Darby McCarthy, page 4
Years later when Kate died, she did not return to haunt Darby, The little boy she loved dearly, no more or less than the rest of her 13 children, merely felt her presence but not her full spiritual force. Strangely enough it was the man who was absent for most of his life who chose to make an appearance at one of his son’s lowest points. “I was lying in a bed in a small unit in Sydney, the window open and no breeze at all in the room. My father’s spirit came in and looked right at me. And then he spoke to me. He said, come on, son get up and have a go’. And then he left.”
Darby must have heeded those words, because he did indeed have a go.
Yakara
The road to Thargomindah officially started off the main road in town, a long stretch of bitumen followed by dirt which left its dusty mark on every form of passing traffic. Whether it be a ‘bush bashing’ utility or cattle truck on its way from Cunnamulla, travellers never saw much traffic on this track; instead it was the occasional sighting of wildlife that broke the monotony of the trip.
Newcomers to this part of southern Queensland were often overwhelmed by the enormity of space that confronted them, as though being in the bush would automatically mean being surrounded by something that appeared to be growing. The space of this area seemed to drain the energy out of its own existence, leaving behind withered reminders of the living—a lone ghost gum, a kangaroo carcass by the side of the road, an abandoned humpy.
To those who had lived their entire lives in such ‘bush’, those reminders did not warrant a glance in passing. In fact the space was a security blanket, an indication that civilisation had halted at its own boundaries, and could merely be viewed from a distance or glanced at as a fading image in the rear vision mirror.
On this day in 1949 the main street of Cunnamulla offered little enticement to travellers except for a shady spot under a verandah. The afternoon sun had lost its sting, making the thought of a road trip bearable, and as old Cocky Easton’s truck laboured past the only signpost offering directions, the reddish brown dust flew up and gathered in the sweat creases of the truck’s occupants. Ahead, on the horizon, clouds were forming which suggested a summer rain was approaching Cunnamulla.
In the back seat, Darby’s light frame bounced up and down with every bump in the road. The bag of belongings beside him suggested he was going away for the weekend, not leaving behind the only family he had ever known. A few clothing items and some food for the trip were all he saw fit to take with him. The little boy’s face didn’t show any emotions at all.
Darby had no concept of how long he would have to sit in the truck but instinctively began a mind game to amuse himself. Just as he could gaze out of a school window and actually be in the midst of an adventure, he stared at the passing landscape and dreamed. The two men in front paid little attention to the boy, and even if they’d turned around they would have had no idea he had mentally abandoned both the truck and its destination for more exciting prospects.
The life of a cowboy was what Darby envisaged lay ahead at the cattle station, Yakara. His daydream quickly gained momentum and he was sleeping out under stars with a couple of hundred head of cattle nearby, his own horse tethered close to a fire with gravy beef on the boil. Darby could almost hear the other men remarking to each other how he’d been a great help that day, chasing the strays back to the herd. And what a horseman he was, mastering the wildest bush horse they could find!
The fantasy continued for some time, but eventually Darby’s thoughts returned to what had really occurred the day before at the camp. Old Cocky Easton had arrived looking for a boy to help with his elderly wife who suffered from sandy blight. It was going on dusk in the summertime, and Kate McCarthy agreed to let young Darby take up the offer of employment. Once decided, the family gathered to say their farewells. “Mum was there, along with Patsy, Mavis, Rose, Bert and Ian. I had a little brown case all packed. Then the man came and picked me up in his truck and I kissed her goodbye.”
Darby already knew he would probably never live the traditional life of a child in the nest again. This was to be his first paid job and he had already assumed the persona of a ‘breadwinner’ in the McCarthy family. He felt more than ever the absence of his father, and even though he was only seven years old, this new role sat comfortably beside his desire to one day go home and make his mother’s life better.
When the truck arrived at Yakara, the Easton family came out to meet their newest station hand. Taking an instant liking to his new employers, Darby made a promise to himself that he would work hard and apply himself to everything old Cocky saw fit to teach him. His enthusiasm for his post was immediately apparent to the family who began treating the little Aboriginal boy as one of their own. Old Cocky started off the familiarity, saying “we’ll call him Darby then”. The nickname was a reference to the racing game, giving the little boy the same first name as a great jockey of the times, Darby Munro. In fact a brother of Darby’s had already ridden several racehorses for one of the Eastons’ sons and had also been nicknamed after another great jockey, Scobie Breasley. Scobie McCarthy rode many winners in the 1940s around the Cunnamulla, Charleville, Bourke and Thargomindah areas for old Cocky’s son. Little did they realise at the time Darby would go on to make his name famous in his own right.
Old Cocky Easton was a bush character, popular amongst the locals of Thargomindah. Most knew the legend of his amazing feat of strength and stamina during an accident involving a bullock team.
According to the story, old Cocky was driving a bullock team in company with a blind man when the bullocks freaked and overturned the wagon, crushing both his legs but sparing his companion. Old Cocky managed to get back up on to the dray, driving it eight miles to drop the blind man back home before he drove the wagon a further 80 miles to get help for his legs.
“They say he got up and was walking six weeks later. Later on it turned out gangrene had set in his left leg because he had khaki trousers on and some of the dye went into the leg,” explained Cunnamulla community worker Hazel McKellar. Eventually the injury healed but the old man walked with a slight limp, rather more apparent after a few rounds at the Thargomindah pub.
Darby’s memory of his first night at Yakara centred around a supper of scones and sandwiches provided by Mrs Easton, a “kind old lady with shoulder length grey hair and a pale face. She was a lovely old lady. I felt really close to her. She never seemed to raise her voice, never changed in her manner”.
She was almost blind; Darby was delegated the task of being her eyes, particularly around the small garden that surrounded the homestead. “I could see that she had difficulty seeing. She moved around the house okay but she had to put her hand out when she wanted to move outside,” he said.
For his tasks Darby was paid one pound a week with lodgings. There were plenty of hazards that Mrs Easton couldn’t see, in particular the snakes that came out of their sleeping holes as the summer months progressed. Darby diligently performed each task that she gave him, whether it was starting a fire in the pot belly each morning or gathering vegetables for the evening’s meal. He did these things happily for her, recognising her frailty and the problems such a disability created in the bush. In return the old woman became a surrogate mother to him, treating him with the same kindness she showed her own two sons. It was therefore natural that Darby would refer to the Eastons as Ma and Pop. In later years she kept a clipping file of Darby’s riding successes, boasting to her family of his achievements as if he were her own son.
The Easton homestead was made of timber with a cement walkway from the front gate. A verandah ran up one side of the house but the front door was hardly ever used. Visitors would walk up the left-hand side of the house and go straight into the kitchen. On the other side of the garden was a meat shed flywired in, an outdoor laundry and toilet. There was also a room out the back which was converted into lodgings for Darby and other employees. This room overlooked a small dam and the barn where all the horses were kept. Darby shared his room with another man, Ted Woodward, who worked on the property as a station hand. He was a quiet, unassuming type of worker who originated from South Australia.
In contrast Pop Easton was a ‘rough and ready diamond’ who became quite unmanageable for his family after a few drinks at the pub “He was a very noisy drunk who’d fight any man, but was always pleasant to the ladies. If we went to Thargomindah he’d head straight for the bar and old Mrs Easton would send me in to get him out. It would usually take me several tugs and probably a few more beers before we could ever get him away from there.”
On one of these excursions to town old Cocky was drunk and attacked his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Charlie Dare, in the pub. “I remember it very plainly. Charlie got alongside the old man and said something to him. The old man had a few drinks in him, turned around and hit him right on the jaw, knocking him to the floor. He then fell on top of him and tried to chew part of his ear off. I reckon the old man was in his seventies when this happened, but he was tough, like a piece of iron,” Darby said.
Such trips into Thargomindah broke the monotony of farm work and were a social event to look forward to. Apart from the pub, which Dot and Curly Kellar owned, the only other building of commerce was Speedie’s general store.
Other events included the arrival of the mail truck on a Friday which would also involve a cup of tea and gossip about the comings and goings of Thargomindah’s locals.
During the three years that Darby lived and worked at Yakara, his fondest memories came from the times he was allowed to be with old Cocky, his sons and the station hands and be a ‘real cowboy’. When Darby first arrived old Cocky casually asked if he could ride a horse, taking the boy’s bold affirmation on its merits. In truth Darby had no riding experience, particularly with the hardy stock horses that were essential to the working life of the station.
“The first few times I was put on the night pony and asked to walk a couple of circles. He was a lovely old horse, a baldy-face chestnut with a long mane and a short tail. I sort of fell in love with him and said, ‘he’s my pony’. Later I rode out supervised by the old man and he asked to see me canter. I cantered and he said ‘oh yes you can ride’.”
Darby would often go down to the night pony’s yard, his tenderness towards the horses in stark contrast to the sometimes cruel antics of the station hands. “Sometimes I’d see them give ’em a kick in the guts when they were shoeing and I didn’t like it.”
Horses weren’t just the lifeblood of the station; they also provided old Cocky with his greatest form of entertainment, the bi-annual Thargomindah races.
While the races were primarily a social day for the locals, they were also the scene of fierce competition between the station owners who considered themselves racehorse trainers. Old Cocky was no exception. In the second year of Darby’s tenure, old Cocky went to Brisbane and returned with a horse specially selected to win on the dusty Thargomindah track.
There was to be a ‘corn fed’ meeting, one where the horses spent three weeks in a paddock picked out by the Thargomindah Racing Club. The horses fed off the grass and were then put onto grain feed a week before the race. The purpose of the corn fed meeting was to strictly supervise the horses’ feed intake, therefore giving them an equal chance of winning on the day. According to Darby, such supervision didn’t prevent owners sneaking out during the middle of the night to stuff their horses full of grain.
Old Cocky employed the services of Noel Thompson, one of the best amateur jockeys at the time, to help prepare and ride the pick of the horses. Noel’s mount that year was New Joy in the main event, the last race of the day.
Noel’s arrival at Yakara was the beginning of Darby’s first taste of racing, and Noel became a worthy role model for his unofficial apprentice. With Pop’s permission, Darby was allowed to assist Noel with five horse in work for the upcoming races: a young maiden called Rusty, New Joy from Brisbane, Sippin Soda, Dear John, and a quiet pony whose name no one remembered.
“I used to follow Noel around like a little sheep and kept saying to everyone that I wanted to ride.”
To prepare the horses for racing, a makeshift racetrack was set up just over the border of the Easton property in a neighbouring paddock. Old Cocky took up a position where he could observe the racing, while Noel rode the good horses and Darby worked the quiet ones. “Eventually he let me have a canter and indicated a couple of days before the race that he may let me have a go at one on race day,” Darby said.
A few days before the race they took the horses to the track at dawn and trialed them. Old Cocky drove the car to the winning post while Noel and Darby saddled up Rusty and Dear John. This was to be Darby’s first gallop and “no one was to see what we were up to”.
As the Thargomindah race day was an unregistered amateur meeting, there was no prize money. Money could be made through the bookmakers who took delight in stirring up station rivalry. This was a serious activity as reputations were on the line. The fiercest competition was not amongst the bush horses or jockeys but rather those owners who rivalled each other to be the best trainer on the day. According to Darby, the most familiar expression on race day was “I’ll back my horse against yours”, accompanied by an exchange of money and a handshake.
While there was an appointed steward and starter to maintain some type of officialdom, the remoteness of the track and the nature of its local community dictated that there were no hard or fast rules. The drop of a rope signalled the start of the race and first across the line was the winner. A shed near the finish line provided no barrier to the heat and the flies.
The day was a special meeting—one of two for the year. The Flying Doctors race day and the Returned Servicemen’s day. Essentially all those at the Thargomindah race track came for one reason alone, and that was to be entertained.
And indeed there was a spectacle on this occasion.
“Old Cocky was known for being really cunning, a smart old man who’s got a trick up his sleeve. For starters he had this commonly bred thing that he was going to put a nine-year-old Aboriginal boy on and he was going to back the shit out of this thing and try and beat everyone,” said Darby.
The conspiracy began at Yakara early that morning when a plan was hatched to ensure New Joy would win. The horse had shown some problems with its starts and was a chance to break before the rope dropped. As there were only four horses in the race, at least two needed to break for the race to be declared a no-start and run again. On Noel’s suggestion, it was decided that Darby would ride Rusty in the first race to gain some experience and then ride another Easton horse in the last race against New Joy. If the Brisbane steed pulled a no-start, Darby would pull back his horse and the race would have to be run again.
“On the day Noel said to Pop, ‘let Darby have a go on Rusty’ and Pop replied ‘alright then’. I’d had some practice at shearing time or cattle branding time when he and I would go out for a day on the horses to do the farm work. Sometimes Pop would say to me ‘hold your hands this way’ or ‘that way’ and that’s where I got my grounding in riding. But it was Noel who encouraged Pop to let me ride in my first race.”
The first race of the day was a half miler. As Darby had never raced before, Pop went and borrowed a set of boots three sizes too big and a skull cap, and Rusty, the little black horse, was fitted with a saddle so big its knee pads engulfed Darby’s small legs. Darby’s silks were borrowed from another rider who was small in stature. Even so they were too big as he weighed in at six stone seven and required additional weight bags.
However none of this mattered when the rope dropped and horses jumped.
“I suppose there would have been 300 people converging at the bar and bets were still going. I didn’t know what the odds were and I didn’t understand those things at the time. The prize money could have been 30 pounds.
“We got around to the start and Noel said to me to watch the starter put his hand on the lever. ‘He’ll pull the lever down and the rope will go up and away you go,’ he said. I was there shaking in my boots, neither me nor the horse had ever raced before but we knew he could run really fast. So off we went and I went straight to the front. The race was over from then on.
“My guts was in a knot beforehand but when I got on the track I said to myself that I was going to win this—I felt confident that nothing in the world was going to beat me. I just kept thinking all the way round I’m going to be a jockey no matter what happens.”
Darby won the race by three lengths, hearing the cheers of the crowd as he passed the bar. “Cocky was standing there with a big grin on his face, pissed to the eyeballs and clapping. ‘Good on you son!’ I couldn’t describe the feeling to you if I lived to be a hundred but I do remember this bit—I was holding the lead bags, the big saddle and I couldn’t keep it all on the scales so the steward just said ‘oh correct weight’ and I got off.”
The day proceeded with drunken gaiety until the last race when Noel and Pop put their winning plan into place. There were only four runners in this race including the filly New Joy. “I knew old man Easton had put a great deal of money on it because it had come from Brisbane. Noel told me what I was to do and when the rope went up I saw Noel on New Joy rear so he pulled the start as well. The other two horses took off at a great pace, unaware their race had to be rerun. By the time the message got through to the jockeys, the two horses had fought it to the finish and were fatigued at having galloped 800 metres.
