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Overview
As a boy, David Cox lived in the dusty outback on a sheep station. His lessons came in a brown envelope from the Correspondence School, but out of doors his father was his teacher. David learned the stockman's skills of riding horses and mustering sheep and cattle, and when they were out riding his father would tell stories about old times. Sometimes they would repair stockyards or fences, and when the job was done his father would step back and say, "Well, it's good enough for a sheep station."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781743437339 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 4 - 8 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Good Enough for a Sheep Station
By David Cox
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2015 David CoxAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74343-733-9
CHAPTER 1
My dad was a horseman. When he rode, he and the horse moved as if they were just one beast.
His saddle was his prize possession.
'Best saddle I ever owned,' he used to say, and he looked after it and kept it soft with saddle grease.
He was as comfortable in that saddle as he was in an armchair.
We lived in the dusty outback on a sheep station called Murringo, and the good thing about that was having plenty of animals about: horses, cattle and sheep and dogs, and wild animals as well.
There were feral pigs and foxes, and native birds and animals, like kangaroos and emus, bowerbirds and koalas.
There were snakes too. People always had stories to tell and a lot of them were stories about snakes. My mother's snake story was about a picnic at Goondiwindi, where a big man sat on a coiled-up death adder, right through lunch, without knowing it.
I said, 'The man must have got a terrible shock when he stood up and saw that death adder. '
'Oh, Mr Cameron, he was all right,' my mother said.
'It was the snake I felt sorry for.
It looked very depressed.'
The not-so-good thing about the sheep station was that there were no other kids to play with. My sisters and brother were away at boarding school.
I had to put up with adults all the time.
One of the stockman, called Roy, was an old, old man.
'You must be respectful and call him Mr Dunn, not Roy,' my dad said. But Roy Dunn said, 'My mum carried me for miles to have me named Roy. So that is who I am.'
Roy was the old type of stockman, my dad said.
'Tough as old boots. They don't make them like that anymore.'
Roy could tell stories about long droving trips, dry rivers, stampeding cattle, cattle duffers and bare-fist fights over the ownership of unbranded 'cleanskin' calves.
When he left the station, old Roy gave me a pair of soft leather leggings and a pair of spurs.
After shearing was over one year, and there was no more mustering to do, he rode away with his dog, and his horses tied head-to-tail.
We never saw him again.
I had to do my schoolwork most days. The lessons came to me in a big brown-paper envelope from the Queensland Correspondence School. The teachers were always encouraging and my mother supervised my work.
I spent a lot of time drawing.
My mother was good at drawing so she didn't mind.
Out of doors, my dad was my teacher.
He trained me in the stockman's skills of riding horses, mustering sheep and cattle and all that kind of thing.
We had a batch of young horses that were newly broken in, and my dad gradually took me from the horses that were easier to ride to ones that were headstrong and difficult.
I had to learn to drive a truck too, sitting on a cushion to see over the dashboard ... I was a small boy.
When there was any special work on the station, like mustering for shearing or building a stockyard or a windmill, I was given time off school.
I loved riding out to the far paddocks to muster.
There might be four or five of us: my dad, me, and two or three stockmen.
My dad didn't talk much riding out to work, and then, in just a few words, he would give us our orders. We would be riding on our own from then on, looking out for sheep and looking down for their tracks.
When we were riding home, that was the time for talk, and just about everyone had a yarn or two to tell.
My dad's stories were about old times. He told us how he came home from boarding school by Cobb & Co coach, drawn by five horses.
He sat up on the box by the coach driver, and the driver would hand him the reins then rattle his boots on the floorboards to make the horses gallop.
He talked about the old-time parson, Fighting Sam, who walked from station to station carrying boxing gloves along with his Bible.
'We'll have the fights first,' he used to say, 'and then the sermons.'
There were great names in his stories: Weewandilla, Warandaroo, Babiloora and Dalgonelly. Old McIntyre, who owned Dalgonelly Station, bought everything by the ton or by the mile, according to my dad. A mile of dungaree? A ton of hobble chains? Was that the truth?
My dad rode along telling stories, comfortable in his big stock saddle as he would be in an armchair. But we all knew his tricks and, within sight of the homestead, we gathered our reins and got our horses on their toes.
Because, suddenly, right in mid-sentence, my dad would let out a yell: 'It's a race!' and be away like a bat out of hell, flat gallop, with just a glance over his shoulder.
He always won that race -- he was the boss, after all -- and at the saddle shed, when we jumped down, we would all be laughing.
Sometimes our work was repairing stockyards or fences, or even windmills. When the job was done and the tools put away in the truck, my dad would step back to look over our handiwork.
'Well,' he would say, 'it's good enough for a sheep station.'
What he meant was, 'That's a job well done.'
They were the good times, but then we had a long time of drought.
The animals grew thin and weak. There were no races to the saddle shed then; we hardly ever rode our horses faster than walking pace.
We watched the sky, while clouds gathered in the evening, then went away, and gathered and went away, over and over again.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Good Enough for a Sheep Station by David Cox. Copyright © 2015 David Cox. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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