THE OLD CATTLE STATION.

Lornesleigh Station was my first home and was so until the family sold up in the late 1960's. It was founded by my great grandfather, John Clark in 1870. Sadly, the new owners were a multi-national and let it go to ruin, so these photographs are the only reminder of what it used to look like. 

Upstairs verandah with father's gun cupboard and my bed.

The wood stove. Great to be around on a cold morning.

The lounge. A few parties in here.

Downstairs. It was the coolest part of the house. There were no fans or air-conditioners then.

Dad in the kitchen.

Rain water tank. 

A bedroom. Note the pistol hanging off the bed.

John Clark: Forged Steel.

My great, grandfather, John Clark in the centre with grandfather Bell and my grandmother. Circa, 1915.

In this picture, John Clark is an old man; a very old man in those times. Clark was ninety-five when he died in 1917. At this time of his life in 1915, Clark was blind and was cared for by his daughters. I wonder as he poses for the camera, if he is reflecting on his life; a life forged by hardship and heart break but also blessed with huge monetary reward.

From humble and tragic beginnings in Scotland, Clark was placed in the care of a tyrannical uncle at a young age. Unable to bear the harsh treatment any longer, he ran away at the age of twelve to make his own way in life.
 Clark never received a formal education and  he remained illiterate throughout his life. Clark's education instead, came from the school of 'you have to fight for everything'.  From humble beginnings, John Henry Clark would become one of the largest land owners in Australia. His land holdings were so vast that they would have covered nearly seven per cent of his former homeland, Scotland.
But it all came at a huge price; his first wife and their child died tragically of disease as did two of his children by his second marriage.
He was renowned a tough and wily man; he had to be. But when a lot of European settlers were taking Aboriginal land with acts of genocide, Clark worked in with the local Aborigines. I also think, he was a man ahead of his time.
Clark would kill cattle for the local Aborigines to eat and he employed them on the cattle stations. One of Clark's most trusted employees was an Aboriginal man named Roddy Clark. Roddy is apparently buried next to Clark. One of his grandchildren was even delivered by Aboriginal mid-wives at Lornesleigh Station.

 As for vices and dislikes? Clark did like whiskey but he was never a heavy drinker. He did have an immense dislike of Catholics. Why, I do not know. Clark disliked Catholics so much that he refused to attend my grandmother's wedding to my grandfather, Richard Bell.

As John Clark had only two surviving daughters, he left all of his land holdings to them. No son in laws were put in charge which caused friction within the family. I haven't found any other women of that time operating a large pastoral company in Australia. Yes, he was a man ahead of his time.

A mountain is named after him on one of the former family properties but I think John Clark should be memorialised more; after all, if it hadn't have been for people like him busting their guts, Australia would not have become the prosperous country it is today.
 

SWIMMING WITH CROCODILES. PART TWO.

My father was going back to the river care of the crocodile.  He had heard recent reports from stockmen that a crocodile had been in the river near the homestead. Having just been nearly taken crossing the river overnight, there was clear evidence of that.  He knew it would be most probably at the Big Hole as it was known. Crocs liked to sun themselves during the day and where better; The Big Hole.

The Big Hole was a large bend in the Suttor River which flowed past the Lornesleigh homestead. Its measured depth was over twenty feet deep. A large sand bank jutted into it and it was a great place to swim on a hot day.  Years later, I remember that it looked like an expanse of beach.  Only difference is the river sand is course and the water wasn’t rolling waves but murky still water. In fact, my mother had been recently swimming in The Big Hole while she had been pregnant with me. Obviously a croc was not in the big hole at the time or was it?

My father left the homestead armed with a German Mauser bolt action rifle 9.3 calibre. It had previously belonged to a game warden in Kenya. The homestead was two miles from the Big Hole. Dad said he stalked the croc upwind along the river for a mile. He knew by previous experience that crocodiles were sensitive to smell and movement.  Getting to a hundred yards from the big hole he was able to first see sight of his target. Thinking it was going to one crocodile, instead it was two; a male and female.

My father stepped slowly forward, but started to sink into a patch of soft sand up to his waist. He pulled himself out of it but the noise of his exertion, started to unsettle the crocodiles. They slid slowly towards the edge of the sand. Dad knew he only had seconds to shoot. He slipped off the safety, aimed and fired just as they slipped into the water. The male buckled as it was hit and then both crocodiles disappeared under the dark water. 

Thinking he had missed, dad returned disappointed to the homestead. A few days later, the mailman was crossing the river when he spotted the male crocodile floating dead on its back. It measured 16 feet ( 4.8 metres). The female crocodile disappeared but there were always suspected sightings over the years. Swimming in the river always made me feel a little uneasy as a kid. Would the female crocodile ever return? Thankfully, she never did.   

SUFFER THE LITTLE BUSH CHILDREN

GEORGINA, CONSTANCE, MY GRANDMOTHER.

When I thought about writing this blog I knew it was going to be distressing. The death of children is heart rending for everyone. But just imagine what it was like in the Australian outback one hundred years ago when a child got injured or took ill.

No doctor for a hundred miles; a trip that involved a ride in a buggy over a barely formed road. If you could get to a doctor in time he couldn’t have done anything for infectious diseases that were still around like diphtheria.

 Certainly he could give pain relief (usually opium), set broken bones or do a basic operation. At the turn of the century, one third of the deaths in the vast region of North Queensland (where the family had settled), were children under ten.  Most deaths were from dysentery, scarlet fever and diphtheria.  

John Clark as you can remember had already lost his first wife and their baby girl. Enough was enough you’d think. Unfortunately, tragedy would strike again and it struck twice. Esther and John Clark had had four girls over the years, Jane Florence (my grandmother), Minnie Maud, Georgina and Constance Isabel.

In 1889 Georgina aged five died from a ruptured appendix and in 1892, Constance died from diphtheria. They both died at the Lornesleigh homestead and were buried near the stockyards. Their headstones are still there despite flood waters having passed over them several times. To see your children die is suffering beyond belief and then having to bury them on top of that. How do you keep functioning? I guess, in those days you had to keep going or you gave up and died. For Esther and John, they kept going.

I remember as a kid at Lornesleigh looking at the ornate headstones of the two girls side by side, the graves covered in old seashells. I thought about the two girls and wondered how life would have turned out for them if they had lived. I still think about them occasionally. Probably always will.   

GRAVES OF THE TWO GIRLS.

WARNING: GREAT GRANNIE'S GOT A GUN.

GUN TOTING ESTHER GEARY.

In 1880, John Clark certainly married a woman suited for the rugged Australian outback. My great grandmother, Esther Geary, was no genteel, fainting lady from the city salons. 

She was a true Geary but she was genteel in a way; she didn’t have a police record. In turn, she married a tough man who was creating a cattle empire in one of the most remote and hostile parts of Australia.  During this time, Europeans were encroaching on Aboriginal land and the Aborigines were fighting back.  When she came to Lornesleigh Station in 1880, there was a tribe of Aborigines living at the nearby river.

There was a frontier war going on between Europeans and Aborigines across North Queensland. It was brutal as any war with many thousands of people losing their lives, many been innocently massacred. For the Aborigines, it ultimately meant the loss of their culture and traditional lands. I will speak more about the frontier war in future blogs.

ABORIGINAL FAMILY. Source: janesoceania.

Unlike his contemporaries who were employing savage methods to rid their stations of Aborigines, John Clark wanted to live in harmony with them. I think he thought that this vast land was big enough to support everyone.  A great cause of conflict on cattle stations was the spearing of cattle.  Usually the Aborigines speared the cattle as they were easy targets which in turn resulted in reprisals. At Lornesleigh, John Clark would kill cattle for the Aborigines thus avoiding the savage cascade of events. It was, I guess, frontier diplomacy.

Sometimes, there was a breakdown in communication. My great grandmother was at the homestead by herself one morning when a lone Aboriginal man decided to visit. She was in the kitchen.The stockmen and John Clark were out mustering cattle. The Aboriginal male demanded tobacco. When Esther told him she didn’t have any he became agitated. He was agitated enough that Esther produced a rifle and told him to leave. Unfortunately for him, he laughed and said, “White Mary can’t shoot.”

She fired over his head, the bullet going through the wall of the kitchen. Her last sight of him was him tearing through the bush back to the safety of the Aboriginal camp.