Brogan: The Brogan Series, #1

By Kev Richardson

A true tale of life in Australia's Far Outback.

 

Born in the drifting sands on desert-edge, of drifting parents, his values founded on the rationale of drifting drovers, Brogan's education is perforce a series of hard-knock experiences, lucky breaks and a witless ignorance of the wider world.

His stumbling adolescence is moulded by 'yellahaired' Kelly, witful Sister Angelus, verbose Old Herb, bellicose and brash Bert, poxed and grasping Elsie, venerable old Da'oud and gullible Aunt Lill. When no longer Brogan the Boy but Brogan the Man, his purpose in life becomes a more purposeful yet no less spontaneous adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597051217

Book preview

Wings ePress, Inc.

Edited by: Karen Babcock

Copy Edited by: Diana Russo Morin

Senior Editor: Dianne Hamilton

Managing Editor: Leslie Hodges

Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens

Cover Artist: Kev Richardson

All rights reserved

NAMES, CHARACTERS AND incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Wings ePress Books

http://www.wings-press.com

Copyright © 2007 by Kevin V. Richardson

ISBN  978-1-59705-121-7

Published by Wings ePress, Inc. at Smashwords

Published In the United States Of America

May 2007

Wings ePress Inc.

403 Wallace Court

Richmond, KY 40475

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Lill Witherspoon for the following...

Outback Christmas Pudding

3 cups flour, 4 hen eggs, 3 cups brown sugar, 5 fistfuls breadcrumbs, 1 lb. beef suet, ½ lb. each sultanas, raisins and, currants, chopped nuts, 2 fistfuls mixed peel, cupful garden herbs, 2 cups Bundy rum, 3 carrots, salt, grated rind and juice of 2 lemons.

Sift flour and salt, fold in spices, breadcrumbs, grated suet, nuts, carrot and lemon rind. Whisk eggs until frothy, add lemon juice and rum, then stir into the mix. Tie in floured muslin and boil 4 hours. Hang in dry air 3 weeks, keeping free of ants. Insert threepenny bits and boil another hour before serving with buttermilk custard.

Budgerigar Pie

Line pie dish with slices of undercut beef. Overlay a dozen budgies dressed as for pigeon, stuffed with breadcrumbs and chicken suet. Dredge a little flour over. Layer three courses of fatty smoked bacon and slices of hardboiled hen eggs, strewing a seasoning of minced parsley, lemon peel and salt between each. Finish with more slices of undercut beef. Nearly fill the dish with water. Cover with a good pastry and bake with a slow fire until pastry is crusty.

Roo-Tail Soup

Joint 2 tails and fry in lard. Add carrots and onions. Transfer to a stewing pan and add a bunch of garden herbs and a pound of minced gravy beef. Add salt, pepper and 3 quarts of water. Boil 4 hours. Remove the tail joints, strain the stock and thicken with flour. Add browning mix. Return the roo-tails and rest several hours in air-safe. Before serving, boil again for 10 minutes.

Foreward

Australia is the lucky country, land of opportunity, or continent of contrasts, depending on whom you ask. And all can be said to be correct. Many people call Australians brash, basic and brutally forthright, and these descriptions too, are correct.

So how did the country come to earn such notoriety?

And what gave Australian people such a reputation?

Modern Australia is a nation but a smidge more than two hundred years old, arguably the newest of cultures, yet its short history is unique. It was founded as the biggest prison in the world, its first white citizens petty-crime convicts transported from a Britain needing to thin its gaols of pickpockets, housebreakers, forgers and political agitators. It was more than two generations before the entire white population weighed in at even fifty percent who were not either still serving convicts or their children. And most remained illiterate throughout life. So it is understandable that Australians are brash, basic and brutally forthright, for there was little subtlety or sophistication in their founding culture.

Lucky country? Rich in minerals, it quickly became—for either long or short periods—the world’s greatest source of gold, silver, copper, zinc, tin, opal, coal and iron ore; and in subsequent years, bauxite from which aluminium is made, uranium, offshore oil and natural gas. Its mountain slopes and plains proved ideal for growing wool and its outback climate ideal for growing beef.

Land of opportunity? As convicts completed their sentences, each was granted not only considerable acreage to begin farming but free convict labour to work it. The majority, by hard physical work in primitive conditions, succeeded, establishing for their families a living standard greater than could have been achieved in Britain. And because his developing culture lacked the class distinctions that hobble European cultures, man was valued according to ability rather than birthright. Increased opportunity was, perforce, available to the majority.

Continent of contrasts? Eighty percent of Australians inhabit the temperate southeast coastal crescent, fifteen percent live in the tropical north and but five percent inhabit eighty percent of this fifth largest continent in the world. It is the planet’s driest continent yet is blessed with world heritage sites of both tropical and temperate rainforests. Its extensive coastline includes the world’s largest coral reef, near two thousand kilometres of it, whilst another two thousand is inundated by a thirty-foot tidal variance twice a day.

In Australia’s far outback, which means even further out than ‘Back o’ Bourke’ or ‘Back o’ Beyond’—bywords for places too remote to be considered of consequence, where even few Australians have dared venture—is a unique world of mostly drifters.

Desert-edge offers more hardships than today’s Australians are prepared to suffer so there are today fewer properties (stations to some, unless you’re American and call them ranches) than even a hundred years ago when the Brogan story begins. The turn of the century on desert-edge, fifty years after the first historic though tragically fatal excursion into the vast unknown centre, that of Burke and Wills, remained a time of heroic struggle even to survive the conditions. Yet a hard core of men and women braved heat and sand, persistent droughts and, paradoxically, periodic floods so widespread that vast plains become an impassable inland sea. Of formal education, medical help, communication from settled parts, there were none; neighbours were mostly a hundred miles distant; camels were the beasts of burden not only for supplies but also for transport, for no other creature could traverse the waterless terrain.

Many a lad of that time grew up in neglect and loneliness, educated only by hard knocks.

Maybe Brogan was luckier than some.

Kev Richardson

GLOSSARY OF ‘AUSSIE’ OUTBACK TERMS

(Local Lingo!)

Aboriginal adjective of ‘Aborigine’

Aborigine ethnic Australian native

Afghan any Arab camel-herder

Akubra Aussie bushman’s hat

billy tin vessel for camp cooking

blimey expression of surprise

bob a shilling

boong see ‘coon’

bulldust soft desert surface sand/soil

bundy the world’s best rum (Bundaberg Qld)

chunder vomit

cocky grazier, outback farmer/rancher

coldie chilled beer

Come-in-Spinner cry of the players in a ‘two-up’ game

Condies Crystals an indelible purple dye—the 1930s ‘condom’

coon slang for ‘Aborigine’

crown land land not yet released for private ownership

damper bushman’s bread

dinkum honest, true blue

duffing stealing, robbery

dunny bush toilet

feranghi Arabic for ‘foreigner’

galibiya Arab smock

gibber sharp flintstone pebble

grog hard liquor

jin slang for female Aboriginal

jump-ups outback patches of grassy soil

overflow inland river swamp (occasional)

quid £ pound

shanghai catapult

shash wraparound face scarf

station grazing property, ranch

ten bob ten shillings

yellahair Arab-Aborigine half-caste

For the uninformed, a dunny, which plays a significant role in one instance in the tale that follows, is a topless and bottomless metal drum with a wooden seat clipped over the top. The bottom of the drum sits atop a pit dug with shovel and sweat sometimes as deep as six feet. Every now and again, some brave stalwart chucks a bucket or two of soil down the shaft, followed by some generous splashes of carbolic. When the pit is getting close to full it is topped with soil and a new pit is dug close by. The little dunny shed with its can and rack of timeworn magazines is then simply moved over the new hole.

Brogan

Book One

Brogan the Boy (1914 - 1920)

"Never let fear stand in the way of your dreams, my boy, or you

will never achieve anything. So long as you keep dreaming

the need, the fears will wane and the means unfold.

If you stop the dreaming, the means will elude you..."

One

B loody hell, it’s you , eh?

The boy peered up into the tangle of sweaty armpit.

The score of conversations in the bar faltered, voices stuttering to an eerie silence to hang expectant in the still air. A score of eyes focused on the boy, his face the window of an innocent mind in conflict.

His eyes roved the bleary face.

Cat got ya bloody tongue then, eh?

The face mouthed the words in a slur as the head jerked in a hiccup. The eyes rolled in stupor before a careful refocus on the boy.

The Arab waited, as expectant as the rest, for he’d seen the boy arrive, watched him settle on the stoop to share it with a half dozen skeletal dogs waiting for a drover to flee the bar spewing remnants of a greasy breakfast and alcoholic dinner, repast for the mongrel herd, reward for patience.

From the stoop the boy fixed his gaze, as he had so often, at the man becoming more besotted by the minute. And the Arab noted, as he in turn had done so often, the anguish on the boy’s face, conflict in the young mind between love and disgust for he who fathered him.

Da’oud had long ago decided there was no more love in the boy for his father than in the father for his son. It seemed clear that the boy had yet to question instincts, had yet to begin evaluating whether or not his father deserved the endorsement of instinct, let alone adoration. But certainly there was no longer gloss in the boy’s eyes when he looked on his father, merely question. Yet the father had never really seen the boy, the Arab reckoned. To him the lad had ever been but a nuisance, a creature simply there for ten years, tagging, running, straggling along on what had always been a catch-up chase of life, wondering who he was, how, why he was there.

The others in the bar also watched, yet maybe with not the yearning interest of old Da’oud’s eyes. Many times they had witnessed this scene; the present confrontation incited no more interest than to see if it would end as usual. Another standoff was expected, the father becoming more brazen, believing that to reject the recognition the boy sought would enhance his reputation as a man’s man, rather than raise question in mates’ eyes that he might be prey to sentiment.

And none admired the father for his victory when the boy capitulated rather than test the turbulent waters of contrition, nor did they of the boy for doing so. But it had always been good sport to ponder on.

One day, they reckoned, there would be a full-on confrontation, an end to the standoff, a winner and loser.

Old Da’oud wanted to be there when that time came, in case he was needed.

THE DAY BEGAN WELL for the boy. It was not every morning the dawn arrived slowly, and the difference excited him, set him to ponder on how suddenly after weeks of sameness, of the brilliance of a million glittering stars quickly dwindling, or was it dying, as dawn approached, there could be change.

The brightness now faded slowly he realized, for the dawn seemed somehow confused by the haze of cloud awaiting it. For months with regular monotony, eerie shadows had each morning emerged quickly from the blackness into shapes of twisted gums, cobwebs across a grey blanket. Then, in the next instant, the eastern sky would erupt in an orange ball, transforming the entire sky into brilliant azure.

Yet today was different.

His eyes traced the line of straggling cloud, his mind pondering on how it hovered over the horizon, slowing the startling suddenness of the usual channel-country dawn. Yet this cloud would bring no rain, for it was yet but a month since the saltbush collected morning dew. No rain would fall for three or four months yet but he understood the perverse pleasure the cloud probably felt, tantalising station folk who even so early in the season, would be counting days, hoping for a thunderstorm.

Station folk were fools, he believed. Though just as well they were, for if they were not prepared to put up with erratic seasons, cope with the problems of withering dries and slithering wets, there’d be less work for drovers. Cattle and sheep must be moved in the dry, he also knew, to better pastures, even to more or less permanent agistment at times. Or to market. And station folk had the added problem, he’d heard the men say, of carrying all the money risk while the drover didn’t care, simply moved stock and got paid. So why be a farmer?

He had decided long ago, swayed by the droving rationale, that they were fools. Such was the boy’s simple solution to the frustrations of life, which to his mind made simple sense. Station folk had problems, drovers didn’t. Or so his pa ever spouted between hiccups and bouts of vomit.

Certainly droving life had more to offer, not being tied to a station with the curse, the ever-spreading purple weed. Or lack of water. Or too much water. Either way, money must be spent to right things. He’d seen many go bust, walk off the land, sacrifice their spread to the curse, or to the rabbits and roos to now do their bloody worst.

‘Worst’ always came with ‘bloody’. Or with ‘the fuckin’. Usually the latter. He often wondered when one should use ‘bloody’ and when ‘the fuckin’. Learning had ever been a quandary. Yet it was important, he’d come to believe. All drovers and even old Da’oud the camel herder porting their stores were always telling him how important it was to get some learning. Yet he’d never seen a drover read a book. Unlike the Arab. That old man had his special book bound in cracked leather. He was forever reading it.

This book is not for drovers, he had once told the boy.

What yer readin’ then? the lad had asked.

The old man had gently closed the volume and tucked it into his galibiya sleeve where the boy knew was secreted a pocket for holding such treasures.

The book of wisdom and truth for my people, he was told. One day if the will of Allah looks kindly on you, your father might let you stay in the school over the fence, get some learning that you too can read; read books in your language as I read in mine.

The boy always felt kindly towards the Arab because the old man took an interest, always had time to hear his questions, deal with each as if important. Drovers never had time or inclination; they rather seemed to avoid questions. Avoid answering them at any rate. Even his pa illustrated a lack of interest in all things the boy found important, even impatience about his every interest.

Now don’t go worrying your mind about those sorts of things, was his typical answer. There’ll be time enough for that later, when you’re growed.

The ‘when you’re growed’ expression was one the boy had ever remembered hearing. It punctuated most answers. It was like the ‘tomorrer’ word he reckoned, that never comes. He had realised for a long time now that he would never ‘be growed’ to the stage of having a question answered, so it would be good in a way he reckoned, if he got to stay in school for a spell, to get enough learning to give answers to questions that nagged his mind.

Black nuns ran a school at Milparinka. Well they were mostly black, except their faces, the round bit of smiling flesh shining from the blackness like a full moon in a starless sky. All he knew of nuns was that they smiled a lot and hated flies.

They’d made a school in one of the houses that convicts built back in the old days. ...to bring learnin’ to station kids and coons, his pa had said. Not that the boy had ever seen a coon read. Although station kids took to reading, he noted when once at the mission. The team travelled south of Tibooburra maybe once in a busy year and even then they didn’t visit the mission every time, only the pub. One of the black nuns had told Da’oud when delivering furniture that the coons would never stay long enough to learn. They wandered off, she had said, on walkabout, not to return for sometimes months, by which time they’d forgotten all they’d learned before leaving.

But the nuns merely smiled again and tried again. To fail again.

But he would stay if it weren’t too lonely, for just a short time. Shouldn’t take too long to learn the words of a short book, and short books should offer less challenge than long ones, he reckoned.

Old Da’oud told him once that he was a bright lad and would take to learning all right, so maybe it wouldn’t take too long.

Droving didn’t call for book learning, his pa reckoned. He said so one time when the team sat round the fire talking on the boy’s future. It was ever only when others were around that his pa had time for such conversation, and then he didn’t really talk with the boy; he was rather intent on spouting off about stuff he reckoned would impress his mates, make them feel he was interested in the boy, helping him understand, make decisions. But decisions never got made. The boy had come to realise the matter always drifted off on some different tack, with always lots of swearing, cussing and spitting. With plenty of ‘bloodies’ and ‘fuckins’.

But the boy never minded when the matter dropped, when the subject changed. Not that he was pleased they were off it, or that he felt either uneasy or happy about the fact it was him they were spending mental effort on, but because talk around the fire at night, as they sipped tea once the boys had cleared away the pannikins and things, turned to stories: either imagined tales, or past incidents relived. And although he didn’t realise it, these stories were his education. Everything he knew was learned from drover gossip. Around the fire was time for swapping news like who in the district had measles or TB or syphilis.

And gossip also provided his measures of who around their vast country were ‘goodies’, and who ‘baddies’. Both made up the world, he knew, yet most were like these mates who tended to sit astride the fence, stay somewhere in the middle, a little bit bad but otherwise good. Most drovers fell into such a category he reckoned, the ‘bit each way’ lot. Sometimes they would tease him until he felt like hurling abuse, yet at other times like when he hurt himself or was sick, they’d fuss over him, stir an extra spoon of sugar into his tea.

‘Goodies’ among station folk were the Witherspoons up by Eulo. The team was often up the Paroo and always stopped by the Witherspoon spread even if no work was at hand, for there was ever a welcome. Always Ma Witherspoon had fresh jam made, to layer thick on crusty bread.

But on the other side of the people fence, the ‘baddies’ side, were the Harrises. The whole Harris family was bad, all the boys and their pa in the ‘real bad’ category. No drover had a good word for them.

Why are they so bad? he’d once asked his father.

Because they’re fuckin Harrises, he was told.

Had a spread east of Tibooburra did old Wicked Wilf. ‘Wicked Wilf Harris’ the boy had dubbed him, an expression the boy was proud of. Coined it himself some time ago he had, to describe what he’d heard the drovers say about the district’s richest man.

Which a fuckin member of bloody parliament should be, they reckoned, rich as fuckin shit, sittin’ where he can sell favours to dinkum blokes in bloody trouble.

And suck-up to bloody mates for fuckin kick-backs.

If mateship’s measured by what they can fuckin pay.

His pa’s regular opinion on it ever brought sniggers from the flickering side of the fire.

Maybe we should call him Wicked Wilf, the boy had quipped, hoping some among them might see the clever humour he was capable of. But his comment was lost as the fire collapsed, logs falling in a shower of sparks.

Jesus fuckin Christ... yelled four or five, leaping to feet, slopping tea in every direction.

And as they brushed at flying sparks, the opportunity for the boy to win some accolade, some recognition for what he valued a worthwhile contribution, was gone.

Gone with the fuckin sparks, he reckoned.

But he would never call Wilf Harris ‘Wicked Wilf’ to his face. In fact he would never get so close, court such risk. Whenever the Harrises were having beers in The Family the same time the drovers were in Tibooburra, it ended in a brawl, stools smashing, men slipping and sliding in spilled beer and spew. And often blood. And with lots of shouting. Always a brawl made for lots of shouting, swearing, grunting. And howls of pain. And ever accompanied by drunken laughter from the background, from those not hero enough to be in the fight, but who could see the funny side of another’s pain.

But the crusty old bastard, only name the boy had for The Family’s publican, for that’s what the drovers called him, would restore calm by switching off the generator so the lights would flicker like a bleating pulse before plunging the melee into blackness. Then he’d fire a blast from the shotgun he kept behind the bar, always into the corner of the ceiling where he knew the hole in the roofing iron could be reached from a ladder without too much bother. And when the noise subsided, the crusty old bastard’s wife and her hired jin would arrive with lamps and mops, to swab up.

They were mean all right, the Harrises. Why else would it always end up in a slinging match when the team was in town?

Why not drink at The Tibooburra, he’d once asked his pa, so we don’t have the fights and get broken heads and such?

Because the fuckin Harrises drink at the fuckin Family, that’s why, boy.

Same old answer he usually got when asking a question, one that didn’t answer anything. Like why he didn’t have a mother.

Because she fuckin croaked, that’s why, the bloody bitch.

Sometimes he would look at his pa, wondering why such a man would ever want a son, why be different from most on the team who stayed single, even careful it seemed, not to get tied up with a woman. Must be something soft and special inside his pa somewhere, he reckoned. Yet it seemed such a pity for any man to try so hard never to let it show. Except about the sorrel, the pony that became the boy’s very life.

Satin was an unlikely name for a sorrel he knew, but he liked it. Ma Witherspoon had told him when he was little that the rag doll he’d had as a baby and still slept with was satin, so he bestowed the name on the pony as soon as he set eyes on it. And it stuck. It was love he knew, the thing the men ever joked about, that he had for Satin, his ‘satin sorrel’. No man could ever love a woman or pony as much, he was sure. And it was a gift from his pa, which must have been out of desire to do something nice for the boy, for it was no hack. He’d grown up in a saddle and knew value when it came to horseflesh. And Satin was a proud pony, as proud of itself as he was proud in turn so it cost many a pound he knew, despite his pa turning shy about the price when the boy whistled in surprise, to ask how much. He knew his pa was always on the cadge for beer money when arriving in a town so there was never a spare bob in his pocket, let alone quids. His pa must have saved up especially he reckoned.

Such uncharacteristic sentiment, by its very simplicity, tied the boy to him, kept him on leash whenever the drunken bouts or displays of bravado, the bases of which the boy knew were hollow, might otherwise cause his affection to waver.

It’s your bloody pony, boy, his pa had said. You fuckin call him Satin if you like and I’ll whop any bastard wot laughs.

Always called ‘boy’ he’d been. It was what his pa ever called him. And the men. Only one different was the old Arab who usually called him ‘young man’ or ‘my boy’. Somehow, even such a slight difference, he reckoned, made it more personal.

I probably don’t have a real name, the boy had said to old Da’oud one time when they talked about what he wanted in life, what opportunities there were other than droving for kids growing up in the desert. Yet it was a subject that didn’t sit easily with the boy. There was nothing else he could imagine doing. Droving suited him fine, and just about everyone he knew, excluding only the Witherspoons and other station folk, were drovers. And none seemed anxious to quit. But the name thing interested him, for most folk had names. Bill or Tom or Harry. Even old Wicked Wilf had a name.

But when everything came down to making a decision on it one way or another, Boy Brogan fitted all right. The not having a name didn’t upset him. And it didn’t worry Satin, for the sorrel knew him by his voice; how much more personal could anything be than that? Which made them mighty close, closer than to anyone who called him Boy or anything else for that matter.

FUCKIN CUNT-FACED BITCH, why’d she have to die, leave me saddled with the boy? Fuckin chain around a man’s bloody neck he is. Might as well been a lag me bloody self, one o’the fuckin convicts wot built Milparinka.

The world owed a living to the elder Brogan, not that he’d earned it of course. The breaks had been bad, the fuckin sheila spreadin’ her legs, turnin’ up the bloody heat when she must have