reading

CONTENTS

Ships Ahoy

A Young Family in Outback Queensland

Thorntonia Station

Heading North

Pine Creek

The Edith

Dingoes and Goats

Fishing

Living off the Land

Wildlife

Cat and Mouse

Crocodiles and Buffaloes

A Break for It

Pigging

Guv’s Mate

Daily Life

Cas

Prices Springs

Darwin

Heading Back to Queensland

Amby

Cloncurry

Lawn Hill

New South Wales

Cunnamulla

Back in the Territory

Pine Creek Goldfields

Stuck

Across to North Queensland

Dundee Beach

Civil Works

Kakadu

Our Chilli Farm

Victoria Highway

Mt Todd

Chad’s Express

East Arm Port

Over West

Darwin City

Adrail

America

Snakes

Travelling Light

Revisiting the Edith

Broome

Mining

Grandkids

Acting

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

SHIPS AHOY

My grandfather Sidney Charles Rickman came over on a ship from the Isle of Wight in the very late 1800’s, possibly the turn of the century. The story was, that he was a stowaway. That’s how a lot of young blokes ended up on Australian soil. He was only fourteen years old.

He met my grandmother whose name was Christina Madeleine Olive Faint. They married in 1916 and settled down in Moree, New South Wales. They had three children, Horace, Maisey and Mum (Ivy).

Mum said my granddad was a gentle man, a very kind man. My grandmother was apparently a very selfish lady. They had fruit trees growing in the yard. My grandma would count the apples so if one of the kids took one she would know. She would go right off if any apples went missing. Granddad would keep watch while the kids grabbed one. If Grandma came out he would whistle. The kids would hide the apple until the coast was clear of Grandma. Then Granddad would tell her he threw a few rotten apples away he found on the ground. That seemed to work.

Mum said growing up in Moree as a child was a pretty good life. My grandfather was one of the first in Moree to buy a car. So they must have been a bit better off than most residents there. It was a big novelty for the kids to ride in a car.

I’m not sure what my grandfather did for a living. Mum did say he worked hard to keep the family fed. I never met my grandparents on either side of the family. They never sent Christmas or birthday cards or presents. I think Mum got very rare letters off them if anything happened to anyone in the family. That’s about it.

Sidney Rickman

Granddad with Horace, Maisey & Ivy

Dad and Mum met at a very young age. Dad (Guv) was from Moree as well. I think he was born in Narrabri, NSW. His parents were Mary Janet Bennett and John Joseph Woods. They eloped as Ivy was pregnant with my oldest brother Duke (Reuben Jr).

They ended up in St George, Queensland for a while before their first child was born. Guv somehow acquired a huge army tent, which he stole no doubt – you’ll understand what I mean as my story goes on. Guv was awarded a contract ring-barking trees out of St George. Years ago the Cockies (station owners) would ring-bark the trees so they would die. That left more room for grass to grow for the cattle, sheep and horses. It was very hard, hot work. Ring barkers usually started before daylight to work. They would have a bit of a rest in the heat of the day.

Ivy and Guv

In no time Ivy had made the tent very homely. She would break off gum tree branches and sweep the dirt floor with them. She would pick wild flowers and if there was none she would make paper roses. The roses would be made out of crepe paper, tie wire, cotton and glue. She made glue out of flour and water mixed into a paste. She would wax them by heating old left over candles in a tin until they melted. She would then pour the melted wax over the roses with a tablespoon. When they got a bit dull looking she would heat more wax and pour it over them again, or sit them in the sun until the wax melted. That would freshen them up.

Ivy made vases out of jam tins or bottles. She would cut out pretty pictures from old magazines and stick them on with her famous flour and water glue. She sure was a very beautiful, smart lady. There wasn’t much she couldn’t do. She updated her vase creations by making them out of Plaster of Paris and a few other ingredients. She would make them the shape of tree stumps and paint them, they looked lovely. Just about everyone who saw Ivy’s vases wanted her to make them some. To shape them she’d put a bottle in the middle and formed the plaster around the bottle. She made a bit of money doing that.

Ivy would always take Guv lunch every day. She would listen for the sound of the axe chopping trees. She would have to walk quite a distance to get to where Guv was working. She would boil the billy and make Billy Tea and a damper, scones or bread for Guv to have with his corned beef etc. Every single day Ivy would take Guv’s lunch to wherever he was. She treated Guv like royalty.

One day Ivy and Guv decided to saddle the horses and ride into St George to do a bit of shopping. Ivy got dressed in a nice shirt and jodhpurs (riding trousers). Guv took one look and said, ‘You’ll be the prettiest girl in St George today!’ That really made Ivy’s day. She very rarely got a compliment off Guv. They would take a pack horse with them to put the shopping in. The pack was made of leather bags that was put on a saddle, each side onto the D rings.

A YOUNG FAMILY IN OUTBACK QUEENSLAND

After Guv had enough money saved to get him to Roma they left St George. They ended up on a place quite a few miles out of town. Ivy started having babies quite close together. She was bare foot and pregnant for years so to speak. She had five boys and three girls while they were at Roma in Queensland. One of my brothers couldn’t wait to come into the world, he was born in an ambulance half way into Roma.

Ivy would take the kids to school in the horse and sulky. She pulled up to pick the kids up from school one day. None of them came out. She looked into the school yard, she could see all the kids gathered into a big circle. So off she went to investigate. There was Duke, fighting his sixth boy. He had already beaten five and was onto his sixth when Ivy put a stop to it.

Guv was a very bad influence on us. He loved violence. He would tell us to fight at school. He even encouraged us girls to be violent as well.

I walked around with a big chip on my shoulder for a lot of years. I ended up getting into a lot of fisty-cuffs in my time, none of which I started I might stress. Everything was settled with the fists. I had been bullied by Guv during my childhood and I wasn’t about to be bullied ever again. So I never took shit off anyone. Thank God I’ve mellowed out a little. I still have my moments. As long as I don’t get to the point of no return I’m ok. If I start swearing, look out. My ex-husband heard me swear once in fifteen years and it wasn’t at him. He was utterly shocked and gob smacked.

Guv bought a couple of Clydesdale horses to pull the sulky. One horse was lovely and quiet, but was a jib. A jib is an animal that won’t move no matter how you try, they won’t budge. The other one was very unpredictable. When Guv first bought him he would kick up a storm. He bolted with the training cart and smashed it to pieces. He came good after a lot of work and cruelty from Guv. Guv was very good at breaking in horses but he was unnecessarily cruel. He would flog the horses if they didn’t do what he wanted them to. He ended up with some good horses over the years.

The sulky was the only transport into town and school, except when the other horses were saddled up and ridden in.

We were unbeatable at sports so the headmaster of the school banned all the Woods kids from entering in any of the sports events. He said we won by too big of a margin. He said the other kids would get a complex if they kept getting beat by the Woods kids. Ivy was furious. She marched up to the teacher and give him a good earful, but he stuck to his digs and wouldn’t budge. Ivy was furious so on sports days she kept all the kids home. The only reason we were so good at sports is because we had a very active lifestyle. Guv made us work like adults, even the girls. We would get teased by the other kids who had nice clothes, and we all had second hand cheap clothes and shoes. Someone else’s leftovers.

Ivy and Guv met another young couple, Lindsay and Muriel Cant who had at least twelve kids. They had a brain wave of all starting up a travelling buckjump show. Chief Little Wolf and Tex Morton were pretty well known with their travelling shows by then. So they bought a few mean horses and started doing shows. They called themselves the Martins and the Troys.

They seemed to get on pretty well with the other show people. If a rider was thrown off the horse Guv or Lindsay would ride it. They would put on a good show to prove the horse could be ridden. The crowd loved it. Guv and Lindsay were sure good at showing off. They were both top buckjump riders who very rarely got thrown off. If they did, it was a great crowd pleaser, a win-win situation.

In their travels they met Violet Scuthorpe, a lovely lady and a good horse rider. She and other show people including the Sharmans and Fosters became friends with Ivy and Guv.

Ivy took Muriel and Lindsay’s daughter Alice to get her car licence. Alice didn’t know left from right so Ivy sat in the back of the police car and when the cop told her to turn left or right, Ivy would tap her on the corresponding shoulder.

Alice (left) with Ivy

With the buckjump show on the road Ivy and Muriel tried to teach the school-age kids correspondence. It was hard, as all the kids wanted to do was see what was going on around them. They certainly weren’t a bit interested in doing school work.

The show lasted a while, then one day one of the sulkies broke down. Lindsay said to Guv, ‘I’ll see you in the next town, you can fix the sulky and catch up.’ That put a huge strain on their relationship. It became a bit of a habit, Guv broke down a couple of times and Lindsay would leave Guv with it and go on ahead without him. If Lindsay broke down and needed help, he would ask Guv to help him fix it which Guv did. They closed the buckjump show and parted ways so the Martins and Troys were no longer.

They remained friends through it all. Their paths would cross now and again over the years. The irony of it all – many years later in 1986 I actually worked for Lindsay’s brother Lenny who owned the Coolalinga Caravan Park (out of Darwin).

After they finished the buckjump show Ivy and Guv spent some time at Yeppoon and also Surat in Queensland for a while. They were living in Dalby when one of my brothers and I were born.

Ivy and Guv had set up camp in the middle of a dry river bed out of Surat somewhere. In the middle of the night Ivy heard a noise that sounded a bit like a cattle stampede. It was a flash flood roaring down the river. She managed to get all the kids out of their swags before the torrent of water came rushing through. It had rained upstream. She lost quite a bit of camping gear, but everyone was safe. She never camped in another dry river bed ever again.

Somewhere on their travels Guv came across a cow that had somehow got wedged between the forked trunk of a tree. Guv saved her by chopping her out. As soon as she was free she charged at him. She was so weak though from being stuck that she fell over. The poor thing must have been there quite a while.

The poor cow stuck in the tree

THORNTONIA STATION

With a family of ten children, my father and mother moved to Thorntonia Station (out from Camooweal in Queensland). Ivy and Guv would get to know the Freckleton’s who owned one of the stores in Camooweal, they were really good people.

Guv was offered a contract to shoot brumbies by the manager, a tall man with a huge moustache whose name was Tom Dowling. His nickname was Handlebars because his moustache come out like handlebars. Tom was a real gentleman from the ‘old school’. He used to wear long striped trousers.

One morning one of the younger boys kept staring at Tom. Dad told him not to stare. Then he said, ‘Why is Tom wearing pyjamas?’ My brother got into trouble off Guv, even though Tom was fine about his little comment.

Guv would shoot the brumbies and bag the manes and tails. The mane and tail hair was used to make bed mattresses. Guv was allowed to keep the brumby foals for himself. He would rear the foals and when they were just under two years old, he would break them in. They were already quiet because us kids would pamper them. So then Guv would mouth, bag and lunge etc., all in the process of breaking in a young horse. They were actually not bad looking horses. Some good colours – blacks, bays, browns, greys, and a couple of red-roans. They ranged in sizes from about 14 hands to 15.2 hands high.

The foals were reared on goat’s milk. We had several hundred head of goats, of mixed breeds consisting of Cashmere, Angora, Saanen, and Anglo Nubians. The goats’ numbers declined rapidly, as Guv killed the wethers for meat. A wether is a billy goat who is castrated. We only had couple of purebred goats which were Saanens. Us kids only had goat’s milk to drink. We didn’t need a milking cow with all the goats. I didn’t taste cow’s milk until I was about nine or ten.

Ivy and Guv also had a beautiful purebred Alsatian dog called Zulu. Zulu was a really good watch dog. She would welcome you in if no one was home, but if you touched anything she wouldn’t let you leave the place.

One day my parents came home and Zulu had the neighbour bailed up at the front gate. Apparently he’d been there for quite a long time. Ivy sorted Zulu out and made her let the man go.

A couple of weeks later Zulu started taking fits and frothing at the mouth. Ivy knew right away that Zulu had been poisoned. She told my oldest brother Duke to run over to that same neighbour and get some salt. The neighbour said he didn’t have any salt, but Duke could see salt on the bloke’s table. Duke said to him, ‘Isn’t that salt on your table?’ He replied, ‘Be gone boy!’

Salty water makes the dog vomit the poison up, especially if its arsenic which they used to poison dingoes. With no salty water, Zulu died. It made sense then, who poisoned Zulu. We also had a couple more dogs, a purebred German Shepherd, and a couple of bitsers (mixed breeds).

On Thorntonia we mainly ate goat and young horse. Ivy made lots of horse meat pies. The Chinese mailman was a nice man that used to stop and have a horse meat pie and Billy Tea on his way past when he dropped the mail off. Guv and Ivy told Duke not to tell him the pie was made out of horse meat. The mailman said it was the best pie he’d ever tasted. Duke couldn’t help himself, ‘You know you’re eating horse meat in that pie.’ Duke disappeared and went and dragged the horse head back so he could prove to the mailman it was horse meat. The mailman got sick on the spot. From then on the mailman wouldn’t even have a Billy Tea. Needless to say Duke got flogged with the razor strap.

Duke was old enough to go to a neighbouring station to work. When Ivy didn’t hear from him for months, she decided to go there and find out what was going on. It turned out he had temporary amnesia. He forgot his name and didn’t know any of us. He got his memory back after a while and all was good again.

By this time Guv had bought an old truck with a crate on it for the animals. Guv had mustered a mob of cows and calves for Tom and had put them in the stockyard. Ivy and Guv had to go into town (Mount Isa). Guv said, ‘None of you boys go anywhere near them calves, just check their water and leave it at that.’

As soon as Guv’s dust from the truck disappeared out of sight, the boys mused, ‘Let the games begin!’ The older girls were curious, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘You’ll see,’ was the reply. We all went down to the stockyard. The boys got in and caught a calf. They scull dragged it out of the yard. One of the older boys jumped on its back, so the others holding it let go. It took off in a flurry of dust with my brother clinging on for grim death. It raced straight through the tent, knocking everything in its wake, including everything off the table (plates, cups etc). Then it blasted straight through the gauze window and out the other side. So the other boys chased the runaways while the girls tried to clean up the chaos that hadn’t gone quite as planned.

They finally caught up with the boy and calf, who by this time were both tired and worn out. They dragged the calf back to the yard. They then waited nervously for Ivy and Guv’s return knowing full well what was in store for them. They all got a good flogging with the whip. Guv didn’t know when to stop. The boys ended up bruised from head to toe. They never pulled that stunt again. We all hated Guv.

Guv was admired for his horsemanship. When he had visitors he would catch a newly broken-in horse. He would then pick up the horse’s back legs, and put them up on his shoulders. He would say a horse is not broken in properly until you can do that.

Ivy and Guv were out riding one day. They came across a rich copper deposit. Guv told a few people about the copper. Two blokes turned up out of the blue. They asked Guv to take them and show them where the copper was. Guv sort of smelled a rat. He saddled up three horses. They rode around for hours. Guv deliberately took them in the opposite direction. When they came back the men were furious. They tried to jump Guv from behind. Guv had the both of them on the broad of their backs in a couple of seconds flat. Then Guv yelled ‘Gun!’ Duke threw Guv the illegal .303 rifle. He held the two men at gunpoint. The youngest had raced around and jumped in the vehicle and said, ‘I’m too young to die!’ and passed out. The older bloke got in the vehicle at Guv’s command. They left in a cloud of dust. It turned out they were two plain clothes detectives.

A couple of car loads of police stormed the place. They handcuffed Guv who acted innocent and clueless, and threw him in the police car and sped off. The other cops proceeded to search the place. They noticed Duke had a pocket knife in a pouch on his belt. They were very jumpy. They said, ‘Hands against the wall and don’t move!’ One cop opened the pouch and flicked the knife onto the floor. They searched and searched for the .303 but couldn’t find it. Guv went to court and got out of it because the two D’s weren’t even supposed to be there. They had no proof he held them up, as they couldn’t find the gun. The copper deposit was found many years later and was opened and mined as Lady Annie mine.

One of the younger boys got severely sore eyes. Guv said it was sandy blight. He told the older boys to take him down to the river and shoot him. So the boys took him down to the river and hid him for days. They would sneak food down to him until Guv snapped out of it and was in a very rare good mood. By this time his eyes were a lot better. When Guv saw him he asked the others, ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’ Then he said, ‘Ok, now his eyes are a lot better he’ll be ok.’

While on Thorntonia Ivy had her eleventh child who was born in the tent. With Ivy’s guidance, the two older girls helped with the birth. She took a long time to register the birth.

Ross riding at Thorntonia

My older sisters

HEADING NORTH

Guv befriended a bloke whose nickname was Shorty Swig. Anyway, Shorty had borrowed one of Duke’s cowboy hats when the family decided to leave Thorntonia Station. Shorty asked if he could hitch a ride to the Northern Territory and Guv agreed.

The first couple of nights were spent on the Georgina River near the Queensland/Northern Territory border. Guv had brought a mob of goats, brumby foals, chooks and dogs. They were in the truck. He would make a temporary yard for the stock out of rope and saplings along the way. Everyone was packing up ready to head off. Guv said jokingly, ‘We are running out of food, we might have to eat Shorty!’ Shorty heard Guv and panic set in. He ran past Duke and threw him his hat and said, ‘Thanks for a lend of the hat Reub.’ He must have hitched a ride because he wasn’t on the road anywhere.

It was a slow trip with all the animals and eleven children, the smallest only a toddler. The couple of days at the Georgina River gave Ivy a chance to catch up on the washing. She would do the washing using buckets and sunlight soap she made. The water in the river was nice and clean. We used to drink the river and billabong water. If it was a bit dirty Ivy would boil it first. Then she would wait until it cooled down so we could drink it.

The German Shepherd fell out of the moving truck somewhere along the track. He took off and no one could catch him. He must have hit his head pretty hard, he wouldn’t come when he was called and acted like a wild dog. There was a waterhole there and Guv decided to wait a day or two and try and catch the dog. That shocked us all, normally Guv would have shot it in the first hour.

When that didn’t work Guv decided to shoot the beautiful shepherd dog. He said he’d go wild and start killing the station stock. Ivy was very upset but once Guv made up his mind that was it. No one would dare try and stop him.

We camped at Warlock Ponds out of Mataranka for a few days along the way. The ponds were beautiful. There was an abundance of birdlife including brolgas, jabiru, wandering whistling ducks and lots of other bird life.

The boys camped in swags in the back of the old truck. The girls camped on the ground near the truck. My sister and I had to sleep near Ivy and Guv in a swag.

I was woken up in the middle of the night to a mournful sound. I’d never heard such a noise before. I was terrified so I sneaked over and crept in with the boys in the truck. Early the next morning Guv and Ivy went into a full panic when they realized I was missing. Ivy woke the girls up to help in the search. Ivy thought the worst because of all the water being so close. She also woke the boys up to look for me. Just then a little head appeared from under the covers and said, ‘Here I am.’ The weird noises I’d heard were a mob of wild donkeys.

The truck was packed up and Ivy came around the side of the truck for a last minute check. Just then one of the smaller boys decided to jump from the top of the crate off the truck. Ivy made a dive and caught him but fell on her back. Only for Ivy’s quick reflexes saved a disaster.

We stopped at the Edith River Bridge north of Katherine and south of Pine Creek on the Stuart Highway. Travelling was slow because the highway was narrow and had lots of sharp bends in it. Duke was investigating the new area. He found a matchbox and opened it. To his surprise there was twenty quid in it ($40). That was a lot of money in them days. Guv took it off him.

Sometimes a traveller would come and camp near the bridge for a night or two. They were only passing through.

We stayed there for quite a while just down a bit from the old bridge, living out of the truck and swags. Ivy went down to the river and done all the washing at the water’s edge. With such a big family it seemed to take her forever. She’d made a lot of homemade soap before leaving Thorntonia. She would make the soap by boiling rendered goat or bullock fat, caustic soda, and a packet of lux flakes & kerosene. She would then pour it while it was hot into a big slab slice tin. Just before it set she would cut it into soap squares. The homemade soap was used for washing and bathing with. She would make enough to last for months. If the clothes got too dirty Ivy would light a fire under the old copper. She would then boil the clothes in the copper. When it was bath time, the boys would go down river one side of the bridge and the girls would go the other end. That kept the boys out of sight from the girls.

We used to clean our teeth with charcoal from the fire. There was no money for toothbrushes or toothpaste. We rubbed our teeth with the charcoal, then we had to wash our mouth out with water. Let me tell you that wasn’t very pleasant.

I loved the beautiful birds and other wildlife that were along the river. The Little red flying foxes were flying over in their millions just on dark. They seemed endless.

PINE CREEK

After leaving the Edith Bridge we ended up staying in Pine Creek with a man called Tom Bantoff. We were in Pine Creek for months.

While we were there we made up games to break the boredom. We used to make our own fun. We’d all sit in a big circle on the ground and would close our eyes. Whoever’s turn it was would silently get up and put a stone in front of one of us. We had to keep our eyes shut and feel for the stone until someone found it. We also played red rover, ball games and we played games on the horses. We used to ride Duke’s horse Casey, the little Galloway pony.

A man by the name of Norm Jensen came in to see Tom. He was amazed how we kept occupied with such simple games. Norm became a friend of Ivy and Guv’s while we were in Pine Creek. Many years later in 1988 I ended up staying at Norm’s place when I was working at the Pine Creek gold fields. He was still there after all those years.

It was Norm Jensen who in the mid ‘60s would encounter a strange being while drilling a bore at Killarney Station. A big piece of hair and skin came up on his drill. It was nothing like anything he’d seen before. He described it as a monster. As far as I know he had it tested and the results were inconclusive. He was hoping to go back to Killarney and do further tests. In his old age, sadly Norm was in a car accident just out of Pine Creek. He got gangrene on his toes sometime after the accident and was admitted to Katherine Hospital where he died.

Guv met the owner of Dorisvale Station, the bloke’s name was Tex Moore. Tex actually was very good to us kids, he was like an uncle. Another bloke Guv and Ivy became friends with was Bill Cane. Bill was a bit of a character. He used to get into a bit of trouble on and off. He was a bit of a lovable rogue.

Me with Tex Moore at Pine Creek decades later

At Pine Creek the older kids did schooling through correspondence. Ivy tried to teach them but like previously she had a real battle on her hands. The boys would see something outside like someone riding past on a horse. They would get up and take off outside to have a look. Ivy tried in vain to get the boys interested in school. They were too interested in pussy-footing around to concentrate on their school work. The girls were a bit better at learning. I think Ivy was at her wits end with the boys.

Ivy used to make quilt covers and bedspreads by cutting up bits and pieces of our old clothes and sewing all the pieces together with an old treadle machine she had. We loved her patchwork bedspreads, they were really pretty. Ivy was very good at most things she did. She was a great self-taught seamstress. She made us some nice clothes out of flour bags and hessian bags. She would cut up the flour bags and make us shorts.

There were a lot of old-timers living on the outskirts of Pine Creek. They had their little shacks made of corrugated iron which they scrounged from the ruins of yesteryear. They were looking for gold hoping to find the mother-load. They mainly lived on bully beef in the tin and dry salted corned beef. They’d have homemade damper with Billy Tea that was so strong you could nearly stand the spoon up in it. We visited a few of them. They had candles, carbide lights and hurricane lights. The carbide lights used to be filled with water and lit at the top.

Ivy and Guv became friends with Mayse and Bogga Young who owned the local pub at Pine Creek. Mayse was a very attractive lady, a real oil painting so to speak. You wouldn’t let her looks fool you though, she was tough as nails. There was also another family by the name of Lees, they had a store in a big shed. The kindness of the Lees would be proved later on.

Ah Toy’s General Store in Pine Creek sold a large range of goods from saddlery needs, to groceries and everything in between. It was owned by the Ah Toy family who would stock carbide and hurricane lamps, and all the bush needs including miners picks etc. Old Mr Ah Toy used to ride miles on his pushbike to deliver tea, flour and other goods to the prospectors to make a bit of freight money. It was a really good service. One of my sisters many years later worked for old Mr Ah Toy’s son Eddie in the shop for quite a while.

I remember one of the old-timers living on the outskirts of town. He emptied out some used carbide on the ground. He lit it and told one of the boys to throw water on it and put it out. He poured water on it and to their great astonishment it flared up even more. With carbide it feeds more with water, that’s how the lights work. The old-timer gave a bit of a chuckle. Other lights they used were hurricane lights filled with kerosene which had a wick to light.

In the wet season everyone would throw out their pumpkin and watermelon seeds. They saved a lot of water that way because the soil stayed damp. Uncut pumpkins would last for months. They would also grow other vegetables which would often be bartered for other foods such as eggs and chooks.

The boys would get a few donkeys and cook them for a couple of days in 44 gallon drums until the meat was falling off the bone. They would let it get cool and feed it to the pigs. We used to eat young donkey as well. It was pretty good meat. There were a lot of donkeys around Hays Creek and Pine Creek. There were big mobs of donkeys which you don’t see anymore. The mobs now only consist of four to six in one mob.

There are still a lot of brumbies in that area too. Old-timers including Norm Jensen, Fred Martin, Bill Cain and Tex Moore, as well as Guv let the horses go when they left the stations. Some of their horses were descendants of the Timor Pony breed. There is also some good looking black stallions still in that area to this day. There is a place just out of Pine Creek which is a brumby sanctuary which is good to see. The place runs through the old Stuart Highway south of Pine Creek. Some were from the brumby foals Guv brought from Thorntonia Station.

THE OLD-TIMER

The old man saddled his horse, his blue heeler dog by his side

He had to make an early start, he is in for a long ride