The Outback Holds Secrets. Watch the trailer of my book, Homecountry.

BUSH CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA. THE PREPARATION.

BUSH CHRISTMAS. 1928. MY DAD IS IN THE FRONT ROW. THIRD FROM THE LEFT. Source: personal collection.

 Preparation for Christmas started months before the festive day. If presents or foodstuffs were not picked up during rare trips to town, the mailman brought the rest. My parents liked buying treats like English biscuits, cheeses or marmalade jam from city department store catalogues. The mailman, Mister Riggs, brought most of it on his weekly trips. Unbeknown to me, he even brought most of my presents. Mister Riggs was like a bush Santa.

It was all very English. That's how it was celebrated then, even if the weather was always blazing hot. An English Christmas?  We liked to celebrate as if we are still in the old country; we imagined we were having a white Christmas; snow, pine trees and fireplaces.  Many of us dreamed about having a white Christmas in Europe.

There were not any fans or air conditioners at the homestead. Remember, this is the 1960's. The homestead did have fly screening. Without the screening the homestead would have been swarming with flies. There was refrigeration though; supplied by six kerosene fridges that sat in the kitchen which was the size of a small house. The only cooling agents available were beer and soft drink. A country pub probably did not not carry as much beer stock as Lornesleigh station.

The Lornesleigh homestead was also well stocked with food and good cheer. Mum and Dad loved having guests for Christmas, the more the merrier. The Christmas tree had been put up in the dining room a week before Christmas. The tree was not a pine tree but a heavily decorated gum tree that Dad has cut out of the bush. It was always hard to put a star on the top of a gum tree. Everyone pitched in with the decorations. 

Guests came and went. Some stayed. They were from the next door stations (next door means they are twenty miles away, at least), stockmen without families, uncles and aunts who lived on the other family stations, the mailman and his kids and my two older half-sisters who usually brought their friends from the city. Even strangers were welcomed. My half- sisters had been here for weeks, playing the record player, staying up late, laughing, dancing and swimming in the river.

I tried to join in but I was seen as an annoyance. I’m way too young. That did not stop me of course. If I got sent to bed I’d just get out again. Hey, it’s Christmas. My two half- sisters were accomplished musicians so the piano in the lounge room was given a good work out. More singing and dancing. Mum and Dad don’t care, they would join in.

 They did not complain when the modern music was played ( Beatles, Rolling Stones etc). My parents had their favourite music; Marty Robbins, Tom Jones. It was all played loud and everyone enjoyed themselves.

 To end the long day, Dad always played Christmas carol compilation records into the wee hours.  To be continued.                        

    

A HARD WAY TO WORK

Neville Coleman, Lornesleigh Station.

Being a stockmen was a hard way to live, work and die. There are two graves of stockmen that I know of on the old family stations to prove it. Remember, that station is only one of many cattle stations in northern Australia. It would be interesting to know how many men and women died getting the meat to the table.

In the old days before cars and airplanes, where you died you usually got buried for obvious reasons. I was told of a stockman being killed after he was thrown from a horse at a place called Long Mick Swamp. The famous bush poem, The Dying Stockman could have been his epitaph:

“Wrap me up in my stockwhip and blanket

And bury me deep down below.

Where the dingoes and crows won’t molest me

In the shade of the coolibah tree.

Bob Masso, Lornesleight Station.

Then there’s the sad tale of a young stockman who came from the city named Andrew Rutherford who drowned trying to swim across a river with his horse. His parents later sent a headstone which stood for many years over his grave on the riverbank where he was retrieved. 

I remember as a kid in the late 1960s, a stockman called Sam Gooley on the next door property dying after he crashed into a tree whilst galloping through thick shrub. The owner of the station, Bill Hatfield, later told Dad that he hadn’t seen injuries like that since his time as a soldier in North Africa.

As I know, stockman wouldn’t have wanted me to dwell on the dangers of their occupation. They were a fatalistic, hard-living, laconic lot with a dry sense of humour. I guess part of the Australian identity comes from them. So I’ll end with a funny story.

My Grandmother Bell was a good boss. So much so that she used to make pies for the men ( apple pies were her speciality) to take on their long mustering trips. The  dozen or so pies were carefully packed into pack saddles that were slung over the pack horse’s back. That day the pack horse wasn’t having any of it and before they could strap the saddles closed, the horse had bucked and thrown the pies all over the paddock.

 I have a feeling that horse wasn’t very popular that day.      

   

TRUE TALES OF THE OUTBACK. PART ONE.

Lots of people have asked me whether my first novel, Homecountry, is true. In case you haven’t read it, it’s a thriller set in the Australian outback, in a mythical town called Clarkes Flat. 

I like to call my book gritty because it doesn’t pull any punches.

Clarkes Flat doesn’t exist on a map. 

But maybe there’s a measure of truth in Homecountry, but only a little bit.

Like Peter Clancy, I grew up in the bush in northern Australia. For those of you who are not from here, the bush is what we call rural Australia. I lived on a cattle station as a kid (a cattle ranch, for my American cousins).

 It was a cattle station about the size of Luxembourg and three generations of my family had worked it, brought up their families on it and died for it. I was the fourth and, sadly, the last of a long line.

I loved growing up in the bush surrounded by stockmen, animals, crocodiles, and more things that can kill you than you could ever possibly imagine. That was a normal life to me.

I heard a lot of bush tales and I lived a lot of things most urban people could never imagine. One day, my sister in law, her eyes as big as saucers while listening to the stories said I should write down what I heard and saw.

Now, I’m not fussed on bush poetry. In my mind they don’t say how hard it really was, and they romanticise it far too much.  I feel much the same about the movies that have been made about bush life. What a load of crap.

 Most people wouldn’t last a minute in the Australian bush—it will kill you in a heartbeat if you don’t know what you’re doing. It can also be very isolating. 

My blog, if you stick with it, will uncover the funny, tragic, ugly and beautiful truth about the Australian outback experience, starting first with my own. 

It’s been a love affair that has endured a lifetime.