RUNAWAY FOR A DAY

The Escapee.

In keeping with the theme of my latest blogs, I will relate a story about my most adventurous near miss. 

As a kid on a cattle station, I was always on the move or on the run. I think as soon as I could walk I was off down the bush seeking adventure. You could call me a runaway, an infant escapee. Others may have used less flattering descriptions for me.  As you would expect, living in the bush is more hazardous for a kid than one living on a suburban street. For a start there’s no wild pigs, thick bush, deep rivers or snakes in most leafy suburbs.

My parents just had to turn their backs and I was gone. A friend of my parents suggested they tie me to the clothes line if I was outside. My parents used to smack me when I came back but that was no deterrence. Usually I’d disappear for a few hours, usually in the company of two cattle dogs. I remember a female dog called Battler. Those dogs are most probably the reason why I didn’t die. I’m convinced God and those cattle dogs were looking after me.

The day of the Great Escape, I apparently took off in the early morning, heading for the river as usual. Mum was left at the homestead as Dad and the stockmen were out mustering cattle. As you would expect, mum soon went into a blind panic when she couldn't find me. She ran to the river but couldn’t find me. She could see bubbles in the water. She went in but of course I wasn’t there. She ran back to the homestead and tried to use the radio but she couldn’t get it to operate (we didn’t have a phone). She tried to start the car but without success, then she attempted to catch a horse but it bolted. She must have been overwhelmed with fear of what had happened to me. Alone and afraid, she probably had already decided I wasn’t coming home. All she could do was to keep searching, hope and wait.

As for me, I don’t remember much about that day (I was aged only three) except for two events. I can still see clearly in my head, the two cattle dogs attacking a bunch of wild pigs near the riverbank. Whether, I had walked into them and the dogs were defending me, I can’t remember.

The other recollection, is sitting naked (I apparently always took off my clothes when I took off. Thankfully, it’s not a habit I have anymore) and covered in sand in the kitchen of the homestead. Then my mother came into the kitchen, saw me sitting in the chair.  You'd think she would have  grabbed me and smacked my bare behind wouldn't you? Instead, I remember clearly her crying and collapsing on the floor.

I probably kept running away but I never ran away for that long again. Even as a kid, I saw no future in it.

      

    

  

DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.

On the road to the cattle station. Parents and I with a Land Rover.  Circa 1964.

Rule number one when rowing across a river if you’re a teenager. When you’re a  teenage boy crossing a river and you want to tip all of your mates, don’t forget to ask if everyone can swim first.

Somehow, I found myself , aged all of seven, in dad’s rowing boat in the middle of a the river with a bunch of rowdy teenage boys, when some bright spark decided to tip everyone all of the boat. I knew that I couldn’t swim but no one else seemed to know that. I had a thing about learning to swim at the time. Dad tried to teach me lots of time. It was probably a good idea when you live close to two intercepting rivers but I used to go beserk every time dad tried to put my head in the water. I had a big fear of drowning. Still do. 

Of course, it was a little too late to contemplate swimming lessons when you’ve just been tipped out of a boat into the murky depths of the Suttor River. I didn’t even have time to yell. I just remember going down and down, like I was floating in a huge water bubble. I tried to thrash my legs about but it was like trying to climb a set of stairs when there aren’t any stairs. I was going down. I stopped panicking and started surrendering to the void. Then a hand plunged into the water from nowhere and I suddenly found myself being pulled from the deep by one of the teenage boys.

I was coughing and sputtering my guts out but I was alive. Thankfully the boat hadn’t sunk so someone had been able to pull me back into it. Asked quickly if I was all right to which I responded in the affirmative. I quickly followed that by spewing up a lungful full of water. Then one of them of them implored that I don’t tell my father.  And I didn’t until much later. How silly of me. If I hadn’t have been a naïve bush kid, I could have eaten a lot of lollies and chocolates and acquired some more toy cars.     

THE CATTLE MUSTER

Stock yards, Lornesleigh Station.

I used to love it when the stockmen came to Lornesleigh Station to muster. Usually only my parents and I lived on the station along with a sundry collection of pets. 

The arrival of six or seven stockmen meant a change from the isolation for me as we didn’t have visitors very often. For Mum and Dad it meant more hard work on top of what they were already doing.

 Most of Mum’s time was taken up with home schooling me ( she had her work cut out there) and keeping a large homestead operating. With the arrival of the stockmen, it also meant she had to cook two hot meals for the men and make lunches ( usually sandwiches) that they would take on the muster packed in their saddle bags.

 And for Dad it meant having to get up before dawn to wake the stockmen. After breakfast the horses were caught and saddled and the day began. It meant a long day in the saddle in all weather conditions, only stopping for lunch.  By late afternoon a cloud of dust could be seen, then the sounds of hundreds of cattle, cracking whips and shouting men as they came towards the cattle yards.

Unfortunately for my fastidious mother, the cattle yards, which held five hundred head, were located close to the homestead. As a result, lots of dust drifted into the house when they were being used. Poor Mum was always cleaning.

Bob Masso shoeing a horse, Lornesleigh Station.

I would sit on a fence post and watch the men and the cattle with awe as they pushed the cattle into the yards. To a young bush kid, the stockmen were heroes. I remember Dad galloping after a breakaway steer and pushing it back into the mob with several cracks of the stockwhip. Dad was a crack rider, like most of his family. Another time I saw my cousin, Neville Coleman (he’s twenty years older than me), gallop beside a steer, jump off the horse, grab it by the horns and pull it down.

When I look back on it now, I wonder how the stockmen weren’t hurt or killed all the time. I think not only was there a lot of skill and bravery involved but also a measure of recklessness. To be continued.

   

   

TRUE TALES OF THE OUTBACK. PART TWO.

Source: Personal Collection.

Yes, that's me on a horse aged three. My mother is leading the horse but I'm sitting by myself, minus shoes of course.

I grew up on a cattle station called Lornesleigh. It was part of a much bigger holding owned by my family’s company, the Mount McConnell Pastoral Company, that was one thousand square miles in size. 

We were among the first settlers in the north— my family had lived on that same land for nearly one hundred years.

When I was born during a flood (but more about that another time), we carried about ten thousand head of cattle and one hundred horses. 

I lived with three uncles and four aunts, my parents and a cousin who were spread over four homesteads, ninety miles from the nearest town. And not a strip of bitumen in sight. It was pot holed, dusty, rutted and, sometimes, as dry as the proverbial dead dingo. No quick run up to the shop for a cup of sugar. Hell, no.

If we wanted to drive into town, the journey took three hours. The road was roughly a dirt track with lots of creeks to cross and many gates to open. 

My life was far from normal, whatever that means. In what way, you ask?

Well, I had a governess, (that was when Mum wasn’t trying to educate me herself as well as feeding the stockmen and keeping the homestead clean) and I didn’t go to school till I was ten. 

I learned to ride a horse almost before I learned to tie my own shoes. In fact, I never did learn how to tie my shoelaces until much, much later. 

What use were shoes except for a horse?

I learned to shoot and Dad tried to teach me to row a boat and drive a car when I was six. I’d have been fine, except that the boat kept going around in circles and the car kept running off the road. He gave up teaching me after I hit a log on my third attempt (in the car, not the boat).

There’s more to come in my next blog. Stay tuned.