Hamersley Gorge along the Nanutarra

Munjina Road Pilbara, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

10

14

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192

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201

203

211

Foreword Lorraine Injie, Chairperson IBN Corporation

Marlbatharndu Wanggagu Once Upon a Time in the West: Sharmila Wood, FORM Curator

Our Station Life

Pastoral Paternalism in the Pilbara Dr Maryanne Jebb, AIATSIS Research Fellow

Black Eureka! Jolly Read

Collaborators: Claire Martin, Photographer’s Note

Jetsonorama, Evolution of the Painted Desert Project

Seeing the Desert Julia Fournier

Interview Reko Rennie

Acknowledgements

Contents

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this book may contain images of people who are now deceased.

This image contains photographs from stations not in the Yinhawangka, Banyjima and Nyiyaparli area, this has been considered and approved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system) without permission. It is customary for some Indigenous communities not to mention the names or reproduce images of, or associated with, the recently deceased. All such mentions and images in this book have been reproduced with the express permission of appropriate authorities and family members, wherever it has been possible to locate them. Nonetheless, care and discretion should be exercised in using this book. Where there are variations of spelling for Indigenous words, the most commonly used versions have been included, or, where supplied, the preferred spelling of individuals and communities.

Front Cover Artwork by Reko Rennie

Branding Cattle on Nicholson Station,

photograph by Percy Spiden, Pictures Collection,

State Library of Victoria, 1955

Stockyard workers from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955,

Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

forewordLorraine Injie, Chairperson, IBN Corporation

The traditional lands of the

Yinhawangka, Banyjima and Nyiyaparli

people are in the high country of North

Western Australia; a region whose

modern development was driven by the

pastoral industry.

Aboriginal people, including our families

were closely engaged with this industry;

from its very beginnings. Kaye Forrest’s

book, The Challenge and the Chance is a

historical record of this interaction. She

records Aboriginal people welcoming

settlers and guiding them to good

pasture, dispossession, battles, friendship

and cruelty, and an intimate integration

into the work and life of the stations.

Forrest records an account of a settler’s

wife staying with the Aboriginal camp,

where she felt safer than staying with

white workers at the homestead, when

her husband travelled away.

There is no simple story to this history,

but dispossession left a legacy, the effect

of which continues to this day. Most

people would not know that in 1878

Aboriginal people lost the right to hunt

on their lands, a right that only returned

with Native Title in 1993. They lost the

right to hold a miners licence in 1888, the

same year the first of Western Australia’s

goldfields were declared in the Pilbara.

The pastoral industry is a part of the

identity and history of many Aboriginal

people. And there is no doubt that the

industry could not have been built

without Aboriginal labour.

Supporting the Yinhawangka, Banyjima and Nyiyaparli people

11

During this project many of those

interviewed reflected that being

on the stations was a happy

time, they worked on country,

with their family and their tribe.

Aboriginal people were good at

station work; they had the skills.

The Yinhawangka, Banyjima and

Nyiyaparli people have many

experiences and stories connected

with stations around the Central

Pilbara. Whilst people have fond

memories this was also a period of

great hardship and pain.

Yet, there is a deep pride in

many Aboriginal people for what

they did in building the pastoral

industry. They were stockmen and

domestic workers – intelligent and

acute horsemen with an intimate

knowledge of the country; they

built windmills, fed hundreds,

sheared sheep and repaired fences.

They worked for rations in hard

conditions, in the heat and the

dust, in the industry that was the

economic backbone of the North

West.

This is a contribution that has

remained largely unrecognised

in the broader community. This

project is important because

it makes Aboriginal pastoral

histories visible. The recording and

sharing of stories, language and

traditions is very important to IBN

and, we believe, to Australia.

It is an essential part of our

country.

That’s why our partnerships with

FORM, and other organisations

such as Wangka Maya Aboriginal

Language Centre, who work

tirelessly to preserve over 30

Aboriginal languages found only in

the Pilbara region, are so vital.

FORM has captured these stories

in film, photography, audio and

large scale art installations,

working with Andrew Dowding

(Anthropologist) Sharmila Wood

(Curator) & artists such as

Jetsonorama. We are grateful to

them for the passion and skills

they’ve brought to this project and

the respect that they’ve shown to

our Elders and their history.

IBN has invested in this project

as we believe it will serve as an

important historical record that

will show the young people and

future generations something of

the spirit of the Aboriginal men

and women who helped to build

the Pilbara.

This project pays respect, in a

highly visual and engaging way, to

the contribution Aboriginal people

made. This is something that has

not been well recognised, despite

the pastoral industry being so

closely linked to the Australian

outback psyche.

12

The Milky Way seen from Cowra Outcamp,

photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Marlbatharndu Wanggagu Sharmila Wood, FORM Curator

Quartpot, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Once Upon a Time in the West is about the interconnectedness between the past and present, about history and place, it’s about heritage, but it’s also about the future, and more than anything it’s about resilience, courage and hope.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Marlbatharndu Wanggagu - Once Upon

a Time in the West explores the untold

history of pastoral industry from an

Aboriginal perspective. In June 2015

pastoral leases are due to be renewed,

which is a poignant time to reflect upon

the pastoral history. Aboriginal people

played a vital role in developing the

industry, yet their role as an essential

workforce is often unacknowledged. This

is not the first project to recount the

pastoral era, and is not intended to be

comprehensive; rather it is an opportunity

to present a range of the histories

experienced by Yinhawangka, Banyjima

and Nyiyaparli (IBN) people on stations.

This project emerged from a series of

informal and formal consultations with

elders and board members from the

IBN Aboriginal Corporation. Station

Life, which has a strong resonance with

people across generations, and family

groups emerged as a priority focus for the

project. Painting is not a common form

of creative expression for IBN people. In

a community where intangible cultural

heritage remains important, yet, often

neglected, as both a system of knowledge

and form of creative expression people

embraced the opportunity to tell their

stories and have these recorded for a

cultural project.

IBN has developed into an Aboriginal

institution with a strong commitment

to self determination, embodied in

their relevance and significance to their

membership of Yinhawangka, Banyjima

and Nyiyaparli people around the Pilbara.

15

It was important that the approach

we embarked upon together was

inclusive, broad and participatory.

Storytelling emerged as the most

suitable and open platform, one

that does not exclude people

because they do not identify

as artists As the conduit for

expression, the oral tradition has a

unique place in Aboriginal culture,

which in this project allowed for

broad engagement with a range

of community members. Yet,

this also posed some challenges

for visualization as we wanted

to ensure that IBN people were

at the forefront of shaping their

representation.

As FORM had begun to deliver

its PUBLIC program, which

explores creativity as a catalyst

for generating public good with a

focus on artists working beyond

the gallery walls, Jetsonorama’s

practice came to our attention.

Born in North Carolina and trained

as a doctor, Jetsonorama has lived

on the Navajo Nation reservation

in Arizona for the last 26 years. In

recent years, he has initiated The

Painted Desert Project, which takes

his experiences on the reservation

and uses the platform of art to

build community, esteem and

a sense of identity. A number of

IBN members had expressed an

interest in connecting with Navajo

communities, and had identified

with Jetsonorama’s paste-ups,

which include images of rodeo

riders and cowboys, that related

directly back to the pastoral

industry. Jetsonorama seemed the

ideal artist to assist in visualizing

the station experience in

collaboration with IBN participants.

In March 2014, Andrew Dowding,

an Aboriginal anthropologist and

I were invited to the IBN Annual

General Meeting to talk about

the project, and receive feedback.

Jetsonorama, who had just arrived

from the USA accompanied us.

When he began to show images

in a slideshow of the majestic

Arizona landscape, the room was

silent- intrigued by this African-

American artist with his paste ups

on the sides of buildings, water

tanks and caravans in a landscape

that resembled some of the

Pilbara’s magnificent vistas.

The initial enthusiasm for the

paste-ups from the elders who

congregated to meet with us

after the presentation, was

diminished as some fears and

anxieties emerged about the

public presentation. Ultimately,

Jetsonorama’s Pilbara trip in

April did not result in large

-scale portraits embedded

in the landscape, as the idea

needed longer to be considered.

However, the trip presented an

opportunity for exchange and

creative development, which has

culminated in a series of paste

ups around South Hedland, and

Indee Station utilizing historic

and archival images of Aboriginal

people at work on the station.

They evoke nostalgia, yet clearly

illustrate the working life of people

during this time.

Whilst the rolling out of paste-ups

was delayed, the AGM endorsed

the project, with elders nominating

their participation, so Andrew

and I embarked on a series of

trips to speak with Yinhawangka,

Banyjima and Nyiyaparli people

who are scattered like stars across

the towns of Tom Price, Wakathuni,

Bellary, Parabardoo, Port Hedland,

Roebourne, Mingullatharndoo

Community, and Karratha. Whilst

I had some understanding of

what people had experienced on

the station, it was, at times, an

emotional and difficult journey.

During this project many of

those interviewed reflected on

the station days fondly, as a time

when they worked on country

with their family, developing into

champion horse breakers, rodeo

riders and kings of the gymkhana.

Energy, action, risk and adventure

were part of this life. Despite not

being financially rewarded for

their knowledge, skills or hard

work, respect and status was

bestowed from the community on

exceptional horsemen and women,

many of whom are remembered as

heroes in these stories.

Women were just as accomplished

as men in the saddle, and, whilst

employment in roles on the station

was gendered, when it was required

women also did fencing, horse

breaking, well sinking, mustering,

and ‘gun slinging.’ However,

women’s primary role appears to

be domestic and they worked as

cooks, cleaners, and nannies. I

found it ironic that station owners

often entrusted their children to

women who worked in their homes,

yet many nannies were subject to

government policies, which forced

the removal of their own children.

Similarly, Aboriginal women

prepared food, but they were not

allowed to eat inside, having to

take their meals to the wood heap,

illustrating the apartheid that in

fact, existed across the entire state.

Yet, rather than a narrative of

victimization and struggle, I heard

voices which were courageous

and heroic. IBN people created

intentional communities of refuge

in the tin shanties and humpies

they inhabited; culture, family

bonds, laughter and love were alive,

whilst strict discipline maintained

kinship and tradition. Material

poverty did not necessarily equate

with spiritual poverty, instead,

cultural abundance and being in

Country, connected to place and

family, provided strength and a

sense of shared belonging. Story,

corroborees, songs, and family trips

to the bush helped to replenish and

nurture people, sustaining them

through difficult times.

There were many times, where

silences and gaps amplified

unspoken tragedy and sadness.

In many stories, the absences of

experience suggested deep chasms

of grief, and unspeakable things.

Some people recounted violence,

exploitation, control, and slavery.

The impact of legislation such

as the Aborigines 1905 Act (WA)

ensured a framework of control,

segregation and surveillance

governed peoples’ lives, and the

impact of these policies is evident

in the lived experience of IBN

people.

In spite of trauma and hardship,

the attachment and rootedness of

people to the station is commonly

expressed. They are places to

which IBN people connected

spiritually and psychically; they

worked, suffered, and loved there,

they raised their children across

the generations in the face of

hardship and uncertainty. In many

ways, Aboriginal people absorbed

elements of station life and made

them their own; the pastoral

culture was not positioned in

opposition to Aboriginal cultural

existence, but integrated into it.

This is clear in the way people

adopted cowboy culture, illustrated

by a love for, Country and Western

music and fashion. Whilst the

stars of Cowboy films were white,

people recognized the lives and

landscapes represented, they

identified with the heroism,

horsemanship and athleticism of

the movie stars. Gymkhana, rodeo,

and cowboy oriented activities were

adopted into Aboriginal culture

with confidence, yet traditions were

also retained.

When the photographer, Claire

Martin travelled to photograph

those who had nominated to have

a portrait, many of the men put on

their cowboy hats, boots and belts.

There was pride and connection

with this culture that people were

keen to portray, reflecting how

the IBN participants were part of

the photo making process, both

present and curious. It was not

always possible to travel to stations

where people had worked, due to

displacement and distance from

traditional Country. Whilst people

are living far away they often wish

to return home, expressing feelings

of wellness and peace in the bush.

Due to distance and time a solution

was for people to nominate where

they would like to be photographed,

whether it was a spring close to

their community or a stock yard

outside of town.

Claire’s practice was well suited to

this project as she actively seeks

to co-create work with the people

she photographs, combining her

personal vision with the alchemy

of feeling, content and aesthetic

sensibility that occurs in the

moment. I witnessed how Claire

made people feel valued and

special, able to build a rapport and

sensitivity in her engagement as

a photographer. The road trip we

undertook through the Pilbara was

a fast paced and intense journey.

However, Claire was in a rhythm of

responding to new environments,

having recently returned from

undertaking the Danube Revisited –

the Inge Morath Truck Project.

Claire was a co-founder of this

multidimensional project which

combined development and

presentation along the length of

the Danube River. The project took

photographs outside of a traditional

gallery context, showcasing

the work of renowned Magnum

photographer Inge Morath, inside a

converted 7.5T truck. The poignant

and elegant images that Claire

produced reveal her talent and

it’s no surprise she received a Prix

Pictet nomination (2012), and the

Inge Morath Magnum Award. This

project also demonstrated her

alignment with Marlbatharndu

Wanggagu’s desire to reach beyond

a typical gallery audience.

Through conversations and

discussion, Claire suggested that

the few objects people owned were

also photographed, these objects

function to delineate time, place

and people from when station work

was a way of life. Whilst people had

few resources available, they often

showed a willingness to explore

and exploit aspects of the non-

Aboriginal world, such as the new

experiences offered by cars, which

were seen as prized objects and a

symbol of independence.

Reko Rennie’s installation created

for the exhibition in Perth, features

a 1954 international AR 110 Truck

which he converts into a symbol

of Aboriginality. Reko, who is one

of Australia’s most significant

contemporary Indigenous artists,

produced the car, extending his

practice to using ‘one shot’ enamel

sign writing techniques, playing

with nostalgic graphics from a

bygone era. Reko also undertook a

trip to the Pilbara from Melbourne

so he could visit Roy Hill Station

with an elder, and over three days

heard his stories of being on the

station. Ultimately, Reko also has

a personal connection with this

history through his Kamiliroi

family in Victoria, demonstrating

that the pastoral experience is not

limited to Western Australia.

Reko developed insignia featuring

four symbols that connect with

Aboriginality and the pastoral

industry. A stockman’s hat

is a symbol of masculinity,

independence, and reliability,

whilst the yandi dish, originally

traditional cot for babies and a

domestic implement for gathering

fruits and vegetables which,

ultimately came to represent

independence and played an

important role in the 1946 Pilbara

Strike.

The juxtaposition with traditional

Aboriginal boomerangs illustrates

how station life was absorbed

into Aboriginal life. More than

this, boomerangs express culture,

used in music and law they were

symbols of invention- it is with

these simple instruments that the

world is sung into existence. The

spears represent the strictness, and

discipline of traditional culture,

which was implemented on the

station.

These divergent symbols are not

seen in opposition, rather, as

the title of the show references,

Aboriginal people appropriated

symbols of cowboy culture, to

make it their own. Once Upon

a Time in the West hints at the

storytelling component of the

project, yet, is also a reference to

the Sergio Leone Western film that

dramatizes a violent struggle over

natural resources in Sweetwater,

a piece of land in the fictional

town of Flagstone, those familiar

with land rights will recognize the

connection.

Exploring ideas of sovereignty,

Reko picked up the reference

people in the Pilbara made

to pastoralists as squatters,

and chose to use the didactic

statement, Pastoralists = Squatters

as a key message in his work. An

unfair system of land ownership,

which dispossessed Aboriginal

people from their Country and

ignored their occupation of the

continent for thousands of years,

also enabled land to be parceled

and distributed for pastoralism.

It was the Crown which allowed

pastoralists to pay rent for the

usage of land upon which they

could build houses, businesses and

generate wealth, which continues

through the current 99 year lease

agreements. Again, highlighting

issues connected with land

ownership, the neon Reko created,

Always was, always will be, reflects

the intersection of land rights in

his work.

In the beginnings of pastoralism,

the threat of, and real acts of

violence were used to procure land.

Property was violently claimed

from indigenous people, who were

effectively forced into a system of

indentured labour to stay in their

own home. This struggle for a

place to reside appears to continue

in Port Hedland where many IBN

people live. The population that

composes Pilbara towns also

reflects the station history; given

that many people were forced

off the land and into reserves,

then towns. Today, Aboriginal

people have been implicated in

supposedly nonviolent housing

policies, and developments,

which systematically dispossess

them through unaffordable

housing, buyouts, and unjust

evictions, creating crises and

often homelessness. This is

fundamental to the problem of

the Pilbara’s, and South Hedland’s

future as an Aboriginal place:

where government policy has

driven people into homes that are

away from home, with limited

opportunity to own land.

South Hedland is where many

Aboriginal people live, and is

a place of protracted struggle.

There has been a collective

erasure of the past in this town;

therefore the desire to re-assert

Aboriginal history created the

desire to find a location where

we could showcase the project

and the general community

could engage. With support from

management, the South Hedland

Shopping Centre became a site for

the installation of paste ups and

photographs developed during

the project. The site is a central

hub for community from a range

of backgrounds to congregate and

through showing the work in a non-

traditional context, we are hoping

to engage and communicate with

new audiences. Located across

multiple installations and sites,

the project will also be exhibited

in city galleries. Online platforms

will connect these varied sites,

and illuminate the histories that

might otherwise be invisible

within the current local landscape.

By looking to the web of past

interactions, histories, individuals

and circumstances, perhaps the

present and the future can be

better illuminated.

The Pilbara with its intense history

is a reflection of the contested

landscapes where Aboriginal

people have built their lives,

created legacies and institutions,

while struggling for their freedom.

This does not diminish the

significance of the Station, but

helps us properly examine the

conditions under which Aboriginal

people existed. Family and country

provided freedom in a system

fundamentally unfree. It was

in these spaces that Aboriginal

people have huddled together, to

protect and comfort each other.

The qualities of storytelling,

humour, kinship, and institutions

have provided a way of expanding

the possibilities of Aboriginal

freedom—and they continue to do

so.

Panorama of the Hamersley Ranges, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Aborigines Act 1905, Courtesy State Law Publisher, Government of

Western Australia, Department of Premier and Cabinet

House girls, 1955, Life and Work on Roy Hill

Station, State Library of Western Australia

Our Station Life

Stirrups, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Horses, 1955, Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, State Library of Western Australia

Yandicoogina David Stock, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

David Stock

I was born in the bush on Roy

Hill Station. My father comes

from that side- Banyjima and my

mother come from Newman way,

Nyiyaparli, work all their life in

Roy Hill Station and wherever

they went. All my life I’ve been

a stockman in Roy Hill and on

Marillana, that’s one firm, one boss

with two stations.

If you got a good name on the

station, working for the squatters,

they tell ‘im, he’s a good stockman

or good worker in the station,

everybody likes ‘im. If you not,

well, they give you a bad name. If

you had a fella who talks for his

right, he’d tell them what’s wrong

and all this, in those days white

people didn’t like that. They don’t

want to be told off by a blackfella.

If you talk out of place to the

white people in the station they’ll

sack you, just for no reason. All

these white people are all in one,

policeman, or welfare.

We’re not allowed to get into the

kitchen. We put our plate in the

window, and a quartpot or mug,

whatever you got for your tea. They

gotta serve me and I go back to the

woodheap, have a feed, then I go to

the stock yard, start workin’.

I was breaking in horses and all

these sorta things. We used to ear

mark them and, put the brand on.

Of course, some of the cattle used

to go finish up in the other end of

the paddock or other area, we have

to go, and get ‘em back. Mustering.

We used to go to Ethel Creek or

Punda Station, see the brand and

the ear mark, say, ‘this is Roy Hill

cattle’ and take ‘em back.

Two or three hundred men used

to work on Roy Hill, with sheep

and cattle. Ohhh a very big station.

Sheep. Cattle. Separate. We used to

come back in March, put a shoe on

horses and everything. Get ‘em all

ready for mustering, and, right, we

used to go out, cattle mustering.

Two or three months out in the

bush. Same in the sheep camp.

Maybe when we go back camp, we

can do a little bit of corroboreeing.

Corroboree good - we’d have a

dance, old people have a dance,

you know? Corroboree, just like

you going to the disco - well

that’s a white fella way, black

fella: corroboreeing. Happy in the

station. When we in the holiday

camp, we gotta stop twelve

months, then we go Christmas

time. Dump us anywhere down

the creek, we right. Two or three

months we stop down there.

Money part cuts out and we get

a ration. They feed us from the

station, make sure we not starving

down there. It’s all right.

Sometime we used to do the

droving - mustering cattle to

My name is Yandycoogina - David Stock. I was born first in

July, 1934.

31

Meekatharra from Roy Hill. Six

weeks on the road watching cattle.

Those days, you know, people

weren’t hurried to get there, no

hurry and no time. You just go

along. Whenever you get there,

you get there. A lot of people

used to drove their cattle from

other stations, all one way from

Meekatharra on the stock roads.

We put ‘em in the yard and feed

‘em and wait for the train. We

truck ‘em all up, send them to

Midland Junction. Done, we gotta

come back now. Straight home.

Terrible though, danger. You wheel

‘em cattle around now, bring ‘em

back and quieten them down, they

start ringing again and you start

talkin’ to them, or all these sorts of

things. They settle down then. So

that’s in the cattle camp. And then

after that, cattle train took over

then. Sometimes they give you

trouble, they rush. But it’s good

fun, long as you know what you

doing, you gotta be very careful

at night, don’t make a noise. One

man jump, that’s it. And you gotta

give ‘em room, and before you go,

they gotta ring around. Make a lot

of dust. Yeah and the horse will be

excited too, you gotta hang on or

they leave you behind, ohhh. The

horses they know what they doing,

gotta hang on! Ohhh! But that was

nothing to us, only a bit of fun.

With sheep, they’d gather up all

the woolly sheep put ‘em all in

the paddock close to the shearing

sheds, when the shearing team

comes along, they ready to start.

Yeah a busy time, you gotta get up

in the morning, and let the shorn

sheep out, and bring the woolly

sheep in. And keep going like that,

tail ‘em and put an ear mark on

‘em and all this.

Money been put in the station by

the government. Money was there,

like what we getting now from

our country – we get a roy-hill-

alty. But this one was different to

that one. You just put the money

there to pay all the workers. And

the squatters they didn’t, they

just said, “Oh, just give them two

pound a week, that’s good enough

for black fellas.” And man that

made this 1946 strike, Old Don

McLeod, he was working at a

windmill man on Roy Hill. He was

working things out, that’s what

these blackfellas get, just a little bit

of money – he’s trying to fight for

the blackfella now.

Those days, people wasn’t worried

about big money, ‘cause you don’t

know the big money, we never

thought, oh, when I get my big

money I’m going to get a motor

car. That’s not in us! We’re not

worrying about motor car or big

money. As long as we got a little bit

of money we were satisfied.

I was with the people who used to

come to Roy Hill from the desert

working, get ‘em going. Some of

them couldn’t put a bridle on a

horse or a saddle, we gotta learn

them properly, some of them was

good riders too. Really good riders!

These people who come from the

desert they had to get learned for

this money. “What’s this?” Those

desert people would ask. “That’s

money” We tell them. “I dunno

money!”They’s day. And they get

a handful of notes, you know,

and they nearly gonna chuck it

away, “no that’s yours, you gotta

buy this one”, we explain to ‘em.

Fair enough we didn’t rob them

you know, we wasn’t that sort of

people.

I got a motor car. T model Ford.

Solid motor car, you hit a kangaroo

with that one, you kill ‘em. You

can’t dent the motor car though.

We used to drive down to Roy Hill.

Open picture in the flat, before

the TV come. Movies. Camp down

and have a weekend and come

back next morning. Oooh, cowboy

pictures, all those sort of things.

The boss used to get ‘em, every

two weeks.

I’m a gymkhana man myself.

Every station used to bring their

horse. Minderoo and somewhere

else, and, everywhere. We used to

run it on Minderoo station. They

put six riders. Line ups, soon as

32

a flag goes down, we gone. The

first man finish his six posts, all

in the drum, he’s the winner. He

gets his blue ribbon, on the horse.

“What this for?” I ask. “Oh, you a

winner. First class,” they would

say. “Ohhh, very good, sounds

good …” They have a flag race,

every man rider’s gonna pick up a

stick and put it back in the drum.

First man standing in a drum is

the winner. Then another game

was the pig melon race and all

these sort of things. You pick up a

pig melon, six of them again. All

these things. Jump on a horse, very

quick, whoever is down there first

is a winner.

Well, working in the station was

alright, course we never used to go

anywhere. At holiday time we go

and see our families, or they come

up. And if the family come up

while we working in the station the

boss bloke would hunt ‘em away.

“Who is that bloke come? Last

night” They’d question us. “That’s

my uncle”, we’d tell ‘im. ‘Well tell

‘im to keep goin, he’s eating our

worker’s feed,” boss would say. We

can’t do anything, cause we’ll go

with him too, we’ll get the sack for

that.

I go back to Roy Hill. I used to work

for them in Millstream before they

come. And I work for ‘em there,

on Millstream Station. And after

a while they bought Roy Hill then,

they all come there. I feel good

when I go back to Roy Hill. You

know? Make you feel good. Well,

that’s my own country, that’s

where I come from. Feel so much

better, you know? In the bush. Oh,

made us feel good.

33

Ethel Creek Homestead, 1922, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

David Cox on his porch at Bellary, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

David Cox

I’m David Cox; I was born in

Rocklea station. My mother and

father was there, they belong

there. My mother and father they

had their own wagon, they had

their own horses - you know those

days was very tough, but some

Aboriginal people got around to

make money.

We got up to late 50’s, still a little

bit of money. Back in the 60’s,

everything went backwards, no

more jobs for the blackfellas. All

finish up in the Onslow reserve.

Sometime, we used to go cattle

mustering, but when that finish

we back in town, we had a very

hard time.

I was a slave in the country. I was

working for shirt, trousers, boots

and hat, that’s all we used to get.

No money.

We never been to school, some

welfare people used to come there,

taking all the kids but we were

too cunning for them, we used to

hide away, out in the bush. They

took two kids from Rocklea never

ever see them come back, never.

But all the family used to sit down,

waiting, might come back, but

nothing, they both finished now.

It left us crying, I cried for them,

everybody cried for them; never

ever see them come back. That’s

the terrible thing was happening

those days, the welfare the ones

that been doing it. There’s a

welfare office in Tom Price,

but I wouldn’t go there!

My mother and father had their

own horses, own cart, own big

wagon - they were independent

people. They were selling horses

too, making us money, that’s the

blackfella’s, they was cunning too.

People then, been doing that, or

going out dogging or fencing. My

father used to get around ten

pound for five or six scalps, but

that was lot of money then. I been

dogging too. Shooting dingoes or I

can set a trap to catch them.

In those days two hundred pounds

was a lot of money you can buy a

motorcar and you still had money

in your pocket. Now, got two

hundred dollars that money’s gone,

that money never lasts.

Old Stan Dellaporte he trained my

brother and the whitefella reckons

that’s the smartest horseman

they’ve ever seen. He raced in

Onslow, and we had a country

race in Boolaloo. He used to race

all those horses in the cup and he

used to win ‘em too. Win the cup.

I had a couple of rides in the races,

but I wasn’t good as him.

My brother, was riding, Pine

Prince, Warm Cloud, Old Bluebird

from Minderoo, he used to ride all

them horses in the cup.

37

Seed Star from Minderoo, two grey

horse, they was station horses, he

wasn’t getting paid, just ride all the

horses for fun, never get money,

just a little bit of dollars, that’s all,

give us a little bit of food.

We used to go to town sometimes.

We’d tell the boss that we go

to town now, in two weeks,

the policeman bring you back.

Policeman come and ask, “how

long you boys here?” “We here for

a couple of weeks,” we’d tell him.

“Alright, After that, you gotta

go,” he’d warn us. Just had a little

bit of holiday, go out fishing. The

policeman, he come and check

that all them boys gone. If you

got no job, he’s going to tell you,

you’re going to jail, that happens to

Aboriginals everywhere.

On the station I was riding a horse,

doing the windmill, going down

the well, oh jeez, that’s a terrible

job that, when you go down the

well, you look up, see all the heads

of the snake, sticking out. Oh,

that’s terrible! One man got to stop

on top, when you down the well

there, nobody’s allowed to have a

spanner or anything, that spanner

drop on your head, and you’re a

dead man.

I used to like riding the horse, but

not now. I used to chop posts, two

hundred everyday, I was working

five or six other men- they used to

do thirty or sixty posts, not me, I

did hundreds. It was all Aboriginal

people you were working with, no

money. When you go and ask for

money, they tell you go see the

wife. That was good enough, never

asked for any more.

The Mulga tree, that’s good for

fencing, but for training posts you

gotta get a black eyed tree. It would

take about three or four months

to build a stock yard, months after

months we been there, till it’s

finished.

We did have plenty of fun. I was

King of the Gymkhana, so were all

the Cox brothers. I used to win the

hurdle, I had a good horse jumping

over the hurdle, and the flank race.

We’ve only got the rodeo now. I

went to the rodeo in Marble Bar,

riding a big black horse, that horse

never shook me, he never chuck

me off. My head spun right round,

I was dizzy, but he had a job to

get me off. I used to watch them

mob riding in Derby- good riders

been there. I went to Marble Bar,

and thought I’m going to have a go

here, that horse never shifted me.

At the station when you work,

you go right up into the night,

ten o’clock, you might get caught

out there with a mob of sheep

and lambs, it could be very slow,

you know. But we used to like

riding. I remember when they

moved me from the sheep camp

to cattle camp. I see a motorcar

pull up, “what you looking at me

for?” I asked. “We come to pick

you up?” They tell me. “Why?” I

say. “They want you in the cattle

camp? You’re the one who can

handle bulls,” they explain. Well, I

wanted to stop in the sheep camp

for a change, they said, no you’re

wanted down there.

In the cattle camp you got to

handle all the bulls. Bulls are not

to play around with, I used to pull

em down all the time, the bull

was nothing to me, nothing to me,

when I was young. But, now I look

at the bull and think, oh, you can

stop there.

That was a good fun, I used to love

cattle mustering, but I wanted a

little bit of change, you know, I had

no chance. We had to drive all the

bulls.

I been learnt by the experts, old

Dellaporte and old Mick Condon,

they was my brother in laws,

married to my sister. They were

experienced man, champion horse

breakers. I been to Roebourne I

went and saw the old Ngarluma

mob breaking horses, by jeez.

Oh Jeez, old Condon, they all

been learn from each other, the

experienced men. You gotta be

careful to ride this horse, gotta

be man, otherwise that horse

38

will kill you. We used to ride his

horse, when you get off, don’t drop

the reins otherwise you’re going

to walk. If that horse chuck you

off when he buck, you’re walking

home. Dellaporte, old Condon,

and that old Ngarluma man, with

their horses, they just drop the rein

and the horse used to wait there.

Blindfold the horse, ride it with

blindfold, when you sing out, look

out, that horse going to buck, or it’s

going to bolt.

Bull is very dangerous, you gotta

know how to handle a bull. Mob of

bulls got out of the yard. One bull

come up from the bush, come into

the yard, and he’s fighting the other

bulls inside, other bull took the

gate, break one old cow in the hip,

got out of the yard, where this bloke

sent me.

If you sing out to a bull, you send

them mad, they going to chase you.

A lot of people got killed with the

bull, one blackfella, one whitefella,

the horse slipped on the rock in the

river, slippery rock with the shoes,

with the bull behind him, when

he got up the bull picked him up,

put the horn straight through him.

Year after, same place, whitefella

got killed. Bull was behind him.

Finished. Very dangerous, especially

the big ones, when you see the bull

shaking his head, go, don’t wait for

him. Even in the motorcar! I’m not

going to wait for them.

Some of them whitefellas good,

some drunken whitefellas, some of

them slack, you gotta get up when

they tell you to get up, otherwise

you get a boot, we went through

all that, some of them good fellas

to work for, some of them bad. Flog

you with a stock whip and all. I got

flogged with a stock whip and all.

It was bad. When they tell you to

do it, you’ve gotta do it. If you don’t

you’ll get a hiding.

I seen one very strong whitefella,

very powerful for a white man,

Jack Harvey, I used to work for

him, I seen him lifting up a big

post, he used to lift it up put it

in, used to tell me sit down mate.

Black eyed tree very heavy you

know, nothing to him. Old Jack,

lucky he wasn’t bad tempered,

he was a cool headed man. His

daughter there now, Wendy.

Old Dellaporte, the boss just used

to fly around in a plane. One time,

back in the early days you gotta

throw the bulls, cut the balls. You

can’t get money for that bull. You

gotta have two powerful man to

pull him down, you gotta chase

him along way though. You cut

his balls, let him go then. Back in

the 40’s and 50’s you gotta thrown

them down in the yard, do him

there in the yard. Some bulls good,

some bulls bad.

Owner was white man, they get all

the blackfellas, slaves. By the way,

you get a whitefella you gotta pay

them, cunning, they know how

to make money. All the squatters

got rich from the Aborigines. They

make millions of dollars from us.

39

Boomerang by David Cox, Boomerang photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Boolaloo, Reports on the station, 1893, Courtesy State Records of Western Australia

40

Stockman working from Life and work on Roy Hill Station, 1955, Courtesy of State Library of Western Australia

Jumbo Jumbo, that’s my full name.

Hamersley Station, born there,

and I went to Rocklea and, been

reared up in Rocklea Station. Good

station, sheep and cattle, two

bosses there, Alder Smith, Len

Smith. Kooline, mustering sheep,

bring the sheep into the shed, good

station, and bad, gotta work early

in the morning, little bit, get late,

knock off.

Riding a horse, mustering sheep,

put it in the shed, pickin’ up sheep

wool, class the wool, shearblade

to shear the sheep, before the

machine come. Bit hard work,

pickin’ up the wool.

I been reared up Rocklea, very

hard - hard station, have tucker

in the wood heap. You have your

tucker in the wood heap, not in the

table at all.

Andrew Dowding: And how did

people feel about that?

Jumbo: No good, isn’t it? Got to be

treated good one working in-it.

Andrew Dowding: How do you get

to the station? How do you travel

there?

Jumbo: Ride a horse, horse and

cart, no motorcar that time.

Andrew Dowding: Do you

remember the name of any horses?

Jumbo: Tall boy, Digger, all them

horses, name.

Andrew Dowding: And what about

your mum and dad, which stations

did they grow up on?

Jumbo: They grew up in the

Hamersley Station.

Andrew Dowding: Did you have

brothers and sisters?

Jumbo: Yeah, but they are all

finished.

Andrew Dowding: And where were

they born?

Jumbo: Born Hamersley Station,

Rocklea.

Andrew Dowding: Any singing,

you guys used to sit around the fire

and sing?

Jumbo: Yeah, we used to do lots,

yeah, singing the song. Old people

used to sing, we used to dance.

Jumbo is a 97 year old Banjiuma elder

Jackaroos mustering sheep on Nanutarra Station, Photo Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

45

Eileen James in her kitchen at Wakathuni, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

I was born in Rocklea Station,

1/1/1945.

Eileen James

My mum and dad was working- he

was droving sheep by foot; they

had a bush yard and things like

that. After there we went to Kooline

Station and stayed there, thats

where I was reared up. At Kooline,

been all around the river side, in a

horse and cart and only come back

to station when shearing start.

Most of the life we done out in

the bush, never been to school,

trapping kangaroo, used to make

a little trap by a wire where the

kangaroos pad coming in to the

water, catch it with wire. Sometime

my stepfather used to go out. We

had three kangaroo dogs. Skin all

the kangaroos and sell the skins,

go over to Kooline lead mine to

sell skins, just for some flour, tea

and sugar. We lived out in the bush

most of the time.

We had to wire up under the tree

for the pad coming down when the

kangaroo come down, its got a loop

in it, when the kangaroo goes in,

he jumps the wire, tighten up, go

in the morning, kill the kangaroo

or we got a dead kangaroo in there,

carry him home, skin him then.

Sometime we used to get kangaroos

with three roo dogs. They used to

skin it and take it out in the sun, let

it dry out, sometime used to get 20

kangaroo skins, then take them all

to the lead mine, sell them there,

get a tea and sugar, big mob of

stores and go back bush again.

We went back to Boolaloo Station

after, worked there, Mum and

Dad, that’s the welfare nearly took

me away from my family, but my

stepfather fight for me.

Move another camp, go to another

place, stay there, travel with a

horse and cart.

When we move, we pack and we

go along. Sometime, walk along

behind, picking up gums off the

tree, putting them in the billycan.

When it got hot, we got no shoes,

we climb back in the cart.

When the shearing starting we all

go back to the station then, Step

Dad be working, Mum working,

when the shearing finish, back

to the bush again. That’s why we

never been to school.

They never used to get paid, all

we used to sell is kangaroo skin to

that lead mine and we used to get

some tea, sugar and flour, jam and

things.

When shearing finish, pick up and

go out bush again. Sometimes stay

in the station if the boss want to do

some fencing, stay around, when

the fencings finish we off back

bush again.

47

We used to stop Mortimer Crossing.

Police camp, other one, sometimes

we made a camp in Mulung Pool,

not far from the lead mine, used to

stay around there, live on fish and

kangaroo.

We used to run around, playing,

helping Dad and Mum making

bough sheds up, go down fishing,

catch some fish for feed. Catfish,

big mob of catfish.

I still remember, every time

memories come back, we sit down

and talk about it. Me, Tadjee and KJ.

We used to go slide in the mud and

all, chuck a water in the bank of

the river, get up that side and slide

down, used to be funny.

We moved around, went and

work in Boolaloo Station welfare

come along, tried to take me away.

That day I took off in to the bush,

the bosses missues said to me

stepfather “come back here, you’re

not going anywhere”.

The missus argued with welfare,

they fight for me that time, that’s

why I never went to school.

You know, these stolen kids, used

to be taken away, thats what they

wanted to do to me, my nephew

got taken from Ashburton station,

my other nephew got taken from

Kooline station they was going to

take me away in Boolaloo station,

but they never.

The welfare were talking to my

Mum and Dad and the bosses wife,

they all said no.

I got married then, and went to

work in Mount Stuart Station. For

13 years, me and my husband,

moved to Wyloo, worked there,

moved to Ashburton, we worked

there, went back to Mount Stuart,

we stayed there, went back to

Nanutarra Station, last.

On the station we feel happy, stay

and working, I used to work in the

house, he used to go out mustering.

It was good, at Mount Stuart, when

the boss and missus go away I look

after the house, keep the garden.

Well we used to plaster trough and

tanks, me and the missus, when

the trough got a hole in it, two

ladies used to do it, me and the

bosses missus.

Go back and cook, wash clothes,

had to wash most of the missus

clothes at the homestead and go

back do my own after.

I had my kids, one out bush, rest

of them in hospital. My three girls

passed away.

We used to live in a little rough

old house, a tin house. Just an old

wooden stove, that’s it. Got to cart

your wood, or you chop it yourself,

no boys around, they all out

mustering, cook damper in a

camp oven.

48

In those days you can’t get air

conditioner or anything, you had

to make a spinifex bough shed.

Spray the spinifex and its nice

and cool inside. You put a netting

around it first, you push all the

spinifex between it, sometimes we

used to run a little hose around it,

drip it into the tap, keep it cool.

We wear any sort of clothes,

old clothes, you don’t have to

be dressed up, my Mum used to

make they used to cut it up and

make it, sew it by hand. Bosses

used to order material, keep it in

the store anytime if they want

it, they get it given to them, they

are workers, get it for free.

I never got my pay, only husband

used to get paid those days, not

ladies, nothing, but we was working.

Camp Oven, photograph by Claire Martin , 2014

49

David Moses on Pipingarra Station, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

“I had to pick up myself and say, “I have to do the right thing for myself. Nobody’s

going to help me.”

DavidMoses

My name is David Moses Martin,

I come from Marble Bar. I was

born on and grew up on a little

station that they call Limestone.

My Mother turned to drink at that

time, and we were left with the

grandmother and the grandfather,

and we grew up with them.

I was under the care of an old

bloke named Lenny Stream. He

was a quiet old fella, he wasn’t

a bloke that growled or pushed

you into things, “it’s there, you do

it, you learn, you hear.” We went

to Mount Brockman at the time,

that’s alongside Hamersley Range,

there was this stockman, Andrew

Stewart, he wasn’t a learning man;

he had a stand-over technique that

he used.

I used to be rough handled, in a

hard way, it hurt a lot too. If I didn’t

do the right thing he’d get behind

me with the stock whip, and I’d get

punched in the jaw, sometimes,

when he could reach me. Some

time I had three of four shirts on,

and trousers. Most of the scars that

I have on my forehead are from dirt

when I fell on the rocks. He was

never teaching properly.

I don’t know what was his idea, it

was strange to me, I thought when

you get taught, you get taught

proper way. One time he had a

partner that went to sleep in the

camp, and the horses ate all the

flour, and I was watching what they

call the coaches near the camp,

waiting for smoke to flare up in the

distance and I got blamed for the

horses eating the flour, he chased

me with a motorcar, and I got on

top of the hill and he shot over

the top of me with a .22. It wasn’t

my fault that I couldn’t be in two

places at the same time.

But it’s sad that he had to carry on

the way he did, because a lot of us

young fellas had been chased by

him with a stock whip, and other

boys had to run into a tree to avoid

it all, so we made a little cubby

house, and yeah, it’s a sad thing.

I might have been eleven, twelve.

Back a few years ago I went to see

him, to tell him I forgive him for

everything he’d done.

It’s very hard, but when you look

at the good things that happened,

there were fun times. When they

let me go with them and try to grab

a young bull by the tail; that was

fun and I was fit, you know, I could

get away from all the cattle that

would turn around on you. You’d

number out all the trees that you

could run to before that young bull

would get you, or, one time we had,

I think it was a young heifer, who

was stirred up that much he had us

all baled up, we didn’t even make it

to the tree.

If I could see I’d like to take you

to the yard we built. When you’re

out in a place like that you got to

learn to work out how to get big

posts, you had to work out yourself,

because if you didn’t do it you’re

gonna get a hiding anyway. We

51

found easy ways to get it on board

with the trailer, using crowbars

and ropes, just to get them onto the

trailer that we had, and you’ve got

to dig into the rocky hard ground,

it’s a clay pan really, but we had to

build a yard there.

I come back to Hillside Station, and

I was able to do things in my own

way. I was kind of boss on me own

there. I was allowed to drive tractor

and trailer to pick up cattles. At the

station, I was sixteen, seventeen, I

done three years there. It’s on the

side of a river, it was lovely place.

I used to live in the quarters, near

the garage. I would go shopping

with the boss to get what I needed -

clothes and blankets, that was just

sort of given to you as a present, as

long as you do your work you get

paid that way. It wasn’t much, ten

dollars a week. That’s not much

hey? But, he was a good old bloke.

I got put on a horse out at

Wadjanginya and I broke my left

leg. I think the horse got wire tied

up on his leg, I just found myself

being booted by the horse, and I just

wanted to save my head, I doubled

up, and I could hear ‘click’, and my

leg went, just smashed - a double

kick too. They had no bitumen

from there to the camp and they

had to take me shortcut through

the roughest road I ever went on,

and this old bloke, he was hanging

on to my leg trying to keep it still,

but he was drunk, the more he

was hanging onto my leg, he was

hurting it. I’d scream, when we got

to the camp site, I thought the best

thing to settle it was two bottle of

whiskey, but it didn’t. I was still in

pain.

I worked Mount Brockman, that was

my first one, and then Hillside was

my second one. I went to Munda

Station. It’s the bush life I think

people like. You’d get different

people there, and a lot of fun. But

the worst thing was everybody had

to leave the station to go into town,

to drink their money. I did it too,

you know, but that was the worst

part of it in our life.

But, we used to have fun on the

gymkhana show, in what they call

Coongan Station, you’d go and mix

with people, and everybody would

come from all areas of stations, with

their good horses that they had.

I used to listen to people putting

requests on ABC radio, who’s

singing who a love song. But, don’t

ask me the name of those songs, I

wouldn’t remember now. So many

of them! But there were a lot of

people, like Slim Dusty, Charlie

Pride, and Dolly Parton, and, old

Hank Williams.

Not in the station but when I was

at Marble Bar, they had a big dance

hall, where everybody used to meet

every races, and yeah they had a

ball in the shearing shed, had some

boys from Marble Bar play their

instruments, a lot of them was

good, but they’re too old to play now

I suppose.

It’s sad that, most of the stations are

closed and haven’t got places to go

and work for the younger generation

to teach them. Nothing out there for

them. I learned a lot, in a way, even

though I got no certificate for it, it’s

all in the mind, it’s in your heart,

what you learn, and you can learn

to do all these things, and you can

explain it to other people, but they

wouldn’t even know what you’re

talking about. It’s sad that, you have

to put the pen and paper to show

them what that means.

When I turned thirty-five, I realized

that I was going blind, but it was

too late then. I thought to myself,

“Well this is it. Can’t go back”. I

thought about going back drinking

and just waste away. “Nah, I’ve got

a daughter”, I said, “I don’t want

to show her that track.” She being

eight years old when I did go blind,

I had to pick up myself and say, “I

have to do the right thing for myself.

Nobody’s going to help me.”

I started to memorise everything

and that’s how I learned to live on

my own. I got burnt a lot with my

fingers, trying to cook. I learned

to use the washing machine, but

I can’t do gardening. I learned to

live like I am now. I just praise the

Lord too, because if I didn’t come

to him, I wouldn’t be where I am

now. Probably would have been back

there still drinking, or probably

dead. I reckon if I didn’t have the

Lord I wouldn’t have stopped

smoking and drinking, I wouldn’t

have that willpower, only through

God, Jesus Christ.

52

David Moses, near Pipingarra Station Water Tank, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

53

Cowra Outcamp, Shearing Shed, Photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Edward and Charlie Dhu at Cowra Outcamp, Mulga Downs Station, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

You’d be battling to live off the land there now, with

bush tucker- because it’s not there. The cattle, they ruin the

Country, they destroy all the bush tucker.

Dhu Brothers

Charlie Dhu: I’m Charlie Dhu, born

and bred on Mulga Downs Station,

in 1935.

Edward Dhu: I’m the younger

brother, Edward Dhu, born in

Port Hedland in 1947 at the Lock

Hospital which used to be the

Aboriginal Hospital, we were never

allowed to go the white people’s

hospital. I spent the first six years

of my life on Mulga Downs, at

Cowra out camp before my father

passed away and we had to move

off there into Marble Bar.

Charlie Dhu: We grew up at

Mulga Downs, we didn’t have any

schooling. When we were school

age we were doing men’s work,

working like men, mustering, and

fencing.

Edward Dhu: Mum was born on

Mulga Downs, and I believe our

grandmother Daisy was born there

also. Dad was born in Toodyay, and

was a stockman on Mulga Downs.

He had to tell the Native Welfare

Department that all us children

would not be associated with the

Aboriginal life.

Andrew Dowding: So that sounds

pretty hard for your mum.

Edward Dhu: She lost her life and

culture. That’s the bad part about it.

Charlie Dhu: I think Dad was a

black sheep in his family because

we’ve never ever met any of his

family, never met one, and they

never ever came up to him, and he

never ever went back.

Charlie Dhu: Most of the time

we weren’t allowed to go down

and talk to the Aboriginal people

because Dad wouldn’t let us.

Edward Dhu: That was a big

thing to do with Native Affairs

Department. They enforced that.

They wanted to take our eldest

sister Alice who was living in the

Aboriginal camp with Mum at

Mulga Downs before Dad came

along, because the three eldest

didn’t belong to dad. Dad took

Alice and Ned and Jack and put

them in the name ‘Dhu’ and said

he’d grow them up as his own

children, and they would not be

associated. The police and the

Native Affairs went out to Dad’s

camp, wherever he was, out from

Mulga Downs, and checked on

the children a few times. My older

brother remembers it all.

Charle Dhu: Most of the time

we weren’t allowed to go down

and talk to the Aboriginal people

because dad wouldn’t let us. I

remember that welfare used to

come ‘round and we used to be

hiding in the room.

Edward Dhu: I think the thing dad

did do wrong was promise he’d

educate all the boys and the girls

in the English schooling language,

57

to read and write and everything,

but he failed to do that, he put

them to work. But all the sisters

could skin a sheep, no problem.

Charlie Dhu: That’s what I say,

when we were school age we was

working like men. Cutting Mulga

posts with axes, and next day we’d

go out with a truck and load them

on the truck and then space them

out on the fence line, then dig all

the holes with a crowbar, clean the

dirt out with a meat tin.

Edward Dhu: Drill the holes with a

brace and bit.

Charlie Dhu: used the old brace

and bit, boring holes in the fence

post, running the wire through,

the girls had to do that as well, our

sisters too had to work like men.

And well, we used to just work for

tucker until we were old enough

to claim wages, and then we were

only getting a dollar a week for

working from eight till dark.

Edward Dhu: Ten bob, there was

no dollars then!

Charlie Dhu: We were out working,

seven days a week, from daylight

to dark, we’d leave the house

at dark and come home dark,

whatever we were doing. Chasing

horses round the horse paddocks

three o’clock in the morning, in the

dark. The mustering and shearing

time was in the cool weather,

in the hot weather we did fixing

windmills, fencing, mixing cement

with a shovel.

Edward Dhu: If I remember rightly

we had one or two draft horses

who used to pull the cart out to the

mustering camp, Clydesdales.

Charlie Dhu: Yeah, a couple

of camels they had out at the

mustering camps...

Edward Dhu: Flour, tea, and sugar,

and salt meat, and you’d have to

salt the meat because there were

no fridges.

Charlie Dhu: We had an old meat

safe with a hessian bag around it.

Put the meat, and whatever, butter,

and had a square like a little tank

on top with little holes in it, water

dripping down the side to keep

cool when the wind blows. And

most of the time we didn’t have

butter, we used to spread mutton

fat on our bread and tomato sauce

…

Edward Dhu: That was it, put salt

and pepper...

Charlie Dhu: And Mum, she would

cook lovely bread, in a big camp

oven, she had two camp ovens,

one big one and one smaller one,

and the bread used to come out

with a brown crust right around

it, you know? Oh, beautiful, you

spread butter on the hot bread and

get into it. Tell you what those two

camp oven loaves of bread didn’t

last too long.

Edward Dhu: But she nearly

cooked everything in a camp oven,

in a mustering camp it used to be

best under a tree anyway.

Charlie Dhu: She’d dig holes, and

light the fire in that, when it all

burned down, pull the coals out

and put the camp oven in with the

bread. We still eat kangaroo now

- well you’ve got to for the price of

meat here! You’d be battling to live

off the land there now, with bush

tucker- because it’s not there. The

cattle, they ruin the Country, they

destroy all the bush tucker.

Andrew Dowding: And how did

you get those stores? How did you

go and get the flour and all that?

Charlie Dhu: From Mulga Downs

Station. Came in on the truck from

Roebourne, we’d go into the station

which was about forty or fifty

miles from Cowra. Jimmy Tsaklos

used to be there from Roebourne,

he had to cart all the wool and that

from Mulga Downs.

Charlie Dhu: You know the

Country looks totally different, the

Country changes after all those

years. Doesn’t look like it used to.

Andrew Dowding: What else has

changed there?

Edward Dhu: Well, there used to

be a big crab hole where mum used

to do the washing...

58

Charle Dhu: with the old washing

board, all the kids, get a mob of

kids to wash, plus the old man

and herself … You couldn’t drink

it, the water was salty. And we

had to cart water from about a

mile and a half, where the good

water was. And the old fellow had

a big beautiful garden. He had

all sorts of veggies, oh, a lovely

garden, rockmelon, watermelon,

big tomato, big cabbages, we used

to eat everything raw, because we

had to cart water from that mill, to

the homestead for drinking water.

And we had to do it the same when

the shearing team were there for

drinking.

Sharmila Wood: What kind of

work were your sisters doing

there?

Charlie Dhu: They used to do the

same as us, you know, fencing.

If all the boys were out fixing

windmills or doing fencing out in

the bush and the girls were home,

they’d go out and get a killer, or

kill a sheep. The whole family

was hard workers; there was no

freeloading amongst our mob.

Because you know we were made

to work.

Andrew Dowding: Did you ever go

into town?

Charlie Dhu: We’d go into

Wittenoom now and then, because

we had a brother Jack and he

used to work at Wittenoom. And

he’d come out sometimes on a

weekend. Town was in full swing.

We’d go and watch the pictures,

now and then. I went to the

pictures and I was walking home

to their place and I got chased by a

big dog, I tell you what I got home

before the dog caught me. Yeah, we

had an old pet dog there. Old sheep

dog. It was good to see a sheep

dog working. Like, you’d only have

to whistle if a sheep broke out of

the mob, that dog would round it

up and bring it back into the mob.

And also herd them in when you’re

putting them in the yard. Saves a

lot of work when you’ve got a good

sheep dog.

Andrew Dowding: And what about

breaking horses, have you guys

had to any of that work?

Charlie Dhu: Yeah, we broke in

some horses there, yeah. Me and

me brother Don. He was a good

rider. A good buck jumper.

Andrew Dowding: So what is a

good buck jumper?

Charlie Dhu: Well when a horse

bucks, you know? You get on a

young horse and he’ll buck. But

one thing you got to do as soon as

he chuck you off you got to get on

straight away, otherwise he know

he got your bluff. If you don’t get

on, keep getting on when you get

chucked off, he knows you’re the

boss. Oh, it was a good life, hard but.

Edward Dhu: When I was

out Warragine there was two

Aboriginal boys there, Bull Runner,

and Max Gardner, they were good

to watch. They’d get them big

scrub bulls, some of those bulls

at Warragine there was fifteen

or sixteen bulls in one mob. And

these two blokes they used to

throw them, grab them by the

head. Just go right up to that bull,

jump off the horse, grab the bull

by the head and twist him.

Charlie Dhu: Used to love cattle

mustering, yeah, nothing better.

Like now they use helicopters and

motorcars and motorbikes, but we

used to horses in them days. It’s a

lot of fun. Get a mob of boys, you

know?

Edward Dhu: Yeah, I had a couple

of real good Aboriginal boys on

De Grey. Number Two they call

him and Tommy Clark, Captain

Williams, Bully Williams, Charlie

Coppin, and Felix Stewart. I was

only about seventeen, when you’re

with them and in the camp it’s all

just laughter and jokes, they’re all

fun and, if you do the wrong thing

they don’t give you a clip under

the ears, they’ll tell you how to do

it properly and, I learned a lot off

those people. Steven Stewart is a

real gentleman and so was old Left

Hand Jimmy. Always laughing and

smiling they were.

59

Charlie Dhu: Yeah, he’d show you

the ropes. If you’re a good learner

you learn quick, if you’re slow,well

it could be dangerous.

Edward Dhu: Oh, I suppose it

could be. I used to hate the horse-

tailing part of it, when we’re in the

mustering camp because when it

was your turn to horse-tail, you’d

have to listen half the night where

that horse is with the bell on, so

you knew which direction to go in

the morning. All you’d have is a

bridle, you’d walk out and they’d

all be hobbled up, so you’d track

the horse down and about four

o’clock in the morning he’d stop,

the bell would stop, and you had to

go and find the direction.

Charlie Dhu: Some of those bush

birds, they call them bell birds?

You could get fooled by them, they

sound like a horse bell!

Edward Dhu: Then you got a horse,

you put a bridle on one, and hobble

the rest and rode one back there

back, brought all the horses back

to the rest of the musterers. And

that was pitch black when you

used to have to walk out there.

Well it was freezing cold, you’re

walking out through the scrub, the

spinifex.

Charlie Dhu: Yeah, you take turns.

Edward Dhu: I worked on

Warralong, I had four years on

Warralong, Coongan, which

was okay, old Peter Miller was a

manager at Coongan and he’s still

alive in Port Hedland, him and

his wife Glynnis, they were nice

people. On the other stations, all

us people, Aboriginals, we ate

aside from the manager and the

white stockmen, but with Peter

Miller, no, we all ate as one, with

him and his wife, it was good,

yeah.

Andrew Dowding: What do you

miss most about those days, the

station days?

CD: Well, you know, it was so

free in them days. You could do

anything, go anywhere. Yeah, a

good life.

Edward Dhu: Yeah, I really enjoyed

the station life, the fun and I don’t

know, maybe just the riding of

the horses and things like that, I

don’t really know. We used to look

forward to the Marble Bar Cup. I

was fortunate enough to be light

enough to ride the race horses.

They were station horses, everyone

used to bring horses in from the

station then, in them days…

Charlie Dhu: He never won a race

but.

Edward Dhu: I won the Marble

Bar cup, thank you, in 1967!

Yeah, so we’d bring our horses

in and put them down there by

the racecourse. We used to bring

three horses in and we did alright.

First Marble Bar Cup I was in I

came second, and in 1967 I think

I won it on a horse called Saint

Christopher. For Warralong. But

them were the days, and Marble

Bar used to be a two-day meeting,

a Saturday and a Monday, and I

think the week after used to be the

Port Hedland races, cup. And the

gymkhana, so you’d look forward

to all them, and Coongan used to

have a gymkhana. They were just

really good times.

Andrew Dowding: Yeah what were

those like?

Edward Dhu: Oh they were

brilliant, you have to train your

horse of course, the bending race

going throughout these flags and

all that. There was all sorts of

things we had, we had bloody

apple and spoon, where you’d have

to get the.....

Charle Dhu: Apple in a bucket of

water...

Edward Dhu: Apple in a bucket of

water, and you’d have to get that

apple out, with your mouth …

Charlie Dhu: And a coin in a plate

of flour. You’d have to jump off

your horse, and you’re not allowed

to use your hand, and you had to

try to get that apple floating in the

water. And then of course, your

60

mouth, first was all wet with water

and then you’d have to blow the

flour down and find the coin and

then you’d have the flour all over

your face, dough all over your face.

Edward Dhu: Then you’d have a

race called a rescue race, you’d

have this bloke standing over up

there about two hundred metres

away so you’d gallop up to him

and he’d jump up behind you, and

half the horses didn’t like anyone

behind, and they’d buck. It was

all great fun. Everybody enjoyed

it. And the other, you had no boot

or saddle, so you’d gallop on the

horse bareback and you’d have to

pull up, put your boots and saddle

on him and gallop to the winning

post. You’d have colours. That

belonged to the station not me, I

couldn’t afford it. But they bought

silks and boots and colours, and a

skull cap. It felt really good when

you won the Cup. Just got out on

the racetrack with the horse and

had your photo taken and that.

Charlie Dhu: Poor old Aboriginal

fellas like us, you’d just get a tin

of meat, but the whitefellas would

win a bridle or a saddle.

Sharmila Wood: So when did you

move off Cowra?

Edward Dhu: Just before Christmas

in 1952.

Charlie Dhu: Old dad got sick, he

had a crook heart, and we drove

him into Mulga Downs one night,

of course, they had the Flying

Doctors and he went to Hedland on

the plane, and he was there for a

couple of weeks. They said he was

going to come home, and then the

next day they said he was gone,

he passed away. And when the

old fella passed away, mum didn’t

want to stay there any more, you

know? Packed up all this gear, and

the kids, we moved to Marble Bar

in late 1952.

Andrew Dowding: So did you

get to go and put him to rest

somewhere?

Edward Dhu: The boys weren’t

allowed to go, but mum, myself,

Florrie and May I think flew in the

plane from Wittenoom came to

Port Hedland for the funeral.

Charlie Dhu: Yeah, the manager on

the station wouldn’t let us go out.

Andrew Dowding: Do you know

why? Did he say why?

Charlie Dhu: No. Well he was hard.

When we moved back to Marble

Bar, me and me brother got a job

at Limestone Station, worked there

for a while, he stayed and I left and

got a job on the Comet Mine, gold

mine. Working underground and

that. Bogging, doing shovel work

all day. I worked at the Comet for

about six, seven months, and then

I got sick of that I went back to the

station- Hillside Station, Bamboo

Springs and Bonney Downs, and

had four years on Muccan. The

station life.

61

Cowra Outcamp, Shearing Shed, Photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Map of station boundaries, Warralong and Coongan, Courtesy State Records of Western Australia

Bonnie Tucker

I was born in Bonney Downs,

and after when I get grow up my

parents took me to Marillana

Station. My dad worked on Roy

Hill, where that red top is... after

that we moved to Bamboo Spring.

We stayed in Bamboo, long, long

time.

We were treated very rough, no

anything, sometimes my mum

used to sew the clothes, and

mend the clothes. My father was a

stockman,breaking in horse, and

mum used to work in the kitchen.

I never see any old lady work here

now, finish.

My parents used to be really good,

my mum would work for the mithy

(white woman) ironing, mixin’

bread, makin’ the bread for the

whitefellas, ‘cause the white fellas

don’t want damper or something,

they want a bread.

She used to go riding too on the

horse, taught me to ride. “Don’t

take our daughter in a horse,

he might buck jump show or

something, you know?”Dad used to

tell ‘im. “No, he right, he’ll learn,”

my mum would say. I would put

the saddle on the horse’s back,

shake the saddlecloth, jump in

the horse. But mum don’t like

riding you know, she like to stop at

home- very nice lady, my old mum.

I used to help her sometime with

her work. “Don’t be a lazy mongrel,

my daughter, you learn to do

something,” she tell me.

We never used to get a lot of

money I tell you, might be ten

shilling, two bob, stingy with the

money, all them governments, you

know. Boss call out, “You fellas

want a money?” “Yeah!” We’d be

singin’ out.

We were working in the Marillana

for about two and a half years. And

when the holiday comes, we go to

Punda Station. All the family was

in Punda, all the Nyiyaparli mob,

my uncle, my cousin brothers,

my mali (Grandfather). We stayed

in that place until anot her work

come up. Sometime the boss come

from Roy Hill- Barrumbanha, oh

nice place, water everywhere. All

that flood come down you know?

We just stop in Marlba’s camp...

very rough. We used to have a

little tin house, go there inside,

make a fire outside and cook a

feed there. We used to have old

beds. Sometimes we get up at six

o’clock work right up to night-time

and we go back to the camp, wash

the clothes, we had no washing

machine, only hand wash.

I remember one Chinaman, he

come from Nullagine, he kill an

Aboriginal woman, he kill it and he

run away from when he been kill

it, and everybody track him where

he went. He used to go breeding all Bonney Downs Station woolshed, 1922, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

67

the kids, every place. Come there,

they put him in jail then, in with

all those big bull ants. They put a

chain over him and he got bitey

everywhere, everything went full up.

Another story I tell you, we had

a Father Brian, who was on that

road going to Hedland, you know,

White Spring? That’s where the

Father used to be, getting all the

girls taking them into that school

place, he took me there, only for

one week. “Oh come on, don’t

want him to go to Moore River,”

Mum and dad used to say. And

you know what happened? My

Mum and Dad said we’ve gotta go

and ask the boss from Bamboo

Spring, we gotta go and ask him

for three horse. Then, they took

me away, gold hunting, oh, they

like the gold hunting and we get

some gold. They used to chop it up

with a little tommy hawk, and sell

a little bit in Nullagine. Old people

they liked travelling around in the

bush didn’t like to just stop on the

station at holiday time.

Shearing Shed, from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955,

Courtesy, State Library of Western Australia

Tommie with horse named The Brewer, Minderoo Station, around 1914, Forrest Family and Minderoo Station, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

Donkeys towing George’s car, Chalba Chalba crossing on the way to Carnarvon, around 1914, Forrest Family and Minderoo Station, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

“My Aboriginal name is Waru and

I’m a Banyjima.”

Gladys Tucker

I was born in the country where that

big hill is, near Auski. It’s actually

a longer name, Warrugardtha, but

they cut it short to Waru. I was

born 1948, down in the out camp.

My dad was working in the station,

mum was a cook helping with the

musterers; she’d be working on the

house too at Mulga Downs Station.

My grandmother used to look after

me when mum and dad worked.

When I was little, I used to talk in

the Yinhawangka language, but I

never grab it. My grandfather was

Jacob Tucker, my dad’s father.

I remember someone telling me

a story about my grandparents,

how they used to walk from

Mulga Downs right up to Juna

Downs on foot, they go across

the Karijini path, this is where

my grandparents used to walk.

They used to walk a country mile.

Along the way they lost a son, a

baby, I don’t know what happened,

something might have bit him,

I don’t know, when they was

chopping the honey, Jandaru.

They used to go droving a sulky

going to White Spring, go visit

the family there too- used to

tell me lots of stories about my

grandparents, my grandfathers

brother, Tommy Tucker, he been

spear my cousin-sister, she might

have tried to run away. They call

him Marnbu-na- that means he got

speared on his thigh. I would walk

lot in Banjiyma country, even right

up to the top, Juna Downs, that’s

where my great, great grandfather,

Willyamara, Bob Tucker, been

born, around eighteen-something.

I grew up in Mulga Downs

Station, used to run around when

I was little. My Dad, he tell us

to stop with our Aunty, Elsie,

Gumbangudda who bake bread

for the squatters in the station.

One part of it we was staying at

Wundumurra, on the road going to

Witteoom, where the tank is, we

used to stay there with the sheep

and all that. We had a little bit of

a holiday there, near the creek.

Old people used to build their own

bough sheds, and kids we used to

build our own, little playhouse. It’s

still standing there.

Old people used to dance at Mulga

Downs, sit down there, listen to

the singing, I wish I could learn,

but I could never pick it up. It was

exciting, they even dress up as a

bugada (devil). They would wear a

mask- used to frighten us! We’d be

hiding under the blanket.

When I got married, me and my

husband used to go on all the

stations. When they wanted a

hand, you know, we used to go.

I met my husband when he was

staying in Coolawanya Station, my

Dad was boss for him.

Windmill at Minderoo Station Homestead, 1914 or 1915

Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

75

He was a handsome man, too.

I was still going to school then. My

Dad give me away to him because

he was a Banjiyma man, keep it in

the Banjiyma. That’s how the lore

and culture was, give me a way to

him.

I was happy, full of laughter,

me and my sister used to go to

Coolawanya shed looking for the

ashes to make a burlgu. One part

of it we seen a kangaroo eating

away, me and my sister, Marnmu

tried to sneak on him but when

we come close he was blind, that

kangaroo. We got to leave him

alone, poor thing.

Coolawanya was a lovely place,

peace and quiet, no fighting. It

was a stone house, with showers,

bathroom, toilet was out of tin

and we used to boil the water and

put it in the bucket, because there

was only cold water. Dad took us

to Roebourne to put us in school.

Dad was working for Tsaklos

driving the truck up and down to

Wittenoom. We used to travel in

the truck, the trailer was empty,

go to Mulga Downs for a holiday,

come back on top of the asbestos.

We didn’t know it was dangerous.

When it was holidays we’d go back

to the station with our aunties

and uncle, I used to have my

best friend, Mavis Pat at Mount

Florence, Yidayena. We used to do

a lot of things, look for some fruit,

white one, collect those ones, fill

the tin up.

When I was staying in Coolawanya

I was running around with my

husband to be, I had to go to High

School then, to Perth, Apple Cross.

It was good, but we only stayed

for a little while because they

found out I was waiting for my

first baby, sent me back, I had to

stay in Roebourne. I went to work

at Cooya Pooya Station, washing

clothes, maybe doing the ironing.

I was self, then, I wasn’t with my

husband to be, he was somewhere

else.

I get up in the morning, might

be set the table for breakfast,

wash the dishes in the kitchen,

do the kitchen work. Sweep the

verandahs. In my free time,

went down, did a bit of fishing,

down the river. I didn’t know my

grandmother was born, around

there, only knew after.

I only stayed for a little while,

went back and stayed in the camp

with my baby. I was staying in the

hostel, then, with my little one.

I got married there, they had to

ring up to him, find out where he

is, have to look after me and my

son. I had a photo back there, my

daughter’s got it.

We got married, went out bush,

he used to work for that old fella,

Jack Smith, Bullawalu they used

to call him, Marshall’s Dad, they

was little then. My husband was

helping the old fella. He was the

offsider for him, mustering cattle,

you know.

I used to work in the house,

watering the garden and the

lawns, work in the kitchen. It was

a sheep station then, he used to

work for Richardson, he’s still

there now.

When we used to go mustering,

I used to be the cook, I had to get

up early, 4’oclock, make a fire, get

things ready, make the lunch, bake

bread in the camp oven. I only

had one child, that first born one.

We used to stop self when all the

boys gone, I didn’t get frightened or

anything like that.

I used to live alone when we went

to work in Mindaroo, that’s the

scariest place going. Bugarda’s

(devils) travel down the river

because of the juna-nulli, they

travel down that road, maybe

looking for somebody. I used to

stop their self, I used to get up

in the tank, sit up there, wait till

dark. My old husband knock off

in the dark- me and my little one

there, waiting.

They got the biggest yard going, I

had to rake up the leaves. I used

to help the ladies washing their

clothes, watering the gardens.

76

We went to Onslow then, stay at

the reserve, but we used to live

out in the open, we had no houses,

lived in the sand hill but it was

lovely, anyway, sometimes we used

to live in the tent. We used to work

at Uralla station; you have to cross

that Ashburton River.

I used to love working on the

stations, and I been working in

Uralla station for the Pattersons.

Ironing, set the table for them,

wash their clothes. We get a ration

from there.

Marshall Smith’s Saddle, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

77

Kathleen Hubert

I’m Kathleen Hubert. I was born

on Rocklea Station. I worked as a

kitchen girl, washing dishes.

My mum and dad was working

there, they used to work for Jack

Edney, with cattle, breaking horses.

I was a young girl then, I used to

stay round there, working. All the

young girls, washing up dishes, me

and my sisters… sister Lena and

sister Charlotte, but they finished

now. All the families were around

there, Maggie Bimba, David Cox

mother - old Daisy Cox, a lot of old

people been working there.

For fun we went fishing,

in Ashburton Downs too.

Kangarooing with a kangaroo

dogs, he chase em, till he catch the

kangaroo. I used to use kangaroo

dogs. Once I was learning my

brother’s dog, he would run, chase

the kangaroo half way, then let

him go, so I grabbed a big stick, hit

him with the stick and he learned

to chase the kangaroo then.

We used to live in the house with

old Delaporte, live in his house.

He used to tell my mum and

dad to live in his house, nice and

quiet. We moved around to other

stations. We went to Murrimamba

near Hamersley Station, Jack

Edney’s station. I’ve been helping

my mother do washing for Jack

Edney, wash his clothes, lot of

things. Marlba’s was there, big mob.

Traveled to Marillana Station,

stayed there with my stepfather

(Scotty Black) who was a windmill

man, he used to do everything.

I didn’t have a husband back then,

I was a young girl. My sister had

a husband, my brother in law,

old Dudley, he was a Nyiyaparli

man. He used to be a cattle man,

mustering cattle. They used to be

breaking horse and breaking calf,

branding the calf, they used to do a

lot of jobs.

I used to help them breaking in

horses and branding the cow and

calf, it was very easy, my brother

in law learn me. He tell me a lot

of things. Used to get chased by

the bull, but used to get away, the

horses used to pull up too fast.

I got married to the truck driver,

my old husband, Stanley Hubert. I

was living in Onslow then. I went

back to work in the station, Mulga

Downs, Mount Florence, Mount

Stuart, Nanutarra. I used to like all

the places, Marillana, Roy Hill.

On Marillana Station policeman

took my little brother, my mum

and me were pulling him by one

arm, policeman pulling the other

arm, my mum went mad crying

and us sisters were sitting crying

with her.

It was good mustering bullock – my

kids know too, because they went

mustering.

78

I had to stop night watch, on the

back of the horse. The horses used

to be good, not running away or

something. We used to watch the

cattle properly, go around, riding

the horse, right around them.

I’m old now, when I was young

I used to like doing these things.

Good life, station.

Off to Maroo. Bill, May, Unknown, and Tommie around 1914,

Forrest Family and Minderoo Station, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

79

Nancy Tommy

I don’t really know where I was

born. I think 1992 I first applied

for my birth certificate, and I only

got it this year. My mum said it’s in

the Jullaru country on Ashburton

Downs Station, she always told me

that, every time we were there…

she showed me, she said that’s

where the plane come and pick

her up. She was taken to the old

Onslow Hospital. But when I asked

for it there’s no registration of me,

whatsoever. I did not exist, ‘till

1992. Then I registered as Nancy

Hicks.

It was a good life in the station

– on Ashburton Downs. I really

hated going back to school! When

I got sent to Derby I was always

homesick. And I was always bitter

about this native welfare…I was

always feeling sorry for myself,

I was one kid that always was

homesick wherever I went…

so homesick that I used to try

and play up. Never do anything

in the classroom, muck around

in the classroom. Talk language

so I can get kicked out. And of

course they were strict that year. I

wasn’t allowed to speak one word

of language, but I used to do it

anyway. I hated old Don Turner’s

truck coming to pick me up, to take

me back ‘cause my mum and dad

didn’t have a car. Mum would jump

on the mail truck, come to pick us

up, and go back out on the station.

The old people that’s resting in

peace now… They taught me

things, how to live off the bush.

How to dig a soak. How you can

walk around and track a goanna.

How you can tell when it’s a fresh

track. What birds are related to

you and what birds you’re not

allowed to touch. They’d tell me,

come here nurdun (little girl). And

they tell you ‘dig there’. And you

get a stick to dig with first, and

then you dig it with your hand.

And we call that jirdinba – soak,

they know this is a good place to

dig a soak. When you get all that

knowledge and old people been

teach you, it stays in your head.

I just learned faster, when they

taught me in language, than I did

learning to read and write.

Well, my mum was a cook on

Ashburton Downs Station. Old

wooden stove. She used to cook

for Billy Hughes and the two

daughters, Tessa and Diana and

Les hills, I can remember that.

We used to have supper there in

the house, in the homestead with

Billy Hughes and the managers. I

used to go down there, big table

outside where we’d sit, and they’d

sit in the dining room. They were

separated from us but Diana and

Tessa used to still look after me

too. They were a long way older

than me, Diana and Tessa.

Spinifex, Photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

81

My old uncle, my dad’s cousin, old

Frank, he was a blind old man but

he was the wood chopper, and he

used to chop all the wood, pile ‘em

up neatly, and drag ‘em, put ‘em in

the bag, drag ‘em, with his guiding

stick, put ‘em all there, pile ‘em up

there for Mum, just outside of the

kitchen, and Mum would get up

in the morning, go and do all that

cooking.

Actually I had two old people that

I spent a lot of time learning with.

My grandmother, my Yindjibarndi

grandmother, Alec Tucker’s

Gunthai, my Garbali, I call her

Garbali and she was blind. The

twenty-eight parrot, was forbidden

for me to touch so she used to

make mum ging it in the pool,

pluck it, and then she used to cook

it in the ashes. She know exactly

how many there of the parrots are

there, because I used to sit next to

her as a little girl, trying to steal

one and looking at her. But, she

used to know, straight away. Soon

as she feels that bird move, I used

to get that walking stick of hers

right on my hand…or I used to get

pinched on the ears!

My dad was a head stockman, my

old dad. I got two fathers. One,

my old juju father, he give me his

name. He give me Bimpalura and

my name Nancy Tommy, that’s a

whitefella’s name. But my name is

Bimpalura; that name come with a

song. That’s from my dad, Juju, he

provided for me, gave me food, he

fed me, and he healed me because

he was a good Mabarngarda

doctor, spiritually.

He done a lot in the station. Bring

in sheeps. Muster the sheeps,

branding horses, feed the horses

and all of that. When we’d go to

Ashburton Downs on the riverbed,

mum used to show me where my

dad had dug a soak to make a

trench for more than fifty head of

horses. He come to the riverbed,

it was so dry. But him being so

clever, he got the water and the

horses drank.

Every Sunday, mum get a day off,

we’d go walkabout, all day long.

We’d go looking for wild onion.

I call it bardingnya, wild potato,

wirra, berries…or sometime when

it’s yam season, with the palms

of the yam. Dig all that up. Oh, I

lived on that! I was taught how

to cook that too, in the ground…

everything in the ground anyway!

We’d go to the riverbed, just sit in

the sand and make a fire there, if

we are fishing for catfish, onto the

coal it goes, straight away.

My Nana used to have a white

flour bag with that Dingo brand

and sometimes she used to make

herself a skirt with it. Sew the skirt

with it.

Where my Mum’s buried now,

by a nice river spot, we used to

walk there on a Sunday. That’s a

long walk! But it was nothing, it’s

coming home, was the hard one!

We just wanted to stay out in the

bush and never wanted to walk

back.

Coroborree, we used to have a

dance…we put paint on, white

ochre and red ochre. We used to

have it at night. We never used

to have it in the day. Moonlight

dancing. Mum was a good

dancer herself. My old dad, well,

he was giving me that name

Bimbaluranha along with that

song, my mum had to dance while

I sat on his knee when he was

singing, and they told me that

story, and I used to love it so much.

Mum was a good dancer and a

good singer for our songs, whereas

me, I couldn’t sing at all, couldn’t

even sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little

Star! I got no tune. And oh she

sang, my nana! My nana composed

her songs too, like when the twins

was born, she was in Minderoo…

or Glenflorrie station and in her

dream she heard that mum was

getting picked up by the Royal

Flying Doctor plane to go to

Roebourne… she knew she was

going to be a grandmother for

twins, just through the dream,

through that song.

82

I worked on a mustering camp,

gotta get up around five. I still get

up at that time in the morning

now…gotta start boiling the billy.

Out on the ground in the tents…

you gotta get up, make a fire,

and then put all the billycans on.

Put the camp oven on, clean up

quickly and make the damper for

the supper or even make the bread

in the camp oven, get all that done.

The rest of the afternoon I’m gone

- hunting for goanna. We clean up

very quick in mustering camp, you

don’t have to worry about mopping

up, you just do the dishes!

I will always call Ashburton

Downs Station my home. I think

getting taught by my old people

made me strong in my wiribda,

my heart, that knowledge of how

to accept my family tree, how

to follow that line. But I became

an alcoholic. I think I drank

too much because I was always

homesick and I found I lost a lot…

the knowledge them old people

gave me, that’s gone, and you

can’t bring it back…I mean, we got

nothing now. We don’t have that

freedom.

83

George Derschow at Pretty Pool, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

George Derschow

My name’s George Derschow and I

was born in Mulga Downs Station,

Wittenoom, on twenty fifth of the

tenth, 1935. And this year I’ll be

seventy nine years old. My mother

and grandmother, all the rest of

me brothers were born there, in

Mulga Downs. Mum doing station

work, housekeeper, whatever. Mum

and dad met at the station.

We left there in 1943 because

mum being native and then dad

German, he had to get out of the

Pilbara, see? The other side of the

twenty sixth parallel - the Japs

and the Germans. So they shifted

them down there, see? When we

moved, mum was very quiet. She

didn’t smoke but she chewed the

Burlga they call it. At the stations

she wanted us to get it, so we used

to go and burn a tree or something

and then get all the white stuff

off and bring it back in those little

tobacco tins and give it to her.

Dad came out to Australia in 1902,I

think he was walking around

the world with a mate for two

thousand pound. And when they

got to Sydney, they’d done four

thousand miles. And I don’t know

what happened after that but he

came this way because he was

working on luggers, he had a steam

ticket - he used to go out from

Roebourne out to those islands and

at Cossack, see?

We moved with old Jimmy Todd.

That’s what I can remember. He

had an old motor car, moved

us down to Meekatharra. And

somewhere from Marble Bar going

across there, a creek was running.

We was all packed on the motor

car. So we all got off, and chucked

all these rocks in the back of the

motor car to put more weight on

so it can get across the creek. We

travelled for two or three days I

think, yeah. We arrived at Minara

Station, this side of Meekatharra.

And at that station it had apples

and oranges and everything

growing there, but I don’t know

how long we stayed there, see?

We finished up down in Cue. Dad

was with that labour party mob I

think, and they used to work on

that ochre mine out from there.

Because I was lighter skinned,

the welfare would come to Mulga

Downs, they were being taking

away left right, and centre, see?

But down around Cue they didn’t

worry, but we still weren’t allowed

in town, up to six o’clock.

I started work when I was say

nine, ten years old, and then I was

working at that Wanarie Station

near Cue, just opening gates, ten

shillings a week or something. I

was there, might be until I was

thirteen, getting the brumbies out

of the bush and that and breaking

them in. We had to go and muster

So what’s the secret to not getting chucked off a horse?

Just hang on there!

85

horses. Took us a couple of days.

I was twelve years old, and

there was a bloke named Hardy

Moocher. Horse breaker. And we

used to bring ‘em in, and some of

those horses used to gallop that

much, by the time we got ‘em to

the yard, the older ones, we’d have

to shoot ‘em because they couldn’t

stand up. Then, he’d break ‘em in

and I’d ride ‘em.

I remember all the boys were too

frightened to get on this grey mare,

and he said “George, you get on

that horse”. I got on the horse there

and rode it around. “Righto” he

said “I’ll catch youse up”, and said

“we’re gonna meet in the middle of

the paddock for lunch,” the normal

thing to do. We waited and waited

there for him. And he was still

leadin’ the bloody horse when he

comes across the Windmill! Yeah!

He’s too frightened to get on the

bloody thing.

And in my lifetime of riding

horses I have never been thrown

off a horse. I got thrown off once,

but it was saddle and all, out in

the bloody paddock. You’ve gotta

make sure the saddle is tight and

all that. And some of them get a

monkey strap to hang on, I never

had a monkey strap. I just get in

the saddle and that’s it, I hold on

the reins.

I had to ride one horse in the races

in Northhampton, because the

jockey couldn’t ride it, this horse

keep going into the post rail all the

time. So I got on this horse and I

rode it around the station, got it

going and racing and they raced

with it and it went alright, see?

There was one horse I loved, they

call ‘im Duke, he was brumby, but

a small horse, and I used to ride

him in the gymkhanas and down

Geraldton, Northhampton, and

you’d just sit on him and go ‘round

the poles like this and everything.

I liked that.

We had this little Shetland pony

there, they can buck those little

buggers. And anyway me brother

wanted it. ‘”Alright, if you can

ride that horse you can have it”

the boss said. My brother got him

outside and he didn’t know what to

do, horse chucked him off! He was

like a dog, he’d just sit there and

if the sheep went out he’d just go

around the sheep and bring them

back in again.

I managed Linton Station, you’ve

gotta look after the windmills and

all that kind of stuff. On top of the

hill, you can see the whales out

there diving up. I just had me wife

and two kids. The boss was one of

the best bosses I come across and

when it was holidays or Christmas

time, I’d take one of the motor cars

back to Magnet, for the week or

whatever it is, and go back again.

When I was a teenager I thought it

a bastard of a job you know? The

station life, because you never

got very much and that and you

weren’t allowed to eat with the

white people. They had a little bit

of a thing outside the window,

even though your wife or whatever

worked in the kitchen, you would

not eat with the whites, you’d have

to eat alone on or with the other

natives.

It wasn’t so bad on the station,

you stayed with the natives, that’s

all, you know. And you ate with

them, all that kind of stuff, but,

you wasn’t called a nigger or black,

or all that. But the school was the

worst one, “nigger nigger, pull the

trigger, bang, bang, bang”. Call

us niggers! And in Cue, because

Saturday was rubbish day, we’d

be down the rubbish dump eating

old, the black lemons when they

turned black and whatever scraps

we could get. During those years,

we weren’t allowed to do this and

that, but I appreciate everything,

now.

Photograph of George with sheep on the station, Courtesy of George Derschow

86

June Injie in her garden at Bellary, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

June Injie

My full name’s June Injie. Mother

of six and grandmother of twelve. I

was born down the road, at a place

called Boolaloo on the Nanutarra

Road, nearby to Boolaloo, is Duck

Creek and Mount Stuart. My

brother’s born Mount Stuart and

we got our names from the hills on

the stations. Our grandad gave us

our names, we’re named after two

hills, a brother and a sister they

say, you know?

Dad was working before the time

we came about, fixing windmills

and things like that, troughs

and sheep, everything that was

bad. And mum was doing the

housework. We wasn’t long in one

place because of the jobs- we had

to move a lot, you know? Mum and

dad and nana they’d pack that

old truck up and my grandfather

would bring his horse, you know?

Horse, food, beds, old tent. Dad

used to tell us not to sit at the back

of the truck because of the beds

and drums.When we’d get to the

station they give us an area where

we could live. We’d have to stay

about half a kilometre away from

the station. We’d stay there for a

couple of months, depends on the

job, you know?

In those three stations where we

were born, they did the shearing,

they’d let us visit the shed because

one of us was mustering and they

are bringing in the cattle, that’s

the only time we’d be near the

grandfather and fathers because

in those days the cattle was still a

bit wild. And they caused a lot of

stampedes and a funny thing, my

two cousins, a brother and sister

were playing away from the camp,

and when we yelled to them “run!”

When they saw the cattle coming

towards them, they just wrapped

themselves in this calico and

they’re layin’ down in the cattle

stampede and I don’t know how it

never trampled them.

I was with my uncle and we saw

this big kangaroo, and they are

saying, “if you haven’t got any

bullets, don’t get off truck”, but he

had one. Anyway, he thought “oh

it’ll go”, but the kangaroo grabbed

him, and struck him. And my

uncle is a big, strong-built person

you know? To see him get, grabbed

by the kangaroo like that, well, it

was funny. And he never tried that

again. This kangaroo was a big

young boomer or something.

We went down with grandad to

the river at Ashburton Downs

while he was doing the windmill

run. He goes around checking the

windmills, and cleaning out the

trough. And he said to us, “wait

here, I’m going down this way,

don’t go to the other side of the

crossing.” ‘Cause the water was

flooding, you know? We call it

magarndu. When he was gone, my

89

sister said, “oh you two, you wait

here, and you look after June, I’ll

go for a quick swim”. She jumped

on a tube that grandfather had

blown up, thought she’d go for a

swim and try the tube out. We was

standing on the bank screaming

and thinking that it was the last

time we’d see her, but she’s a good

swimmer so it was okay. Later

on, she saved some boys from

drowning in Onslow.

In Mount Stuart, we saw the

mushroom cloud, you know? The

black smoke from the Montebello

Island Atomic testing. That came

out to where we was, atomic

testing. That was orders from the

queen, eh? The queen’s mother.

And the French. And that’s where

I got my chronic illness from- it

was those bombs. They did two

atomic testings over in Onslow

and we was told to block off any

areas with blankets, wetting the

blankets, we were still using those

blankets, you know? We’d wash

‘em and thinking that, well mum

and dad, and nana thought they

wouldn’t affect us. We wasn’t told,

nothin’ about that. And we thought

it looked like a cyclone coming, you

know? But the cloud was thick and

black. And mum said, “no, don’t go

outside and look”, but because we

had the old windows you know, we

can feel and see the smoke coming

through. Smoke around the house.

And we got those big red sores on

our legs, and that’s why people

like me, you know…well, we had a

good life but no government people

came out to the station to tell us

and, those things we didn’t know

about.

Mulla, mulla, Pilbara,

photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

90

Gathering of station hands and their families at Boolaloo Station, 1959, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

Kathleen Johnny in Tom Price, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Kathleen Johnny

Where you was born Aunty?

Started off in Wyloo, I been born

there and I worked there, from

there I went to Mount Stuart,

worked there.

Where you been meet Uncle na?

Kooline

In Kooline Station?

Yeah. Mount Stuart, me and him

was last, me and the husband, I

sacked him there.

What sort of work you been doing

Aunty?

In the kitchen and all. Washing up,

mopping up, putting the sprinkler

in the lawn. Make me sick.

How early you gotta get up Aunty?

5 o’clock in the morning. You

gotta whether you’re getting cold

or not. Those days when I was

young. I done the same on all

the stations Mount Stuart, Cane

River, Ashburton, my father was

a gardener then, Ashburton, look

after the garden, my old dad.

What else did you get up to on the

station?

My mother and father, my two

brothers, look after the chooks- he

used to go look after the chooks. I

used to steal the eggs when I was

a kid. And, you know what, he

always used to come home then,

he used to see my tracks, and he

tell me, “aya, you know what you

done?” And I said, “What dad?”

“You been steal the egg, ay?” “No,

not me,” I tell him. “Yeah, you

the one.” As soon as I said not

me- Bang! Kick and all. “You gotta

catch me.” I used to tell my father.

“I’ll tell my mother on you.” “Go tell

mum,” he tell him. “Of course I’ll

tell him.” We don’t steal the egg,

we go steal the watermelon, who

gonna catch us, down the river.

I used to be an outlaw when I was

a kid. Always work, and go back

home, lay back, start the wireless

and go to sleep. All the white-

fellas talking, you know, inside

the wireless. Some time I put a

cassette on, Slim Dusty, Charlie

Pride and all that.

I always sit down, and time comes,

go to work, always go to work,

white man always used to tell me

now, “alright, knock off time, you

can go back home now.” Always

used to go back home, sit around,

playing music, wireless. That’s all.

This interview takes place between Marianne Tucker and

Kathleen Johnny.

95

Susie Yuline with her grandchildren in South Hedland, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

96

Gordon Yuline in his front yard at South Hedland, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

97

Sandra Cox collecting junba on the Nanutarra - Witenoom Road, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Sandra Cox

My mum is Kathleen Johnny, also

a Banyjima Elder. And my dad

was a Yinhawangka Elder, but he’s

passed on. My early memories

growing up, is of myself, my sister

who passed on, and my brother.

My early childhood is growing

up with my grandparents out on

stations, moving from station

to station, My old stepfather –

‘cause I grew up as a little girl

acknowledging him as my dad –

my dad used to do a lot of cattle

mustering and fencing. Mum

used to be the housemaid and

the musterer’s cook. Working in

Mount Stuart station with one of

my mum’s other brother, we were

doing fencing. Fencing, and they

also did cattle mustering there as

well, and sheep mustering first,

‘cause that was a sheep station

as well, and when they moved all

the sheep out it became a cattle

station.

With mum, she and my aunty, they

used to go up to the boss’s house

and clean the main house there,

do their washing, feed their little

ones belonging to the boss. They

had chooks there, and the chooks

used to wander down to the river,

‘cause there’s the river, side of the

main station homestead. They

used to tell us, “all you kids gotta

go and looking for eggs now”, and

we used to have a race to see how

much eggs we used to find. And if

the white kids used to find more

eggs than the black kids, well the

black kids used to flog the white

kids! …for their eggs, you know?

And mum and them would wonder

why these little white kids crying

all the time! But, yeah, we used to

be friends with them, before that

egg business, ‘cause they used to

have jellybeans in those days too

you know, for lollies?…and we used

to play with them, go and hide ‘em.

When my parents used to finish

doing sheep mustering, we would

do fencing then. My uncle, he used

to drive the ute, my dad in the

passenger seat, and me and mum

and my brothers and sister on the

back, we used to go out doing the

fencing run and take our dinner

out, you know? Mum used to cook

all the johnny cakes and cook the

kangaroo meat there.

My uncle used to take his work

boots off, and one particular day

he took his boots off, and he laying

down, having a good old rest, and

my little brother…he killed a big

lizard, well he never killed it, but

he made it go dizzy. He grabbed a

little piece of string, and he tied it

on my uncle’s toe. He was asleep,

he didn’t know this was happening

at that time, ‘cause he was so tired

from working, you know? …being

summer time. My brother tied

the lizard to his toe, and then my

uncle can feel it ‘cause it started

My name is Sandra Cox. I’m from the Banyjima tribe.

99

to come out of that dizziness, this

lizard. And, he’s thinkin’ “what’s

this on my toe”, you know? And my

dad’s lay down next to him, he’s

snoring away. And then he opened

his eye and he find this lizard!

Ohhh! He kicked, didn’t he? But he

couldn’t get up and kick it off his

foot quick enough, because that

thing was still tied to his toe! And,

he turn and he ask me and my

sister “now who the bloody hell did

that”? And we just pointed straight

at [my brother] you know? ‘Cause

we wasn’t going to get a hiding for

him!

From Mount Stuart we moved to

Wyloo then, mum and dad used

to do cattle mustering and fix all

the windmills. Mum and my aunty

used to be the housemaids, and we

just walk down to the yard from

the camp, where all us blackfellas

used to stop, it was not even an

hour’s walk, you know? With all

the old people were there in the

yard, branding cattle. We always

used to say “whoa gee, lucky we

not a bullock, you know? To get

a brand on us?!” And all my little

brothers, they used to sit up on top

of the rails, and old people used to

tell us “don’t sit up on the rails”,

they used to get frightened those

bloody big bullocks with sharp

horns might get us.

You know how they used to take

mardamarda (mixed) kids away

from their mums? Welfare days?

Well my aunty she’s mardamarda,

see? Her dad was a white fella.

When my nana used to see

welfare, the policeman coming

they used to take off into the river.

One day, she tell me a yarn about

how this welfare bloke walked into

the camp. They wasn’t expecting

him,anyway, my mother had

charcoal and she painted my aunty

black, so then she couldn’t get

recognised. You see if they would

have recognised her, she would

have been gone - to a mission.

Welfare those days were very

strict. And we got chucked into

a hostel, started schoolin’, but

holiday times was good, because

then you’re still going back to

country, see? You going back to the

station life. When the holidays are

finished it’s very hard to leave that

behind, you know? And saying,

having to say goodbye to my Nana

was the most hurtful thing.

100

Tobacco Tin, Photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

101

Sheila Sampi in her garden, Port Hedland, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Sheila Sampi

My name is Sheila Sampi. I born in

Marble Bar, Googaligong, that used

to be the tin field, people used to

work there yandying for tin, that’s

where my mother come from, my

father from Lombardina. He had

two older brothers brought him

down here, he came to Marble Bar

and that’s where I was born in

1943, during that World War.

When it was war time, things were

worse, starving- can’t get a feed.

My father took off during war

time, he had to go somewhere he

could work for money, he left his

country to go to work and earn

money, make proper money, to

buy tucker and clothes, so we

took off to Onslow, all of us, with

him, through Roebourne, that was

during war time.

We wouldn’t have gotten through,

because those days blackfella

wasn’t allowed to go north,

blackfella wasn’t allowed to go

south, they had to have one white

man, Pinky, with them, because

that white man, the only one

who could get them through.

They had a rabbit proof fence up

there; no one was allowed to pass

that; blackfellas from this side.

People coming down from north

mustering cattle, my father used

to go up this side to the boundary

and put the cattle through so the

people over the other side take

over the cattle.

He been mustering around Anna

Plains, Canning Stock Road, my

father, when he was young. Then

when he had me baby, we took

off this way. Well, that’s the story

he was telling us. First, he had

us out bush, he was working as

a contractor building fences, and

sheep yards, and horse yards and

we used to be kids.

Then, when I was a baby, we

had that white man who took us

right through to Onslow. That’s

where I grew up, all my life, in

Onslow. From there we went onto

Carnarvon, that’s where my sister

was born. My mother used to

yandy, she belong around here,

Palyku, Nyiarparli. That’s why

we’re here.

My father learned all that reading

and writing, a lot of people in

Onslow know that, he used to talk

that much politics. Well, my father

used to work on station and things,

he used to teach people how to

read and write because he was

well educated. My father opened

Bindi Bindi and fight for Bindi

Bindi, put up toilets and showers,

houses for people to live there.

We used to learn from school of

the air on the radio, that’s where

we get our ABC from and all that.

Teacher used to talk in the radio

from Perth. The boss come out and

tell us, “The teacher be on the air,

it’s a good time for you children to

103

get to a radio” and we start picking

up from there. We used to have

our little pens and pads. Sit down

at the table, listen to the radio,

to what she saying, how she’s

pronouncing and spelling.

Sometimes I just used to leave

my sister and go out playing, that

used to be funny, she used to sing

out, “Don’t you go, you got to come

back here to listen to this teacher.”

When my sister was born, my

father came back, we went to work,

Urala station, long time back, in

1948.

In the stations, we used to work

hard, help our father. Still, I never

realized my sister was already

interested with that ABC, she

was learning herself, so, every

time she try teach me, I takes off

somewhere else- come back again.

You don’t sit down and listen, “I

can teach you me-self now.” “No,

no, please leave me out, I tell ‘im.”

On the station, we do our School

of the Air first, about 9 o’clock,

that lady talk to us, we stay home,

our father and mother go out on

the line, making fences, with a

hammer and standard. My mother,

she size it up keep it, “as straight

as a needle”, she says. Every time

we get back to look at the line, we

can only see one standard, because

they are all there straight.

Then, after that, when my Dad

opened a school in Onslow he put

my sister in a school and shift me

off to work, me and my brother,

because we were old enough to

work, that’s when we split up.

He went working self, and I went

working self on another station.

Cleaning up and washing. I worked

on nearly all the stations.

My brother was the first one to

go, because he was nearly about

twenty, I think, when he met this

bloke, Bob Payne on the station

who asked him, “what about

you come with me I’ll teach you

everything I know.” He did learn

him everything, using whips,

jumping on young horses, my

brother.

He got to be a real stockman,

champion!

I remember…… all the other boys,

pushing and laughing each other to

get on a wild horse, they were not

game enough to saddle the horse.

But nobody was able to jump on it,

they was too frightened.

I was there with them; I followed

my brother most of the time

because he had his wife. I used to

follow him cattle mustering and

everything.

Dad told him to fix the car up

for us. I was sitting down and

watching them boys, me and

my Mum, and Winnie, my little

sister. Dad told him, “fix that car

up for me,” he used to be a bush

mechanic too my brother.

My brother can hear those boys

laughing, they not far away from

that shed. He just threw the

spanner down, I told Mum, “look,

look, he just chucked the spanner

and took off to that yard.” They

all start singing out for him, all

the other young fellas, “Ah! Here

he come, George Sampi, he’s the

gamest one to jump on these

wild horses they bringing up.” He

just went up, “What you fella’s

frightened for this horse?” He just

went and jumped on that wild

horse. He was sitting down there

like a little chicken on the top, like

he’s on a rocking chair. We was

laughing for him, that horse never

threw him, and he stayed with that

horse, till the horse stopped still.

“Here boys you can have him now,

I’m going back to fix the car, before

my father knock my block off.”

Anyway, he went out again,

station, I used to knock around

with my brother and his wife.

Again, the boys are telling me,

‘Hey, you want to see a trick?” I

said, “What trick?” “Come here,

we’ll show you what your brother

can do.” “Not my brother!” I start

up an argument with them. “If he

die I’ll shoot you fellas.” See, I got

the gun in the jeep, I’m the driver

in the car for the cattle mustering.

104

“What he can do?” I said. Then

I went along, they got a big mob

of cattle into this little flat. “Oh

My God,” I don’t know what to do,

you know. I start asking his wife,

“What can we do?” Drive in, he

might miss the horse. They tellin

me, “you watch him, he’ll leave

his horse on the flat and he’ll walk

around, we want to get the bull

out of the scrub.” With a bull, they

run into a scrub, they stubborn,

they won’t come out, you can

chase them round, anywhere you

like- they won’t come out. You got

to be a man to get out in the flat

for him. I said Oh My God, this is

the way he’s going to get killed. I

was standing by that motorcar,

thinking I might have to pop the

bull.

They said, “Wait.” They go around

singing out, those boys around

the bushes, trying to make the

bull come out. My brother got off

the horse; he started walking way

from the horse, picking up stones

and things. That’s the time, the

bull look around, see him in the

flat. He come out with his big

horns, running for him, flat out,

and that horse, he was standing up

over there, as soon as that horse

seen the bull, the horse come

running up close to my brother.

And he run and in just one spring

from the ground he was on that

horse, and that horse was gone

like a bullet. The bull come behind

him, too late, you know - a bull

shut his eye when he come to stab

you. My brother was already about

a half mile, this side, standing with

that horse.

When I first started, I was only

working for a tin of tobacco,

clothes and shoes, that’s all. Some

of the station people were good,

some of them you had to face, they

would give us orders what to do,

well I didn’t like it. One morning

I said, “You go out and do it your

bloody self, I been working here

two years, you do it yourself, you’re

not paying, we get no money from

you, I only get tucker, clothes, and

hat.” He said, “Oh, yeah I’m sorry

about that, it’s true what you’re

saying.” And I said, “You can keep

it, we’re off.” We used to take off,

those days, just walking. Anybody

would pick us up and take you

where you want to go.

My brother taught me how to drive,

even told me to jump on a horse,

and a motorbike, you know those

Harley Davidsons. When I first

learnt to drive I never used to drive

in a flash car, I learned in an old, T

model Ford, we used to call them

gunbarr, they like big spiders,

the way they move around. Then

after that I drive a Chev 6, just a

long tray in the back; we used to

just take off with them motorcars

driving. We even driving a buggy,

they used to drive a horse and cart

those days. Go around mustering.

When the boys go out mustering,

all the lambs fall out, well, we

were behind in the car to pick

them up. Hold all the sheep in the

back, tie them up, until we get to

the place where the other sheep

are, we let them out, where the

water is. Sometimes mother and

father give you orders while you’re

having breakfast, from there,

you got to go and do it yourself.

They give us a hand if they see us

struggling with it.

We do it all ourselves. It was a bit

hard working with some of those

whitefellas, they used to be hard

with us, sometimes they don’t

want us to be gathered, they split

us up, we wake up in the night,

we go and chase each other in the

night, talk up a yarn. They used to

tell us, “Don’t you fellas talk to one

another at night, you have a sleep.”

But, we used to go out, still doing

it, we used to run around in the

back, sneak away from them, keep

us in the house, camping inside of

the shed in the yard, but we used

to still take off.

105

I used to make the table, set it up

for them, make up the cup of tea,

walk in to their bedroom, put it on

the table. When I think back now, I

used to feel like chucking water on

them. I done all that. But, I loved

the station because it was nice and

quiet; I used to be a lot of the time

by myself.

106

Sheila Sampi on her verndah with her two pet dogs, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

107

Yanrey Homestead around 1915, from Forrest Family and Minderoo Station, Courtesy of State Library of Western Australia

Tadjee Limerick in Tom Price, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Tadjee Limerick

When I get married, I was in

Ashburton. My old husband used

to work there. From there we went

to Red Hill, stay down there, old

husband used to work there. And

next minute we went to Yannery

Station. Stop there. Working long

time. And, after that we come

back to Koordarrie Station, not far

from Minderoo, stay ‘round there,

working. That’s the last job for us.

No more jobs. We went to town

then. Onslow, stay in Onslow.

We’d go sheep driving and we’d go

camp, one night fill the tank up for

the sheep. They was good. I never

used to work. My husband used

to work, that’s all. I used to cook

for him. We used to go to town,

shopping and come back with the

boss. I think they all die now, poor

things.

I come to Koordarrie, and I find my

friends there, Eileen and Kathleen

and old girl who passed away. They

all been reared up with me. We

used to go looking for kangaroo,

bring a kangaroo back. We used to

steal a kangaroo dog and go! And

the old people used to say “Ahhh!

Those girls gone now, they’ve run

away with the kangaroo dogs!”

Well them kangaroo dog, he

knows, we going kangarooing and

they used to kill it for us. And they

used to cry out, singing out for us.

And we used to bring ‘em back.

Back to the old ladies down the

river, they used to feed us, cook

the damper.

One day we get married, we was

finished then. But they don’t want

to go with the man. We were

saying, “come on! Let’s run away

down the river! Hide away!” I

moved around on stations with my

husband then.

Koodarrie Station we used to go.

I used to drive the car when my

old husband was drunk. He used

to be a mechanic for the car, he

used to fix the cars for himself.

He used to ride a horse. And he

knows about the horse, he used

to quiet it himself, really good,

used to put the rope on his neck

and hold it. Make him go‘round.

And that horse, he know then, and

they used to put the shoes on and

saddle on ‘em. He’d be a quiet ride

then.

That’s the last job for us. We was

finished and we was going back to

Onslow. Stay down there.

111

Stock Boys from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

Hilda Flan

My name is Hilda Flan but before

I was married I was part of the

Yuline family. Gordon Yuline is

my big brother and there is Susie,

and Richard. We are Nyiyaparli

people. But I was born in Nyamal

country along the Shaw River

at Hillside station where a mine

started; I grew up there in that

country. When I grew up, I was

helping my mum and dad. We used

to work for our living, yandying

tin and looking for minerals. But

grandmother’s country is Roy Hill,

right up to Capricorn, Newman,

and all round Warrawandu.

My mother told me about my

grandmother’s country so when

we grew up we knew where my

grandmother’s country was.

My grandfather was Nyamal, but

we don’t go by the grandfather, he

was my step grandfather really, my

real grandfather is a white man, a

German bloke, but we don’t count

that, we go by the tribal one. I was

in Marble Bar, and grew up there in

that country. Some time ago mum

and dad took me to Bonney Downs

Station, I was working there in

the station, as a little girl, then

at Warrie Station and Bamboo

Springs, before they closed that

station. I remembered they told

us that this is Palyku country,

our country is back there, that’s

where I know my grandmothers

Nyiyaparli country, all around Roy

hill, Cloudbreak, and Christmas

creek, that’s my grandmother’s

area.

I grew up on Hillside with my

mum and dad working as a little

girl, I remember the country, we

used to go hunting around thr

tin mine. We had a big camp and

that’s where we lived, yandying

tin. That’s why I know that country

pretty well, because I grew up

there at the Shaw river.

A yandy is a dish, well you get a

piece of iron, cut it round and that

makes a yandy. We sometimes use

them today we go to marble bar

looking for gold. It was hard work

back in them days. You had to

separate the dirt from the tin, or

the mineral we were looking for.

We would sell it to the Johnston

family, they used to come there to

the mine. We took the tin into the

shop, put it in a fruit jar, then they

weigh it in kilograms. We used

to help mum and dad get a little

bit of money for food and clothes;

those days were a bit hard. You

got to have a little bit of money

for living to help with the rations

through the minerals. The rations

was only a little bit, tin of sugar,

and a government blanket which

was enough to keep us warm, plus

a little bit of clothes, when we

started off.

Stockyards from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

115

When I stopped in the tin mine,

after all the stations stopped

we went back to Marble Bar and

stayed there. I got married then, to

the father of my son. We stayed at

Moolyella and did the same thing,

tin mining, yandying and working.

From Marble Bar, I went to

Warralong, Strelley with the

Don McLeod mob the Strikers,

I was there with them. Then

Don McLeod’s mob then bought

the station at Strelley and they

handled that station. Don McLeod

used to run the station but he also

had a few Aboriginal bosses, Toby

Jones, Billy Thomas, Crow, that’s

all the bosses, Old Jacob.

I used to be a bookkeeper; I used to

sign a cheque for people. I would

put down in a book how much

money people were going to get. I

remember it was seven dollars a

week, I would put in a book how

much people were going to draw

out or how much they put away.

We would get nice clothes that

we’d order for men, women and

children. We used to get material

to make our own dresses or skirt.

We used to use a needle for hand

sewing to make a dress.

I was a widow when I met David

Stock, we met in Marble Bar, we

went to Muccan Station, worked

there. I used to be a cook for the

boys when they were mustering.

I would make bread or damper,

kangaroo or sometimes sheep

meat.

I only went to stations lately

with my husband; I was a miner,

working in a mine. The station is

different see? My mum and dad

worked hard in the mine everyday

looking for minerals. I used to work

too, make some extra money for

lollies and a cool drink. Yandying

is not easy, you have to get used to

it. We have a spell if we get tired,

you need to sit in the shade, have a

cup of tea.

We looked for black tin, I showed

my husband, and he got mad for

it, making money! In those days

we got no car, we walked from

the mine with that tin he had to

carry it on the shoulder in a bag,

put some in a bag and come back

walking, that’s in Coogaligong

and Spear hill. These places are

right-out in the bush, then you

got to come back into town to sell

it. Nowadays we both got a car,

but no more minerals, no more

stations that’s all finished.

Horses, 1955 Life and Work on Roy Hill Station

Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

116

Allie Parker, Rhonda’s brother in Parabardoo, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Rhonda Parker

My name is Rhonda Parker,

my Mother was a Gurruma,

Yinhawangka and Banjima lady,

my father was Wobby Parker, he’s

a Banjiyma man and my mother’s

father was an Yinhawangka

man, his mother was a Banjiyma

woman.

I grew up in Wittenoom back in the

1970’s with my mum, and we used

to go out to a lot of stations like

Mulga Downs, Hamersley Station,

Rocklea, and Ashburton.

Everyone got moved everywhere

and we ended up around Karratha,

Roebourne and when we lived

in Wickham we’d go to Rocklea

Station because we had a lot of

family there. Back in the 90’s we

did a homeland movement with

my mum to Wakathuni, that’s why

this is there today.

On the stations we used to help

cooking dampers and everything

else for the old people; they’d sit

down, tell us about the land, who

we are for the land, and show us

how to dance. My big brother used

to teach us how to saddle a horse,

me and my sister we used to be

go riding with our grandparents

around Rocklea Station.

My dad and big brother used to

work on Mulga Downs station, it

was a good time; we used to go

shooting. The old people used to go

out horse riding, do the windmill

run, and they were sometimes on

motorbikes. All the women used to

do the cooking, getting everything

ready- especially a cup of tea! They

used to sing. My mum never learnt

to read or write, but she had a lot

of knowledge.

We’d get a kangaroo, put it on the

fire, for the turkey we’d pluck it,

mum used to use a pillow case or

flour bag to put the turkey in and

cook it. Gurumanthu,we’d get the

ngarlu out, get all the hard skin

off, and put him in the ground,

kangaroo tail the same.

When we used to go out with my

grandparents pop Chubby Jones,

used to tell us about the names

of windmills. They used to do

the trough and we would help

to keep them clean. We used to

always pull up by the river, that’s

where they did the storytelling,

they would name the river and

the hills- hills are the landmarks,

they tell you which side are the

boundaries for the countries,

which tribe your next door

neighbours, your kinship colour.

At Rocklea Station we used to go

to Sandy Creek all the time, that’s

where my nana Dora used to hang

out all the time, she used to make

a soak all the time. We go back

there now, it’s all sanded in, and

it’s not there anymore.

In those days, they never used

119

to work for money; it was only

tobacco, and flour. On Rocklea they

used to send us to the main home-

stead, to the lady of the house for

stores. We used to drive the little

buggy’s and take rations back to

the old people. One time we hit

the biggest rock going, everything

went everywhere, then we got told

off. Old people used to growl at us,

they never used to hit us though.

We used to go with dad a lot to

Ashburton Downs. When we went

to the Gillamia Native Hostel

in Onslow Old Bob Hart used to

collect us and take us out to the

station. They used to do cattle

mustering then, my old brother

lived on the land; he did a lot of

work with his old people.

We used to go to races in Onslow,

they used to come in from the

station when its races time, or

Gymkhana time. That’s when we

used to see our parents because we

used to be in the hostel. Everyone

would be dressed up, old people

used to look smart all the time

with their boots and buckles on.

People were competing in the

gymkhana, they had their sleeves

rolled up, it was all about who

was the best stockman. My big

brother used to talk about that

all the time. He passed away not

long ago. He used to dress up like a

stockman all the time. He was so

proud of himself.

Sheep in shed detail from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955,

Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

120

Elaine James

My name is Elaine James. I’m

from Wakathuni, but I been born

in the station at a place called

Carters Creek, out from Kooline

Station. My mum had me there. I

grew up on Kooline, and then Dad

had to work on another station,

Wyloo, so we moved. My sister

was born there and the other two

as well, one in the old camp, one

at the new camp. We stayed in tin

houses, all of us workers - Dad and

them, we used to get maybe ten

shillings a week or something, and

we might get, flour and sugar and

tea. Tobacco. Little bit hard those

days, you know?

When I grew up a little bit more,

I went to school at the Gillamia

Native Hostel, in Onslow. When

I finished school I had to work in

the station, to earn my own living.

I was getting paid twelve dollars

a week. But it was alright, just

enough for my bit of clothing. My

mum used to know how to sew

dresses, we used to just get the

materials in the store and sew it up

at the bush.

My nana was teaching us, I used

to be with her more than mum. I

used to like it when they told me

yarns, what they used to be doing.

They would tell us to blow the

water to let them know that you

belong to that place. You would

blow it from your mouth. We

learnt what was good in the bush,

the fruits and things, if you’re

hungry, there are wild potatoes,

we call it goolyu. There are fruits

like a banana that we call wirra

and little ones like jiburra, you

can get them on the banks of the

Ashburton. We learn to talk the

language - get full with it.

We’d play around, grabbing lizards.

But, I never used to eat them, but

all the little ones would cook it

like a gurdumanthu and eat them.

They would put it in a tobacco tin.

Once I was digging a lizard hole or

a spider hole, and Angie poked my

eye. That’s why I lose my eyesight,

I had to go to Perth and I just

remember that I had a false eye

then.

I used to know all the fishing

spots in Ashburton, right along

to Kooline, and at Wyloo the river

is way down... a long way from

the station but we used to still go

there, with the old Toyotas and

Jeeps from the station. My uncle

used to drive the jeeps around,

and old dodge. We liked going in

them old motorcars because we

can sit in the side. We’d race with

one another to open the gates, it

used to be fun, and we would just

jump straight off. The trucks used

to take the gear up, the tucker and

everything, but wool buggies they

used to go mustering with the

horses. So we used to run out of

122

tucker some of the time- the flour,

but we would still live off the land.

The bush tucker, fill us up; I’ve

never been sick out in the bush.

We used to dance. They’d let

us kids have a dance first. We’d

mix with the old people, with

the grownups. We have a mixed

dance. Then us kids stopped and

let the men have a go, and the

old woman’s. They had their own

corroborrees.

I got an old uncle from there, he

used to rattle a boomerang all the

time, early in the morning if we

were still asleep, and in night time

he’ll sing,

Barlgabi Songs. He was a deadly

old man.

I used to play the button accordion.

I used to play Slim Dusty music. If

we hear it in the wireless we’d get

very good at it. We used to order

the accordion in from the station

and they’d take money out and pay

it out of our wages.David Smirk, he

was our brother there, we used to

race one another to get what song

we could play better, me or him!

123

Living Quarters, from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station from Life and Work on Roy Hill Station, 1955, Courtesy, State Library of Western Australia

Marshall Smith on Mingullatharndo Community, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Marshall Smith

My name is Marshall Smith,

Aboriginal name Indabirnga-

ngardi. I was born near a windmill

called Metawandy on Wyloo

Station. My mum is Mirlyarranyba

Banjiyma from Mount Bruce area

and South East to Mount Robinson

and the Governor, my dad is

Gurruma from Mount Brockman

area, Southerly towards Paraburdu,

Westerly to the Beasley river and

Easterly to the Minthaigorndi

River, a branch off the Thurriri

River.

My mum grew up mostly through

the Parabardoo, Rocklea, and Juna

Downs areas and later travelled

with families along the Ashburton

River visiting and working on

Kooline, Ashburton, Wyloo, Mount

Stuart and Boolaloo stations.

Banjiyma people congregated at

Rocklea Station when this became

a pastoral lease in the early 1900’s,

together with the Yinhawangka

and the Gurrama.

They soon found that stations

like Rocklea also could give them

benefits such as knives, axes,

rifles, tobacco …. the people also

adapted very quickly to working

on the stations as stockmen and

stockwomen.

Dad’s father was an Englishman

named Leonard Smith, who was

the brother of Frederick Walter

Smith who owned Rocklea Station

in those years. I think it was in

1905 that they took up the station

lease. Dad was born on top of

Mount Brockman hill at a spring

named Bullurru. Like many of our

people who had white fathers he

was considered half caste. One of

the things that happened in the

era, the old fellas (the husbands)

would use their wives to buy, or

to make deals at the station, for

food and this was accepted. That

appears to be what happened with

Nana and Leonard. Of course there

were times this was not okay…

it is a tough history but I always

say that it is good to know history

but don’t dwell too long in it, look

forward.

We erected fences on Mount

Stuart and Red Hill stations

during 1955-56’(these stations

are alongside each other) and old

grandpa Sandy and Nana Pidgey

Hicks were with us, they normally

resided at Hamersley station. We

went to Juna Downs station in

1957, however nana and grandpa

Hicks went back to Hamersley

station. When we arrived at Juna

Downs there was only the cow

paddock there with a milking cow

named Boza and her calf named.

There were many wild horse herds

in around Juna Downs known as

“brumbies”. My uncle Chubby Jones

was also my dad’s horse breaker,

so dad and the men trapped the

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brumbies in water holes where

they had built trap yards during

the dry season, where there is

minimum water. They also used to

run them back to the homestead

yard at other times and my mum

used to ride and help the men on

a small horse named “Queenie”

that was bought from Turee Creek

station in around 1955. They used

two racehorses (Sapplejack, and

Sunrise) to turn the wild brumbies

because the brumbies could run

into the mountainous areas in

the wrong direction a lot quicker

than the stockhorses. It was about

around twenty-seven kilometres

hard and fast gallop to Juna Downs

homestead yards.

We erected all of the original

fences on Juna Downs, the

boundary, the lot. When we left

the station in about 1961 to go

to Hamersley station, there were

windmill water supplies and an

adequate number of both cattle

and horses.

At that time Mount Brockman

Station (which is about fifty

kilometres West of Hamersley

station) was going into receivership

to Dalgetys PTY, LTD and so dad

was given the contract by Dalgety’s

to do the final stock muster. This

was in order for Dalgetys to get

back as much of the money that

they could after giving credit to

Jack Edney, who was owner of

Mount Brockman at the time. In

those days most stations around

here used to be given credit by

Dalgetys because they were the

main hardware agent in the

Pilbara and elsewhere. I was only

about nine years old then.

We had a three-and-a-half-tonne

truck which was a Maple Leaf

Chevrolet, that was our vehicle,

but dad was very strict in how

it was used because when you

bought a drum of fuel, the nearest

point was to go back to the station

and if you weren’t on the station

you’d have a fair walk if you ran

out of fuel. We never did, but it was

never used frequently, only when

it really was needed, for example,

to go and pick up food supplies or

the fencing supplies. We lived in

base camps, at these camps we

had rain tents, my mother and

all the ladies, they would all help

each other to build these as well as

bough shelters for summer cooling.

In 1971, our parents got their

first house in Roebourne, this

gave my sisters and brothers the

opportunity to attend school as

well. Before that we had to board

in the Government hostel, which

was built for children who had

parents out on stations.

We would always hangout for

school holidays because we could

go back out bush again.

When we lived out bush, my toys

were a shanghai (ging), a dog

named Gypsy, a little spear, a

woomera, and the flat river stones

which I used as a motorcar. Pop

Sandy showed me how to throw a

spear and make the spear. I used

to spear gum trees because the

bark is soft.

My brother and cousins showed

me how to make and use the

shanghai. We didn’t need anything

else. Television obviously wasn’t

around so we didn’t know what the

latest news was anyway. We did

have wirelesses (old radios) to keep

track of the weather.

In the fencing camps we all

chipped in to help with the work. I

was seven years old and I used to

dig my post holes up to my arm’s

length and leave it for the older

people to finish. Fencing came

easily because family did it as a

family thing. So mum and the

ladies would run the wires through

what was then the wooden post.

It was very hard work for them

because the holes were never

drilled straight in line with the

fence direction, but they never had

access to a good workshop with a

drill press. So the men would stand

with this brace and bit (manual

drill tool,) and they’d have a can of

oil to dip the tip into the oil, then

into the wood and drill for a little

bit (manually turning the handle),

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pull the bit out and they would dip

it constantly into the can of oil, in

order to keep the auger bit cool. In

those days the station required the

fences to be erected with wooden

posts because they could not

afford the steel pickets to put on

their fences. This meant using a

crow bar to dig the post-hole. There

is an easy way to use the crow bar

and a hard way. You dig the first

four to six inches making the post

hole size, then dig the very centre

area of the hole a couple of inches,

then break into that centre from

the edges of that hole.

I had the greatest opportunity to

learn as much as I could about

working with horses because many

of my family members assisted

me. My uncle, Chubby Jones,

cousin Churchill Jones’ father,

was also my trainer; he showed

me how to do the cantors and

the gallops, with my brother Des,

who’s passed on now. I idolised my

brother and uncle because they

seemed to be so good at everything

when working with stock. He and

Uncle Chubby used to be the two

that stood out when it came to

riding rough stock horses. So from

the age of eight I wanted to be like

them. They never seemed to fear

anything, rough horses was their

recreation, they competed to see

who was going to ride the roughest

horse.

In those days parents like my

father used to hand their sons

over to their nephews, my father

gave Des over to brother Stan

Dellaporte who was working on

Wyloo station and he trained Des

up as a stockman. Uncle David

Cox had two brothers who were

renowned rough horse riders

as well, my brother Des used to

always talk about them, old Gilbert

Cox and Thomas Cox, well Gilbert

taught Des how to ride rough

stock.

Anyway, this particular morning it

was winter time and Uncle Gilbert

was riding his rough horse to

train. Everybody was given young

horses to train. Uncle Gilbert had

all these boils on his backside, and

the horse decided to buck, and his

backside landed hard on the seat of

the saddle and of course it burst all

the boils, he couldn’t hold on any

more it was just like a hot iron on

his backside, so he bailed off. And

nobody wanted to ride the horse,

but he knew brother Des could. So

Des got on the horse and he rode it

for uncle, Des was only 12 years of

age then.

When we talk about rough horse

riders, there’s two types of rough

riders, one’s called a Balance Rider,

the other is called a Grip Rider,

what happens with a balance rider

is that he sits on the same type

of saddle, but his body is straight

from his heels back to his head,

when he sits in the saddle, and

all he does is balance on the very

central point of where the horse

is twisting. Some people say that

balance riders are better than grip

riders, but I question that because

I’ve seen a lot of grip riders riding

and they can ride just as good.

A grip rider is one who squeezes

with their knee and leg, and most

people get used to the grip riding

because it’s part of them when

they’re learning how to ride a

horse, because you tighten up all

the time, but balance riders are not

few and far between, but they are

special in some ways.

The consequences of a balance

rider is that when they get down to

about forty years old, their backs

become painfully difficult, because

what’s happened is the cantle,

which is the rear part of the saddle

seat will always hit up against

their lower back, because they sit

a lot straighter when riding rough

stock. Whereas the grip rider,

works out with his leg where that

horse is pivoting, and he doesn’t

have to lay back a lot unless the

horse is kicking high, if your horse

is kicking high obviously you sit

back more, but that’s only for that

split second of course. That’s the

difference.

Well, the unfortunate thing is

you’ve got to ride it out, or it

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throws you, one or the other.

The standard rule my brother

taught me… and he was very well

known, he was one man that rolled

a smoke on a bucking horse called

Dingo in Hamersley Station, so

that’s how much of a rider he was,

but that’s another story… with a

young horse the rules of getting

on that fellow is very different to a

rodeo. In the rodeo you’ve got him

sittin’ in the chute, so he’s basically

locked in and you come down on

top of him. It’s a different story

when he’s all saddled up and ready

in a big yard because he can do

what he likes.

But the first point is you grab his

head, pull his head right around to

the mane, which is tight, and then,

when you go to put your weight

onto the stirrup, you generally step

up onto that stirrup three times.

Third time you generally flip over.

You’ve gotta get him to feel your

weight, and when the breaker’s

broken him, he would have given

him that feeling anyway. But

that third time when you swing

over you’ve gotta make sure your

right boot goes into the stirrup,

but some riders are so good they

don’t really worry about that other

stirrup. I have to find that other

stirrup! And then, you either

grip or you balance, but then you

obviously loosen the rein, because

if you use it too tight it will pull

you over the saddle. But all that

kicks in because if you’ve done it

many times it doesn’t matter. It’s

all part of you anyway.

Most Aboriginal stockmen, were

natural horseman, not only riding

the rough horse, they were natural

with handling stock. They were

natural with breaking horses.

There were some who actually

stood out because their job was to

break many horses on the station,

but in general, most everyone

knew how to tame a horse, ride a

horse, but there were those that

excelled, and people like Uncle

Thomas, Gilbert, Denis Ashburton,

Chubby Jones, Alec Tucker, the

Long brothers, David Stock, my

brother Des, Uncle Johnson Hicks,

Stan Dellaporte, dad and his

brothers, Nicholas Cook’s father,

Uncle Chooky Dowden. They were

all natural, but that’s just naming

a few in the area where my family

worked, there are many, many

more I pay tribute too.

A lot of those guys loved jumping

off the horse and grabbing a bull

by the tail and pulling it over

to tie it down. The first thing to

remember with cattle – when

chasing with a horse, you watch

the hind legs… when the beef is

fighting fit, the hind legs always

drop parallel. First signs of

tiredness are that the hind legs

start dropping cross legged when

galloping. Once they’re crossing

you’ll know that the beef is weary,

but then you’ve gotta watch the

ears because the eyeball and the

ear move together. So, you gotta

watch that ear, to know whether

it’s safe to jump off the horse while

it’s looking at you or not. And

you’re at full gallop – you train

your horse to hit the breaks as

soon as your weight shifts on the

saddle, that’s part of the training

on stock camps as well. When the

horse hits the break, you jump off

hitting the ground running, grab

the hairy part of the lower tail,

twist it once, around either your

left or right hand depending on

what you are. Once you’ve got that

twisted, that’s your grip, you step

out so that the beef will see you

alongside of it and the beef will

see you and try to turn around

and hook you, that’s when he’s off-

balance, then you pull him over.

Right, once he’s down, you put

the tail between his leg – the rear

leg obviously - Pull it up on to his

rump, put your knee onto his rump

he can’t get up no matter how big

the bull is, he won’t be able to get

up then you tie him.

And the other method that the old

fellas used to have, is what they

call pulling ‘em down by the tail

off the horse. Now that’s fine for

that fella who is doing the pulling

down, because all he has to do is

130

Marshall Smith on his horse at Mingullatharndo Community, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

131

gallop up to the beef, grab that tail

the same way with one hand this

time, and make his horse gallop

past him and pull it. The man

behind is the one whose gotta hit

the ground to grab it and hold it

down and tie it up. That was lots

of fun, because sometimes the

beef got up before the backup

rider would grab them, all of a

sudden you find yourself looking

at his face coming at you, and then

you’ve gotta find out how fast you

can run! I used to chase and tie

my beef up using the method of

jumping off the horse and pulling

the beef down on the ground and

not depending on other riders

to pull them down by the tail,

while still riding the horse. If the

beef got up and saw the man on

the ground, generally another

rider would be close by to ride in

between the beef and the man on

the ground and the beef would

always turn to chase the horse

that is getting in its’ way or that

rider would throw a hat at the beef

and it would try to hook the hat

and gallop away.

You taught your own horses

that you were given to train, or

a number of horses they called

them hacks – for your mustering.

We had about four or five each.

Some of the things you’d teach it

to do was stand still by hobbling

it down, bring the reign down to

the hobble, every time you stopped

somewhere. That was a full day’s

work, but they’d remember that.

Each time they trod on that reign,

they thought the hobble was on.

I taught a horse to rear up when

I made a certain sound and he

became a faithful friend. I had

all the trust in him when doing

musters, and never once did he

falter or let me down.

I began my training by tying

calves, when I was a teenager. I

was always with old fellas at some

muster, I was probably ten, twelve,

mucking ‘round with young calves,

but it was safe. But, I didn’t start

pulling bulls down until I was

seventeen. I’d like to take my boys

on one of those musters, just for

them to experience what it was

like. We had pack horses which

carried our supplies when we were

moving camp, if we didn’t have a

vehicle or the area was too difficult

to use a vehicle, such as the Mount

Brockman muster.

You were given you own horse to

train, or a number of horses they

called hacks, for your mustering,

so we had about four or five each.

Some of the things you’d teach it to

do were to stand still by hobbling

it down, and bringing the reign

down to the hobble every time

you stopped somewhere. That was

a full day’s work, but they would

remember. Each time they trod on

that reign, they thought they were

hobbled down.

My brother Des used to tell me,

“the bull in the yard, you can trust;

if he turns on you and comes for

you just stand dead still, he won’t

hit you”. Many times I saw him do

that. He would also say, “if you’re

riding a horse and you run a wild

bull into the herd and he’s fresh

and angry, and if he comes at you,

just hold the horse back and he

won’t hit you, unless you move. If

you move on that saddle, he’ll hit

the horse”. I only did that once. I

was just about seventeen years

old... we ran a herd in, and this

black looking thing was walkin’

around the herd, he’d had enough,

he wanted to get out, my brother

Des said “look out, he’s gonna line

you up”. I had a beautiful horse,

I could trust him…and all I did

was tug on his reign asking him

to stand still and I was sitting

looking south, and I saw this thing

just go into a ball. They are so fast

and I was that dead scared that I

couldn’t even look at him coming.

There’s a point at which it is too

late to run and I also went deaf, I

couldn’t even hear the hoof beats,

that’s how frightened I was! I was

thinking where the hell’s this bull?

When I looked, I saw him smelling

my right foot! I’m sure I had ten

years’ of life taken out of me; the

132

bull went back to the herd after

that. I went over to my brother and

said, “I know it works but I’ll never

do that again.”

I was involved with night

watching. Night watches were

generally used when droving

cattle, and you had no yarding

point, so everyone had turns

pairing off in two’s depending on

the size of the herd to do a night

watch. It depends on the number

of stockmen, as to how many,

hour stints you’d do. The evening

star was one that you watched.

You watch the movement of the

Milky Way, and they knew where

the hours would roughly drop,

especially the Southern Cross,

where it was moving. We used to

try and give the old fellas more

of a rest, like my dad and Alex’s

dad…all you did was walk in the

opposite direction to each other

around the sleeping herd. After

midnight the cows generally want

to get up and have a feed, they get

hungry quicker and so they’ll get

up, or try too, so you talk to them

or stay near them so they would

camp down again. The worst ones

were the cows and the steers. The

bull he’d have a sleep, he’d be quite

happy to lay there.

I didn’t make much money but

I loved every day of it, helping

Dad to pay the debts as well, and

everybody had plenty to eat so we

were quite happy, it was great fun.

Every day something happened,

especially with bulls…I certainly

miss it, but it’s a passing era. I

loved pretty much everything;

there is nothing that I would

change if I went back into it again.

I think I’d just live the same life.

I enjoyed probably every day, and

especially when I was a jackaroo.

Now it’s pretty dull around the

place not getting chased by a bull

any more! Sometimes I wish you

could turn that clock back a bit.

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Marshall Smith, Mingullatharndo Community,proof sheet of photographs by Claire Martin, 2014

Adrian Reggie Condon with his grand-daughter at Bellary Spring, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

Adrian Reggie Condon

My name is Adrian Reggie Condon,

born in Onslow, 1965… everyone

had to move to the coastal towns,

as there was no more work left on

the stations.

My mum was a cleaner on the

station and my dad was a drover.

Before my dad met my mum he

was a drover during World War

II. They drove the cattle from

the Pilbara, down the desert

through the Canning Stock Route

to Meekatharra. One crew would

meet up with another crew from

up in the Kimberley, two crews

would go down together, they

met the Murchison mob, and

they’d walk across to Meekatharra

so they can put the cattle on

the train, send them down to

Fremantle where the cattle got put

on the ships and over to blokes in

the war.

Everybody says my father was the

greatest horseman going, that’s

where I got started; I love horses

as well. My dad and my mum used

to travel around from station to

station doing cattle mustering.

They had a horse and cart- they’d

travel all around the Pilbara.

When my dad’s would take off

droving cattle they left all the

ladies at home. Then it was left up

to my mum and her sisters to take

over the horse riding, to keep the

station running. They used to love

riding horses.

I learned to ride a horse on a

station called Kooline, I was sixteen

when I first learnt to ride a horse.

I was always interested in riding

horses, so the old man asked me

if I wanted to get on a horse, yeah,

no worries, then I got frightened-

the horse was that high. I can feel

the heartbeat of the horse and that

horse can feel my heartbeat. The

horse can feel that I’m frightened

so that horse panicked and

knocked me off. I didn’t want to

get back on the horse, but with a

couple of slaps on the back, I got

back on there.

The old people were strict, very

hard. They told me to do it, if you

don’t do it, get back there and do

it again, if you don’t do it, go for a

walk, if you get thrown off a horse,

get back on, if you don’t get back

on, go back and wash the dishes!

It was a very hard life. I remember

someone was riding a horse, just

for fun, my grandfather told him -

you get off, put that saddle on your

head and walk thirty kilometres.

We learn that you never be cruel to

the horse. If you were not treating

the cattle right, you get in trouble

again. A lot of cattles, you take

them away from their country,

they take the sulk in their heart,

they’ll sit down, they won’t move,

that’s where they’ll stay. You will

always break their spirit when you

take them away from the country.

137

You have to treat them right to get

them into the yard, and into the

trucks.

Last time I was out on the station

near Wakathuni, me and a bull

had a disagreement in the yard, I

wanted him to go somewhere he

didn’t want to go, so I punched him

in the ribs, he kicked me in my

arm and broke it. So, fair, fair.

On Mount Stuart during winter, we

got up with ice in the morning. We

had to walk the horse round and

round the fire till he get warm, but

it was alright, but with cattle when

they see you, you got to hope to

hell you can stay on a horse.

After a while it started being

seasonal work, it wasn’t work

around the year.

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Adrian Reggie Condon at Bellary Spring, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

139

Julie Walker

My name is Julie Walker and my

maiden name is Tommy. When

I was born in 1959 my mum was

actually working in Ashburton,

they flew her to the Roebourne

Hospital because she was having

twins. But my grandmother, who

was working on Minderoo, her

Aboriginal name was Nyneedee

meaning singer (Maggie Bimba)

already knew this was going to

happen because she had a dream

where this song came to her. At

that time it was a bit unusual to

have twins that survived.

My name is Walkayinya

which means ‘belly button’ in

Yinhawangka and my brother’s

name, Pitithangu means dry leaf.

After mum had us we went to

Ashburton station, which is where

I grew up. When we was about

five we was sent to Gilliamia

Hostel, but we went home for the

school holidays. My mum also

worked around Ashburton, Mount

Vernon, Pingandee, Milgun and

Mulgun. We used to go travel

down along the Meekatharra road,

and used to travel up and down to

Meekatharra.

Most of the time the welfare would

fly us to see her from Onslow to

Minner station or to Paraburdoo

airport. They would travel down

the old road - Ashburton is only

eighty kilometres on the old road,

but you have to go right around

now, in those days it usually took

us three days because we had the

old Bedford truck then and we

would camp along the way from

Ashburton to Tom Price.

Dad, his Aboriginal name is

Nyimali (Yimalee) but he was

known as Ashburton Tommy. He

used to work for the well sinkers

that put in the wells around

Rocklea. On the map you’ll see

there is a well spelt as Jupiter,

you know, the planet? But the

Aboriginal name is Juburrah,

which is, the name of a plant and

a spiritual place. A lot of the places

around there they got a connection

to us, and an Aboriginal name.

Dad was a well sinker, and

he helped Jack Harvey set up

Minner station, he did a lot of

the windmills, at Ashburton and

Rocklea station, he did most of

them. He showed the pastoralists

because when they first arrived,

they didn’t know where the water

was, or other resources. They used

dynamite to put up a windmill

and a water tank, in traditional

meeting places where people

would get their water.

On the Ashburton lease, mum

told me a story about a place there

called Nymari Spring, now there is

a windmill and a tank, but there is

a creation story.

Map of Ashburton showing the Native Well, Courtesy State Records of Western Australia

141

The little Nymari, which are

finches, used to be big birds

but they were mean with other

animals coming to get the water

so the Minkarla made them small

and said that they will never be too

far away from the water. So, if you

see Nymari, then you know water’s

not far away.”

My old father took mum around

and showed her where all the

water places are, so she knows

those windmills- most of them

are near a spring or a place

where there was always water. In

1967 my old dad was granted an

exception under the NWA and was

eventually pensioned off, which

was unusual in those days as

Aboriginal people didn’t have any

rights – that happened when he

was about seventy-five years. We

then moved to the Onslow reserve.

We used to live in a tent there,

but he used to get a ration and

clothes as part of his pension. We

had a forty gallon drum in the tent

where he would put his rations in,

people used to come there getting

milk, sugar, tea and flour from us.

On the station we used to get

up at four o’clock, we had the

contract to do the fencing. And

at that time we were replacing

the wooden fence and poles with

the standards. My old uncle dad

Chuckeye Smith used to get me on

the spinning jenny. We were in the

Bedford truck, my younger sister

used to drive along the fence line,

and he would go and walk every

now and then. About every half

mile he would walk and pull the

wire through the fence and then

connect it and get me to spin it

on the spinning jenny. So, we just

spent our holidays doing this, we

go all day till the sun went down.

When we were on Ashburton my

old grandfather Joe Galby was kept

down in the bough shed, a bit of a

distance from the main house. He

stayed in the bough shed which

we’d wet to keep him cool down

there. I used to go down and take

his supper. I remember when he

passed away, it was Christmas

and we was getting’ ready for

Christmas dinner. This was the

only time we’d have golden syrup

and sultanas because that was

the only sweet thing we had. I had

to go and take my grandfather’s

false teeth down. And then all of a

sudden I saw everybody rushing.

In those times people just got

buried where they passed away,

so we buried him in Ashburton

Downs. He was a really good

stockman, only a short man but he

trained people how to ride horses.

I remember there was a goat shed,

I used to have to go and feed the

goats. I didn’t like that ‘cause one

of them was really cheeky. The

goat bumped me; it got out of

the gate, knocked me down and

took off. There was also a garage,

and my brother got good with his

mechanics because Les Hill would

take him there so he got used to

go fixing cars and things. They

used to do everything down on the

station- you got to fix your own

cars and everything. Every Sunday

we used to have ration day. When I

was little I thought the store house

was the best room, it was just full

of food.

At Ashburton what we had was

really flash compared to what

other people had in the stations,

cause we had hot water, taps and

proper pumped water. We had a

proper shower, flushing toilets,

and an old style hot water, system,

with the wood. Compared to other

stations Ashburton was long ways

in front.

We grew up with my dad’s family,

Frank they called him, was a

woodchopper and his brother

Henry was known as the Mount

Vernon Stockman. Wood chopper

was blind he would follow the

pipeline from the Aboriginal camp

to the main station homestead,

chop the wood for the station

owners and do the same for us.

Every Sunday us kids, mum and

our aunties would go down the

rubbish dump and have a look

around for bottles. I used to

collect bottles because we never

142

had dolls and that’s how I cut my

forehead because I was nursing a

bottle. I slipped and fell, this was

at Ashburton Downs, and this all

healed up by my aunty who used

sweet potato peel; you boil it up

and use it like a band-aid.

My old aunty used to also collect

coloured rocks. I used to collect

them actually, she sent me out to

the river, to get ‘em and she used

to polish it with sheep fat. She had

all these things as her ornaments,

and there was also a five gallon

drum of sheep fat in her little

house, but not much furniture.

They used sheep fat for everything,

bread and puddings and stews;

sheep fat went into everything.

Sometimes they’d get things from

the rubbish, old cupboards, but

most of the time they put all their

things it in those old little hessian

bags.

When we’d go back to school at

the holidays, us kids would always

be really upset, but all our family

would tell us that we had to go

back. I remember once I had left

some stones in the old Bedford

truck and I went back to collect

them, I found my mum, aunty and

everyone in a circle crying for us,

that made me really sad.

My mum stayed working on the

station right up to 1974; she was

doing just about everything – a

domestic cook, but mustering

too. She told me about the first

time they was using nylon rope,

because they never used that.

Mum had her finger ripped off

when it got tangled up when she

was roping the calf, and when the

calf bolted it got taken off, this was

at Pingandee station.

My Mum’s got a song about

that place on Ashburton called

Gobawarrah. She’d talk about

when they had the first plane

muster, and made a song about

it. The woodchopper got a song

I like about riding on horseback,

and it’s dark in the thunderstorm

and when the lightning flashed, he

can see the blood pouring off the

horse. He talks about going back to

his country from Mount Elephant,

Wooldamunda, towards Pingandee

and Top Camp, Marribah, in a

thunder storm. In the thunder

storm the lightning strikes and

his horse is bleeding, it’s all in

blackness and in the lightening

flash he can see blood pouring, yet

he still finds his way home.

He was saying y’know the country

has taken him because he can’t

see, it’s the dark, and all the rivers

are starting to fill, to swell up and

the flood is coming down. But he’s

travelling back, so I thought he

must have had a really good horse.

My family was on stations for close

to two hundred years. We go back

to Ashburton every year for my old

grandfather’s anniversary, since he

passed away in sixty five. He’s got

his own grave in the willow and

he’s got a little fence around his

grave site, it’s a nice little spot with

bush bananas growing there.

143

Corunna Downs 1906, Aboriginal shearing team, Photo courtesy of the author

While pastoral bosses differed

in their treatment of Pilbara

Aboriginal people, there is one

thing they had in common from

the 1860s to the 1960s; they

all held localised power over

Aboriginal people far greater than

other employers. For many years

pastoralists saw themselves and

the government saw them as

owning ‘their’ Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal people held some of

their own power, even if it was for

many years under duress. They

knew the country intimately and

became expert in the pastoral

industry, and essential to the

success of a pastoral venture.

This paternalistic relationship

developed early in the Pilbara,

supported by the Masters and

Servants Act, land acts and

pastoral lease regulations, and by

the edifice of Aborigines and Native

welfare acts that came to dominate

Aboriginal peoples’ lives and

discriminate against their attempts

to exercise their rights as citizens.

Pilbara pastoral leases were taken

up in the 1860s to occupy land

ultimately owned by the Crown

but leased for pastoral purposes to

encourage European occupation

and economic development:

Settlers are permitted on formal

application [which was often a

letter and description without

survey] to proceed to the north

and allowed free pasturage

for their stock for the term of

twelve months from the date

of arrival therein, within which

time they may select runs not

exceeding 100,000 acres for one

establishment, which they may

enjoy for three years, free of rent.’1

These arrangements resulted in

groups of lease holders combining

to form huge pastoral runs of over

a million acres including hundreds

of miles of river frontages and

water courses. In the 1880s

and later, land acts and lease

regulations were altered to allow

leases of 50 years and eventually

99 years to 2015. The regulations

provided for Aboriginal people to

have access to the leases for their

traditional hunting purposes,

although access clauses were

amended in the 1930s to only

unfenced areas.

The 1862 terms under which

the ‘new Territories of Western

Australia’ were ‘open for

occupation’ prevented convicts or

ticket of leave holders from residing

or working in the north west. By

the 1880s much of the land in the

North West was under pastoral

lease and all stations relied on

Aboriginal labour.

The first systematic reporting to

government on Aboriginal people’s

working and living conditions

on Pilbara pastoral leases was

Pastoral Paternalism in the PilbaraBy Mary Anne Jebb

AIATSIS Research Fellow.

Mary Anne is a historian whose PhD integrated oral

historical and ethnographic research methods with written documentary textual analysis

to uncover histories of a region of Australia where few people

recorded their experiences in writing. It was published as Blood, Sweat and Welfare in

2002, for which it received the Keith Hancock History

Award. She has held academic lecturing and research positions

at Murdoch University, Notre Dame (Fremantle), the

University of Western Australia and the Australian National

University.

145

in 1893 when Charles Straker

was instructed to tour north

western stations to make sure that

government rations of blankets

and flour were not being used for

workers or for people who could

support themselves with bush

food.2 From these reports a picture

emerges of station work, station

relationships and government

attitudes and policies that endured

for the next 50 to 60 years. Each

homestead and pastoral lease,

regardless of size was accompanied

by groups of Aboriginal people.

For decades the Pilbara pastoral

industry was a labour intensive

open range system without fences,

which relied upon natural watering

points and on Aboriginal people

to survive. At every sheep camp

and homestead across the Pilbara,

one or two white men, and very

few white women, were overseers

for hundreds of Aboriginal men,

women and children who worked

as shepherds, cooks, goat herds,

firewood gatherers, water drawers,

horse tailers, bullock drovers,

horse breakers, and much more.

Flocks of sheep were shepherded

by small groups of Aboriginal men,

women and children for months

at a time following river frontages

and water. On Mundabullangana

station in the 1880s, water was

drawn from 66 wells to maintain

hundreds of thousands of sheep.3

In the 1890s Straker reported forty

two men women and children

working at Mindaroo Downs on

the Ashburton, 57 at Ashburton

Downs, 17 at Boolaloo, 44 at

Globehill, 67 at Nanutarra, 31 at

Uaroo, 76 on the Yanarrie River, 29

at Dairie Downs, 39 at Mt Hubert,

and up to 300 on the De Grey River

stations. They received rations of

flour, tea, tobacco and some meat

only when working and a set of

clothes if they worked near white

men or women.

At first Aboriginal people had

been employed under the

Master and Servants Acts in

the Pilbara, but by the 1880s

the government instituted a

separate system of agreements

for Aboriginal people under

separate Aborigines protection

acts. The first in 1886 was partly a

response to embarrassing reports

in newspapers in Britain that

a system of slavery and abuse

occurred in northern Western

Australia especially in the pearling

industry but also the pastoral

industry. There were reports of

children as young as eight being

chained and returned to employers

by police if they absconded, and

by far the majority of Aboriginal

people had no idea of what

they had signed if there was an

agreement at all.

Straker’s secondary aim in touring

the northwest stations was to

report on a proposed new system

of general permits or group

permits which according to the

Chief Protector of Aborigines,

would provide minimal regulation

of living conditions and give

pastoralists the right to ‘secure the

obedience of their native servants

without continually calling in

the aid of the police or resorting

to more questionable means’.4

Straker wrote that discipline was

maintained on most stations with

the threat of eviction and that

there were fewer instances of

violent punishment, with only an

occasional thrashing of trouble

makers. Most people, he wrote

want to stay on their land and

returned after their annual holiday

and were ‘settling down’.

Violence and conflict were

common features in the history of

the region from the 1860s to the

early 1900s, which together with

the threat of being ’hunted off’

were powerful disciplinary forces.

Incidents of extreme violence and

multiple murders are recalled in

oral testimony and recorded in

diaries and newspapers during

the period from 1860 to 1900

when Aboriginal people were

learning the rules of the new

regime. Pardoo, the De Grey and

Oakover River areas, the central

coast between Port Hedland and

Roebourne, the Burrup Peninsula,

Maitland and Fortescue Rivers, the

146

Ashburton and Hamersley Ranges

all experienced incidents that

helped to create a landscape of fear

for Aboriginal people.5

Force and potential violence

influenced relationships of

interdependence, exchange and

accommodation to work. Bush

populations contracted toward

increasing dependence on stations,

with holiday seasons only when

work was less intense. Aboriginal

people’s lives began to revolve

around white men’s camps and

pastoral stations, and the pastoral

routine. The conflicts of the past did

not succeed in destroying Aboriginal

culture but certainly severely

disrupted it, and it is against

this background of violence that

Aboriginal people did their best to

survive as a people.

For those people who accepted the

new regime and way of living with

pastoralists and pastoralism, there

were some benefits – comparative

security and protection by the boss

against being rounded up to work

on a station outside your country

or removed to a jail like Rottnest

Island. For the generations who

grew up on the stations many were

selected for special treatment but it

did not include wages or better living

conditions. These were no longer the

‘bush blacks’ or ‘myalls’ as they’d

been called for the first 20 years,

but station ‘boys’, ‘house girls’ and

‘gins’ who belonged to and identified

with particular stations and

particular bosses. They had grown

up with the pastoral bosses, learned

their ‘discipline’, experienced

or witnessed punishments and

humiliation and learned never

to question the bosses’ authority.

Key workers and their families

developed a comparatively secure

relationship on the stations and

many helped care for the bosses

children. They were rewarded

with regular and reliable rations,

unencumbered access to the lease,

and holidays for law ceremonies or

the races with new dresses, shirts

and hats and some pocket money for

the occasion. Leaders for Law were

in every camp, singing, arranging

marriages and punishments and

ceremonies for initiation. Authority

in the Law was displaced but not

destroyed by the pastoral system.6

Legislation enacted in 1905,

1936 and 1954 again to ‘protect’

Aboriginal people through increased

state control over employment and

behaviour of Aboriginal people

further entrenched the localised

regime on pastoral stations

and protected most northern

pastoral station people from

some of the interventions and

institutionalisation that occurred

for Aboriginal people living in other

regions of WA, especially the south

and metropolitan areas. Mosely

reporting on the conditions of

Aboriginal people in WA in 1934,

wrote that ‘full blood’ Aboriginal

people on pastoral stations in

the north should be kept ‘under

benevolent supervision’ of the

pastoralists, not educated or

encouraged to leave stations and

their ‘tribal property’.7

People classed as ‘full blood’

Aboriginal were not entitled to

welfare payments of any kind; they

were the responsibility of the State

as far as the Federal government

was concerned and of pastoralists

as far as the State government

was concerned. Without equal

wage status, or welfare payments

Aboriginal people had very little

choice about where they could

live. They were only partially

incorporated into systems of

wages and welfare and needed to

stay on stations where they were

maintained.

The western Australian government

introduced an assimilation policy

in 1951 to educate and encourage

Aboriginal people to behave like

white people and leave what was

considered to be an Aboriginal

way of life. Within this policy

hundreds of part descent children

were removed from their families

and did not return. But it did not

substantially alter its policy of

supporting benevolent supervision

on stations and the system of

rations with pocket money, with

147

little education for children. This

system was maintained into

the 1940s and in some areas of

the Pilbara into the 1950s. As a

result welfare Patrol Officers who

arrived at some stations to remove

children were turned away,

parents were warned and children

sent to the creeks to hide and

actively kept from state or religious

institutions. The first mission in

the Pilbara was after 1946.

There was one major difference

for Pilbara people, mining.

In the 1880s gold fields were

opened and Pilbara people began

to work for the miners, and

some prospected themselves.

Pastoralists complained in the

1900s that station employees were

staying on the mining fields and

not returning to work as they once

had. Tin mining at Moolyella in

the 1930s, 40s and 50s became

a significant industry for many

Pilbara people who would go to

the fields during their off season

holidays and exchange tin for cash

and rations. This alternative means

of survival was important in the

Pilbara, providing encouragement

to the 1946 Aboriginal pastoral

workers strike for better wages

and conditions and an avenue to

stay away from stations for years

afterwards.

Limited wages were introduced

in the 1940s especially for skilled

stockmen, teamsters, horse

breakers and fencers. Some wages

were also paid to workers who

were part-descent people and

had become ‘citizens’ under the

Native (Citizenship Rights) Act of

1944, and were no longer classed

as Aboriginal and in need of

protection. They were able to enter

into contracts, own guns, join

unions, collect welfare payments

like any other citizen, receive child

endowment and age pensions, go

into pubs and work where and for

whoever they liked. Some of these

people also enlisted or were man

powered to stations during the

Second World War and entered

a formal system of wages for the

first time.

In the 1960s assimilation polices

began to impact upon pastoral

stations in the Pilbara and severely

disrupted the old system of life

on the stations. Commonwealth

funds flowed into the Pilbara for

Aboriginal welfare with access for

all Aboriginal people to maternity

allowances, age pensions and

unemployment benefits also in

the 1960s. Aboriginal hostels in

Roebourne, Onslow, Port Hedland

and Carnarvon operated in the

1950 and 1960s catering for station

children who would spend months

away from their families but many

returned to stations for holidays. In

the late 1960s and 1970s, welfare

payments and wages drew people

away from stations to towns to

visit children and exercise their

independence, as well as reconnect

with others in town reserves who

had previously been limited in

their ability to leave the stations.

The old system of cheap labour in

exchange for family and cultural

security began to crumble.

Pilbara Aboriginal people were

for decades exploited as pastoral

station labourers but they

endured to negotiate a lifestyle

that allowed them to survive a

violent frontier period and to stay

on or near their own land and

families for many generations.

This was the system that colonial

governments’ supported and it was

the system that was supported by

State governments well into the

twentieth century.

References

1. ‘Western Australia’, South Australian Weekly Chronicle, Saturday 6 January 1866, p. 5.

2. See especially Charles Straker reports, SROWA 0926/1893, Cons 495 Series 3026.

3. Jenny Hardie, (1988) Nor’ Westers of the Pilbara Breed, Hesperian Press.

4. ‘The Aborigines Department’, The West Australian, 28 October 1899, p. 39.

5. M. Allbrook and M. A. Jebb, (2009) ‘Hid-den Histories; Conflict, massacres and the colonisation of the Pilbara’, Report, AIATSIS.

6. M.A. Jebb, (2002) Blood Sweat and Welfare, UWA Press.

7. Mosely Royal Commission p.4, in M.A. Jebb, (1987) ‘Isolating the ‘problem’: Ve-nereal Disease and Aborigines in Western Australia’, Honours Thesis, Murdoch University.

148

Corunna Downs, 1906, Photo author’s collection

Marianne Tucker

My name is Marianne Tucker. I

was born in Roebourne in 1959. I

grew up on Mulga Downs Station

which is in my father’s traditional

land, the Banyjima people. I grew

up on Mulga Downs with my

aunty, Elsie Tucker; she was a cook

on Mulga Downs Station. When

I was old enough to go back to

schooling in Roebourne, I stayed

at the Werriana hostel. Dad was

working as a station hand, as a

stockman, and he stayed and

worked on Mulga Downs because

he belonged to that country. Life

on the station was very good in

those days, there was no problem.

We didn’t have any television,

only just a radio. But all the time

we’d get good stories around the

campfire and that’s how we get

knowledge from the old people.

They used to explain to us, just

our family, who we were related to,

some funny stories too, but most of

them were serious because my dad

was very strict with us. We weren’t

allowed to swear in front of him,

not allowed to smoke, we had to

go to school and stay in Roebourne

at the hostel, ‘til the holiday time

come, and there was a mail truck

driver named old Teddy Rogers,

and his offsider’s name was Adam

Gilby. When the old, people are

busy workin’ on the station, old

Mr. Rogers used to come pick us

up at the hostel. I used to get onto

the back of the truck, it only had

one big quarter full gallon drum

and one big spare tyre. We just

had to hang on, we’d go through

old Wittenoom Road, which is still

gravel today.

On the station we’d walk around

the station, go and get our bush

fruit, and bush medicine which

you can bathe in and drink, it’s

good for cold, good for asthma, and

you can bath your sores in it.

In the summer time we sleep

outside, during the winter time

we’d make a big fire, sleep next to

that. My aunty had a little mia, it’s

still there standing today. I liked

to help a lot of the old people with

my sister, we used to cook, and we

clean the camp, rake up and get a

bush broom, from the Gurlimba

tree, we’d tie up the dry leaf then

hit it on the ground and just let

all the dry stuff out and we used

to sweep, so we used a broom,

y’know, old people showed us. My

toy [was] a rusted old milk can! We

used to put a wire through that.

We fill it up with the sand, and we

go around playin’ everywhere in

the flat.

I liked working. We had to boil the

hot water, we didn’t have a good

hot water system. We’d fill up a

flour drum we used to buy back in

the ‘60s, that Dingo brand, and we

used to make a fire and fill it up

with the water . Mulga Downs Pastoral Lease, Department of Lands and Survey, Courtesy State Records of Western Australia

151

The station owner help look after

our old people y’know? They have

to go down and get a killer, down

at the wool shed, they get a full

sheep, or a fresh killer of meat.

And my brother was there, he’s

the one who used to sit around the

back of the station at the old wool

shed. He used to get all the killers,

the owners, the Hancock family

were there. When I was around

then Mulga Downs then, that

under the Hewson family, Jim and

Dora Hewson.

When we went back to town it

wasn’t very happy. We used to see

all the people drinkin’, fightin’,

y’know. Same thing you see today.

I reckon the bush life was good. I

don’t know why they give up their

job and…it was a better upbringin’

then. We had a good life out in the

station, because on Saturdays we

used to go out to the old picture

garden in Wittenoom. It was the

only entertainment we used to

have – apart from when Slim

Dusty and Buddy William used to

come into town and play a show.

At the pictures, if we don’t have

money, we just sneak in, some of

the old people used to go in with

a big blanket. ‘Cause I remember I

sneaked in a few times. Dad used

to like going, that’s the only time

we used to go in. We used to love

watching the cowboy movies.

Actually he named by brother

‘Western’! And you wouldn’t

believe his second name is ‘Kid’!

After Mulga Downs, we went and

dad moved on to Coolawanya

station. Sometimes, Dad was

dogging. We would all put in the

one little short tail Land Rover.

Bush tucker, kangaroo meat, and

all that. Dad has to pick out a spot,

a certain spot where the dingo

he go around, you know? He had

to dig a shallow hole where you

set up a trap, put all the leaves in

there. Then he used to cover it up,

put a goanna on there, kangaroo

and thing, and he’s a put that trap

underneath that and he cover it

up with the leaf and all that. And

when the dingo put his jina (foot)

there, well, he get caught.

He was a hard worker. We used

to go out bush, none of us used

to stay in the camp when he was

dogging, we used to all go with

mum and dad. Out on dogging

run. ‘Cause I remember one

nightit rained all night, during

wintertime. We didn’t even get

out, sleep on the ground, nothing,

couldn’t even make a fire ‘cause

it just rained all night! All us kids

were squashed up in the Land

Rover. Once the sun rise and get

up in the morning, we made the

biggest fire going, we all lay down

on the ground have a big rest, next

morning! Well that was only when

we was young and school kids. We

were used to it, you know, the bush

life and dad was happy with that.

Aboriginal Stockman breaking in a wildhorse, 1958, National Library of Australia

152

Eva Connors

My name is Eva Connors and I was

born in Rocklea Station, Ashburton

in 1948. My mother used to work

all sort of jobs, cleaning the house,

cooking and doing men’s work

mending the saddle and cleaning

bridles. Dad used to be mustering

sheep and cattle. They would

never whine about spending all

day chasing sheep or cattle and

then getting up early the next

morning to be gone all day again.

Us kids would never see dad until

late at night. My mother was the

same, but mother was not far if we

wanted her, we used to go to the

station house, and we used to get a

feed from her.

In 1950, the old boss sold the

station to the new boss. Then

we all had to move out to Wyloo

Station. We stayed there; I don’t

know how long, I was very young.

From there we went to Kooline

Station, working, dad used to do

fencing, that was his main job, but

when we were at Rocklea he used

to do everything, dogging, doing

fences, tank building, handling

horses, breaking horses. All for food

and clothes, they were happy to

work the long hours, because they

enjoyed it. They used to do droving

from Rocklea to Meekatharra and

put the sheep on the train to Perth.

Later on, they did it with cattle too,

put them on the train to Midland,

to the meat place.

Later in 1959 mum had to move

to Onslow, we two kids had to

move as well. Before then we

were told, “you cant go to school

because your Aboriginal,” and we

would think “Why? What is the

difference, we are all kids!” But

then, all of a sudden we started

school, I was the age of eleven.

From there dad moved from Wyloo

to Juna Downs Station not far from

Wittenoom, so in 1960’s we moved

to Roebourne school, because it

was closer to dad. We enjoyed

school in Roebourne, but then later

we moved to the Nullagine mission

in 1962. My parents were still

working hard, building stockyards,

fencing, and windmills.

On Rocklea we’d look after the

elders with everything. “You got

to look after the old people, they

used to look after you when you

were little, so it’s your turn to look

after them”, my Mum told us. We

were happy to look after them.

Old people used to tell us yarns

about working hard for clothes and

food. It wasn’t until the 1950’s they

started to get money, something

like five bob a week. We used to

think that was a lot of money, but

when I sit back now and think, five

bob! That’s not that much money!

But, we never went hungry- we

always had fresh meat. When dad

was out droving, the boss used to

kill a sheep for us, one for each

camp so we all had meat.

154

Dad used to be gone three or four

months when he was, it was slow

to drive sheep them from Rocklea

to Meekatharra.

The camps used to be different;

the old people would have their

own tents. The kids would have to

go and collect fire wood for the old

people in the afternoon, and get a

bucket of water for them, before

they go to sleep.

We used to go to the station store

for the rations, us kids would get

tin-a-fruit with milk, and a curly

lolly, the one with sugar on top-

that was our favorite. They used

to give us a box and it would last

a long time before we got to finish

it. We called it a sugar lolly; it had

toffee in the middle. We never

had clothes like today, we used to

wear boys clothes, because it was

very hard to get girl clothes until

around 1949, then they started to

get clothes for the woman. Mum

used to make clothes and they

used to get material from Onslow.

Rocklea is the station I remember

the most, but we moved wherever

the work was. Later, when I was a

bit older, we worked on Hamersley

Station, my sister and I. We worked

for rations, just like Mum and Dad;

the little kids they used to line up

for their rations too. Once a month

the boss would go to town and get

supplies, then every Sunday we

would come in from the bush to

the station and get a ration, or the

boss would drop it out to us if we

couldn’t make it.

Dad used to have an old wooden

truck, the tires never had a tube

it was just hard rubber. We used

to sit on the back of that, and it

was a rough ride! But we used to

enjoy going out to the rivers and

permanent pools on the weekend,

go and get a kangaroo. We would

jump in the old truck and go

anywhere. We also had a little

calf, the calf was always with the

dogs, when the dogs used to jump

off to chase kangaroo the calf was

right there with them! People used

to say “what’s wrong with that

calf.” We used say “he thinks he

is a dog!” It was funny when he

got big, because he would still sit

in the back of the truck with us,

this big thing in the back with the

dogs and us! But when he died, we

were all upset, we were crying,

we got no more calf to chase the

kangaroo!

In 1962-63 I was in Nullagine

but after that I came back to

Roebourne to get a job in the

hostel, that is where I started

work at fifteen. I was working

for fourteen dollars a week! I

knew what to do when I came to

Werriana Hostel because I used

to do it in the station because my

grandmother trained me to cook.

In the station we had a

groundsheet and blanket to lie

down, and everyone would eat

at the same time. We would put

down the feed; everyone would sit

together, after it was all cleaned

up we used to have a yarn around

campfire that was when they tell

us about our culture.

Lots of funny yarns, dad and his

friends would tell us about when

they was out dogging and they was

riding all day looking for kangaroo,

but no kangaroo, no nothing, and

they said “Oh well, this station

man is rich, we will shoot a cattle,

get a meat like that”. They thought

we don’t get anything for our work;

we just work for clothes and food.

A lot of people talked about getting

no money. The station people

would say, “there is no money,

because the wool price is down”

or “we got a big drought and lots

of sheep are dying, and that’s was

why there is no money”. That was

their excuse! They had to move

the sheep around a lot then in

the drought, to places where they

could get a bit of feed, and to the

water as well, so you’ve got to

know where the water is.

It was a hard time, dad had to

break in horses, and mend the

saddle if it was broken, my mum

used to do that, bridle and grease

the saddle.

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Andrew Malcolm Stewart, Mt Wittenoom Station, 1955, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

The ladies got to do the cleaning

of the saddle, and grease the

saddle. First they used to clean it,

clean the saddle with cloth, and

then you get the saddle grease,

and grease it up like that, polish

it up like a car. Back then when

there was a job you got to work

right through till you get pinkeye

(holiday), just imagine that!

Today I go back to some of the

stations, but it makes me sad,

the old stations that I knew are

finished. I went back to my old

playground to find the old fig

tree we used to climb, but that’s

all gone now. We used to walk

down the river, but that river is

all dry now, and the food we used

to collect in the river, that’s all

finished too! We used to collect

bush potatoes, white carrot, and

wild onion, fill a bucket. Mum and

Dad used to get wild honey, and

we’d eat grubs that are all fat.

I used to ride horses, in

Hamersley Station. I taught

Gina Rinehart to ride a horse;

she couldn’t ride a horse until

my sister and I taught her.

A rich mans’ daughter; blackfella

showed her how to ride a horse!

We used to love riding, you feel

free, you can jump on the back of

the horse and you are gone! We

had a horse called Stocking and

Jewel, they were cattle mustering

horses, we were told, “Don’t ride

that horse, it will kill you, it broke

that other man’s leg”, I said “don’t

worry about that, we can ride it!”

So I rode that horse, I never got

broken leg, you got to know how to

handle them.

My dad used to show me,

mustering cattle. We used to do the

horses while the men go chasing

wild cattle, we would take the first

horses to yard and wait for the

boys to bring the cattle in. It was a

long ride from the station, to bush

camp, and we had to take all the

loose horses and supplies, you start

off in the morning and get there at

dark. You go along slowly, you cant

gallop the horse; you will tire him

up so you got to go along slowly. My

dad would get angry if anyone was

cruel to a horse, they would get a

hiding. When you are mustering

cattle, you got to have three spare

horses, so when one get lame, then

you got another two for backup, or

you got to go all the way back to the

station to get another one, and that

takes a while so he didn’t like that.

When free rights came in, that

killed our way of life, the station

people had to send all the people

back into town because they

couldn’t keep them. I was told

that everyone was allowed to go

in the pub now, and I thought this

is going to ruin our way of life.

Those days on the station taught

us “you have to work to survive,

if you don’t work, you don’t eat”.

Some people today call me today

‘old fashioned’, but I rather be ‘old

fashioned’ than ‘new fashioned’,

we had a really happy life in the

station, never mind we didn’t have

money, we were happy and we

couldn’t see any trouble.

Joffre Gorge at Karijini National Park, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

158

Nina Smith

My name is Nina Smith. I was born

in Wittenoom, during 1961. My

parents worked around there and

they are from that area. My dad

worked in Mulga Downs station

doing a lot of contract work and

fencing on different stations. We

lived out in the bush, in little

humpies and dad just went from

the camp to work. Dad had a few

blokes working for him. I was only

around two or three years old,

running around.

I remember we’d go into

Wittenoom for groceries and

hospital, to meet other families or

to see the pictures. It was strange

to come from bush into town, we

never had televisions back then,

we were excited to watch a movie

on the big screen. We used to like

going into town, and looking in

shops, seeing families who lived in

Wittenoom, and seeing different

people.

I haven’t been back there for a long

time… many years. We would just

play around, in the wool sheds, and

when it was shearing time, we’d

watch them shear. We just love

running around free in the country

and swimming in the rivers. We

used to call mum the gunslinger,

because she used to go hunting

with the gun, and she’d always

have Pudding following her. She

used to walk with a kangaroo dog.

Mum used to tell us she grew up

on Rocklea Station. She reckons

they used to have an old Chinese

bloke who used to be the cook, he

taught them how to cook, how to

sew their clothes. He was training

all the young girls. She’d talk about

her life in Rocklea, remembering

when the half-caste kids got

taken away, and she’d say that

she was a lucky one. They used

to call the police the mounted

police, and when they used to see

them coming, my grandmother

would yell out to mum “Quick,

quick they are coming, run, run

they’re coming!” They used to run

to the river or head up the hills.

Otherwise she would have been

stolen. That’s the native welfare.

When I was living around Mulga

Downs, in about 1966-67, Dad

found work around at Cherreta

Station and he did a bit of

mustering in Pyramid, you can see

his old cattle yards standing. He

couldn’t keep us out bush anymore

so we were placed in the Weeriana

Hostel, and that’s how we ended

up in Roebourne. Dad would still

come in from working on stations

and we used to go out weekends

and most of the holidays from the

hostel. We used to love being out

bush. As soon as he’d come to pick

us up we would say “Oh! Yes, dad’s

here, we are going bush!” We used

to enjoy cruising in the back of

160

the car and we’d go fencing with

him. He took us to places where he

worked in Pyramid, Cherreta, and

Cooya Pooya, he also worked for

Karratha Station and some near

Onslow, so he used to travel a lot.

I remember mum saying that

they never paid for her work,

only rations, clothes and food.

Sometimes they used to get

Shillings, Thrupence, a little bit

of pay, but mum said they never

used to worry about it, so long

as they got food. Mum said that

money wasn’t around much, and

that they just got all the things

from the station. They knew there

wasn’t much money around. It was

when they got into town that they

started worrying about money.

When she finally ended up getting

a house she used to take us to the

old Red Cross shop in Roebourne

where we had to buy all our

clothes and shoes, all second had

stuff. We never really had much in

those days!

Today, I work in the school here

in Roebourne, and when I talk to

the young kids I tell them they are

luck to have a nice playground,

lawn, and good buildings. When

we started school we had nothing,

we had to play with sticks and

stones and tins, our oval was

dirt, it was red dust, no lawn, no

buildings! When our families did

have a little bit of money they got

us little things, and we had to take

whatever we were given, we knew

our parents couldn’t afford much.

Mum always said to me, “you got

to work to get something, and you

have to learn to look after it, don’t

just want want and want!” Mum

and dad were very strict they said

“don’t go on the dole, you got to

work, and don’t come and ask us

for money”. I have good memories

to look back on and think about

how hard life was for mum and

dad, it wasn’t an easy life. We

have it hard today but it wasn’t as

hard as what the old people went

through.

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Ronny Roy

My name is Ronny Roy.

I started off in Onslow school-

that’s in the 1960’s. I left when

I was fourteen or fifteen. I went

and worked at the station with my

father, because my grandmother

said, “you can go with your

Dad now.” I’d been with my

grandmother all my life. Most of

the time she was on the stations,

Yaraloola, Peedamulla, and Red

Hill, my grandmother used to

work as a musterer’s cook, clean

up dishes, make a feed. She had to

do breakfast, dinner, and supper,

work hard. I don’t think she made

any money for that, just used to

get rations.

The first station I been too,

working, is called Hamersley

Station. I was about fifteen and a

half. I had to learn how to ride a

horse. We went out bush and they

gave me a horse called Bumble.

That’s how you gallop a horse,

jogging around, falling off, until

I got the hang of it. First thing, I

went out bush, and they had all

the cattle, the coaches.

We were at a windmill called

Bennet mill, way up in the hills at

Hamersley Station, out in the flat.

I was on bumble we were rounding

up the coaches and wild cattle was

there chasing straight for me, I

didn’t know what to do. By jingoes,

that bull was coming straight

for me. Uncle Midjaling (Johnson

Hicks), he saved me, pushed that

bull away. I didn’t know what to

do, really, that’s how I learned how

to gallop properly, and that’s how I

started.

I been there two and half years.

They call me a jackaroo, I used

to work for two dollars a week,

and that’s hard. In those days, we

had the old money, the pounds,

shillings, two bob. I spent it getting

surf, and soap, tobacco, everything

came from the station, soon

the money’s gone, never made

anything, two dollar a week, little

bit hard.

I used to get up early, if you don’t,

they’d leave us there, asleep and

they’d be gone. We wake up, there

would be no breakfast, saddle our

horses and we had to figure out

which way they gone, had to follow

the track, all in the open country,

by jingoes, they used to be hard

with us. They never used to be

easy; they used to treat us rough.

Get up early, leave us there.

Nelson Hughes was main man

around there, David Stock, Barney

Standard and Ginger Samson,

they taught me. I never used to

stop working, never used to have

a smoko, I didn’t like that. I didn’t

want to stop, I had the energy.

They taught me how to ride a buck

jumper, give me a lot of skills.

Ronny Roy at Dalgetty House in Port Hedland, photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

163

We used to chase the cattle, jump

on, get off the horse, grab them

by the tail and put a handcuff

on them. They taught me how to

castrate them, brand them.

I was working with cattle then, the

sheep was moved off the station

because they found out too many

cattle were breaking all the fences,

so all the sheep was going right

through and coming the other side,

mixing up. He had two stations

so he sent them to Mulga Downs

station, old Lang Hancock.

I loved the horse riding, and going

out bush, mustering wild cattle.

We had to bring all the wild cattle,

when we got enough- bring them

right back to four mile, draft them

all out, them old mickeys and the

bulls, draft them all out, castrate

them. Always a big mob, they had

a fence there. Take all them there,

maybe thirty of forty, push them

into the paddock, all the little

calves go back with their mothers.

Two blokes and a rope, one bloke

get the front leg, one in the back.

I used to like the back leg. Lasoo

it. You draft them all out, the

calves and the mickey put them

in the race. We used to love riding

the little calves me and Douglas

Fazeldean.

Once, we was mustering the

cattle in the moonlight, “ a lot of

cattle coming in, get ready, saddle

horses.” All us fellas can hear

them, brraaa you can hear the bull

coming, we got to muster them.

We can see ‘em in the moonlight,

the biggest mob. One old fella said,

“come on, let’s go.” He chase them,

that’s in the gravel country, this

one horse put his foot down and

went tumbling so I went flying,

a sharp stick was there, it just

missed me, I was lucky, I would

have been dead.

Another time when I was with

Marshall Smith I had a bugger of

a horse, I didn’t like that horse, I

tried to kick him he went straight

back into this tree, going straight

for me, but I went underneath it.

Marshall thought I was going to get

hurt. That’s a long way if you get

hurt, this was up in the tablelands

country. We used to work this side

of Mount Herbert, put the yard

down along there near the Black

Ranges, wild cattle along there

too. I used to love it, nice country

out the back; I didn’t worry about

money much.

Back in the Hamersley station

this one bloke Sam Wheelbarrow,

give me goanna in this saddle

bag, but they only half killed him.

I was riding along, next minute

something grabbed me, I see the

goanna, ‘oh jingoe’ when that

happened I jumped off the horse,

before the horse knew if I was in

front of him , horse got the biggest

fright, he jumped back, I was that

quick, the horse didn’t even know-

I was like Bruce Lee. That goanna

frightened me, I can’t even grab a

goanna now!

We used to carry our tucker in

those saddlebags- along with a

quart-pot, a whip, old rifle, to kill a

kangaroo or something, when we

got sick of eating beef, or an emu

or goanna. But you can’t carry too

many things, a bull might chase

you, when they get hot, they come

straight for you.

Old fella that saved my life, he got

kicked by a horse, broke his two

legs. “Don’t get behind the horse,”

he said. Anyway this one time, I

went to close the gate, and forgot

that horse was just standing in

front of me and he kicked, I saw

two legs either side of my head,

lucky I was right in middle, he

would have blown my head off.

Sheep not as hard as cattle, when

he gets savage he’ll chase you, the

bugger. I went working on Karratha

Station after Hamersley; this was

my first sheep station. I was still

a teenager then. My grandmother

was back at Peedamulla Station.

At that time, Tom Price wasn’t

even there, they was just putting

a railway line in, but us Aboriginal

people couldn’t get a job with them

guys. We wanted to work, all us

Aboriginal people like working.

164

I was willing to do anything, these

days, any kind of work, plenty of

energy.

I couldn’t get a job, us Aboriginal

people had no right to get a job at

the railway- until the free rights

came in. When free rights come

in, everyone was happy. I was at

the races in Wittenoom town,

meet a lot of people there. We was

camping in the flat, people would

say, “come have a drink with us.”

“No, too early for me,” I’d tell them.

First time I got drunk they had to

carry me from the chair to my bed,

by jingoes, I had a hangover, “what

you fellas done to me?” I said.

But, we never used to be silly, old

people were strict, everyone was

sensible.

Most of us Aboriginal people used

to be out on the station, that’s

where we spent our life. Then

award rates come in you know– too

many people was in the station,

biggest mob, they couldn’t pay the

people to stay there, that’s why

the people had to go into town.

That’s when town buggered the

people up. Round the Ashburton

district, Kooline, Mount Stuart, full

of Aboriginal people, every station.

They never got paid.

I worked at many stations around

the Gascoyne- many used to be

sheep station, but it’s all cattle

now. We come in the 60’s we didn’t

get rations, but it was still hard in

those days. We were mustering on

motorbikes then and everything

changed. I was learning how to

ride this bike. Motorbike you could

get there faster, a bit easier. They

got motorcars come in, helicopters

come around now. Yanery was

my last station. I miss the station

life, miss all the people. We used

to love the dance in my kid days,

everyone paint up, and we had the

dancing stick. I love those stations.

165

Alec Tucker

I was born on Mulga Downs

Station in 1943, under the mulga

tree. My older sister and brother

passed away, I’m the younger

one, the nyirri. I’m reared and

born on Mulga Downs, grew up

there. Started work on the station

when I was around fourteen as a

yardman.

All my life, Mulga Downs…George

Hancock, Lang Hancock’s father

owned that station. We worked for

nothing, outrageous!? When I got

up to my age, they started a pound

a week, but we first start off with

just a ration. The highest rate we

went to was one pound, no dollars

and cents. Worked there until I

was twenty one…had my home

there, mostly in the station, I was

the head stockman, you know?

My first job, clean the yard. Second

job, they put me down in the wool

shed, shearing shed, do some

fencing around the yard, fix up the

sheep yard. Gotta stop there until

I finish that job, if I do anything

wrong, the boss will go and check

it. “You gotta sit down here until

you finish, I’ll be back again to

check you,” he would say. Once

you’re completed, then you’re right.

I get sick of the yard…I like horses,

see? I like to be with them rather

than hanging round with Mum.

Mum and I don’t get on, you know

they used to make a cake in the

stove oven and I liked to eat the

dough. I get in trouble over that,

Mum get rough. I tell her I’m going

with Dad.

In the house, where the boss is,

that’s where the kitchen is, they

cook there; bring all the food out

to the camps. The breakfast they

have at home, morning tea in the

bough shed, in the wood heap,

sit down there, sometime have

dinner…Lovely cake, and breads in

those old wood stoves.

They cook there, the boss’ wife

look after the old girls that cook,

you know? Tell them how to cook

a good feed for the boys, sweets

and stuff like that…fruit, custard,

you get them dried fruit in the

packet and they cook that up with

custard. You buy a tin of fruit from

the shop - they had a lovely shop,

everything there. It was on the

station, and opens every Sunday.

The boss – the manager, used to

run it.

The old manager was George

Derby, and he had a daughter, my

playmate, we’d get into trouble.

Binyarri, you know? Fighting…you

know, kids. Grew up with a few

whitefellas. The second boss, Reece

King, he had a son and a daughter,

so I grew up mixing. Happy

childhood, happy memories…

go down the creek, Estate Creek

used to be there, not far from the

The station people gave me the name Alexander, but I tell

them, it’s Alec.

Alec Tucker in Tom Price, photograph by Jestonorama, 2014

167

homestead when it rained, it would

run and that’s our swimming pool.

Lovely childhood! Old people had a

great time, they sit down and sing

a corroboree every night, happy

old people, sit down, round a fire,

yarn. But I’m not allowed to be

there, they kick me out. “You’ve got

your own room, you go there,” they

said.

Gramophone, wind up that old

one, 78 records. Slim Dusty. I used

to argue with the old people who

bought this and they said this will

keep you busy, stop you arguing

with Mum and Dad. It only had one

needle, but the needle gets blunt,

you can’t get any needle. Blackfella

got a knife, sharpen him up, that’s

how it is. Life in the station. Hard

life, but happy people.

I went to the muster camp then,

and stayed in mustering. There

were two lots of mustering, winter

time shearing, and summer

time tailing. When they’ve done

that they knock off, they call it

the ‘pink eye’, go holidays, see?

They tell the station owners,

the squatter that its ‘pink eye’

time, every station they use that

word. We stop in the bush, near

a windmill, we tell the boss that

we’re going down to the windmill,

round the back, in the creek, and

have a corroboree, yarn there. No

going to town, and we never used

to worry about drink. Just bush.

Do the last run, summer time,

just about Christmas. Winter time

comes around and they are back

for shearing, that’s another muster

going to two lots of sheds, Mulga

Downs and Cowra Outcamp.

By the time you’ve finished, its

races, Wittenoom, but Roebourne

first. We got it all exactly right,

when you finish the last muster,

last sheep, we go back home, take

all the shoes off, get ready, clean

up, go to the races, that was fun.

Races different to races now, they

used to have station horses. I

used to be a trainer. Some of the

whitefellas used to have a horse

in town, but they leave it in Mulga

Downs station. I gotta go look for

his horse, train him up, look after

him. We use him for shearing,

mustering, to get a bit of weight

off him, train him at the same

time. Take it in for him, leave it in

his yard. That’s how it was in the

station.

There was the Gymkhana too; they

have stockmen races, all sorts of

races. Stockmen have a foot race,

a running race. Jump in the bag,

hop along, policeman he knows

Alec see, lining up for foot races,

all the boys lined up, he pulled me

out. “You come back, come behind

a bit, you cheating here,” he said.

We gotta line up; he’s always the

first one! You get some prize, some

gift for you, kids do the same. We’d

mix them up, whitefellas and all.

We had a lady with us, didn’t know

we had a lady with us! She dressed

up like a stockman, hey, we got

one lady here!

But jeez, some of those ladies can

ride.

Stockmen race was just for station

people. Might be Coolawanya,

Mount Florence, Mulga Downs.

Only place that never bring a horse

was Hamersley, we had a race

horse in Mulga Downs, belong to

the station, two horses. Mount

Welcome, they come up, have

their own race horse. Good times,

Aboriginal people used to come

from there, meet up…we know

other people coming too, from

Roebourne, from other stations,

Marillana, Roy Hill, used to be a

separate camp, Roebourne, then

us, we know each other. Roy Hill

and Marillana Station they camp

one side. We all get together and

have a talk at the race course

though, enjoy the activities there.

Cards were the main one for the

old people. Two-up, we young

fellas, we never joined up in them,

we keep to one side, we play music,

sit down. Old Kenny Jerrold, my

gadja, he was with the music fellas

that Roebourne mob, we were the

music people too, we had guitars

on the station. We sit down,

have a yarn, we’d wander down,

168

something like a merry-go-round

in the town and we’d go there.

Course, we’re not allowed in the

pub at that time.

Everybody dressed up like a

stockman…stockmen clothes,

stockmen shirts, everything from

the station. RM Williams stuff,

you’ve got to order it, any trousers,

stock man cut. I was a stockmen

when I was fifteen, jumping on

horses then, you know. I was

training a horse too, teaching, I

was trained by the old people, you

know, how to break a horse in….

Old people, Paddy Long, my Dad,

the old fellas they break a horse in,

they teach us, see? We used to get

teached by them, rough and tough.

It wasn’t kind words. “If you don’t

get on a horse you’re not worth

anything…..If you want to be a

stockman, you got to learn to listen

and obey, when we’re gone, you

fellas got to take over” they would

say, “we tell you, you listen….and if

you get chucked off, just shake the

dust off your clothes, get back on

again, if you don’t, you get out of

the yard - if you want to learn, no

shaking to get on.” They used very

strong words.

When we had ‘pink eye’, we had

to light a fire, that’s a custom you

know, for Aboriginal people that’s

their telephone, it says, we coming.

White fellas, he different in the

early days, they drive a motor

car. Aboriginal people they don’t

like that whitefella, they probably

spear him and kill him in those

days. They only like certain people

that belong, real old timers, they

say, alright, you’re my friend, don’t

like stranger whitefella, never seen

them before. Poor old fellas.

This old fella, my old uncle,

bushman, can’t speak English

much, they had a spring cart, and

one of them shafts was broken, in

the bush. I was only a kid then, I

thought we stuck here, we’ll never

get going, then I seen an old fella

get an axe, chop the mulga tree,

come back, made a new shaft,

going again. They used to be pretty

good bush mechanics. I seen an old

fella make a jillerman (gun) .22,

single shot, one stock was broken,

old fella got an axe, chop the tree

and make him up. Very crafty.

At Mulga Downs the head

stockman used to be Aboriginal

fella running the camp…then they

changed; bring a whitefella in,

some good, some bad. Get in the

boxing ring with them, we had the

biggest fight. Old George Hancock

was very straight, because he been

a binyarri with blackfellas, when

he first came in, he binyarri with

the blackfellas. Some of them were

good old ringers, good boxers, you

know, old fellas.

Station work, that was the only

skill we have, then I change to

Roebourne, worked at the Mobil

Station, those were free rights

time, they come in about ‘65, you

know. I was in the Mallina Station

at that time; I got a job in Mallina,

Croydon, Canes Well, those were

owned by John Stickney. At that

time we had sheep and cattle. We

learned shearing from back in

Mulga Downs, you’ve got to shear

twice a year, shearing time, get

shared by shearers, second time,

tailing, lamb tailers, Aboriginal

people did that because no

shearers, it was a hard job, ram

had a big horn, and pretty heavy

too, and they kick.

We started going back to the

reserve in Roebourne and Onslow

too. It was very strict with the

government then, police, welfare,

they would come and ask you

questions. “Are you on holiday”?

They would ask. “Yeah, two

weeks,” I’d say. “Well, once those

two weeks is up we want you on

the mail truck,” they’d tell us.

Otherwise they’d charge you for

vagrancy. “You’re not allowed

to bludge around there with the

pensioners”, they’d warn us. “Hey,

they are my family,” we’d respond.

“You’re young fellas, you got to go

work,” policeman said. That’s how

strict they were.

169

In our heart, we, say, we love

the station. We have stations, at

Onslow, Peedamulla, we can swap

around. You think about those

good memories when you were

a kid, with your mum and dad,

with the old people, you can get

their picture, sitting around the

camp fire, go around storytelling

in the country, travelling and the

waterholes, we could do all that.

Alec Tucker in Tom Price, photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

170

May Byrne

May Byrne: My name is May Byrne.

Andrew Dowding: Where were

you born?

May Byrne: I was born in Onslow,

1959 at the old hospital, but that’s

no longer there and I stayed on the

reserve. My mum was born near

Paraburdoo, at Rocklea Station.

All the people from the tableland

moved to Onslow and surrounding

stations. There was nothing at

the old reserve, they only had one

house (government house) people

used to just live in the sandhills.

Native Welfare then issued tents

and they started building the

houses on the reserve.

Sharmila Wood: And how come

Banjyma people were living in

Onslow?

May Byrne: Most of the families

moved to Onslow or Roebourne.

My grandmother’s younger sister,

nana Alice Smith and her family

were the last to leave the stations,

they were on Juna Downs and

grandfather Nelson Hughes and

his family left Hamersley Station

in the 1980s. Station life was very

hard but people liked living on

their land.

Andrew Dowding: So you were

born down in Onslow and then did

your mum and dad work on the

Stations after that?

Yes, they did. They were out at

Glenn Florrie Station as that is

why my sister Munyi and I were

in Gillamia Native Hostel, because

our parents were out on the

Station. The Native Hostel was

for children whose parents were

working out on stations.

Johnny Rolston owned Glenn

Florrie station, he was the pioneer

of cattle aerial mustering. Me and

Munyi s first plane ride was on

his plane “Moonie”, we’d be on

the flight to Onslow for schooling.

Everything looked like toys up

in the air, we could see the tank,

windmill and my father with all

the other workers mustering.

Johnny Rolston swooped down and

threw a note wrapped around a

rock below to them.

Andrew Dowding: So it sounds like

it was pretty exciting.

Yeah, we got on well with their

kids, I still keep in contact with

Michelle Rolston she worked for

a heart surgeon and now owns

a ranch in California, teaching

riding.

Sharmila Wood: What else do

you remember about being on the

Station?

May Byrne: Lots of things. It was

a very pretty station, with date

palms and rivers all around it.

May Byrne at her property photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

173

I used to just walk off on my own,

not far, looking for bardies. I used

to go digging for bardies up near

the airstrip. I use to go around

chasing the spinifex pigeon, I

chased one there because they’re

good eating, because they land and

get up and land, you can follow it

easily and I was chasing this bird,

going up on top of the hill and

I saw a grave there, when I saw

this I got frightened and I rushed

back home, yeah and left that bird

alone!

Eric Rolston was only nine but he

was allowed to drive the station

car, a Volkswagen, and all us kids

would jump in and go up to two

mile creek- no adults.

Yeah, another incident happened

when we were in Glenn Florrie.

Johnny Rolston used his plane

to search for two boys who were

missing from Red Hill Station.

They were walking to Mount

Stuart Station. He came back and

gave the news that they both

perished, one of them was my

mums’ older sister’s son and the

other was my young uncle.

Andrew Dowding: So you were

really young at that time on Glenn

Florrie?

Yes, the Station owner children

and us got on well, we used to take

them looking for Ngudgarla (bush

gum ) lollies off the trees.

Sharmila Wood: So was your mum

working?

May Byrne: Yeah, she used to go

to work at the house there and on

Stations too, they used to cook in

the English way. They learnt that

too, the old people.

Andrew Dowding: How do you

think they went doing that?

Changing from cooking outdoors

to cooking in the oven and stove?

May Byrne: Well the old people

loved sitting around the fire, they

didn’t have gas until the 1970’s but

they use to get us to light the gas.

Sharmila Wood: So on the

stations, did your mum make your

clothes for you?

May Byrne: Yeah, she used to

make shift dresses. I used to see

her on the ground there, you know,

just cutting it out.

Andrew Dowding: And so how old

were you when you guys came off

the Stations? Were you school age?

May Bryne: Yes, we were school

age then…. We lived on the reserve

with the now new houses with my

dad working at the local garage.

The local garage was a contractor

for taking Station mails and food

out. I went on a trip with my dad,

he couldn’t read and write, but

they would stack the mail for each

Station, first one was Mount Stuart

then onto Wyloo and then onto

Kooline Station and Ashburton

Downs Station.

Andrew Dowding: And who did

you guys visit out there? Or what

did you do on those weekends?

May Byrne: On Ashburton Downs

Station my mum’s older sister

aunty Lena Long and her husband

uncle Henry Long were there

and their 2 sons, they used to get

excited when they saw us.

Sharmila Wood: So, where were

you living on the station?

May Byrne: We used to stay in the

shearing quarters in Glenn Florrie,

it was only our family who stayed

there.

Andrew Dowding: When you say

inside the shearing shed, did you

guys sleep on cyclone beds?

May Byrne: Oh no, we used to have

we used to sleep on the ground

outside with a calico ground sheet.

Andrew Doding: So pretty rough?

May Byrne: Yeah, we had a rough

life! We had no mattresses either

in the old reserve, but they were

happy memories!

174

Sharmila Wood: So what was

it that you liked most about the

station?

May Byrne: I loved the bush,

because I was so happy in the

bush, you know? That is why I am

living out on my country in the

bush… so peaceful.

Junba, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

175

Peter Henry

Derschaw

They used to always say I was

born in the 1942 blow. Today, they

call it a cyclone. I was born on the

station, and followed my father

around on the stations, and then

he actually got a job at the Comet

gold mine out at Marble Bar. I sort

of grew up there, and I went to

school in Marble Bar. I don’t know

what for, but I went to school. I

didn’t learn anything, that was

at Geraldton High School. I was

waiting as a apprentice diesel

engineer, but I started working

on the station in 1957 and I ended

up preferring the station life. I

was on Muccan Station along the

De Grey River. We used to check

the windmills and muster sheep

during the winter season. We’d be

on horseback.

My dad’s mother’s brother sold me

a horse from Warrie Station and

the horse came off the Fortescue

Marsh. I used to ride horses when I

was very young. And the horse was

named Swagman. But when I went

to Geraldton High School I took the

horse to Limestone Station, and I

haven’t seen the horse since.

The manager at Mucken Station

was Dave Schillings at the time. I

was only there seventeen months

before I moved to Warrawagine,

but you know, the time used to be

very slow in them days, not like

today. Maybe because we worked

hard sitting in the saddle all the

time and lived life pretty hard,

like during the winter mustering

season when we had to get up at

daylight and finish dark you know?

It was 4.00 am ‘til dark. But that

was only six months of the year.

We also had to do the windmill

run and clean the trough. We had

to clean the troughs every couple

of days because the sheep didn’t

like dirty water. I’ve been in and

out of everything, until 1963, that’s

when I left the stations completely.

I liked working on the station. That

was the only thing at that time.

If you didn’t work, there was no

such thing as Centrelink. We didn’t

know anything about that until

I turned about thirty. We earned

about three pound eighteen and

we managed to live with that. The

only thing we could get on the

stations was Cabin or Champion

tobacco until we got to town, and

then we used to buy all types of

things.

We never used to ride without

spurs at that time and I had to ride

buck-jumping horses. I was good

at it…six months of the year was

on sheep, then when the weather

got hot, we had to go on the cattle

side, that’s on the east side of

Warrawagine. All the cattle could

come out of the hills, you know,

and go down on to the river flats.

We only had horses to round them

up with no airplanes to drive ‘em Peter Derschaw in Port Hedland,

photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

177

out from the hills. We had to set

fire to logs around the rock holes

and things to get the cattle down

into the river flats. We have to be

waiting all the time for them…

we was the outside musterers, the

ones to bring the wild cattle in. A

lot of times, when they are getting

close the cattle break out, so we

had to chase him and tip him over,

cut his horns and whatever else,

you know? Then bring the coaches

and let him go, untie the mickey

straps, wrestle them, jump off the

horse. The moment they broke out,

like the fresh bull, you couldn’t

let that bull tire…you had to catch

them while they were more or less

in full flight, and then catch them

off balance, and tip them over by

the tail.

I’ll tell you we used to get ten bob

for every trucking cattle - I got

thirty three, and the closest one

to me was twenty, so I was pretty

good at the game. Well I went

there ‘round about ‘58, and I left

there when I turned twenty-one.

I had my birthday on the back

of a horse.

The horses we had to ride, if there

was ever a movie camera, the

things we used to do, and still

survive today…no one would

ever know, only I do and no

other people that’s still alive…

Sometimes we had to leg rope

them and put the saddle on, and

get up onto the horse, more or

less break the horse in while we’re

sitting on their back…mules were

the worst. You got on a mule in the

morning, you couldn’t get off him

until you got back to the camp at

night, because if you got off them

out in the paddock, you’d never get

back or you’d have to walk all the

way by yourself.

We used to get a lot of good riders.

Some of them, well almost all of

the Warrawagine horses there,

they used to buck a lot. We used

to get jackaroos coming up. they

would go and get a job, but they

couldn’t ride these horses. So I

used to end up with one for every

day of the week because I galloped

them every day to bring the wild

cattle into the coaches. A lot of

people had four, some of them only

had two, and I always had one for

every day of the week because

I could ride ‘em, you know, the

rough ones, the buck-jumping

ones. My horses never used to

get tired because I kept changing

every day.

With the buck jumpers you had

to get onto the saddle before they

could buck. But I had a good way

that I was taught, to heel-lock the

horse and have your rein folded up

the right way, and the horse’s head

would be more or less under your

shoulder. You put your knee into

the shoulder and swing from there

onto the horse. That’s how I get on

a buck-jumping horse very quick.

Use your knee, not just swing and

swivel around on your stirrup.

A lot of people say they’re a good

horseman, but I’ve never ever seen

them mount a horse the correct

way…If I showed a person now

how I was taught to get on a horse,

they’d laugh at me…There were a

lot of stockmen in Warrawagine,

real top-class, and they was all

Aboriginals. When the white

jackaroos used come and see how

we’d mount a horse and things

like that, they never expected to

see, how quick we used to get on a

horse.

There were never too many white

people, sometimes the musterers

cook, but the rest of us is all

Aboriginals. Especially mustering

wild cattle, we never used to

have a jackaroo muster, it’s too

dangerous….I’ve seen bulls ripping

horses to pieces. That’s why we

stopped having white people with

us in cattle camp, because they

face up to a bull. Well, that bull is

very quick. I see it jump like that

before the horse could move. Yeah,

not a good sight….but what a bull

can do to the horses...skin them!

So you had to be very experienced,

if a bull break you have to be on

him straight away to knock him

before he tires, but if that happens,

178

and he is tired you go got no

chance of throwing him. When

we got desperate to get enough

truckin’ cattle, then we would use

all these different tricks you can

take your hat and fling it like that,

and he’d go up to that and we use

ropes and different thing.

I used to like mustering wild cattle

better than sheep, because sheep

was too slow, but once they got

into the coaches the wild cattle, it

would take them two or three days

to calm down. I tell you they were

very slow to drive along, you know,

from camp to camp. So we had

special people doing that, but we

was always on the outside, in case

we find more wild ones and bring

them in.

We used to have a cook and old

Austin truck, they used to set up

camp in any new area that we

came into. We used to sleep on the

ground, we had our own swag…eat

out of a plate, no tables or chairs.

In the mustering camps, we had a

cook and a yard man to keep the

fire going, and collect wood.

We never carried anything with

us, and a lot of times, we never

used to bother about eating. In

the rough country, you know, the

horse would lose a lot of shoes. In

our saddle bag was a horseshoe

hammer, nails and horseshoes.

A lot of times you had to pull up,

you’ll feel the horse limp a little

bit, jump off, knock a shoe on and

off again. We had to keep up with

them wild cattle…it used to be a

very quick job at that time.

We couldn’t fit much in our saddle

bag, lunch in there, and chunks

of salted meat and we had to just

tear it open. We’d eat it as we’re

going along.

We would never see the station

owner but on the cheque we used

to get under the signature was

‘Trustees of Mark Rubin’. So he

was the owner. I’ve never ever

seen him. His son was around a

few times.

All the cattle would ship out of

Port Hedland. And we used to

tail the cattle...to put on the ship,

around the race course. There

were no buildings around the race

course then…we had to lock them

up at night. We had to build a yard

that used to hold them overnight,

but we used to camp there, near

morning time around the race

course.

At that time, there was a lot of

these bunkers built during war

time that you’d crawl in, you

know…well that’s all covered

over now. We used to sit in those

old fox holes because the wind

used to be very cold in the winter.

Usually, we sat on horses and not

inside a house.

They bought the bull buggies in

around about ‘64 or ‘65 maybe.

That’s why I left, I knew that was

happening. I caught the tail end of

the good station days, without the

helicopter and bull buggy. And the

sheep, the wool price dropped here

and they were getting rid of the

sheep as well. There was nothing

really left on the station for me

because I was a horseman…It’s all

done, and I’m not going to stand

around just opening the gates.

179

Photograph of Peter Derschaw

as a young man, photograph by

Jetsonorama, 2014

Amy Coffin

My childhood name is Amy Coffin.

I was born in Redcliffe, well, that’s

what they used to call it then. My

grandad started the station there

and he died- poor old fella. I was

born in the cart shed, out on the

station, these days BHP has got a

canteen there. I left when I was

three years old. I’m eighty eight

now. We had four brothers but

they’re all gone, only five of us left

now out of six girls.

We went to Western Shaw,

prospecting around with a horse

and cart; we went past Hillside

Station, right out to a place called

Tippleton, rolling around like

gypsies. They used to get gold and I

liked using the tomahawk, but once

I chopped my cousin’s finger, and

she had blood coming out. I wasn’t

left alone after that and they took

away the tomahawk.

There was no playing with dolls,

but climbing trees instead. Once

I found a mud lark nest with my

sister. Mum and dad was on the

other side of the hill, working. “Let’s

get up and get the mud lark, have

a look at it,” I said. “No dad might

see me,” she replied. “No, I’ll watch

out,” I assured her. She climbed up

the tree, and I told her to throw it

down, as soon as it hit the ground

the birds were finished.

As I got older they used to send

me to the station. I’ve never seen

women wash clothes like Nanna

Derschow, by hand, it was like a

washing machine used to be white

as anything. I was moving around

all the time, until the first job I had

when I was on the station with my

aunty, they would give me shoes,

or a hat. The only place I got a

pay was for ten shillings, then I

got a raise, it was for around two

pounds.

I used to get up about three

o’clock in the morning, cooking

for about forty people, especially

at mustering time. I used to go

get the bread, mix it up, go and

do the washing, cook breakfast.

The boss got smart, and I walked

out, you see. I just took off. On

the weekends they’d let us go into

Nullagine.

I was at Woodstock with mum,

my husband rode a bike down

to Woodstock, he was on Mulga

Downs but he had a fight with Lang

Hancock. Les was cousin for Lang.

We got married; he’s back on the

horse and straight out in the bush,

kids crying out in the background.

My husband rode a bike down

to Woodstock, he was on Mulga

Downs, but he had a fight with Lang

Hancock. It was wartime when we

were married; the Japanese bombed

the airport in 1942, that’s why I

couldn’t come in from Woodstock

to have Peter. When we used to

hear a plane we’d run for our lives,

duck behind the bushes.

Amy Coffin in her Port Hedland home, photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

183

I wasn’t working then. When he

was born, we waited and waited

for the shearing team to come,

early morning in the big ’42 blow. It

flooded town, water went right up

to the bar. We were sleeping out in

a tent, under a bough shed. My Dad

used to cart sheets of iron and then

just put bushes and Spinifex on the

side, used to be cool.

Dad used to shoot all night, my

brother and I used to get up, skin

all the roos and hang them. I don’t

know how much we would get; I

never used to handle money. They

used to paint it with brine. In our

T-model Ford, we’d tie ‘em up and

the truck used to get them. First

pay I got was one dollar, cooking

for forty people, with no washing

machine.

We used to get sheep meat on the

station, we had to kill the sheep

to get the dripping. At Bonney

Downs we would make a roast, or

a stew, lamb fry. They used to kill

a bullock, I would dress that on my

own. Hang it up there to sit, go out

mustering, cut it all up, that’s all

they had.

They used to have a lot of sugar, go

in with a knife, chop it up, we used

to run out of sugar, Aunty Maggie

used to jump through the window,

another time they had box of eggs

there, all her foot was full of eggs.

Blame the tom cat. When they’d be

sitting having dinner, we’d be The

boss left cool room open- Maggie

was the worst. Maggie, maggie

its open. Singing out. The Mrs,

right behind, I come to shut it. Oh,

heavens, she nearly dropped dead.

This old man, old Scotty Black used

to be out the doggers, we used to

have Sunday off. Oh, I know them.

We could have lunch home, boss,

Amy, did you make a cake for

Scotty to take bush? No, well you

can go and do it. I had to go and

cook this cake. I put all the herbs,

spice, put it in that cake. Make one

for the boys out back too, made

another one. What happened she

gave the wrong cake away to Scotty

Black, he was stuck one with the

backfired on us badly.

Oh, we did alot of funny things.

Sometimes the manager’s wife was

around, used to have fun trying

to dodge her. I used to sew, break

the needles, with hand and foot-

machine. Every time they go away

we’d get into the phone, wind it up.

Sometimes ring, Nullagine just to

be a nuisance, other ones had no

phone anyway.

We used to like going across the

sandy creek and jump onto the

spokes and go for a ride. We used

to live on pig melons cook it with

sugar if we had sugar put it in

the meat for veggies, biggest mob

everywhere. They wasn’t wasteful

people.

White flour bags, hessian, we used

to boil them and I’d sew them with

my hands, sew clothes, my dress,

just about end of the war we was

still giving coupons then. Women

used to dress like the men. I do

crocheting, some lady showed my

sister and I’ve carried on. I used to

knit too. But there were no knitting

needles during the war. I used to

make my own knitting needles

from fencing wire.

Strikers used to have plenty of

tucker, tins of jam, couldn’t read

had to open it to find out what was

inside. They were striking for a

long time.

Used to get gold, tin, knew how

to work. Station people said they’d

starve, but they had so much

tucker.

Amy Coffin as a young woman on the station, photograph by Jetsonorama, 2014

184

On the way to the shearing shed, Minderoo Station, around 1914, Forrest Family and Minderoo Station, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

Black Eureka!

On a winter’s day in June 1863,

three Kariyarra men set off from

camp to a nearby mangrove inlet

on the north west coast bounding

their traditional country and the

vast Indian Ocean.

They called this place

Marapikurrinya and because of

three reliable fresh water soaks in

the area it was a popular meeting

place. In the clear turquoise

harbour waters, fish of all varieties

‘were teeming and along the banks

of the mangrove creeks, where

the beautiful jabiru stalked, they

found crabs and oysters.’ (1)

The men were standing in the surf

fishing with their spears – as their

ancestors had done for millennia

- when they were confronted by a

bizarre sight. It was like nothing

they had seen before.

A wooden barque with four

strange figures, men like them but

fully clothed and, astonishingly,

white skinned, were standing on

the deck as the boat entered and

dropped anchor in the inlet that

Captain Peter Hedland had first

sighted two months earlier. The

event was recorded in the journal

of the government surveyor,

Ridley, who wrote that both parties

‘making friendly signs, advanced

towards each other, but their

courage failed them when within

two or three hundred yards of

us, the natives made off for the

sandhills’.(2)

On that day, June 23rd, unbeknown

to those three retreating men,

Marapikurrinya was already lost to

them. The government navigator

on board, a man named Hunt, had

decided to name the harbour after

Hedland. From that day onwards,

the Kariyarra men’s lives - along

with the destinies of thousands

of Aboriginal people across the

ancient and wide Pilbara lands -

were to change forever.

Marapikurrinya became Port

Hedland and in the next 50 years

it was developed by the colonists

from the Swan River Settlement

1700kms south as the main

north west port for its sheep and

wool industries, later cattle and

finally 100 years later, the major

exporting port for the massive iron

ore industry that developed across

the rich Pilbara spinifex covered

plains.

Those first recorded shared

‘friendly’ gestures quickly

transformed into the heavy hand

of authority as squatters and

explorers ventured north, staking

claims over the Pilbara lands that

for 60,000 thousand years had

belonged to 31 traditional language

groups successfully living within

sophisticated social, religious and

cultural systems.

Just 38 days after Hedland’s

Mystery dropped anchor, a young

man named Charles Nairn carved

his initials into a white gum

growing on a river bank, marking

the first white settlement of the

north west at De Grey station.

Tragically for the traditional

owners, within a few short decades

vast tracks of land in the country

they called Pilypara - meaning

dry country in the Nyamal and

Banyjima languages - were taken

up by the squatters and their lives

became subject to the restrictions

and laws enacted by the colonial

Jolly Read, Author, Kangkushot, The Life of Nyamal Lawman, Peter Coppin and Yandy, the award winning play about the 1946 strike.

authorities now in charge of

Western Australia. Those laws

were often brutally implemented

to protect the squatters’ interests

and the so-called ‘pioneering spirit’

came to mean murder, sickness,

dislocation, cultural extinction

and slavery for the Aboriginal

people living in their distinct

communities along the coastal

lands, across the rust red gorges

and ranges and into the Great

Sandy Desert.

These laws came to control every

aspect of Aboriginal people’s lives

from birth to death, including

whom they could marry and

where they could live; banning

them from entering townships

after sunset and placing them

under contracts as indentured

labour that barred them from

leaving their employ without the

permission of the station owners

and pearling bosses. Men were

rounded up in chains by boundary

riders, others - with their families

- relegated to camps with no

housing along the river beds to

become the stockmen, musterers,

cooks, housemaids and shearers

for the pastoralists.

As time went by, ‘mardamarda’* –

people fathered by whitemen who

claimed ownership of the land but

not paternity - were consigned

to the outskirts of townships in

corrugated iron humpies with

dirt floors, while others had their

children forcibly taken from them

and sent to institutions under

harsh government policies that

nominated local police as their

‘Protectors’.

Pilbara Aboriginal people – like

Indigenous people everywhere -

were not counted as citizens under

Australian law and by the early

20th century they had become

virtual slaves in their own land.

Top Nyamal Lawman, the late

Peter Coppin – or Kangkushot

as he was known – recalled: ‘...

in the early days...there were no

Aboriginal people sleeping in a

house, nothing. They don’t want

any blackfella to sleep among

them white people. So we were

kept separate. But they used to like

our work, you know, when we were

workin’.’(3)

For their toil, they were paid a

pittance or nothing at all, receiving

modest supplies of tobacco, flour

and sugar. A white jackaroo on De

Grey station in 1877 was paid 5

pounds for his work, while in 1885

Aboriginal workers received no

money for shearing 13,200 sheep in

six weeks.(4)

As a young man, Kangkushot

remembered, ‘We were all camping

there (in the river bank) in rain

time...They (the squatters) never

give us good houses...Nothing,

because the boss used to have a

meeting about the blackfella, every

place, everywhere, and maybe

another whitefella say, “Oh, they’re

happy. They’re used to it, so keep

them like that.” Maybe they used

to talk like that to keep us down.

‘It was cruel. My word, it was cruel

all right.’(5)

By the mid 1930s, people were

beginning to resent this disparity

and their lack of freedom and

wages. There was a growing

undercurrent of resistance and

discontent and eventually a white

miner and contractor, Don McLeod

- who employed local Aboriginal

men and paid them well - was

approached by a few concerned

leaders to discuss what action

could be taken to improve living

conditions and give them proper

wages.

After several years of planning, a

series of extraordinary meetings

of more than 200 Lawmen from

across the north took place at

Skull Springs in 1942. From these

historic meetings, it was decided

that the station workers and their

families would go on strike on

International Workers’ Day, May 1,

1946.

The first wave left the stations as

planned, after Lawmen Dooley Bin

Bin and Clancy McKenna, under

dangerous conditions, delivered on

foot and horseback secret strike

calendars to the workers. They

were marked with a cross on May

1 and the days marked off until

the cross was reached, designating

the day to walk. The second wave

followed in August when people

from outlying stations came into

Port Hedland on horse trucks

and the train for the annual race

meeting. They refused to go back,

telling the white bosses and police

that they were joining the strike.

Bin Bin and McKenna told the

strikers at the start that they must

stay strong to fight the squatter

and the government, and keep

‘Narawuda’ and all it represented

at the forefront of their minds.

It was their ‘Garden of Eden, a

paradise of waterlily pools, birds

and rushes where the sacred sticks

of the desert people were buried’. (6)

‘We’re on the freedom track to

Narawuda,’ Clancy told them.

‘Don’t sit beside the road!’(7)

During the following months,

hundreds joined the strike from

27 stations across the Pilbara in

what became Australia’s first

major strike by Aboriginal people,

20 years before the famous Gurinji

strike at Wave Hill in the Northern

Territory.

Kangkushot recalled, ‘Anyway, we

all left. About 700 or 800 people

from everywhere in the Pilbara.

It was clean right through...We

came from every station, like from

Yarrie, Limestone, Warrawagine,

all them sheep stations.’ (8)

The strike lasted three years,

infuriating the Department

for Native Welfare and the

pastoralists, and saw the gaoling

with hard labour of McLeod,

McKenna and Bin Bin for some

months in Port Hedland. To

survive, the strikers collected and

sold pearl shell and buffel seed,

they mined for manganese, beryl

and tantalite, went ‘yandying’ for

tin, and shot goats for their skins.

But there were plenty of starvation

times.

They endured great hardship,

physical danger, violence and

threats from the government and

police but they stood firm and

their bravery and determination

finally forced changes that helped

initiate the restoration and

recognition of the basic human

rights of their people.

Eighty three years after the three

Kariyarra men took refuge in

the sandhills, the 1946 strike -

sometimes referred to as the Black

Eureka - represented a huge step

forward by Pilbara Aboriginal

people to regain their ground.

The old people remember that

it was ‘a big story all right, that

strike. We were just blackfellas to

be used as slaves on the stations.

We got no proper pay, no proper

houses – just a bit o’ tin, a bit o’

paper bark, a bit o’ blanket, down

in the river. That’s how we lived

then...’(9)

It was, in historical terms, the

beginning of the movement which

eventually saw Aboriginal station

workers throughout Australia

achieve award wages in the 60s.

As Professor Patrick Dodson,

former Chairman of the Council

for Aboriginal Reconciliation

says, ‘The Pilbara strike was an

important and inspiring milestone

in the battle for justice, rights,

equality and recognition for

Indigenous people.’

References

1. Hardie Jenny, Nor’Westers of the Pilbara breed, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, WA, 1988.

2. Hardie.3. Read Jolly and Coppin Peter, Kangkushot,

The Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, Revised edition 2014.

4. Read and Coppin.5. Read and Coppin.6. Brown Max, The Black Eureka,

Australasian Book Society, Sydney, NSW, 1976.

7. Brown Max.8. Read and Coppin.9. Read Jolly, Yandy, Black Swan State

Theatre Company, 2004.

*Mardamarda, literally ‘red red’, name for ‘half-caste’ in Nyangumarta language. (Orthography: Wangka Maya Pilbara Language Centre.)

Pastoralists Association of Western Australia 1932, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia

collaborators

Spurs, photograph Claire Martin, 2014

When I was in University studying

Social work I began to learn about

Aboriginal history and culture. I

remember even then sitting in class

daydreaming about photographing

this culture. I can still picture the

images I used to conjure up – future

photographs I imagined I would

take.

Later in my degree, it was also

these lessons on Australian

Aboriginal history that encouraged

me to abandon my career in social

work. Lessons on the Paternalistic

thinking that characterizes our

history here, on the grave injustice

that “good” white people inflicted

on Aboriginals – some of them I

am sure believing whole heartedly

that their actions were for the

greater good. Nuns, teachers,

government workers, police,

everyday citizens…. I did not want

to get caught on the wrong side of

history, working within a cultural

paradigm that may justify and

sermonize ideas at odds with my

basic understanding of human

rights, as these people had.

Claire Martin

Photographer’s Note

I moved in to a degree in

communications, journalism

and photography and years latter

found work as a photojournalist,

all the while my lessons in ethics,

anthropology, social work informed

my story telling. I shied away

from photographing anything

indigenous for fear of perpetuating

this paternalistic cycle, instead

focusing on marginalization and

stigma in developed countries

and within predominantly white

communities.

When I received an invite to

photograph a story about the

history of Aboriginal stock workers

in the Pilbara I felt the time was

right to try and capture those

images I had conjured up all those

years ago. I was to be travelling with

Sharmila Wood, a curator at FORM,

and Aboriginal anthropologist

Andrew Dowding, both of whom

have a strong connection with the

region and the people I met. I felt I

was in capable hands.

The history of Aboriginal

stockmen, and domestic workers

on pastoral stations in the Pilbara

was some-what familiar to me. I

knew that white people “employed”

Aboriginals to work their land

for them. I also assumed that

“employed” meant forced to work

for free. What I didn’t know was

the conditions that this slavery

of sorts was justified by. The only

Aboriginal people allowed to live

on their land, were those who

agreed (or were privileged enough)

to work for free - for this right

to reside in their own country.

All others were forced to live in

shanties and towns, completely

divorced from their land, their

culture and their way of life.

The most shocking thing I found on

the trip was the unanimously fond

recollection of this time among

the Aboriginal station workers I

met. It seems they felt like the

lucky ones, able to maintain some

of their culture – to live on their

land, and indeed in this way, they

were. Resilience, strength and

humor, together with a strong

sense of pride seem to define the

memories of this time. There is no

question that the Aboriginal stock

workers and horse musterers were

exceptionally talented and hard

working.

Marlbatharndu Wanggagu - Once

Upon a Time in the West is an

important story to tell, and I

commend FORM for initiating

the project. It was certainly eye

opening for me to see the pivotal

role that Aboriginal stock and

domestic workers played in

developing the pastoral industry

in Western Australia, particularly

as this labour, and the imperialist

laws that drove it, are so often

unacknowledged.

193

“I’m just trying to keep a good feeling going round and around.”Jetsonorama

The question I am asked frequently

is what is an old black doctor

doing wheat-pasting images of

Navajo people along the roadside

on the reservation? It’s an unlikely

journey. However, upon further

inspection it makes perfect sense.

I came to work at a small clinic

on the Navajo Nation twenty six

years ago, bright eyed and full of

idealism and misconceptions. My

first misconception was that as an

African-American I’d be accepted

by the Navajo who’d share a

sense of solidarity with me as a

member of a historically oppressed

group like themselves. Wrong. I

learned quickly that people here

are focused on addressing their

daily needs such as herding sheep,

hauling water, firewood and/or

coal and taking care of family.

Acceptance into the community is

hard won. They have grown weary

of outsiders coming to take from

them leaving little in return.

My first year here I set up a black

and white darkroom. After work I

would go out into the community

to spend time with people as they

were doing chores around their

homesteads or hanging out with

their families, often getting to

photograph these experiences.

I’d started shooting black and

white film in junior high school.

My junior high school experience

at the Arthur Morgan School in

the mountains of North Carolina

was unique and in retrospect was

instrumental in influencing my

efforts to contribute fully to my

adopted community.

During my family practice

residency in West Virginia during

the early 1980s, I’d make frequent

trips to New York City hoping

to see break dancing on street

corners and burners on trains. My

dream was to become a member of

the Zulu Nation and it was during

this time I started experimenting

with graffiti.

Evolution of the Painted Desert Project

By Jetsonorama

Hugo’s House, Arizona photograph and paste up by Chip Thomas

195

Public Health Meets Public Art

The Navajo should be one of the

wealthiest groups of people living in

the U.S. However, because of the way

the contracts were written to exploit

those natural resources, the Navajo

people are amongst the poorest people

in the U.S.

The Navajo Nation is located in the

Four Corners region of the United

States (U.S) The land area is 27,500

square miles in size which is larger

than the state of West Virginia.

It is home to roughly 160,000

people. Coal, natural gas, oil, and

uranium are found in abundance

here. The Navajo should be one of

the wealthiest groups of people

living in the U.S. However, because

of the way the contracts were

written to exploit those natural

resources, the Navajo people are

amongst the poorest people in

the U.S. Health problems on the

reservation reflect those of other

impoverished communities.

Rates of diabetes, heart disease,

hypertension, alcohol and drug

abuse, domestic violence, teen

pregnancy, interpersonal violence

are all higher than the national

average. In the midst of what

many from outside the reservation

characterize as overwhelmingly

dire circumstances, there are

people living lives of dignity,

celebrating the joys of family,

farming and community.

My first intersection of public

art and public health occurred

shortly after I arrived on the

reservation. Concerned with

what we considered irresponsible

advertising in that it was

promoting cheap, sugary drinks

in a population plagued with

Type 2 Diabetes, a community

health nurse and I went out one

night to correct a billboard on the

reservation.

Photograph courtesy of Jetsonorama

Building Community

During my time on the reservation

I had been following street art

from a distance. Any time I’d go to

a big city with graffiti or street art,

I’d definitely notice it. In the mid

1990s I did a project I called the

Urban Guerrilla Art Assault where

I’d place black and white photos on

community bulletin boards and in

store windows in Flagstaff. In 2004

I travelled to Brazil for the first

time and was blown away by the

abundance, diversity and caliber of

the street art. I returned to Brazil

for three months in 2009 and art

on the street made by the people

and for the people consumed me

again.

There was one guy whose work I

saw and liked as I moved around

Bahia. His name is Limpo. It turned

out that during my last three

weeks I rented a flat immediately

above his studio. I spent every

day in his studio talking with him

and street artists from around the

world who’d stop by to share ideas

in sketch books, videos online

and street art books. Their energy

and enthusiasm were infectious.

As I left Brazil, the street art

community that had embraced me

and said, ‘keep it going!’

When I returned to the U.S., I

decided to enlarge and start wheat

pasting images from my twenty

two year archive of negatives

along the roadside. I got a recipe

for boiling wheat paste off the

internet, talked with people

at Kinko’s about how to make

enlargements and away I went. My

first forays were at night. I pasted

onto roadside stands where people

sell jewelry to tourists venturing

to the Grand Canyon, Monument

Valley and Lake Powell. As I

contemplated doing this, I had to

consider how to introduce a new

art form into a traditional culture?

What imagery is acceptable? After

stumbling a couple times, I settled

on what I considered universally

beloved Navajo themes such as

Code Talkers, sheep and elders.

One of my first pastings was of

Navajo Code Talkers that I pasted

onto an abandoned, deteriorating

jewelry stand along the highway to

Flagstaff.

I was shocked a week later as

I drove by the stand to find

people out repairing it. Curious,

I stopped. The guys working on

the stand didn’t know I was the

person who’d placed the Code

Talker photo there. They said that

so many tourists were stopping

to photograph the stand; they

decided to repair it and start using

it again. I asked if I could take a

photo as well and then told them

that I placed the image there. They

responded by asking me to put

something at the other end to stop

traffic coming from that direction.

This was my first validation

from the community to continue

pasting and it was my first

insight into the potential of art to

promote economic independence

for the roadside vendors. More

importantly, I appreciated the

potential of this work serving as a

tool to bridge cultures and races of

people.

It is through these types of

interactions with people as I’m

installing art that I get to better

know my community apart from

the constrained interactions I

have in the clinic. Many people

don’t know I’m a doctor who has

been here for twenty six years

and that I have a sixteen year old

half Navajo son. I defend what

I’m doing by telling people that

my project is a mirror reflecting

back to the community the beauty

they’ve shared with me over the

past quarter century. It is my hope

that a stronger sense of self and

collective identity is nurtured

through the images, which thereby

strengthens the community.

Last summer I decided to pursue a

dream suggested by a fellow street

artist to invite some of my favorite

artists out to the reservation to

paint murals and to work with

local youth. I called this The

Painted Desert Project.

197

The Painted Desert Project

The Painted Desert Project hates

stereotypes, respects the unique

culture in which it operates and

spreads love.

Before the first group of artists

came out last summer to paint

murals (which included Gaia,

Labrona, Overunder, Doodles, Tom

Greyeyes and Thomas ‘Breeze’

Marcus), I sent to the non-Native

American artists copies of a

chapter on the Navajo creation

story, a book of images and

observations about the land and

the people, a beaded item from one

of the roadside stands and a film

(‘Broken Rainbow’), in an effort to

sensitize the artists to the different

world view here. I attempted to

pair artists with various roadside

stand owners and arranged for

sweat rituals with tribal elders

to bless our efforts and give the

artists an idea of acceptable

imagery and Navajo taboos.

It is important that artists come to

the project without preconceived

ideas of what they’re going to

paint. They should also have

enough time to interact with

community members and absorb

this land of enormous skies and

stunning landscapes, then create

work that reflects this interplay of

cultures and landscape. My hope is

that the artist leaves enlightened

and that the community feels

enriched or vice versa.

Last summer as the first group of

artists was preparing to leave we

did something I’d never done in my

long tenure. We invited members

from the community to my house

to share a dinner with the artists.

It was a simple meal shared

around a candlelit table outdoors

under the stars. How can this type

of rich exchange not inform my

medical practice, which like my art

practice attempts to heal?

So, what’s an old black doctor

doing wheat pasting on the Navajo

nation? Like the brothers told me

in Brazil, I’m just trying to keep

a good feeling going round and

around.

Paste up inspired by Jetsonorama, Photograph by Lillian Frost, in Wedgefield, 2014

198

My husband and I drive through

the Diné reservation four times a

year on the way from our home in

Phoenix, Arizona to see friends in

Colorado. The trip has become a

welcome ritual over the past twenty

five years, since it takes us into the

company of loved ones, once young

like us, now old like us, waiting at

the other end of our journey to tell

and listen to stories, laugh and cry.

We have traversed these same

roads for over two decades. The

landscape of the road could be

perceived as monotonous to people

rushing through, impatient to get to

whatever it is they are on their way

too. Maybe we are a bit weird. We

love the road and the landscape. We

keep track of the changes, which

are few, and exclaim over the same

beauty year after year: the sky in

its blueness, the clouds and their

whiteness, the red or yellow brown

land. Sometimes there is a lone

horse, with or without a rider or the

clouds gift us shapes that remind us

of animals or people, even maps of

countries.

At some point, somewhere along the

road we started noticing manmade

beauty at the margins of our road.

Seeing the Desertby Julia Fournier

Paste Up inspired by Jetsonorama of Stockman, 1955 on Indee Station

Giant photographs, or were they

paintings? Stuck to the sides of

abandoned or unfinished buildings

and obsolete tanks, we were

confused by them at first. What

were they? What did they mean?

The speed limit throughout the

Diné Reservation takes you through

the vast landscape rather rapidly.

At first, these images flew past our

peripheral vision like ghosts. We

tried to take mental note of where

they were so we could take it in on

the way back through.

In September of 2010, we finally

stopped to have a look at a handful

of the pieces. We tried to watch out

for never-before-seen-by-us pieces as

we travelled through in November of

2010. We stopped off during that trip

and photographed some of the work.

After posting a few of the pieces

online one woman gave me a name

to search: Chip Thomas. Then one

day, by coincidence, a high school

acquaintance came into our gallery

and shop, had a look around, and

upon leaving said, “I have a friend

on the Navajo reservation, I think

you would like his art, I’m going to

introduce you.”

We were introduced to Chip, known

as Jetsonorama in the street art

community.

I was happily surprised to find

out this was the artist we had so

admired all this time. We began

to follow him on social media and

invited him to participate in shows

at our gallery in Phoenix.

As The Painted Desert project grew,

and the art and artists expanded,

the road became more beautiful,

more punctuated with images.

Unless you have travelled the road,

or at all, it is difficult to imagine how

different it is to encounter street art

in this context.

Instead of large images in a dense

urban setting on multistorey

buildings, The Painted Desert

Project pieces are scattered across

miles on antiquated industrial

leftovers, ramshackle structures and

abandoned billboards. Sometimes

the pieces seem to be drawing you

in to their content and sometimes

the pieces call your attention to

the circumstances that led the

“canvas” to become available. “What

happened to the people who lived

in those trailers?” you might think

as you speed past “Why are these

roadside stands abandoned?”

Each piece exists in solitude, in

a singularly vast and beautiful

environment but speaks somehow

to the other pieces, as well as to the

earth, sky and clouds that surround

it. The pieces may speak loudest of

all to those of us driving by on the

road to somewhere else.

“See me,” they say as we go whizzing

past, “wonder about me.”

Julia Fournier is a former school teacher

who now jointly runs The Hive Gallery

+ The Bee’s Knees resale clothing store

with her husband, Stephen. They are the

parents of teenage twin boys.

201

202

As you know this project has been

about the stories of Aboriginal

experience on Stations in the

Pilbara Region, have you got any

personal stories about your family

working on stations or farms in

this era?

My grandmother and her younger

brother were kidnapped from their

camp on Kamilaroi land, as part of

former government policy where

they unfortunately, like many other

Aboriginal children never saw their

family again.

My grandmother was then enslaved

at Angledool mission, learning

to perform domestic duties and

other practises that would lead

the children to be then moved on.

Later as a young teenage girl she

had to serve another mandatory

term of enslavement as part of

the Sixpence program on a large

pastoral station in northern NSW,

called Dungalear.

Her brother escaped from

Angledool mission and later worked

at Dungalear until they walked off

the station in protest during 1954.

What do you think is the

importance of telling these stories

about these men and women?

It’s very important these stories

are told, remembered and shared

with the rest of the community and

made part of our collective history

of Australia.

Aboriginal men and women, who

worked on the stations were an

important and integral part of the

success of these stations. And that’s

something you can’t deny.

It’s also about the history of

Australia and how Aboriginal

people survived on these pastoral

stations. And this is information

needs to be shared and told.

Do you have any reflections on the

99 year lease expiration in 2015 for

pastoral stations in the Pilbara?

Some of the pastoral stations have

large iron ore and precious mineral

deposits within the station, how

does this not become an issue? I

think it’s problematic to grant an

individual or organisation a 99

year lease and as a condition of the

lease, their main economic stable is

to derive from pastoral activities.

In areas like the Pilbara, its mineral

and iron ore deposits are much

more lucrative then the activities

of a pastoral station. I don’t

understand how a pastoral station

could operate and have agreements

with mining organisations on the

same property. It seems strange,

but then I’m only an artist.

You were able to travel to the

Pilbara and meet some of the

Aboriginal men and women who

worked on stations, how was this

experience? What ideas, thoughts,

emotions remained with you after

Reko Rennie

Andrew Dowding, the Ngarluma anthropologist engaged with the project spoke to Reko Rennie about his experiences working on Marlbartharndu Wanggagu.

Neon installation, Always was, Always will be, by Reko Rennie, 2014

203

you left the Pilbara.

It was an experience I will never

forget. The wonderful opportunity

to be invited onto Yandicoogina

traditional land and listen to his

passion for the land and life on

the station. But also it was chilling

and emotional to hear the stories

of survival, enslavement and the

way of life Aboriginal people were

subjected to on a daily basis.

There were many emotions and it

also caused me to reflect on how

life was for my grandmother and

any other young Aboriginal man

or woman working on a station. It

was real tough work, the men were

tough as nails and the woman

were even tougher to survive and

endure what they did during those

times.

It was great to hear all the stories

and in particular I liked the one

about people squaring their

differences. For one example, if an

Aboriginal man had a grievance

with the boss you could challenge

him and take him on in a sort of

station boxing ring. And as we

heard some Aboriginal blokes got

to give the boss a good hiding and

then they’d shake hands.

And another story I heard was a

former post office worker, who

didn’t pass on all the mail about

mining licenses to the intended

recipients and instead registered

them in his name and left a large

legacy was very interesting.

I’ll never forget our visit to Roy

Hill Station and the attitude of

the station boss, telling us not

to publish any myths about

Aboriginal people working the

land. If it wasn’t for Aboriginal

people working the land, Roy Hill

Station wouldn’t have survived.

I mean who would of done all

the necessary hard work, all day,

everyday, for rations?

Can you describe your work in

this exhibition, and give us an

insight into how it responds to the

personal histories your carry as

well as the recent experiences in

the Pilbara.

The works vary from neon designs,

to text, to an old painted station

truck.

There were so many amazing

quotes about life on the station,

from the ‘Sweeteners’ to ‘We

worked for Rations’ and one of the

best was “Pastoralists = Squatters”.

That was why I decided to paint

the truck with these quotes from

the period. The truck once served

and worked on a property and it

seemed right to decorate the truck

with quotes and text about life on

the property.

It also a reminder of how political

it all was and still is. I painted

‘This Land is Ours” on the truck

because it still is Aboriginal land

and the fact is that it was stolen

and then operated on, doesn’t

change a thing. It’s also a reminder

that pastoralists are squatters on

Aboriginal land.

The neon work with the two spears

and the cowboy hat and yandying

bowl down the bottom, symbolises

the Aboriginal men and women

who worked the land and survived.

It’s a symbol of power and survival

about the real pastoral history of

Australia.

204

Reko Rennie, Pastoralists = Squatters, 1954 international AR 110 Truck, 2014

205

We worked for rations, graphics & Stolen Land, 1954 international AR 110 Truck, 2014

Neon Insignia, by Reko Rennie, 2014

acknowledgements

Horseshoe, photograph by Claire Martin, 2014

FORM gratefully acknowledges

the contribution and support

of the following Marlbatharndu

Wanggagu, Once Upon a Time in

the West partners and individuals:

Principal partner IBN Corporation,

in particular the support of the

entire IBN board and Chairperson,

Lorraine Injie who also provided

support, advice and guidance

throughout the project in her role

as Project Officer, Lore, Language

and Culture.

The entire IBN Staff, including

Patricia Ansey, and Jon Aitchinson

also played key roles and helped to

make the project a reality, as have

Jubillee Pagsuyuin, Denise Dann,

Daniel Brown, Shannon Wilson,

Chona Pawloff and Chris Duris.

David Fernandez and Joyce (Jugari)

Drummond from the Tom Price

office provided invaluable support

on the ground.

We’d also like to thank Grant

Bussell, former CEO for his passion

and commitment to ensuring

the Aboriginal perspective on

the station era was captured and

celebrated.

The State Library of Western

Australia, National Library of

Australia, State Library of Victoria

and State Records Office of

Western Australia for providing

access and use of their images.

Wangka Maya, for support on

language translation.

The photographer, Claire Martin,

artist Jetsonorama (Chip Thomas)

and Reko Rennie for being part

of this project and their courage,

artistic excellence and dedication

to their practice, which inspires,

provokes and illuminates.

Jolly Read, and Dr Maryanne Jebb

who provided well researched

and expert writing and advice on

histories related to the project.

Andrew Dowding, Tarruru

Anthropologist, who led, developed

and conceptualized the project,

with Sharmila Wood, FORM

Curator. Sean Byford and Irene

Schneider who helped make the

project possible. Viet Nguyen

and Ryan Stephenson for their

design and IT. Travis Kelleher and

Andrew Nicholls for research and

transcription.

Lauren Nemroff of the Google

Cultural Institue who we are

partnering with to host the project

online so these histories can reach

a worldwide audience. Raleigh

Seamster from Google Earth

Outreach, for her ongoing support

of Indigenous communities in

many different countries.

Andrew Wilkinson from Charter

Hall for his belief in the project.

Most importantly we thank the

Yinhawangka, Banyjima and

Nyiyaparli people for sharing their

station stories, the elders and old

people who lived courageous lives.

211

Published by FORM

ISBN

978-0-9872624-8-6

Project by

Sharmila Wood and Andrew Dowding

Cultural Advisor

Lorraine Injie

Designed by

Folklore Brand Storytelling

FORM

Building a State of Creativity

357 Murray Street, Perth, Western

Australia 6000

T. + 61 9226 2799

F. + 61 89226 2250

mail@form.net.au

www.form.net.au

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FORM is supported by the Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy, an initiative of the Australian State and Territory Governments. FORM is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Project initiated and delivered by Principal Partner

Project Partner

213

Yinhawangka, Banyjima and Nyiyaparli Station Stories