jack Smythe, went on a well-deserved holiday. The property was owned by the Australian Pastoral Company (APC), one of the biggest landowners in Queensland at that time. Dad had a lot of work through the APC over the next few years.

This station was full of lignum, a plant native to Australia. The homestead was totally surrounded by it. Mr Smythe gave Dad a mud map of the station and a quick look around including which cows to milk and a list of jobs to do. Dad and Col were out every day doing the work while we had the pleasure of living a life of luxury. We even had a toilet, rather than having to go behind a tree or bush. Unfortunately, the toilet was the old “long drop”, meaning the hole was about 6 feet deep and the toilet seat was a thick plank of wood with a hole cut in it. It was one size fits all and was not meant for small bums. When we little ones sat, we would end up with our bums dangling down into the hole. It was huge to a five-year-old and I hated it with a vengeance and eventually refused to go in there. I had nightmares over this toilet for years and I wet the bed many a time dreaming I was falling into that great gaping hole. To compound the problem, the toilet was full of spiders, they were also in the great gaping hole under the toilet seat.

The station had a public road going through it and instead of having gates or grids at the fences, a dog was tied to each side of the road. They would run out barking at the stock to stop any that tried to come through. While there, two of the dogs were mauled to death by wild pigs that obviously wanted to go through the gate and did not appreciate the dogs’ efforts trying to stop them. This also gave me nightmares for years as I heard the full graphic story when Col came back and described how the dogs had been eaten by the pigs. I was a sooky sensitive child, and the smallest thing would set me off crying and sucking my thumb.

Dad found milking the cows difficult as some did not take kindly to being milked by a stranger. He had to practically tie them up when he milked them and when Mr Smythe and his family came back, they found that Dad had inadvertently broken in several new milking cows. Dad had milked all the cows that had hung around the shed as he had forgotten which cows were supposed to be milked and which weren’t. The non-broken in cows would have put up a real fuss at the indignity of being milked. No doubt kicking out their back feet and trying to butt Dad away.

While in Dirranbandi we did many trips in other towns. At some stage Dad met up with a couple in Dirranbandi he got on really well with. Tom and Merle Crumblin had several kids and we were all around the same age. Tom was the rubbish man, wood carter and the night cart man. He had a tip-up truck and went from house to house picking up their rubbish and dumping it into the back of the open truck. We loved to pick over the rubbish if we happened to be at their place when he came home for a meal but he was not so popular on the night cart days. Phew the pong!

The night cart job was to go door to door. At the back of the toilet was a door that was big enough to pull the full can out and push the new empty one back inside. Tom would have a potato bag slung over his shoulder and he would hoist the full can onto his covered shoulder and carry it back to his truck. If the can did not have a lid on it or was a bit full, it would slop over onto Tom’s head and shoulders, though Tom always wore a hat. This smell would permeate everything and when home on these days, Tom was only allowed on the veranda, not inside the house. As a side note, if the cans were full before the night cart man was due to come back, then the house holder would dig a hole in his back yard to bury the muck and this made good ground for growing vegetables later on. Tom said often someone would be sitting on the toilet and he would greet them with a, ‘Good mornin darlin,’ if a woman or ‘How ya going mate?’ if a man. If he did not know the sex of the occupant, he would say a cheery ‘Good mornin.’ In a town the size of Dirranbandi, everyone knew each other and quite possibly, someone knew their bowel habits too.

There was no toilet paper in those days for the “poor folk” so they would cut up newspapers and magazines into four inch squares and place a corner of it onto a twirl of wire that hung on the back of the toilet door within easy reach or on the side wall of the “dunny” as it was called in the bush. A luxury we never had was to gather the soft tissue paper wrapped around apples and pears and use that. Quite often a vine of some sort would grow over these small buildings and it would become a haven for snakes, frogs and any living creature that fancied a warm or cool spot, depending on the weather. Most of the time the dunny door was kept closed, if not any animal could go inside. Often as you entered you would be greeted by some creature wishing to get out! If it was in the dark of night it was very frightening for kids and women. There was rarely any privacy going to and from the outside dunnies and neighbours would have a natter with you while you were trying to have a quiet pee.

Tom had a large council paddock on the Noondoo Road where he buried the sewage waste. The day before collection he would dig large holes in this paddock, much like a corner post size and the sewage cans were tipped into these, then filled in with dirt. One day Tom decided to bring his boys and the Kemp boys to help. With the truck filled with cans, the boys sat on top of it and yelled, cooeed and yahooed all the way as Tom drove out to the paddock. The first thing Tom said to the younger boys was, ‘Don’t run around, you will fall over and get hurt.’ Tom carried a can and tipped it into a hole. Col and John carried cans between them. Les never listened to anyone and ran around the paddock, jumping over filled and empty holes in the ground. He tripped over a pile of dirt and splat, went head first into a newly filled sewage pit. He let out a scream, stood up and shook himself like a dog, with brown slime and pieces of paper dripping off him. Tom glared at him. ‘I bloody well told you not to run around. Now see what you’ve done.’ He went to the truck and retrieved a potato bag, wrapped it around Les and sat him down near a truck wheel, refusing to pander to him by not taking him home immediately. Mum was not amused when he arrived home in that state.

At that time Lonnie Donegon’s song, My Old Man’s a Dustman, was popular on the radio and we all knew the song off by heart and when driving into town to visit with the Crumblins we lustily sang it. I am sure we could be heard leaving the campsite about two miles out of town. We had a transistor radio at that time that we called a “wireless” and it could only be used on very rare occasions. Dad listened to the news occasionally, any boxing matches that were being broadcast and the Melbourne Cup. If he was not around and we could get reception, Mum would sometimes let us listen in.

When it was rubbish collection day and Tom came home for dinner before dropping the full load off at the tip, we would jump up on the top and have a good rummage. This scared Mum silly as she was frightened we would fall off and hurt ourselves. The younger ones were banned from getting on the truck, but I am happy to say that no one ever fell off in our foraging.

While John, Arthur and Les were rummaging around one day, John found a big doll fully dressed. She had a lovely printed pink frock, a waist band, real hair and a pair of little shoes. John dusted it off and threw it down to me. What a treat! He had a sister not much younger than I was, but of course she was at school. Mum was never too impressed with our rummaging as she was afraid of diseases but we loved it and lots of good stuff was found.

I loved John Crumblin and wanted to marry him when I was older. I always wondered why the doll had been thrown away like that, as it seemed brand new. Sad to say the doll went like the rest of our toys, lost, worn out or just plain forgotten and left behind at a campsite. Often one of the older brothers would tease us younger ones by holding our prized possessions out of reach for us to try and grab or they would pull the toy apart for a “tease”, so we never had anything precious for long. We two youngest ones were small and the older boys, when we tried to attack them in revenge, would just put their hands on our heads and hold us at arm’s length so we could not reach them. I would get so wild I would cry, then go to a quiet corner and suck my thumb.

Tom and Merle’s house was on the Balonne River bank and they offered us the use of their yard to camp in, which Dad accepted a couple of times. At this particular time, the river was in flood and John, Arthur and Col insisted on swimming in it. Merle got into a ripe old temper. She screamed out, ‘If you get yourself drowned, don’t come crying to me.’

We thought this was hilarious and crowed about it for years. I remember her turning to Mum one day when she was very annoyed with her brood and saying, ‘You got one boy, you got a boy; you got two boys, you got half a boy; you got three boys, you got no boys.’ That puzzled me for years but eventually I understood the truth of it.

One day Tom upset Merle dreadfully. In front of us all, she stood on the front veranda and threw 20 pounds of potatoes at him – one at a time. She did not hit him once. We all thought it very, very funny, which enraged her even more. Another time we were there for dinner and Merle made a pot of tea. Tom took a mouthful of it and spat it out as it scalded his mouth. He complained, ‘What did you do Merle, boil this water?’

We kids were taught to tell the truth but we learnt that telling the truth to an adult was not always a good thing. Merle made a cake and it was a bit doughy, but as we rarely had cake, we all ate with great gusto. When he’d finished eating, little Mike said, ‘Thanks for the cake, Mrs Crumblin. The tea was nice but the cake was a bit soggy.’ That got him a slap from Dad for bad manners.

Another time Merle gave her younger son Tommy, a hiding with bamboo and he got a big splinter in his hand as a result. Dad tried to take it out but it would not move. So Dad volunteered to take him to the hospital to get it removed and before they left Merle said to Tommy, ‘If you tell them I flogged you with bamboo, I’ll kill you when you get home.’ At the hospital, the first thing Tommy said was, ‘She flogged me with bamboo.’

Tommy always wanted to please and Dad was a real scrounge who took anything offered to him that might come in useful. One day Tommy found a washer that he thought Dad would like and offered it to Dad, saying, ‘Mr Tent, do you want a squasher?’ Washers became “squashers” for many years after that in our family and Kemp quickly became “Tent”. Being little blighters we would call Dad Mr Tent to get a reaction, which was mostly a light kick up the bum or clip over the head.

John Crumblin whipped up a homemade canoe and we all got in it. He placed a drum each side of the canoe and held it together with a rail about two inches thick to balance it. Getting into the canoe was an art in itself. John and Col were at each end and the rest of us very gingerly stepped in. As it was a tight fit, the older ones sat with their bums on the edge and their feet in the canoe and we smaller ones sat in the middle. Mum saw us out in the full flowing river, the canoe wobbling madly, and she called us in. So with great disappointment and trepidation we paddled back to the bank. We all received a good hiding for doing that as half the Kemp kids still could not swim at that stage. Merle locked her kids in the chook pen to punish them. We all considered Mum a real “spoil sport” and that we were allowed no fun.

In the Crumblin’s large yard they had an old empty tank on a high stand and we enjoyed climbing into it to play. It would shake and rattle and it’s a miracle that it didn’t ever topple over and kill us. The yard backed out onto open spaces and kangaroos often came in and when they did the boys would run like mad to try and catch them. One day Les caught one by the tail and he flew one way and the roo went the other way… who got the biggest fright is debatable.

We often camped on the reserve some two miles out of town. Mum much preferred living there as it gave us more freedom and Dad and Mum more privacy. Mum was a screamer and she had the liberty to shout at us kids to her heart’s content.

The Culgoa Common was a camping spot for drovers and swaggies. It was a good place to camp as there was shade, water and grass for the horses and we did not have to worry about the dogs barking and being a nuisance to anyone in the township. Nearby was a farming family called Dean, we could shout across the river to them and they would come over and play with us. When the river was low in water and there was a tree that had fallen over we could walk across for a visit. As Mum kept a tight rein on us, the Deans had to do most of the visiting to “our” side of the river. They were very friendly and any drovers who camped in this common got a visit from the Deans. The two Dean children still living at home, Leithy and Leroy used to ride their bikes to school in Dirranbandi. When we had stock, our camp was right near their gate and it was great to meet these kids and have a chat before they biked to their house up the road a bit. They were in the older kids’ age group, but we all enjoyed their company. We looked forward to camps like this as we met so few kids our age group. The family had two Alsatian dogs Pedro and Kim and a horse called Tony that Leithy rode. When the Dean family heard we were fairly close on a trip with stock they would travel out on the stock route for a visit and the adults would play cards into the night and we kids would play games in the dark.

Their Dairy was called Riverside and it was a couple of miles out of Dirranbandi on the Bollon side of town. Mrs Dean carried the milk into Dirranbandi every day with a horse and cart and after a while they bought a secondhand ambulance that their daughter Mackie drove for them. Neither Mr nor Mrs Dean could drive.

Mackie was thirteen and worked for the Pippos who owned the local Café Deluxe in town. Our parents would often go into the café and Mackie would serve them their mixed grill. We would be out in the back of the truck and after they finished their meal they would buy a large serving of hot chips, which was wrapped in used newspaper, for our meal and the drive back to the camp. Col would get his share. He never seemed to mind being left behind to mind the camp but then he didn’t really have a choice. At this stage he would have only been about ten years old.

In the earlier years, Mackie, Leithy and Leroy would ride their horses to and from school. The local Aboriginal children who lived near the Deans on the opposite side of the river had to walk to and from school, having no other mode of transport. After school was over there was a wild rush to get to the horses. Whoever got to them first, got to ride them home. When the Aboriginal children rode them, they would gallop up near the bridge, tie the horses to a tree and walk the rest of the way home. The Deans would walk to where their horses were tied and ride the rest of the way home.

Many years after this incident I met up with Leroy and he told me fondly, ‘The little black bastards would pull us off our horses and gallop home to their humpies, if we were lucky, they would not bash us up.’

No grudges were ever held, he who ran the fastest got the horse. Eventually, the teachers got cunning and would let those riding home leave school early, cutting out the wild dash to the horse paddock.

Being on the Culgoa Reserve we could paddle in the water and Col, Les and Emmie learnt to swim there. The Culgoa River was a muddy water hole most of the time and was full of leeches. One day Dad and Mum went shopping in Dirranbandi with all the kids except Col, who was always left at the campsite to mind it, in case someone came along to steal things. We called in at the Crumblins for a visit and Merle asked us all to stay for dinner. Mum said no we could not stay as Col was waiting for dinner out at the camp. So Merle told John to race out and get him and John did that and they both then jogged the two miles back into town. It proves how healthy they were. John had one of his big toes missing, he had accidentally cut it off while chopping wood for the family stove at a young age. The whole family wore thongs and he adapted by having his second toe in the thong between his second and third toes.

We all loved lying in the truck on our parents’ double bed. This was the prime viewing spot and we fought over it all the time. We did not believe in dibs. First one in got the spot and quite often us little ones had to share with the bigger ones until we got bored and moved on to playing a game of some sort. If we had an old pack of cards we would play cards or “I spy” or make up silly jokes.

We were camped at our usual spot on the Culgoa Common and we had to go to a job for the APC. Before we left any camp we always cleaned it up – our mess and other people’s, in case anyone thought we had left it behind. This particular time, I was in the back of the truck and I had to get down onto the ground. Instead of stepping down onto the empty kero drum that was used as our step, I tried to jump over and past the drum. As I jumped, my long dress got caught on something in the truck and I fell face first onto the drum edge, knocking out all my front teeth. Mum quickly grabbed a clean tea towel and placed it over my mouth to help stem the flow of blood. With the truck all packed up they drove me to hospital where I had several stitches to my gums, bottom lip and down my chin. I clearly remember looking over Dad’s shoulder as the doctor and a kindly nurse fussed over me and quietly assessed and reassured me that I would be all right. I spent several days in hospital while the stitches healed.

My parents and siblings went off on the droving trip but not before visiting their friends Keith and Agnes Brummel. One of the family visited me on a daily basis, bearing gifts of some sort and I soon had a collection of pyjamas, singlets and panties. How spoilt I felt, and how grateful. After I was let out of hospital I went and stayed with Mr and Mrs Brummel and their family: Don, Lynette and Shirley in Dirranbandi.

Mr Brummell was a returned soldier from the Second World War and he was bed ridden most of the time. His legs were partly paralysed and he was dreadfully white, painfully thin and of course had other problems as well. Their children were quite a bit older than I was. They had a large vegetable garden out the back and chooks and dogs and a fluffy white cat I could play with. I stayed with the Brummels for several weeks. The worry was I would break open the stitches and living in dirt as we did would not bode well for me. With the flies, horse and sheep poo, heaps of dust, not to speak of dogs being more than happy to jump up and give you a lick or three as a greeting, it was safer for me to stay where I was with the Brummels. I quickly learnt it was a nice way to live!

I had my own bed, three nice meals a day and if there was pumpkin on the plate I was not forced to eat it like Mum made me do. I was treated how I thought royalty would be treated and they were a very kind and loving family. They loved paddy melon jam and on Mr Brummel’s good days someone would carry him out to their car and with his wife and me, we would go tripping down the road looking for paddy melons. Mrs Brummel would take a picnic for us. Although I was excited to get back with my family, I was a spoilt brat by the time I returned to the bush. I missed the luxury and the spoiling of the Brummels, but that was quickly knocked out of me.

The Brummel’s son Don went on a couple of droving trips with us and one day Dad bought a horse in Dirranbandi and it had to be taken some miles out to the camp. The distance was too far to lead the horse with the reins out the side window of the truck, so Dad asked Don to help him load the horse into the back of the truck. Dad backed the truck into a deep table drain so the horse did not have far to jump. Then Dad hopped into the back of the truck, holding the reins in his hands, and tried to pull the horse in. Don was supposed to gee him up from behind, and this was not too successful so they swapped places. Don was in the back of the truck and Dad was outside with a rope around the horse’s backside and heaving on it, the horse was shying back and trying to escape and rearing a little. Don could not quite get the knack of how to pull the horse in with brute force so Dad yelled to Emmie, ‘Hit the bastard on the arse.’ She grabbed the loose end of rope and gave the horse a huge whack on the bum. It smartly jumped onto the back of the truck and Don just as smartly jumped up onto my parents’ bed, away from the horse. A great feat of agility for a young lad.

While in this district, we all got “sandy blight” or conjunctivitis as it was really called. It was dreadful and we kept catching it off each other. All that yucky muck in our eyes and when we woke in the morning, we couldn’t see a thing until our eyes were washed out with warm salty water. We got this on and off for a while and eventually grew out of it. Another problem was the flies stung our eyes and we would end up with a bung eye. Flies are a dreadful nuisance and the biting flies did not have to be near you for long before they stung. This was the beginning of the “Great Australian Wave”, trying to stop the pesky bastards from landing on our face. We learnt how to squint and pull faces or to shoo them off before they could sting. If you were carrying a handful of wood or steel pegs for the sheep break, you had no free hands to shoo the flies away. There was no Aerogard in those days.

One time we had a mob of sheep on the road between Dirranbandi and St. George and it was time for fresh meat. Dad was skinning a sheep and the St. George policeman drove past in his car, did a U-turn and came back. As the cop drove his vehicle over the tough black soil and large tussocks of dry grass, Dad quickly slashed the ears of the dead sheep’s head and threw them to Gus our dog who was panting nearby. The ears had the station owner’s branding on them so that made short work of getting rid of the evidence. Dad then cut the brand off the skin and stuck it up the sheep’s backside. Dad rolled the carcass back on top of the wool and casually lit a cigarette, waiting coolly to greet the cop.

When the cop pulled up, Dad had a chat with him and asked, ‘Do you want to wait around? You can have half the sheep.’ He continued to dress the sheep but the skinning knife was a bit blunt and as he walked off to sharpen his knife, the cop asked him what he was doing. Dad told him and the cop said, ‘Here, have my pocket knife.’

Obviously, he had no idea how to skin a sheep. After the sheep was cut in half and then quarters, the cop assured Dad he could cut the chops etc. so Mum found an old sheet that was kept for wrapping the fresh meat in. Dad wrapped it up and said to the cop, ‘It’s a bit hot mate.’

The cop replied, ‘It will be cool by the time I get back to the station.’

This always tickled our fancy as we knew what the double talk meant: “hot” meat was code for stolen.

Sometime after this the policeman had his young daughter with him. We were giving her a ride on one of the ponies and she was highly delighted with this treat. The cop asked Dad if he had any strays and Dad said, ‘Yes, but we will be putting it out of the mob tonight.’ He said this to let the cop know he did not condone stray sheep in his mob.

The cop surprised him by saying, ‘Why do you want to do that?’

Dad promptly caught the offending sheep, tied its four feet up so it could not jump around and plopped it into the boot of the car and away they went. Lamb chops for dinner!

A year or so later, Dad decided that Mum should get her driver’s licence and Dad drove into Dirranbandi and pulled up opposite the police station. The cop looked up from doing his paperwork and said, ‘What can I do for you, Mick?’

‘The Missus wants to get her driver’s licence,’ Dad replied.

‘But she’s been driving for years,’ the cop said.

‘Yes, I know that but she still wants it!’

‘Where is she now?’ the cop asked.

‘Out in the truck,’ said Dad. ‘You had better take her for a test.’

All through this, Mum had been in the truck scared stiff. When she came inside, the policeman stood her up against the wall and took note of her full name, height and age. He then copied this information onto another precious piece of paper and handed it to Mum with a flourish. ‘All legal now, Mrs Kemp,’ he said.

Dad asked the cop what did he owe him and the cop replied, ‘That will cost you a sheep, one of those “hot” bastards.’

These policemen became our best friends and often received some “hot” meat. The “good” stock inspectors also received legs of lamb or whatever was available as they never failed to bring our mail and loaves of bread when they passed by.

Being such a large family, Mum and Dad never went anywhere without a loaf of bread and a tin of fig jam, a tin of cream or possibly a nob of devon to help out with any invitation to a meal. Also, it was not uncommon to be asked to come for dinner and bring your own or a portion to add to the dinner being arranged. If we had a “killer” (a sheep to be killed to be eaten) the meat would be shared. Living on the reserve we had to be careful of killing stock in the area. If a killer was needed, Dad and Col would drive a few miles out of town, send a dog to round up a sheep, and they would kill it on the spot, hide the evidence and bring the carcass back. Dad would sometimes drive out to a property where he had worked and they would sell him a sheep. Dad was very protective of his reputation and although he never appeared bothered to steal a sheep, he didn’t want to get caught doing it. Most stations, whether sheep or cattle, carried their killers in the horse paddock so they were handy to get when necessary. Station killers were always fat lambs or no older than two tooth (two years old). If the station owner denied Dad a killer, he would go back some time later and help himself to one or two and possibly share it with the local cop. Dad was always generous with the “hot” sheep and he never denied any callers fresh meat. He always said, ‘It does not hurt to keep in the bastard’s good books,’ meaning the local constabulary. Some could get really tough on the drovers for various reasons, in particular the young cops. Dad found them a bit too keen regarding the law. The older, longer serving cops were kinder and had empathy with the drover’s and their lot. Most drovers did not push the barrier, being aware how difficult life could be by upsetting the law, and the same applied to the Stock Inspectors.

We were travelling to a job one day and driving through Dirranbandi with the truck loaded up with six horses, kids and the usual gear carried for droving. As Dad drove along a young cop drove straight across the road in front of the truck. With much cursing Dad jammed the brakes on, the horses were stumbling in the back, trying to keep on their feet and Dad managed to stop within an inch of the driver’s door. Dad jumped out the cabin and checked that he did not hit the car and shouted to the cop, ‘What did you do that for, you stupid bastard?’

The young cop said, ‘I wanted to check your brakes.’ He spoke like it was the normal thing to do.

Just as well he was in the police car or Dad would have jobbed him, deservedly so.

Dad loved people and when he went visiting, he would drag Mum and us kids with him, except for Col being the minder of the camp. Taking us on the trip made it easier to keep an eye on us as we were mostly kept in the back of the truck and our beds were there so we were set if we went to sleep. One time we were quite a distance out of town and Dad decided he would go and visit Mr Brummel as he had heard he was not too well. We were all loaded up except for Col and off we went in the old rattly truck. It rattled because of all the stuff hanging inside – hobbles, chains and other gear that was necessary for droving.

Mum, Dad and Emmie went inside the Brummel’s house. This particular time they were having a long visit and we probably went to sleep and then woke up. We were bored so one of us decided to go to the toilet, the outside dunny behind the house. As toilets were a bit of a novelty, all four of us went: Mary, Les, Mike and I. We were climbing the fruit trees and cuddling the cat and the dog and having a great time. Eventually, when we got back around to the front of the house, the truck was gone – disaster. Were we going to cop it!

When the parents arrived back at the camp, they called for us to get out of the truck but there was no answer. Called again, no answer. They thought we were pretending to be asleep and Dad got up into the truck and realised all the beds were empty, so they had to make the long trip back to Dirranbandi and pick up a mob of sheepish, scared kids. Thankfully, we never got the flogging we thought was coming and we never did all go to the toilet at once again. I think my parents learnt a lesson too because they always checked we were in the back before driving off!

Also living in Dirranbandi was a Hawker, an Indian called George Box who had a brother in the fruit and vegetable business. They had a shop in town and also an old truck. Once a week Mr Box would fill the truck with goods from the shop and drive to surrounding districts selling his wares to station owners and drovers as he came across them.

He had boxes of fruit and vegetables, chewing gum, lollies and odds and ends such as sewing cotton, torches and other necessities. He would also barter for old wool, sheep and cattle hides that would be left to dry out hanging over fences. We loved to see Mr Box driving to meet us on the side of the road. The first thing he did was cut apples in half to share amongst us kids and then he would do business with Mum. One day as he was driving away from the camp, a box full of oranges fell off, the wooden box disintegrated and we kids ran madly behind his truck shouting, ‘Mr Box, Mr Box, a box has fallen off.’ He heard us after a screech or two and pulled up. We helped him gather the oranges and placed them in the truck. He gave us an orange each for helping him. An orange each was like winning the lottery as usually, Mum would cut an orange into quarters and share that among us.

One time we were left in the camp while Dad and Mum went to town to socialise and look for work. Col had a brain wave, and we cut the dry grass into a huge pile and made an emu nest out of it. We sat in the middle and sucked on cigarettes that Col had stolen out of our parents’ supply. They were the “roll your own” kind and we all had a puff but Col and Les got right into it. When the parents got back to the camp, Les told on us all for smoking and we all got a hiding, except for him as he had told. He was a “brave boy” for dobbing, which he did on a regular basis.

Dad was a red head and Mum a brunette and though we were all born blonde, Col and I grew into brunettes while the others grew into red heads or “carrot tops” as they were often called. Les was the only one to be born a red head and he was favoured from the start. Even at a young age, he was a cruel ratbag to us “young ones”. If we complained about him pinching us, rough teasing or stealing any treat we had, he would deny it and the parents would believe him so we never had a case.

Across the river from our camp. the Aboriginals had their humpies and campsites. We could shout out to them to say hello but mostly we got insults back. It was always done in fun, the black kids having a way with words. Quite often their parents would have a go too. At the end there would be a wave and lots of laughter. If the Aboriginals were serious they could easily swim over and sort us out but they were as lonely as we were for a bit of chiacking around. If they tried to get us going when the parents were home we did not take them up on it, as much as we would have loved to. They would yell out to us, ‘You yella dogs, go on ’ave a go, go on, scared of your mummy and daddy.’ We would just walk around doing our thing, managing to ignore them. But when our parents drove out of the camp, before the dust had barely settled it was on again. We would chant back to them, ‘Sticks and stones will break our bones but names will never hurt us.’ Normally we would be in our “attitude” stance, hands on hips and poking out our tongues and a few rude hand signals.

When we went into town we were never allowed out of the truck so eventually a lot of the Aboriginal kids would come up and stand at the back of the truck for a chat. They would have a bag of hot potato chips, lollies or chewing gum and tease us by offering a piece and not handing it over. Sometimes we might barter something that was in the truck but we could never let Mum see we had taken a treat off the other kids as that would have been deserving of a swat of the hand on any part of our anatomy within reach.

In 1956 we went to a property called Trafalgar (next door to Cubbie Station, out of Dirranbandi) to pick up a mob of sheep and the station manager was Bill and Alice Holmes. We had to muster the sheep before taking them, so we spent a week or more there while the men mustered. Spending time like this on a property was always like a holiday, not having to pack and unpack every day and quite often they let us stay at the shearers’ huts so that meant we had showers also. This made a nice change to bathing in the big round tub once a week, whether we needed it or not.

The Holmes were a family of five, two daughters Shannon and Cleone and son Bryon. Emmie became very close to the family and she and Shannon were pen friends for years. Emmie and Bryon married ten years after they met, when Emmie was eighteen. Byron used to joke that when he met us we used to run around with no pants on and were really dirty, much to Emmie’s embarrassment.

Over the years we met all kinds of folk, good and bad. One particular person who was a bit different to others was Gordon and he owned a station between Dirranbandi and Nindigully. When he was younger, he had been trying to knock down a tree with a bulldozer. It would not give, so he went at it full pelt and a limb fell on top of his head and tragically this affected him badly. After he recovered, he was never quite right in the head. For example, he was sick of the perfectly good house on his property so he bulldozed that one down and had another larger house built that he thought was more suitable to his station in life.

One weekend all the station hands and Gordon went to a circus in St. George. They walked around the site admiring all the wild animals that were tied up or in cages. One cage held an old scraggily, ill kept lion and Gordon walked up to it to give it a pat, the lion gave a lazy half-hearted roar, snarled at him and lay down on his belly. One of the circus workers walked past and Gordon engaged him in conversation with an unusual outcome. When the circus was over, the men had the lion in the back of the truck and home they went. The lion spent the rest of the night in the back of the truck and the next day they proceeded to build a large yard for the “new pet”. After a few months, Gordon had him walking on a chain like a dog. He had hired three Aboriginal families to do stick picking on the property, so there along a dusty track would walk Gordon, the lion, a collection of his dogs, and the Aboriginal family all enjoying an outing in the late afternoon.

Gordon and his workmen went to church on an irregular basis in Dirranbandi on a rough dirt road. He later decided that he and the men needed to go to church more regularly so he decided to build one on his station. Gordon would get dressed up as a minister in a black robe, full black gown with all the regalia and take the service. On occasion, he would strap a colt .45 on his hip as well and the men would say they did not know whether the boss was going to be Jesus Christ or Ned Kelly for the day. Sometimes after the church service, Gordon would mount his horse and gallop off, his robe flapping in the wind, shooting the gun in the air.

Later on, he lost all his money and the bank took over his property. The day he left he set fire to the house, burning it to the ground and drove the bulldozer into the dam.