A Bulldust Story: 3
Like Moses and Solomon
The water at the next bore is so good that the drover Chris Herrmann tips out the bad water we are carrying from the previous bore.
To my surprise, the 40 gallons disappear without a trace down a small crack in the red ground.
“I thought ten-to-one we would have to scrape the green stuff off the top,” Chris says of this sweet bore water.
Over tea, while the rest of Australia discusses inflation and the 1974 Budget, everyone around the camp fire is talking about something called “Birdsville disease” – which could kill the horses if they eat a certain plant.
Chris suddenly spots a bull he doesn’t like the look of and takes the stern attitude some people in the cities adopt toward Treasury economists: “The first thing we do when we get to Numery is cut him,” he says. “With bulls you always keep a sharp knife handy, it’s better to cut too many than too few.”
He and his sons discuss how much they enjoy eating the results of castration: “I haven’t eaten balls for weeks,” laments Chris over a corned beef sandwich.
Robin Cobbo, with eyes like a hawk, has spotted the three cattle we lost off yesterday’s dinner camp.
I mention that there don’t seem to be any snakes around and Robin interrupts: “I saw five snake tracks today.” A sobering thought for someone sleeping on the ground each night.
After that I notice tracks in the dust which look like someone tied a bottle to a rope and pulled it across the soft bulldust while moving left and right.
Asked about the snakes, Chris says he has never run into many: “My wife would’ve killed more snakes than me. I wouldn’t have had more than 20 arguments with snakes in my life.”
The bread we have is going bad but Chris insists “it’s just getting a few whiskers. Put it on the fire and burn them off.”
Some large wild bullocks break into our mob despite attempts to keep them out.
Robin Cobbo skilfully follows the biggest one through our cattle, slowly enough not to upset them. The bullock weighs over half a ton but Robin keeps cutting it off, even when it turns on him.
Robin is 60 and when on the ground he can hardly move. He has a cramped bow-legged stance from years in the saddle. But once on a horse Robin becomes part of the beast.
I saw him wield a whip around a horse that had never seen one before and the horse tried to throw the whip-wielding rider but couldn’t shift him in his seat.
It was like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers waltzing.
“A lot of horses have thrown me,” Robin tells me later. “One threw me seven times before I rode him. I’m not skiting, but it takes a good horse to throw me.” And I believe him.
The rumble of cattle gathering speed to the water is drowned out now by the rusty haunting Condamine bells hung from the necks of what Chris calls our “outlaw” horses.
The idea is to know where those horses are at all times.
The next bore is spooky because of all the skeletons of dead cows around the water.
This bore is called “Cook’s Well” and it means that Urandangie is now close.
Flies are a constant annoyance.
“Haven’t noticed any,” says Chris. “These few, they’re just for company.” The flies are all over the corned meat but Chris says not to worry. “These won’t eat it all. If it gets blown you just knock the grubs off.”
I start to notice that Chris always chooses to wash from the cattle trough and never has a swim. He says the water in the cattle trough is warmer than in the giant tanks storing the water at this bore.
These silver tanks must be 20 foot high, with a ladder up the side, so some of us climb up and jump in and swim in the deep cold water; it is the best any of us have felt for a week.
On this trip everyone has been getting up every morning in the dark before dawn.
“Righteo, no more mucking around,” Chris says to their surprised faces. “Tomorrow we’ve got to get off to an early start.”
It is 11 pm and my turn to be on watch in the Centre’s darkness.
As he gets into his swag and pulls his hat down to keep the moonlight out, Chris remarks: “If it was bullocks you were watching tonight, I’d sleep with my boots on.” The wireless is playing an appropriate number by Slim Dusty about “old drovers having black tea and damper by a fire of gidgee coal”.
“What will I do if the cattle do rush?” I suddenly ask.
“If they come this way, wake me first,” is all the advice Chris gives from under his hat.
It is so relaxing drinking Milo by the fire of gidgee coal that it is hard to stay awake.
There’s nothing to do except stoke the fire.
Walking around the temporary hessian yard I sing constantly, under instruction from Chris Herrmann so the cattle know I’m there: Percy Sledge, The Beatles, Frank Ifield, Dusty Springfield ...
After my watch I follow standard operating Herrmann procedure of not giving the next man – “John the blackfella” (John Cobbo) – the watch until he is out of bed.
The horses are normally caught and saddled before the first red light of dawn appears, but the sun is up and the muscular white mare is still eluding capture. Someone forgot to hobble her front legs last night so Chris is upset.
Eventually, he corners the horse – using only his voice – after it has been eluding four men on foot.
Then we’re off again.
A big white Brahman cow is wobbling as she walks and for mile after mile doesn’t look as if she will go another step as she trails behind the pack. “You’ll be surprised how long a Brahman like that will keep going,” says Chris.
But he admits he might have to leave her behind near water if she falters any more.
Now it’s grasshoppers!
Swarm after swarm of countless millions keep coming in search of grass … tacking into the wind in vast black clouds which look like a thunderstorm.
“If they get too nasty I’ll take the stock-whip to them,” says Chris.
The cattle are almost blotted from view by the grasshoppers and refuse to move forward.
The cattle are actually retreating … their hooves hidden in a seething mass of grasshoppers on the ground. The leaders are tossing their heads in annoyance and backing into the cattle behind them.
The grasshoppers are so thick in the air that nearly every time I throw a stone, it hits one.
Despite the efforts of the ringers – who are flat-out staying on their spooked horses – the cattle will not walk over this living layer of scratchy grasshoppers.
But forget the grasshoppers for a moment: the most amazing sight is Robin Cobbo twirling on his horse as it tries to bolt and escape the attack of the saw-toothed insects. Robin can no longer drive the cattle … but he’s never gonna leave that horse.
What are we going to do? I ask Chris.
“I’ll bore it up ’em,” he says, wheeling the Tilley until it is in front of the cattle.
In low gear he charges ahead clearing a path in front and cracking his stock-whip out the window for further effect. As he does so, grasshoppers fly into the air like ash from a raging bushfire.
The Tilley gets stuck in a steep rut so that’s the end of that.
Chris leaps out and walks in front of the 800 Droughtmasters, cracking his stock-whip and yelling abuse at the grasshoppers as he walks through them … like Moses parting the waves.
I’m helping as only a city-slicker can – throwing rocks at them. But when they get in my shirt, scratching and raspy-clawed, I’m worse than the horses, doing an Indian war dance and calling for help.
Chris is covered in them too but doesn’t appear to notice: “They’re just along for the ride,” he tells me.
At last the grasshoppers have gone and everyone, including the Droughtmasters and the horses, can relax.
A car loaded with two families heads towards us through the bulldust of the unsealed and unseen Plenty Highway from the direction of ’Dangie. It pulls up: “How far to Urandangie?” the driver asks.
It’s like the old joke about the Australian bush: but this time it’s true. They’ve driven through Urandangie, the place where it was said the dust would never settle, and they’ve missed this town which used to have 80 children in the school.
A cow has an early calf during dinner camp, and we are still not a quarter of the way through the drove. It’s a beautiful little red bull calf.
Chris turns to me and says: “Unfortunately, it’s gonna have to die of lead poisoning.”
For a second I don’t understand.
Chris talks nicely to the calf with big eyelashes for a while, says nothing to me, and walks to the Tilley and gets out the axe, not the rifle. Still talking in a soft voice to the calf he raises the axe high above his head.
I look away and thump.
The calf is dead.
Chris stands, hands akimbo, looking down. “Poor bastard,” he says, and walks back to the truck.
This is not the last time he has to do this.
“I would have given it to one of the two ladies in Urandangie, but they’re not on speaking terms. We need the woman at the Post Office to relay our messages, and the woman in the pub makes beautiful bread.”
The boards at the ’Dangie pub wobble and flip upwards like a see-saw as we all stagger wearily in for a beer.
We’re the only customers.
There are only stools for four and everyone gets a different-shaped glass. In fact, no two glasses in the whole pub are alike.
Alice Springs and Birdsville are thought to be the back-of-beyond in Australia but this is it.
There is no electric light, only foul-smelling carbide flames.
There’s six of us so the woman behind the counter struggles to add up the total cost of our six drinks. She’s doing it with a pencil and paper. So I tell her: “Six beers at 45 cents, that’s $2.70.”
It turns out that I’ve unknowingly finally impressed Robin Cobbo, the man whose riding skills I’d been admiring for a week.
Back at camp that night around the fire, he talks about nothing else except the fact that I could add up “all those figures” in my head!
Only two of the buildings in ’Dangie are occupied. The main streets are Margaret and Hutton Streets but the woman serving in the pub doesn’t remember which is which.
She also doesn’t want her name in the newspaper.
There is something missing: something totally different about this town which at first I couldn’t put my finger on. Then it came to me: there are no water tanks on any of the buildings.
It turns out this is because it so rarely rains out here that tanks would be a useless expense. So the town itself has a windmill bore.
The bad news is that the next bore, more than 20 miles further west, is supposed to be out of water.
“We can’t go that far without water,” Chris Herrmann says.
We make camp on the finish line of the ’Dangie racetrack.
Considering 10 miles a day was once regarded as fast droving, we’ve done very well. We have covered the 105 miles here in seven days (15 miles a day), including a late start the first day.
“It’s the exotic breed,” says Chris. “You wouldn’t walk pure British cattle like this.”
Young Steve Herrmann makes another flour-and-water damper for dinner – which is even better than the home-made bread from the woman at the hotel.
We are very close to the Northern Territory border and Chris laughs about the dingo fence governments built the entire length of the border.
“They built the fence to keep the dogs out but the gate’s open and broken and ten-to-one it has been like that for 40 years! They spent millions but neither the fence nor the road are worth two bob,” he says.
And he’s right.
Next day one of our cows is reported lying dead in the yard next to the Urandangie racetrack.
It calved during the night and the little calf crawled away into the shade. Some horses lick the afterbirth and the cow doesn’t move.
Chris gets out his rifle this time and walks solemnly toward the cow. He kicks the cow first – and it moves. He puts the rifle down and pulls the cow’s back legs under its body. Then he takes a good hold on its ears and strains mightily to pull it to its feet.
Sweating and swearing and with muscles standing out like steel cables, he gets the huge cow into a sitting position, but it falls across the other side and lies just as still.
The struggle continues: this time using a spare wheel as support.
Previously, Chris had told me about “bull straps” and how you pull the bull over by the tail and tie his legs. I didn’t quite believe him, but now I do because somehow he gets the cow to its feet. And miraculously it recovers.
’Dangie is on the Georgina River which is not running but there are some deep waterholes left which we must avoid because they might bog the cattle.
Chris must go and look for a safe way across and check the real water situation at the next bore while the cattle have a rest day in ’Dangie.
“What bridge do we go over?” I ask as the two of us set out.
“There are no bridges across the Georgina,” Chris replies, pulling a face at my ignorance.
We are back on the so-called “Plenty Highway” – and the fine bulldust is up to the axles most of the way. There is a bit of water at the mill but not much.
“They can have a sip,” says Chris.
There are yards for the cattle, too, but they stink from dead beasts. “That? That’s no worries,” says Chris. “We can live here.”
Another cow is calving, but the calf is caught with only its head and one leg out.
The calf looks dead and the men are worried that if it stays in, it will swell and kill the mother. Chris gets his lasso this time, rather than axe or rifle, and lassoes the calf and pulls it alive from the mother.
Looking down, he remarks, “He’d make a bloody good bull calf,” and gets the axe.
How can he do it?
“I don’t like doing it, but still and all, someone has to do it. It’s a job that has to be done. If we were closer to home we would leave the mother and calf and come back – or throw it on the trailer. Out here it would never survive alone.”
There is a two-day limit on holding cattle in ‘Dangie and we must leave the next day.
Chris looks gaunter and leaner than usual: two horses are lying down not feeling well, the big white cow is to be left out alone for the night, and seven bulls have taken a fancy to the one cow.
“That’s bad. They can keep chasing her around and can kill her,” he says.
Untouched by metrication, Chris measures many things in chains. “The sun’s still got four chains to go,” he says when someone suggests they get the cattle in.
He opens a bottle with his Capstan tin and when someone suggests we sleep the last night in the shed in the cattle yards instead of the open, I protest that there’s no door to keep the bulls out.
“I’ll sleep across there,” says Chris. “That’ll frighten them off.”
We pass through the dingo fence into the Northern Territory but the men are too tired to cheer.
Steve crashes at speed into a deep hole and his motorbike breaks clean in half. This is disastrous because only eight of the eleven horses are still fit enough to ride. We are getting close to half-way and the journey is beginning to take its toll of the weaker cattle.
The big white Brahman cow can hardly move and is left behind at the bore.
Maybe one day they will be back to get her … if she is still here.
At Manners Creek, Chris shows his skill by welding the motorbike together and then killing a giant 2 m brown snake at the bore. He decides two lame cows and four small weaners which are trailing the mob must be left behind.
Another calf must be killed.
With the weaker cattle dropped off, the big mob is now making between 15 and 20 miles a day ... double what could be expected.
Half-way point on the drove is reached in 15 days, way ahead of schedule.
Around the campfire the men are jubilant as they eat their damper, jam, and corned meat. Including the ten days to reach Dajarra they have been on the go for nearly four weeks.
We have been beside the dusty so-called Plenty Highway for four days but have seen no vehicles since the family that was lost.
Even Chris admits that the bore water out here is “bloody awful”. And they say the next two are undrinkable.
At a place called “Beenleigh Bore” the cattle go thirsty for the night. The trough has a hole in it and all the water has run out. This does not help the cattle and three days later another cow and weaner must be left behind.
Two more horses are limping through the spinifex as the men turn south around the Simpson Desert and only six horses are now shouldering all the work.
No one talks – they just push on toward Numery Station.
We should be there in ten days if the cows keep going. Most of these Droughtmasters are strong and fit and ready to run, but some have diarrhoea from eating a certain type of weed and are weak.
Two more must be left behind at the next bore.
Luckily the weather has turned cold and it helps everyone. So at Dinnara Bore, Chris decides to spell the cattle for a day.
Incredibly it pours rain for two days. It’s like seeing snow in Darwin. At first the rain is welcome but soon everyone gets wet and miserable on their horses.
Steve tumbles off his bike in slippery conditions and appears to have broken his leg below the knee. It is swollen and tender. No doctors here.
The horses are so tired that Steve keeps riding his bike with his leg strapped.
Chris says he’s worth two or three horses.
The horses are walking with heads close to the ground now and the brown pony falls by the wayside… then, as if on cue, we come to a sign: “Dead Horse Rock”.
Sandhills now: we are almost in the Simpson Desert, but close to Numery Station, which opens up on to the desert. Steve can’t ride, his leg is too sore, and he is relegated to cook.
The heat after the rain brings out the flies which swarm like bees around our faces, beating us to the food.
All this land … and nobody else here: nobody for days and weeks of travelling. No wonder Chris Herrmann laughs when he calls this The Land of Plenty. No wonder everyone else in Australia is hugging the shoreline near Manly, and St Kilda, and Surfers Paradise.
No wonder politicians never come out here where there’s only bore water, damper, corned beef, and Milo: but no voters.
Chris spots a grey mare near a pack of ’roos. “We’re near now. She got away from me in the desert six weeks ago. A good horse, but I’ll never get her back out here.”
Even Chris is complaining about the flies: “They’re getting bigger and better every day.”
It’s now well and truly summer out here and everyone is finding it hard. The drove is now down to four horses – the rest are just too weary to be ridden any more. But still the men are all smiles and talk as they did when they first set out.
“Just as well we had Droughtmaster cattle with all that Brahman in them,” Chris tells the men, with just five miles to go. “I don’t think any other breed could have walked all that distance and put on weight in the time we took.”
As he talks one of the sixty prize bulls breaks a leg and must be shot.
The 425-mile drove through the Centre is completed in just 28 days’ travelling and three rest days – an average of 15 miles a day.
From the 800 head the losses are one bull and two cows from accidents and the white cow and the pony both of which will almost certainly die. Six calves have had to be killed, three have been given away, and five cows and five weaners left behind for later.
Not a bad result considering the total length of the trip – from southeast Queensland deep into the Northern Territory.
For the owner, Richard Apel, there has been a saving of $29,000 over road transport.
“With that sort of result we might all go back to droving,” he says triumphantly.
Somehow I rather fancy, I’ll stay away from ’Dangie; and stick to city slickers, selling sandals in Myers.
Two readers (who shall remain anonymous) sent me a lovely email about why they had decided to become paid subscribers to my site this week.
I'd like to tell my modest but devoted substack audience why they said they did it:
"Frequently nostalgic, always entertaining, and leaving us with something interesting to think about. You're a bargain!"
Gave me a real lift, a boost to keep on keeping on.
Yet again, very evocative Hugh! Really enjoyed all 3. Having lived in the outback but never with deprivation, I can truly imagine it all. What an adventure! Several years ago I got to stay on a vast remote station in outback Queensland for a couple of nights where they mustered by chopper. Very sobering to realise that even with the Flying Doctor, the massive medicine kit provided by the Flying Doctor Service and modern communication, you can still be up against it. Have a heart attack as one worker did and it is curtains.