March 28, 2026

Our Andy's Gone With Cattle: The story of the Drovers

Hop on your horse, let's go. And be warned: your bottom will be rubbed raw after just one a day in the saddle. And you could be heaving and swaying up there for several months.

I have some fascinating people to introduce you to. Like the late, legendary Bill Gwydir, who used to drove thousands of cattle thousands of kilometres, through the sweaty monsoonal mud of Queensland, then through the heat and cold and endless sand of South Australia. Bill's stories, of a childhood raised in the saddle, and of horses going blind in sandstorms, are riveting.

Then there's Aboriginal singer-songwriter Kev Carmody, who was also just a young boy when he first accompanied his parents. He recalls the hardships endured by his mother, then sings of it in 'Droving Woman'.

Another Aboriginal woman, a decade earlier, had an even harder life. Evelyn Crawford recounts this life with clarity and humour, in her book, 'Over My Tracks.'

This, and many other adventures await you, in 'Our Andy's Gone With Cattle', the story of the Drovers.

04:03 - A pioneer woman's lonely struggle

06:42 - Some legendary drovers - including Bill Gwydir

15:52 - The unpredictable seasons

18:09 - A kid learns the hard way

26:57 - The Romance of the Saddle Life

28:56 - Remembering Aboriginal stockmen of the Kimberlys

34:21 - Callous Canning and Carnegie: Natives chained up until they revealed water

36:16 - 'Droving Woman': an Aboriginal boy on the track with his parents

56:12 - 'The kid stuck in the saddlebag crying': Horsey tales with humour

WEBVTT

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Ah, the crackling campfire and the wheeling of galas pink against the sunset, and my trusty heart.

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G'day, I'm John Francis, pull up a gum leaf.

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Welcome to the Red Dust Tapes Campfire, where we'll sit around listening to fascinating outback characters of the early 20th century recorded by me long ago.

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The story of the drovers.

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You count them there, and I generally count bullocks and twos.

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Drop the hot number as they gather past.

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Two, four, six, eight, ten, like that.

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See hundred.

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And when the hundred goes past, then you tie your whip in it.

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You whip all the knot and that's hundred, and when you get seven hundred, then you look 'em up and you've got seven knots, then you must have the lot.

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Our Andy's gone to battle now.

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Against drought and red marauder.

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How Andy's gone with cattle now, across the Queensland border.

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He's left us in dejection now.

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Our hearts with him are roving.

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It's dull in the selection now, since Andy went a drovin.

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The Aussie stockmen and women, they had millions of stars to sleep under.

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They covered ridiculous riding distances, sometimes taking them many months.

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They faced dust storms, sand hill crossings, scarcity of water, and raging floods.

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Yes, the droving days, when for the majority of our country, the only way to get cattle or sheep to the markets was to hop on a horse and herd the moo-moo's or the barbars.

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The longest established stock route in the world at 1,850 kilometres, is the canning stock route from Hall's Creek in the Northern Territory to Willuna in Western Australia.

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The route traversed three deserts.

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Apart from about 50 horses, about 15 camels were also used, not just for carrying supplies, but to haul up from wells the large quantity of water needed to refresh the cattle.

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This chapter of Red Dust Tapes is a collection of stories, as well as a few short interviews, about some true legends.

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Included will be a reading from a book on the life of one of my favourites, Evelyn Crawford, an Aboriginal woman who, along the way to having 13 or 14 children, was also a drover.

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Romantic notions of the horses of the land spell as a fantasy dream.

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Ah, yes, and an interview with Kev Carmody, the writer of Droving Woman, a song which pulls no punches when it recalls the hardships and at times heartbreaks of life in the saddle.

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Yeah, sometimes the big stations would break the horses in, and they we'd pass through the station and they give you a horse, you know, to quiten it, to get it used to cattle and stuff a young horse.

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It depends how they were handled.

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I mean, if they were the horsebaker was vicious towards a horse, poor old horse had no way to operate, but um, oh, bite and strike there.

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But let's start with a woman who was often left behind when the men were droving.

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One that our opening poem, Our Andes Gone with Cattle Now, might refer to.

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But this was no fretful type, this was a woman with more grit than you can possibly imagine.

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The story is recounted by Samantha Ellie, a member of the Minaro Pioneers History Group in the Snowy Mountains.

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Born in Ireland, Jane Power West's early life was shaped by her father, Thomas Power, who served in the Royal Marines.

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As a young girl, she accompanied him to his posting at the Norfolk Island Convict Settlement, later moving with her family to Sydney.

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At just 16, Jane married Henry Samuel West.

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Together they journeyed nearly 300 miles by bullock train to Coulomon Station near Kyandra.

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There they built a house from slabs and shingles, ground their wheat by hand, and baked bed or damper in the ashes of their fires.

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Life was harsh and isolated.

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Jane often went for months without seeing another woman, and especially when the men were away herding stock.

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Her first encounter with dingos was unforgettable.

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Awakened by a persistent howling, Jane initially believed her home was under attack by devils, only to discover it was a pack of wild animals circling her house.

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The harsh southern New South Wales climate tested Jane's mettle further.

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She survived the great storm, which left cattle buried in snow drifts, and she even found a bullock hanging by its neck in a tree after the snow melted, a grim testament to the storm's ferocity.

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Jane herself once became lost in a snowstorm near Coomer.

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She sheltered under a tree all night, clutching her horse's bridle, and at dawn trusted the horse to lead her home safely.

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Even in her later years, Jane's determination never waned.

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She thought nothing of riding bare back to Golburn, crossing swollen rivers to fetch supplies for her family, a round trip of 250 miles, so that's 400 kilometres.

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Jane Power West died in 1913 at the age of 90.

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She left a legacy of resilience and experiences that only a pioneer woman in early Australia could have endured.

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Jane and Henry raised eleven children together.

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Now to the Drovers, otherwise known as the Overlanders.

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Let's start with a quick snapshot of a handful of these legends, as related by Ron Shearer for the Christian Science Monitor in 1991 and from Wikipedia accounts.

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In 1881, Nat Buchanan, regarded by many as the greatest drover of all, took 20,000 cattle from St.

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George in southern Queensland to the Daly River, not far south of Darwin, a distance of 3,200 kilometres.

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Cattle stealing has long been a part of Australia's history, and some of the country's biggest droving feats have been performed by cattle rustlers or duffers.

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The most notable one was Harry Redford, who established a reputation as an accomplished drover when he stole 1,000 cattle from Bowen Downs Station near Longreach in Queensland in 1870 and drove them 2,400 kilometres.

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His route took him through very difficult country down the Thompson, Barku, Cooper, and Strazlecki rivers, thus pioneering the Straslecki Track.

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Women have been noted as exceptional drovers as well.

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One of the true legends of the Outback was Edna Zigbine, better known as Edna Jesson, who took over a droving job from her injured father and became a boss drover at twenty-three.

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Along with her brother Andy and four ringers, they moved 1,550 bullocks, the 2,240 kilometres, across the Barclay Tableland to Dajara, near Mount Isa in Queensland.

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Bill Guyder worked the Birdsville track, which runs from Queensland to Mare in South Australia.

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He had two epic trips across Cooper's Creek in 1949 and 1950 when it was flooded.

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An important note here, folks, the so-called Cooper's Creek, now called Cooper Creek, is usually dry.

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It consists of a series of channels over a width of about ten kilometres, and in the occasional flood years the water tears down through Queensland to Cutty Thunder Lake Eyre in South Australia.

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In 1943, Bill Guider drove 700 bullocks up the Diamantina River.

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He faced quicksand and hundreds of miles of sand dunes, but lost only three cattle.

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Ah, yes, listeners, Bill Guider.

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Let's stick with Bill for a bit.

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Here's a newspaper report from 1949.

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And just remember, folks, water flowing at 10 miles an hour equates to about 16 kilometres an hour.

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Fast and unrelenting.

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Here's that newspaper report.

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A stream of 10,000 cattle is moving down the road from Birdsville and Queensland to attempt the crossing of Cooper's Creek, now flooded once again in an attempt to reach the Adelaide market.

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The pioneer trail crossing at Copper Moranna by a South Australian drover, Bill Guider, was made necessary by the greatest volume of floodwaters since 1890, flowing at 10 miles an hour in a two-mile stream into Lake Eyre, filling thousands of square miles of billabongs and lakes on its path to the barren inland sea.

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The flood waters reached the stock route crossing at Copper Moranna, facing Western Queensland cattle owners with the alternative of swimming their cattle across the flood or missing the Adelaide market.

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The first crossing was made by Guaida with a mob of 600 head, mainly steers.

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It was six hours before they were all across.

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The widest channel without a foothold was about three-quarters of a mile, followed by a mile and a half of alternate swimming and wading.

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Yes, folks, that was the voice of the renowned Bill Guider.

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I recorded Bill in 1968 in the cattle yards at Udna Data in South Australia's far north, just to the west of Cutty Thunder Lake Air.

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He was coaxing and cursing cattle into railway trucks, ready for transporting south to Adelaide.

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It was a chance encounter with a legend.

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He had work to do, and the old Gan train, in the last years of its narrow gauge existence, would be pulling out shortly with me on board, so my time with him was brief.

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What a pity.

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He had a great way of spinning yarns, and he could have told me many, many more.

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You said that you started driving when you were nine years old.

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What did you do for school?

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Well, most of the school I had my sister taught me, one of his sisters, which is why I never had much of a chance because I, you know, I might have oh anything up to six weeks, seven weeks with her.

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Then I'd go on another drover trip, or what she taught me I'd forget.

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But I've been gifted to two things as I thank for that.

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That's counting cattle or making up an account.

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I lift me out to no man at counting the mob of bullocks out in the flat.

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How do you count a moderate mob of bullets, big bullocks?

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Because they'd be moving around, wouldn't they?

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You string them out.

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One man gets on that side, on the other side, and another one on this side.

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And you count them there, and I generally count bullocks in twos.

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Drop the hot numbers, they gather past.

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Two, four, six, eight, ten like that.

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See hundred.

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And when the hundred goes past, then you tie your whip in it.

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You whip for the knot, and that's hundred, and when you get seven hundred, the end of the five, you look 'em up and you've got seven knots, then you must have the last.

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There must be very few drovers now compared to what you would know in your day.

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Oh, no comparison.

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That's what them days look.

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1931.

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I went out with Brunette Downs with O'Larf and Nilson.

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We took bullets from Brunette Downs to Tucker Tucker in New South Wales.

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We were twenty-eight weeks and five days on the road with them.

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We traveled right across the Rankin Plain.

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We come down to down the James, down the Georgina, right down to Madury.

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We went across Madury then in through Windora, Quilpee, Charlevell, and right down into New South Wales, Tucker Tucker.

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We were twenty-eight weeks and five days in the road with seven hundred seventeen hundred and fifty of them.

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And when you were out, I suppose you would have seen a lot of other droving plants on the road as well.

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Past them every day.

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Every day, those drovers I can remember.

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Stan Fowler and Lidsters and Old Crouch.

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Sure, strings of them, all them old time drovers, but they're all gone now.

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It must have been a very tough life, uh, droving cattle in those days.

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Well, yes, I can remember one trip out of mob of Mount Leonard's Bullocks, and Blando fellows came just ahead of me.

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Here the mob of Marion Downs Bullocks.

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Well, a dust storm hit us that night.

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That was the worst dust storm that ever I saw.

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And I've seen some bad ones, you know.

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Well, the horse tailor was on watch, and eight o'clock it hit us.

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The two of us were held until three o'clock in the morning.

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The only way you could see 'em was when the light didn't flash.

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She was a dry storm.

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And I said to the horse tailor, I said, Well, we've done a fair wing of these, and anyhow they're all jammed up together.

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But after he went and got the horses, another blow come out.

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There's two men was in bed.

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The dust storm of the sand had blew them, and they were covered right over, the swags were covered right over, and black Billy Cans had been at the fire for months, and the little stones flying at night made them shiny on one side.

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Anyhow, he brought the horses up, and we strung them out and canned them out sixty-one short.

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I rode through them, and they were all old pikers.

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I thought catches, I caught a good horse, and look, I just trotted over the second sandal.

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And here the whole lot of them was just getting up.

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They got out of the wind, you know, that's where they lay down.

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I caught them up, and I went down to old Bland.

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Poor old Bland's dead now.

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He died out here at Mount Isa.

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He was a wonderful drover.

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Now he had his night or one night horse go stone blind that night with the dust, and one bullock.

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They were both stone blind.

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The Bloomin' Bullock was walking on the tail of his counter just like a bullock with sandy blight.

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But he was stone blind, but old Bland reckoned it was the worst night ever he seen, there was the worst night ever, I see.

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Earlier we heard of Bill's epic Cooper's Creek flood crossings, but it's mainly drought in the centre of this country.

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But in those rare major flood times, Cooper's or Cooper Creek and other rivers in the Queensland Channel country can be kilometers wide.

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And this part of the world, the Lake Air Basin as it's called, covers one-sixth of the Australian continent.

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It's the size of France, Germany, and Italy combined.

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All these channels and creeks have one destination, the mighty Cutty Thunder Lake Air, fifteen meters below sea level, that giant salt pan that lies crusty, dry, and simmering, just waiting for the water.

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Most years that water sinks into the ground or is evaporated well before it reaches the lake.

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But on those rare occasions when the northern floods are great enough and the water crashes its way through to Lake Eyre, the lake changes from a seemingly lifeless assault pan into a paradise with fish, frogs, and wildflowers.

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Not to mention the millions of water birds, including pelicans.

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But all this watery stuff is for the exceptional years.

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For instance, when I was up in Birdsville in 1970, the Lake Ear basin was in the midst of a seven-year drought, and it would be another five years before Lake Eyre was again a paradise.

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In many other parts of the inland, the flood or famine is not quite so extreme.

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And in terms of cattle fattening, if you're a moo moo, Australia's inland is a great place to be.

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As an Alice Springs cattleman explained to me years ago.

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The country itself, of course, was uh stricken by this seven-year drought.

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Of course, now we're going into another one, roughly six years in between the breaking of the last drought and uh the starting of this one, and uh we're in quite a critical period as far as feed and water go at this time.

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Where were you before you came here?

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Uh Wicherty Station, which is a hundred miles uh west of Broken Hill, uh in South Australia.

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And were you working with cattle at that stage?

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Uh mixed, yes, by sheep and cattle, yeah.

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What sort of cattle do you run here?

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Uh mainly Hereford.

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What are the Here the the Hereford uh cattle used for mainly?

00:17:32.880 --> 00:17:35.359
Uh it's all beef production in this area.

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They uh ship in fat to the Adelaide markets generally.

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Now, what is this country like for raising cattle?

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This country is uh probably some of the best country in Australia.

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Uh that is uh dry area country.

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Uh but this applies, of course, to any area that is prone to drought because you get the feed that grows when a drought breaks has so much uh nutritious value in it that the cattle respond very, very quickly, and this is what makes this uh area and other dry areas such wonderful fattening areas when we have the seasons.

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We who work in this type of country always regard a a drought of possibly every five to seven years, not necessarily a drought, but a a dry period every five to seven years.

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You consider this to be normal?

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Yes, this is normal in the dry areas.

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And once those cattle are fattened, they'll be off to the market.

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But these markets might be thousands of kilometers away, and before road transport that was a job for the drovers.

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Bob Gerhardt started as a drover at a young age.

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In his reminiscences he wrote eloquently of that life.

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Here are some excerpts from his early days working with sheep.

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Drovers often passed through Broken Hill on their way to the local sale yards and abattoirs, and our back fence was on the boundary of that stock route.

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When mobs of sheep were passing through, I would go and walk behind them, helping the drover with the stragglers and pointing the way to the sale yards about four miles away.

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For his help, he'd reward me with some salt meat to take home, or a potty lamb to rear on our goats.

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When the drover had delivered the sheep, he would pay his men with a check, which they promptly took to the nearest pub, and handing their checks over to the bar to the publican, they would say, Just let us know when it's all cut out, and we'll be on our way again.

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I returned home one day from the sale yards and found a black and tan kelpie sheepdog lying in the shade of our dunny, which was also at our back fence.

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Dunny, by the way, folks, is the outside toilet.

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He was all tucked up, his ribs were sticking out, and the pads of his feet were red raw.

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I gave him a drink of water and a feed.

00:19:56.960 --> 00:20:07.359
I then put some mutton fat on his pads, made him some boots out of soft tongue leather from old miners' boots, like I'd seen the drovers do, and I had him right again in no time.

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When the next mob of sheep came through, I took him along to see if I could get him some work with the mob.

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He worked so well the drover gave me ten shillings for him.

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Ten shillings.

00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:21.039
It was a fortune to me in those days.

00:20:21.759 --> 00:20:25.279
A couple of weeks later, the dog was back with me again.

00:20:25.519 --> 00:20:32.000
When the next drover came along, I sold him again for another ten bob, and that was the last I saw of the dog.

00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:36.960
Our next door neighbour was an Afghan Aboriginal family named Zada.

00:20:37.519 --> 00:20:43.200
They had many boys who were highly regarded by boss drovers as being good stockmen.

00:20:43.599 --> 00:20:48.400
One day a boss drover called at the house and asked the mother for one of her sons.

00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:50.400
They're all away working, she said.

00:20:50.640 --> 00:20:54.240
But there's a boy next door who would like a job, I'll go and get him.

00:20:54.480 --> 00:21:04.240
He then introduced himself to me, saying, My name's Patty McLellan, but everyone calls me Patty the Bastard, so if that's what they think, I may as well be one.

00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:10.160
He hired me for one pound a week and keep, and only half wages whilst we were travelling empty.

00:21:10.400 --> 00:21:13.279
Empty was the time taken to get to your destination.

00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:18.559
Keep meant that he would provide me with three meals a day, which was more than I was getting at home.

00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:23.279
Be ready early tomorrow morning with your swag, he said, and rode away.

00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:24.880
A swag?

00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:28.400
Where would a fourteen-year-old boy get a swag?

00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:32.079
The aboriginal lady next door knew what to do.

00:21:32.319 --> 00:21:40.319
She and my mum got together, and between them they found two old grey blankets, a towel, and a bar of soap and some safety pins.

00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:45.279
They wrapped it all up in a piece of faded canvas and tied it with a bit of rope.

00:21:45.599 --> 00:21:48.960
I thought I was Dick Whittington on his way to London.

00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:59.519
We started out next morning on the empty part of our trip to Mount Wood Station, 400 miles north of Broken Hill on the Queensland border, to take delivery of five thousand.

00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:04.000
And fat sheep and walked them back to the sale yards at Broken Hill.

00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:10.880
The boss drove the wagonette which carried all of our food and equipment, and the cook and myself rode behind on horseback.

00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:14.559
Our daily stages would be approximately forty miles each.

00:22:14.720 --> 00:22:17.599
This is about normal travel with working horses.

00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:19.680
Forty miles a day.

00:22:19.839 --> 00:22:23.599
I'd never even ridden four miles a day, let alone forty.

00:22:23.839 --> 00:22:36.319
By the end of that day I was not only aching all over, but every hair had been pinched out of my inner legs by the action of the stirrup leathers, rubbing against the saddle flaps, and they have never grown back.

00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:46.799
I couldn't say sorry, boss, this job is not for me, and catch the next bus home, because there was no bus, no other work, and no incentive to get back home.

00:22:47.039 --> 00:22:53.279
After ten days travelling we arrived at our destination and took delivery of their sheep from the mustering camp.

00:22:53.440 --> 00:22:59.680
It was always a great occasion, counting the sheep through the race, signing contracts and swapping news.

00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:09.839
My lasting memory of that day was I saw two cooked chops left in their camp oven by the fire from the musterers last meal.

00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:13.279
I had never seen food left over before.

00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:15.680
Their cook said to me, You can have them.

00:23:15.839 --> 00:23:17.680
I didn't take any second telling.

00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:19.359
I was always hungry.

00:23:20.079 --> 00:23:23.519
We started off on the long journey back to Broken Hill.

00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:28.160
Our stages would now be only six miles a day, a government regulation.

00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:30.480
Cattle could travel ten miles a day.

00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:37.279
This regulation prevented ill treatment of stock and dawdling on private properties, eating their precious grass.

00:23:37.519 --> 00:23:50.400
Forward notice had to be given to all the properties that you would be passing through so that they could send a man out to make sure your mob kept moving, didn't spread too wide, and didn't box in any of their flock.

00:23:50.640 --> 00:24:07.680
The government also installed watering places along the stock routes such as artesian boars, wells and dams, and if a caretaker was in charge, it would cost the drover a penny per head for cattle and horses, and ten shillings per thousand for sheep, for one drink only.

00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:14.079
The owners of the sheep allowed a certain number of killers from their mob for the drover's meat supply.

00:24:14.319 --> 00:24:21.519
The drover became very adept at boxing in a few strangers along the way to keep his numbers intact.

00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:23.680
It was an unwritten law at the time.

00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:28.480
When you needed meat you never killed your own, always that of a stranger.

00:24:28.799 --> 00:24:34.799
It was practised by property owners as well as drovers, so the numbers must have evened out in the end.

00:24:34.960 --> 00:24:43.599
A popular saying was that the only time you ate your own meat was when you were invited to your next door neighbour's place for dinner.

00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:48.319
We were about a week into our trip when a ew died lambing.

00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:52.640
The boss said to our cook, Dress that meat and we'll use it as one of our killers.

00:24:52.799 --> 00:24:55.359
It will also help to keep our numbers intact.

00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:57.279
The cook said, No way.

00:24:57.599 --> 00:25:01.680
I've tried that before, and the meat was so tough we couldn't eat it.

00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:08.240
The boss insisted and the cook resisted, so he sacked him, and turning to me he asked, Can you cook?

00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:10.799
No, I said, Well you can now.

00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:12.799
Now is the best time to learn.

00:25:13.119 --> 00:25:20.079
He told me how to cook in the camp oven, mounted his horse, and with his two dogs rode off to take charge of the mob.

00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:21.279
I cooked the meat.

00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:22.640
The cook was right.

00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:24.000
It was very tough.

00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:29.039
The boss said, The best way to handle tough meat is to make your knife sharper.

00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:34.640
There were now only two of us to handle five thousand sheep and eight horses.

00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:43.519
I became the cook, horse tailor, that's the bloke who's responsible for looking after the horses, by the way, the wagon driver and the yard builder.

00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:51.680
At daybreak each morning after breakfast, the sheep would be let out of the five rope and bush peg yard that I had built for them the night before.

00:25:51.839 --> 00:25:56.720
They were pointed in the right direction and allowed to spread out to get the utmost feed.

00:25:56.880 --> 00:26:02.079
I would dismantle the yard, pack up the wagon, and catch up with the boss about midday.

00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:10.559
We'd boil the billy, have a feed, then he would direct me to where our next night camp would be, and the previous procedure would be repeated again.

00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:17.440
We arrived at Broken Hill sail yards with all our numbers intact after approximately ten weeks on the road.

00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:20.559
We then had to truck them to the Adelaide abattoirs.

00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:27.920
Getting sheep into two decker railway trucks was an exercise in sheer frustration.

00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:34.319
The first few had to be physically carried in and kept there until we got the rest of them moving.

00:26:34.559 --> 00:26:45.359
There was only headroom for sheep, so we were down on our hands and knees, crawling along, rattling tin cans and barking like dogs.

00:26:45.599 --> 00:26:52.079
Eventually they were all loaded, and I walked home with my swag on my back and a check in my pocket.

00:26:57.039 --> 00:27:02.319
Ah, Bob Gerhardt, a born stockman, but also a natural yarn.

00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:07.599
Bob went on to work with cattle and claimed he would never go back to sheep.

00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:18.720
The reason why I came here in the first place was to get away from civilisation, to get out into the bush where a man felt as though that he was part of the country, part of the birds and the animals that roamed it.

00:27:19.119 --> 00:27:22.640
I was free, I was comfortable, I had no worries.

00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:31.599
That was Kelly Hargraves, an Alice Springs horseman, waxing lyrical to me in 1969 about the life of a drover.

00:27:31.759 --> 00:27:36.799
You'd ride this wag out and you put your hat on top of your boots, you go to bed and you'd really enjoy it.

00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:41.759
You'd wake up during the night, you'd see the beautiful clear sky with millions of stars.

00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:48.000
Now I'd go as far as to say that you see more stars in the Northern Territory sky than any other state in Australia.

00:27:48.319 --> 00:28:06.000
Pick you up, Scott! Pick you up! Scotty, we call it the good old days.

00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:09.119
The modern generation calls it stupidity.

00:28:09.599 --> 00:28:16.960
But to our idea, you pack up your saddle, uh, your pack saddles, your gear, your tucker, and all that sort of thing.

00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:22.400
You go into the homestead, you say goodbye to your wife or your family, and the boss of her over it was.

00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:27.279
And you could be gone for three months from that homestead, still on the one plate.

00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:30.880
It didn't matter whether it rained, hailed, or shined.

00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:41.599
You still slept in your swag at night, out in the open, you had no cover, but you always had made sure that your bedroll, or swag as we call it, was done up with a good canvas.

00:28:41.759 --> 00:28:47.279
Now it wouldn't matter how much it rained, any rain that came would automatically run off and run away from you.

00:28:47.359 --> 00:28:50.640
And you get up in the morning, your blankets and everything else are still dry.

00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:53.440
The only thing that's wet is a canvas on one side.

00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:57.920
It was live, it was hard, it was rough, and it was tough.

00:28:58.079 --> 00:28:59.599
But it made a man of you.

00:28:59.759 --> 00:29:04.160
Well, we used to live on corned beef and damper and a few boiled spuds and onions.

00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:10.079
Today they take out tin fruit, fresh bread, everything is tin for them.

00:29:10.240 --> 00:29:14.559
They have Land Rovers and utilities and God knows what not to carry it around.

00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:18.079
The old pack horse is a thing of the past.

00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:25.279
A lyrical chronicler of Australian life in the mid-20th century was Patsy Adam Smith.

00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:42.640
One of her books called No Tribesman told of her travels around Australia, meeting and living with Aboriginal people in wildly varying circumstances and with equally varying attitudes to the places they found themselves in in this white man's world.

00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:49.200
No Tribesman is out of print, but well worth tracking down for the honest insight it offers.

00:29:49.599 --> 00:29:57.839
In this excerpt, Patty describes coming across a group of Aboriginal drovers in the Kimberley country in the far northwest.

00:29:58.079 --> 00:30:02.400
Suddenly a little donkey ran by right beside my campfire.

00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:09.759
A bell around his neck went clock clock clock as he went.

00:30:09.920 --> 00:30:14.240
He brayed in ludicrous delight and scampered onto the boar.

00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:23.039
Then, there in the dusk and the dust and the last of the setting sun was a string of horses, with stockmen taking them to water.

00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:25.279
The donkey was among friends.

00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:29.119
I ran to a big rock near the Boababs and climbed it.

00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:42.559
Sticking out of the top of the dust layer were ten gallon stockmen's hats and horses' heads, and the horns of cattle tossing and dodging as stockmen rode the herd to settle it down for the night.

00:30:43.359 --> 00:31:00.000
Suddenly it was dark, it's always sudden here, and with the darkness the birds stopped screeching abruptly, and only then could I hear the complaining of a thousand head of cattle as they were brought into a tight circle and encouraged to lie down.

00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:04.400
In the Kimberlees you sleep out under the stars if you're travelling.

00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:08.960
The night air is gentle, and your fire is always within arm's reach.

00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:11.759
I travelled soft by outback standards.

00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:13.279
I had an air mattress.

00:31:13.519 --> 00:31:22.079
Now with the fire smouldering low, a soft bed and a balmy deep purple sky, I was comfortable, happy.

00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:24.559
But for once I couldn't sleep.

00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:26.559
That excitement was still there.

00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:32.880
I felt as I do in a theatre when the lights go down and the curtain has yet to come up.

00:31:33.119 --> 00:31:34.880
There were noises everywhere.

00:31:35.119 --> 00:31:38.480
Click clock went a bell, surely scores of bells.

00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:42.640
There was a jingling too, like the tinkling of Chinese windbells.

00:31:42.799 --> 00:31:44.319
I didn't think of hobbles.

00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:47.920
Out there the dark was full of moving animals.

00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:55.119
I was never too sure if animals would tread on a prostate sleeper in the dark, and still can't believe that they never do.

00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:57.839
The tinkling disappeared and came again.

00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:03.279
Then the tread of high heeled boots on the dirt track to the boar passed my head.

00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:06.160
One said to another, This been good country.

00:32:06.319 --> 00:32:14.480
I've been walking fifty mile, plenty tucker, been catchin' wallaby, emu, goanna, turkey, plenty beef, you know starve here.

00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:17.440
The scrunch of their footfalls fell away.

00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:20.000
The cattle were lowing gently.

00:32:20.720 --> 00:32:25.680
And then it began gently, softly at first.

00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:31.759
The stockmen began to sing the cattle, make them content and aware of the presence of men.

00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:40.559
If one beast becomes uncertain and panics, the whole herd will stampede within seconds, and no man can stop it.

00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:42.720
So they sing the cattle.

00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:44.880
I strained to hear the words.

00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:59.119
They eluded me, the melody too, but inside my head the rhythm was pounding through from the ground beneath me, and the darkness was part of the words, and the ugly freaked trees, and the men who had walked by my camp.

00:32:59.359 --> 00:33:05.440
You knew then that these were aboriginal stockmen singing their tribal lullabies and corroborey songs.

00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:13.359
As they rode around the closely packed herd, their voices faded in the distance, and then grew loud as they neared me.

00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:21.440
First they were high and clear, then the same rhythm was repeated in the middle registry, then came a deep throbbing in the chest.

00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:28.480
It went on all night, broken sometimes by an elusive whistling, an occasional lowing from a beast.

00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:37.200
At midnight the watch changed, and an older songster took over, but that wild, primitive, disturbing rhythm was the same.

00:33:37.519 --> 00:33:38.960
The moon came up.

00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:52.640
The bloated bottle trees were things of fantasy, great rocks crouched all around, and when the singers passed between me and the moon, their tall hats were silhouetted black against the golden ball.

00:33:53.119 --> 00:33:55.599
And on and on went the song.

00:33:55.920 --> 00:34:04.400
Sometimes I dozed, hating every moment of sleep that blotted out this thing that might never happen to me again.

00:34:04.799 --> 00:34:06.559
Then they were gone.

00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:08.079
It was daylight.

00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:18.960
Where a thousand cattle, men, donkeys and horses had been, was flat red plain, scorching already as the sun sprang up, but empty.

00:34:19.280 --> 00:34:21.280
Even the birds had vanished.

00:34:23.840 --> 00:34:30.800
These were the words of Patsy Adams Smith in her book No Tribesman, published by Rigby.

00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:33.599
You'll find copies through secondhand booksellers.

00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:37.119
Ah the Aboriginal people.

00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:50.079
Let's go back for a moment to the building of that Canning's stock route, the eighteen hundred and fifty kilometer long Northern Territory Western Australia Trail, mainly through desert country.

00:34:50.800 --> 00:35:08.960
It was only made possible by using the local knowledge of many Aboriginal tribes along the way to find where there was water in the form of soaks and springs, which was then, in most cases, blasted and dug into deep, more reliable wells.

00:35:09.679 --> 00:35:16.400
Water, the most essential of all life's needs, is the rarest thing in desert country.

00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:36.960
How incredibly generous of the Aboriginal people to share this precious information that their own people needed for survival to be used not only by strangers, but while they wouldn't have known it at the time, by several hundred thirsty cattle with massive bellies.

00:35:37.840 --> 00:35:40.239
Why would they share that precious information?

00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:56.559
The surveyor Canning was inspired by previous explorers in that region, Wells and Carnegie, although Carnegie, it seems, just used ropes for the restraining.

00:35:56.960 --> 00:36:03.360
The Aboriginal so-called guides were chained up overnight so they couldn't escape.

00:36:03.760 --> 00:36:14.800
Carnegie even denied them water until they gave in, and Canning, on one occasion, is said to have chained up a man's wife until he led them to water.

00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:32.639
The Aboriginal people have been indispensable in developing and maintaining Australia's stock industry.

00:36:32.880 --> 00:36:44.559
An Aboriginal ringer on his horse is an absolute delight to behold, wheeling and whooshing their mounts with the grace of a ballet dancer and with the focus and skill of a footy player.

00:36:44.719 --> 00:36:51.599
But it's a gruelling life, hard, dangerous, often with bitter rewards.

00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:57.760
Consider these words about the life of an aboriginal woman and her husband in the saddle.

00:36:58.480 --> 00:37:04.400
She buried him down on the edge of town where the brigolo suckers on the cemetery creep.

00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:07.920
She stood with them children in a heavy brown gown.

00:37:08.159 --> 00:37:10.719
What you want you just can't always keep.

00:37:11.599 --> 00:37:14.639
I'm sorry, I says, I knew him so well.

00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:22.000
Though your body is young you just never can tell when the hand of fate rings the final death knell.

00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:24.960
She just turned with the saddest of smiles.

00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:32.960
She says At the start, well, we knewed it so hard we were always dealt the severest of cards.

00:37:33.199 --> 00:37:38.480
Honeymoon spent droving Jamison's stock through the wildest winter you've seen.

00:37:38.800 --> 00:37:45.280
Romantic notions of horses and land, they were soon dispelled as a fantasized dream.

00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:51.679
Watching cattle at night in the midwinter cold turns a person both wiry and old.

00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:54.400
You might recognise those words.

00:37:54.559 --> 00:38:01.119
They're from Droving Woman, a much revered song by Aboriginal songwriter Kev Carmedy.

00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:05.920
There's also a popular version by Missy Higgins and Dan and Paul Kelly.

00:38:06.079 --> 00:38:08.719
We'll hear Kev's own version shortly.

00:38:08.880 --> 00:38:10.800
But first, here's Kev Carmody.

00:38:11.039 --> 00:38:14.079
Well it came from you know my admiration for the women.

00:38:14.239 --> 00:38:18.239
You know, like Mum put food on the table like every day.

00:38:18.320 --> 00:38:22.400
Paul and Rain, they just held the whole camp together.

00:38:22.480 --> 00:38:25.280
I mean, Mum, Mum, in a sense, was a boss.

00:38:25.679 --> 00:38:31.840
Uh Dad was the um on the camp, dad was the um the contractor, as it were.

00:38:32.079 --> 00:38:43.280
You know, sometimes the the big stations would break the horses in and they we'd pass through the station and they give you a horse, you know, to quite it to get it used to cattle and stuff, a young horse.

00:38:43.519 --> 00:38:45.119
It depends how they were handled.

00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:53.599
I mean, if they were the horsebacker was vicious towards the horse, poor old horse had no way to operate, but um, oh, bite and strike, yeah.

00:38:53.760 --> 00:39:07.519
Then you had to put a rope around the neck with a slip knot on it, throw the rope back on the ground, lead the horse into it with his back leg, and lift one foot off the ground on you on the side you hopped on, so it was only on three legs, just to get started with the poor thing.

00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:14.000
Kev spoke of cattle and horses being spooked and in danger from lightning.

00:39:14.239 --> 00:39:22.400
Stock routes when they were following a road used to be ten chains or approximately two hundred meters wide.

00:39:22.639 --> 00:39:32.239
In places there would be a two-meter high galvanised netting fence down each side, which were designed to keep the dingos out.

00:39:32.559 --> 00:39:50.000
In stormy weather, the stockmen had to try to keep the cattle, their horses and themselves clear of these fences, because Kev says if one of these fences was struck by lightning, it would run the whole length of the fence and kill anything that got near it.

00:39:50.239 --> 00:39:58.719
So a frightening task in the dark when you're working with a few hundred head of startled cattle and nervous horses.

00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:03.119
As Kev says, this wasn't my little pony stuff.

00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:13.280
The story that you're you're relating here, or perhaps a combination of stories, is from your own experience and and from the the lives of your your parents, is that correct?

00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:14.960
Yes, and what we heard.

00:40:15.119 --> 00:40:17.039
I mean, that was the thing about driving.

00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:27.599
You'd pass through a uh a little tiny settlement, you know, or you'd pass through a big station, and the men working there would come out because there was word of mouth and they'd come out and they camp with you.

00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:39.840
Or come to your camp over nighttime as you were going through, you had to move, you know, five mile or eight miles, depending on whether you had uh bullocks or whether you had cows and calves, to keep your permit.

00:40:40.159 --> 00:40:44.159
That was to keep you moving through the big stations and not eating their glass.

00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:47.119
Yeah, this is back in the 1950s when I was a kid.

00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:48.880
I was on a horse when I was four.

00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:52.719

Our Andy's Gone With Cattle: The story of the Drovers

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