A Fortunate Life (Puffin story books) Page 9

  Arthur reckoned that we had the best part of two and a half thousand miles to travel from where we started until we reached Geraldton. This was because of the winding route we would have to take. As the crow flew, the distance would be somewhere around one and a half thousand miles. ‘We should make good time for the first few weeks,’ Arthur said, ‘but after that it will be slower, as there is a big mob to pick up from Mundiwindi Station which we should reach in eighteen days or so.’

  With a small herd the average distance travelled was about twelve miles a day, but a large herd slowed the pace down. I asked Arthur how many head of cattle we would finally have to deliver, and he said any number between fifteen hundred and three thousand—the boss expected to pick up from eight stations en route.

  For the next two weeks Arthur and I were together most of the time; the only time we saw the others was at night and early in the mornings. I liked all the men; the black men particularly were nice and helpful.

  My pony Dinnertime and I got along fine. She seemed to know that everything was strange to me and kept close. We sometimes let her off the tether unhobbled at night, and she would come as close as she could to where I slept, and lie down to rest. I thought this was wonderful, and the Boss said he had never seen anything like it; ‘That pony loves you, Bert.’

  The men, black and white, hadn’t shaved since we left Mullewa and all had beards. They looked a wild mob. I used to get Darkie to trim my hair but I had no whisker troubles.

  We had been on the drive for two weeks, travelling about twelve miles each day, and were south-east of the Ophthalmia Range, when we got our next lot of cattle. They were from Mundiwindi Station and two other stations farther south, nearly five hundred head.

  Near the end of March we met up with another small herd of cattle. They came in from the north, about one hundred and fifty of them. The next lot of cattle we met would be at the Ashburton River, a little over a week away. The weather was hot and sultry and the cattle were feeling the heat and our progress had slowed down to about eight miles a day.

  As well as the problem with the heat, we were pestered by thousands of pink-and-grey cockatoos. I’d never seen anything like them in my life. They would bite holes in anything, even the leather saddles and straps. We would wash our shirts and hang them out to dry on a bush, and these birds would make big holes in them. One of the men had to get a rifle and shoot a few to frighten them off.

  We arrived at the Ashburton River on the second day of April. Waiting on the other side were the cattle we were to pick up, a fairly large mixed herd. The river here was very wide, but the water was shallow. Our herd came up to the river. One of the stockmen rode into the herd as it was bunched up near the water, lassooed a cow and pulled her out, and another got behind the cow with a whip. Then the first man tied the end of the lasso rope to the horn of his saddle and pulled the cow towards the water. After a few cuts with the whip the cow was persuaded to go into the water and hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when the herd commenced to follow. An hour later they were all on the south side of the river and by the time we got across, the new cattle and our herd had mixed and the herd was now about eleven hundred head.

  After crossing the Ashburton River we headed southwest towards the coast and Hamelin Pool, some three hundred miles away, and ten days on from the Ashburton we reached the Lyons River which was only a small watercourse. It was now past mid-April and we had travelled four hundred miles since we had taken the first cattle.

  The country we were crossing now was flatter and more open. One night the sky was overcast and as the clouds became lower and darker, we could hear thunder in the distance and see flashes of lightning. Arthur and I made camp near an outcrop of granite boulders where we would be able to keep dry should it rain. A small valley just beyond would be a good place to bed the cattle for the night.

  I managed to get a good fire going for Arthur with the sticks, wood and dry manure I had picked up along the way and Arthur cooked a nice stew. The herd came in at about sundown and the cattle settled down early as they were very tired; they had covered a good thirteen miles that day. This was the usual pattern adopted by experienced drovers when the weather was threatening: make the cattle travel faster to make them as tired as possible to calm them down.

  The men had our stew, then three of them rode out to ride the herd. It was getting very dark and the thunder and lightning were more frequent and close, and very loud. Arthur and I cleaned up our pots, billies, enamel plates, and soon rolled into our rough beds on the ground.

  The next thing I knew, Arthur was shaking me violently saying, ‘The cattle have stampeded, we will have to go after them!’ The thunder and lightning were terrific. I ran to Dinnertime and saddled her, and rode her towards the sound I was sure was the cattle—a crashing, galloping noise. The rain came down in buckets—I was wet through but I was sure I could hear the cattle, so I kept going.

  The lightning was flashing every few seconds but I couldn’t sight the cattle. After a while I had no idea in what direction I was travelling any more.

  Ten

  Daylight finally came. There were no cattle and I couldn’t see any tracks; it was still raining and there was running water everywhere. I tied Dinnertime to a bush and climbed up to the top of a high ironstone hill. All I could see from the top was mountainous country in all directions. I was lost. I was also cold, wet and hungry, and very frightened.

  I scrambled down to my pony and climbed on her back. I had been told that if you get lost while on horseback, you should give the horse its head and it will take you home. This theory was no good with Dinnertime—she only took me where there was plenty of feed. I let her eat as much as she wanted and walked for a time to get the warmth back into my legs and body. Then I rode to the top of some other high hills, but still to no avail.

  I kept Dinnie going and going until we came to a gorge with large granite boulders on each side. There were large caves under the boulders, big enough for a horse to walk into. Now it was getting late and I decided to camp there for the night. I unsaddled Dinnie, and tethered her near the cave. Thank goodness I had the tether rope, because without Dinnie all would be lost for me. But Dinnie pawed the ground and came inside the cave and lay down to rest. Some of my fear left me at this, and after a while I went to sleep.

  When I woke it was daylight and still raining. The gorge had water running through it like a little river. The sun was completely hidden; I was unable to tell north from south, or east from west. After giving Dinnie a longer tether rope so she could reach some grass, I sat thinking what to do. I thought, if the grass is good for Dinnie, it is good enough for me. I put some in my mouth and chewed it. The juice tasted nice but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t swallow the grass. At least I had no water troubles. It would be terrible to be lost like this with no water.

  When Dinnie stopped eating, I saddled her up and rode all the rest of that day towards what I thought was the west. I rode up high hills and peaks along valleys, but saw only kangaroos by the hundreds, a few emus and a few wild horses. Not a sign of a track.

  The rain stopped just before dark. The wind stopped too and everything was still and quiet. All I could hear was a dingo howling and another answering in the distance. I came across a thick patch of scrub and decided to camp there for the night. I broke off a pile of scrub and made a place to lie down. I tethered Dinnie and spent my second night alone.

  In the morning the sky was clear. I waited for the sun, looking to where I expected it to rise. I got the surprise of my life. It rose behind me. This confused me completely. I was absolutely lost. I wondered what I should do. Then I decided that if I kept travelling in one direction, I must come across some road or river that I could follow back, out of this hopeless situation I had got myself into.

  I saddled Dinnie and rode off in what I thought was a south-west direction. Dinnie walked at a very lively pace along valleys and over high hills and flat scrubby country. Then she pricked up her ears and st
opped still, as if she had spotted something. I got off her back and tied her to a clump of scrub, then I sneaked back to see what was there, being very careful not to be seen. Luckily the wind was blowing towards me so whatever it was wouldn’t be able to smell me. For a few minutes I couldn’t make out anything, then I saw something. I moved closer. It was a black man, very wild-looking, with a long bushy beard. I was scared stiff. I stopped where I was, watching, and after a few minutes he picked up the hindquarters of a large kangaroo and a bundle of spears and set off over a rise.

  When I was sure he was gone I went to the spot where he had been and found the front half of a kangaroo he had just skinned. I noticed that he hadn’t taken the liver, so, being starving, I took it out and ate it all. Then I took the rest of the carcass down to where I had left Dinnie, tied it to the saddle and walked, leading the pony.

  All of a sudden I became very ill. I felt as if I had been poisoned. I lay down near a large granite boulder and vomited—I couldn’t stop. I felt too weak to do anything. Finally, I managed to get up. It was now well into the afternoon. I untied the kangaroo from the saddle, took the saddle off and rested it against a boulder. Then I tethered Dinnie to where she could get plenty of good feed. Funny, I wasn’t frightened—I just didn’t care what became of me.

  Finally I fell asleep, and woke just before daylight, on the fourth day, with terrible pains in my stomach. I felt very faint and it was nearly midday before the pains eased. Dinnie stood looking at me. She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t shifted her tether to fresh grass. Late in the afternoon I felt a little better and getting some sharp-edged stones, I set about bruising pieces of the flesh off the kangaroo carcass to chew into small pieces later. By the time I had finished, the sun was close to setting. I saddled up and followed a small running stream hoping to find a better camping place. Just before dark I came to a beautiful valley with a watercourse almost big enough to be called a river. There was plenty of feed for Dinnie so I camped there. I unsaddled and tethered her and made myself a place to lie down for the night. I tried chewing some of the kangaroo meat, and I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps I had made a mistake in hiding from that black man. He may have been able to help me—and almost anything would be better than what I was going through now. Finally I dozed off to sleep.

  When daylight came I shifted Dinnie’s tether rope and had a drink of water out of the stream. I was in the fifth day now and there was no sign of anything that would help me—no tracks, no cattle, no way of knowing how far I had travelled or in what direction. I made up my mind that no matter what happened, I would not leave the watercourse, but keep following the direction of the flowing water. It must eventually take me somewhere.

  I saddled Dinnie and set off again. I kept on chewing the small pieces of meat, and whenever I stopped to rest or have a drink, I would chew grass or the leaves of the scrub bushes, since my stomach had settled down. It was terribly hot so I had to rest every two or three hours, and the flies and mosquitoes were very bad. The going was very rough—hills with huge boulders all over them—then a valley would open out into a large, scrubby plain with the everwinding watercourse travelling on and on.

  The next day was very similar to the fifth. The sun was so hot that I was forced to lie up for about five hours in the middle of the day. That night I found a sand patch close to the bank of the watercourse that was nice and soft to lie on. It was a long time before I went to sleep. My kangaroo meat supplies were very low and all sorts of frightening thoughts came to me. A person would have to be lost like I was to really know what it was like—it was dreadful.

  When I awakened on the seventh day I got a shock. Dinnie was over the other side of the stream. I thought she must have got off the tether. Then two black men jumped me, one from each side. These black men looked very wild. They wore only loincloths out of kangaroo skins, and they all had beards. I yelled, ‘Let me go!’ and tried to struggle free, but they held me and one of them called out to a third man who was on the other side of the stream with Dinnie. I didn’t understand their language. The one with Dinnie brought her back over the stream, then they put the saddle on her and one of the men made signs to me. I realized that they wanted me to get on Dinnie’s back. I did this, then one of them took the reins and led her. We left the watercourse and travelled north.

  I had been scared many times in my short life, but nothing like I was now. They ran on their bare feet, and Dinnie had to trot to keep up with them most of the time. They travelled towards a large hill. It took us about two hours to get to the top. There I dismounted and one of the black men unsaddled Dinnie. Then one of them squatted and did something with a pile of dry sticks and scrub so that, after a few minutes, smoke started rising. They gathered some green scrub and bushes and heaped them in the fire, which made a thick white smoke. Then one of them took the saddle cloth from Dinnie and kept putting it on and off the fire. It was at this moment that I realized, with relief, that they had built the fire to make smoke signals.

  Suddenly one of them gave a shout and patted me on the shoulder and pointed at something in the distance. Then I saw it. Little clouds were going up into the air at small intervals from a hill top to the north-west, some three or four miles away.

  One of the black men put the saddle on Dinnie and the other two put the fire out by throwing earth on it. We set off towards where the other smoke signals had been. It was amazing how they could travel over prickly scrub and stony ground with their bare feet. We stopped every two or three hours for the men to rest. Every time they stopped they would let Dinnie feed. The blacks had no food, and how they kept going I’ll never know. After dark they slowed to a walk. Then, while travelling on a rise, one of them pointed to a small light in the distance. He squeezed my leg. The gesture conveyed to me that we were close to the end of our journey. The fear had left me now; I knew the blacks were my friends.

  An hour or so later we arrived at a large blacks’ camp. There were several large fires burning and about thirty dogs came towards us, barking. We were surrounded by dozens of blacks and then, to my surprise, out walked Stan Smith. ‘Bert, you come with me,’ he said. He took me to a fairly large mia-mia. Inside there were several older natives and they were all very pleased to see me. A middle-aged native woman came in with a bowl with some kind of dark fluid in it. She handed it to me. I looked at Stan and he said to drink it, it would do me good. I didn’t like the look of it but it tasted fine.

  After I had finished it, he said tome, ‘You better not have any more, Bert. You’ll have to be careful and start with only a little at a time for now.’ I lay down on some skins with a rug spread over me. I was dog-tired and was soon sound asleep.

  When I awoke next morning the sun was high in the sky. Stan came into the mia-mia and asked me how I felt. I told him I was still very tired but felt much better. While we were talking the native woman came back. This time she gave me some kangaroo steak and some kind of damper which tasted beautiful. Stan could talk the blacks’ language and I asked him to thank the woman and the three men that found me.

  You would have thought I was a king or something, the fuss they made. The chief, a large man, took me by the hand and wished me well, and made it clear that he and his people were my friends. The three men that had found me came and shook me by the hand and patted me on the shoulders in such a friendly, jolly manner. A few minutes later they fetched our horses and Stan said we must get back to the herd. After shaking hands with dozens of the blacks—men, women and children—we rode away.

  The day was very hot and Stan said that the extra heat this time of the year was unusual—it could mean another storm. I said, ‘I hope not. I’ve had enough storms to do me the rest of my life.’ Then Stan asked me how I had managed to live. I told him how I had taken pieces off the kangaroo carcass and kept chewing them. He said, ‘If you had approached the black he would have saved you then. All the blacks were on the lookout for you. They’re all friendly. Don’t take any notice of the tales that you hear.�
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  When I told Stan about deciding to follow the watercourse no matter what, he said that was good judgement and most likely saved my life. Stan was a good bushman and knew the country in the North like the back of his hand. He said, ‘That watercourse you followed was a branch of the Gascoyne River—the Lyons. Our herd should be travelling close to the other end of the Lyons about now.’

  We camped for the night at a boundary riders’ shack. Stan awakened me just after daylight; he estimated that we should catch the herd some time that day. Late in the afternoon we came across tracks made by the herd. Stan said that the tracks were a day old so we should catch up to them before dark. About sundown we reached the camp, close to the bend of a river. Stan told me again that this was the river I had been following. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you were on your way to safety.’

  Darkey and three others were out herding the cattle, but the rest of the gang all ran to shake hands with me, and to my surprise, the Boss grabbed me and kissed me like he was my mother. He told me that he was very worried while I was lost. When we had something to eat they all sat around, and I had to explain what happened and how I managed to stay alive. When I finished telling them my story I put my bed down and turned in for the night. I was very tired.

  Next day I was back into my usual routine of helping Arthur. He made me take things easy, on the Boss’ orders. Arthur told me they had lost about two and a half days getting the herd rounded up after the stampede. Three stations had sent herds to join the drive while I was lost, and the herd was now around the two thousand mark. We had about five hundred miles more to go. Six days later we came to the Kennedy Ranges. The weather was cool and travelling was pleasant. The cattle were all looking fine, and the Boss said he was very pleased with the way things were turning out.