6. Droving

In early January in 1950 we set off with Poddy Finche to Broken Hill where we spent a few days and then to his sheep station near White Cliffs where we stayed for about a week learning a bit about how a sheep station works.  Before we left White Cliffs, Poddy Finche said that he was having five thousand sheep driven from a station near Bourke to Cunnamulla in Queensland and would we like a job with the drover.  “Yes please” said Harry so off we went to Bourke.

On the way to Bourke, cross country on dirt tracks all the way, Poddy pulled up and said “there is a kangaroo over there.  Would you like to shoot it?”.  Graziers usually shot any kangaroo they saw because they considered them competitors for their sheep’s grass.
Harry took the grazier’s rifle and at about 75 metres shot the roo.
It went down but was still alive so I said you will have to go and put it out of it’s misery but Harry couldn’t be bothered.
So I, not being able to leave it to die a slow death, went to do it.  I don’t why I didn’t take the rifle, it was a female roo only about 1.6 metres tall and posed no serious threat to me so on the way picked up a stout stick to hit it over the head and found when I got there it had a joey in it’s pouch which, as I approached, it dumped on the ground and came at me slashing at my stomach with it’s back legs.
I jumped to the side and at the same time bashed it on the head, but the stick broke leaving me with about 100mm of weapon with which to defend myself.
The roo turned and came at me again and I just had to keep bashing it with a fist full of stick until it went down.  Then I found a stouter stick and killed it .
The joey was in a bush and I found that the bullet had broken it’s leg so I had to kill the poor little thing as well.  I really did not want to do that.
I lost quite a lot of respect for Harry over that incident, as a shooter you should finish the job properly and our friendship, for me, was never quite the same afterwards.

At the sheep station near Bourke we signed up with the drover for four pounds and ten shillings ($9.00) per week plus our food.  He supplied the horses and equipment.
 We spent the first day rounding up and counting out five thousand sheep and formed them into a mob for droving.
 The droving team consisted of the boss drover, Harry and I, three other stockmen and the cook with the tuck wagon (called chuck wagon by Americans), four cart horses and two stock horses each.
Each morning before day break we would get up to a breakfast of bacon and eggs or mutton steak and eggs, make our own lunch and have our horse saddled by the time the sheep were ready to move.
This drover had a good reputation for getting the maximum number of sheep to their destination, not only alive but in good condition.  He moved the sheep at their own pace and organized everyone to work around the needs of the sheep which meant we slowed down at the hot part of the day and even allowed the sheep to graze or rest in the shade during the mid-day heat.  While the sheep rested we took the opportunity to eat our lunch and have a snooze in the shade with them.

Each day one of the stockmen would be appointed the horse tailer who would also be the cook’s assistant.  While the rest of us set off with the sheep the horse tailer and the cook were left to pack up the camp, load it onto the tuck wagon and if there was good fire wood around, load some on the wagon in case there was none at the next camp.
The wagon and the spare horses would then make their own way to the next camp which had to be where the sheep could be watered and they would have dinner ready for us when we arrived at sunset.

Dinner was always meat and three vegetables and surprisingly, always sweets.  The cook had wheat bags full of dried apricots, dried figs, dried apples and prunes which he served with custard.
After my first long day in the saddle I had blisters on my bum so the boss made me the horse tailer for the second day but I rode on the wagon to give my blisters a chance to heal.
At night we erected a ‘sheep break’ around the mob which was a portable fence made of star pickets and light rope that could be rolled up and stowed on the tuck wagon.  We all had to roll out our swags spaced evenly around the perimeter of the sheep so that if the sheep were spooked during the night by dingos or something we were already in a position to contain them.  Two stockmen were appointed each night to sleep with their boots on and their horses saddled in case of such an emergency.  One was supposed to stay awake while the other slept in two hour shifts.
We had to carry everything we needed for the 12 hour day ahead on our horse.  We each had two saddle bags in which we carried our food and a waterbag that hung around the horse’s neck.  Harry and I also had an ex-army water bottle that hung on our belt.  You needed a coat for the early mornings and evenings.
When approaching water, from a mile (1.6 km.) back the sheep were gradually guided into a long thin line, about three abreast, and the line would be guided so that it was strung around the edge of the water.  This was so that they would not arrive at the water in a mob, when the sheep on the water’s edge would be pushed into the water by the sheep pushing from behind.  At every waterhole all waterbags had to be filled because as the boss said, the next waterhole might be dry.
The water in one waterhole was muddy and not a clear spot could be found to fill our waterbags so we had to fill them with muddy water.  Later in the day I came across a bush track and there was a government main roads department water tanker on the side of the track.
 After looking around to see if anyone was about and checking and tasting the water I emptied my waterbag of the muddy water and filled it from the tanker.  While giving my horse a drink out of my hat Harry came along and was emptying his waterbag when the boss rode up and said “what do you think you are doing?”.
Harry explained and the boss said “you never empty your waterbag when you are not sure you can refill it, you don’t know if there is enough water left in that tanker to fill your waterbag”.

But that was typical of the boss’s attitude towards Harry.  Harry could do nothing right in the eyes of the boss and therefore in the eyes of the other stockmen.
This life of a stockman was what Harry had dreamed of since he was 12 years old but he was basically a city boy and had had no experience of country life and there are many every day little things that country people know have to be done and automatically do them.  He also had some romantic idea about a drover’s life which was far from reality.

On the other hand the boss could see me do no wrong.  “Come with me and we will pick out a sheep to kill for food”, he said “and I will show you how to go about it”.
We dragged the sheep to an appropriate tree with a branch at the right height.  “Now right under this branch we dig a hole for the blood and guts to fall into, I never leave a mess where I camp” he said.  So I was digging the hole when I got the crow bar and just dropped it into the middle of the hole to get a better grip.  The boss said “ I can see you have dug plenty of holes before”.  A few I said, but how can you tell” Because you always drive the crow bar into the centre of the hole before you start, just like you did then”.
He used to say “I can make a first class stockman out of you, You would own your own rig in no time”.
I said “do you really think so? but thought “not bloody likely, this is not the life for me”.

At the next camp site the boss said quietly to me “if Harry left this job would you go with him?”.
I said “yes I would have to go with him, he is my travelling mate”.
He said “I admire you for sticking with your mate, that’s the right thing to do”, and I thought “I wonder what that was about?”.

We had started droving from a sheep station South West of Bourke and after droving for seven days apparently we were only about thirty or forty kilometres North of Bourke.  That evening the boss’s wife turned up in a car and took him back into Bourke to celebrate his birthday.
The next morning at first light they arrived back at camp with another stockman and the boss said to Harry and I “here’s your money for one week, I’m sending you back to Bourke with my wife.”
Suddenly we were out of there, Harry was disappointed but I was jubilant.  I really did not want to be droving for another five weeks.

We found accommodation in a grand old hotel that was now a cheap boarding house, like a back-packers.  Obviously Bourke had seen much richer days.
Our room was big and luxurious with grand furniture and French doors opening onto a balcony.  It was great to have a hot soapy bath after more than a week.
 While going and coming, looking for either a job or a lift out of town, we noticed that there was always a notice hanging on the door knob of the room next to us which said “VACANT” and vaguely wondered what it meant because we knew someone occupied the room, we had seen her out on the next balcony.  Then we saw that the notice sometimes changed to “OCCUPIED”

There were no jobs available in Bourke so we got a lift on a truck to Dubbo where we arrived in the evening.  After having a meal in a café we found a boarding house but decided not to take a room unless we found a job and to sleep in a rather nice park in our swags.
The next morning we found a newspaper in a rubbish bin and were looking through it for work when I read the court report which was full of people being sent to jail for sleeping in the park.
So when a policeman came along on his bike and said while looking at our swags “where did you two fellows sleep last night?” “
We said “In the Palace boarding House just down the road there”.

We found a job at a concrete roof tile factory for four pounds a week ($8.00) where they wanted us to start the next Monday.  After calculating that with our boarding house rent and buying our food there would be no money left to eventually pay our way out of Dubbo we decided to get out while we still had some cash.

Harry sometimes got this really severe fever which usually lasted only about 24 hours if he took good care of himself, otherwise he would finish up in hospital.
He could feel this fever coming on and we spent the rest of the day keeping warm, keeping Harry comfortable and feeding him aspros.
I decided we had to find shelter for the night but before surrendering to a boarding house, which would cost money, looked around the town and found a sports oval with a grandstand which I reasoned would have changing rooms, toilets etc under it.
 On checking I found an unlocked door to changing rooms which were in the process of being painted.  There were drop sheets and cans of paint all over the floor.
This was all right, a big room with an ensuite of six toilets, six hand basins and six showers all I had to do was clear a space amongst the paint tins and roll out our swags.
We had a lovely long hot shower.
To keep Harry warm we combined our swags and slept together with Harry sweating out his fever all night.
Early next morning we were woken by a painter saying “come on, breakfast is ready” and they had a smoke outside while we packed up.
Harry’s fever had passed and the painters told us of the best service station to wait at to get a lift.
 We walked to the tile factory to tell them that we decided not to take the job and then to the service station to wait for a lift.

Our lift in a truck took us to Orange where Harry wanted to get a job and when we had enough money to then go to Sydney.  I was subtly trying to steer Harry towards home and I definitely did not want to go to Sydney.
We got a job at the Email refrigerator factory and found a boarding house similar to the one in Bourke which used to be a grand old hotel with a balcony off each room.  The other boarders were really rough men who used to go to the pub every night and often sported punched up faces and sometimes bandages at the breakfast table.  Harry and I did not drink except on formal occasions when we would have a sherry before dinner and sometimes a glass of wine or beer with dinner or at a party.  We never got drunk and it was unusual for us to go to a pub.  The minimum legal age then for drinking alcohol was 21 years.

At the factory I was shown how to assemble refrigerator door hinges and Harry was given the job of attaching the freezer doors.
The foreman said that there was a quota we had to make every day and if we did not meet that quota we would lose our jobs.  So we worked as hard as we could hoping we would make our quota.
Next morning the union representative said to us “you guys produced far too much yesterday, it makes the rest of us look like we are not doing as well as we could”.
To work down to the quota the union wanted, the work day was very relaxed indeed with a great deal of chatting and telling yarns.
This factory made two or three brands of refrigerators.  If I remember correctly, Westinghouse, Frigidaire and Kelvinator, the only difference being the badge on the door.

Harry met a very attractive girl who also played the guitar and sang country and western.  One night a week she had a half hour spot on the local radio station.  She was keen to get a male singer on her show and asked Harry.  Harry invited her to our room so she could hear him sing and they decided to do a duet.  After she left a waitress came to our room and said fiercely
 “Madam wants to see you two in her office NOW”.
Madam said “have you two had a girl in your room” “ Yes” we said and explained why.
Do you not know that, in New South Wales, it is a criminal offence to have a girl in your room in a public boarding house or hotel?”.
“No” we said.
Well if you do it again I will have to phone the police and you will be arrested.
Nice place this NSW we thought.  (Nice and bloody backward).

The wages were not good enough for us to save enough money to go to Sydney so after two weeks at the factory I convinced Harry to go to Griffith where the peach picking season would be starting.  We could make twice as much money picking peaches.  So we gave the required one week notice.

Discussing this with the guys at the factory we said we would be hitching down the coast road because, although it was further, to get a lift you needed a lot of traffic.
They all disagreed and said that the inland road was the best route.  It was shorter, sealed all the way and plenty of traffic, so at daybreak next morning we were out on the inland road hitching a ride.

Our first lift was with a farmer who took us to the turnoff to his farm in the middle of nowhere.  We waited for 36 hours camping on the side of the road before the next vehicle came along.
After 12 hours we had run out of food and were getting a bit hungry.
Over the fence on the other side of the road there was a hut that looked like it might be a boundary rider’s hut, we had seen no one about all day and decided to climb the fence and visit.
Immediately we got over the fence about four savage sounding blue healers appeared from under old drums, under the hut and from behind bushes and we were back over the fence in one leap.
Safely back on the road we stopped to look and saw that the dogs were actually all tied up.
After about another hour when we saw that the barking dogs didn’t bring anyone we decided to give it another try, climbed the fence and knocked on the door while the dogs were straining at their chains.

Being no answer we tried the door which was open and on the table was a lovely big uncut loaf of bread, sitting on a cutting board with a bread knife next to it.  In the cool safe we found a full pound of butter, some cheese and apricot jam.  Cheese and apricot jam is my favourite sandwich so we decided to have a slice and it was so good we had another then another until only a quarter of the bread was left.  We could have eaten more but decided that we had better leave some for whoever owned it.

After that we thought it prudent to walk on a few kilometres and had just made camp under a tree on the side of the road when we heard a rifle shot not far away so we walked towards it to see if we could see anyone.
About a kilometre away we found a farmer who had just shot a nice young cow that had become hopelessly entangled in the barbed wire fence.
After chatting telling him what we were doing he said “would you like a couple of nice fresh steaks for your dinner?” and proceeded to slice them off for us.

The next morning a small truck came along and offered us a lift to West Wylong where we bought sandwiches for lunch from a small weatherboard delicatessen with steps up to the front door.
While eating our sandwiches sitting on a bench type seat on the footpath under the delicatessen verandah, with our swags and backpacks a policeman came along.
“Where are you two from”, he said,
“From Mildura” said Harry,
“Where are you going,”
“To Griffith”,
“You are going the wrong way then,  you are from Sydney aren’t you?”
 I said “no, we have been travelling for nearly two months, we left Mildura in early January, been to Broken Hill then to White Cliffs then to Bourke, then Dubbo, then Orange, now we are on our way to pick peaches at Griffith.
 “What’s your name? “ he said to me, “What age are you?”,
We told him,
“Where did you live in Sydney?”.
I said “why do you think we are from Sydney!?”
“We get a lot of people from Sydney trying to escape the law through here” he replied.
“What’s your address in Mildura then?”.
Because we were able to give him our Mildura addresses without hesitation he seemed to be satisfied and said “well don’t let me see you here tomorrow”. Policemen in my experience so far have always been friendly and helpful and this aggressive attitude I had not met before.  Harry and I by maintaining a friendly and conversational attitude I think defused a situation that could have become difficult

We waited at the service station where we got a lift in a transport truck to Griffith.

Harry knew Griffith because he had been there before and we went straight to a rooming house situated on top of a shop in the main street.  It was crummy but cheap.

The peach picking season was just starting and we could not find a job.  They all said “come back in a week or two” so we took a job at the packing sheds loading cases of fruit onto the goods trains which was all done by hand.
 At this job I could not do a thing right.  The foreman had it in for me, every time I scratched myself he would appear from nowhere saying “loafing again”.
After a week at this job we got word that the biggest peach grower wanted pickers but being the biggest they paid the worst rates, we enquired around but, no other offers so we took the job.
Payment was by what was called ‘peace work’.  You were paid about three shillings for every box you picked.  Picking fruit was not new to us and by working hard and efficiently we made ten pounds ($20.00) a week which was good money in those days.

Harry and I soon found ourselves a girlfriend each and mine asked me home to dinner one night.  There was no father present.
After dinner we were playing the gramophone in the lounge room when I heard a loud and drunken male voice from the kitchen.  My girlfriend said “quick, quick out this door.”
Hesitating I said “why, what’s going on”.
She started to cry and said “please, I don’t want you to fight dad”.
I thought “ I don’t want to fight dad either” and did what she said.
She whispered out the door “get over the fence, get over the fence, hurry”.
Back in Mildura, Harry and I used to practice quick ways of getting over fences and this knowledge was very useful.
I found myself in the neighbour’s yard right outside a large picture window where inside there was a dinner party of about ten people going on.
I stood frozen to the spot waiting to be discovered but soon noticed that although some people were looking straight in my direction they continued chatting away and obviously couldn’t see me.
The light inside was bright,  it was dark outside and although I could very clearly see them, they could not see me.
So smiling at them I casually walked right passed their happy party out onto the street.
To get back to my room I had to pass the front of her house and they had a hedge trimmed like battlements in a castle.   Walking passed cautiously looking through the gaps, I came face to face with him.
We looked at each other, he turned and walked back into his house.
That was the end of that romance.  

On Saturday evening when we had been picking for three weeks with money in our pockets we were looking in the shop windows when I found I was looking at a flight time table in Ansett Airways window and said to Harry “we have to pay our rent tomorrow or for the same money, we could catch this flight and be home tomorrow.”

This was my first flight.  It was a DC3 obviously an old war bird, the windows rattled and the noise of the two radial engines was deafening.
I loved flying, as I knew I would, and at the low level that DC3’s flew the view of the landscape, especially when we came in over Mildura was fascinating.
No one knew we were coming so we caught the airport bus home to Harry’s place where I phoned mum at Gol Gol  to ask if someone could pick me up.

The family had moved over to Gol Gol while we were away.

*****

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