To Ride a Fine Horse (4 page)

The wild mob's bolting now, my boys,

But 'twas never in their hides

To show the way to the well-trained nags

That are rattling by their sides.

 

Oh 'tis jolly to follow the roving herd

Through the long, long summer day,

And camp at night by some lonely creek

When dies the golden ray.

Where the jackass laughs in the old gum-tree,

And our quart-pot tea we sip;

The saddle was our childhood's home

Our heritage the whip.'

The stockmen of Australia
. . . 

Perhaps Patsy himself had a hand in some of these unsigned verses, for it was said that he could string a ballad together as he rode along and sing it to the delight of his companions like the bards of old. Unfortunately his youngest son, who kept dozens of his verses, burned them because he thought that a younger more sophisticated generation would make fun of them; but the few of his rhymes that have survived show that he had at least as much talent as the best of these early folk singers.

People said that Patsy Durack always seemed to be in several places at the same time. This was because of his boundless energy and the speed at which he would travel from place to place, fitting in all sorts of different jobs. One week he would be mustering with a party around the Lachlan. The next he would be settling stock on his land at Lake Bathurst, from where, having left a couple of stockmen in charge, he would ride back to the family at Dixon's Creek and help with the erection of buildings and yards that had been going on in his absence.

These first bush homesteads were simple, but comfortable enough. They were made of slabs of timber and bark with thatched roofs and shutters that swung on hinges made from strips of untanned leather, or ‘greenhide,' They had only two rooms, one for general living, where the men slept in their swags on the floor at night, and a bedroom for the women and children. The kitchen was simply an open lean-to outside. The floors were of hard beaten mud, strewn with hides, the furniture made of rough-hewn timber and greenhide. Bed coverings were the pelts of furred animals, roughly pieced together.

Some of the things Patsy had learned about building from his father now came in useful, but the little timber homesteads of the Australian bush were very different from the whitewashed stone farmhouses of his native land. It amused him, as he worked, to sing a popular jingle about the use made of stringybark and greenhide in the bush:

 

If you want to build a hut to keep out wind and weather,

Stringybark will make it snug and hold the shack together;

Greenhide, if you use it well, will make it all the stronger,

Just tie it up with greenhide and it's sure to last the longer.

 

Stringybark will light your fire

Greenhide will never fail yer,

Stringybark and greenhide

Are the mainstay of Australia.'

 

Patsy was proud of that first little Dixon's Creek homestead, but he promised his family that some day he would build them a fine mansion and they would ride in carriages and dress in the height of fashion. His sisters believed that everything he said would come true and worked almost as hard as himself. They were all good riders, especially little Sarah, who had been so delicate. Australian life had agreed with her and she had grown strong and bright and spent as much time as possible stock riding with her big brother.

Their Uncle Darby, who lived on the adjoining selection, was afraid that young Patsy might be riding for a fall, with his two properties, his mortgage to Mr Emanuel, and all this rushing about. He thought he should settle down quietly, pay cash for everything, and clear his land for agriculture as he was
doing himself. Darby also said he was going to bring his sons up to be good practical farmers, not like so many of the younger generation who were forever galloping off after wild stock or droving cattle to some waterless wilderness. He now had three sturdy boys, whose lives, had he but known, would be spent doing exactly those things of which he disapproved.

Patsy himself would have liked to have some land under crop but he felt the time had not yet come for successful agriculture in Australia and that he would do better to use his properties for grazing stock. Already the land he had purchased had begun to seem too small for him. His herd was increasing and the crown land he had been able to use at first was quickly being taken up by other small settlers.

He had now registered 7 PD, his ‘lucky number' and his initials, as the brand for his stock and just as he had been so confident about his pot of gold, he began to feel sure that somewhere on the vast continent there was a great stretch of country on which his 7 PD stock would graze and multiply.

Sometimes he would talk with drovers who had returned from taking stock to the north or the far west or had brought sheep or cattle from distant areas for sale in Goulburn. From these he heard of the great empty spaces waiting to be taken up ‘past the last man out'. Then he would grow restless and impatient to strike out for himself where no white man had set foot before. Indeed he might have done so then and there if fate had not stepped in. But this is a story he best tells himself in a rhyme he called ‘The Boy from County Clare':

 

This boy he came from County Clare

And nothing to his name

'Til a horse he found in the Goulburn pound

Then he was in the game.

 

Some gold he dug where the diggers delved

But he turned his horse again,

For the gold of his heart was the gold of the grass

That grew on the Goulburn plain.

 

“See how a Squire am I,” he sang,

“With credit at the store,

“And gold a-mounting in the bank,

“And who should wish for more?”

 

But as he sang a voice he heard

From far, far away

And never felt he half as rich

From that very day.

 

“Ride boy, ride, for the bush is wide

“And if your heart is stout

“There is a kingdom for a song

“Where all the roads run out.

 

“A kingdom for a song, boy,

“A kingdom for a sigh,

“Where scattered tracks of nomad blacks

“Stretch out to touch the sky.

 

“Such rivers and such seas of grass

“And little price to pay!”

But all the streams of his fair dreams

Were far, so far away.

 

And what was at the end of them

But longing for to gain,

When the gold of his heart was the gold in the hair

Of a girl on the Goulburn plain?'

M
ARY
C
OSTELLO
was only fourteen years old when Patsy met her and decided then and there that he would one day make her his wife. She was the daughter of well-to-do station owners, who had also
migrated from Ireland and later taken up land about ten miles from Dixon's Creek. Their two children were both Australian born, but whereas the son, John, at sixteen years old was already considered a splendid young stockman, rider and horsebreaker, the parents had scarcely let their cherished daughter out of their sight. She was a pretty, gentle little girl and her mother at least had no intention of ever permitting her to marry a struggling bush settler. It was impossible, however, to prevent her meeting Patsy from time to time, as he and her brother, with their mutual love of horses and horse racing, were firm friends. They both rode at the Goulburn race meetings and as Patsy was the elder by four years Mrs Costello was sure he was encouraging her son to become a gambler and a ne'er-do-well.

When the first little band of nuns came to settle in Goulburn, Mary was at once packed off to boarding school, where she remained for two years, and was thereafter taken to stay with relatives in Sydney.

Patsy immediately began to find good reasons for visiting the big city. He attended all the stock sales, purchased stud cattle and horses and turned up at social functions where he would be likely to meet the girl of his dreams. Mary's mother disapproved as strongly as ever, but her father could not long resist the happy personality of the determined young Irishman. At last it became clear to all that this was true love, for neither Patsy nor Mary had eyes for any other and it had to be admitted, even by Mrs Costello, that they made a handsome young couple.

They were married in the spring of 1862, at Tea-tree Station, the Costellos' station home. It was the
biggest bush wedding of the year, and with so many riders, traps and buggies on the road people said it looked like another gold rush. Those were the days when women wore crinolines, and men, almost always with flowing beards and moustaches, wore coloured waistcoats and flowing cravats. The little girls dressed
like miniatures of their mammas and the boys in checked pantaloons, tight-fitting trousers, peaked caps or ribboned boaters.

It was a merry gathering with much dancing, singing and merrymaking. Patsy declared it to be the happiest day of his life, and true it was that his gentle bride was always to remain for him as lovely and beloved as on their wedding day.

Not long after their marriage, Patsy and Mary went to Sydney, accompanied by John Costello and Patsy's seventeen-year-old brother, whom they called ‘Stumpy Michael' to distinguish him from other family members of the same name. Patsy had taken up a block of land for his brother and wanted to purchase some good stock to start it off.

It was at the sales that they met two great Queensland stockmen and explorers, William Landsborough and Nat Buchanan. Patsy and John Costello knew of them both by repute, having read a report of their recent discovery of the Camooweal district and several big rivers flowing south from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Landsborough was now agent for the land he had opened up and was anxious to find settlers bold enough to start pioneering untried country hundreds of miles from civilization. It was not long before he realized that here were just the sort of men he was looking for, for apart from their natural love of adventure and longing to push out past all established frontiers, they had other reasons for wanting to leave the now closely settled districts in New South Wales.