Six — Keen Eyes for Conformation

Six – Keen Eyes for Conformation

We passed through the gate from Bull Rush to the main laneway after the last of the horses. While the others waited, Danielle dismounted and closed the gate, a gate unlike any I’d seen before. Made of barbed wire, it appeared at first glance like a continuation of the fence line. In fact, it was a clever construction strung between two stout posts and fastened using a metal fence post as a lever to rack the whole thing tight.

With the mob securely within the corral the five of us entered, dismounted, and unsaddled our horses. The sun had climbed to its full mast; the moist air closed in upon me. I squirmed in my tight clothes; the effort of struggling with the heavy leather saddle further opened my pores. Within minutes I was sweating as if in a sauna. Saltwater glazed my glasses as I trudged about the shifting sand in my heavy boots.

Our mounts were all dark with sweat; after removing the saddles and saddle blankets we led them by the bridles to an old green hose snaking out of the abattoir and cooled them off. I released Silibark into the laneway where he treated himself to a good roll in the dust. I laughed to see the large animal on his back, snorting and kicking as I’d seen only dogs do before.

“What’d you think Dave?” Peter asked as we drank deeply of the cool water we’d brought from the house that morning.

“It was all right! Definitely all right!” I enthused, grinning and nodding. I was proud of myself. Although I hadn’t played a critical role in the operation, neither had I fallen off my horse nor somehow sent the horses off in a hundred different directions. I lasted the duration, an accomplishment for a greenhorn such as myself.

“Going to be a little sore tomorrow?” Marlee asked, a gleam in her eyes. “I looked over once and saw you bouncing around like a sack of flour on an oxcart,” she said, sending a chuckle through the small group.

“Yeah, it was a bit rough there at one point. Damn horse was giving it more than I’d asked, I’m afraid.”

“You’ve got to control your horse with your body and your legs. He gets away and you can get in big trouble,” Charlie cautioned.

“Yeah, and remember if your horse does go bush, hop off if you want your pay,” Peter said in mock seriousness.

“Minus the cost of the saddle,” Charlie added, in a rather more serious tone.

“In that case, you may as well stay on and go bush with it, because you’ll be working for years at jackaroo wages to pay for one of them,” laughed Peter.

After our short break we returned to the yards. As we’d done with the stock horses that morning we chased the new batch of horses through the various pens until they filled up the forcing pen and the large pen opening onto it. Marlee seated herself on the top rail of the round yard, Danielle stood in a position to open one of the gates, as did Peter. I manned the gate into the main yard as I had several hours earlier. Charlie entered the forcing pen and gently shushed the horses one at a time into the round yard for evaluation.

“Looks alright in stature,” someone would say.

“Naw. Rump’s too thin,” another would interject.

“She’s young, may grow a bit.”

“Have a look next year.” On general assent each beast would surge through my open gate to join the others in the main yard.

“Good God, look at the dirty great head on that thing!” Danielle was most often quickest to offer these sorts of editorials.

“And the wonky rear!”

“Give this one to St. Vincent de Paul!”

Or;

“There’s a good-looking animal.”

“Yeah, beautiful line to her.”

“She’ll do.”

In this manner the horses were sorted into two general categories; animals who would be allowed to reproduce, and those who would be sterilized. Several horses entered the ring with a growth or wound of some sort. These animals were gathered in their own pen for later treatment.

When the dozen horses in the forcing pen were all sorted we would hop into the holding yard and push another group into the forcing pen. The nearest person would hasten to close the gate and the process would begin again.

“No beam to that one.”

“Christ, where did that thing come from?”

“Looks like an eye problem here.”

“What you think of this one Charlie?”

“A bit long legged.”

“There’s a good looker.”

“Yeah, but she’s had two ugly foals already.”

To my eye they all looked much the same – large, powerful, feral. It was fascinating to see what was said as each animal entered the ring for scrutiny; with each comment I’d try to see what qualities were being referenced. Occasionally a characteristic would be obvious, but most often the critique remained too subtle for my eye. Time and again a sure winner would enter the round yard only to be verbally shredded under the acute Henderson eye.

One important group segregated from the rest comprised the unbranded horses, or clean skins. These were young colts, frisky and obstreperous in their adolescence. They were a joy to watch, high-stepping and tossing their heads, their short manes bristling. Several were only a few months old. These scampered in confusion, bawling in response to their mother’s whinnies. These cries filled the air as friends and family protested the indignity of the separation.

The sorting process continued for several hours amidst the dust and the cries. I never ceased to be awed by the might of the animals as they charged past my open gate, or moved by their reunions as kin rejoined each other in the main yard. As I watched their interplay I gained for the first time a sense of why so many folks are smitten with these intelligent and elegant animals.

By eleven o’clock we’d run the last of the animals into their appropriate pen. Throughout the morning I had seen Uncle Dick moving about the workshop, sixty yards or so from the corral where we toiled. As we finished with the horses I saw him disappear into the grimy corrugated metal shack home to the generator, and a moment later the whir of an engine sounded, then caught. Other sounds came to life as electricity flowed to Bullo’s various buildings. From the direction of a large round water tank an electric motor strained, then began humming. In the workshop an air compressor kicked on. A country-western ballad drifted from Stumpie’s residence.

After all the horses had been segregated into their appropriate groups Danielle and I began pushing the various mobs into the appropriate paddocks. The others headed off in other directions: Charlie and Peter joined Dick in the workshop, Marlee headed to the house for medicine to treat the ailing horses.

Danielle and I first released all the geldings and non-brood mares back into Bull Rush through a gate opening from the corral into that pasture. I watched as the first few explored then tentatively stepped through the open gate. When their mates realized freedom was at hand a crush developed as, suffused with a reinvigorated independence, they raced to join their compadres in the scraggly forest we’d only just cleared that morning. How long, I wondered, before I’d be fighting its entanglements again?

The brood mares we allowed back into the laneway. Danielle gave me some instructions before she hopped into the truck and drove off to open the gate leading from the laneway to their new home in River Paddock. I was to wait several moments before pushing the two dozen bachelorettes over the creek which crossed the laneway. Then Danielle would pick them up and drive them through into River paddock via the gate she would’ve opened. This we accomplished without incident.

We met again at the yards. Danielle motioned me into her truck and we drove to a building standing close to the homestead and which once had been an airplane hangar. Now it was empty except for a small stack of hay bales and a brood of resident laying hens. As we passed through the gate leading into the small home or “garden” paddock surrounding the homestead Pumpkin and Daisy eyed us warily. Banjo and Kelly, who’d returned home after exhausting herself on the morning run, ran out to meet us, happy for the promise of more excitement. After we’d thrown several of the hay bales into the back of the truck Kelly jumped on, though Banjo seemed to remember his earlier futility and chose not to relive the moment.

These bales we drove back to the corral and broke them up in the pen where the cleanskins scampered. The next morning, Danielle explained, we would brand them and castrate the males. The prospect excited me – it promised to be another archetypal cowboy experience.

The sun by now stood full overhead. My hat, symbol of my new status, made it’s true purpose apparent; shielding my face and head from the scalding sun. It’s comforts notwithstanding I was miserable. The tight pants and boots suffocated my legs, my soaked shirt stuck to my body, pulling against me as I moved. Hay dust and dirt kicked up by the horses caked my arms and face. I’d given up cleaning my glasses.

I jumped in the truck when we finished spreading the hay bales as Danielle called lunchtime. Eating habits in my previous life typically involved no breakfast whatsoever, followed by a big meal a few hours after waking. With only a small breakfast in my belly and five hours of hard work behind me I was ravenous.

As we drove to the house Peter and Charlie were striding across the small salty white flat between Homestead Creek and the sprawling house. They arrived as we pulled up in the truck and as we walked inside Charlie questioned Danielle about the dispersal of the horses. Inside, Sara, accompanied by Kenny Rogers on the stereo, was arranging on the countertop a hearty meal – the fact I didn’t bother to strip off my uncomfortable clothing was a testament to its allure.

Indeed, I was preparing to sit down in front of a large pan of crusty meat pie when Charlie upbraided me for not washing my hands. For the second time that day I kicked myself for having to be told something so elementary. Though I slunk to the bathroom feeling like a juvenile the banquet confronting me upon my return resuscitated me completely. Along with the meat pie, Sara had prepared a roasting pan full of steaks, a bowl full of buttery vegetables, grilled pumpkin squash, and a hearty salad. The circular loaf of rustic bread stood nearby, along with a jug of ice cold milk and several liters of water.

Unsure where to begin the bacchanal I reached for a knife and seized the nearest article, which happened to be the bread. I hacked off a prodigious wedge, smeared it with butter, and packed the dough in my mouth. Momentarily appeased, and aware of ten astonished eyes upon me, I approached the rest of the meal with more civility, if no less an appetite, and my hunger was soon assuaged.

The table conversation – what I caught of it – revolved around the success of that morning and plans for the near future, little of which I fully deciphered. There was talk of graders and straining in this paddock and that paddock — which had something to do with fences — then segued into talk of cattle and panels and yard sites. I did discern that within a few days two more station hands and a domestic would arrive. With the coming cool weather the mustering season was about to shift into top gear. The two men were aborigines, sent by the Commonwealth Employment Service in Katherine, Western Australia.

I realized as I listened just how little I knew of what I was in for. I didn’t know how cattle were mustered or what was involved once they were all together. When Charlie directed Peter and I to collect a load of wood for branding fires I knew that the afternoon with Peter would get a few of my questions answered.

After lunch I retired to my room for a nap. I reveled in the sanctuary the ceiling fan in my small room provided from the dead still and clammy outside air. The cool breeze combined with the hearty lunch and the early morning’s exertions lead easily into a nap which ended far, far too soon.

I awoke, sweating, to Peter’s call. My fan no longer offered relief; Dick had powered down the generator. I managed to rouse myself and, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, joined Peter in the truck. We swung by the workshop where we picked up fuel, various tools, and a length of rope. We drove out the main drive several miles, then left the road to follow a fence line, along which lay small trees felled during its construction. Peter filled me in on the work ahead as we scavenged firewood.

“You’ve seen that stack of metal panels by the workshop?”

I’d noticed the couple of hundred metal rectangles leaning against a large Bloodwood tree. Each section was about six feet tall and eight feet wide, constructed of square pipe welded into two sides and four or five rails.

“Basically,” he continued, “we load those onto the old flatbed Toyota and drive them out to the yard site, where we take them off and build a bloody great ring.”

“Where’s the yard site?”

“Varies. This station is divided into sections and Charlie picks the site according to where it is best suited.”

“So is each section mustered separately?”

“Yeah. This year, from the way he’s talking, looks like we’ll have four or five yard sites.”

“And each time, the thing has to be taken down and put up in a different place?”

“Right. But that’s not even half of it. There’s also the bales and the trough to be brought in and the wings built.”

“What are wings?” The info was coming in scads.

“Wings are fences to direct the cattle into the portable yard. Like the permanent laneway, except that they’ve got to be rolled up afterwards.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Aw, it’s not that bad. Besides, what else is there to do?” He asked with an ironic smile. He did have a point. With the nearest mall or movie theatre more than a day’s hard drive distant, “on a whim” didn’t exist at Bullo.

Peter pulled up next to a felled hardwood — bald, contorted, gray with death. We snapped off the smaller branches by hand as the conversation continued.

“So how does a college professor’s child end up out here?”

“Well matey, as I said on the ride in, I haven’t ended up anywhere, just yet. But I like it here, reckon I’m outside in the fresh air – don’t have much of that in LA, I hear. Reckon it’s just in me blood, this.”

“What, a taste for the rural life?” I asked.

“No – insanity.” His boyish face split with a gleaming grin.

Before the truck was half full our tree was exhausted of fodder small enough for us to break off under the concentrated lean of both our weight. We each pulled an axe out of the front seat and whacked off another several branches. We then left the stumpy carcass of our first behind and drove, sweaty and caked with wood debris, to another lifeless tree.

“Where have you worked besides Bullo?”

“Only a couple of sheep stations down in South Australia since leaving Ag college two years back. It’s on those sheep stations that Spike earns his keep.” The little terrier perked his ears up at the mention of his name.

“Do you like working sheep?”

“Bloody love the bastards, though they hadn’t got a bit of sense. And they stink.”

“Dumber than cows?”

“Heaps, mate. Heaps. If there’s fifty of them jammed into a pen and you open a door the bloody bastards will stand and bloody look at each other. Gotta start shoving them through the gate before they catch on.”

I laughed at this description of ovine groupthink. It reminded me of Los Angeles motorists confronted with a broken traffic light.

“I suppose you’d have been prepared for that, though, having gone to agricultural school.”

“Been working with sheep longer than that, Dave. I went to Ag college because I’d like to be a manager of a place. Some owners like to see that piece of paper.”

“What can you learn indoors about this type of life?” I asked.

“Business end, mostly. Had to learn a bit of economics and the like. Spent most of the time outdoors with the animals. Even learned some about plants and crops. I had a project where I grew all the little seedlings and measured them and all.” He offered this tidbit with the cheery enthusiasm of a kindergartner who’d sprouted a corn kernel in a milk carton.

”So how’d you get from there to here?”

“I drove from the gulf in Queensland into Bullo. It took me five hours to travel the driveway in hope of a job. I had no fuel left by the time I got here and then Sara said there was no work. I asked if I could do a day’s work for a tank of fuel. I ended up in the workshop repairing punctured bull catcher tires. At the end of the day Charlie turned up and we got to talking about the bulldozer out in front of the shed. He said it was waiting to have its tracks hard-face welded but he and Dick had no time. I told him I can weld so next day he put me on the welder and after two hours he offered me a full-time job here.”

“So what, you just drove in on a hope and a prayer? And why this station? Why Bullo River?” I asked, trying to get my head around the idea of doing something that speculative, though not hard enough to recognize myself in his tale.

“I’d seen Bullo on an Australian TV program called A Big Country. The episode was called Henderson’s Daughters. It looked like a beautiful place.”

Given that these lovely women had been featured on a national television program, I thought, I’m surprised the Bullo turnoff doesn’t require a traffic signal.

“So you’re here for the social scene?” My arched eyebrows hinted at the obvious.

“No, I have a bird already. Back home in South Australia. Her name’s Diane,” he said. “I’ll have a photo back home.”

“A sweetheart, is she?”

“I reckon she’ll do,” he said, smiling at his understatement.

“No, I stick around to work with Charlie. He’s a top bloke. Knows what he’s doing just about all the time. There’s easier places to work, but Charlie is an education by himself. College of Experience. And that’s the more important part. I mean, a quick bloke can pick up most things I learned in school over time, if he keeps his eyes open. Not all, but most. Precious little that can be picked up in school about driving a grader, or planning a muster, running a crew. And Charlie got a feel for those things like few people, Dave. Very few.” His clear blue eyes reflected his admiration for the older man.

When we finished gleaning two trees our truck was piled high with a spaghetti stack of dead branches. We jumped back in the vehicle and moseyed along the fence line. I assumed we were returning to the road, but Peter pulled up alongside another fallen tree.

“More?” I asked, looking at the impressive load of interlacing limbs.

“Sure; we’ll get plenty more on here. Probably have to come back for a second load anyway.” I wondered what size branding fire we were planning. “This stuff is right dry, it’ll burn quickly.”

By the time we’d doubled our load the chopping and stacking left me gassed. Peter tied two ropes to a small rail running along one side of the truck, threw them over the top of the load, and secured the load with a clever self-tightening knot.

We drove the several miles back to the yard in easy conversation about life in Los Angeles. The twelve million people in LA County equaled the better part of Australia’s entire sixteen-plus million population. This was the main difference I’d noticed so far, the absence of the constant buzz of human activity always present on the periphery, an omnipresent background energy. Here, I had a sense of moving within the environment, rather than having the scenery relentlessly rushing past me. It was relaxing; sort of an extended version of the relief one feels when a noisy neighbor turns off their stereo.

I also liked the irregular curves and quirk of the natural landscape, so varied and unconstrained. The rhythms were more sedate as it passed by than the flashy angularity of urban scenes.

Peter cast his glance around as I talked, trying to imagine living amongst millions of strangers packed into four-cornered buildings. He’d been to Sydney, he said, found it great fun if over-populated. He’d enjoyed the voluptuous charms of Bondi beach, as had I. As a man comfortable in urban environments I was smitten with almost everything about low-rise red-brick terra-cotta Sydney, scattered about the rounded hills which rise out of Port Jackson in the Tasman Sea.

Once back at the yard I swung the final gate open and Peter drove into the sandy main pen. About twenty feet from the round yard gate he stopped and we untied our load. When the entirety of it lay askew in the sand we drove to the workshop, where Charlie had his arms deep within a diesel engine. Peter returned from a brief conversation with the mandate to collect another load.

“We have yearlings to do tomorrow. Charlie says it may take a while to deal with all of them.”

“Why so?” I asked.

“Because they’re big and don’t go down easily. Should make quite a fuss, actually. Most of them wouldn’t have gotten a good whiff of humans before.”

“Why do we have so many large horses if they’re difficult? Wouldn’t it be better to get them young?”

“Sure! Much better. But last year we were a bit shorthanded when the season began, which was late anyhow seeing how the wet season lasted nearly into May. Didn’t have time to get to them all before the wet returned.”

“So now they’re wild and independent, and not too fond of strangers, I take it?

“Yup. Proper brumbies, Dave. Should be something interesting to tell the folks back home in California, I reckon.”

The balance of his and my workday involved gathering another impressive load of deadwood, then using our hands, knees, and axes to break the two loads into manageable pieces of firewood. We were both sweating profusely by the time evening’s filtered glow shone upon our stack of truncated Ghost Gums. As we were finishing, Danielle came up and scattered more hay for the horses.

With the unhurried pace of day’s end we rolled over to the workshop, past the treacherous copse amid whose million finger grip I’d begun the day upon Silibark. It seemed a long time ago, the way summer feels on the second day of a new school year. Charlie remained occupied in the workshop, but he’d heard us leave the yards and had begun cleaning up. He slid onto the seat next to me and the three of us – dirty, hungry, and full of tangible accomplishment – drove to the house for dinner where, once again, I managed to outdo everyone in both volume and enthusiasm for my repast. The day had left me with just enough energy to resupply.

“He eats like there’s no tomorrow!” Sara said, but she had it wrong – I ate precisely because there was a tomorrow, and it promised to be every bit as demanding as today had been.