POMMY JACKEROO
“ … Cannibalism seems to have been common at the time, too …”
Sailing along the West Australian coastline on the good ship, “Australind,” in February, 1887, came a fresh-faced, one-eyed Yorkshireman, Tom Carter (1863-1931), eager for new adventures in the mysterious North West.Fortunately, the 24-year-old Englishman maintained a regular diary in which he kept a descriptive account of his travels, observations and experiences among the sheep station fraternity of the Gascoyne country.
In 1887, he noted, the township of Carnarvon contained a European population of one 100 residents, a large element being government employees. The town proper consisted of “about a dozen corrugated iron buildings” three general stores, built in dangerous proximity to the south bank of an arm of the Gascoyne River.
In and around the scrubby outskirts Aborigines camped “behind their wind breaks of broken bushes.”
Tom Carter travelled first to Boolathana Station with its “low, one-storyed stone house” built by the pioneer pastoralist, Charles Brockman. In the first days of settlement there had been many black-white confrontations, the visitor heard. Some white men had their heads cut off with tomahawks while they slept. Others were speared.
During Carter’s stay at Boolathana, an Aboriginal trouble-maker, “Charlie,” picked up in the bush some poisoned chunks of meat left as baits for dingoes and presented these as a gift to his aged father. The old man soon suffered violent convulsions and had to be administered “black fig tobacco” to promote vomiting. The old fellow soon recuperated. Charlie, however, was suspected of evil intent when he complained about his father’s recovery, remarking: “He too much old beggar. What for him nothing dead?”
The young pommy jackeroo delighted in writing of the remarkable characters and eccentrics he encountered along the track. At Boolathana, for instance, he discovered a disreputable American negro, an ex-slave, who had deserted a whaling vessel and taken up the labour of a mean station cook. Employed on one of R. Bush’s stations, the negro died in a fit and his corpse was discovered by the mailman, “with the fowls eating the maggots off … the body.”
All pastoral land was leased from the government for 21 years, with a rent of ten shillings ($1) a thousand acres per annum for the first seven years. No property of less than 20,000 acres was allotted to the squatters. An average station was between 200,000 – 500,000 acres, the maximum number of stock per ten acres being one sheep.
At one period Carter and a mate ran dangerously close to being speared when they mutually decided to reduce the number of mongrel dogs being kept by a group of Aborigines who were camped on the property. By the light of the moon, Carter shot five dogs and his companion dropped three. The angry Aborigines threatened to spear the young white men. It was soon realised by the newcomer that the tribal folk “would sooner lose their babies than their dogs.”
In his diary, the pommy jackeroo wrote: “When the blacks are travelling and the women run short of water and are carrying infants, they will sacrifice the children before the dogs … dogs catch game and act as sentinels, whereas infants are only an encumbrance.”
Travelling north from the Gascoyne River with a mob of sheep, the young Englishman was faced with “a vast area of salt marsh” that later came to be known as Lake McLeod. This no-man’s land, “with a hard-baked crust a few inches thick (covered) unknown depths of salt, mud and ooze.”
The local Aborigines, said Carter, were afraid of this saltmarsh territory, believing it to be inhabited with “huge snakes or monsters” who dwelt in the treacherous mud and preyed upon travellers, grabbing them by the legs and dragging them to their depths in the bottomless swamp.
Sheep stealing by the Aboriginals was a continuing problem, Tom Carter observed. On one occasion at Boolathana C. Brockman and R. Walcot visited a nearby tribal camp as they suspected the people had been spearing their mutton. Brockman pointed his revolver at a tall Aboriginal man who appeared to be a leader. The Aboriginal retaliated, pinning Brockman’s arms in such a manner as to render him powerless. Threatened with a bullet, the Aboriginal released his grasp and, with Walcot’s assistance, Brockman soon had him handcuffed. The other black people in the camp denied having any involvement in the sheep killing. In a flash, Walcot grabbed one man and said he was going to cut open his stomach with a knife to determine whether or not he had been eating mutton. Alarmed, the Aborigines collectively confessed their involvement on the sheep stealing.
Cannibalism seems to have been common at the time, too. The jackeroo mentions two native men arrested at the Wooramel River charged with having murdered, cooked and eaten an elderly woman who was the mother of one of the prisoners.
The police alleged the murderers attacked the old woman with sticks and kylies (boomerangs) until she expired. They then cooked and devoured part of her body. The murderers pleaded guilty and seemed to be “quite apologetic because … she was old and tough and they could not eat all the body.” Taking into consideration that cannibalism “followed a tribal custom,” the killers were only sentenced to two year’s imprisonment.
In another incident recorded by Tom Carter, a Mr G. Brockman of Minilya Station sent a letter to Carnarvon in the care of an old Aboriginal worker named “Governor.” Along the track the messenger heard of the recent death of a plump Aboriginal woman, Judy, who had been buried. Having delivered the letter, Governor decided Judy’s burial was “a waste of good meat”. He found her grave, uncovered the corpse, “cut some flesh (from) the thighs … and took this with him to eat on the road.”
Another colourful personality at Boolathana was Hoppy, a grizzled old warrior with one leg self-amputed above the knee. Hoppy was compelled to move around in a doubled-up position, “using the palms or knuckles of his hands on the ground and his remaining foot (to) progress.” At the homestead to collect his lunch, old Hoppy would place a pannikin of hot tea on his head, balance on top of that his hunk of damper or meat, and then, with his peculiar method of walking (?), the old fellow would return to the camp 200 yards away without dropping or spilling anything. Carter noted in his diary the Aboriginal liking of eagle and dog carcases for food, particularly those that had been poisoned with strychnine. Even when only partially cooked in the usual camp manner, the Aborigines never seemed to suffer ill effects. The diarist mentions an “old bush native” who requested that he be allowed to eat a dingo corpse that had been lying out in the sun for three days. The Aborigines grabbed hold of the dead dingo’s hind leg and started to drag it away. But the leg parted from the body, it was so putrified. The Aborigines then gathered up the whole body in his arms like a baby and tenderly carried it to his campfire where he quickly cooked and ate it, despite the wild dog’s state of advanced putrification.
At Shaw’s Tank, north of Boolathana homestead, Tom Carter met an American-born well sinker, Charles Whiting, better known as “Yankee.” The American was described as “tall, gaunt (and) wiry.” He had fought in the American civil war. His wild drinking sprees were legendary throughout the district, Carter said. At three or four locations around the countryside were huge heaps of empty grog bottles, each marking the site of a past binge. These bottle piles were known as “Yankee’s Heap” and were well-known landmarks.
Down on the Wooramel River the jackeroo heard tales concerning Ludwig von Bibra, a pioneer of the area. Concerned at the number of sheep being taken by dingoes, von Bibra ordered one of his men to sit up all night with a loaded rifle and to keep a close eye on a nearby bush yard. In the dark, the rifleman spotted a low, four-legged creature lurking near the yard; he aimed, fired, and soon discovered he had killed an old ewe. Disgusted, von Bibra decided to do the next night’s watch himself. During the night he noticed a strange object at the edge of a claypan, drinking. Carefully stalking his prey, von Bibra fired and hit his target. Unfortunately, to his deep embarrassment, he learnt he had shot a Chinese swagman who was humping his bluey through the bush, and had knelt for a drink at the waterhole. Ludwig von Bibra felt obliged to transport the wounded Asian to the doctor – and, an even greater indignity – to pay his rather large medical bill.
Everywhere in his travels the observant Carter met fascinating characters, many being rejects of what some called “respectable society.” Such was James Clark, an employee of Wandagee Station, who was more commonly known as “Balaclava Jim.” Clark, who had once been a Colour Sergeant in the Royal Artillery in the Crimean War and had at one point in his inglorious career been sentenced to be shot for desertion. He managed to avoid execution by convincing the military authorities he had been taken as a prisoner-of-war by Russian troops. Soon afterwards, Carter learnt, the soldier was transported to the Australian colonies for “embezzling mess funds.” Poor, misguided “Bally”, as he was known, fell under a team of horses and perished for want of proper medical attention. He was “buried near the river bed, wrapped in his solitary blanket.”
Bush justice in that era is highlighted in the cursory mention of a teamster employed by Messers Gooch and Wheelock in the earliest times of Wandagee Station. Apparently, the teamster, whose name was Brackle, was in the habit of sleeping under his waggon, a position regarded as safer than an open camp. The teamster was speared one night by “bold and treacherous” natives and his head was cut off. A punitive party went forth and shot down an unspecified number of tribal people, innocent and guilty alike. After this, Carter said. “there was not much (more) serious trouble” in that part of the countryside.
Middalya Station’s manager, J. Mansfield, boasted of an effective punishment de devised for disobedient Aborigines.
“He filed the teeth of a handsaw,” Carter wrote, “and fastened it to a straight handle, which he wielded with both hands … the effect of smacking it on a native’s back or behind was wonderful, as it did not leave any marks or injure the offender.”
Camped at Yanget Pool on the Gascoyne River, the pommy jackeroo watched a “gorgeous fight amongst 100 Aborigines.” Aboriginal brawls and squabbles were a regular event every Sunday afternoon, and these were regarded as entertainment by many of the European settlers. From time to time, the police raided the Aboriginal camps to confiscate and destroy spears and other weapons. These were always readily replaced.
“In later years there were not enough natives left to get up a good fight,” Carter mused, regretfully.
Following a two year stay around the Gascoyne area, the young English adventurer briefly re-visited his homeland in 1889. Coming back to the North West, Carter lived on his own sheep property near Point Cloates until 1903. Again he travelled to the U.K. to marry his childhood sweetheart, Annie Ward, when Tom was 40 and Annie 34. The couple journeyed together to West Australia – to Broomehill – and finally returned to England to stay in 1914 when Carter developed a heart problem.
Their children were Gwen (1904-1928), Christopher (1906), and Violet (1911).
Not able to settle comfortably in his native Yorkshire, Tom Carter again visited West Australia on three later occasions, his final jaunt being in 1928. A noted ornithologist for most of his adult life, Carter’s observations and findings of our bird life were published in many books and papers around the world. One of his bird collections, 500 strong, collected during his sojourn in the North West in the first years of the 1900s was sold to Lord Rothschild for his private collection and was later sold in the USA and is now preserved in the American museum of Natural History in New York. Other parts of his valuable collections are currently housed at the British and West Australian Museums. Carter’s most valuable contribution during his 14 years residence in the Gascoyne region were his recorded observations of the habits, movements and nesting habits of the birds found in the North West of Australia. Through droughts and following rains, he closely observed the bird life to a point that exceeded all others. The list of his journalistic contributions to ornithological publications fills almost two pages of “Literature of Australian Birds, by H. Whittell. He was a foundation member of the Royal Australian Ornithologists’ Union and connected also with the British Ornothologists’ Union.
Tom Carter died in 1931, aged 68 years, and is buried at Masham, in Yorkshire, with his wife (died 1941), and his eldest daughter, Gwen (died 1924). His unpublished diaries of life in the North West of Australia were finally printed in book form in 1987 by his daughter, Violet Carter, under the title, “No Sundays In The Bush.”
