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                        PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

     An Influenza epidemic was raging all over the world in 1919

when I was born dead.  I was declared dead by Suzy Doyle the

Midwife and by the local Doctor. Then I was  placed in an enamel

bucket with a towel over the top in the wash house. I remained

there for sometime. 

     After a couple of hours I became active, and reached up and

tipped the bucket off the table ledge onto the floor of the wash

house.  Mrs Doyle came out and picked me up, took me inside and

gave me a warm bath.  My Mother was almost  dead with Influenza.  

I don't remember any of this.  I got it first hand from my

Mother and Mrs Suzy Doyle whom I visited many, many years after

my birth.  She always declared it a "Miracle." 

She said "Don, you are a miracle. I don't know how you survived?

What was it like on the other side?" 

     On my day of birth, my father Jack Johnson and a friend,

Alec Moody they were working for a Mr Coward down the Barwon

river, shearing, and they'd got the Flu also. Some people said It

was "Bubonic Plague" brought home from the First World War by the

soldiers returning from Europe.  My father had it very badly, as

did Alec Moody and they could no longer work. Their boss Mr

Coward, gave them a bottle of Brandy thinking it might help a

bit.  They started out for Mungindi and both men ended up in the 

bottom of the Sulky. Someone found them in the street and then

they were conveyed to hospital.  Alec Moody died of this terrible

Flu. 

He had died in the sulky. My father had it so bad he was

classified dead and he placed in the morgue on three separate

occasions.

Though each time he was brought back out. My mother was at Mrs

Doyle's place, the midwifery house. Mother was in no better state

and that is how I came into this world.

CHAPTER 2 

     After my seventy six years knocking about here I am making

an effort to go back over my life. I have been told I have a

retentive memory and I am doing the best I can to tell my story

here from day one. After the "Bubonic Plague" my Father took up a

butchery business in Mungindi, and served the people pretty well. 

Once  a bloke came in and ordered a yard of steak, so the old man

cut him off a yard of steak  right down the bullock's backbone.

Measured it off with a ruler, rolled it up and handed it to the

customer.  The customer said "I don't want that at all!" So he

pushed it back across the counter. The old  man picked up the

lump of steak and bashed him out of his shop with it.           

There were quite a few Customers in the shop at the time.  This

fellow tried to take

advantage of my Father,  who was running a clean and decent

business. That is the sort of man he was, very exact. He was

known as "Quiet Jack."  A very quiet man 

normally, it was unusual for him to take this attitude with the

customer who provoked him on the day. 

CHAPTER 3

     On the other hand my mother became a very famous equestrian,

although she had Polio at five years old, and couldn't walk till

fourteen years of age. At first she used to crawl and

then she used to hop. Her sisters slighted her, and called her

hoppy. 

     As time went by Mother she could pull herself up onto a

quiet horse, and she learned to ride, and the name went from

Hoppy to TUPPY. They broke it down a bit when she became  famous

on the showgrounds with her horses.  She was in demand by every

body that had a decent horse, a Camp horse, or a Flag and Bending

horse. Yes she rode the Hunters too. She had the full choice of

the mounts. 

     I can remember at two years old, I was very proud of my

people very, very proud. We used to travel the shows.

The experts say "How far back can the human brain remember, just

what's gone on from an early age?" Well I can definitely say, I

can remember most things from the very early age of two year old

or less. I had an Uncle Walter Johnson who came back from World

War One, who, on occasion, became my baby sitter. He used to

drink a bit, and he drank a Dutch brew. Well sometimes he 

brought a little bottle of Schnapps. He would mix me up a drop of

the Schnapps in warm water with a bit of sugar in it,  while he

played on the floor with me. If it didn't work immediately, he'd

give me a couple more teaspoons and he'd tuck me off to beddy

bye.

My Uncle Walter was the nearest and kindest person to me, very

dear to me. I loved him more than any other person I've ever met.

CHAPTER 4

     On Saturday night Walter would be on the grog. My mother

Tuppy and my father Jack would say about dark "Well we'd better

go and get Walter."  They'd go over to the local Pub and bring

Walter home. He was very placid as far as our family was

concerned.  He knew he always had a job to do looking after yours

truly, while my Mum and Dad went off to a dance or the pictures. 

     My Mother was sometimes quick tempered and on this one

occasion, Walter had been fishing.  She had a pine table that she

had just scrubbed clean till it was snow white. It was after tea

time and she had just completed this chore.  

     Walter came in with a twenty pound codfish, and threw it on

to the nice clean table. The table was covered in gum leaves and

slime off the fish. My mother looked at it and she said, 

"Walter you are a bastard."  She picked the codfish up by the

head and bashed him out of the kitchen with it.

     This good man he did apologise and later he cleaned the fish

hung it up and set to work and scrubbed the pine table for poor

old Tup.  I could see on his face that he didn't realize what he

had done. He'd had a few drinks and thought he had done wonders

catching this big codfish.  A twenty pound cod is a pretty good

fish and I suppose he was a bit pleased he could bring it home

for us.  Walter Johnson was killed in a Mungindi hotel. He had

been an Army Sergeant attached to a Ghurka Platoon during World

War One, and was a welter weight boxing champion in the 1st Aif.  

            He had joined them kukura in hand behind enemy lines

cutting throats and taking an ear as was the Ghurka practice. He

had lived by the knife. He had been demonstrating in the pub just

how this was done.

Suddenly a Mungindi man, Jim, produced a long butchers knife and

drove it right through Walter. Saying "This is how the Mungindi

Ghurka's do it." Walter lived for a day impaled with this great

knife. The police approached his bedside and Walter generous      

to the end said. "It was an accident and all my fault."

There had been a lady and a jealous husband somehow involved.

CHAPTER 5

     As I've said my old man was the local butcher.  He had an

old cattle bitch called Bluey. Sometimes he used to have a few

grogs on the weekend and he'd have all the takings from the shop

on him. 

He'd have Bluey following him when he'd start for home. He'd be a

bit tipsy and have to sit on a log to rest awhile. Sometimes he

would lay down and have a bit of a nap before he got home because

he didn't like coming home drunk. 

     Some days the local crooks would follow him, as they knew he

was carrying a good deal of money on him. Now old Bluey she was

up to the task of taking care of my father. He never ever got

robbed and he always made it home with the full days takings. 

Occasionally sometimes the Police followed him also and did their

best to roll him, yes to take his money off him.  On a couple of

occasions  old Bluey, she tore the trousers off these 

Police men.  You see my father was a protected species just

providing he had the old blue bitch with him. 

CHAPTER 6

     I can remember at another time, we had two wild Aboriginals

living with us Gilbert and Nelson.  Old Nelson was a very honest 

Aboriginal and had all the tribal scars on him, he was the

essence of honesty. On the other hand Gilbert, he was a bit of a

rogue. I remember one day as a small boy my mother said to

Gilbert, "Climb up that coolibah tree, Gilbert. There's a

Bluebonnets nest up there. Get up and cut a hole in it and see if

those birds are big enough to get out." The birds were worth ten

bob each. So old Gilbert he got up in the tree. She then told him

" You know where to tap and knock on the tree to find out where

those birds are. Cut a hole in the tree, poke your head in and

have a look." So he did this and I remember quite clearly he said

"No Missus, no, too young, too young, no feathers on em."

     She threw him up a bit of wire, she said "Tie a bit of bark

over the hole, in another ten days or a fortnights time we'll get

em out."  He tied the bark to the tree blocking up the hole and

came down. 

     Sometime during the night old Bluey she 

growled and my mother called out "Get hold of him!" 

The old bitch went charging out and everything quietened down. My

mother, being a bush woman, always got up early. She went out to

get some wood for the stove, and there was Gilbert sitting up in

the fork of the tree, with old Bluey laying at the butt of the

tree.

    Gilbert knew if he came down the old cattle bitch would have

chewed the calves of his legs off. He was still sitting in the

tree at daylight.  Lots of people say they have good dogs. Well

of the dogs I've seen, especially the ones like Blue, you could

depend on them.

CHAPTER 7

     We always went to the Moree show. On this visit we saw

Worth's Circus,  the most wonderful circus in the world. They

travelled the world. The things I saw in that Circus, they were

magic. 

     These Worth circus people only had some of their show with

them. The other half had been sunk during World War One while

they were touring.  They had lost all their animals, but some of

their performers survived. They eventually ended up in South

Africa, and although they had lost half a circus at sea, it was

still a wonderful circus.

     My mother was there with horses for the show, and we had to 

 take a race horse off the train. His name was Peadmont.  He had

been born and raced in Sydney so he had never seen a bullock in

his life. She had wanted to take this horse, and intended to

enter him in the Campdraft, the open, and district campdraft.     

    She knew that Peadmont had never seen a beast so she went

riding up and down the river on him at Moree. To see if she could

find a beast to give the old horse a bit of practice and to see

what he could do.

All she could find was a donkey to shoulder about. The donkey

kicked hell out of both of them, but she got a bit of practice

for the horse.     

     Eventually she saddled him up for the open campdraft, and

the district and open campdraft, and won both of them. I was

small boy,

three years old, who wanted his mother. I always went with her on

horseback wherever she went, practically from birth.  Though not

in the show ring this wasn't allowed. I was too young to

understand I couldn't go out there. 

     I was in company with my Grandfather Joe White.   I was

making such a noise yelling out, he went over and changed a five

pound note into two shilling pieces.  He thought he'd subdue the

brat, get rid of the noise and quieten me down.  I'd be able to

buy some fairy floss or get on a merry go round. No, I didn`t

want those wooden horses. I had been on real live horses, Old

Yarraman the Aboriginals called them. I had a pocket full of two

shilling pieces where the old fellow had stuffed them in my 

pocket.  I was so wild and so cranky, I started pelting two

shilling pieces all over the show grounds at Moree.  All the

other little gutter snipe kids dived on these two bob pieces.

They must have thought it was Christmas and a miniature Santa

Claus had arrived. 

     My mother Tup won most of the events she competed in, on

that day we had a wonderful time. I was very proud of her

afterwards.

     Looking back it just goes to show what a bushman thinks of

money. He thinks more of horses and his mother and the company.

Bugger the money, we only need enough money to get along, to buy

the few things that we want.  In that day and age I didn't

appreciate what my grandfather was doing for me.  He had the best

of intentions and Joe, he must have thought that I was a bastard

of a kid.

CHAPTER 8

     My Grandfather Joe White was a Drover, and my Mother carried

me on horseback on the pommel of a saddle on droving trips.  I

went everywhere she went. We brought cattle in from the Northern

Territory border and the backblocks of Queensland. Took them

right down to Narrabri and Newcastle and across to Albury

Wodonga. Right from an early age whatever was going I was in it.  

     One day we had been all day without water and it was about

four o'clock in the afternoon. A squatter came out to have a look

at the cattle and to have a bit of a talk. I was burnt as red as

a boiled prawn and was as thirsty as Lake Eliza and  badly in

need of water. Anyhow a bit of a thunderstorm came up. Mother had

a bushman's curled brim hat on.  While she was talking to this

squatter, under a tree for a bit of shelter, the rain was coming

down on the top of her hat.  The brim of her hat created a half

shaped funnel thing, and I was there with my mouth open drinking

the water off her hat.  I can remember this squatter saying to

her,

  " Tup you've got a tough customer there. He'll see it out.

He'll see the job done.  He'll get a drink or a feed wherever he

goes. 

He's the toughest kid I ever run into, and he's not going to miss

an opportunity to get himself a drink of water." 

CHAPTER 9

     It was a world of horses. We thought more of horses than

anything else.  My people were cattle drovers, old Millanbri to

the Aboriginals. Whatever we did it was done on horseback.  The

horses were known as Moke, Prad, and Yarraman, Mustang, Moorang.

There seemed then a hundred names used for horses. Some even

called them Crocodiles and no doubt some were as rough as

Crocodiles to ride. 

     I learned to ride a horse before I learned to walk. I

learned to crack a whip about the time I learnt to walk.    I was

interested in whip making and cracking whips from an early age.  

A funny thing about horses the old time bushmen always said, 

" Horses had no brains, they only had oil for brains," but this

was a myth. There are many things they didn't understand then

about the bush.  Horses are my special gift my chief sole

delight.  I'd rather have a horse as a plaything more than

anything else I know.

CHAPTER  10   

     When I was a small kid, long before I could mount a horse,

the motor cars were very few indeed. They used to send out petrol

in four gallon drums in a case, two four gallon drums to a case.

It was either Texaco or Shell petrol. 

     I had an old brown pony. I used to stack the petrol tin

cases, one laying down one standing up. The old brown pony was

very patient. She knew what I was trying to do. I'd start

climbing up the petrol cases, and down then I would fall, as the

stack overbalanced, dropping me under the old brown horse. She

never took a bit of notice.  

     I discovered afterwards if I put the two bridle reins over

the horse's wither, I could get my foot up in the reins together,

and step on to the horses neck. I'd then slide back to climb onto

its back. If the horse was saddled I could climb up like a monkey

using the stirrup leather, to get into the saddle.  There are

plenty of ways to get into the saddle but only two ways out of

it.  You can get off or you can be pelted off.

    They used to tell me I had to be thrown a hundred times

before I became a horseman.  I'm still waiting to fall off those

hundred times.  I can't ever remember being thrown from a horse

any time, but I've had them buck over on top of me.  I've had

them rear over on top of me. They have bashed me up against trees

and pulled me off. Horses have good brains, and if you study them

and use a bit of horse sense,  you will accumulate horse sense

over a lifetime  in the game.   If you went about it in the right

way, It's marvellous what you could achieve. 

     I'll just say this about horsemen. If you want to be a

horseman, you want to start young at the game.  If you ride seven

different horses seven days a week for seven years; if you have

enough horse sense, guts, and gumption you may become an

accomplished horseman.  I think I'm fit to make this statement. 

I have used horses in every field, saddle horses,  show horses,

Race horses. And I've driven horses in horse teams  and bullocks

in bullock teams, driven them in carts, wagons, sulkys, and

wagonettes, and four in hand.  

CHAPTER 11

     The old timers had different ways of treating horses and

their own remedies.  Today they use all modern ideas, it is a bit

out of focus with me now. It is done scientificly now of course,

but I found the old ways ok too.  If you wanted to drench a

horse, let him get thirsty, mix up a knob of reckitts blue in his

water, and let him drink it. This will expel the worms. 

     Going back to the days of Cobb and Co Coaches, four horses

in hand.  They'd do twenty miles at a pretty quick pace.  They

soon found they were losing quite often, horses due to water

gripes. The horses couldn't expel their water. So on every mail

change where the horses were changed they grew Bitter Alloes.

They would boil a few leaves off the cactus plant in a container. 

 So when the horses arrived hot and a bit thirsty, they let them

take a few mouthfuls, a few slurps of the bitter Alloes mixture.

Then they could be turned loose safely in the horse paddock, and

they wouldn't develop water gripes. 

     We had cures for swamp cancer, poll evil, and sore backed

horses, some with splints, old remedies. 

      My Grandfather had a special ointment.  He knew of an

Aboriginal who had a big cancer on his nose. The old man gave him

some of this ointment, made out of a mixture of axle grease,

bluestone, and arsenic.  Low and behold, after about three weeks

Nickabilla Bob's nose had been healed up, he was very impressed.

He returned to Joe's camp again and said to my grandfather. 

"Joe, have you got any more of that good ointment? ." 

"Oh yes I've got plenty of it what do you want it for Nik?" 

Replied Joe raising his eyebrows. 

Nik said "Well down in the camp there's an old horse. He's got a

bad bloody back." 

My grandfather said " Has he got it bad, Nik?"  Here Nik

answered,

"Oh you know Joe, not too bad, only breaking out in the both 

sides. "  

     Still anyway, of this potion, many among the old Stockmen

would ask my Grandfather "The ointment, is it any good?" He

always assured them "It would heal a dog's ass up in two days and

grow hair on it on the third!"

So I think that made it a fairly potent brew?

CHAPTER 12

     Joe White earned a reputation as an exceptional Camp

Drafter, when he entered for the open Camp Draft on his Brown

horse Nilgie at the Mungindi Show. As he entered the gate, he

took the Bridle,

Girth and Surcingle, off the horse he was riding, and went out

and won the event with balanced riding. He was later requested by

the  Show Committee,  please give another demonstration of his

camp drafting on Nilgie.  He was pushing this big cock horned

bullock around the grounds. Some people standing at the

Showground fence would call to him, "Bring him over here Joe,"

and they would hang their hats on the bullock's horns for fun. 

     Boss Erwin the Publican, in his grog booth made of boxes in

a circle, picked up a loud hailer. Boss Erwin called out at the

top of his voice " Bring him in here Joe, and we will give him a

drink!"  So Joe pushed this big bullock through the showground

fence, amongst the crowd and then he pushed him into Boss Erwin's

bar. The bar gate was narrow and the bar exploded and knocked

Boss Erwin off his till. Joe White grabbed the big old bullock by

the horns, and led him back to the stockyards. 

     After doing so the Police arrived and locked up my

Grandfather Joe, for dangerous behaviour in a public place. Mr

Livingstone arrived and stated to the police, " Open the cell and

let Joe White out, or I'll see to it that you are defrocked!" Joe

was released forthwith and departed.  

CHAPTER 13

     We eventually moved to an outstation called Nilgie, west of

Mungindi. It was an outstation of  Burrun Downs that belonged to

the Livingstone family. My mother and father seemed to run Nilgie

station in any way they saw fit. By this time we had produced

another member of our family, my brother Victor John. It was at

Nilgie, at an early age that our mother taught us to take care of

ourselves and each other.  How to trap rabbits, shoot a kangaroo

or duck and how to catch a fish.  We could do the cooking the

washing the ironing or answer the old telephone. The phone was

connected to the head station only, we had no direct contact with

the outside world just the head station.  To get a message to

town, it had to be relayed through Burran Down's station

by Mr Livingstone's bookkeeper.                        

     At Burran Downs they had two old Fiat cars, early twenties

style, with real leather seats. They were Italian make with gate

gearboxes out on the running board, and had great big backs on

them. The upholstery was absolutely wonderful. They were

majestic carriages, fit for a king.  

     Around the homestead there was an orchard of five acres. A

Chinaman was installed to keep the orchard and the garden in

order.

Occasionally we were invited in on a Sunday to  visit the

homestead. By this time the Worby family had bought the place and

had taken over. There were three of the Worby boys living there

and like all small kids we wandered into the orchard and got

stuck into green fruit. We ate green peaches, and plums, and

other fruit. 

 On our return home in the old rough and bulky, the sulky,  our

mother found out that we had been eating green fruit. She

immediately gave us a dose of castor oil just to be on the safe

side. 

     Well, lo and behold, only a few days later, the Worby boys

were in the hospital, and George Worby died of green fruit

poisoning. I asked my mother why George died and we were spared

and she assured me it was the dose of castor oil that fixed us

up.  We were lucky to have a mother that knew and understood what

was going on. 

     We were responsible kids and we could run the horses up, 

milk the cow and cut wood for the stove. We could pump water at

the old hand pump down on the Ballandool creek.  Before the pump

came we used to carry water. We'd be running like Chinamen with

two treacle billy tins of water.  As time went by the old man put

a plunger pump on the edge of the water. It was a pretty big job

for boys to use this old push and pull pump, to fill a thousand

gallon tank.  

     Mother ran the place, and the old man went out and did a bit

of shearing,  fencing, or whatever had to be done on adjoining

properties.  

     Victor and I had a poison cart with a plough underneath it.

The thing that dispensed the rabbit bait, had broken down.  We

used to put a horse in the straps and drag this cart around the

sandhills. We'd mix up Raspberry jam with the roots of nut grass

and would, with a quantity of Strychnine,  make the bait for the

rabbits. At five and seven years old we were professional rabbit

poisoners. 

     By this time we had a baby brother, Noel, who was just

starting to walk. One day we had a full can mixed for rabbit

bait.

We were following the plough. It would dig up a clod and then we

would put a big dollop of jam bait on the clod.  We had gone

about a mile and had just about run out of jam, when we noticed

Noel coming along behind us. He'd got a big old spoon, one of

those they mix up puddings with, and he was following us along

eating the baits. He had raspberry jam all over his face and

mouth, and halfway up his nose, spread from one ear to the other.

He was licking it and getting it into him.  

     We put him on the old poison cart and trotted him back to

Mother. Luckily for Noel she was home at the time. She got onto

the doctor on the old telephone, and, by relaying a message, the

doctor told her that Noel had probably eaten too much Strychnine,

an overdose.  She was giving him salt and water to get him to

vomit, then castor oil to drive it through him. Noel, he survived

eating two quarts of rabbit bait. 

     Another time there when we were pretty small, there was a

big jar of Arsenic in the house. The Arsenic was kept on one

ledge of the wall, in the old tin house that we lived in.  After

a windstorm this couple of pounds of Arsenic fell off the ledge

onto the floor and broke. My young brother, Victor, sat there

with a spoon and he ate this Arsenic, I suppose he ate half a

pound of Arsenic. Mother rang the Doctor again. 

     The doctor sent word. Yes, he probably ate too much Arsenic.

It never killed him, but he was always a good deal lighter  than

Noel and I. Perhaps the Arsenic stunted his growth, or was it the

smoking? They used to say in those days that smoking would stunt

your growth.  

CHAPTER 14

     But getting back to the old homestead, our mother was good

on the old Singer sewing machine. She used to knock us up Indian

moccasins and Indian clothes and feather bonnets. We'd be mounted

on the old brown pony, Colo the sulky horse or old Slavey,

mother's old show horse, a creamy mare.

     Slavey's foal Gail was there. He was born to Slavey when the

mare was twenty four years old. Gail he was a bit lively for us.

He was a bit lively for anybody other than our mother. She sold

Gail a couple of times and each time the neighbour brought him

back and said he was unmanageable.  He was a very fierce horse,

hard in the mouth and he took a bit of riding.  

     As I remember we were in Mungindi on day when Ashtons'

circus were there. Our people knew Joe Ashton. Joe gave my father

two Greyhound bitches, they were circus jumping dogs. They used

to run up a platform and jump twenty or thirty feet over a gate

and Mr Ashton would catch them on the other side.  We kept these

two bitches. One was called Dossie, the other was May. They were

named after the Ashton girls.  We crossed them with a staghound

dog also back to a greyhound. They were wonderful dogs, quite

efficient at catching any Kangaroo or Pig that jumped up in the

bush.

    Victor and I often used to go rabbiting. We couldn't take 

 that jam eater, Noel, with us. He was a bit of a nuisance. 

We would take an axe and a blue dog called Bluey with us, and go

"logging" a few rabbits. When a rabbit ran into a hollow box log,

we would stuff our hats in the holes. Then set to work to cut the

rabbit out of the log with the wood axe.  

     On this day it was a long thin box log, and the rabbit was

in there, right enough. Victor stuck his hat in one end and me, I

was standing at the other end. Bluey could hear the rabbit moving

through the log. I was just about to stuff my hat in when the

rabbit escaped. 

     Bluey came past me very fast trying to catch the rabbit.

Poor Bluey was opened up by the sharp axe blade, from the

shoulder up to the hip, and his guts dropped out.  We were very

sorry about it and we carried old blue back to the house. I can

remember Mother was there at the back steps. She sat there with

Bluey and she must have used a couple of reels of cotton, to sew

him up.

     Blue couldn't walk for about three months or so, and we fed

him at the back steps and watered him there. When he finally

walked, he was so tight on one side where he'd healed up, he used

to walk in a circle. 

CHAPTER 15

    One day there was a bagman who arrived. He had a black beard

and a very bad stoop. He had two walking sticks cut from bush

timber, when he came hobbling up the road to the homestead.  Old

Dora the  bitch spotted him and barked, and the blue Kangaroo Dog

he went after the bagman. The bagman wasn't very old at all,

although he had this black bushy beard. He took one look at

Bluey,

and dumped the walking sticks. He raced down to the sliprails and

jumped into the fork of an old Coolibah tree.  The blue dog was

jumping at him in circles.  

     In the tree fork the bagman was yelling out, 

"For Christsake help, help, the bloody dogs are killing me."  

The dogs never put a tooth on him. I never saw an invalid or a

man with two walking sticks become so much alive as when old

Bluey and Dora got on to him. If mother hadn't found him, perched

in the tree, the old bagman he might have been there yet, because

he was not game to leave it. 

CHAPTER  16

     Above the back door, there were two big nails driven into

the wood. Resting on the nails, above the door, Mother always had

a thirty two Winchester rifle. There were all sorts of people

knocking about, with possible murderers among these total

strangers on the track.  These drifters would call by to cadge a

meal. They'd come to the back door and some might want to know

where to go to get work. Or they'd be asking for a bit of tucker.

Our Mother would stand there talking, with both hands on the

rifle, cocked and loaded.   She was a dead shot at a hundred

yards. All she had to do now was pull the old rifle off the

nails, and shoot if trouble appeared. Many of these people didn't

know who they were dealing with. Luckily for them they didn't

turn nasty at the door, in this lonely place in the bush.

     You'd be surprised at the people that were roaming about.

They used to come past our place in old time wagonettes. A big

family in a wagonette pulled by a couple of old poor horses. They

might come out of South Australia.  

     Over there in those days there were dust storms and 

drought.

These people always seemed red eyed. Their horses and dogs were

poor, their clothes were worn out. They might have been out there

on a rabbit fence, boundary riding, or trying to get a job. Some

of them might do a circle out there of nearly a thousand mile

trying to get a job. Sadly there were no jobs, times were really

bad and nobody had much money. These poor people we saw coming in

might have sandy blight. They'd be starving and we'd help them

out. Give them whatever we could. They wouldn't even have a bit 

of salt in the tucker box to bathe their eyes. They were the sort

of people that pioneered this country and made it what it is

today. 

CHAPTER 17

     Our life really started at Nilgie Homestead. We came there

on the back of a wagon pulled by twenty four horses. We were

brought there by the local Mungindi carrier, Jack Edwards.

Jack brought us there with all our dunnage.  We sat up on the

back of the wagon six feet off the ground, looking at the old tin

hut that was to become our home for a few years.  

     It was Jack Edwards who came past with his wagon loaded with

wool, heading for the nearest railway at Mungindi. Then one day

he came along with a T Model Ford truck. It had a worm driven

diff. in it. The truck didn't go too fast.

 Twenty mile an hour might have been the speed flat out. This

truck it carried five bales of wool,

four on the floor and one on top of the four.

     The old man met him one day, and said to him, 

"You can't get much on it, Jack." 

The old carrier said, "No, but I can do many quicker trips. I can

be in and out. I can travel all day and night!" 

     So that is how he worked it. Instead of dragging in eighty

or one hundred bales in a wagon, that took him a fortnight to do.

Jack he would work day and night and get in ten bales a day, or a

hundred bales in ten days, to the railway.  Still later Jack he

got a bigger truck I think it was a Talbot, it had hard rubber

tyres on it, and it was very rough. He could stack quite a bit of

wool on it. That is the way the wool went to town.  The mail that

we got delivered,  it run down by the Moonie river, it was carted

by sulky. The sulky mailman he brought out a bit of bread and

butter  and the mail once a week, or once a fortnight, his name

 was Wicks he did a good service.

    Meanwhile we were  diving in the old Ballandool creek,

getting a few mussels, and catching a few fishes.

    The old man had a Greener shotgun it was given to him as a

presentation, by some mates and he used to take us Duck shooting. 

He was a pretty good shot and we always got a few Ducks, Wood

Ducks, Black Ducks, and Teal Ducks.  Over in the swamp we would

see the Brolgas dancing. Those big storks the Brolgas, in the

mating season when they were nesting. They usually nest out in

the swamp.

They were very pretty to watch at sundown doing their courting,

with their steps and antics, that they performed, our bit of

entertainment.

CHAPTER 18

      We had a bit of a problem at one stage, the feral cats left

by the people before us. Some were feral and some were friendly. 

   Our Mother she did a big job on Nilgie.  She was doing the

mustering for the lambmarking and doing the cooking for the

lambmarkers, and she made this big Bmonge, about two gallons of

it.

Then one of the kids had something wrong with him, probably Noel

fell head over heels, or trod on a nail. Mother she rushed out to

see what was wrong with him. So when she came in there was about

two dozen cats sitting around the mixing bowl eating the Bmonge.

Annoyed, she grabbed a bottle of Strychnine off the wall and

tipped it in and stirred it up, with a big old wooden spoon.  Now

she said

"come on you blokes we are going for a walk, so we went for a bit

of a walk up the creek."

     I suppose we were away for a couple of hours, she sat under

a tree there and she showed us the way that the old Aboriginals

made hats out of gum leaves. She made quite good hats for us out

of gum leaves. So many  people wouldn't know of this practice.

Showed us also how to plait grass into all sorts of useful

things,  belts and head bands bridles and saddles tables and

chairs.  She made pipes out of gum nuts with sticks stuck in

them. She would make them with a pocket knife.  We thought we

were pretty lucky to have a Mother who was so handy at making 

things for us. So later that day we went back to the house and

there were bloody cats dead everywhere.

Bar one she had stuck under a washtub, a black cat. She had

poisoned the lot of them with the Bmonge, they were under the

house or in the house. Some had raced up the verandah post a big

old pine post a foot thick and hung there dying. Looking out for

about fifty yards all around there was nothing but dead cats.  We

had to get a spring cart, to cart these cats away. We carted then

over onto a sandhill about a mile away, and dumped them there.

Down the rabbit burrows, we buried them and there was only one

cat left the old black cat. He grew up there and he lived around

the place a few years and then she got a big blue cattle dog, off

a bloke called Andy Mitchell. 

This dog was pretty good at killing Kangaroos when they were

bailed up.  

He would kill anything and the old cat caught on, and he went up

onto the sandhill. The black cat he isolated himself on the

sandhill for eighteen months or so, while the dog was home. 

Still later the dog it was found, was a sheep killer. So mother

put a bullet in the old cattle dog and took him up on the

sandhill and chucked him there.  Yes lo and behold the old  black

cat turned up at home that night, after all that time in

isolation. 

CHAPTER 19

    Another day a thunder storm came up on the horizon and she

said to Victor and me. "You blokes had better soon get a bit of

kindling wood in, it might be wet in the morning and we will need

something to start the fire going." So he and I go down on the

woodheap and then we are cutting up  a butter box.  A pine box

they were in those days, or a petrol box the same thing. We were

chopping it up and we just about had enough.  Finally there was a

bit of a board laying there and we both concentrated on it at the

same time. I reached out to pick this board up and Victor chopped

the end off my index finger on the right hand. Mother stuck it

back on and put a bandage on it.  Early the next morning we set

out for Mungindi twenty five miles away.

 My finger looked a bit crook, a bit red it was only hanging by a

tiny piece of skin connected. The old doctor stitched it on and

the finger nail never grew quite straight, but the rest of the

finger was ok and it still works today. There has been great

argument ever since over the incident on whom was to blame,

Victor or I, on how I came to get my finger off. 

CHAPTER 20

     Sometimes she would put the old brown pony in the sulky to

go out and do a bit of sheep work. If she could see

where there wasn't too much scrub she could take the three of us

with her. With a cut lunch aboard away we'd go, old Dora the

sheep bitch would follow.

    Though on this day we had a big old kangaroo dog Whiskers, he

was half Staghound and bred from one of these Ashton Greyhound

bitches, he was toothless. His teeth had rotted out and he was

pretty blind as well.  Anyhow we took off in the sulky, Whiskers

got up full of arthritis and tried to follow.  Mother swung the

whip and said " Go home Whiskers you are too old and useless." 

He had been a good dog in his day. So off then we went to work.

We get over onto the Chapman fence line, and were going down the

fence line and what happened here. Dora bailed up a big old grey

Kangaroo.  A monster standing at least seven feet high when it

reared up. Dora bailed him up, and he gathered Dora up in his

arms.

These Kangaroos they have a terrible strength.                    

This grey kangaroo, he was squashing old Dora, her tongue was

hanging out. This giant Roo he was cracking her ribs and was

trying to rake his hind foot up and down her ribs there. Tuppy

our mother she got out of the sulky and she got through the

fence. She was a lame woman, she had suffered Polio at a young

age.  She got out with a butcher's knife in her hand, to go over

to take tea or to deal with this kangaroo, that was killing her

sheep dog. To our horror, no sooner had she stepped through the

fence, instead of the Kangaroo going on with the dog. He dropped 

the dog and attacked our Mother.  Just as he did so, then old

Whiskers the old half blind dog he came trotting up. Old Whiskers

jumped up and caught this big old roo by the throat, and I'll

swear to this day that he never put a tooth mark on that

Kangaroo. Whiskers he had such great strength, great power in his

jaws that he choked that kangaroo, and

our mother got away.  If it wasn't for Whiskers we might have

lost our Mother that day. There is nothing that we could have

done. Many Australians  do not realize how dangerous a kangaroo

can be. A buck kangaroo particularly in the mating season. In

parks I have noticed they have kangaroo males and females in

together. In the off season they are ok.  The old buck is pretty

docile. The difference is if he has a mate there that's on

season, and he is very protective of

her, he would be the most dangerous thing to tackle that I

remember.  A boar pig is pretty bad but the old man kangaroo, is

dangerous.

CHAPTER 21

     Another time I saw the dogs bale a Kangaroo up. Mother was

there on her horse after it. Then I saw this kangaroo grab her

horse by the throat, and our Mother was fighting him there  using

a butcher's knife.  While the roo slashed at the horse with it's

hind legs and bit her on her arms. ( They can bite like a dog

almost, and can  bite pieces out of you.) Still she tried to kill

him with the blade, and she eventually killed him with the

butcher's knife. She was a pretty game sort of woman our Mother

and had to be in those days. To be able to tackle anything and

when she mounted the old creamy mare  and went out into the bush.

She always took a stick with her, a knockout stick she called it.

This club was a sapling off a tree, and had a knob on one end she

carried it in her hand. 

CHAPTER 22

    It was nothing for her to come home with sixteen or eighteen

good kangaroo skins,  and probably a couple of fox skins that she

had run down in the bush.  She might get home at dark and with

the old kerosene light, she then had to nail those skins out in

the garden where the dogs couldn't tear them up.

 Then by the end of the month when she went to town, she always

had some extra pounds shillings and pence, it went towards our

survival and keeping us going. She had been saving money in this

way for sometime, and she wanted maroon curtains, satin maroon

curtains. 

     Yes she was talking about them and visualised what they

would look like. We had big doors and windows in this old 

tin house.  Eventually when she got enough money she bought the

material. Then she sat down on a winters day, it was raining

while she made the curtains, with frills on the top and at the

bottom and with tie back straps to match.  She sat back and was

admiring her handy work and it was a beautiful sight, these

velvet curtains.

    Next door a few miles away, there lived three little girls on

another station.  These little girls came in the door and were so

cold and hungry, and they had little thin cotton dresses on them.

Some had dresses made of sea foam flour bags, and they were

shivering and blue with the cold.  She must have thought " What a

selfish person I am? "  Because, she reached up and she pulled

the curtains down.   She made under clothing and dresses, and

booty's, and berets, out of her curtains for the little girls.

This can give you some idea of our Mother's unselfish caring

personality.  I was very happy to see those little girls going

home with their new clothes.  Later that evening when the rain

stopped, Mother took them home in the sulky.  They looked like

three little pixies's in the bush. They were beautiful to see,

were warm and had full bellies and they wore my mothers curtains

home, something I can't forget.   

CHAPTER 23

    Other times we would go gathering Emu eggs in the sulky. In a

drive of five or six miles you could find ten emu's nests. That

was, good clean ones that hadn't any blood in them, or hadn't

gone rotten. You could drive round and pick up a hundred emu eggs

in the season, each emu egg was equivalent to a dozen fowl eggs.

The old Aboriginals they knew when there would be emu eggs about.

" When the Gidgee trees come into blossom " One would say "

Plenty emu eggs, old denno one, old Emu be laying now be plenty

of eggs about for a while."  These eggs were a fairly good

supplement to our food supply for quite a few weeks. If you got

them fresh they would remain fresh. We even sent some away on the

train down to Brisbane to the cake manufacturer in those days.

Quite often as small kids there would be a brown snake around the

place, or a death adder. Aboriginals called them Wongai.

Strangely we never seemed to have

any fear of snakes or death adders. They were part of the set up

in the bush, we could kill a snake or a death adder even as small

kids in the bush. We use to stomp on the heads of death adders

with our bare heels, to kill them and bust their head.

I suppose we could have been bitten. The death adder usually

strikes from the side. So if you stomp down on his head, while he

is waiting for you to come in from the side and you hit him from

above, you had him.  It's not a practice recommended to anybody,

we killed them in this manner.  

 I had a friend a Chinaman Harry Archoi, he had a fruiterer

business in the town. I saw him doctor a horse that had a bad

shoulder, it had been torn about and there was much proud flesh.

The dead flesh was a mess and he introduced maggots into the

wound.

After a time when he said the maggots had eaten the proud flesh,

he got them out again. He filled the now hollow pocket in the

horses shoulder with milk, and sure enough the maggots filled

with milk and came out of the wound. 

The shoulder healed up and the horse returned to health.

    There was a Chinaman in the Mungindi hospital  Georgie Wah

he was badly constipated. The hospital staff decided to fill up

his rectum with water to help his constipation. The pressure from

the mixture became too great and he jumped out of bed and ran

through the ward yelling "waffaw" trailing a tube which sprayed

the ward as he passed.     Back in town we stayed with people we

knew.  Our mother had to sell the car for eighty pounds.   And

the horses and the rest of the gear that we had gathered it all

went by the way. 

While we were in town old Colo the sulky horse was left on Nilgie

Station. Then a  big raw jackaroo entered him in the open hunt,

and high jump.  This old horse who had been my Uncle Walter's

horse, went out with this raw jackaroo riding him, and he won the

district hunt and the high jump.  The horses that we owned were

truly exceptional,  and Colo proved himself once again .  At this

point things started to go down hill for our family . My brother

Victor, I don't think he was ever a boy, he had to be and adult

early.                           

 Victor could cope in nearly any situation. He was better 

than I at most things. Our brother Noel was about four year old

at this time and we had to do the best we could 

    After we left Nilgie station which had been our home,

situated  on the banks of the Ballandool creek, about one mile

inside the border of Queensland from New South Wales. This border

crossing was called Cload's gate .                             

     CHAPTER 24 

             OLD STAR.        

Old Star stood in the horse paddock so dry,

with the others he'd just been run in.

The Manager gave orders, he now had to die,

the Jackaroo's job was to kill him.

Brown Star was Tuppy`s favourite horse,

he'd shoulder a beast with the best .

He was old but still game at campdrafting of course,

he'd been one of the best in the west.

But this was the pay off, for death had arrived,

his sickle was shining and sharp.

The Jackaroo pointed the rifle and fired,

tried to shoot him right through his game heart.

The old horse did canter was whinnying still,

five times round the paddock he'd run.

The dumb Jackaroo was still shooting to kill,

when Tuppy took from him the gun.

She whistled for Star and he cantered up,

with the blood gushing out of his side.

she stroked him awhile like a young cattle pup

one bullet and poor old Star died.

                          by D H Johnson.

In the bad old days on the big Company Properties, Stations out

in west Queensland, a horse was broken in at four years of age.

Before that age it was thought not strong enough to carry a man.  

   Deemed worn out at eight years and destroyed. So Star was just

a liability to his calculating masters. You see there were always

more young horses being bred for a short life, to replace the

eight year old slave. So horses good and smart were killed along

with the rogue horses and the buck jumpers. Just as soon as they

had been 8 years on the Company books . Today they are broken in

at 2 years and are useful for twenty years and more, a difference

of opinion with the old masters!

CHAPTER 25

  Earlier on Cubbie Station in the Dirranbandi area,  when we

visited occasionally. There had worked a giant Aborigine 'Cubby

Jack'. He stood about 6 foot 6 inches tall, was bony thin, but he

kept him self clean . This man, he wore a pair of goose neck

spurs  wired on to his feet with black rusty wire . He never wore

a boot in his life and he rode with his big toe in the stirrup

iron.                                                      

He would say often with pride, "I'm Cubbie Jack , King of the

blacks and a bloody lot of white fellows too!"

  He was right  a definite force to be reckoned with , and not to

be stepped on .

He worked as a station hand on the local stations and did his job

well. Before my father died we used to go to Cubbie now and then

catching pigs. Once caught an old barrow pig dressed up and sold

to the butcher was worth a weeks wages. Father could cure pork or

make bacon or sausages he knew the trade . On one visit we were

supposed to have a bit of a party with Joe White. He had a beer

keg buried in a sandhill and was away working on the station

fixing fences .

But we were too arrive too late the three bachelor Mc'Govern

brothers had found the beer, dug it up  and when we arrived they

were choked down around the keg .

CHAPTER 26

    I went as a small boy of 9 years with Wicky Fing to Weemalah. 

We took tucker and shearers to a woolshed in the watercourse

country, to a place owned by Mr Bucknell . The Publican in 

Mungindi had said that morning "What will you have for breakfast,

 Goat or Galah for breakfast?  The cheese is a bit on the nose,

it's mouldy ."  We had delivered the supplies from the railway to

the shearers in a Five Horse Dray. On the journey we went through

flood water, and the water was so deep I spent one night sleeping

in a Coolibah tree fork. But deliver them we did. The townspeople

of Mungindi were searching for the body of Harry Newman, who had

drowned in the Gil Gil. He was found while we were at Weemalah .

CHAPTER 27

     After the death of my father John Hambleton Johnson in 1928.

 I was given over to a German woman . She was 36 stone weight and

she took Noel and I to Helensburg . There I was to become a boy

slave, at nine years of age . All her family were spies against

me.

Every morning I had to gather up six bags of horse shit for the

garden. Plus at the back steps there was a 400 gallon ships tank.

Before breakfast every morning I had to fill that 400

 gallon tank with two kerosene drum buckets, from a well 50 yards

away . I had to climb down that well to the water using the steps

that were cut into the rock, to the water edge. And then to fill

these buckets and return, so many times every morning. Once

finished I got the leftovers from the breakfast table .

As I was never on time at the meal table. I got paraded before

the fat lady, in her bedroom. She took up the entire double bed

with her flab.  On entering the room , the aroma from her

unwashed body, smelt like a cheese factory. If she sat at the

breakfast table, at the head of the table, she took up two full

size strong kitchen chairs . One chair for each cheek of her

backside . I will give you her first name only, 'Lavina'. After

being reprimanded by this big

bloody hun. I was directed to get a Gad, It looked like a coal

chisel, used for cutting steel, plus a seven pound hammer . I was

directed to cut a track across a limestone boulder, some six feet

out of the ground it sat. The grooving had to be done 6 inches

deep. At the top of the boulder the grooves had to go deeper.     

  Then I started with wood wedges at the top of the rock, with

three or four wood wedges placed in the groove.  Now using a

fourteen pound hammer I would split the rock. After it had been

split. It was carved by Gad, or Coal Chisel, into rock tiles

about two feet long, by one foot wide.  You see I was building a

stone fence.  I was a boy slave there with no friends or

encouragement from anyone. Without any show of kindness, I worked

as a stone mason . Bob Boyd a visitor and a returned soldier of

the First World War, sometimes gave me a penny to buy a Bulls Eye

lolly. I  saved these pennies and on a used envelope that I had

found, I put a stamp . Bought with the bulls eye money.  On a

piece of brown paper I wrote a message to my Mother, "I'm in hell

, come and get me ." I secretly posted the letter . I can

remember my Mother, who was very lame, coming to the rockpile. 

She wore a tartan skirt coloured red brown and yellow . It is the

tartan of my tribe.  This is how I made my escape from slavery.

CHAPTER 28

     After leaving Helensburg . I was placed with my aunt Maud

Russell, my Grandfather Joe's sister, in Botany Road Windsor in

Sydney. Her husband George had died.  I slept on her lounge, in

this room with a couple of blankets at night . She was kind to me

and treated me well . Now Botany Road Windsor, even back in the

thirties was a slum area with Prostitution. Young girls would

come to her house often. Some of these girls she had reared and

fostered, only to have them become Prostitutes .       

But they still called her place home . I can remember my Aunt

talking to some of the girls, who were street kids originally .

In summer they were dressed in silk dresses, with stockings and

every refinement. They were well spoken and my Aunt had seen to

that . In winter they wore fur coats over woollen dresses.

   At night whilst I was supposed to be asleep, though quite wide

awake,  I listened to their stories . How one young lady had been

serviced by fourteen Chinamen in China town . She said the

Chinese seemed to have the most money, and were better payers. It

was a new experience living in Sydney. The young boys made billy

carts , and we used to race them down Botany Road from the

hilltop. On the corners and on the footpath, alcoholics were in

every nook and cranny and back lane . Saturated they were, from

the plonk and the grog, that they could beg , borrow or steal. It

was a suburb of thieves and rogues , necklacers and garotters. I

learned the way of the street kid.  If you were hungry it was

easy to steal a couple of apples from a barrow. The owner would

not even chase you because they were worth almost nothing, four

pence a dozen for instance.

There were street gangs who fought each other from suburb to 

suburb . At times, I met the Botany Road mob, 15 to 20 young

louts.

I knew I couldn't beat them all.  But I could run faster and I

always managed to get away . The Botany Road slum was an awful

place , but I grew to use it. If I saw a rich man who wore a new

suit, and a gold watch chain across his vest, and perhaps a gold

ring of marriage on his finger. Especially if he smoked a Havana

cigar.                   

We would tag onto him until he gave us a shilling, to be gone .

My best friend was a boy whose head was as large as a big

Watermelon. 

He was called Melonhead for some reason? He said to me " Johnno

we will go to the Fleas and Itches, the Matinee."

 I said  "We've got no money ?" he said " I will get the money ."

I walked home with Melonhead and he said to his mother 

"Hey mum I want 2 shillings." She said " Get out of her you big 

headed bastard!" So he said " If you don't give it to me, I'll

tell the old man you slept with the butcher." She threw the 2

shillings at us . We saw a western movie show, and it had to be

Tom Mix on Tony riding to save the day.

CHAPTER 29

     I saw the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, on the 

18th of march 1932, bare footed and bare assed. I stood there a

lonely boy in the crowd. The band was playing and there was a

parade with people marching past, lots of flag waving .

 I saw Captain De Groote race in on his charger, and cut the blue

ribbon with his sabre ahead of Jack Lang, the Premier of New

South Wales. He was charged for his actions and fined five

pounds. On thesouthern side of the Harbour Bridge, I saw two

little blonde headed

boys about five and seven years old. They were busking or begging

and were singing," When your hair has turned to silver we will

still be on the dole!" I had grown considerably wiser and had no

intention of returning to stone masonry . I had learnt everything

from the city people, that I could use to my advantage.           

CHAPTER 30

     At this point I jumped the 'Rattler', the train from Sydney

to Mungindi. I got a job burr cutting on Wirrah Station or the

now Cleveland. I was about 10 years of age when I worked with Les

Hulin and young Terry O'Connel. I was left there with nothing but

a 6 By 4 tent and a burr cutting hoe. The other two had soon left

the job, but I stayed on after the tucker ran out. I went on

cutting burr in a 10,000 acre paddock, and worked hard to finish

the job .

Occasionally or about once a month, a boundary rider would visit

me, Bill Star. He saw my plight.  This working man would turn up

with a bit of flour, tea and sugar. He would talk to me and

encourage me to remain on the job. I remember Christmas day was

celebrated on damper and fat. On new years day I had damper and

treacle from a big tin that was near empty, on the bore drain

where I was camped. The bore water was stagnant, it had dead Pigs

that had been 'sapped', poisoned, laying in it. Further along up

the drain there were dead sheep laying rotting in the water. On

completion of the job I reported to the Manager at Wirrah

Station, Mr Kirkpatric. When I asked for my wages, some 10

shillings a week for three months work. He told me to get off the

place as soon as I could. 

CHAPTER 31

  I was a little boy with no home, no one to turn to for any kind

of help. But there was the rubbish heap at Mungindi to support

me. 

On the banks of the Barwon river, above the Police Paddock, there

was a tin hut made of kerosene tins opened out, and attached to

belah rails.  It had a fireplace inside. The previous owners were

a tribe of Aboriginals who called themselves Mc'Pherson. Yes they

moved out of it, it was too rough for them to live in. I took up

residence in this tin mansion at once. I had a few old mates like

Death Adder Joe Williams , who was my nearest neighbour . A

Stalwell Gift Winner for Foot Racing. This man made a point of

killing a Death Adder a day, hence his name. There was a full

blood Aboriginal who had a Gunyah just south of the railway line.

He had worked for my Grandfather Joe White in the old days. He

called himself Harry Whiteman, he was old and wise in the ways of

the bush and taught me of it. Below the Police Paddock lived an

old man called Scotty, a very suspicious character. And below him

further down was where the 'Two Up School' was run. It used to be

played in the gullies.

 Harry Johnson who lived in a humpy nearby, taught me how to spin

the pennies in the game of SWY.  He was the master of all Two Up 

players, and taught me very well. It was a handy trade during the

Second World War for me, and it earned me pocket money often.  

CHAPTER   32  

     Near the Barwon Bridge lived an old convict in a tent, Mr

Wiseman, this man walked with a broken stride.  I asked why he

had one crippled leg, and he took his boots off and showed me

why.

Showed where he had been shackled to a ball and chain. 

 Yes in a chain gang chained together with others.  He said "Don

they broke my stride but they never broke my heart," 

He removed his shirt and pulled his trousers down a bit, to show

me his buttocks, loins, chest and back where he had been flogged

repeatedly, with a Cat of Nine Tails.  The awful scar tissue told

the story, all over his tortured body, a living example of what

the Magistrates and his owners had done to my friend, God rest

his soul.

  My younger brother Victor now 7 years was living with Aunt Mona

on the Nella Property near Girlie, in New South Wales. And Noel

as a small boy was with my Mother.  She was being cared for by my

Aunt Maud Russell in Sydney town. On her return from, Sydney

after serious operations.   She joined me with my two brothers on

the bank of the Barwon river where we made our home in the tin

shack .

    I took my first 'paid ' job at a Grazier's property, it was

to last over the shearing.  We travelled by sulky to the Graziers

place just outside the Mungindi township.

That night he said,"You can sleep over there in the shed with the

dogs, you might be able to shake out a couple of old corn bags to

sleep under."  These bags were the ones the dogs had been

sleeping on. He was a big man of stature and position in  the

community and his name was Ned. So I stayed that night with the

dogs.  Next morning about daybreak the bell then rang, at the

kitchen door for breakfast. I entered the kitchen and I was given

a bone from a leg of mutton. It was dry, you could not shave

anything off it.

Where the leg joined the hip bone, there was moisture. When I

looked at it, there were two big maggots, looking back at me.

I decided not to disturb them. I had also received the very thin

stale heel of a loaf of bread that had gone mouldy and curled up.

So I said to the cook "May I have some tea please?" 

She walked to the Bosses's breakfast table and came back with a

silver teapot. These people only used weak tea, because of

meanness! 

She took the teapot to the urn on the range and filled it up with

boiling water. She even came over and poured it out for me, so

that I would not leave my dirty hand prints on their silver

teapot. So I had a cup of boiled water for breakfast, class

distinction at its worst?  After  breakfast we went mustering, he

put me to muster around the fence.  He must have thought I was a

new chum, as he turned the sheep in to me, to move down the

fence. On the fence I found in the south east part of the

property an old ewe sheep she was trapped in the fence by the

legs. Her four legs were caught

between two wires of the fence.

The crows had picked both her eyes out. With the root of a

Sandlewood tree I knocked her brains out and then pulled her out

of the wire of the fence. Her two little lambs were fat and

strong.

They followed me to the horse, so I carried them on horseback,

all that day while mustering.  We put the sheep into the yards at

the Woolshed. The Boss said to me "What have you got there?"

Pointing to the lambs, " Give them here." He grabbed them by the

back legs and bashed their heads against a Coolibah tree knocking

their brains out.  So I thought to myself  "I'd better watch out

for this Grazier he might do the same to me?"

 I was so hungry I could have eaten those two Lambs, after

roasting them on a fire, but I couldn't now!  I had a great

respect for animals, remember we were living off the sheeps back

in those days.

The Boss left me with the sheep at the shed and took my saddle

horse away. The next day installed in the kitchen at the shearing

shed, was a very old man, Ben Murray the Shearers Cook.  He

immediately knocked up an Irish 'Murphy Stew', mainly potatoes. I

don't mind telling you the saliva was running from my mouth, as

it was being cooked  in a big boiler on the top of the wood

stove. Ben next knocked up a damper and a brownie, the only

difference between the two, was that the brownie had a sprinkling

of currants in it.

So I was to get a feed from the cook Ben Murray. He was a dirty

old cook, and every meal was stew topped up each day in the same

pot.

This job lasted a fortnight, so we ate stew for two weeks! 

I was given the job of Rouseabout at the sheds penning up the

sheep for the Shearers. They were Crutching the sheep these three

men  Les Hulin, Norman Young, and his brother. They were 'Gun'

Crutchers, these men each crutched one thousand sheep a day. My

job was to keep bringing the sheep in to the shed for them. Also

to sweep the shearing board, pick the Dags out of the stained

part of the wool, throwing the good wool into the woolpress. I

was the wool presser in my spare time, at night with a hurricane

light.

 For a young lad to fill and press wool, in this Moffat Wool

Press was a back breaking job. Yes even for a full sized man

never mind a boy, working into the night to press these

Crutchings. 

Of course they had to weigh three hundred pounds, and had to be

branded with the owners name and the property name.  The Dags

were also pressed into bails of four or five hundred pounds

weight, all in good order. When the job was finished. I never saw

any money. I expect my stepfather Les Hulin collected the lot. 

 CHAPTER 33

    I took myself a job with a drover with, Mr Patrick O'Connel,

who was a great old bloke. His family they were Catholics and

they lived in Mungindi. He was a big man, strong on discipline

with his family.  He taught the boys to fight, Queensbury Rules,

and taught music to the girls, so they would be ladies.  He paid

me ten shillings a week and my keep. I stayed with this man for

two years.

He taught me how to defend myself. He was an old time pug. In my

droving days with Paddy O'Connel, I was to learn a lot about this

man.  In earlier life he had brought mobs of cattle in from the

Northern Territory down to New South Wales. After working for

him, between Jobs I stayed with his family and appreciated their

hospitality and Christianity. These Catholic people never

despised me although I was baptised a  church of England.

They fed me and gave me shelter. I worked hard for Mr O'Connel

and tried to please him. God bless them, In Arabic I say "Impshe

Allah" God go with you. 

  CHAPTER 34

     After Paddy had retired, I went with another drover, a pound

a week and my keep. Sometimes I got paid but often not. 

I went with Sonny Gallagher the drover. This man had married one

 of the Cahill girls, with him I was to be Horse Tailer. So we

went down the Barwon river systems calling at Angledool,

Goodooga, Hebel and on through Willamoringle. After following the

Culgoa down river we stopped at a place called Stony Point, where

there was an old Pub. This is where the Culgoa joins the Darling

river. Here I hobbled out the horses and let the dogs go. Within

ten minutes, every dog had a Strychnine poison bait. We had a bag

of coarse salt for salting corned meat, and we used it on the

dogs.  We were pushing it down their throats, raw, with our hands

and forcing it into their guts. The salt was very dry and we

poured much warm water down with the salt. Some dogs made a quick

recovery, by vomiting the salt and the Bait up.

The others now had a belly so full of salty water and we swung

them around by their back legs to make them sick until they all

had brought up their baits. Of the twenty dogs we never lost one.

In the camp there was Frank Smith brother of Doolah, Jim Smith.

Frank had been Mick Roach's butcher boy and had delivered meat

around the town in a basket. Flash Jack Stewart was the cook,

this man gave me hell, every time I approached the cooks cart,

the Wagonette.  I've never forgiven this bastard. Our next stop

was North Bourke on the Darling river. 

We visited Bourke from our camp at North Bourke. Gallagher and

his men seemed to like the rum very much, and on returning to

camp they gave me a few swigs of their rum.  For the first time I

was slightly intoxicated. At this time a Camel driver,  an Afghan

turned up with his camels, and turned them loose among our

horses.

The horses had never seen a camel before.  They took fright and

went racing away in every direction. It was a big job for the

Horse Tailer, me, to round them up again. What made it harder

still was the lingering smell of the camels?  The owner of the

sheep that we had travelled to fetch from this far south, was

Mick Fitzgerald of Galtimore Mungindi. Mick had paid seven and

sixpence each for them,

and the manager of Tralee threw in an extra 500 sheep to ice the

cake on top.

At Tralee there was a very big Woolshed about ninety stands for

the old blade shearers.  At this early point in time, over head

gear machinery had been installed, and it was driven by a Steam

Engine. 

They had a high tank at the shed to supply the Steam Engine and

workers with water. At the time the water was relayed by piping

to the men's huts where there was a tap on a pipe.                

 The pipe was held upright by a big post. That day I was riding a

big wild clumper mare, ( part draft horse.) This mare was wearing

a chain on her neck, so I could tie her up, ( yes to avoid

busting any more bridles.)  In my haste to tie her up I tied her

to the post the tap was on. As usual she took fright at

something and pulled the post out of the ground.  Still going

backwards she pulled the pipe out of the ground for a hundred

yards from where it was buried, to my horror. She pulled all the

piping out of the ground from the mens huts back to the woolshed.

She went up the paddock dragging the piping and the post, kicking

and striking at it. After catching the mare I had to gather up

the piping and straighten it. Had to replace it where it broke

off at the shed, and put it all back where it belonged. It was my

duty to repair this awful damage. It was nothing to be alarmed

about, it was just a job of work well done in the end. I remember

following the Culgoa to Willamoringle, at that place I was to

meet an old Aboriginal woman. She who when she was a child had

half her foot burnt off in a fire.  She now couldn't walk very

well, but she could ride a horse pretty good. She told me she had

worked in droving camps as a Horse Tailer all her life. At a

later point in my life, I was to meet some of her children, they

told me their Mother was called 'Hopping Annie'. In fact I later

served in the Second World War with her son, Jack Bishop, he had

a sister Tooley and a brother Bronco.

CHAPTER 35

    We came through Dirranbandi and went into town. Flash Jack

Stewart got himself bailed up by a shop owner Mrs Hickey, she

wanted her money that he owed her, seven and sixpence!

She kicked up quite a row and threatened to garnishee his wages,

so Sonny Gallagher paid her bill.

     Anyhow I stayed with Sonny Gallagher I was a good all

rounder by now.  I went with Sonny to shift another mob of sheep

for Mickey Fitzgerald from Walkon Station on the Condamine River. 

As we were following the river down in drought time, we saw sheep

dying in the paddocks that we passed on both sides of the stock

route. The owners sometimes offered them to us for nothing. We

told them that we had more sheep than we could cut scrub for at

the time. I used to ride ahead of the sheep cutting off bushy

limbs with a sharp tomahawk  cutting Wilga, Whitewood, or

anything I thought the sheep might eat. Our sheep now were dying

like flies.  As they dropped out near death, we cut their throats

rather than let the crows pick their eyes out, while they were

still alive and they couldn't get

up. There seemed nothing but death and destruction all around us,

these sheep could hardly walk, and they would have to go up to

three days without water. We fed our horses corn and chaff and

watered them off the wagonette. After coming off Ted Underwood's

place Waroo Station, we came to the Bindle Reserve. The sheep

three days without water rushed into the river, we could not stop

them.

The banks were steep and muddy and we bogged the bloody lot 3,000

of them.  We had to climb down the steep bank and wash them and

pull them out of the mud, and then carry them up the steep bank.

This took the two of us about forty eight hours to complete the

job.

The ones who couldn't get up, we then cut their throats,

 later their skins stretched about a mile along Ted Underwood's

fence.  So with axes we cut scrub on the reserve for the

survivors.

We found a sandy place where they could water with safety at the

lower end of the reserve. We cut scrub until there was no scrub

left. Mr Ted Underwood saw that the drought had beaten us. He

advised us to take the sheep across the river at a dry spot onto

his brothers property. It was called Yarran, it was on the

western side of the Balonne river. It was red country and had a

bit of wire grass there, so we cut scrub again.  We were in a

huge paddock, the only water on the place was from a looped bore

drain. The drain came into Yarran on the southern side and went

back out again into Beady Lagoon.  The loop in our paddock was

half a mile long before

it went back to Beady Lagoon. On Beady Lagoon there was a man who

worked with a shovel, to block the bore drain up to flood

irrigate his land. Every day this old grey headed man came riding

a grey horse, and he would soon have the drain blocked

completely. So while he was irrigating, the sheep in our paddock

would be dying of thirst. It was no good talking to him, he did

not consider us at all. 

     So very annoyed, I decided to hide myself early, very close

to where he was working every day. On this day he started filling

in the bore drain with the shovel again, and I waited for him to

take a break from his labours. I lined up my old long barrelled 

.303 single shot rifle, and when he stood still I blew the top

out of his Panamana hat, with unit 303. This old slow man, he

moved like Tom Mix, the Cowboy movie hero.  He was lightning

quick as he vaulted over the grey horse's rump into the saddle

and galloped off. I never saw this man again, he kept well away

from the boundary fence and the bore drain.  He had learned his

lesson from the Breaker.  I was left alone on Yarran with the

sheep to fend for myself. Later Sonny returned and we started

with the sheep again for Galtimore Mungindi.  Mickey Fitzgerald

was going to be disappointed, I could see.  During the 1933

drought we lost most of the sheep between St George and the

Dareel Reserve.  After starting out with 3,000 we arrived at

Dareel with 300. Sonny Gallagher went

to town and left me with them for a few days. They were still

dying when two men arrived in the night with a wagonette.  With

it were Knockout Brown, Norman and Les Marr, they came and took

delivery of the 300 we had left. They were all just about dead on

their feet.

Mr Brown and Mr Marr after scrub cutting and putting out corn

delivered 250 to Galtimore.

I left my horse and saddle, quartpot saddlebag and blue sheep dog

with Gallagher and never ever saw them again.

He kept a dog and horses I'd bought from him. I thought nothing

of it at the time, for me I'd robbed a few myself.

CHAPTER 36

     Next I stayed with Granny Hulin at Mungindi and Mother sent

me a telegram and invited me to come to Dirranbandi for 

Christmas. They were camped on the river on Christmas 33/34. I

was fourteen and a half years old when I joined them there. They

were camped in a marquee tent on the river bank, not far from the

modern pumping station, under a Coolibah tree. We spent Christmas

together.  Jack and Thelma Mc'Ewan visited us carrying Cliffy, a

baby of fourteen months, a very cranky boy. While we were talking

together Cliffy ran away. Being knockneed Cliffy fell over and

lay there belting his head on the ground in bad temper. My Mother

said "Don please go and get him," I distinctly remember picking

him up yelling and kicking. Here I thought "What an awful bastard

you are,

will you grow up the same," and he never changed.

  Old Tom Lamb owned the Seery's place then, and he kept a blue

cattle dog tied on a long chain outside his fence on a Coolibah

tree. My little step sister Claire about three years old, was

bitten by the dog, he pulled the calf out of the back of her leg. 

We were all very upset about it. In the new year there was a

dance on the claypan at the front of Charlie Brummells last

residence.

 They were kicking up the dust at least 200 people were there.

Old Bernie Keneir played Guitar and Bluey Rundle the drums, with

Mrs Seaton on the Violin with a few more musicians of the town.

They were all having a good time. No doubt it was Les Hulin and

Tom Lamb fighting over the dog bite, that caused a stir. Though

it was soon broken up and we danced the night away. Waltzed the

old year out and the new year in, on the dusty claypan. By then

it was a dust storm.

CHAPTER 37

     Next day I heard that George (Twenty minutes Knox) wanted a

water Joey for his Ringbarking camp.

Ringbarking is the killing of trees by cutting into the sap

through the  bark with a very sharp axe, and exposing the sap to

the air. The good Ringbarker made all of his cuts meet around 

the tree into the sap.  The water Joey carried water bags and

gave water to the many thirsty men slaving in the heat, to

replace some of their sweat. They called him Twenty Minutes Knox

because, if you could last twenty minutes on the job you probably

would keep your job. Not a bad old bloke I thought. In a few

weeks I became an expert Ringbarker. In the camp was a man Billy

James,

an orphan boy.  A former street kid, Billy was a Southpaw Boxer

with his boxing gloves.  He was the Light Weight Amateur title

holder of New South Wales.  The only man I ever saw who could

laugh while he was fighting, always. His skin looked like an over

ripe tomato.

 So every evening he taught me the Marquis of Queensbury rules. 

I

was keen to learn, any rotten thing you could do to a man. 

Behold

I was lucky the " Cock eyed World"   turned up yes the Henry

Broughten, he was Welter Weight Champ of New South Wales, at the

time. He watched me and Billy James and said to me, "Boy you

haven't learnt nothing yet. We'll show you how to brush off a

straight left, or a right cross, and how to use an upper cut to

the gut or chin."  So it was fisticuffs at daylight every morning

and every evening. We walked up to four miles to 

work and carried our tucker bag and water bags with us. And then 

we carried them back home again after work. They taught me how to

use the flying mare, how to break an arm at the elbow, also the

leg at the knee. Weekends were always hard lessons taught to me

by the best in the land. By this time George Knox had a red Ford

Truck. 

Now I could do anything with a good sharp axe. I could throw it

twenty or thirty feet and stick it in a tree every shot.

  George Knox one morning got up in a bad temper and chipped the

lot of us, he said,"It's about time some of you blokes got a go

on."  I threw my axe into the back of his truck and it landed in

the centre of the tray and stuck in the wood. I said "You can

stick that one up your ass George." It was a friday and Billy

James and I walked to town, about thirty miles.  Later half the

camp followed us on the saturday afternoon, they'd sacked

themselves.

Dick Hulin was among the mob that arrived in town. So the scabs,

and the shirkers, and the bludgers, were the only ones left to

work for Twenty, on monday morning. A few week's later 

P J Mc Carthy J.P. and storekeeper, put a garnishee on 'Twenty'

and took the truck off him on the day. I worked for Jim Clancy of

Surat Ringbarking at Eric Grant's place Corack now Waldor, for a

few weeks. A friend and I later decided to leave the job. Anyhow

Tom Dancey had two horses, and Tom was a proud old bloke, half

Aboriginal, proud with good cause, he had won the Stallwell Gift

1910 foot race. We decided  enough was enough, so we saddled up

his horse.  I jumped on to the spare one bare back, early one

morning, and we hit Dirranbandi at two o`clock a ride of some

fifty odd miles.

    I met Cocoa Jack Wilkinson in Dirranbandi. I had known him as

a boy in Mungindi. I had saved up enough money to buy a saddle

horse, a bay thoroughbred horse bred on "Tucker tucker" and

branded/TT5. I paid three pounds for him.  I borrowed a saddle

off Tom McGowan  and told him I'd return it to him  later. This

horse I named "Gozo". Although his eyes looked alright, "Gozo"

was Melon Blind, stone blind. He was blind from eating paddy

melons in a drought.  With that I headed for Adavale, a very long

ride from Dirranbandi. Gozo was a wonderful old horse that I

rode. I could talk to that horse and he would answer every

suggestion. I was his eyes.

      Yes Cocoa Jack and I headed for Adavale via Woolerina

station. There was a Ringbarking camp there run by some mad

bastard. Jack and I started work there. There were no tents

there,

only the boredrain.  We cooked our tucker on the coals and used

empty Herring and Tomato sauce  tins, for cooking utensils. The

going was rough and the black ants were bad. When Cocoa Jack got

the sack. He had a gammy hand and was of no use at axe work, and

the Boss sacked him. So I said to the boss, "I have to go with

Cocoa." He said "No you won't, I want a weeks notice," So I went

back to work and only ring barked the wrong trees Bottle Trees

and Currajong. I put a big collar on them about a foot wide.

 I'd walk out of line to get them, or anywhere around the front

of the men ring barking.

There was an old Canadian Eddy who noticed what I was doing, and

he would shout and laugh, "They couldn't got to the party without

a collar and tie could they Johnno?" This was the only time I

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