The Drover's Daughter. Patsy Kemp
road. The first thing he did was cut apples in half to share amongst us kids and then he would do business with Mum. One day as he was driving away from the camp, a box full of oranges fell off, the wooden box disintegrated and we kids ran madly behind his truck shouting, ‘Mr Box, Mr Box, a box has fallen off.’ He heard us after a screech or two and pulled up. We helped him gather the oranges and placed them in the truck. He gave us an orange each for helping him. An orange each was like winning the lottery as usually, Mum would cut an orange into quarters and share that among us.
One time we were left in the camp while Dad and Mum went to town to socialise and look for work. Col had a brain wave, and we cut the dry grass into a huge pile and made an emu nest out of it. We sat in the middle and sucked on cigarettes that Col had stolen out of our parents’ supply. They were the “roll your own” kind and we all had a puff but Col and Les got right into it. When the parents got back to the camp, Les told on us all for smoking and we all got a hiding, except for him as he had told. He was a “brave boy” for dobbing, which he did on a regular basis.
Dad was a red head and Mum a brunette and though we were all born blonde, Col and I grew into brunettes while the others grew into red heads or “carrot tops” as they were often called. Les was the only one to be born a red head and he was favoured from the start. Even at a young age, he was a cruel ratbag to us “young ones”. If we complained about him pinching us, rough teasing or stealing any treat we had, he would deny it and the parents would believe him so we never had a case.
Across the river from our camp. the Aboriginals had their humpies and campsites. We could shout out to them to say hello but mostly we got insults back. It was always done in fun, the black kids having a way with words. Quite often their parents would have a go too. At the end there would be a wave and lots of laughter. If the Aboriginals were serious they could easily swim over and sort us out but they were as lonely as we were for a bit of chiacking around. If they tried to get us going when the parents were home we did not take them up on it, as much as we would have loved to. They would yell out to us, ‘You yella dogs, go on ’ave a go, go on, scared of your mummy and daddy.’ We would just walk around doing our thing, managing to ignore them. But when our parents drove out of the camp, before the dust had barely settled it was on again. We would chant back to them, ‘Sticks and stones will break our bones but names will never hurt us.’ Normally we would be in our “attitude” stance, hands on hips and poking out our tongues and a few rude hand signals.
When we went into town we were never allowed out of the truck so eventually a lot of the Aboriginal kids would come up and stand at the back of the truck for a chat. They would have a bag of hot potato chips, lollies or chewing gum and tease us by offering a piece and not handing it over. Sometimes we might barter something that was in the truck but we could never let Mum see we had taken a treat off the other kids as that would have been deserving of a swat of the hand on any part of our anatomy within reach.
In 1956 we went to a property called Trafalgar (next door to Cubbie Station, out of Dirranbandi) to pick up a mob of sheep and the station manager was Bill and Alice Holmes. We had to muster the sheep before taking them, so we spent a week or more there while the men mustered. Spending time like this on a property was always like a holiday, not having to pack and unpack every day and quite often they let us stay at the shearers’ huts so that meant we had showers also. This made a nice change to bathing in the big round tub once a week, whether we needed it or not.
The Holmes were a family of five, two daughters Shannon and Cleone and son Bryon. Emmie became very close to the family and she and Shannon were pen friends for years. Emmie and Bryon married ten years after they met, when Emmie was eighteen. Byron used to joke that when he met us we used to run around with no pants on and were really dirty, much to Emmie’s embarrassment.
Over the years we met all kinds of folk, good and bad. One particular person who was a bit different to others was Gordon and he owned a station between Dirranbandi and Nindigully. When he was younger, he had been trying to knock down a tree with a bulldozer. It would not give, so he went at it full pelt and a limb fell on top of his head and tragically this affected him badly. After he recovered, he was never quite right in the head. For example, he was sick of the perfectly good house on his property so he bulldozed that one down and had another larger house built that he thought was more suitable to his station in life.
One weekend all the station hands and Gordon went to a circus in St. George. They walked around the site admiring all the wild animals that were tied up or in cages. One cage held an old scraggily, ill kept lion and Gordon walked up to it to give it a pat, the lion gave a lazy half-hearted roar, snarled at him and lay down on his belly. One of the circus workers walked past and Gordon engaged him in conversation with an unusual outcome. When the circus was over, the men had the lion in the back of the truck and home they went. The lion spent the rest of the night in the back of the truck and the next day they proceeded to build a large yard for the “new pet”. After a few months, Gordon had him walking on a chain like a dog. He had hired three Aboriginal families to do stick picking on the property, so there along a dusty track would walk Gordon, the lion, a collection of his dogs, and the Aboriginal family all enjoying an outing in the late afternoon.
Gordon and his workmen went to church on an irregular basis in Dirranbandi on a rough dirt road. He later decided that he and the men needed to go to church more regularly so he decided to build one on his station. Gordon would get dressed up as a minister in a black robe, full black gown with all the regalia and take the service. On occasion, he would strap a colt .45 on his hip as well and the men would say they did not know whether the boss was going to be Jesus Christ or Ned Kelly for the day. Sometimes after the church service, Gordon would mount his horse and gallop off, his robe flapping in the wind, shooting the gun in the air.
Later on, he lost all his money and the bank took over his property. The day he left he set fire to the house, burning it to the ground and drove the bulldozer into the dam.
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