Chapter VIII: Wild Cattle

On the whole, Australia is one of the worst countries for sport that can be imagined. There is no big game of any kind, except kangaroos; and after the novelty of a kangaroo hunt has worn off, it is very poor fun. Since the destruction of native dogs and eagle-hawks by the squatters who stocked the country with sheep, the kangaroos have not a single natural enemy left, and in some districts of Queensland they have increased to such an extent as to bring absolute ruin upon the runs which they infest. An Act known as the Marsupial Act was accordingly passed to encourage their destruction, a reward of so much a scalp being offered by the Government. In some places countless droves of them blacken the plains, eating up every vestige of grass, and literally starving the sheep off the country. Some of the squatters have gone to a vast expense in fencing in their runs with marsupial fencing, but it never pays.

The usual method adopted for slaughtering them is to build a yard with a very high fence in one of the “scrubs” on the plains. From this yard two fences run out through the “scrub,” widening out and extending like wings for a long distance over the surrounding plain. A whole crowd of men on horseback get together, with a mob of blacks to assist them, and drive the country for miles around up towards the wings of the fence. Once between the fences, the wretched animals are doomed. They make straight for the “scrub,” and never know where they are till they find themselves inside the yard, with a mob of black devils yelling behind them. The rails are then put up, and the blacks go in and slaughter them with tomahawks and clubs. Hundreds and hundreds of kangaroos are often secured at a single “battue” of this kind; but when once a good herd of them gets fairly started on a run, it is very difficult to get rid of them, or even to keep them down. This, however, is brutal work, though it is absolutely necessary it should be done, and no one could possibly describe it as sport. Even with good dogs and good horses, there is not much fun to be got out of hunting kangaroos singly. It is too much like coursing, which is of all bastard forms of sport the most detestable; and though an “old-man” kangaroo will generally show fight when he is bailed up, there is very little difficulty in knocking him senseless with a stick.

Away up north an occasional raid after the wild Blacks enlivens the monotony of life, and there are some men who are brutal enough to enjoy hunting them down. But apart from the chance of getting a spear through his ribs, or a tomahawk in his skull, no one who has not lost every vestige of decent feeling could possibly look upon this as sport, or be induced to undertake it except in self-defence. Of the few kinds of sport which Australia does afford, undoubtedly the finest is hunting wild cattle. It is part of the legitimate business of a stockman, and a very necessary part too, for nothing is more injurious to a tame herd than the presence of wild cattle on a run. It ought, therefore, to be classed as work rather than sport; but anyone who has once been at it will own that it is a form of entertainment that is exceedingly bad to beat. Of course there are no wild cattle indigenous to the country, but in some places there are cattle that have been neglected, and that have bred wild for generations, and they are to all intents and purposes as wild, and twice as savage, as bisons. There was one corner of Mount Spencer run, on the coast-fall of the range, known as Black’s Creek, the creek itself being one of the heads of the Pioneer River, and here the former owner of the station had allowed a mob of wild cattle to establish themselves. In reality it was the business of the neighbouring run, below the range, to get rid of them. The Black’s Creek country belonged half to Mount Spencer and half to our neighbours, whose yards were very much nearer to it than ours, and very much more accessible from the part where the wild cattle were. But they neglected their business, and, as the wild cattle were a great nuisance to us, we had great sport for several years in hunting them down.

Black’s Creek was about as wild a piece of country as it would be possible to find in Queensland. Its course lay right among the mountains, which towered on both sides, sending rocky spurs down in many places right up the banks of the creek. The grass was frightfully long, for it was not once in two years that we could get it to burn, and in many places it was up to one’s elbows as one rode through it. There were a few little open flats along the course of the creek, but the rest of the country was very heavily timbered, the banks of the creek and a good deal of the country being covered with dense scrub, for which the cattle made the instant they were disturbed. Once in the scrubs, one never saw them again that day, and the only chance was to corner them off, and hunt them out on to the more open country.

One day my brother and I settled we would make an expedition down Black’s Creek, and hunt up some of the “clean-skins,” as the wild cattle are called, in allusion to their never having been branded. We sent over to Haslewood for Billy Burgess, who appeared armed with an uncomfortable-looking sort of old musket, which he declared was a most reliable weapon if it was only held straight. My brother and I had a “Winchester” rifle each, and we provided Frank with an “Express,” with which he was not half a bad shot. Rolling up our weapons in our blankets, which were strapped on to the saddle in front, we set off one afternoon in October, taking a black boy and some rations with us. The head of Black’s Creek was about thirteen miles from the station; so we meant to camp out, and start early the next morning to look for the cattle.

There are various phases of camping-out in the Bush, some of them very pleasant, and some of them very much the reverse. On a warm dry summer night, with plenty of food and tobacco, and one or two good mates, there are few things more thoroughly enjoyable than to turn your horses out, light a fire and boil a “billy” of tea, and, after supper, to sit round smoking and yarning till it is time to roll yourself up in a blanket and sleep like a top under a tree. Occasionally, however, there are times when the camper-out does not have by any means a good time, and anyone who has knocked about the Bush for some time is sure to have spent more than one night of which the dismal recollection will not easily be wiped out of his mind. When the rain is falling in torrents, and a cold winter’s night overtakes the solitary wanderer who has lost his way and knocked up his horse, it is by no means pleasant to find that he has got between two flooded creeks, and that the only thing to do is to wait for the morning’s light before he attempts to go any farther. Soaked to the skin, and shivering with cold, without shelter and without food, he is lucky if he can find a rock, or the trunk of a big tree, to keep the piercing winter’s wind from freezing the marrow in his back-bone. As he sits there huddled up, with his horse’s bridle between his numbed fingers, the howl of the native dog, and the forlorn wail of the stone-curlew, strike with a mournful cadence upon his ears, about which the dead sticks from the trees overhead are flying. Mechanically he cuts up a pipe of tobacco, and fills his pipe, fumbling with shaking fingers in the recesses of his pouch for a dry match. Fortunate for him if he finds one dry enough to raise a smoke; but if the hours before morning do not seem preternaturally long he must be of an exceedingly cheerful disposition.

Just before sundown we got to the place where we meant to camp, on the bank of the creek. The creek was not running; but just here there was a small water-hole in the bed, full of clear water, with rocks all round covered with beautiful maiden-hair fern.

A little way back from the bank a huge mass of rock rose up, and between this and the creek we camped. Having unstrapped our blankets, we put our weapons together, and, taking off the saddles, we piled them against the rock, spreading the saddle-cloths over them to keep off the dew, and then, having hobbled the horses, we turned them out, with a small bell hung round the neck of one of them to tell us their whereabouts in the morning. In a few minutes the black boy had got a good fire going, with a couple of quart-pots set down to boil for making tea. “Quart-pot” tea, as tea made in the Bush is always called, is really the proper way to make it. A tin quart of water is set down by the fire, and when it is boiling hard a handful of tea is thrown in, and the pot instantly removed from the fire. Thus the tea is really made with boiling water, which brings out its full flavour, and it is drunk before it has time to draw too much.

Frank, meanwhile, went and chopped a piece of bark off a tree, and set about making some “Johnny cakes” for supper with a small bag of flour which he had brought with him. Emptying some of the flour into the sheet of bark, he poured some cold water into the middle of it, and stirred it quickly up into a paste. “Johnny cakes” are made with nothing but flour, but there is a great art in mixing them. If it is done properly, they are about the lightest and nicest sort of bread that can be made; but the efforts of an amateur generally result in a wet heavy pulp, that sticks round one’s teeth like bird-lime. Frank, however, was quite a professor, and, having got his dough to his satisfaction, he pressed it out very thin, and tossed it on to the hot ashes in three-cornered pieces, which he kept turning over with a stick every few seconds. In a very few minutes a good supply of them were done, and as the tea was made, and a “Johnny cake” is nothing unless it is eaten red-hot, we produced the salt beef, and set to work at once.

After supper we all lit our pipes--except Frank, who did not smoke--and lay down round the fire with a sensation of absolute contentment and peace that one must go and camp-out in the Bush to understand. The only single drawback to my enjoyment was that Frank did not smoke. There is always something uncomfortable about a man who does not smoke; but in the Bush, where one’s pipe gets to be such a companion as it never does elsewhere, it was really quite painful to think of Frank setting off out on the run every day by himself without a pipe. He and Billy, not having seen each other for some weeks, began instantly to jaw about cattle, and the way in which they went at it laid over anything in the way of “shop” that I ever heard. Two fox-hunters fighting their battles over again are bad enough, and a couple of old University men recounting their college experiences will drive anyone who is obliged to listen nearly out of his mind. But for pure professional “shop-talking,” unbroken by a single pause, and undiluted by a single digression, commend me to a pair of stockmen who take a hearty interest in the cattle that they are discussing, and who have not seen each other for a month.

Frank began it.

“I say, Billy,” he said, “I was over at the head of Running Creek yesterday, and I saw that red bullock that we missed last time we mustered on Tommy’s Camp.”

“Ah!” said Billy, “he runs about there now. Was that dying old crow-bait of a white cow along with him?”

“Yes; and that strawberry heifer too, whose mother died in the yard this time last year, when Stewart came up for fat cattle.”

“I remember; and a fine old bit of stuff her mother was, too. She was a calf of one of the last of old Lloyd’s lot, that were here when I came.”

“What! not that big roan cow that used to run down at the Gum Swamp, that broke away the time you and me and Fraser were yarding that mob down at the Hut?”

“No, no, not that one at all. Do you remember a dark-red cow, branded AL on the cheek, that was always with that mob that used to be about the ridges behind the Black Swamp about five years ago?”

“Of course I do. She was a milker.”

“Well, _she_ wasn’t the mother of that strawberry heifer’s mother, but her sister was. They were both of them milker’s calves, and their mother was the mother of that big yellow bullock that went away down to Rockhampton with Kirwan’s mob five years ago.”

“My word, what a rowdy brute he was! Do you remember how nearly he horned Dick in the yard? And when we let them out that white down-horned bullock hunted you half-way across the swamp. His mother’s alive yet, and got another calf, as like its mother as can be, only it’s got a white star. I saw them the other day down Black Creek, the time I fetched in that big roan calf belonging to that white cow, that was a calf of old ‘Susan’s.’”

And so they go on, discussing the appearance and the performance of one animal after another, and all its sisters and its cousins and its aunts, till one’s brain reels in trying to follow them.

I had always heard Brahmins upheld as the possessors of the most marvellous memories in the world, but until a Brahmin gives some better proof of it than merely reciting five or six thousand lines of prose by heart, he must sink into insignificance compared to men who have 12,000 cattle to look after, ranging over 400 square miles of country, and increasing at the rate of 3000 every year, and who apparently know them every one by sight, and can remember most of the ones that they have seen during the preceding ten years, whereabouts they used to run, and how they were bred.

Hour after hour Frank and Billy went on, and when I lay down to sleep, with my feet to the fire and a big stone for a pillow, they were still hard at it, in the middle of a discussion as to whether the great-great-grandmother of a big roan bullock on the Main Camp had a black nose or not.

Next morning we all woke up just before daybreak, while the stars were still shining, the straw-coloured light over the hills to the east showing that it would not be very long before the sun appeared. The ashes of last night’s fire were still hot, and the addition of a few dry sticks soon raised a blaze again. After a wash in the creek we lit our pipes, and, leaving Billy to boil the tea for breakfast, we sallied out to look for our horses. The grass was up to our waists, and saturated with dew, so that before we had gone fifty yards we were soaked to the skin; but the weather was warm, so it did not matter. In winter, when the ground is covered with hoar frost, it is no joke to have to wade perhaps a couple of miles through the long grass to look for your horse, for it is hours before the sun has sufficient strength to dry your clothes. On such occasions I used to leave all my clothes at the camp-fire, and set out without a rag on, as I infinitely preferred a slight cut or two from the grass to sitting on my horse, shaking with cold and perfectly wet through, for four or five hours. This time our horses had not gone very far, and we were back in the camp by the time that the tea was made. Breakfast did not take long, and the instant we had done, we loaded our weapons, and, clambering on to our horses, we set off down the creek to look for the cattle.

Frank had been down some weeks before, and burnt as much of the grass as he could, but it was only in places that it would burn. In such a country it was perfectly hopeless to dream of getting any of the “clean-skins” home to the yards, and all we wanted to do was to shoot as many of them as we could. Sneaking silently along for about a couple of miles, we came to a crossing of the creek, on the opposite side of which was a small plain. As we emerged on to this, we came suddenly upon a mob of about thirty wild cattle, among which were six or seven bulls, one of them about the biggest I ever saw. The instant they saw us the whole mob charged, and cleared us out in every direction. The black boy’s bridle came off, and his horse tore wildly into the middle of a mob of raging bulls, with him yelling murder and absolutely white with funk. Frank and my brother disappeared into the creek after the big bull and one or two others, and Billy and I tore across the plain after a small mob that were going like mad for the ridges beyond. As we came up with them, Billy discharged his weapon at a young bull that was a little behind the rest, the bullet breaking his shoulder, and bringing him bellowing on his head. Away we went after the rest; but a little farther on Billy got a most awful buster over some rocks in the long grass, he and his horse rolling over each other in a most uncomfortable kind of way. Looking back over my shoulder as I galloped on, I saw him on his legs again, so I hit out like anything to get a shot at the rest of the mob before they got away into the ridges. Just on the edge of the plain I came up with them, and put a bullet behind the shoulder of a good-sized bull that was nearest me. He turned and charged, but my horse cleared out too quick for him, and after struggling on for about a hundred yards, he rolled over. The others were gone where it was hopeless to follow them, so I rode up and put another shot into him to finish him, and then turned back to see how Billy was getting on.

Fortunately he had landed clear of the rocks, in the long grass, but his saddle was smashed to pieces, and his horse’s legs very much cut and knocked about. We rode back and finished off the bull that Billy had shot first, and then went over the creek to see what had become of the others. Following their tracks for about half a mile, we came upon my brother sitting upon a log all alone, smoking a pipe, and mopping the blood from his forehead.

“Hullo,” I said, “are you hurt? had a buster? where’s Frank? and what’s happened to your horse?”

“Why, my horse has cleared out, and Frank has gone after him. He and I cornered off that big bull, and I rode up alongside and put a shot into him. I never saw anything turn as quick. He got me full on the ancle, and that kept his horn out of ‘Darkie’s’ ribs; but the fool, instead of clearing, went into figures, and what with the cant I got from the bull, and the rifle, and one thing and another, down I went. It was all so mixed I thought the bull had upset me. ‘Darkie’ cleared out then, and left me on the ground five yards from the bull, on a dead level plain, without a bush for a hundred yards. I struggled on to my knees, and worked the rifle so as to load again; but before I could get it up the brute charged, and caught me full over the eye. Frank was yelling to me to lie down, but it’s all gammon. I saw a bull the other day rooting up a daisy with perfect ease. I scrambled up again, and, the rifle being loaded, I put another shot into his shoulder, when he fortunately gave me best and left me. He’s dead somewhere in the creek down there, I think. The ‘Winchester’ is good, and they always die of it, but the bullet is not stopping enough to prevent a charge. However, I’ve got off very well, with a sprained ancle from the first charge, and as to my eye, I think my head must be nearly as hard as the bull’s, for, beyond cutting it open, it hasn’t hurt me much.”

“Well, hold on a minute,” I said, “and I’ll fetch you a pannikin of water out of the creek, if there is any here.”

A little lower down I found a small pool of water, and having got my brother some, and washed his head for him, I set off down the creek to look for the bull. Sure enough, he was lying in the bed of the creek, stone dead, about a quarter of a mile below where my brother had last shot at him. Just then Frank reappeared leading “Darkie,” whom he had managed to bail up amongst some big rocks lower down. Billy’s horse was dead lame, and my brother’s ancle so swollen that he could only just manage to ride; so we concluded to knock off and go home, and altogether, considering the frightful nature of the country, we had not done so badly to kill three of the bulls before they got away.

The next time we went down Black’s Creek after the clean-skins we had a still more lively time. In the early part of the day my horse got badly horned in the belly, and not long after, while galloping after a beast, he went head over heels into a hole where the stump of a big tree had been burned out, and broke his shoulder. O’Donnell, the stockman from the neighbouring run, who came with us, came to fearful grief. He and his horse, and the bull that he was after, all went head foremost into a deep rocky gully. When we found them, the bull was lying in the bottom, among the rocks, with its neck broken, and O’Donnell on top of it, quite insensible. We got him out, and carried him home on a litter of saplings. For twenty-four hours he lay quite still, bleeding at the ears, and we thought he was away, but he came round, and eventually got all right again. The rest of us managed to get a mob of cattle, mostly clean-skins, into the yards; and about the gayest time that we had was drafting them. They exhibited shocking temper.

The worst of having wild cattle anywhere near one’s run is that the tame ones go and join them, and become nearly as wild themselves. The country was so rough down Black’s Creek that it was almost impossible to clean it up thoroughly, and we hardly ever went down there without crippling somebody. But there is no doubt that hunting wild cattle there was as healthy a form of sport as anyone could wish for.