Our Andy's Gone With Cattle: The story of the Drovers

Hop on your horse, let's go. And be warned: your bottom will be rubbed raw after just one a day in the saddle. And you could be heaving and swaying up there for several months.

I have some fascinating people to introduce you to. Like the late, legendary Bill Gwydir, who used to drove thousands of cattle thousands of kilometres, through the sweaty monsoonal mud of Queensland, then through the heat and cold and endless sand of South Australia. Bill's stories, of a childhood raised in the saddle, and of horses going blind in sandstorms, are riveting.

Then there's Aboriginal singer-songwriter Kev Carmody, who was also just a young boy when he first accompanied his parents. He recalls the hardships endured by  his mother, then sings of it in 'Droving Woman'.

Another Aboriginal woman, a decade earlier, had an even harder life. Evelyn Crawford recounts this life with clarity and humour, in her book, 'Over My Tracks.'

This, and many other adventures await you, in 'Our Andy's Gone With Cattle', the story of the Drovers.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Ah, the crackling campfire and the wheeling of galas pink against the sunset, and my trusty heart. G'day, I'm John Francis, pull up a gum leaf. Welcome to the Red Dust Tapes Campfire, where we'll sit around listening to fascinating outback characters of the early 20th century recorded by me long ago. The story of the drovers.

SPEAKER_08 0:58

You count them there, and I generally count bullocks and twos. Drop the hot number as they gather past. Two, four, six, eight, ten, like that. See hundred. And when the hundred goes past, then you tie your whip in it. You whip all the knot and that's hundred, and when you get seven hundred, then you look 'em up and you've got seven knots, then you must have the lot.

SPEAKER_10 1:22

Our Andy's gone to battle now. Against drought and red marauder. How Andy's gone with cattle now, across the Queensland border. He's left us in dejection now. Our hearts with him are roving. It's dull in the selection now, since Andy went a drovin.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

The Aussie stockmen and women, they had millions of stars to sleep under. They covered ridiculous riding distances, sometimes taking them many months. They faced dust storms, sand hill crossings, scarcity of water, and raging floods. Yes, the droving days, when for the majority of our country, the only way to get cattle or sheep to the markets was to hop on a horse and herd the moo-moo's or the barbars. The longest established stock route in the world at 1,850 kilometres, is the canning stock route from Hall's Creek in the Northern Territory to Willuna in Western Australia. The route traversed three deserts. Apart from about 50 horses, about 15 camels were also used, not just for carrying supplies, but to haul up from wells the large quantity of water needed to refresh the cattle. This chapter of Red Dust Tapes is a collection of stories, as well as a few short interviews, about some true legends. Included will be a reading from a book on the life of one of my favourites, Evelyn Crawford, an Aboriginal woman who, along the way to having 13 or 14 children, was also a drover.

SPEAKER_05 3:10

Romantic notions of the horses of the land spell as a fantasy dream.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Ah, yes, and an interview with Kev Carmody, the writer of Droving Woman, a song which pulls no punches when it recalls the hardships and at times heartbreaks of life in the saddle.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah, sometimes the big stations would break the horses in, and they we'd pass through the station and they give you a horse, you know, to quiten it, to get it used to cattle and stuff a young horse. It depends how they were handled. I mean, if they were the horsebaker was vicious towards a horse, poor old horse had no way to operate, but um, oh, bite and strike there.

Some legendary drovers - including Bill Gwydir

SPEAKER_01 4:03

But let's start with a woman who was often left behind when the men were droving. One that our opening poem, Our Andes Gone with Cattle Now, might refer to. But this was no fretful type, this was a woman with more grit than you can possibly imagine. The story is recounted by Samantha Ellie, a member of the Minaro Pioneers History Group in the Snowy Mountains. Born in Ireland, Jane Power West's early life was shaped by her father, Thomas Power, who served in the Royal Marines. As a young girl, she accompanied him to his posting at the Norfolk Island Convict Settlement, later moving with her family to Sydney. At just 16, Jane married Henry Samuel West. Together they journeyed nearly 300 miles by bullock train to Coulomon Station near Kyandra. There they built a house from slabs and shingles, ground their wheat by hand, and baked bed or damper in the ashes of their fires. Life was harsh and isolated. Jane often went for months without seeing another woman, and especially when the men were away herding stock. Her first encounter with dingos was unforgettable. Awakened by a persistent howling, Jane initially believed her home was under attack by devils, only to discover it was a pack of wild animals circling her house. The harsh southern New South Wales climate tested Jane's mettle further. She survived the great storm, which left cattle buried in snow drifts, and she even found a bullock hanging by its neck in a tree after the snow melted, a grim testament to the storm's ferocity. Jane herself once became lost in a snowstorm near Coomer. She sheltered under a tree all night, clutching her horse's bridle, and at dawn trusted the horse to lead her home safely. Even in her later years, Jane's determination never waned. She thought nothing of riding bare back to Golburn, crossing swollen rivers to fetch supplies for her family, a round trip of 250 miles, so that's 400 kilometres. Jane Power West died in 1913 at the age of 90. She left a legacy of resilience and experiences that only a pioneer woman in early Australia could have endured. Jane and Henry raised eleven children together. Now to the Drovers, otherwise known as the Overlanders. Let's start with a quick snapshot of a handful of these legends, as related by Ron Shearer for the Christian Science Monitor in 1991 and from Wikipedia accounts. In 1881, Nat Buchanan, regarded by many as the greatest drover of all, took 20,000 cattle from St. George in southern Queensland to the Daly River, not far south of Darwin, a distance of 3,200 kilometres. Cattle stealing has long been a part of Australia's history, and some of the country's biggest droving feats have been performed by cattle rustlers or duffers. The most notable one was Harry Redford, who established a reputation as an accomplished drover when he stole 1,000 cattle from Bowen Downs Station near Longreach in Queensland in 1870 and drove them 2,400 kilometres. His route took him through very difficult country down the Thompson, Barku, Cooper, and Strazlecki rivers, thus pioneering the Straslecki Track. Women have been noted as exceptional drovers as well. One of the true legends of the Outback was Edna Zigbine, better known as Edna Jesson, who took over a droving job from her injured father and became a boss drover at twenty-three. Along with her brother Andy and four ringers, they moved 1,550 bullocks, the 2,240 kilometres, across the Barclay Tableland to Dajara, near Mount Isa in Queensland. Bill Guyder worked the Birdsville track, which runs from Queensland to Mare in South Australia. He had two epic trips across Cooper's Creek in 1949 and 1950 when it was flooded. An important note here, folks, the so-called Cooper's Creek, now called Cooper Creek, is usually dry. It consists of a series of channels over a width of about ten kilometres, and in the occasional flood years the water tears down through Queensland to Cutty Thunder Lake Eyre in South Australia. In 1943, Bill Guider drove 700 bullocks up the Diamantina River. He faced quicksand and hundreds of miles of sand dunes, but lost only three cattle. Ah, yes, listeners, Bill Guider. Let's stick with Bill for a bit. Here's a newspaper report from 1949. And just remember, folks, water flowing at 10 miles an hour equates to about 16 kilometres an hour. Fast and unrelenting. Here's that newspaper report. A stream of 10,000 cattle is moving down the road from Birdsville and Queensland to attempt the crossing of Cooper's Creek, now flooded once again in an attempt to reach the Adelaide market. The pioneer trail crossing at Copper Moranna by a South Australian drover, Bill Guider, was made necessary by the greatest volume of floodwaters since 1890, flowing at 10 miles an hour in a two-mile stream into Lake Eyre, filling thousands of square miles of billabongs and lakes on its path to the barren inland sea. The flood waters reached the stock route crossing at Copper Moranna, facing Western Queensland cattle owners with the alternative of swimming their cattle across the flood or missing the Adelaide market. The first crossing was made by Guaida with a mob of 600 head, mainly steers. It was six hours before they were all across. The widest channel without a foothold was about three-quarters of a mile, followed by a mile and a half of alternate swimming and wading. Yes, folks, that was the voice of the renowned Bill Guider. I recorded Bill in 1968 in the cattle yards at Udna Data in South Australia's far north, just to the west of Cutty Thunder Lake Air. He was coaxing and cursing cattle into railway trucks, ready for transporting south to Adelaide. It was a chance encounter with a legend. He had work to do, and the old Gan train, in the last years of its narrow gauge existence, would be pulling out shortly with me on board, so my time with him was brief. What a pity. He had a great way of spinning yarns, and he could have told me many, many more.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

You said that you started driving when you were nine years old. What did you do for school?

SPEAKER_08 11:48

Well, most of the school I had my sister taught me, one of his sisters, which is why I never had much of a chance because I, you know, I might have oh anything up to six weeks, seven weeks with her. Then I'd go on another drover trip, or what she taught me I'd forget. But I've been gifted to two things as I thank for that. That's counting cattle or making up an account. I lift me out to no man at counting the mob of bullocks out in the flat.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

How do you count a moderate mob of bullets, big bullocks? Because they'd be moving around, wouldn't they?

SPEAKER_08 12:15

You string them out. One man gets on that side, on the other side, and another one on this side. And you count them there, and I generally count bullocks in twos. Drop the hot numbers, they gather past. Two, four, six, eight, ten like that. See hundred. And when the hundred goes past, then you tie your whip in it. You whip for the knot, and that's hundred, and when you get seven hundred, the end of the five, you look 'em up and you've got seven knots, then you must have the last.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

There must be very few drovers now compared to what you would know in your day.

SPEAKER_08 12:41

Oh, no comparison. That's what them days look. 1931. I went out with Brunette Downs with O'Larf and Nilson. We took bullets from Brunette Downs to Tucker Tucker in New South Wales. We were twenty-eight weeks and five days on the road with them. We traveled right across the Rankin Plain. We come down to down the James, down the Georgina, right down to Madury. We went across Madury then in through Windora, Quilpee, Charlevell, and right down into New South Wales, Tucker Tucker. We were twenty-eight weeks and five days in the road with seven hundred seventeen hundred and fifty of them.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

And when you were out, I suppose you would have seen a lot of other droving plants on the road as well.

SPEAKER_08 13:18

Past them every day. Every day, those drovers I can remember. Stan Fowler and Lidsters and Old Crouch. Sure, strings of them, all them old time drovers, but they're all gone now.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

It must have been a very tough life, uh, droving cattle in those days.

SPEAKER_08 13:32

Well, yes, I can remember one trip out of mob of Mount Leonard's Bullocks, and Blando fellows came just ahead of me. Here the mob of Marion Downs Bullocks. Well, a dust storm hit us that night. That was the worst dust storm that ever I saw. And I've seen some bad ones, you know. Well, the horse tailor was on watch, and eight o'clock it hit us. The two of us were held until three o'clock in the morning. The only way you could see 'em was when the light didn't flash. She was a dry storm. And I said to the horse tailor, I said, Well, we've done a fair wing of these, and anyhow they're all jammed up together. But after he went and got the horses, another blow come out. There's two men was in bed. The dust storm of the sand had blew them, and they were covered right over, the swags were covered right over, and black Billy Cans had been at the fire for months, and the little stones flying at night made them shiny on one side. Anyhow, he brought the horses up, and we strung them out and canned them out sixty-one short. I rode through them, and they were all old pikers. I thought catches, I caught a good horse, and look, I just trotted over the second sandal. And here the whole lot of them was just getting up. They got out of the wind, you know, that's where they lay down. I caught them up, and I went down to old Bland. Poor old Bland's dead now. He died out here at Mount Isa. He was a wonderful drover. Now he had his night or one night horse go stone blind that night with the dust, and one bullock. They were both stone blind. The Bloomin' Bullock was walking on the tail of his counter just like a bullock with sandy blight. But he was stone blind, but old Bland reckoned it was the worst night ever he seen, there was the worst night ever, I see.

The unpredictable seasons

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Earlier we heard of Bill's epic Cooper's Creek flood crossings, but it's mainly drought in the centre of this country. But in those rare major flood times, Cooper's or Cooper Creek and other rivers in the Queensland Channel country can be kilometers wide. And this part of the world, the Lake Air Basin as it's called, covers one-sixth of the Australian continent. It's the size of France, Germany, and Italy combined. All these channels and creeks have one destination, the mighty Cutty Thunder Lake Air, fifteen meters below sea level, that giant salt pan that lies crusty, dry, and simmering, just waiting for the water. Most years that water sinks into the ground or is evaporated well before it reaches the lake. But on those rare occasions when the northern floods are great enough and the water crashes its way through to Lake Eyre, the lake changes from a seemingly lifeless assault pan into a paradise with fish, frogs, and wildflowers. Not to mention the millions of water birds, including pelicans. But all this watery stuff is for the exceptional years. For instance, when I was up in Birdsville in 1970, the Lake Ear basin was in the midst of a seven-year drought, and it would be another five years before Lake Eyre was again a paradise. In many other parts of the inland, the flood or famine is not quite so extreme. And in terms of cattle fattening, if you're a moo moo, Australia's inland is a great place to be. As an Alice Springs cattleman explained to me years ago.

A kid learns the hard way

SPEAKER_03 16:54

The country itself, of course, was uh stricken by this seven-year drought. Of course, now we're going into another one, roughly six years in between the breaking of the last drought and uh the starting of this one, and uh we're in quite a critical period as far as feed and water go at this time. Where were you before you came here? Uh Wicherty Station, which is a hundred miles uh west of Broken Hill, uh in South Australia. And were you working with cattle at that stage? Uh mixed, yes, by sheep and cattle, yeah. What sort of cattle do you run here? Uh mainly Hereford. What are the Here the the Hereford uh cattle used for mainly? Uh it's all beef production in this area. They uh ship in fat to the Adelaide markets generally. Now, what is this country like for raising cattle? This country is uh probably some of the best country in Australia. Uh that is uh dry area country. Uh but this applies, of course, to any area that is prone to drought because you get the feed that grows when a drought breaks has so much uh nutritious value in it that the cattle respond very, very quickly, and this is what makes this uh area and other dry areas such wonderful fattening areas when we have the seasons. We who work in this type of country always regard a a drought of possibly every five to seven years, not necessarily a drought, but a a dry period every five to seven years. You consider this to be normal? Yes, this is normal in the dry areas.

The Romance of the Saddle Life

SPEAKER_01 18:26

And once those cattle are fattened, they'll be off to the market. But these markets might be thousands of kilometers away, and before road transport that was a job for the drovers. Bob Gerhardt started as a drover at a young age. In his reminiscences he wrote eloquently of that life. Here are some excerpts from his early days working with sheep. Drovers often passed through Broken Hill on their way to the local sale yards and abattoirs, and our back fence was on the boundary of that stock route. When mobs of sheep were passing through, I would go and walk behind them, helping the drover with the stragglers and pointing the way to the sale yards about four miles away. For his help, he'd reward me with some salt meat to take home, or a potty lamb to rear on our goats. When the drover had delivered the sheep, he would pay his men with a check, which they promptly took to the nearest pub, and handing their checks over to the bar to the publican, they would say, Just let us know when it's all cut out, and we'll be on our way again. I returned home one day from the sale yards and found a black and tan kelpie sheepdog lying in the shade of our dunny, which was also at our back fence. Dunny, by the way, folks, is the outside toilet. He was all tucked up, his ribs were sticking out, and the pads of his feet were red raw. I gave him a drink of water and a feed. I then put some mutton fat on his pads, made him some boots out of soft tongue leather from old miners' boots, like I'd seen the drovers do, and I had him right again in no time. When the next mob of sheep came through, I took him along to see if I could get him some work with the mob. He worked so well the drover gave me ten shillings for him. Ten shillings. It was a fortune to me in those days. A couple of weeks later, the dog was back with me again. When the next drover came along, I sold him again for another ten bob, and that was the last I saw of the dog. Our next door neighbour was an Afghan Aboriginal family named Zada. They had many boys who were highly regarded by boss drovers as being good stockmen. One day a boss drover called at the house and asked the mother for one of her sons. They're all away working, she said. But there's a boy next door who would like a job, I'll go and get him. He then introduced himself to me, saying, My name's Patty McLellan, but everyone calls me Patty the Bastard, so if that's what they think, I may as well be one. He hired me for one pound a week and keep, and only half wages whilst we were travelling empty. Empty was the time taken to get to your destination. Keep meant that he would provide me with three meals a day, which was more than I was getting at home. Be ready early tomorrow morning with your swag, he said, and rode away. A swag? Where would a fourteen-year-old boy get a swag? The aboriginal lady next door knew what to do. She and my mum got together, and between them they found two old grey blankets, a towel, and a bar of soap and some safety pins. They wrapped it all up in a piece of faded canvas and tied it with a bit of rope. I thought I was Dick Whittington on his way to London. We started out next morning on the empty part of our trip to Mount Wood Station, 400 miles north of Broken Hill on the Queensland border, to take delivery of five thousand. And fat sheep and walked them back to the sale yards at Broken Hill. The boss drove the wagonette which carried all of our food and equipment, and the cook and myself rode behind on horseback. Our daily stages would be approximately forty miles each. This is about normal travel with working horses. Forty miles a day. I'd never even ridden four miles a day, let alone forty. By the end of that day I was not only aching all over, but every hair had been pinched out of my inner legs by the action of the stirrup leathers, rubbing against the saddle flaps, and they have never grown back. I couldn't say sorry, boss, this job is not for me, and catch the next bus home, because there was no bus, no other work, and no incentive to get back home. After ten days travelling we arrived at our destination and took delivery of their sheep from the mustering camp. It was always a great occasion, counting the sheep through the race, signing contracts and swapping news. My lasting memory of that day was I saw two cooked chops left in their camp oven by the fire from the musterers last meal. I had never seen food left over before. Their cook said to me, You can have them. I didn't take any second telling. I was always hungry. We started off on the long journey back to Broken Hill. Our stages would now be only six miles a day, a government regulation. Cattle could travel ten miles a day. This regulation prevented ill treatment of stock and dawdling on private properties, eating their precious grass. Forward notice had to be given to all the properties that you would be passing through so that they could send a man out to make sure your mob kept moving, didn't spread too wide, and didn't box in any of their flock. The government also installed watering places along the stock routes such as artesian boars, wells and dams, and if a caretaker was in charge, it would cost the drover a penny per head for cattle and horses, and ten shillings per thousand for sheep, for one drink only. The owners of the sheep allowed a certain number of killers from their mob for the drover's meat supply. The drover became very adept at boxing in a few strangers along the way to keep his numbers intact. It was an unwritten law at the time. When you needed meat you never killed your own, always that of a stranger. It was practised by property owners as well as drovers, so the numbers must have evened out in the end. A popular saying was that the only time you ate your own meat was when you were invited to your next door neighbour's place for dinner. We were about a week into our trip when a ew died lambing. The boss said to our cook, Dress that meat and we'll use it as one of our killers. It will also help to keep our numbers intact. The cook said, No way. I've tried that before, and the meat was so tough we couldn't eat it. The boss insisted and the cook resisted, so he sacked him, and turning to me he asked, Can you cook? No, I said, Well you can now. Now is the best time to learn. He told me how to cook in the camp oven, mounted his horse, and with his two dogs rode off to take charge of the mob. I cooked the meat. The cook was right. It was very tough. The boss said, The best way to handle tough meat is to make your knife sharper. There were now only two of us to handle five thousand sheep and eight horses. I became the cook, horse tailor, that's the bloke who's responsible for looking after the horses, by the way, the wagon driver and the yard builder. At daybreak each morning after breakfast, the sheep would be let out of the five rope and bush peg yard that I had built for them the night before. They were pointed in the right direction and allowed to spread out to get the utmost feed. I would dismantle the yard, pack up the wagon, and catch up with the boss about midday. We'd boil the billy, have a feed, then he would direct me to where our next night camp would be, and the previous procedure would be repeated again. We arrived at Broken Hill sail yards with all our numbers intact after approximately ten weeks on the road. We then had to truck them to the Adelaide abattoirs. Getting sheep into two decker railway trucks was an exercise in sheer frustration. The first few had to be physically carried in and kept there until we got the rest of them moving. There was only headroom for sheep, so we were down on our hands and knees, crawling along, rattling tin cans and barking like dogs. Eventually they were all loaded, and I walked home with my swag on my back and a check in my pocket. Ah, Bob Gerhardt, a born stockman, but also a natural yarn. Bob went on to work with cattle and claimed he would never go back to sheep.

SPEAKER_09 27:07

The reason why I came here in the first place was to get away from civilisation, to get out into the bush where a man felt as though that he was part of the country, part of the birds and the animals that roamed it. I was free, I was comfortable, I had no worries.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

That was Kelly Hargraves, an Alice Springs horseman, waxing lyrical to me in 1969 about the life of a drover.

SPEAKER_09 27:31

You'd ride this wag out and you put your hat on top of your boots, you go to bed and you'd really enjoy it. You'd wake up during the night, you'd see the beautiful clear sky with millions of stars. Now I'd go as far as to say that you see more stars in the Northern Territory sky than any other state in Australia.

SPEAKER_07 27:48

Pick you up, Scott! Pick you up! Scotty, we call it the good old days.

Remembering Aboriginal stockmen of the Kimberlys

SPEAKER_09 28:06

The modern generation calls it stupidity. But to our idea, you pack up your saddle, uh, your pack saddles, your gear, your tucker, and all that sort of thing. You go into the homestead, you say goodbye to your wife or your family, and the boss of her over it was. And you could be gone for three months from that homestead, still on the one plate. It didn't matter whether it rained, hailed, or shined. You still slept in your swag at night, out in the open, you had no cover, but you always had made sure that your bedroll, or swag as we call it, was done up with a good canvas. Now it wouldn't matter how much it rained, any rain that came would automatically run off and run away from you. And you get up in the morning, your blankets and everything else are still dry. The only thing that's wet is a canvas on one side. It was live, it was hard, it was rough, and it was tough. But it made a man of you. Well, we used to live on corned beef and damper and a few boiled spuds and onions. Today they take out tin fruit, fresh bread, everything is tin for them. They have Land Rovers and utilities and God knows what not to carry it around. The old pack horse is a thing of the past.

Callous Canning and Carnegie: Natives chained up until they revealed water

'Droving Woman': an Aboriginal boy on the track with his parents

SPEAKER_01 29:18

A lyrical chronicler of Australian life in the mid-20th century was Patsy Adam Smith. One of her books called No Tribesman told of her travels around Australia, meeting and living with Aboriginal people in wildly varying circumstances and with equally varying attitudes to the places they found themselves in in this white man's world. No Tribesman is out of print, but well worth tracking down for the honest insight it offers. In this excerpt, Patty describes coming across a group of Aboriginal drovers in the Kimberley country in the far northwest. Suddenly a little donkey ran by right beside my campfire. A bell around his neck went clock clock clock as he went. He brayed in ludicrous delight and scampered onto the boar. Then, there in the dusk and the dust and the last of the setting sun was a string of horses, with stockmen taking them to water. The donkey was among friends. I ran to a big rock near the Boababs and climbed it. Sticking out of the top of the dust layer were ten gallon stockmen's hats and horses' heads, and the horns of cattle tossing and dodging as stockmen rode the herd to settle it down for the night. Suddenly it was dark, it's always sudden here, and with the darkness the birds stopped screeching abruptly, and only then could I hear the complaining of a thousand head of cattle as they were brought into a tight circle and encouraged to lie down. In the Kimberlees you sleep out under the stars if you're travelling. The night air is gentle, and your fire is always within arm's reach. I travelled soft by outback standards. I had an air mattress. Now with the fire smouldering low, a soft bed and a balmy deep purple sky, I was comfortable, happy. But for once I couldn't sleep. That excitement was still there. I felt as I do in a theatre when the lights go down and the curtain has yet to come up. There were noises everywhere. Click clock went a bell, surely scores of bells. There was a jingling too, like the tinkling of Chinese windbells. I didn't think of hobbles. Out there the dark was full of moving animals. I was never too sure if animals would tread on a prostate sleeper in the dark, and still can't believe that they never do. The tinkling disappeared and came again. Then the tread of high heeled boots on the dirt track to the boar passed my head. One said to another, This been good country. I've been walking fifty mile, plenty tucker, been catchin' wallaby, emu, goanna, turkey, plenty beef, you know starve here. The scrunch of their footfalls fell away. The cattle were lowing gently. And then it began gently, softly at first. The stockmen began to sing the cattle, make them content and aware of the presence of men. If one beast becomes uncertain and panics, the whole herd will stampede within seconds, and no man can stop it. So they sing the cattle. I strained to hear the words. They eluded me, the melody too, but inside my head the rhythm was pounding through from the ground beneath me, and the darkness was part of the words, and the ugly freaked trees, and the men who had walked by my camp. You knew then that these were aboriginal stockmen singing their tribal lullabies and corroborey songs. As they rode around the closely packed herd, their voices faded in the distance, and then grew loud as they neared me. First they were high and clear, then the same rhythm was repeated in the middle registry, then came a deep throbbing in the chest. It went on all night, broken sometimes by an elusive whistling, an occasional lowing from a beast. At midnight the watch changed, and an older songster took over, but that wild, primitive, disturbing rhythm was the same. The moon came up. The bloated bottle trees were things of fantasy, great rocks crouched all around, and when the singers passed between me and the moon, their tall hats were silhouetted black against the golden ball. And on and on went the song. Sometimes I dozed, hating every moment of sleep that blotted out this thing that might never happen to me again. Then they were gone. It was daylight. Where a thousand cattle, men, donkeys and horses had been, was flat red plain, scorching already as the sun sprang up, but empty. Even the birds had vanished. These were the words of Patsy Adams Smith in her book No Tribesman, published by Rigby. You'll find copies through secondhand booksellers. Ah the Aboriginal people. Let's go back for a moment to the building of that Canning's stock route, the eighteen hundred and fifty kilometer long Northern Territory Western Australia Trail, mainly through desert country. It was only made possible by using the local knowledge of many Aboriginal tribes along the way to find where there was water in the form of soaks and springs, which was then, in most cases, blasted and dug into deep, more reliable wells. Water, the most essential of all life's needs, is the rarest thing in desert country. How incredibly generous of the Aboriginal people to share this precious information that their own people needed for survival to be used not only by strangers, but while they wouldn't have known it at the time, by several hundred thirsty cattle with massive bellies. Why would they share that precious information? The surveyor Canning was inspired by previous explorers in that region, Wells and Carnegie, although Carnegie, it seems, just used ropes for the restraining. The Aboriginal so-called guides were chained up overnight so they couldn't escape. Carnegie even denied them water until they gave in, and Canning, on one occasion, is said to have chained up a man's wife until he led them to water. The Aboriginal people have been indispensable in developing and maintaining Australia's stock industry. An Aboriginal ringer on his horse is an absolute delight to behold, wheeling and whooshing their mounts with the grace of a ballet dancer and with the focus and skill of a footy player. But it's a gruelling life, hard, dangerous, often with bitter rewards. Consider these words about the life of an aboriginal woman and her husband in the saddle. She buried him down on the edge of town where the brigolo suckers on the cemetery creep. She stood with them children in a heavy brown gown. What you want you just can't always keep. I'm sorry, I says, I knew him so well. Though your body is young you just never can tell when the hand of fate rings the final death knell. She just turned with the saddest of smiles. She says At the start, well, we knewed it so hard we were always dealt the severest of cards. Honeymoon spent droving Jamison's stock through the wildest winter you've seen. Romantic notions of horses and land, they were soon dispelled as a fantasized dream. Watching cattle at night in the midwinter cold turns a person both wiry and old. You might recognise those words. They're from Droving Woman, a much revered song by Aboriginal songwriter Kev Carmedy. There's also a popular version by Missy Higgins and Dan and Paul Kelly. We'll hear Kev's own version shortly. But first, here's Kev Carmody.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Well it came from you know my admiration for the women. You know, like Mum put food on the table like every day. Paul and Rain, they just held the whole camp together. I mean, Mum, Mum, in a sense, was a boss. Uh Dad was the um on the camp, dad was the um the contractor, as it were. You know, sometimes the the big stations would break the horses in and they we'd pass through the station and they give you a horse, you know, to quite it to get it used to cattle and stuff, a young horse. It depends how they were handled. I mean, if they were the horsebacker was vicious towards the horse, poor old horse had no way to operate, but um, oh, bite and strike, yeah. Then you had to put a rope around the neck with a slip knot on it, throw the rope back on the ground, lead the horse into it with his back leg, and lift one foot off the ground on you on the side you hopped on, so it was only on three legs, just to get started with the poor thing.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Kev spoke of cattle and horses being spooked and in danger from lightning. Stock routes when they were following a road used to be ten chains or approximately two hundred meters wide. In places there would be a two-meter high galvanised netting fence down each side, which were designed to keep the dingos out. In stormy weather, the stockmen had to try to keep the cattle, their horses and themselves clear of these fences, because Kev says if one of these fences was struck by lightning, it would run the whole length of the fence and kill anything that got near it. So a frightening task in the dark when you're working with a few hundred head of startled cattle and nervous horses. As Kev says, this wasn't my little pony stuff. The story that you're you're relating here, or perhaps a combination of stories, is from your own experience and and from the the lives of your your parents, is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yes, and what we heard. I mean, that was the thing about driving. You'd pass through a uh a little tiny settlement, you know, or you'd pass through a big station, and the men working there would come out because there was word of mouth and they'd come out and they camp with you. Or come to your camp over nighttime as you were going through, you had to move, you know, five mile or eight miles, depending on whether you had uh bullocks or whether you had cows and calves, to keep your permit. That was to keep you moving through the big stations and not eating their glass. Yeah, this is back in the 1950s when I was a kid. I was on a horse when I was four. Yeah, well, I didn't go to school till I was ten, because I hit myself. Because I'd taken the kids away them days, and uh they hit me up till I was ten-year-old, 1956 they got us. But from 1950 to 1956, I was on horse, yeah, just helping mum and dad. I mean, like we could learn a vision when we were 10-year-old, we could go when they put us into school to learn ABC and and arithmetic, and that we didn't reckon we needed that because we already knew how to break horses and hold cattle and you know, track cattle and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

I I love that that verse uh in regards to the the children's uh education, and I guess this would have been similar to yours. The kids got their schooling from the government mail. They considered their learning a self-imposed jail, they'd rather help their father and fail.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Oh, that's right, because Paul and Mum Ryan, I mean, the cover was it was done by correspondence, John. So you left the where was your mailbox? You're you're no matter, you're moving. So poor and mum would have to uh put it in the when we got to a candle sale, she put in a uh uh lesson in. Well, parts of that lesson, because I said we're always on the bloody horses. Uh yeah, she posted it in, and then when you got to the next, you know, center, that's where they'd have to send the correspondence to left hand, and she'd have to go to the post office there and get it there. You know, and and of course, it seems it was daylight. Not sun up, daylight, like an hour and a half before sun-up. We were gone. We were under the horses in northern power moment. No, but trying to teach us reading and writing.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Yeah, it's a completely different life, Kev. Absolutely completely different. And presumably not like it. It wouldn't exist like that now. Oh God no, God no, oh crazy no. It sounds like it was a pretty enviable form of alternative education for a little fella with a lot of exceptional memories.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

We we never did big mobs. I think about the biggest mob we ever had was about 600. Uh, but they were money in around the 300 and stuff. But see, the the the old cows they you know they bent down every evening. You could hear them breezing there over nighttime under the Milky Way. Beautiful, eh? We used to listen to old wireless. That we put an aerial up a tree, we had an old dry cell battery wireless, and uh in the morning you could hear the hillbilly, Slim Dusky and uh Tush Morton and Tad Morgan and all those famous old Australian singers, fantastic. Yeah, yeah, and then of course over nighttime, uh BC you you get uh symphony orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

And of course, under the stars, you know that you've you've got your line there about uh them inland skies and the starriest of nights. Uh I mean it is very beautiful out there.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Oh god, that's light pollution in town, uh, John. That's that's the thing. That they're not connected with the with the beauty uh and the infinity of of that night sky. Unbelievable. Uh, you know, and all the stories associated with that, it was like a huge book. That I can point the stories out to you. Yeah, Strinsky and bloody, you know, the bushy and uh human and bloody hiding and all that under the stars of a nighttime. Unbelievable. And then the old cows would get up around two o'clock their legs and feed the calves. We used to call it the fourth dawn. It's when the sun hits the ionosphere and get the reflection back, and you'd almost swear it was very sunrise if you don't ever watch. And uh the old cows get up and they they feed the calf and then they lay back down again. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's a really faint glow in the sky. And of course we used to get up and we call it daylight, you know, and go after the old horses. We'd hobble the horses over night time or put the chain on them. We never had a vehicle until about nineteen I think dad, about nineteen fifty-four, dad got uh an old coma truck that we we could bring the horses back and we put gold boxes on them to put the dogs because the dogs w were as good as a man.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Yeah, the dogs are amazing. Look, you you mentioned about uh the fact that uh you you're just lying under the stars and you didn't have any tents, you had nothing. Uh I mean again in your song you refer to this, you know, uh with with uh the woman in the song uh being held back while the the man's going ahead because there's been problems with the truck and uh she's l out there waiting in the in the in the rain and uh you know, everything's wet and she can't get a fire going.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

As I said, we didn't have a truck for the first few years. Everything was carried on in pack saddles on the horse. So, you know, even though we got the truck, if it got bulk you know no no bitch from the roads out there then days, she was she'd just go down to the axle.

SPEAKER_06 45:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

And uh with your permit, it had to move ahead. So we'd start moving the paddle and and Mum had sort of waited there until she dried a bit. Yeah, and or the mailman had come along, or the you know, the the property owner had come out with a platform and pulled you out.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

And of course she had no phone to contact people anyway.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

No, no, word of mouth.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

So, Kevin, this is a very, very powerful song. So it it comes then from a really from a lot of those experiences that you and your family would gather from being um on the when you're sitting around with others and from their own experiences, of course, and your experiences, but sitting around with others uh when you're on the track.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

Oh crazy. But like let's get back to the reality of of that particular song, John Like, and you know, I've been to a few country funerals in my time, and uh just that resilience. That resilience, yes, well, you know, he's passed on now, and it's been hard, and I you know, the kids are growing up, I'm gonna sell them Joven Pan. And there was a lot of lot of lot of women like that. And it was a a tribute to my mum and to my grandmother, and you know, to well for all women, indigenous and non-indigenous, that was in that country. I mean, you know, it it's awful hard because the the women they need other women to talk to, not be very heap of men coming in every night.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Yeah, it would have been a very lonely life, not just because of the country, but because of the lack of female company.

SPEAKER_02 47:17

Yeah, yeah, well, it's the old black follow away. Women's business over here, men's business over here. Men don't go over to women's place, the women don't come over to the men, and then you've got all the in-between area where they all come together for the benefit of everybody.

SPEAKER_05 47:37

She's buried in down on the edge of town with a brick load, suckers on the stem tree creep. She stood with them children in a heavy brown gown. What you want? Can always keep that well, I need so well, put your body out. Just never come out when the hand of feet rings the final death now. It's loud. Well, we sound with out the feet, and rowing the jammer start all the wild with the 15 Romantic notes, the horses are land, spell, as the fantasy dream, watching good night, in the midweet cold under button, both wiring older And the flame of the breakfast, fire be dead and rose up, keeping my out ahead I'd be breaking the camp there and rolling the bed, while he fan the stuff why the feeder When the weather turns off the unsettled rain, Rock it bumped down to the axle maintenance and chains and I'd away In the mud by the road With the black canvas that hung out nothing to feet couldn't lie to fire with no stop permit with a forthcoming child, the dog to whimper in the winter wind rain And swatching the rain Walking all night like the dog on the chain red-eyed and we're a pack of all a mouth mouth behind the mud and everything gold We had nothing but the roots and the mailman the meat We move up and down with the wave What the last guys are it's tonight with a dance of the fight for a girl light The beauty of its tons that's we're constantly light I found nature and let me intrude it No butt fast the limb plane You're only content with your card for the name It's a time that's five clothes to the box tell them a table It's been alive on a ride with your And the kids got their school from the card on the mail to their working college The kids today delay Let's help be in four steel They rather help their father in failure last month at the end of the cry He was given a host Nobody could arrive where his ears were the fire in his stride USDO And his spirit was wild The catchy meeting morning with an hour battle We had the collar open side to throw out sidelin Biden eat strike He made my nuts a rival And the morning ring drive with a hot style of moon with the covenant bowl that was still I've not felt before I couldn't know it was that was stealthily watching his boot quick take and stuff from the ring what's the full from the horse woman Just Tal when the horse went up when it's the Yeah And look at the title Let's go make the face colour turn the white I make it tonight My body's broken I'm bleeding inside in the light Sluby draining I'll sell up the plan now movie the town for the winter returns with a chill on the ground for what I just lost consult and be found I was blessed with the gentlistic man eventually the children will move to the east But I couldn't stand the bustle Even a quiet city street I'll stay in the scrubby where my heart really beats some dog wrote to oh change.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

I came across her out of print book a while back, titled Over My Tracks. It's Evelyn's life story, as told to writer Chris Walsh. It's the story of an Aboriginal woman who grew up in far western New South Wales, out back of the Burke. She became a drover. She had thirteen to fourteen kids, and then became a highly respected educator of her people in both the primary schools and in the broken hill tape. Evelyn Crawford was fifty-seven when by chance she found out how old she was. She'd called into Ross Moore Station, not far out of Burke. That's where her and her family had been living, in a tent near the main station buildings. And Evelyn was shown the station ledger for May 18, 1928, and it read, Born to Station, calves nine, lambs twenty-eight, foals two, born to Hannah Black and Jack Malia, one baby girl. As Evelyn recalls in her book, we were in their station ledger. We was like their stock. In the introduction to her book, Evelyn Crawford says of Chris Walsh, who prepared the book, telling all this to Chris to make the book, it's been like sitting down with a friend yarning about old times. There's not many people left that you can yarn with. I hope the people who read it will feel like that too. And as just one reader, yes, I'm so happy to feel like a friend of Evelyn's. Her adventures through the years, including evading authorities who were removing Aboriginal children from their parents, makes this book for me a real page turner. It would have been fascinating and a privilege to meet her in the flesh. So now I want to share with you a truly delightful yarn from Evelyn's driving days. At this stage in her story, Evelyn and her husband Gong had just one child. On this trip, Gong had set out ahead with the main party, so Evelyn was setting out with just her little one, Marie. So here we go. I was Horse Taylor, along with bandy-legged old Aboriginal Jimmy Galton, and a young red-headed white fella, Gong and four other drivers had ridden ahead to take delivery of the cattle and load 'em at the start of the branch line. Marie was about two, and she could talk like anything. She got into all the strife you could imagine, and some you couldn't, because I was a brand new mum, and I didn't know how to look after a brand new baby. I had to find out the hard way. And poor old Marie suffered. I wouldn't leave her with anyone except Gong. I'd be thinking, What if I came back and she's not there? What if we can't find her? The kids are too precious to lose before he left. Because the horse could run away with her. You wouldn't know where she'd end up. It was a good place for the kid. A bit of red. She could have easily to sleep. I said, No. I wanted to do that. We went into a board water the horses. And with the mother, it was a pretty long job. It was hard. I said to Marie, we're in the bag now. You can sit in the bag and play while we water the horses. Then I'll get you out and jack you in the trough so you can have a swim. The first horses watered quietly. But then a couple reared up, and a snake slithered from underneath the trough. Off round the tank went the lot, and the pack horse, with Marie sitting up in the bag crying. There was this kid in the bag, only the head and one arm sticking out, singing out Mam M The more the kids screamed, the more that bloody horse went silly. Jimmy Galton was singing out too. He had a very, very loud voice, this Aboriginal fella, because since he was a little boy, he was trained to be a singer of songs for corroborey. There was the horse bells clanging, Marie crying, Jimmy singing out, me yelling, Grab the horse, grab the horse, and all like cattle dogs barking just for the fun of it. Bedlam. The pack horse got into a corner, and the other horses hemmed it in. I jumped off my horse and ran in amongst them, grabbed Marie by the collar of her shirt to lift her out, and the horse pulled away again. I was left standing there, the kids still in the saddlebag crying, and all I had was like a collar. While I was running around after the horse, I was saying to myself, Dong will kill me for sure. I won't tell him about this, I won't tell him. But Marie would tell him for herself, even though she was still small. Anyway, Jimmy caught the horse and got her out. After that, she wouldn't go near the saddlebag, even when it was on the ground, not even to get something she wanted. When we got to Yuntabullah we needed meat. The only meat they had at the little store, still linen there, was bully beef in tins. We camped a couple of days to make dampers so we wouldn't have to keep pulling up to cook. In the night we just ate as we rode along. I bought a pretty little dress for Mari. She liked it. And in the morning when we were packing up, she said, What do I do with my Gumby? I was busy and not really looking at her and said, Throw it in the fire if you like. And she did. I didn't know that little kids took literally what you said to them. I could have kicked myself. Ten and sixpence it cost. And that was a lot of money and half a day's pay for me. I really couldn't afford even the sixpence. Many a time I said to myself, What in the bloody hell am I doing here when I could be back at the burger sitting under a tree? Thank you, Chris Walsh, for bringing us the life story of Evelyn Crawford. Over my tracks should be available through online second-hand booksellers. We opened with part of Henry Lawson's famous poem, How Andy's Gone with Cattle Now, recited by Max Cullen, from the album, also featuring Warren Fay, The Dead Men Talking. And I thoroughly recommend checking out the work of Aboriginal singer-songwriter Kev Carmody. Shortly we'll finish with that tireless folklorist Warren Fay with the classic The Overlanders.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:13

So it's past the Billy Round boys. Don't let the point pot stand there. But tonight we'll drink the health of every overlander. Where the creeks run dry or ten feet high, and it's either drought or plenty. So pass the chilly round boys, don't let the pin on stand there. But tonight will drink the hell of every elf of land. From Spain and France and Flanders. Well mixed pack of white and black from Queensland. When we've earned a spree in town, we'll live like pigs in clover. And the whole damn check pours down the neck of many a Queensland rover. And it's past the Billy Round boys. Don't let the pine pot stand there. But tonight we'll drink the hell of every older lander. The kids they raise my dander. Shout, Mama dear, take in the clothes, it comes an overlander. And it's past the Billy Roundy boys. Don't let the pine pot stand there. Who said, Don't leave me lonely. I said it's sad, but my old horse has room for one man only. And it's past the Billy Roundly boys. Don't let that point pot stand there. For tonight we drink the hell of every own lander. But I'm bound for home once more on a horse that's quite a go'er. I can find a job with a crawlin' mob on the banks of the Maranoa. So it's past the Billy Rounded boys. Don't let the pine pot stand there.