Did I tell you about the time they called me, among other things ‘you little beauty’ and our ‘King of Cups’
It was during my days wandering from sheep station to cattle station in colonial Australia. It was at the time when they said that ‘Australia rode on the sheep’s back’.
Now I took pride in the fact that I could turn my hand to almost anything. When you are a down on your luck, wandering swaggie, on the track, humping your Bluey with a few precious belongings, you need to be nimble, adaptive, a Jack of all trades. Rarely are you a master of any.
I was headed for Baldwin Station, a property reputed to cover more than a million hectares. The squatter, as of iconic Waltzing Matilda fame had occupied a vast tract of ‘unoccupied’ land in order to graze his livestock. He and others like him not only contributed to the growth of the wool industry but became part of a very powerful social class. But that and the so called unoccupied land is stuff for another yarn.
When I arrived the place was in chaos. Old Herbert, the Squatter, was in Adelaide on urgent business and the cook, a giant of a roustabout had just suffered a traumatic injury to his head after a drunken altercation, the details of which are best left to the imagination, with a ram. Apparently they were not sure he, or the indignant ram for that matter, would recover.
‘Can you rustle up a meal’ were the words I was greeted with when the harried station manager met me on the track approaching the homestead.
Now I have been known to produce feeds for hungry sailors at sea but feeding men who worked so hard terrified me. I maintained a poker face and simply said ‘of course! Take me to the kitchen”…. To be continued
Wild Mother Calling 