Follow My Dust by Jessica Hawke

Author:Jessica Hawke [Hawke, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781875892921
Publisher: ETT Imprint
Published: 2015-11-07T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE AMATEUR BULL-FIGHTER

I

Late spring one year, Upfield found himself again at Milparinka and decided to prospect out to Yandama, a property of three thousand square miles, and famous for its horses. Yandama occupies the far north-west tip of New South Wales, and is reached by crossing high plains and stony flats, then abruptly dropping down to the sandhill country, where the homestead lies athwart a small creek.

The Yandama Creek meanders westward from the homestead, crosses into South Australia and enters a depression joining Lake Callabonna with Lake Frome. North-west of the homestead is Sturt’s old camp, named Fort Grey, and a mile or so beyond this you can brew tea in New South Wales, toss the leaves into Queensland and water South Australia, for here the boundaries of the three States meet, here at this angle meet three great dog- and rabbit-proof State fences.

Upfield accompanied the camel-rider patrolling the northern section of the South Australian border fence, and saluted the three States in the time-honoured manner. One of the gates on this section barred a track leading to the homestead of Tilcha Station in South Australia; the track did not pass beyond the homestead, for beyond Tilcha live only the buckbush and the flies. To this homestead was yet to come a woman who wrote a fine book entitled No Roads Go By.

Subsequently, Upfield took over a section of the fence west of the Quinambie homestead, the section being twenty-two miles long, and pack-camels used for transportation. The fence is dog-proof, being six feet high of wire netting topped with barbed wire, and it runs due north and south, this particular section an endless switchback over gigantic sand ranges.

These sand ranges run east-west for miles, and from the eastern highlands to the shores of Lake Frome, like the waves of a petrified ocean, waves of red sand forty and fifty feet high above the troughs of narrow, hard flats.

With two camels to carry his equipment, Upfield discovered that his section of twenty-two miles was twenty miles too long. Across flat and over sandhill, the fence had to be not less than six feet high, the minimum height to stop dingoes; and the eternal battle was to prevent the fence being engulfed by sand.

The quiet and crisp winter days and cold nights of inland Australia present a markedly different country from that ruled by the summer sun. In summer this world comes alive and what is termed the Dead Heart fights and bashes men and animals, and brings flies, snakes, iguanas and perentis, stomach and eye troubles, and the conviction of lunacy for being there.

Yet Upfield gained much from it.

Come November, the flies are such that the white tarpaulin over the pack-load is made black, and the only relief in this cattle country is to keep one’s face in the hot air rising from a fire, and there eat your salt beef and bone-dry soda bread. Cooking is done and dinner eaten after dark.

But you are not alone in this

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