Some of My Friends Have Tails by Sara Henderson

Author:Sara Henderson [Sara Henderson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743341735
Publisher: Momentum Books
Published: 2012-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Around Charlie, pandemonium reigned in the air and on the ground. There were continual problems, breakdowns, staff leaving, arrangements delayed or just completely forgotten. To this day, I am not sure if it was bad luck, lack of funds, bad equipment, untrained staff, or having a cattle station run—oops—commanded by a frustrated, would-be fighter pilot … maybe it was all of these things. Whatever, the result was devastation, a constant seemingly hopeless situation, that bumbled and stumbled from one fiasco to the next.

It was not out of the norm for the cattle trucks to arrive at the yards and find no cattle to load. On many occasions, the stock camp would ‘down tools’ and walk out because of one of Charlie’s outrageous demands. The muster would be delayed until more unsuspecting stockmen arrived and picked up the pieces. But Charlie would regularly forget to notify the trucking company of the delay. Trucks would arrive at the appointed time and find the yards empty. Often the drivers would find themselves on a horse, whether they could ride or not, out in a paddock, with the girls (out of school again), the cook-cum-teacher-cum-nurse-cum-typist, namely me, on horses, racing around the paddock rounding up cattle, while Charlie swooped around the sky shouting orders at us out the window.

As one stockman put it, ‘Missus, I don’t mind the rough conditions, I don’t mind riding a half-broken mad horse. I don’t mind working for a bloke that doesn’t know what he’s doing most of the time; I don’t even mind all his crazy ideas. But I don’t much like the idea of getting my head chopped off by a propellor blade while riding a horse, mustering cattle. Wild cattle ain’t the danger out here!’

But sometimes, not often, there were unexpected bonuses in working for Charlie. Peter Per, Uncle Dick’s assistant hooch-maker, drinking mate and deputy mechanic, left the station for the umpteenth time after Charlie made him mad. He applied for a job in Darwin at one of the big hotels. The job was fairly cushy after Bullo, taking care of the swimming pool filtering machinery, plus various garden-tending duties. There were hundreds of applicants. The manager was interviewing the long line of men. He asked their name, where they had worked last, and a few other questions, took a phone contact and told the man he would be in touch. This was done without lifting his head or looking at the man. He knew the reason most of the men were applying for the job was to be near the grog, and that was their only qualification. Per was no different in this respect, but he was also a mechanic.

Peter Per finally reached the desk. He was asked his name, age and occupation in rapid fire, then where he worked last. When he replied Bullo River the manager stopped writing and looked up for the first time. ‘How long did you work for Charlie Henderson?’

When Peter told him six months, he was hired on the spot.

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