My Dad the Cattle Drover

Dad was a bushman and a cattleman. Fairly tall, slim and wiry best described his physique. Clean shaven with short dark hair, his ears stuck out  from years of supporting a felt hat.  He was fastidious and scrupulously clean, never wore a dirty shirt and his shoes and elastic sided boots were always well cared for.

Dad on his horse outside 'Ferris's Hotel' in Dorrigo NSW - The hotel has a different name, but we always knew it by the name of the owner who was Mick Ferris (at least in the early 50's it was but I'm not sure when this photo was taken). The pic is cropped from a larger scene. See photo at end of story.

He was likeable, quick witted and entertaining. I'm loath to describe him as a charmer because that can imply insincerity and for all his faults I don't think he was ever deliberately insincere. Probably the word charismatic if we?d known it then would have fitted him to a 'T'. But  more than anything he was a wanderer at heart. As an old man well into his 70's when I was barely a teenager, his words of advice to me were "Don't own anything Lyndy. It'll tie you down".

How I remembered those words over the years! I inherited dad's wanderlust  but didn't take his advice, so each move's a painful experience of sorting and transporting my accumulation of goods. Perhaps I need to prove dad wrong - that you can still 'own things' and not be tied down?

Born in 1883, my dad was 62 when I was born in 1945.  My earliest memories of him are at our small farm on a mountain plateau in Northern NSW where by any standards we must have lived in poverty. But not abject poverty. That phrase conjures up images of grief and neglect and our life was far from that. My brother and I had no sense of being poor or unhappy.

Our wonderful mum somehow kept us fed with basics she grew herself, with a chook from our own fowl-yard for the occasional special Sunday roast. And our dad would periodically re-appear on the scene in between his trips away cattle droving and whatever else he got up to. Then the diet would be supplemented by rabbits which I helped him trap, eel freshly caught from a nearby creek, mushrooms from surrounding paddocks, and potatoes grubbed from the soil of last seasons planting.

Then the days would be filled with rare treats,  accompanying dad on various small adventures.  One day when a burn-off of some long grasses started to get away he had us all there helping. Mum, my brother and myself all beating at the edges of the runaway flames with wet hessian bags. Another time he was teaching me to ride on a loosely  saddled horse when the horse trotted away - with me swinging upside down under the horses belly. In between these little adventures I cleaned the copper pennies which dad gave me occasionally until they shone so brightly I could pretend they were gold!

Most nights when dad was home were spent at the scrubbed kitchen table by the light of a kerosene lamp. There we would listen entranced while dad spun his yarns, played the mouth organ, and taught us his Irish and bush songs. Sometime during his life he'd learnt to tap dance, and nothing pleased him more than teaching tap to his "little Lyndy" - but he was a hard taskmaster, insisting on the basic steps being practiced on a small milking stool. I wasn't allowed to look down and if I fell off I'd allowed my feet to range too far!

One night was different. A mob of cattle had to be moved down the mountain on a very narrow, steep and winding road cut into the mountain-side..

I was only about 6 years old at the time - my brother 9. Why he didn't use cattle dogs I don't know. Or maybe dogs won?t work at night? Whatever the reason we were all conscripted to help take the mob down the mountain.  My father had a  reputation as a great cattleman. Sometimes when he was bringing a mob into town from a safer direction we could hear his colourful drovers language mingling with the crack of his stockwhip anything up to four miles away.

But the night we took the mob down that dark mountain was different. His voice was like a slow monotonous soothing caress which he kept up for hours. No stockwhip that night. He knew that if the cattle were 'spooked' in any way we'd see most of the mob stumble to their deaths in the thick scrub on the steep inaccessible mountain slopes. Well we made it. After spending the best part of the night on the road, on foot, bringing those cattle down the mountain, we hadn't lost a single beast.

Well known Australian artist Kevin Best OAM painted this  interpretation of our journey down the Dorrigo Mountain with the cattle. He has captured the scene at dusk at the commencement of our journey, when the afterglow of sunset is still in the sky, mist is starting to form in pockets, and a waterfall flows down and below the road before cascading further down the mountain-side. In the painting my father is depicted at the rear, my mother and myself on the near side of the roadway, and my brother on the far side. The kerosene lanterns we carried are just starting to glow as night falls. falls.

'Seven Miles to Daybreak' - Kevin Best 2005

Dad's visits home got more infrequent, so when I was seven mum packed up my brother and myself and we moved out west where mum worked as a housekeeper on sheep and wheat properties.

We saw dad just a few times after that, once visiting him for a holiday on a property where he was fencing and care-taking for a while. He still loved his cattle and horses and when we went riding together he was proud as punch of my seat on a horse. He was probably too old to tackle droving then but still attracted a spell-bound audience from properties for miles around to his Saturday evening yarn-spinning sessions.

And what yarns they were - of his youth in Victoria when he used to play the piano for the young Nellie Melba, his departure to South Africa when 16 or 17 to fight in the Boer war, then his later enlistment in WW1 - only to be discharged after being kicked in the back by a horse during training.

Then there were the Irish stories and songs. So compellingly real that when I was younger I'd asked "Daddy, when are we going back to Ireland?"

One story which remains fresh in my mind was of his father's reason for coming to Australia. Dad said his father owned a large house in Northern Ireland, and one night went to investigate a noise in the barn. There was a scuffle with an intruder and the intruder was killed. Being of some position in the community,  my grandfather was given the option by the local constabulary  of emigrating - at great speed - to Australia rather than staying to face murder charges.

Dad also talked of the depression years and how he carried his swag around the country looking for work and food. He claimed that he and a mate had only one respectable pair of pants and coat between them so one would smarten up in the available clothes before approaching a farmhouse or station, while the other would stay hidden in the bushes.

In addition to my brother and myself, I was always aware of the existence of two half sisters and a half brother from dad's earlier marriage. Both families met briefly at dad's funeral in the 60's and then went their separate ways.

Until very recently that is, when  I commenced some belated research into my father and his family. Now the once firm foundations of my childhood move under my feet.

A half sister has been located, though sadly my other half sister, and half brother are both dead. My father appears to have been married several times and there is no record of  his enlistment in WW1. His parents were born and married in England and came to Australia shortly before my father was born. No records relating to Ireland have yet been found.

A timely lesson that  family history as portrayed by our recollection of family stories might be a long way from the truth.

But find the truth one day I will - and that will be another story.

Copyright  Lynda Cracknell (nee Stevens

This photo was a gift from my half sister Lucy, Christmas 2000. She said that Dad was always proud of leading the 'Parade' ? in Dorrigo every year.