To Ride a Fine Horse by Mary Durack

exile far removed from his country and his tribe.

    Pumpkin
    Patsy could see, however, that, delighted as the native was to see him, he was somewhat reproachful and hurt that he had not been called upon to go to Kimberley with the boys. Much as he loved and admired them, Pumpkin had little faith in their ability to pioneer a station in a wild land, and he was worried too about the beautiful Thylungra animals that had no doubt been left to stray to their doom at the hands of the cruel and treacherous Kimberley tribes. What did those book-reading boys know about the proper care of horses and cattle? Moreover, he had never seen them with a tool in their hands and could not imagine how they would make a house for themselves and put up yards and fences.
    Still, Patsy hesitated to send Pumpkin on his own to Kimberley, so the native bided his time, looking after the coach horses and pottering about the garden of ‘Maryview’.
    Meanwhile life in the newly occupied country was proving as lively and exciting as any fiction of the American ‘Wild West’. Jack Sorensen, the balladist, was later to write of how:
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    â€˜The cattlemen of Kimberley, a saddle for a throne,
    Were carving from the wilderness a kingdom of their own;
    A branding iron for sceptre, a stockwhip for a sword,
    From Wyndham past the border, from the Fitzroy to the Ord.’
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    The boys’ first letters were full of exciting news of how they had brought the horses from the Gulf and pegged out the site for a station called Argyle about 160 miles upriver. The two Michaels—‘Long’ and ‘Stumpy’—had selected a site which they called Lissa-dell on the other side of the Ord, while Tom Kilfoyle and Tom Hayes had marked out another place called Rosewood adjoining Argyle.
    Riding back to the Gulf for stores soon after their arrival the boys had been excited to meet hundreds of prospectors making inland to a place called Hall’s Creek and to hear wonderful reports of the gold to be picked up there, of all the ships pouring into the gulf and the little port of Wyndham that had sprung up like a mushroom on the tidal shores. The boys hurried on to find that all they had heard was true. At Black Pat’s store goods were being exchanged for nuggets and they learned that there was a market for all the beef they could supply to the goldfields. They had already sold the first five hundred head for payment in gold and were then about to drove another mob to Hall’s Creek and see the diggings for themselves.
    As he read, Patsy was reminded of his own boyhood at the Ovens River and the unforgettable thrill of weighing out raw nuggets. He remembered that first piece of gold in the shape of a horseshoe and thought that for all the hardships of his life it did seem to have brought him luck. He had prospered in Queensland just as it seemed his boys were to prosper in Kimberley. Everywhere he went people congratulated him on the gold strike and his good judgment in taking up Ord River country that was now being hailed as the richest pasture in Australia. His spirits were ridinghigh when a telegram sent from Darwin brought him suddenly face to face with the grim reality of the new land.
    Big Johnnie Durack, hero of the long overland trail, had been speared by the blacks! There were no details—only the tragic fact to take to the anxious mother and her family at Molong. Later they would learn how the two Johns had been riding together when a spear hurled from an ambush of long grass had struck the elder cousin from his horse. By the time young John had dismounted the other man’s horse had galloped madly off and the natives, painted, befeathered and with raised spears were moving slowly forwardto the kill. Desperately the boy had tried to lift the wounded man into his saddle but Big Johnnie knew his end had come.

    â€˜I’m done for, son,’ he said. ‘Ride for your life,’ and had slumped in his