As Cheeky As You Can't: Maronan Station

Maronan Cattle Station, Cloncurry
Maronan Cattle Station is home to over 5000 head of cattle and run by the Muller family, who moved there from Rockhampton in the east, in 1950’s. When George and Phyllis came over then, it was a question of just plain hard slog to get it going, with hundreds of kilometres of fencing, done by hand, searching for and tapping bore water supplies, working mostly on horseback, with the machinery that makes the life of Colin, his son and heir, so much easier.

We were staying with Colin, his wife Nevenka, their kids Kasie and Rose, and their Governess Julie Andress. Arriving after turning off the bitumen we drove down a dirt road for a mere 10 kilometres. I saw ‘mere’, because in some homesteads, in the really huge Cattle Stations, the ones of a million square kilometres or more, you drive past the post box and the gate, and find the house 250 kilometres away. On the way back from your 1000 kilometre round-trip to the shops go through the gate, pick up the mail, and four bumpy hours later you are home. Easy. These are the people who have helicopters and small aircraft. Sensible I say.

The driveway wound around clumps of harsh spinnifex grass and impressive gumtrees before we got to the homestead, which was on a sprawling yard, adjacent to a workshop, in a diagonal line from two other houses, those of Colin’s sister Josephine, and of his parents, George and Phyllis, with various sleeping quarters for the staff (they normally employ up to 3 full time hands), hen houses, more sheds, barns and garages than you would think necessary but all of them seemingly in use and doing their job, if the order and tidiness of them were anything to go by.

Spinifex, inedible for cattle

Nevenka was there to greet us when we pulled up and directed us to the sleeping quarters where we would be staying, a short stumble from their house. The ground rules set down and the boundaries established (outback life has many nuances you wouldn’t think of) she took us in the house and made us tea as we chatted about our activities for the next few days. There was more than enough to do, she assured us, no one works during the heat of the day, so a bit in the morning and some more in the late afternoon, when it’s cooler, would suffice. Be it helping her or Colin, who was busy doing water runs due to the drought we would be kept busy. ‘Welcome to Maronan’, she said finally.

George and Colin at work

We slept soundly that night, despite being bombarded with legions of moths intent on firing themselves in every direction to find something to land on until the next space at the light bulb came along. Our first morning, we were woken by an excited Rose bursting in on us, telling us to “wake up you lot and come see this”. Colin, had in his hand, a five foot Olive Python with two lumps in it. “Just found this fella in the chook pen. The lumps are two chicks. He’s hungry eh.” As he held it up, he was smiling.

Two chucks in make a sizable bulge in the python

Over the next few days we helped Nevenka put up her pool, an incongruous addition maybe in an Outback Cattle Station, but a welcome one the kids were thoroughly looking forward to. Colin was also concerning himself with the issue of water, but for the cattle, driving around the property, running diesel generators off the windmills to pump more bore water into the troughs. He was busier than normal, he told us, due to the drought. According to George, this was the driest in his 52 years of being there. Not a drop of rain in months, and all storms seeming to pass them by.

A dust storm swamps the station

Indeed, helping Colin one day drop off bails of hay for the cattle for feed because the grass was in scant supply, a vast raincloud could be seen in the distance, to the east, and running away from Maronan, pouring thousands of litres of rain down, yet not a drop where Colin and George wanted it. “But when it rains, mate, it rains. You see this place after a good rain. Two days and it’s green, everywhere, lush”.

Taking a brief walk round the property, past the huge sheds and excavators and tractors, I walked along the fenceline towards, well, a lot of not very much, to take it all in. The flies thought it a good idea too, and came with me, the cheeky blighters thinking they could hitchhike up my nose, and not taking no for an answer, the tykes. My hat on my head, and a stick to lean on, I walked on.

The most striking thing is the silence. It is an awesome quiet. With the heat sizzling and the sun pounding, the silence takes on an almost palpable air, especially during the hottest parts of the day, when you can hear yourself begin to cook.

Occasional sounds, like the distant call of a solitary bird, interrupt the silence, but barely penetrate it. Some galas are suddenly aroused by the sound of my footsteps and take flight in a panic; a herd of wild afghan camels stand in the shade and stare curiously; a pair of wallabies graze under a tree and pause to check me out and see what I am. The only sound is the crunch underfoot as I walk over the dry, red earth. I sweat constant.

The flies stay with me, resting on my hat, so that when I take it off to mop my brow (phew!) they hover and buzz around my head in discontent until I put it back on and they can sit back down. My thoughts flow on into the distance, ahead of me; what use is time out here, or measuring distance, surely everything comes down to the fortitude of endurance? I walk back with these thoughts and more in my head, and arriving back at the homestead remark to Colin, who works day after day in this heat, on this land, that it has been a hot day.

Colin wears his long sleeved shirt and work trousers no matter how high the temperature gets

He eyes me quizzically. Then asks “what’s wrong with your face? You look miserable and fucked”.
“Nothing. I’m relaxed and unworried”
“Are you bored?”
“No. I’ve just been for a walk. It’s pretty hot, maybe I’m a little tired, I don’t know” I felt fine, maybe my perpetually sun-red ginger complexion confused him.

Whereupon he raises a finger to his mouth, flicking his bottom lip suggesting I man-up a little. “You boys better toughen up, this is spring time ya pansies”. Clearly the heat is not an issue for him. But I love this about the Aussies. It is far more productive to think about how bad things could get, have been, rather than how bad they are, like when the heat melted the thermometer at 52º. But even that was not hot, though, because there would have been another time, a worse incident, a time they fried an egg on a dog, or something.

A time when people presumably did not sweat, and anyone who carelessly perspired was called a poof and a girl, being berated for their tenderness, when men ate bitumen sandwiches, spitting out the gravel at the perspirers, before calling the sun a Sheila. It’s not that they are careless when it comes to the sun, far from it, they know how to handle the heat, what they can and cannot do, how much water and when. It is that there is no mollycoddling out here, no easing you in gently, because the reality is harsh, the sun is ferocious and the heat unrelenting – in an unforgiving climate, you learn fast or you suffer slowly, or something cool that sounds like that, but you get the picture. So, it is a question of toughen up red, and wipe that dripping stuff from yer blubbery eyes, because, mate, you think this is hot…

But it’s a beautiful country. As Colin takes us round the property, we take a closer look at the trees. As arid as it is, these slowly keep themselves growing. Colin told us about the ghost gum (Eucalyptus papuana) trees which were spectacular. They are a smooth, clean off-white colour, hence their colloquial name Ghost Gum, with usually a long stem going off in three of four branches, with perennial green leaves.

Ghost Gum Tree
They shed the whole of their outer layer of bark each year, which gives them a ragged, unearthly palour, as the perfectly smooth pristine white layer underneath is revealed. Other gum trees abounded also. The grey and red gums shed their bark in patches of various shapes and colours over a period of two or more years. The bark surface changes colour as it weathers, creating a mosaic effect as the newly exposed surface is bright yellow, the older ones a silvery grey, almost a light blue whilst the oldest are dark grey or brown.

It is quite a sight to see these trees, languid in the sun, bent and gnarled, grown twisted with the wind that flies over the flat land, with the sinews of the branches and the newly forming bark entwined like a tightly coiled muscle. They seem to be straining ever so slightly to maintain this posture, one the older, larger trees have maintained for over three hundred years. They are a fascinating tree, and eerily beautiful. The bloodwoods are often very showy too, with the deep red sap oozing, and the red-flowering gum (eucalyptus ficifolia) with its masses of red flowers, attracting the cockatoos and parrots to it.

The eucalyptus trees are the most abundant. They are by far the most conspicuous element of Australian vegetation. About 95% of forest trees are eucalypts, they dominate the woodlands. They are found east to west, and north to south and are remarkable hardy and tough. According to Colin “gum trees want to burn, it’s how they outcompete other plants. They’re full of oil and once they catch fire they’re a bugger to put out”.

The Australian bush relies on fire to replenish and regrow. The old, dead wood, leaves, grasses and dying vegetation get cleared away during a fire, and new life flourishes afterwards. It is how the Aboriginals managed the land. They would leave a particular area, burn it as they went, then go someplace else, and come back in a few months, to new growth, fresh vegetation, which in turn attracted grazing animals, and the low grass provided the visibility for them to hunt them. It is a curious relationship between the land and fire; that it at once destroys and restocks.

It was only when the settlers came to Australia, and, seeing the Aboriginals burn the land thought it madness, and stopped it, that bushfires got out of hand, with years of growth igniting ferocious blazes that destroyed outright and raged across the land. The practice of controlled burning is one each district now practices, with Aboriginal Rangers much involved, once the benefits became clear.

That is not the only mistake the early settlers made. Australian flora and fauna is littered with examples of introductions and experiments gone drastically wrong. It is almost incredible to read about some of the outrageous act of idiocy. The Acclimatization Project, for instance, was an idea, by the English, to turn the Australian landscape into a familiar vista. Can you imagine it, introducing scores of species of plants and animals, in an effort to turn the Outback into an English country garden! “Croquet dear? Don’t mind if I do. I’ll leave my tipple by the begonia, which is growing remarkable well, what-what [snort] Oh look at Tiddles playing with that dead marsupial. Can you move the sun a little further west, dear? Charmed”. These species then completely overran the native ones. On a continent left alone since the dawn of time, transients turned up and had it overrun within a hundred years. Wild foxes, camels, donkeys, horses (called Brumbys), water buffalo, cows, goats, sheep, pigs and cats abounded. A half dozen rabbits brought over by Lord Itscomingforme, or something, for the entertainment of himself and guests in shooting them, are the descendents of the millions that plagued Australia up to the 50’s, until they mixamitosed them, and all but wiped them out. All but. Now see Rabbit Plague 2: The Revenge. This time it’s personal.

Over 130 Australian mammals are currently threatened, 16 are now extinct, since the introduction of Acclimatization in the 1860’s, more than in any other continent. The cat, the common moggie being the biggest culprit, along with the fox, accounting for the scarcity of such delightful creatures as numbats, bettongs, quolls, potoroos, bandicoots, rock wallabies, platypuses, and many more. Australian mammals simply did not evolve the weaponry to fight these creatures of ours, and so the aliens multiply, uninterrupted. The Cane Toad being the pin-up boy for this process.

It’s the same with the flora. Lantana, an aggressive introduced grass, grows thickly, and tall, quickly. Blackberry and prickly pear thrive perniciously in vast densities, at one point, prickly pear was on the verge of destroying the livelihood of Victorian farmers because of the rapidity of its accumulation. Australia, again, more than any other country, is overrun, by more than 2700 foreign weeds.

As out-of-place as an Afghan camel may seem in the Aussie Outback, we were delighted when, after unloading bails of hay for the cattle with Colin, on our way back, after racing alongside a determined Kangaroo intent on shooing under the fence, with Colin equally determined not to let it, and I mean we raced, because while Colin driving at 70ks an hour, on a rough dirt track, the Kangaroo beside us about ten metres away, was keeping pace, seemingly at a canter, at a mild bounce of nine to ten feet between hops, with no great effort, just bounding along, and a few kilometres from the homestead we saw what Colin immediately spotted as a Camel with a new born baby camel, nursing the shade. We drove a little closer to make sure, then headed for home, to pick up everyone else.

With Kasie and Rose the kids, Juile, and the three of us loaded into the back of the pickup, Nevenka sitting up front, we drove out along the dirt track to where the camel and its kid? camel light? calf were and very slowly got close enough to see its first steps. Its umbilical cord and the remains of its placenta were still hanging darkly red around its trembling body, down its hind legs. It teetered unevenly to its feet, all of us, in thrall, mouths agape, silent, then it fell in a clump to the ground. Mum was wary, but unconcerned about our presence, Colin getting close enough to see, but far enough away so as not to seem a threat to her.

As it sat, the calf regarded us quizzically, mum more so with the protective instinct natural to all mothers, but neither stirred much, with only a growl from mum to say ‘oi, that’s far enough now’, and to deter us from getting too many ideas. The calf tried again to get to its feet, all legs it teetered again, the hind legs shaking as it tried to get some balance, hopping forward onto its front legs, shuffling them, and trying to get its hind legs working, trying to stabilise somehow, tentative steps, holding its head too high to balance, and falling over again in a heap.

No more than an hour old, a time we deduced from old George telling us afterwards he’d seen mum that morning and “she was the size of a plastic water tank”, so she’d given birth sometime in the interim. Animals get upright quickly in the wild, for fear of falling prey if they don’t, he said. So, we watched the calf vying for its first steps, mum encouraging it with maternal headbutts to get up, and it did; it walked, stopped, got set, walked, stopped, got set, walked, fell in a heap. It almost seemed embarrassed, mum seemed almost to be scolding us for laughing. It was a very touching thing to see, and very rare too, I’m sure.

Next day, after laying paving stones we drove out in the quad bike to fetch, Phil and I were greeted by Colin who asked us if we wanted to come for a spin around the property, to one of the dams he dug out, to check the water level. Sure, we said.

Julie bottle feeds an orphaned cow
“ok, gimme a minute to wait for Kasie, she’s driving”, he said.
“ok, no worries”, we said, not sure what he meant. Kasie is eleven. “Kasie’s driving?” I asked.
“Kasie’s driving”, replied Colin as he busied himself getting stuff out of his ute.
“The car?”
“Her car,” he said over his shoulder
“Her car?” Phil and I look at one another.
“yup”.

Kasie bounds out of the house and she and her dad start to walk around the back of the workshop. Still unsure what exactly is going on, convinced I’ve misheard, and waiting for someone to let me in on the joke, we nevertheless follow behind. At the back of the workshop is an old battered lime green Toyota, with a plastic milk carton for a petrol tank and no windows. This is Kasie’s car. She jumps in, her dad next to her in the passenger side, Phil and I backseat. She reverses not so much carefully as confidently, then we’re off, along the dirt road, Kasie, eleven, I say it again, chatting amiably to her dad, asking questions, not looking at the road as she does, but quite happily driving away.

Phil and I are laughing. We can’t help it. Colin sees the funny side too, and asks Kasie to show them her reverse handbrake-turn. Of course, he doesn’t vocalise the request, merely tells her to drive off at the spot they usually do it, and proceed to scare the living bejesus out of the two of us as she reverses at high speed and pulls the handbrake while turning the steering full lock. All the kids have cars, they learn to drive as soon as they have chewed their first snot ball. Rose, who’s nine, has a car, and is, according to what she told us, a better driver than Kasie. “Not better”, said Nevanka, “just more crazy”. Fair enough.

It was not long afterwards that Colin ceded to our request to go shooting. He keeps a 300 Remington 12 gauge shotgun and a rifle on the property, using it to cull ‘Roos, and kill dingoes.

He showed us how to load the cartridges in the gun room, a meticulous process, involving first weighing the gun powder exactly, as too little will mean the charge does not go, and too much could involve a tiny explosion, little enough to take your face off I am sure. So, powder weighed, and tipped carefully into the cartridge, the bullet is placed on, an placed firmly down in place with the aid of a custom press. Bullets prepared, we took the guns out of their cage, kept locked in separate places for safety, and made for the shooting range.

A calf investigates the world around him with his tongue

Driving out some distance from the homestead, with two rifles and the shotgun, we could not help thinking, ‘this is where people end up out here. Riddled with shot, unable to crawl home, “I thought he was rustling me cattle, officer”, he would say, in the unlikely eventuality of our bullet strewn corpses ever being found. So, we hollered and whooped our best imitation of redneck hillbillies, in the hope of at least making it fun for him.

We stopped in a field, pretty much like the others we had driven through, and Colin and I set up the full, out of date, coke cans and the target taped to a cardboard box about forty feet away we were to test our marksmanship against, and the empty 4 litre container we had a little closer, to blast to kingdom come, holler holler now ya’ll. He made sure we knew how the guns worked. He took us through the process of loading, priming and, safety off, readiness to fire, first without bullets, then, when we were confident, with a bullet.

I shot first, out of the car window. After loading the bullet, pushing the catch into place, pulling it back, primed, I lastly took the safety off, and as Colin said, “she’s ready to go now. Gently on the trigger, she’s very sensitive, you don’t need much pressure, line her up and fire when you’re ready. Ok?” Ok. I lined up the centre of the target in the scope, remembering all I had vicariously learned from all the rubbish films I have seen, breathed in, out, in out, lined her up dead centre, got her steady, breathed in, out, in – fire! Dead centre shot. I could not have been more surprised. Bullseye.

Anne and Phil went next, Colin taking them through the same process, and both had pretty good shots, hitting just above the centre. Then it was the turn of the coke cans. Again, Colin made sure we went through the process of loading with meticulous care, and while Phil and I blew the cans into the sky, Anne narrowly missed hers by a mile. The distant echo of an “ouch!forfucksakeswhatthe” could be heard, but we could not see where.

The shotgun next, and boy did it pack a punch, the poor container suffering immensely under our marksmans eye. By the time we got to the heavy gauge rifle, which we fired sitting on the ground, like Vietnam, we had our eye in, Phil and I shoot another coke can each, blasting them to bits, Anne persevering a couple of times until she shot hers, the bullet passing straight through on a trajectory so true in did not even move the can, a hole either end at the top the only proof it had ever passed through.

On the way back, guns unloaded, opened, and safely on our laps, Phil and I sat on the back of the ute, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the sunset, a-hollerin and a whoopin like good ol boys. It was the first time we had shot a gun, and while exhilarating, they are certainly too much of a responsibility for the likes of us.

At the end of the week, the Cloncurry Races were on. They love their horses in this part of the world, and the Races are a highlight of the social calendar. Everyone gets spruced up and then rabidly drunk. Nevenka offered us some showbags she had, 50 bags containing little games, sweets, treats and novelties for kids. We could sell them at the races, for $5 each, set up a stall and raise some money. It was a good idea, so we combed our hair, washed behind our ears and clenched our buttocks until we were at least out of earshot.

It was a blisteringly hot day at the Cloncurry Races. We were set up just beside the bar, which is either a great place to catch passers by or the worse kind of torture for three booze-deprived self-confessed booze hounds. As the parents were schmoozing and boozing, the kids were bored, running around playing and when we set up, they asked if they could help. We said sure, and gave them a donations jar to collect some money. Others hung around, and as the showbags began to sell, a few offered to help us. The sight of a Jacob, all 3foot of him, grabbing the arm of a cowboy-hat wearing, John Wayne striding old farmer and exclaiming “showbags for five” at him will live in my mind for a long time. He sold it too.

All up we raised over $500 on that day thanks to the kids. Denzil and Megan, collected over $200 in donations in the jar, with Denzil’s brothers coming back at intervals, emptying their pockets and producing $5 here or $4 there. We gave them all hats and removable tattoos as thanks, realising that they raised far more than we could have done. That’s why child labour used to be so effective! Oh, for the olden golden days of yore once more.

Nevenka got lucky too, winning one race, and bagging a tidy sum. It was a good day all round. That night we got to sink a few beers, an nurse a bit of sunburn. We ended our time at Maronan helping Nevenka finish laying the paving stones around the pool, as thanks for the showbags, and for everything else, including feeding our ravenous bellies. We left, but not before George shimmied up to the gate by the house, ushering us to him, with a round plastic container, containing small bits of alluvial gold he’d just found.