Yes, we have been spending more time in big, open spaces – being more energetically drawn to here rather than to QLD’s coastline. After all the big open spaces we have been spending time in these past few months, the coast just felt way too populated for us to cope with right now! In any case, we have already been to some of QLD’s iconic coastal destinations a few years ago - and are saving the Whitsundays for a big holiday in its own right when we can jet off on our private yacht for a couple of weeks without having to wonder where to stick the camper-trailer during that time!
So, Outback QLD has been an interesting one for us. When we crossed the border we didn’t even really want to be here – our hearts and souls were still deeply entrenched in our love for W.A and The Kimberley. It’s hard for the scenery of any place to compete with the sheer stunning beauty of the landscapes we found in The Kimberley and its relatively unpopulated remoteness! Sure, QLD’s Outback is remote, has its own beauty (albeit stark) and also has the big open spaces like W.A - but there is a lot more population living in these spaces and in far more towns of varying sizes, many of which are not too much of a distance from the other. So we knew as soon as we crossed the border, that if we were to give this place any kind of chance, we would need to find a new way to engage with it – a way that would be totally different from how we interacted with W.A! So my friends, we decided on this occasion to steer away from spending time in National Parks and instead to choose to experience and celebrate some of the other things Outback QLD is famous for – its pioneering history, its festivals, its friendly heritage-towns and its people. Our first real port of call was Camooweal, where we went to watch some Bronco Branding - as well as see what on earth happens in a tiny, outback QLD town when the ‘Annual Drovers Camp Festival” is being held! Now I agree, it was an interesting choice of celebration and venue for my birthday, that’s for sure, but I am pleased to report, it was a surprisingly very entertaining one nonetheless! I am guessing that if you drove into Camooweal on any other day or weekend of the year, you would probably want to just keep going and shoot straight through! Indeed, our first impression of it as we pulled in ahead of the festival, was that it was a rather drab, boring and very dusty, godforsaken “dot” of a town clustering itself tightly along a road that that seemed a few sizes too big for its needs (at 200km long, it is known to be the longest main road in the world!). However, once upon a time, Camooweal was the heart and soul of QLD’s droving heritage and a colourful droving centre for some of the largest cattle drivers in the world. So, to visit the town at the time when it hosts its annual salute to the deeds, lives and memory of the Australian Drover of old, was to see the place awash with some of its former colour and vibrancy - and, of course, to see history come alive once again! By the time the weekend kicked off with the lively street parade, we were ready to hit a festival of meeting drovers, watching bronco branding and crazy mail races, viewing art, hearing poetry and music and of course….eating! We hope then that you enjoy this first of our 2-part Outback Queensland series, focusing for the moment on all the rather excellent adventures we found to be had in little Camooweal!
Australia’s Last Legends of the Outback
Down the stockroute in the cold and rain, the heat, dust and the sand
Us old drovers don’t exist no more and it’s hard to understand
Hear the heavy roar of diesel of the roadtrains where we rode
There’s no stockroute where it used to be – just a winding black topped road
I’d give a lot to see and hear the old bush sounds again
But I’ve left it all behind me like a lot have done before
Our way of life is not good enough in this age of needing more
But the trusting and the friendship in the old days was so real
I was always proud of who I was and it’s still the way I feel
(“Still The Way I Feel”- Ray Rose)
Whether it was at the pub, at the Bronco Branding, the Drovers Ball or just while sitting down to eat at the Drovers Camp, we had an absolute blast hanging out with some of these 70 ex-drovers and ringers of yesteryear – even if many of them were nearing or over 80 years old! (For the Poms who don’t know - a drover was like a horse-mounted shepherd of cattle and sometimes of sheep). They truly are Australia’s last legends of the Outback and, as we listened to their yarns of how it used to be for them on horseback, leading the rather solitary and hard life they did and driving their huge mobs of cattle across vast and often treacherous distances of land, we couldn’t feel anything less than privileged to have met them and be humbled by their amazing achievements – achievements which not only included having survived such trips but that also extended to the successful setting up and stocking of those huge remote stations, on behalf of the owners of the cattle. Surprisingly, a lot of these now retired drovers are still as fit as fiddle and with huge hands too – testament to just how physically tough they had to be back then and something that has obviously stayed with them ever since (even if many of them are so bow-legged they look like they still live, eat, and sleep on a horse!).
Of the ones we got to know, there were of course different personalities we saw emerging and we were able to get a glimpse of what it might have been like to have known them in their hey-day! Sporting his flashy big belt-buckle won at a rodeo championship back in the sixties, Euguene was the most colourful character we found amongst them all. Walking and looking a lot like the unshaven British ‘Steptoe”, he referred to nearly everyone as a “bastard”, which I learnt in the end was either the literal meaning or his way of saying “a bloke” – though it was never clear to me which time was which one! Feisty, cranky Euguene! He was one of the last 6 remaining drovers of Camooweal who had higher opinion of himself than he did most other men and wasn’t afraid to share those opinions either – usually via praising himself and denouncing everyone and everything else as “bullshit”! In fairness though, even if you only believed half his yarns, he had probably indeed been a very skilful bushman, effective organizer and daring leader in his time. He could talk for ages and ages about it all from under his big brown drovers hat and not even notice if you turned away to speak to someone else! It was clear that he must have been quite the ladies man in his day as it was hilarious to watch the way he would only address me and our 60 year-old friend Lindy with all his yarns ….but not Gordon! In fact, he had quite the hots for Lindy and spent most of the weekend chasing her about! But say what you like about him, when you could get the mouth to stop flapping, we got to see that he really was a very generous man in many ways and really all heart underneath!
Another wonderful, generous man we got to know a little, was Ben, an ex-stockman and rather fabulous dancer! His face reminded me of a lovely turtle (!) and we were told by his mates that every wrinkle on his face was a laughter line – and that must have been so because all we ever saw and heard him do was smile or let out loud guffaws of mirthful chuckles. He had the most beautiful soul energy - a gentle man and a true gentleman, with an arm always lovingly placed around his wife. Both he and his wife were such an inspiration to us – they were such a beautiful and clearly-still-in-love couple that just radiated that energy the minute they got onto the dance floor at the Drovers Ball and wherever they walked together during the weekend. And again, in Ben we found another wonderfully generous man – gifting us his stainless steel, drovers quart-pot as a thank you for us agreeing to on-send some photos we had taken of him and his wife at the Ball. A lovely memento of a gorgeous soul!
With such colourful characters as these, how sad it is then, that droving no longer exists in Australia the way that these men used to know and uphold it – but how great that festivals like these still exist to commemorate them!
Singing and Dancing - the Outback QLD way!
Let your song take me back to the musters
And the horses a man used to ride
Let me feel the handshake of a bushman
See a bushwoman’s eyes shine with pride
Take me back to the glow of a campfire
And the yarns that the old timers told
So sing me another bush ballad
Relive a life that will never grow old
(‘Sing Me Another Bush Ballad” – Ray Rose)
Australian bush-ballad songs (and even some good ol’ American Johnny Cash!) were a permanent fixture of this whole festival weekend and I have to say that, whilst initially we were WAY out of our comfort zone with it all (after all, it’s a far cry from Pink or the Chilli Peppers!), Gordon and I ended up surprising ourselves by getting into the whole scene scarily quick! In our defence though, we will simply say that there are some very evocative lines in those songs, and they are not just a toe-tappin’ tune either but also relay wonderfully nostalgic stories of a time long gone. (OK, so the control freak in me loved the fact that each song had a definite start and end….so what?!!) Anyway, whether it was the live country music being played in the front of the pub’s packed verandah and verge during the lively street parade (the guitarist and singer standing on the back of an open ute!), or the bands that kept the atmosphere going throughout the days and evenings – music was a uniting force that kept everything going when the searing 37 degree heat had some of us fading!
But it was perhaps the Drovers Ball itself that was the musical jewel in the crown – a real-deal, 100% genuine, small town, dinky-di Aussie country dance! And a brand new experience for yours truly too! It was held in the Shire Hall, a wooden colonial building hugged on all sides by a lovely old-fashioned wide verandah – a fine example of colonial architecture. I was told that in the past the local copper had had to shut down the pub across the road until midnight, to make sure all of the men went to the dance (it was the only place where grog was being served!) and that it was permitted to reopen after midnight! It would seem the coppers nowadays are more kind-hearted than that and that the men are much better at turning up for the dance!
Inside the hall it was almost austere, save for a line of coloured balloons hanging down the length of the centre of the ceiling, chairs lining each of the three walls that were adorned with black and white photos of early pioneering life, and a colourful stage at the far end for the 3 piece country-music band (who were all hats, buckles, boots, shirts and guitars!). By the time we arrived some couples were already dancing over its wooden floorboards but the two fish out of water (a.k.a. me and Gordon) dived straight for the bar and then a seat against the wall – and in that order!! As the evening “hotted up”, I for one, relaxed a little more in my chair, if only because I was so enthralled with all the people-watching that was to be had! After all, it was quite something to see couples of varying ages twirling around the dance-floor the way that they were - some holding each other close, some of them promenading their steps with arms outstretched and feet light as a feather, some of the men spinning their women around only for those women to effortlessly return back to their partners with a hand barely resting on his back or shoulder! This was good ol’ fashioned dancing at its best and we were getting to watch it in bucket loads!
While most were dressed in smart-casual, there were some flared A-Line skirts that swirled in bold and vivid colours, while the odd ballgown or two elegantly rustled in time to the music too. Some of the dancers looked serious, keen to execute their steps perfectly as they travelled across the floor - while others just couldn’t stop smiling at their partner and laughing. It was fascinating to see all the different steps and dances there were for all the different songs - and that these people knew when to change those steps and dances! It really was like looking in on another world for us – especially when some of the men, dressed in their shirts and trousers or jeans, would go around the chairs lining the walls, asking women for the next dance! It reminded me of the school disco when you were either mortified that the person who had come to you had asked you – or thrilled because you secretly fancy him! (and, yes, right there at the Drovers Ball, it happened to me and all Gordon could do was secretly laugh his head off! I mean to say though - the man had a very dodgy pair of socks on with his shoes, was even older than Gordon (!) and didn’t have the grace to take “no” for an answer, begging me – most unattractively I might add – to reconsider! Oh my God!)
At 10pm supper was served – an abundance of home-made sandwiches cut into small triangles, heaps of homemade cakes, and all served with tea or coffee! Watching all this dancing had been very exhausting indeed and so naturally Gordon and I lined up with our plates for a small “partaking” of all that very tasty fare! Shortly after supper the band started up again, and Gordon finally plucked up the courage to ask me to dance! To quote Gordon: “I discovered that dancing with my gorgeous wife was to be something akin to the sport of Bronco Branding which we were here in Camooweal to see. Bronco Branding involves grappling with a ‘beast’ and trying to get it to go somewhere where it doesn’t want to go - but the advantage the Bronco Branders had was that they could use ropes!!!! The truth is, while Caroline struggled just a little with the idea of “ being led” by the man on the dance floor she is a wonderful partner, and we had a ‘ball” and a great laugh!” Hmmm. No comment!
Not long after our own toe-tapping venture, the band started up with a classic boot-scooting song drawing a young lad to the dance floor and everyone soon cleared the way for him to strut his stuff and entertain us. He must have only been about 12 years old and yet on this dancefloor, he was the King….. with zero inhibitions and all the requisite moves and grooves! It was fantastic to see him all dressed up in his hat, boots and buckle, going for it, while we all enthusiastically clapped and whooped him on. You could see he had the stockman in his blood, even at that young age - and that he had a very clear idea of who he is or who he is meant to be in this life!
As I looked around at everyone, I realized they were having the most fantastic time at this Ball! And that’s when I think I finally “got it” – that these people actually have something here! They have togetherness, touching/physical contact and something simple and honest and wholesome and good. And as I left them still dancing merrily past midnight, it certainly wasn’t them who were the boring ones! In fact, they continued to party right into the very wee small hours, raising the Camooweal roof with all their noise and keeping us lame campers awake with all their racket! Now THAT’s living!
Bronco Branding – or: Lessons in How To Thoroughly Annoy A Cow!
So, just how much fun can you have with a camera sticking through a railing, a pile of dust, a mob of cattle and some red-blooded Aussie stockmen either on horseback with lassoos or getting down and dirty on the ground? Well, after a weekend of Bronco Branding, I discovered that the answer is: a LOT! Furthermore, I would probably go as far as to say that after watching so much of it, I have probably newly joined the ranks of those who love this sport and who keep it alive. (Now all I have to do is to remember NOT to keep calling it BrAnco BOnding, which is what I inadvertently DID keep referring to it and which only served to attract to me many laughs and strange looks from people. But who knows, I may well have inspired someone to organize a brand new and entirely different, X-rated sort of man and horse event in the future!)
For the readers in Blighty, who are in the dark about what I am going on about, let me briefly explain Bronco Branding. In a nutshell, it was the method that stockmen traditionally used on most of the large stations in Australia up until the late 60’s, to brand mobs of young cattle out in the bush when these cattle weren’t able to be held in the more ordered confines of a stockyard. It involved mounted stockmen mustering the mob and holding them together on the “camp” (an open stretch of land). Meanwhile the “catcher” - usually the head stockman or an experienced ringer - would ride into the mob and rope or lassoo a “cleanskin” (unbranded) calf from where the stockmen was mounted on his horse. The roped calf would be hauled to the bronco ramp or a tree and leg ropes would then be applied and used to secure the beast to the ground. From this position, the calf would be earmarked, branded, and, if male, cut (castrated) and let up. Remarkably, the whole process took less than a minute and huge mobs of cattle would be mustered and branded in just one day using this method!
Now, I always get sad when old traditions die out or are replaced by “advanced technologies”, so it cheers me up considerably to understand that the new “sporting tradition” of Bronco Branding Championships that I am about to watch, has been set up to keep the skills of the great Australian Stockman alive and well! And indeed, it truly is fantastic to see a whole new generation of white Australian and Aboriginal stockmen – and yes, stockwomen! – all learning the ways of old, even right down to the art of greenhide rope-making. And it’s fantastic to know I am going to be seeing all ages competing – from young to 86 years old!
It’s 7a.m and the competition begins. With it’s opening, my initiation into this strange new world commences.
About an hour into watching the teams do their rounds from my vantage point of the back bench of the spectator stand, I can contain myself there no longer! I want to get closer to all the action! So I move right down to ground level and to the side of the fence - on my own save for the two female judges and the commentator. There, with arms leaning on one of the rails and camera shoved right through the gap, I get all and at times more than what I bargain for! You see, nothing can quite prepare you for your first encounter with action of this kind – or for all the noises that accompany it. The whole thing is quite a sight and it’s a privilege to be watching such skilled men and women on horseback - their thick and hard, raw-greenhide lassoos held high and always about to swing in perfected motion. Right now, here, in Camooweal, I know that what I am watching is the real deal – it’s not put on for any tourists…..and I am hooked to be a part of it all! I am as close to the action as I can legitimately get – where I can hear the snorts of the cattle, the thud of their hooves in stampede, the strangled and angry bellows of the calf that’s been captured as it fights against the rope. This is where I can witness up-close-and-personal the cow yanking and tugging at the rope around its neck, stamping his hoof in defiance, angrily swishing and flicking of his tail, eyes blazing mad, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The bellows are hard for me to listen to at first but I soon get used to them – once I realize the cow is not really in distress – just very, very pissed off!!! (It also helps having it explained to me that the competition rules and penalty systems are created in order to ensure humane treatment of the beast.).
By now, after an hour or so into the competition, the commentator is really on fire. A dinky-di Aussie, he sounds like a cross between a racing commentator, a football commentator and an auctioneer, whipping everyone into even more of a frenzy. So far, at times, I haven’t got a clue what he is actually saying - it’s just a loud “noise” from his mouth, a mass of joined together sounds. Other times though, like now, I can’t miss the jokes he’s cracking and his laughter – he’s having a ball and the two women judges are in stitches listening to him…as am I!
Depending on where he has been caught within the herd, I breathlessly watch the latest calf barging into and onto his fellow calves in a bid to escape the rope around him. He is trying as hard as he can to not be pulled by the mounted stockman. This even includes kicking his back legs up in the air and bucking in a final but always thwarted bid to break loose. It’s a flurry of movement and the dust is getting kicked up everywhere. This results in a huge “white-out” at times, with seconds of complete confusion for not only the spectator but also the judges. There is so much dust flying everywhere that I even have to quickly cover my camera lens to protect it from damage! The commentator notices, and makes yet another remark (there have been many) about me being the Official Photographer for “Outback Magazine” – I wish!!!
Soon enough though, the dust settles enough for everyone to come back on board with the action and to just catch the ground crew rushing in around the cow trying to contain him. The men keep a healthy distance for a few seconds but then rapidly close in on the calf - trying to “round him up” into the bit of fence they have to secure him to. By now the cow is giving it all that he’s got on the noise front, its bellows at times coming distorted out of its belly and throat, as they coincide with one or other member of the ground-crew lunging onto him. Above all these strained and not so strained bellows, I hear the sounds of the ground crew, shouting to each other in communication as to how best to trap this beast as the “clock” continues to tick away their competing seconds! Then, just as the commentator is entertaining himself by joking with them as they try to do their job, they manage to finally slam the calf against the iron railings. On this occasion the calf even practically head-butts the railing! There’s not even enough time for me to fully wonder how the hell this animal didn’t knock himself out. In an instant all three ground-crew firstly lunge their full body weight onto him and then alternate between one or two of them pitching their bodies against his – forcing him tighter and tighter up against the railing. Before the cow realizes it, they have got him right where they want him and he is in place! I watch excitedly as events unfold – no matter how many times I see them do this, I still marvel at the skill and speed and dexterity of these stockmen. With no seconds to waste, one of the ground-crew furiously ties the back leg of the cow to the rail and is followed by his teammate tying the cow’s front leg to the rail. Only now are this team permitted to fling this cow to the ground to fully contain him once and for all. On this occasion the calf goes down with a sickening thud though I have watched others get there all by themselves through wrestling with the men and getting off balance. With the calf down on the ground now, the team mates can remove the lasso from around its neck and keep a booted foot or two on him to make sure he goes nowhere. The two teammates catch their own breath – using the small window of time afforded to them as the third teammate, the “brander”, rushes off to get the “irons” (which, for humane reasons, is a paintbrush!). What an unbelievably physical contact sport this is! I see the heaving chests and panting breaths of both man and beast and then realize that even my own heart has been pounding away and my own breath has been held in the suspense and drama of it all!
In the shake of a tail the “brander” has returned, his paintbrush dripping with coloured paint. All that remains is for this teammate to daub a mark on the calf’s rear as well as a big fat stripe from the cow’s forehead to the back of its neck. By now the cow is so hemmed in that it just lays there, resigned to and accepting of its fate. But all changes the minute they take their booted feet off him and release his ropes – then he’s up onto his feet in a flash and away, giving one last indignant bellow as he goes! (Earlier before in this competition one cow was actually so mad that he turned on one of the ground crew and started to give chase – it was a thrilling few seconds to watch that happen!). Absorbed back into the fold, the calf seems to find solace and almost instantly recovers from his experience. In the ensuing little window of no-action, I can suddenly hear the strains of laid-back crooning and guitar strumming from the country music band on stage across the park – music that has been playing all the time but that has been obscured by all the action of this competition arena. It’s an oddly surreal moment and for some strange reason I feel like I am completely at home.
As the various rounds progress and each team has their go at competing, things hot up with the arrival of the “doubles” part of the competition. This involves more action and more quickly too, as two men on horseback may now catch calves at the same time, rather than one man on horseback. With the two men now in the fold throwing their lassoos around there is even more flurry and confusion and it becomes even harder to see which cow has become the latest victim to the rope. Sometimes - as happens now - while I am watching the teammates dealing with a cow at the railing, my attention is completely distracted away by the commentator shouting something like “Woah! Manny just caught another one!” For an agonizing second I can’t decide where to watch - the calf and teammates at the railing and all the action happening here - or Manny amidst the mob of remaining cattle and all the drama playing out there! Then there are the times when the commentator starts hollering enthusiastically because each mounted stockmen has managed to lassoo himself or herself a calf within seconds of each other! Initially all I can see are both of them astride their horses in the throng of cattle, their lines of rope extending from their arms and ending somewhere amongst the thick of the mob. Each stockman drives their horse forward and the cattle start moving quickly and in different directions, rapidly dispersing and tripping over each other in the scuffle that now ensues. As the cows move to get out of the way, it’s hard to know which stockman to watch and I flick my eyes from one to the other as if watching a tennis match! Always though, one stockman and his calf are the first to emerge from the confusion, so I try to keep track by noting the direction the mob are moving and by following both the bellows of the annoyed calf and the line of rope as it gets tauter. Sure enough, before long, the mystery is solved!
Just as the “doubles” competition is reaching its end something happens that has the commentator so excitedly whooping into his microphone that he practically launches himself into his space! One of the mounted stockmen has (inadvertently) lassooed TWO calves at the same time with just the one rope – something that the commentator has apparently never seen before! I excitedly thrust my camera through the railing in a bid to capture this moment in Bronco Branding history but only manage a couple of shots before all the dust beats me back. As the teammates try to deal with these two calves, seconds later the other mounted stockmen lassoos HIS calf – causing the commentator to wheeze with laughter as the groundcrew try to deal with it all in the seconds that remain!
At this point, the noise from THREE very annoyed cows is deafening to my ear. The body of my camera and the body of ME are covered in reddish-brown dust from top to toe. I even have a “tide-mark” where my sunglasses have been and I have grit in my mouth! But the smile on my face is bigger than anything and says it all – “THIS is Outback Queensland….and what a blast it has been!”
Before we leave this blog………
We could not go without sharing the lyrics to one particular bush ballad we love and whose lyrics are some of the most beautiful we have heard. The lines are so evocative of the land and the simple nature of the humble drovers of old, many of whom were never married and had no family. Their love was the land, being at one with the country and their simple way of life. Many of them had a wish to be returned back to that land in the same simple way in which they had lived with it when alive. (For the Poms, a quick translation – a ringer is a stockman, the Cooper is a QLD river, a gidgee is a hardwood bush tree that makes great firewood, the camp refers to a drovers overnight camp, and a cleanskin is an unbranded cow!)
Enjoy and see you next blog!
Axemark on a Gidgee
With horsebells to keep me company
And the waters to flow near me
Just an axemark on a gidgee
I don’t want no fancy grave
Somewhere out there on the Cooper
There’s a quiet spot near the nine-mile
Where the ringers go each muster
When the gidgee blossoms sway.
Let the wild horse and the cleanskin
And the brown bee in the clover
Let the wood duck and the emu
Hold their witness to my tomb
Near that quiet spot at the nine-mile
Make an axemark on the gidgee
Let my shrine be always centred
By the western gidgee blue
Just an axemark on a gidgee
I don’t wish for marble headstone
I’ve no kin in distant places
Who may shed a tear in vain
Just an axemark on a gidgee
And initials for my name.
And in the middle of each muster
When the camp is by the nine mile
And the steers are being ridden
And those sandhill flowers wave
Try to find the time one evening
To come by where I’ll be sleeping
Where an axemark on a gidgee
By the Cooper marks my grave
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment