The Drover's Daughter

By Deanna Dunham

'The Drover's Daughter' is the true story of Deanna 'Dee' Dunham, a girl from a dusty backward town in rural New South Wales, who escaped her harsh and violent childhood only to be swept off her feet by an English playboy who later became a Mormon bishop. Always outspoken and rebellious, Dee gives vivid descriptions of her life as a Mormon wife who was constantly getting in trouble with church leaders. The mother of three children, Dee's life changed forever when her husband got sick and eventually she escaped to the safe haven of a farm in the Australian Sunshine Coast Hinterland where she became a champion goat-breeder and cheesemaker. Dee's extraordinary story includes her moving account of her sister Carol, a schizophrenic who became a prostitute to fund her drug habit and was murdered with her baby daughter and husband in a triple homicide in Sydney in the 1960s. Dee also describes her journeys to Nepal in her 70s to distribute funds she had raised from her hospital bed after the earthquake there. Full of self-deprecation, humour and compassion, 'The Drover's Daughter' will appeal to anyone who is interested in true life stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667857459

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First published in 2021

by Pendulum Books

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-1-66785-745-9

Copyright © Deanna Dunham 2021.  All rights reserved.

Deanna Dunham has asserted her right under the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1998, to be identified as the author of this work. 

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publisher.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

GREAT-GRANDFATHER

FATHER

BOGGABILLA

FRIDAY

JULIA

DROVING

BOARDING SCHOOL

LIFE AFTER BOARDING SCHOOL

MIKE

CAROL

MARRIED LIFE

THE MORMONS

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

DECEMBER 28TH

THE AFTERMATH

WIDOW

KENILWORTH

GOATS

GRANDCHILDREN

NEPAL

ANIMALS

POLITICS

ABOUT WOMEN

THE FUTURE

FOREWORD

I am 82 years old and still not comfortable in my own skin.  I have waited with great anticipation for the beautiful butterfly inside this awkward, clumsy, uncoordinated body to fly free.  And while I patiently await the emergence of the butterfly, I live. This is my story of that life I have lived.

GREAT-GRANDFATHER

My paternal great-grandfather was a convict.  He came from County Clare in Ireland and was transported for stealing a sheep to feed his starving family. He spent five years as a prisoner before he was made a ‘freeman’. By that time he was enjoying the lifestyle in the colonies and decided he would join the merchant navy, return to Ireland and bring the rest of his family to Australia. When he arrived in Ireland, he was grief-stricken on discovering that of all his family there was only one niece who had survived the potato famine. All the others had starved or died of related illnesses.

William brought his niece with him and settled at Hay in western New South Wales where he married and had four children. He worked as a labourer and often had to travel quite long distances and be away from home for extended periods of time. On one occasion, he knew he would be away for several weeks and had little money to leave behind for food for his family. He told his wife that he would post his first pay cheque to her. He arrived home some weeks later to find his wife had committed suicide and the children were starving. On the mantelpiece was the envelope containing the cheque. He had addressed it to himself and his wife would never open his mail.

They were harsh days and there was little time for the luxury of grieving so he soon married another strapping country girl who gave him another 18 children. 22 in all. He managed to acquire a farm which is now Heritage listed and also ran a pub for some time. He continued to run foul of the law being in trouble for S.P. bookmaking and selling sly grog although he always claimed he was set up for that. Eventually, the pub was moved onto the farm site and became a tourist attraction.

My grandfather, also named William, was one of the younger children. He grew to be a very handsome man, a very stylish dresser, and a favourite with the ladies. He also liked to drink and gamble. He was 30 years old and had never married when he met my grandmother Mary Anne Ward.

Her father was a Scottish engineer who had come to the outback to find a way to bring water there.  Her mother was something of a society dame and considered herself somewhat above the common herd who lived in the area.

When her daughter aged 15 ran away with the son of the local publican, it must have been her worst nightmare and when she discovered that her daughter was pregnant she declared her dead and her name was never spoken in the mother’s presence again. Even on her deathbed, she would not allow my grandmother in her presence.

FATHER

Here I am aged 82 and my worst nightmare is becoming a reality. The thing I have dreaded all my life.

I am turning into my father. I have become grumpy, intolerant and vocally opinionated and I am always right (in my opinion).

Give me even a scent that you have right-wing conservative sympathies and I will attack and crucify you with vitriolic words that roll so easily off my tongue, because my democratic socialist beliefs are the only ones with any validity.

If you are a climate denier, don’t tell me. I would encourage you to take up residence on the moon or Mars and let those of us who love this planet get on with the job of rescuing it.

I have different boxes in which to file different categories of people with belief systems I loathe. If you belong to any of those categories, it’s best to stay away from me because I don’t want to hear your reasons or justifications.  You are just wrong.

I’m not quite there yet and hopefully I will die before arrival. As yet, I am not vengeful or consciously cruel to any living thing and those people I love are perfect. Criticise my friends, children, their partners or my grandchildren only if you want to experience the awful wrath of  my unbridled rage.

My father was all the things I have become and more. He was born into a family of 13 in 1909 and with his younger brothers grew up like a little wild animals in the worst of the Great Depression. They lost their property at Lightning Ridge where they were trying to produce superfine Merino wool and walked to Inglewood in Queensland, then moved to tiny Gibbenbel. There for some time, they lived in a makeshift house they built from wattle and daub with an antbed floor and lived on whatever food they could catch or forage.

My father and his two younger brothers Pat and Jim were born there. My grandmother, whom I adored, suffered terribly from depression and when the older girls saw that she was about to have an episode they would take my father and his brothers into the bush and hide them in hollow logs, sometimes for several days, eating only the food their sisters could smuggle to them. My father witnessed a great deal of violence during his childhood.  He and his two younger brothers grew up to be very damaged emotional cripples.

There was a one room, one teacher school near where they lived with a very young and inexperienced teacher. Father and his brothers would all pile on one horse and ride to school.  On hot days, they would overpower the teacher, tie her to a chair and all the students would go down to the river to swim, returning in time to free the teacher before riding home.  On other days, they would sit in class and light up cigarettes they had stolen from the local shop, daring her to stop them but the poor girl was terrified of them.  I don’t know how long this continued for but eventually the young  teacher had a complete breakdown and was carried away by some of the parents. Father laughed as he told us this story, describing how the young woman was screaming blue murder, completely out of her mind.  He couldn’t understand why my sisters and I were crying in sympathy with the teacher.

He was not a tall man but fit, well-built and very handsome with classic Irish good looks. Black curly hair, olive skin and eyes of deepest blue that looked like they were set in with smutty fingers. Socially he was a charming, delightful personality with a special gift for singing and dancing. The ladies loved him and he was happy to perform for them.  Not so much the men.  As I grew older, I noticed that his male friends were very temporary and very few. At every social function he claimed the limelight and did whatever he had to do to be the centre of attention.

My father had many talents. A highly intelligent person, he compensated for his lack of schooling by being an avid reader and became highly educated over a wide range of subjects. He took to studying the Bible when he was in his 80’s after some Seventh Day Adventist missionaries began to call regularly. In a short time, he could quote a reading on almost any given subject. The missionaries were most impressed but he soon put them straight. He was studying the scriptures not because he was interested in the content but so that he could prove them wrong. He relished the debate and was quite disappointed when after a short time, they ceased their visits.

He was also a highly respected stockman during his younger years, winning all the local show competitions for camp draughting and novelty races like flag race, bending race and calf roping.  He was also a man of many contradictions, being a passionate environmentalist long before it was known as a ‘thing’. Nothing was ever wasted, everything was recycled and when in the bush he was always careful to leave the smallest footprint possible. He had a great knowledge of ’bushlore’, never taking more than he needed and always leaving enough for healthy regeneration. I grew up with a strong belief in conservation, though I didn’t know that it was even a word. I assumed that everyone else did the same. I am still shocked at the mindless, often wilful destruction of our only habitable planet.

When I was very small, I felt sorry for my friends because their fathers were so inferior to mine. I wondered if they looked at their fathers and thought they looked like him. As I got a little older and realised how much he disliked me, I became afraid of him and tried to avoid him when he was at home, which fortunately was not often.       As I grew even older, I developed a strange love/hate attitude to him. I constantly rebelled and argued with him knowing that the punishment meted out would be ferocious and cruel and that I would often suffer injuries that did not heal quickly. He used a stock whip expertly in a manner that would inflict the most pain and sometimes I would go to school unable to sit because of the bleeding welts on the upper back of my legs. At other times he used whatever weapon was available: a razor strop, a belt or his hands.

I realised at a fairly young age that the beatings were not necessarily related to my crime. More often, they were related to his state of mind.  Once the violence started, it inflamed his rage and I doubt that he actually knew why I was being punished. It was more about him acting out his anger against someone he disliked and had under his power, someone too vulnerable to fight back.

When I was about five years old, he decided to train me as an equestrienne even though I showed little skill or grace but just loved playing with my pony.  He brought home a beautiful chestnut stallion with a silver mane and tail. It was frisky, highly strung and only partly broken to a saddle. His theory was that if I was the one to ride it, we would bond and it would be my horse for competitive riding.  My mother begged him not to put me on it but he went ahead anyway. I lasted a few seconds in the saddle before it threw me to the ground. Father picked me up and put me back in the saddle and the stallion bucked me off again. This routine was repeated over and over.

By now I was howling, my mother was screaming Stop, you’ll get her killed, stop now, my father was yelling, Shut up and get inside, you stupid woman. You’re turning her into a coward. The horse was snorting and pawing the ground, a couple of dogs had joined the melee and were barking and jumping around and I was howling even louder. Finally, Father gave up in disgust, took the horse away and disappeared into his shed for the remainder of the afternoon.  I sat there on the ground for a long time feeling like every bone in my body was broken and contemplating the fact that I was a disappointment and a failure.

When he was at home, Father liked to tuck my sister Lorraine and me into bed and when we were all settled he would sing to us. The songs he sang were ‘The Fatal Wedding’, ‘The Luggage Van Ahead’, ‘Put My Litttle Shoes Away’, ‘Shep’, and ‘The Bridle Hanging On The Wall’. And many more. He had a huge repertoire of sad songs of tragedy and heartbreak. When he finally had us sobbing our hearts out, he would say Goodnight, put the light out and leave us to cry ourselves to sleep.

But it didn’t stop there. He seemed to get some perverse pleasure from seeing us emotionally distraught. One evening when he was tucking us into bed, the local police sergeant who lived next door called him from the boundary fence. Father went out and was gone quite a long time. When he came back, he came into our room looking very downcast.

I’ve just come to say goodbye, he said sadly. I’ve been accused of murdering a man and the sergeant has arrested me. I have to go to jail and next week they will hang me.

I can still feel the shock and the terror of that moment. Lorraine and I both began to scream hysterically, clinging to each other in a state of panic. Finally, Father began to laugh and swept out a large fish that he had been holding behind his back. The policeman had been fishing and had given him a large yellow belly. To this day, I cannot eat freshwater fish.

When I had children of my own I was determined that they would never be exposed to this emotional trauma so I set strict guidelines with my parents and assumed they would honour my wishes.  There was only one occasion when I witnessed Father up to his old tricks.

Rachel was only a few weeks old and the boys were struggling with having a baby sister who needed much of my time. We were working through the situation when one morning Father arrived at our house. He was amused that the boys were having some jealousy issues so he said to them,

Don’t worry, boys. I met a man this morning who wanted to buy a baby girl. I told him you didn’t want your baby sister so he gave me two dollars for her. He should be here in about an hour to collect her.

The boys began crying,

No, no. She’s our baby. We want to keep her. Please don’t sell her.

I listened to the conversation with disbelief, then asked Father to join me in the kitchen and said,

You’ve just crossed a boundary. If you ever do that to my kids again, you will not be allowed to see them.

He assumed a stance of righteous indignation at my lack of a sense of humour and left. There was no way I could police the situation so I had to assume that he would comply with my wishes.

The only thing I remember about the relationship between our parents is the arguing. It never stopped and often went on long into the night. Lorraine and I, huddled in our big iron bed, would press our hands over our ears to try to block it out. The arguments usually started over money. Father resented every penny spent on Mum and on us, even for essential food and clothing. He was critical of everything Mum did and made no secret of his contempt for her. No matter how hard she worked, it was never enough, he constantly scorned everything about her, including her looks and what he considered her lack of intelligence.

In fact, Mum was a very pretty and intelligent woman but not flashy like Father. She had black wavy hair, olive skin with a very elegant bone structure and emerald green eyes which sent out sparks when she was happy or angry. She struggled with a weight problem and Father constantly taunted her about it so her life became a pattern of starving and bingeing.  She had a beautiful deep, powerful singing voice which was rarely heard because nothing was allowed to take the focus from Father in social situations.

I was very influenced by his attitude to my mother and it was not until I reached adulthood that I realised that she was actually the strong one in their partnership. She kept everything together while he played at being a gentleman. He earned a very good income always and was a hard and reliable worker who could turn his hand to anything but all the money went on horseracing and boy’s toys. When he was at home we all walked on broken glass to avoid upsetting him. Our mother was constantly warning us, Don’t make a noise, you’ll disturb your father. Don’t say that, you’ll upset your father.

There was another side to Father: he could be very kind, generous and compassionate. If anyone came to him for help, he would never refuse.  When I wanted to buy our first house in 1972, I needed $4,000 for a deposit which he happily loaned me. Later, in 1981 when Mike died, he loaned me $1,500 to clear all our debts and refused to take the money when I tried to repay it. I imagine he was equally generous to my sisters. He was also a great storyteller and would hold us spellbound with stories of his childhood in the early 1900’s.

It really saddens me to know that there was a very dark side to Father and I believe he must have been tortured by memories of some of the things he had done. When he was dying at age 101, he was so distressed and afraid. He desperately needed to know that there was enough money in his account to pay his way out of Purgatory.

One of his talents was training animals. He could almost have a horse talking and his dogs were so fiercely loyal to him that they would have died for him. Once when he was droving a small mob of sheep alone, his horse fell and rolled on him, breaking his arm. Eventually he realised that he needed medical attention so he threw his hat into the tent and commanded his dog, Patch, to watch it. When he got to the hospital, he found he needed surgery to mend the arm so was away longer than expected. It was three days later that he returned to his camp. There was Patch guarding the hat. He was starving, dehydrated and exhausted but he would not leave the hat until Father issued the order.

The thing that I am unable to reconcile with this is that he could also be brutally cruel and show no remorse. I am still horrified at some of the things he did to animals that he apparently loved. We always had at least a dozen working dogs and they were always kept lean, apparently a lean dog is a better worker, which meant they were always hungry. One day, Father caught Bluey, a blue cattle dog, trying to steal food from the kitchen table. He grabbed the boiling kettle from the stove and emptied it over the dog’s back.

I will never forget the screams of agony that came from that poor animal for hours and the wailing in pain that lasted for days. My father felt no remorse, in his mind it was a just punishment but Bluey suffered terrible wounds which took months to heal.  As a child I never wanted a dog of my own because I was afraid of what he would do to it. There were many incidents like this but recalling them is much too painful. Enough to say that my father had a sadistic streak that terrified yet enraged me from when I was very young.

As I grew older, his dislike of me became more apparent but boarding school provided me with a reprieve from the age of 11 to 14. Then we moved to Newcastle and I moved back with the family for a year before continuing at boarding school until I was 16.

After school on Mondays in Newcastle, my friend Yvonne and I attended an art class so we were always late home, but on this particular day we were preparing for an exhibition, lost track of time and missed our usual bus home. We had to wait an hour for the next bus. I was surprised to see Father waiting for me at the bus stop. I actually thought he had come to meet me because it was almost dark and he was concerned with my safety. But the moment I got off the bus he attacked me, hitting me around the head, calling me a slut, a tramp and a whore. He had decided that I was late because I was meeting a boy.

Not once did he ask the reason I had missed the bus. He beat me all the way home and then when we were in the house he really set into me, attacking my head. Eventually I fell to the floor, almost unconscious. As usual, my mother was screaming helplessly and eventually he turned his rage on her, giving me an opportunity to crawl into my bedroom and into bed. The next day it was as if nothing had happened and the incident was never mentioned again.

On more than one occasion, in a fit of rage and usually the result of a row with Mum, he lined us up with a loaded rifle pointed at us, declaring that he was going to shoot all of us because we had ruined his life, preventing him from living the life he wanted. I’m not sure if he would have pulled the trigger, but fortunately on both occasions I remember, Barney arrived, wrestled him to the floor and took the rifle away.

Not long before Mum died, Lorraine and Barney were visiting them in Caboolture. It was late afternoon and Father looked out the window to see three young men, all apparently drunk, coming along the footpath, ripping out all the letterboxes. Father, about 90 years old, hurried down the stairs yelling threats at them and a loud verbal altercation ensued. Mum was very frightened that they would hurt Father so Lorraine asked Barney to go downstairs and persuade Father to come inside.

Reluctantly, Barney went down to try to talk sense into him but just as he arrived on the scene Father threw a rock and hit one of the young men who immediately jumped the fence, punched Barney in the face and knocked him unconscious. As Barney lay bleeding on the ground, Father was dancing around him and yelling,

Come on, you yellow livered bastard.  Get up!!  Get up and fight.  Be a man, you fucking coward!!

Lorraine, who had called the police, rushed down to help Barney upstairs while Father continued to rant at him.

The young men staggered off to their house up the road and the police arrived quite quickly. They lectured Father about the dangers of picking a fight with young drunks and instructed him that if the young men returned he was to lock the doors, stay inside, phone the police and let them deal with it.

The next morning, Lorraine woke up to find Mum in a state of panic. Father was missing. She didn’t know how long he’d been gone but was sure he was in some kind of trouble.  So Lorraine went looking for him and sure enough there he was, pounding on the front door of the house where the young men lived and yelling,       Come out, you bloody cowards. See how brave you are without a belly full of booze. Come on, you useless mongrels. I’ll take the lot of you on. Come out and fight now!!

Of course, the young men were fast asleep and heard nothing.

Having four daughters was Father’s worst nightmare. It meant four weddings and in those days the family of the bride was expected to pay the cost.  When Lorraine wanted to get married he was totally disappoving. She was only 19 so needed parental consent which he withheld until the 11th hour. Finally he signed the papers saying,

I do this with great reluctance. I do not approve of this marriage. You are too young, he is too old for you and he drinks too much. I’m signing this consent under duress and I’m telling you that if you make this bed you will lie in it. Don’t ever come whining to me that you made a mistake. I won’t want to know. 

It’s the only time I ever saw Lorraine defy Father. She said nothing but stood firm, looking him in the eye. When he handed her the signed paper, she quietly thanked him and left.

Lorraine and Barney have been married for more than 60 years and Lorraine often laughingly credits Father for the success of their marriage. She says there were a few rocky times when she might have left but she always remembered Father’s words and was determined not to give him the satisfaction of being right.

Father’s hatred of Barney continued until the day he died but Barney was the kindest and most caring son-in-law he could have wished for. It always seemed sad that Father didn’t embrace Barney as the son he always wanted.  Instead he referred to him as that German bastard (Barney’s mother was Swiss). But to be fair, Father hated all his sons-in-law. Freddy (Mahomet} because he was Indian, Mike because he was English and Stanley, the only one who deserved his dislike, because he was a police officer. He was delighted when my younger sister Jeanette and Stanley divorced but horrified when Jeanette remarried to a man 30 years her junior.

But even with her poor choices in men, Jeanette remained his favourite. He constantly compared Lorraine and me to her and we always came up wanting. She, according to him, was the only one of his daughters who had any brains and since he judged people by their material success, she was the only really successful one.

After Mum died, Father went to live with Lorraine and Barney who took very good care of him. But Father needed drama in his life and since there was none readily available at Lorraine and Barney’s house, he set about creating some.

During Father’s stay with Lorraine, he related many stories to her that she found distressing. He told her of how he suspected a 10 year old boy of stealing his coin collection, so one day he lured the boy into the back of one of the large sheds where he forced him to stand on a stool. He then blindfolded him, put a noose around his neck and demanded that he confess. The boy continued to proclaim his innocence. Father kept him balanced on the stool for hours, the poor child was crying and wet his pants but still Father kept him there. Eventually, Father had no option but to release him with a threat that if he ever revealed the incident to anyone, he would hunt him down and kill him. The boy never told anyone.

Father also told Lorraine how he had attended a horse auction and had his eye on a particular mob of horses that were being offered as a group. Father was outbid by another buyer and the horses were taken to a large paddock with an artesian bore connected to their drinking trough. Father went to the place where the horses were being kept and cut off the water supply so the horses died a slow, agonising death of thirst in temperatures in excess of 35 degrees Celsius. If anyone suspected him of this hideous act, they never made any accusation and Father enjoyed what he thought was suitable revenge.

The thing that was very distressing was that he felt no remorse for either of these actions but actually seemed quite proud of them.

Lorraine and I wept as she recounted the stories, not only for the innocent victims but also for Father that he could possibly believe that what he had done was clever.

He indicated to Jeanette that he was not being well cared for and that he was worried about his money {he had made Lorraine his Enduring Power of Attorney).  Jeanette confronted Lorraine with these accusations and threatened to have her investigated for ‘elder abuse’.  And so the bond between sisters was severed. Jeanette arrived at Lorraine’s house and took possession of all the old family portraits that were hanging in the hallway, including one that Father had given Lorraine as a gift. Jeanette refused to return it saying they were all part of Father’s estate. They were never seen by any of us again.

The last time I spent any real time with Father was when Lorraine was feeling exhausted and her health was suffering. I offered to go down and stay for two weeks so that she and Barney could have some free time together but things didn’t quite work out as planned. As I walked across the tarmac at Newcastle Airport, I felt something snap in my left knee and a searing pain shot up my leg. The pain increased dramatically and by the time I reached the baggage claim I was limping and in agony, but we managed to find me a walking stick so that I could hobble around and be useful.

It was apparent from the beginning of my visit that Father was not happy to see me. We discussed my reason for being there but that just made things worse. When I tried to explain that Lorraine needed a rest break, he became quite angry.

What are you talking about? he snapped. Why does she need a break? She doesn’t do much. I’m no trouble, I don’t make any work for her.

He had no concept that he had taken over their lives to the point where they were constantly driving him to medical appointments and to senior’s activities, shopping, that his dietary choices meant more cooking and food preparation, there was extra cleaning and laundry and as he became less mobile, the burden on Lorraine grew heavier. 

But the thing that caused her the most stress was Father’s hostility  towards Barney. I suggested that Lorraine and Barney take advantage of my presence and plan some outings together, just the two of them. Father was furious. He was used to going everywhere with them because they were afraid to leave him alone for fear that he would not be able to get help if he needed it.

They went ahead and planned some outings. They were like a pair of teenagers planning dates with Father disapproving strongly and vocally in the background. Nothing much had changed. As soon as Barney and Lorraine went out, he would go to the front porch to sit and wait for them. No matter how long they were away, he would not eat or drink anything I prepared for him. My every offering of food or drink was tersely refused with, No thank you. I don’t want that. Lorraine will make my lunch (or morning or afternoon tea) when she comes home.

On the last day of my visit, Father had to have surgery on his eyelid and a dressing had to be changed regularly. Lorraine was busy when he asked her to dress the wound so I offered to do it for him. I tended the wound, handed him the tube of cream and he said,       Thank you.

Then, as he turned away, he muttered in a very gutteral voice,

You fucking snob. I hate you.

At first I thought I might cry, but then I realised that for the first time I knew the truth. All those years I had wasted trying to win my father’s approval and now I knew it