I needed to pause in the raucous tumult of loading and find the words of poetry that would be a strange prayer for this one death among thousands. I needed to brush one hand on the red swirled hair of her forehead before turning back to the cattle in the race. The wild wasn’t tender when it came to life and death. This cow had been born beneath some gnarled bloodwood in the gulf-country forest to live among the heat and flies of the coast, only to die suddenly in a chute because people wanted their will imposed where they thought there was none.
But she wouldn’t have been there to begin with if it hadn’t been for some human dream of order long ago. And she would have died anyway. A croc or a pack of wild dogs would have had less mercy. That it had happened before my eyes made it neither sacred nor profane. The kites would clean her completely. The wind and sun, bleaching bones and carrying away the dust of her living, would somehow purify her, or wrap her into the cycle that existed above and beyond human dilemmas. As it was, I would have to let go of my sadness, to learn, like the mangroves, to filter the salt out of my blood, or cry like seabirds do to flush out the sea, or release salt through my tongue like a crocodile. Vic had sat on the cow’s turgid lumpy belly and tallied cattle in a small green book. Later, when the road trains pulled away for long hours of dirt road and highways farther south, when dust had cleared from the air and the cattle milled quiet, one of the guys would drag her out to the mudflats to give the wild pigs and dingoes something to eat for the night.
Stock Industry
MUSTERING IN THE MODERN OUTBACK entails a large operation. Long stretches of barbed wire, several strands of it held up at intervals by metal and wood pickets, divide the property into paddocks. The entire expanse is cross-fenced into these smaller parcels, each a few hundred to a few thousand hectares in area. The herd of cattle, whether it numbers five hundred or fifty thousand, is split into several mobs, a mob being any subset. The different mobs graze year-round in the large paddocks. Twice a year, crews muster all of the paddocks, one at a time, walking or hauling the cattle into a set of yards to brand the young calves, wean the older calves, sort out the cull cows and bulls, and then vaccinate, doctor, tick-dip, tail-bang, and sometimes preg-check the cows that will be turned out again. During drought years, the owners or managers might sell off a larger portion of the herd, keeping only the best genetics—young healthy cows for breeding stock.
The stock industry—cattle, horses, and sheep—has long defined the outback. The land proved too harsh for most agricultural endeavors, but sheep in particular found ways to survive and even flourish, their numbers expanding from a hundred thousand in 1820 to over a million a decade later. In another three decades, the numbers had swelled to thirteen million. Yet in those years, the settlers were no more than four hundred thousand, and the tracks of settlers, squatters, and herdsmen could only be followed with uncertainty.
No one knew how far into the interior the settlements reached, or how far each man traveled with his herds. Maps that might have assisted would-be settlers and stockmen had yet to be drawn up. The continent was to them a blank stone, scratched only along the edges with a few lines running inward, the Great Dividing Range holding all of the newcomers back for a quarter century. Then, in a haphazard, each-man-for-himself rush, the psychological barrier crumbled. The government sent out surveyors and issued land grants and titles, but herdsmen quickly spread beyond the farthest surveyed limits, beyond the known world, and beyond the reach of the law. Livestock were pushed into new areas across the continent, and released to find their own ways of surviving.
Great herds reached the northern state of Queensland, and the far north of the gulf country, in the 1860s. Livestock were shipped by boat, then waded through mangrove swamps to reach dry land and find water holes that weren’t full of tide. In some cases they were driven across the desolate inner swaths to the farthest reaches of the continent. The tough—the stock that didn’t get smashed to death by hurricane winds and swells, or sucked into mud, didn’t sicken from bad water or disease, or die of exhaustion and lack of water or feed—made it to the interior and beyond. Sheepmen sheared and shipped the wool back to England, to be spun and woven into blankets and garments. Cattlemen shipped out beef on the hoof. The industry became the foundation for wealth and sustained the continent during the first century of its colonial occupation.
When stock prices dropped too low and livestock herds grew too large for the arid land to support them, a few thought they would recover their costs and turn a profit by boiling millions of sheep and cattle until they turned to grease. They called it boiling down, a sickening image, but tallow made soap to cleanse the country of its overindulgence. This was the story. The people who stayed endured every manner of depression, drought, and setback, layer after layer.
Cattle gradually replaced sheep as the wool market plummeted and refrigeration techniques were developed on cargo ships to transport beef back to Europe. Cattle also proved more durable in the long run. English breeds of Shorthorn and Hereford adapted well to the more verdant fringes and the South, but the interior demanded other blood. So in the early part of the twentieth century the North American-bred Brahman cattle—heat-, tick-, and disease-resistant—changed the entire herd of Australia. Over time the stockmen adapted too, developing their own traditions and heritage, born of Australia, written into songs and the creases of their hands and faces; carried with pride, patience, and the requisite rugged recklessness. The process resulted in a coevolution of stock, stockmen, and the environments of the immense island continent.
A Quiet Muster
DAWN SEEPED IN AT THE EDGE of the clearing beyond the kitchen, offering its pale glow as a halo over our world. We gathered and left in the dark, piling into utes to drive to the yards. I had silently joined the mustering crew, following after Miles when he left the kitchen after a brief consultation with Angus. No one told me to do otherwise. If I kept quiet and almost invisible, I might be able to slip in, as I had in the yards, without much disruption.
The crew had split up to divide the work, and just a few of us—Miles, Victoria, Cole, and I—would ride together that morning, bringing in cattle that had been mustered to a holding paddock to be worked at the house yards. Cole, with his vest zipped up but bare arms exposed, started the big diesel horse truck that stayed parked at the yards and pulled up alongside the loading ramp. Vic opened the door to the shipping container that served as the saddle shed. She and Cole had brought a pile of saddles, bridles, pads, shoeing tools, and veterinary supplies along with their truckload of thoroughbreds. The inside of the shipping container was so dark I couldn’t distinguish the saddles, but I found mine by feel, and the other ringers seemed to know by instinct which rack held their saddles and bridles. Vic and Cole gathered halters and bridles and entered the pens through metal gates, their figures moving in among the shadowy forms of horses.
I caught Darcy and slipped the snaffle bit into his mouth and the headstall over his ears. He followed me on a loose rein through the pale filtered dawn. The ringers tied their horses and hauled saddles out of the shed. We brushed the horses’ backs with our hands, placed blankets and saddles, and pulled up cinches. The little Australian stock saddles were lightweight, easy to toss up onto the horses’ backs. The latigo—a strap used to adjust the cinch—was just a piece of webbing, instead of the thick band of leather I was used to. Following the others, I led Darcy carefully up the loading ramp to stand packed close and parallel with the other horses. The horses lined up in the back of the big truck, their hooves braced against the metal grid welded to the floor to give them extra footing.
Miles tied his horse at the front so he could unload his mount last, after he mustered the paddock with the motorbike. Cole closed the heavy iron doors of the truck crate and slid the ramp back into place. The ramp was hard to lift, and harder to slide under the bed of the truck. Cole said a bull had smashed it a few weeks back and bent it out of shape. He spoke quietly, gently, his tone defying the meaning of his words. Miles left ahead of us with the motorbike; he would