Floating cows through St Albans.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Having exhausted all sources of finance to buy the farm, there was no spare cash to hire a float. So my old Falcon ute became a mini cattle carrier. I built a wooden frame with a rear gate, hinged at the top that closed to be secured by the tail gate. Knowing nothing about buying cattle, I called on Cousin Wally to buy for me. He bought and sold at Camden, over three hours by main road, so when he bought three young pregnant cows in one lot I had a dilemma. They had to be taken home in the ute and I doubted they would fit.

But they walked aboard quietly enough and the gate was dropped, jamming them in. Then we noticed rear tyres disappearing into mudguards hinting that one and a half tons of beef on a half ton ute was probably illegal. So we decided to take back roads through Wisemans Ferry and St Albans to avoid Mr Plod on the F3. I had never taken that road before, but Wally assured me it was ‘a piece of cake’. He should have said mudcake!

Both kids were with me, crammed into the front seat together bags and all, so we were really loaded. Wally assured me cattle on the move are a too busy trying to stay upright to cause trouble but I wondered what would happen on the Mangrove Creek Ferry. So while the kids stood at the rail watching the water go by, I was up on the cab talking to my girls. Cattle are funny people. They like being talked to. I told them how beautiful they were with their gorgeous big eyes and kept them enthralled until we were over. Vanity trumped the urge to stampede.

As darkness fell we crept through St. Albans past the Settlers Arms, believing our worries were over. But in the Common north of the village, the road had been graded so often and its surface lowered so far, it was now the de-facto creek bed. Sheets of water hid the road and as is their wont, four wheel drivers had discovered the mess and ripped around making a bad road just about impassable.

So we unexpectedly found ourselves up to the headlights in serious pot holes. But the old ute kept on, in and out, in and out until the road lifted above the waterway and wound its way higher up the hillside. Suddenly and thankfully we were on bitumen. I pushed the speed until we were humming along in top gear for the first time in a while. Then Julia screamed.

Around a bend, right in front, the road disappeared into water, wide and still.
‘Boat ramp! I yelled, and pregnant mothers be damned, hit the brakes, skidding hard. Cows whumped against the cabin as the whole rig lurched from side to side threatening to topple. We stopped with front wheels in the water, still rocking as six human and six bovine eyes stared through the dark at forty metres of river. We just breathed and stared as the cows adjusted their balance, bellowing complaints. After a few seconds of recovery, I switched to low beam. High beam had bounced off the water, hiding its depth but low revealed no more than two inches of clear water over a smooth concrete causeway.

For years afterwards, every time we saw a boat ramp I was reminded.
‘Hey Dad! (ha ha ha) Do you reckon that’s a boat ramp?’ Kids are shits.

Flash the Wonder Horse.

I don’t know what it is with teenage girls, but if there is any hint of a possibility, they all want a horse, and so it was with Julia. We had the space and the accommodation so there was no excuse. Well, there was but we didn’t know it then.

Pouring over SMH classifieds, we found the perfect horse. ‘Pony, gelding, good with children, trained and quiet. Ideal first horse’, so we drove down to Mona Vale to the riding school to see him.

Julia was helped aboard and led around the yard, then given the reins to drive herself. He was responsive, obedient and so pretty that she had to have him. We paid up and took him home.

Valium is a wonderful thing. That afternoon Julia rode Flash around the property, walking then trying a bit of trotting, eventually canterting, flushed with success. I am no rider, but I hopped on and did my usual gate checks and shunting of steers around the paddocks on horseback like a real cowboy. He behaved impeccably.

Next day I saddled him up expecting the same but the moment my bum hit the saddle, he was off. No amount of heaving on the bridle could stop him.
Eventually a gate loomed up. I leaned forward preparing for an attempted leap but he propped and I kept going, over his head, hitting the gate and bouncing back to bury my face in a fresh cow pat.

My next move was a call my mate Bob to send down one of his boys to ‘check out a horse I had bought’.
‘Where ja buy ‘im?’
‘Sydney.’
‘Riding school?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Ya bloody idiot! Why would a riding school wanna sell a good ‘orse?’
‘I dunno.’
‘I bet the damn thing hurt somebody. The bastards pump ’em full of valium long enough to sell ‘em and twenty four hours later it’s your problem!’
‘OK, so I’m a dickhead. Now what?’
‘I’ll send young Bert down.’ Click went the phone cutting off a sigh.

Bert came and the horse looked great under his expert hands and heels, galloping, turning, spinning and jumping. Finally he slid off next to me.
‘Good ‘orse! He c’n go, but he’s a nasty bastard of a thing, he’d kill a kid.’
So that was it. She couldn't keep him.
No point in trying to sell him locally, so we sent him to Wyong sales where nobody would know him. But to be fair, we gave the valium a miss and he sold at a good price, almost what we paid. We thought that was that.

But no, a week later at Mel’s, as soon as Bob saw me, he was out of control, laughing.
‘What’re you laughing at, dopey?’
‘Orr mate, ya won’t believe this!’
‘What?’
‘Ya know that bloody ‘orse a yours, the one ya sent all the way down to bloody Wyong? Well the mongrel of a thing’s back!’
‘What!’
‘One of those silly city buggers bought ‘im there an’ as soon as he was outa the float he took orf ‘n nobody c’n catch ‘im!’
‘Shit! What should I do?’
‘Yer could start by buyin’ me a beer?’
So that’s what I did.

Drips and other torchers.

While Wollombi itself was set on the valley floor, surrounded on three sides by well grazed grassland, Bucketty, then within the Wollombi Brigade area, was set along several ridges, a fire fighter’s nightmare. To take advantage of views, houses were built right in the fire-ball sweet spot.

If you have ever held a bit of paper over a fire, you know how hard it can be to light, despite the temperature. No oxygen, and that is how fire balls form.
Super heated gases created by fires rushing uphill cannot all burn as they are released from oily leaves. Unburnt gases overtop the ridge in an envelope of oxides then follow the hill shape to where, in fresh oxygen, they combust from the outside in. Whispy bits burn first, until what is left is a ball of burning gas, flying along near ground level, igniting all it touches.

There is no point trying to hold a fire hose against such a terror, so the only way to win is to back burn down the slope. But for that to be possible, the fire fighter must be way ahead of the front. On the day of the double back burn I was, but so was Old Frank.

At least two ridges away in bushland, we could see the long line of brown smoke smudging the view below circling crows and hawks, looking for roast dinners in cooling ashes behind the front. We stood there with our map on the bonnet of the jeep, me the captain and Frank, my boss, making our plan. We decided I should take a drip torch on the trail bike and start a back burn to establish a containment line. Fine so far.

It needed a long light-up, so it took a while. But with a couple of kilometers of flame satisfactorily creeping towards the menace and several checks to be sure it was all travelling in the right direction, I headed back towards Frank and the village.

I digress to explain something. In unburnt bush, wind at ground level is reduced significantly so spotting ahead from a backburn is not usually a problem. But at the front of a wildfire, wind rushes unhindered through denuded trees and shrubs throwing super hot leaves, bark and twigs way ahead to reignite in fresh air up to a half kilometre or more, leapfrogging the front at deadly speed as happened in Victoria recently. A backburn must be wider than spot fire range.

Anyway, I was almost back when I saw Old Frank walking along, having lit a second burn between us and the village, putting himself and worse still, me between two fire fronts. One end had closed and the other was closing rapidly. Fifteen minutes to BBQ long pig!

He really was a bright bloke, but sometimes C2H5OH hangs around into the next day to cloud judgment and befuddle memory. I really believe he had forgotten I was out there and thought he needed to save the village single handed. So there he was, drip torch in hand cutting off our escape. By the time I dropped the bike and ran to Frank, visibility was almost nil and breathing difficult.

He saw me coming and did the classical double take. I wish I had a photo of his face but there was no time for recriminations. We had to get out, so I led him through the closing gap. With eyes streaming and the only clean air near the ground, we crawled on hands and knees while flames raced in on both sides.

Luckily it was not far but it was far enough. Wheezing and coughing, we slid and scrambled between rocks and scrub, cinders and ash swirling, eyes streaming, until the air cleared and we were out.

‘Hey Frank!’ I yelled at his blackened face, tears washing pink strips down his cheeks into his beard. ‘Am I being paid for this job?’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ he growled. ‘Nobody gets paid, yer dickhead!’
‘So it’s not a real job then!’
‘Waddayamean, a real job?’
‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘If it was a real job, I’d tell you to stick it up your arse!’

I stopped, hysterical, while he glared at me from baleful eyes, coughing, panting and sweating. I guess seeing the funny side is harder through a hangover, but then again, maybe it wasn’t all that funny.

(Photo courtesy The Age)

Old Frank’s Firewater.

There always had been a love-hate relationship between Laguna and Wollombi. Laguna claims to be older with Laguna House built in 1834 on 1,000 acres of land granted to Heneage Finch, surveyor, then later sold to Richard Wiseman. The house is a beautiful and smart example of Georgian architecture, basically a stone box with gable roof.

It is smart because there is a gap of two or three feet between the top of the outside walls and the roof. It is a ‘box inside a tent’ with total ceiling ventilation, the gap protected from vermin and birds by fine wire mesh.

That building is the coolest summer house I have ever been in. The kitchen of course, is separate but unlike many, has never been burnt out. Doorways are all about five feet six inches, so the average twentieth century Australian must do a limbo entry.

It is only one of two or three stone structure in Laguna whereas Wollombi, built later and having the advantage of being at the junction of two main roads, one to Newcastle and Maitland, the other to Singleton, grew quickly and now boasts at least a half dozen substantial stone buildings including two churches and more if you include houses on the outskirts of town, like the Andrews and Thompson homes and of course Mulla Villa further east..

When Frank Legge bought the Laguna Tavern, built in 1927, he reclaimed its original name; 'Ye Olde Horse Wagon Trading Post'. He then decided it needed an iconic beverage to compete with Wollombi’s Dr Jurd’s Jungle Juice. So he produced a similar drop, with his own bearded likeness on the label and marketed it in similar half gallon jars. The Trading Post did have a few advantages. It sold basic groceries, had a petrol bowser and an old slab shed where dances were held occasionally, and it had Frank.

Frank was a delightfully social old bugger and worked tirelessly for his community, but he did like a drink, so although I never saw Frank Legge legless, he did attract a few drinking regulars and, I suspect, his gregarious sharing of a glass or ten did cloud his judgment at times. Maybe that would not have mattered had he not accepted the job of District Controller for the Rural Fire Brigade, headquartered in Cessnock. So Frank was my boss, and I am loyal to a fault, or I was then.

Floods occasionally overflow bridges out along the Watagan road, so the old locals behead a chook, bake bread and stay on their side of the water until it subsides, usually within a few days. But on this Friday evening I got a call from Frank to bring the fire tanker to Laguna. When I arrived there were maybe eight or nine disappointed people, weekenders, who had driven up from Sydney but could not get through the flood.

So Frank decided I should take them home on the fire truck. I was not at all happy about that. I told them it was too dangerous and they should all high tail it back to Sydney while they could. Old Frank accused me of being gutless, loaded them all aboard and with the cab full and another half dozen clinging to the tank, prepared to take them across the flooded bridge.

Although the bridge was still there, as evidenced by the handrail just visible above the water, I could imagine a plank or two missing and the tanker front wheels dropping into a hole. If that happened we had a potential disaster, with people trying to get themselves and their children back through rushing brown water in the dark. I tried to reason with them but I suspect they didn’t want to disappoint Old Frank either and most made the decision to go. However, I was conceded one wish and attached the Fire Brigade Jeep to the truck by a long rope so I could tow it off the bridge if it stalled and to provide a life line should the truck have to be abandoned.

The truck got through so I unhitched the rope, watched it disappear into the rain and drove the jeep home cursing myself all the way for not confiscating both sets of keys. Luck was with them that time and of course they now had a new adventure to talk about.

‘Who dares wins’.
Old Frank dared and I lost credibility. That hurt. But in hindsight, to have been vindicated, lives might have been lost. So, in retrospect, if the only thing lost was a bit of 'face', that's OK by me.

Gang Rape Most Fowl.

We decided to raise some fowls and bought twenty mixed day-old chicks. But as they grew we realized the mix was nowhere near the fifty-fifty we expected. We had been conned.

Nineteen developed rooster-like features until it was clear we had only one pullet, a ratio of five percent. But we looked on the bright side and planned to dress one a week starting soon. Then our timetable was changed by events beyond our control.

Jim McBeath, my drummer mate and his wife Susan, bought a house at Tascott near Gosford, built a chook pen and populated it with four mature white leghorns hens. All went well until one day that summer, Sue screamed and Jim looked out the window. They were horrified to see a two metre tiger snake slithering across the yard uncomfortably close to their three year old infant. By the time Jim slowed from warp speed at the child’s side, the snake had disappeared under the chook house.

Eric Worrall was alive then, so Jim called him at the Reptile Park and asked what to do. Eric sent a big bearded guy with long hooked length of fencing wire and a chaff bag. After poking around under the shed for ten minutes he had the tiger by the tail, popped him into the bag and offered this advice:

‘You gotta get rid a th’chooks.’

Jim and Sue liked their fowls. Kitchen scraps, transformed into free range eggs, helped feed themselves and four growing boys and they all had names. Fluffy, Muffie, Scruffy and Lucky were loved.

‘Why’s that?’
‘Mate,’ says the expert. ‘Ya got chooks, ya got chook feed. When ya got chook feed ya got rats ‘n where ya got rats ya got snakes. OK?’

At the gig that Friday, Jim asked if I’d take his hens. Our one pullet hadn’t started to lay, so I happily accepted. And so it was that late Sunday night, four comatose birds were tipped gently from a potato sack onto the chook pen floor and I went to bed.

Monday morning, just as the sky was turning from black to streaky grey all hell broke loose. The cacophony of screeching, crowing and two dogs barking propelled me out of bed, heart hammering, to see who or what was being murdered.

It was a brothel in a goldfield. Lined up behind each of the four old virgins were four or five roosters, crowing, scratching, pecking and raping. The hens were terrified as they were spurred into submission, their genetic preconditioning forcing them to squat, wings out to accept their fate-worse-than-death.

The pullet, still too immature for her smell and antics to be attractive, was running around the fence in bewildered terror when I took a hand, grabbed the bag from where I had dropped it in the dark and stuffed the old girls back inside.

While Sal stoked the fire to boil water, I drove two nails into the chopping block to hold their necks still, rounded up all the cockerels except one and lopped off their heads. In ten minutes there were eighteen white rapists hanging by their toes Italian style from the clothes line. From there they were removed one by one, dipped into boiling water, plucking and dressed. All the good bits like hearts, kidneys and gizzards, collectively the giblets, were kept along with the legs for winter broth.

Laying hens live in a coop,
And peacefully sleep on a roost.
Roosters that raid them
Will soon feel the blade then
And end up as somebody’s soup!

Their criminal 'remains', after having been hung, drawn and frozen, were consumed with gusto and sweet revenge over the following months.

Ladies Man.

Ozzie Harris was an odd little bloke, small and wiry, maybe late sixties, who lived with his brother and sister-in-law in what may have been the last surviving stucco house in Wollombi. Built in the late 1800s, it sat among trees on the town side of Narone Creek Bridge.

With abundant energy and little to do, Oz could be seen wandering about looking for a chat. Often, when you were outside, he would appear, wide smile and cheery greeting to stay for a few minutes or longer, wandering through his mind and yours for as long as you liked. Comments on the weather came first, the price of cattle followed then on to anything else that cropped up. But he always ended by offering his help.

Anyone could expect the occasional visit but women received more visits than average. Sally often mentioned that Oz had called but never hinted at anything untoward, in fact she found him ‘sweet’ and certainly 'non-threatening’.
I agreed with her, but suspected he had hopes.

So, as I was told later, when a youngish woman moved into a small cottage a hundred metres away just over the bridge, Ozzie called in to make sure she was OK.
Over the months, his help was offered and accepted until he was chopping her wood, attending her garden and helping wherever he could. She became dependant on his generosity and he felt the obligation her apparent helplessness engendered.

It was said she needed substances to face her demons and maybe that provided the last link to complete this tragedy. So, as shadows lengthened, she retreated inside to begin her routine that insulated against whatever ghosts shared her existence.

Late on that fateful day, it was also said, Ozzie remembered his promise to cut her some firewood. So, as light was fading, he grabbed his axe and hurried across the bridge to attack the wood pile before all warmth left the lowlands, which it did as soon as the sun climbed away up the hillsides. Tragically, his lateness and two ‘it was saids’ converged to end one life, ruin another and shock scores.

Inside the house, night was close. Lamps were lit, and the dog had settled in by the newly kindled fire. Spooked by the dog’s frantic barking, she grabbed her rifle and joined him at the door. Of course the dog knew Oz and had his tail been wagging, the outcome might have been different. But her dog heard only the squeak of gate hinges and it was the wrong time of day.

Through the glass and against fading light, all she could see was the silhouette of a man hurrying towards her, axe in hand. Fear, confusion and maybe a little substance induced paranoia tightened her finger and the gun fired, bursting apart the big heart of her only friend in town.

Acquitted while a head.

George Cooper was legally blind, but was a regular at Mel’s wine bar. Maybe twice a week his old mare delivered him to the door where she waited patiently until about nine o’clock when she would snort her message that it was home time. In the interim, George, at about eighty years of age, would drink more than he should and tell stories. This one is too good to not pass on.

Back when Laguna had a hotel and was the first stopping place west of the Hawkesbury on the Great North Road, I’m guessing about the late 1860’s, a bushranger was active near Wisemans Ferry.

As anyone familiar with that area will know, prolonged summer rain turns dirt roads to porridge and paddocks to soup. A week of rain and no wheeled vehicle could move along the flat country between Laguna and Wollombi. That was the situation when a rider came through with news that a bushranger had robbed a gold coach, shot the guard in cold blood and was probably headed their way.

Later that night, under a full moon, a traveler woke to find a big bearded man silhouetted against the sky, climbing in his window. He thought he saw a gun in the intruder’s hand, scrabbled his own out from under his pillow and shot the man dead.

Of course, the noise brought men a-running, lanterns in one hand and revolvers in the other. It was a wonder the sleeper wasn’t also shot in the panic, but everyone eventually calmed down and the body was dragged into the kitchen for a better look.

They agreed he must have been the bushranger. But, as there was no way even a pack horse could get through to the Wollombi lock-up, they decided to cut off his head and take it in for identification. The sleeper volunteered to walk the seven miles at first light carrying the head in a chaff bag.

After Battling through the mire for most of the morning, he made it to the court house and presented his grisly trophy. The constable cleaned it up a bit and they compared the rough bearded face with likenesses on the wall. He wasn’t wanted.

Dan Langan, Cattleman.

About the only person not already at the market was Old Dan. Wollombi intersection was seriously clogged with bodies overflowing from Mel’s and sight-seers, milling around, admiring St Michaels, the court house and the post Office, beautiful examples of convict masonry in locally quarried sandstone.

I had never seen it before, despite spending months at a time on my grandparents’ dairy farm at Werombi, where the first chore of the day, after a round of the rabbit traps, was to take Rowdy and drive the herd in for milking. Not that they needed much driving: they all knew the way and were further motivated by swollen udders and a trough of grain and silage waiting at the out end of the milking shed. But we drove them from the back

Now, here was Old Dan, chugging along on his old Massey Ferguson in low-low, a bale of lucerne hay on the carry-all, parting the crowd of revelers, followed by a herd of mixed cows and calves. There was no hurry, no yapping, nipping blue cattle dog and no break-aways to be chased and cursed at. That was so outside my experience. I stood and watched and learned.

He knew cattle are followers. They string out in a line, one behind the other, each calmly following the one in front and in this case, following the one following the hay bale.
I saw it again at Dooralong years later as the dairyman brought his cows home by simply walking slowly in front, leading the way with the dog at the rear adding a little encouragement to any cow stopping for more than a quick chomp of roadside greenery

Peter Police was fussing about, fretting over the impediment to traffic flow and trying to keep the road clear in case a car should blunder into town. Then at the height of confusion, along came Dan to be the star of that moment, creeping along on his unregistered tractor and for me at least, showing how it was done. As he passed where I stood, his old eyes appeared briefly from under the hat brim and he winked. People standing nearby were startled by my sudden laughter as I turned away. Dan kept going, eyes front and I knew he heard and understood he'd been sprung. I miss him.

Arson About

If you drive through Wollombi now, you will see a different landscape. Trees have replaced grass on the hilly terrain. This is due in no small measure to the passing of Jimmy Roberts, crow catcher and your friendly neighborhood arsonist.
It is really a bit harsh to label Jimmy an arsonist. He was simply following the local tradition of lighting up the bush every year as an efficient way of clearing scrub.

Within days of a summer fire, grass would sprout, providing feed for winter when cattle take to the hills to escape cold damp air on the valley floor, moving into forest remnants at night into warmer air then back to the slopes to feed, strolling down to a dam or creek for a drink every other day.

But, things changed in the seventies. Young people, I hesitate to call them Hippies, moved out of the city in an attempt to create a life for themselves that was less dependant on big everything. Big oil, big mortgages, big job commitments, in other words, small enough to feel manageable.

After a year as deputy I was elected Fire Captain. Not knowing much of the layout, I spent a few days on a trail bike familiarising myself with the network of trails that criss-crossed the bush. As I buzzed around, I found scores of huts and shacks sprinkled through the bush, most not attended but some well established with families.

After marking what I found on the map, I reported my concern that the local culture of burning off in summer could result in tragedy, maybe even death. I was ordered to warn the arsonists off, so I pulled Jimmy aside next time I saw him at Mel’s. Pleasantries passed both ways then I got down to business.

‘Jimmy, you can’t keep lighting those fires up in Stockyard Creek in summer. You’ll have to do it in winter and take me along to burn back around the weekenders.’
‘What bloody weekenders?’
‘Jimmy, there are huts and shacks up there now, so you can’t just light up the bush whenever you feel like it.’
‘No good burnin’ in bloody winna ya dill. The scrub won’t burn then, it’s gotta be summa.’
‘Well, people live there now so you can’t do it any more.’
‘If those silly buggers wanna live up there in th’ bush that’s their look out!’
‘I’m afraid the law says otherwise Jimmy. Someone could get killed, so if you’re caught you'd be up for murder.’

Jimmy skolled the last of his Muscat and turned to leave.
‘Yer won’t catch me, mate.’
‘Why not?’
He gave me a pitying look.

‘I light a candle in the grass and when it gits away, I’ve been in Cessnock fer two hours ‘avin’ a beer with me mates.’
And he was right. I never did catch him at it and maybe just as well.

Many a time while I was guiding Jimmy's fires around people's houses, if I'd caught the old bastard at it, It might have been me that was up for murder!

Gawd Stone the Crows!

Jimmy Roberts.
(Apologies in advance, particularly to overseas readers for this attempt to capture his accent).

Jimmy Roberts never married. He and his brother lived on a farm down towards Payne’s Crossing on the Wollombi Brook and worked for the Cessnock Council.
Every night an old truck pulled up outside Mel's tavern and Ben Bowyang and Bill Smith walked in. One was short and stout, the other tall and skinny.
There was no need for Mel to ask what they wanted. It was always brown Muscat in a five ounce glass, eight cents. Beer was not officially available because the wine bar didn’t have a public toilet, but beer from the bottle shop was OK.

Actually, the bottle shop was at the same counter, divided by an imaginary line where it returned near the street door. So if you wanted a beer, you took the two paces to the end of the counter and collected your stubby, 32 cents. Now, because the stubby had been bought at the bottle shop, it was yours and you could drink it in the licensed premises as a BYO, which means you took it back to your place at the bar to drink it. If there was a space near the end of the counter when you came in, that was the place to be. You only needed to reach around the end of the bar to collect your beer from the legally correct department.

Anyway, Jimmy overheard me telling Mel I didn’t know what to do about the crows that were digging holes in my water melons. Now Jimmy grew a lot of water melons every year and was somewhat of an expert.

He turned his attention to me.
‘I’ll tell ya,’ he says. ‘Ya gits a hegg.’
‘A hegg?’
‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ says Jimmy to Mel. ‘Where ja git this silly bugger?’
‘His name’s Ford.’
‘Righto, Pford’, he says, turning back to me. ‘Ya gits a hegg.’
‘What do you mean? What’s a hegg?’
‘An enn’s hegg, ya dill, like ya gits fr’m a bloody chook. ‘N enn’s heg, ya git me?’
‘Yes I get you, so you get a hen’s egg. OK, then what?’
‘Ya puts the hegg on a rebbit trep like, ‘n when the bastard gits cort ya leave ‘im there t’ frighten away the other bastards!’
‘Seems a bit cruel.’
‘Crule! Bloody ‘ell it’s owny a damn crow, fer Chrissakes.’
He turns again to Mel.
‘This ‘ere stupid mate a yers, bloody Pford, ‘d rather leave bloody crows eat ‘is melons th’n frighten ‘em orf!’
‘Ya gotta make allowances,’ laughs Mel. ‘He’s from Sydney.’
‘’Nuf said,’ says Jimmy and turned away to talk to his brother.

Council Capers 2. CLAG Sale Day

Cattle sales were, for that tiny hamlet on the Wollombi Brook, a four times a year social event where old friends caught up, kids played around the brook, everyone ate too much gramma pie with clotted cream and some cattle changed hands.

Cessnock Landholders Action Group (CLAG) was formed to fight Cessnock Council’s 400% rate hike on non productive rural properties. Their strategy was clear. After the Stephen and Catherine Pile debacle, they reckoned they had found a way to squeeze new squatters off their cheap land and out of their home-made shacks.

Clearly, they were not aware of the quality of their protagonists. We had Bernie Eddie, ABC TV producer, who made an hilarious TDT episode on the subject, Guy Morrison, retired SMH Features editor who wrote our media releases and his brother Alastair, university lecturer and author of Let’s Talk Strine, to name just a few of our cast of media professionals.

This day was not a cattle sale day, but a trash and treasure day to raise money for CLAG. Sheds gave up a century of treasures to be good-naturedly haggled over. Eight or ten food stalls were selling preserves, water melon, ginger beer and the ubiquitous sausage sandwich. A bush band was torturing old favourites and families were picnicking on rugs among the cow pats. The old market place hummed with fun and frivolity until suddenly, the ambience darkened and all eyes turned to a kerfuffle at a stall where a big red faced man was berating an old lady selling cakes and tarts.

As the secretary of our gang of dissenters, I hurried over. There was our Council Health Inspector demanding the stall close.
‘Excuse me.’ I said stepping in between him and the stall. ‘I’m one of the organizers. Can I help you?’
‘There was no permission given for this!’ he frothed, waving his arms expansively to include picnickers, kids screeching around the paddock, knots of buyers and sellers, coming to rest on the stall at hand.
‘Close this down immediately or you’ll be in breach of article (something or other) and will be summonsed.’

‘I see,’ I said reasonably. ‘So all the Vinnies, Boy Scouts, CWA and footie clubs that have their stalls in town, you're saying they all have permits?’
He stared for a moment as the rusty wheels turned, but I wasn’t finished.
‘If you close this down, there’ll be a lot of angry people running around Cessnock demanding you close them too.’
That went into the thought grinder as I waited. We had form, as the say.
He was wavering as I reminded him:
‘And you know we’ll do it.’
‘OK,’ he said, red faced and frustrated. ‘I’ll let it go this time, but next time you get a permit or I will close you down!’

His eyes left mine and flicked behind me where an angry crowd was gathering. There is a time to attack and a time to retreat. This was retreat time.

I was surprised to see him at the next market with his wife and kids, standing in the gramma pie queue. ‘Good choice.’ I smiled my approval as we both pretended I was referring to the pies.

Dark Doings at Dingle Dell

I watched fascinated as Wollombi moved from being a red neck remnant to an alternate lifestyle enclave, but Dingle Dell pushed that envelope further than I thought was possible. I don’t know why, but a set of escapees from Sydney’s gay show biz community set up camp (sic) out along Yango Road and called it Dingle Dell. You are permitted to wonder at the name but I will let that go through to the keeper.

They turned up at the tavern, two but rarely three at a time and became known at the bar as harmless and friendly, funny and exuberant as gays often present. All seemed well until Jimmy began arriving alone, very depressed and teary. What apparently brought it undone was a love triangle, with the older man being replaced by a younger man in the heart of an even younger man, so they all left except the oldest man who stayed on, probably because he had nowhere better to go. But he gradually carved out a place for himself in the community.

Jimmy Goode was an outrageous poof, so camp, he was a caricature of himself but you just had to like him. Friendly, emotional, caring and willing, he became such a fixture at the Tavern, no longer Mel’s, but basically unchanged except for the prices, that his absence always invoked a worried; ‘Is Jimmy OK?’

Winter was on the way and Tony Royal wanted a fireplace in the bar. Jimmy offered the unbelievable information he was a stonemason. A Pom with a withered arm, a history of hanging about King’s Cross with Les Girls, a poofy lisp and a skinny ageing body, it was a bit farfetched, but Bob, Tony’s manager, gave him the nod and work began. Of course professional stonemasons employ grunts to do the heavy stuff. So, with some local boys to provide muscle and eye candy, Jimmy’s joy filled project progressed. Stone was cut, trimmed and lifted until it was time to fit the blacksmithed iron grate. And so it was that the fire was lit with suitable pomp, plonk and pissedness to commission Wollombi’s first new stone fireplace in maybe a hundred years.

Helped by his boys, none of whom to my knowledge was ever invited to replace his lost love, Jimmy built fireplaces. Moving out of Dingle Dell and into town, he was given a home in Rex (Hipshot) Thompson’s shed. When fireplace building declined, he became the Tavern’s barman, always friendly and always entertaining until he died, remembered by people who accepted him into their community for what he essentially was. A nice bloke.

The Wooly Red Steer.

Dan Langan was the oldest man in town, nearing ninety, wiry and strong, he still rode his big white mare around the hilly property. We had a common border that appeared as a road on the map where it looked flat. But like other roads of its time, it had been drawn up in Sydney by a draughtsman as far removed from reality as the road was to any chance it would ever be formed. It was probably the same fellow who plotted the course of the Great North Road north of Wiseman’s Ferry, an heroic undertaking that promised a highway to the Hunter valley as grand as any in the world.

Stone work on that road is equal to the best of Macquarie’s grand buildings, costing the colony the labour of hundreds of convicts for years, blasting, shaping blocks and digging culverts, traversing a cliff that would challenge Sir Edmund Hillary. There was even a cave beside the road with a convenient round hole in its roof, called the hanging cave. It is rumored they hanged recalcitrant convicts there with a gibbet erected over the hole, through which unfortunates were dropped, breaking their necks.

Whatever the truth of that, there is a graveyard nearby which I was told holds the hundred and thirty bodies of men who lost their lives in the pursuit of that folly.
Before its steep grade saw real traffic a better way was found by following an Aboriginal path through the Mangrove Creek Valley taking the easier slope out that is now the St Albans Road.

Dan’s fence was an exercise in desperation. What was still standing was held together by baling twine and rust, but with a little repair by me, it seemed to keep my stock in and his out.

That was until the appearance of the red wooly steer. I arrived home to see him, not yet accepted by my four, grazing alone on my side of the fence.
I drove him out my front gate and pushed him into Dan’s place. Then I searched until I found what I thought had been his point of entry and closed the gap.
Next visit he was back.

Bugger. This time he had integrated with mine. They were now mates and would test the fence if they were separated.
It was time to see Dan.

Dan loved a chat and that’s what we had for maybe an hour. A pot of tea and several scones later as Mrs. Langan fussed over us and it was time for business.
‘Well, young feller,’ he said. ‘You didn’t come over here for a chat. What’s on your mind?’

I told him his red steer was back on my side of the fence and maybe we needed to put him in a more secure paddock.
His smile broadened as I spoke until he was laughing.
‘I thought the pest of a thing was yours!’
‘No, he’s not mine.’
‘OK,’ he laughed again. ‘Let’s eat him!’

Dr Jurds Jungle Juice.

Mel Jurd’s wine bar was the hub.
The old pub had burnt to the ground in the late fifties. It is said; Mel himself inadvertently put petrol in the kerosene refrigerator tanks and of course, as anyone who knows about such things will attest, petrol fumes soon find burning wicks and the rest is history as was the pub.

No village like Wolombi could survive without a focus, so the community got together, cut trees, sawed timber and had the new place up and the bar open in six weeks.
When I bought my place there in 1973, the general store was still running but closed before I moved in a year later, making Mel’s the only door open in the village except for the PO and the cop shop.

Home alone after dark, I often visited Mel’s, more for the company than the beer.
The Roberts boys would call in most evenings for a glass or two of brown Muscat, but usually left in time to be home for tea so at the end of the night it was just me sitting there listening to Mel’s stories. On such nights with no strangers about, I would help him make up a jar of his famous ‘Dr Jurd’s Jungle Juice’.

It came in only one size back then, the half gallon flagon with screw top lid.
The recipe varied according to what wines were left over from bottles that had been opened during the day, mainly for travelers passing through.
With the help of a funnel, all dregs were tipped into the flagon. If the level reached two thirds, that was enough wine, otherwise it was brought to that level by adding port then filled to the top with bulk brandy.
On went the label (Recommended by 101 year old Mabel Wobbly) and it was ready for sale.

I guess no germ was ever strong enough to live in that mix and no drinker seems to have survived long enough to complain or return to demand a refund!

Council Capers.

Mid seventies and Cessnock Council had a problem.
Land was dirt cheap (sic) and allotments plentiful. As villages around Wollombi shrank, properties were abandoned. After a few years, those Old System titles were incorporated into surrounding farms, claimed by the simple mechanism of fencing them off and paying the rates.
Most farmers there were old and were happy to sell a few acres of old system titles for a few thousand dollars. After all, they cost them nothing and they all needed cash.
So, throughout the surrounding bush, shacks were built on reclaimed lots. Of my own property’s 32 titles, I could produce deeds for only sixteen.

My hundred acres shared a long boundary with Stephen and Catherine, artists, just back from living in Europe for a few years with their toddler David.
While repairing our common fence, I saw they were home again and wandered across to meet them. At that time, the hut was a single room with a huge fire place taking up most of a massive stone wall, a stove, a table and apart from a bed and cot not much else.

Over the next year Stephen bartered a few cases of beer at the Cessnock tip and brought home bricks, roofing iron, timber, doors and windows in fact almost all the material he needed to extend their hut along the escarpment to become an elegant three bedroom cottage with a proper bathroom, sited to command serene mountain and valley views. One unique feature was a two-seater long drop dunny that stood overlooking the long winding driveway, snaking its way up from Narone Creek Road. They could never be sprung.

Art was slow and Catherine was pregnant so Stephen took a job at Cessnock Correctional Centre as a counselor. All was well until the week before the baby was due.
Stephen was at work when Catherine saw a council ute grinding its way up the hill. Two suited officials alighted to ask to see her husband.
‘He’s at work. He works at the jail.’
‘OK,’ says the senior bully. ‘Tell him he has two weeks to pull this illegal building down or we do it and charge him for the labour.’
That was it. They climbed in and were watched by a devastated Catherie, as they disappeared into their own dust.

Catherine was alone, no phone and no car. She made it to my house on foot, hot tired and distraught and rang Stephen who went straight to the council office and demanded to see the bullies.
‘Be there on Sunday,’ he demanded. ‘You can explain to the media why you forced me to burn my home out from under my pregnant wife and infant son!’

Not waiting for a reply, he left and drove home. They weren’t far behind.
His dust was still settling when the same council ute raced up the driveway to brake dramatically beside him in front of the house.
Their eyes never left him as they climbed slowly out, faces revealing a mixture of fear and embarrassment.
He waited, arms folded.
‘Um, there’s no need to go off half cocked mate. We don’t want you to burn your house down, no way!’
‘I haven’t got time to knock the bloody thing down in a fortnight, I haven’t got the money to pay you blokes to do it, so the only fucking way to comply is to burn it, so burn it I will.’
‘Look, mate, I’m sure we can come to some understanding here. The problem is, the house was erected without Council approval. You need approval.’
‘It’s a bit late for that. The bloody thing’s up!’
‘Well, it is possible to get approval in retrospect, in cases like yours, maybe.’
‘And how do I maybe get that?’
‘Just draw up plans and drop them in to me and you might need to fix a few things up, that’s all.’
‘Like what?’
He looked around, settling in a brick pier that was not quite vertical.
‘Like you better straighten up that pier. OK?’
‘So it comes down to this. You started by demanding I knock my house down and now all you want is a pier straightened! Is that it?’
He walked inside leaving them there with nothing to say.
The question was never answered, the pier never straightened, plans never submitted and they never came back.

Picking a Sprinter.

Heat almost drove me inside. Too much around the middle from years of sedentary work then a sudden move to the country found me seriously unfit. A sprint uphill was the last thing I needed, but that is what I did.

Dan Langan, ninety plus was working on his property maybe two hundred metres away, his white mare marking where he was. I couldn’t see him but I could hear his axe creating echoes that bounced from the sandstone cliffs behind my house.
Working on my new cattle yard and loading race. I was puffing lightly, chain-sawing posts and rails, marveling at Dan, still chopping steadily, Crack-k! Crack-k! Crack-k! A short break and he would start again.
Each time he stopped I looked up. It was hot and I began to worry that he shouldn’t be chopping wood on such a hot day. But each time, there he was, moving between weedy shrubs on the hillside, back and forth to the horse then the axe would start again.

At the next break in chopping I again looked up the hill and saw him lying on the ground face down. After a few seconds of no movement I began walking towards him. Through the fence and still no movement so I broke into a run, my concern firing up my ill conditioned muscles to maximum effort up the rocky hill.
With the taste of blood in my mouth, I arrived by his side and took in the detail. He was lying there with his arm down a new post hole, scooping out the last of the dirt preparing to install a post, cut, trimmed and ready.
He rolled over slowly and sat up as I flopped to the ground.
“G’day young feller!’ he smiled. ‘Yer shouldn’t hold yer breath when you run.’
‘What?’
“Yer can alwiz pick a sprinter cos he holds his breath when he runs an yer can pick a stayer cos he breathes.’
‘Shit Dan, I thought you were dead!’
‘I’m orright but you’re not, yer silly bugger. You’re no sprinter, yer gotta breathe!’
I just fell back breathing heavily, my heart banging against my ribs trying to get out.
My eyes found the horse. She was quietly standing in a scrap of shade, black tail swishing flies and shivering her mane, big brown eyes calmly staring. She agreed with Dan and I agreed with her.
“Can’t argue with that!’ I mumbled as I struggled to my feet and shuffled home, breathing hard all the way. Definitely not a sprinter!