For anyone who has been following my blog for a while, they will know that I am a huge fan of the books of Arthur Upfield. He wrote many wonderful fictional books which are based on the Australian Outback. Some stories, like the one that follows, are about his own experiences. His stories are all drawn from his own observations, trials and tribulations in the Outback. He lived his stories. He said:
“In me was born a passionate love for the
Australian bush which
will burn until the end, a love stronger
than love of family, so strong that
even now it threatens to claim me”
Sunday Times 21 February 1932, page 7
Experiences in the “Never-Never” Country
Into the Great Solitude With Camels
by Arthur Upfield
The No 1 Rabbit-Proof fence in this State is, without doubt, the longest fence in the world, running from Starvation Harbor, east of Hopetoun, northward for 1139 miles to Banningarra on the northwest coast. Administered by a Government department it is divided into two sections, each section controlled by an inspector who, in turn, controls the boundary-riders.
My section of fence, two years ago, was 163 miles in length, the journey each way occupying a fortnight. I used two camels drawing a heavy hooded spring cart and, when comparing that job with similar ones in the Eastern States my solitude was nothing to shout about, for I saw a human being on an average once in six days. In fact, I am beginning to think that if one really desires the blessing of solitude it will be necessary to go somewhere outside Australia. Australia is becoming far too crowded.
My stores for the trip, my swag, stretcher-bed, writing box, camera, and myself were transported to the Government farm east of the fence, which crosses the railway one mile from Burracoppin. At the farm was the cart in which the gear was packed after the two five-gallon water drums were filled. The two camels had to be sought for in a thousand-acre paddock of dense scrub, where their own tracks were so criss-crossed that finding them quickly was quite a matter of luck.
Please accompany me on my trip.
Image – Meta AI
Curley and Belle
Meet Curley and Belle! Curley is a lad about four years old. He has a wicked, impudent look in his eye, and objects to being nose-lined. An ill-mannered beast, he will bite given the slightest opportunity, so he is put down on his knees near a tree, where his head is secured. Give him a free head, and the time will surely come when he will determinedly attempt to scalp a man. Once he nearly got me, but only the crown of my hat suffered. It does not do to take chances with Curley.
You would like Belle, I know. When Belle is being nose-lined she cries, and one sees her back teeth and far down her throat. I am always reminded of a doctor who used to make me say “Ah!” Yet Belle is good. She never attempts to bite. It is advisable, though, to make her lie down before attempting to buckle on or remove her hobbles. I regret to say that neither Belle nor Curley are as well-behaved as some other camels I know.
Brought to the cart, they are laid down and harnessed with much grumbling. Curley wears winkers, and the pandemonium of a lion-filled circus accompanies the trick of slipping them over his head. It used to take me half an hour to get the winkers on him, but we understand each other better now.
Brought to his feet. Curley is backed into the shafts, and his harness rigged thereto without loss of time. Belle then is harnessed up ahead of him. Another man is waiting to give me a hand. He takes the brake. It is the point of the outfit most distant from the camels. The gates out of the farm are opened. The way is clear. I take the chain off the wheel and grab the end of Belle’s nose-line.
With a wild rush, we start. The wheels are almost locked by the brake. We are forced to run. We swing out through the farm gate, take a sharp turn to the right, another to the left, across a culvert over the great Mundaring-Goldfields pipeline, cross then the single-track railway line, again turn to the left on the main road, follow it westward for two hundred yards, and then turn north along the netted rabbit fence. Once off the main road, once on the private Government road which follows the fence for hundreds of miles, our excitement subsides. The locked wheels induce the camels to take it easy, and they are brought to a stop, whereupon Curley is most anxious to look back and see exactly what is behind him, whilst Belle yawns and with her
brilliant, lovely eyes asks: “How did you like that?”
The brakeman is thankful he is going no further. Belle’s nose line is tied back to her harness, and I slip behind to the brake. Curley is trying to form himself into the letter S. The helper and I nod farewell. I whistle to the camels, and away we go, first in a mad rush, but soon at a smart walk, on our long trip, one hundred and sixty-three miles north.
To The Nine Mile
Immediately we leave on the right the farm that abuts the railway, and the bush closes in upon us. It is bush in the literal sense of the word, low broom bush and other rubbish set so close as to be almost impassable, with here and there belts of gimlet trees and salmon gums. The fence runs straight, rising slowly to the first-mile peg, and when we come to that point the fence takes a slight angle to the northeast and the camels settle down to a steady pace.
It is possible now to climb up into the cart over the tail-board, but one has to be constantly ready to jump out and swing on the brake, should the camels’ bolt. Camels are slow-moving animals, but when frightened can put forth tremendous strength. A cart like mine could be drawn comfortably by one camel, but camels have more sense than the white man in that they will not live alone.
At the four-mile peg, we pass two farms. The farmhouse to the right is close to the road, and the reaction to it by the team is interesting. Belle does not like the house and never did. Her approach to it is like that of a cat stalking a bird. Her ears protrude diagonally from her head, small cat-like ears. Curley, however, sees nothing wrong with the house. He saunters along, placidly chewing his cud, and trying to conceal his disgust at not being able to look behind.
Just past the house, Bella can restrain herself no longer. With amazing quickness, she leaps into a swift amble. No less quickly Curley is straining at the tugs. He himself is not at all frightened — but oh, for a good old gallop, and to smash the cursed thing behind against a salmon gum! But the brakes halfway on two seconds before Belle has decided to lead the gallant charge, and before she gets fairly started the wheels are locked. Once past three big trees growing close beside the track they may if they like pull a cart with locked wheels for several miles; we shall reach our northern terminus the sooner.
Dragging a wheel-locked cart, however, is too much like work. Once past farms, the familiar bush surrounds us — at this point quite useless stuff, a thousand acres of which would not support a single donkey. The first day we travel nine miles. We may have had to stop a dozen times to mend a broken wire, renew a broken post, or repair a tear in the netting. The Inspector might come along at any time, and he has an eye like an eaglehawk.
At the nine-mile peg, the fence crosses a water gutter lined with a species of wattle, and this wattle proves very attractive to the camels for about half an hour. Now, a horse will eat its fill from grass, a donkey will be content with licking out meat tins, and a goat will thrive on an old boot, but a camel, like a man, cannot live on bread alone. It must have a mixed diet. Grass it will not eat, which is as well, for there is no grass along my section, save at the nineteen-mile. The wattle at the nine-mile creek is the only fodder in that locality, and it is, therefore, a question of eat it or go hungry. And after half an hour the camels will prefer hunger. To let them free, even in shortened hobbles, would mean nothing for them to find and a 10-mile walk after them in the morning.
There is but one thing to do, which is to rope them each to a wattle bush when unharnessed from the cart; but shortly after the sun has set I serve them a meal of wheat chaff obtained from the Government farm. I do not think I could sleep that night if the last thing I saw was reproach in their eyes at being compelled to go hungry. The chaff is given to them in petrol cases. Belle does not care much for it at first, but Curly eats avidly, and when he is finished he invariably picks the box up with bis month and lays it down again, well out of the way, exactly like a small child pushing its empty plate aside.
Dinner that night is a feast. I dine off half a dozen mutton chops grilled gently over the wood coals, fresh yeast bread, and strong coffee. I have sufficient bread to last two days, but the weather being hot I shall not again taste meat for a month. In the winter one can pack butter easily, but at no time of the year does the man call with the ice.
The camp chores done, I lie on my stretcher bed, set up beside the cart, and reread my last four weeks accumulated mail, and wonder sometimes how I could have been such a fool ever to have left the city. And there, under the familiar canopy of stars, I fall asleep, untroubled by bad digestion or worry, and sleep soundly till the alarm goes off just when dawn lightens the sky. It is not a clock bell that rings, but the camel bells that clank and clatter violently when the animals simultaneously get to their feet to put in a second half-hour on wattle bushes and a little chaff.
Through Enemy Country
We are on the track again before sunrise. It is going to be a hot day, and there are 18 miles before us. The earlier we start the earlier we reach camp, and this is a day of days when we meet numerous enemies. At the 14-mile peg we crest a long rise and see before us a ten-mile belt of cleared farms running east and west. Ten years before the virgin bush covered that belt. Beyond it, the uncleared bush shows black to the crest of a far distant rise of ground, a black ribbon below the horizon gashed by a single brown cut through which runs the fence.
Crossing the farm belt is attended by some slight anxiety. The camels are prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation, and provocation occurs in the shape of roaring tractors, humming harvester machines, and three-horse waggons carting water in galvanised iron tanks. One is obliged to walk at the rear of the cart within easy reach of the brake handle. To meet a team coming along the public road — here a chain east of the fence — is to wager which will bolt first — my camels or the other fellow’s horses. The odds are even that both teams will bolt at precisely the same instant and the opportunity is lost to say “good day.” If there is anything more intense than our dislike of the farmers, it is the farmers’ hatred of us.
At the 19-mile there is a standpipe connected with the goldfields water supply, and at this standpipe, many farmers obtain water for their stock and domestic use. A complex of animals and waggons at this standpipe on one of my journeys south resulted in a peculiar accident, when camels and horses bolted at the same time, and a white horse became entangled in the fence, obliterating four panels of netting. Plain and barbed wire were half-hitched around its neck and its four legs, holding it more securely than a fly is held by a spider’s web. It took 20 minutes with axe and wire cutters to get it free, and the astonishing fact remains that beyond a few gashes, the animal was unhurt, and ere long was able to resume its work of water drawing.
Belle, Curley, and I are always glad to get across the wheat belt. We are thankful, too, when we have crossed, the railway line at Campion, on the 26-mile peg, for this place always proves to be a source of excitement. At the twenty-seven mile, there is a Government hut and a rain tank but is built too close to the road to be of service, because the public empty the rain tank.
Sixty Mile Camp
It is evident that both Curley and Belle are pleased when we arrive at the sixty-mile salmon gum flats where on grow currant bush, wait-a-bit, and a kind of blue bush which they like. Curley loses no time in sampling the varied menu, but Belle requires watching. She has a homing instinct stronger than a racing pigeon, and she causes me to despair. Hardly able to restrain her eagerness to obey, she hastily snatches a meal before hurrying to the road and away. Every half hour I am obliged to go after her with a nose line and bring her back to Curley, who watches the operation with placid incuriousness. I have allowed her sometimes to get well away, just to see what happens, and it is not long before she is far up the track and unseen by the “lad” who is feeding in the bush. He realises suddenly that his companion and partner in many glorious bolts has left him. “The cat!” He bellows like a bull, and goes after her in great lunging jumps, moving both his hobbled forefeet at once.
Curley and Belle – Photo TROVE
It is necessary every night to anchor poor Belle to a tree and cut scrub for her to eat during the hours of darkness, for there is not a cross fence between us and her childhood home. She cries sometimes and gets into a pet when she finds herself a prisoner and observes the gallant Curley at liberty; but at many camps, it is advisable to tie Curley to a tree as well, when she resigns herself more calmly to a cruel fate.
As a matter of simple fact, the country over which lies my section is not suitable for camels. Mile after mile of it is sandplain desert, and nowhere is there really first-class camel feed. Yet the distance between watering places and the obvious expense of carting chaff for horses compel the use of camels.
Desert and Oasis
We reach the northern edge of the good timber country at about the sixty-eight-mile peg. All this country has been surveyed and is rapidly being swamped by the land-seeking army. The sixty-nine-mile peg is on a quartz and ironstone ridge on which grows the wattle that flames yellow in the spring. Here we turn east for ten chains when we reach another small hut and a rock tank at the foot of an outcrop of granite covering many acres.
North of the sixty-nine-mile peg the country is undulating — the rises covered with broom bush and scrub, the flats supporting gimlet — this rises so far distant that it is sometimes possible to see the locality of the night’s camp early in the morning. The fence is always straight, with a few deviations. At long intervals, we pass gates, but why those gates are there we do not know, for the tracks through them are very old and faint. From the crest of one low ridge, one can follow the fence and its cut line gashing the bush-covered ridge 10 and 15 miles north. For 27 miles there is not enough edible feed to support a mule. The 82-mile camp — there is no choice now — is situated where the fence flows through a cutting in the rough breakaway country, and from the summit of the rocks, one can look down upon the desolation.
Imagine yourself standing on a chair gazing down on a great green-black carpet, ridged here and there as though it had not been laid properly. From my vantage point on the far-flung circular edge of the world, I see not a single break in the vast desolation of nature surrounding me. In this world, there are but two colours. The greenish-black of the earth and the steel-blue of the cloudless sky. I sit on a balancing rock feeling as possible as an ant feels when exalted on a pebble.
The narrow belt of gimlet and saltbush at the ninety-six mile is a veritable oasis in the desert. Approximately half-way to the Camel Station we take out a day here in lieu of the two Saturday afternoons we have worked since leaving Burracoppin. Here there is a roomy hut and plenty of rainwater in two big galvanised tanks. No less than myself, the camels are immensely pleased to reach this place. Near a convenient tree opposite the hut the team is stopped, whereupon Curley proclaims his impatience to fill a depleted stomach by shuffling his feet, and generally misbehaving. Prim Miss Belle regards the saltbush with assumed languor and an expression of infantile innocence.
Immediately she is released from her trace chains attention has to be given to the “lad.” He is in the mood to bite, and bite hard, the midget biped who will not hurry to let him get at that saltbush. And, when finally he is free from the cart shafts, he throws himself down instantly and bellows a demand to be unharnessed at once. Belled and hobbled, they are set at liberty. For an hour I may forget them, for experience has taught me that they will not attempt to go far until they have removed the edge of the hunger and called back for a drink. It is later when each has drunk 12 gallons of sparkling water from buckets that Belle will receive her wireless call from home. Curley watches her start off, contempt for her foolishness in his black eyes. I shout after Belle. She turns right round and pretends to be interested in the scenery, but directly as I turn my back she is off again. Now and then Curley looks over at me, wrinkles his nose in a sniff, and says with his eyes:
“There you are, old boy! Women! Ain’t they the limit?”
Desert Castaways
Once on reaching this camp, I found three men in possession. Seeing no car or other mode of transport, naturally, I assumed they were tramps. But tramps do not wear good cloth trousers as a rule, and never thin-soled shoes. They were, in fact, desert castaways. They were coming south in a car from the far north when at the 125 mile the steering gear broke, the car dashed into the fence, destroyed four panels, and fortunately skidded off the track again, when it was brought to a stop. It was in January, and the weather was extremely hot. The travellers were unaware that on the fence at the 126 mile, is a hut and rock tank, and that ten miles west of the fence at that point is a station homestead, where they could have secured willing and instant help. They had no water other than that in the radiator and a packet of biscuits. Another car might come along within the week, or it might not. Knowing that there was water at the 96-mile peg they abandoned the car and walked the 29 miles south during the night.
Obviously, a walk of that length is a great undertaking to men unused to walking, and wearing city footgear. Two of them were by no means bright and merry when, fortunately, I happened along. Of course, they were welcome to my plain fare of tinned dog and rice, and the following day accompanied me to the 106-mile peg, and the day after were fortunate in being taken on to the station homestead for assistance in a chance passing car.
At another time, at the 107-mile peg, where the bush is but two feet high, I saw something light red in colour move at the edge of the track ahead. The reddish object, when now and then it revealed itself, appeared exactly like a dingos low red body worrying the carcase of an emu, of which at that time there were hundreds along the track. Then, dingo scalps were worth £2 each. I, therefore, decided to stake a cartridge on the red, as it were; and with the rifle, I walked a little way ahead of the team to try my luck at about 150 yards. Having shot kangaroos for a living, I considered my chance fairly good. Sitting down with my back to the fence, elbows supported and steadied on raised knees, I waited to see the dog move again into sight. And presently a man lurched to his feet and walked with a visible stagger to the fence, against which he leaned.
That man’s luck! He proved to be a harmless lunatic, a victim probably of bush loneliness, and he confided that he was walking to Port Darwin. He had not followed the fence from the farm country, leaving tracks for me to see, and he would not be advised to turn back. Later I heard that he had arrived at Meekatharra, and like Captain Hatteras, was still walking north.
Journeys End
Day after day we cover from 10 to 13 miles. Night after night I sit at a small table in the cart engaged in my interminable writing. Barely do we meet anyone, but when a car is seen coming I halt the team on the track so that the travellers may not pass with a mere lordly wave of the hand. To them, I say:
“I have to inform you that you are trespassing on Government property, and that you are liable to be fined £100, so please give me your names and addresses. That is official – unofficially, how about stopping ten minutes for a drink of tea?”
So they stay, and we boil the billy, and I do all the talking because my tongue has become stiff from lack of exercise, and when they go everyone is happy. So much better than passing me with that feeling of superiority above the wretched boundary rider. Some are horrified, by the loneliness of my life, and fail to understand that to me a far more terrible life is that lived in a factory or an office.
We complete the crossing of the desert when we are 154 miles north of Burracoppin. Jam bush and desert trees give way to broad-leafed mulga growing apart at greater distances and giving living room to saltbush, cotton bush and tussock grass. It is the southern edge of the pastoral country, and now we sometimes see the bounding kangaroo, and often the waddling monarch Iguana. The ground is covered with small pieces of white quartz, reminding one of death and graveyards.
At the 160-mile peg Belle and Curley begin to call for their relatives in the camel station paddocks on the west side of the fence, for we are now nearing the end of the journey. Half an hour later the scrub on our left seems to lift as though raised by a giant hand, and there is revealed to us a stone-built house with towering wireless masts beside it, and beyond it a low hill, called from its two curved humps, Dromedary Hill. Belle cries continuously with a glad note in her voice. Curley tries to gallop. We are “home” at last. The man in charge of the camel station comes out and opens the gate for us. He and I are bright with smiles, for his life is one of solitude like mine. We talk with eagerness and the sound of his blessed voice in my ears is no less strange than the sound of my own.
We unharness the camels and let them go free of the detested hobbles. Off they amble in their rolling stride, bellowing for their friends. We walk into the kitchen and drink scalding tea, and talk as gossiping old women of unimportant incidents that have occurred during the weeks I have been on the track. And at night we tune in on the wireless and listen to the announcer 360 miles away in Perth.
If there is no romance, no gaiety, no softness of civilisation in the life of a Government boundary-rider, there is indeed a tranquillity of mind, a peace, not to be found in cities. When he does taste the fleshpots, may he not be allowed to gorge? For me, seven days in a city are sufficient. Like Belle, listening ceaselessly to the voice calling her home,
I hear the voices of the bush calling, calling, insistently calling. And then the city is a prison.
Reproduced with permission of: ETT Imprint, publishers of Arthur Upfield and Bony, worldwide.
Moya Sharp
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What a wonderful tale, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for sharing it.
I loved reading the Aurthur Upfield story. I have an interest in the Kalgoorlie area as a relative of mine arrived there from England in the early 1900’s. She was the daughter of my great grandfather, Francis T Day, a photographer in Saffron Waldron. She was born Lilian Day, and married a Ross King and came to the Goldfields of Kalgoorlie. I found one newspaper article about her trying to stop people poisoning dogs, but that’s all.
I’m hoping you may have more information about her.
Yours,
Andrew Payne.
photographix@bigpond.com
Have emailed you Andrew
Hello Moya. What a pleasant read this boundry rider presents, a good change from the artificial stories of 2024. Thank you, regards, Kevin stiller, Brisbane.