[woofa.express]

This story is broken into several parts. Todays is long and I really can't brake this segment into more than one part.
Speewah 1968.

Speewah is a legendry outback property in Australia. Infact it is the name of an outstation attached to Dunham River Station in the East Kimberleys, south of the now well known tourist station of El Questro and south of Wyndham. North of Bow River on the Halls Creek road.
The year was1968 and I was the station pilot flying a brand new Piper Super Cub. My job was mustering cattle by air. It goes like this. A number of stockmen called Ringers would hold a mob of cattle we called coaches in a partly exposed position and I would run cattle into these coaches. The ringers would lay flat on their horses and the new cattle weren't aware at that moment they were being captured. Holding them wasn’t easy and it would take some time before they would settle and be moved on. Bulls were particularly difficult.
My memory has it there were eight ringers in that camp. One the head stockman whose name was John Collins who was the greatest exaggerator of facts and a bright lively story teller ( all lies) by the name of Vince Kelly whose claimed to have a celebrity sister. Paddy Carol, an aboriginal aged about 90 and Tiger. Paddy was important because he had local knowledge. He never rode faster than a walk and was addressed as “old man” as that was a title of respect. Paddy’s wife Mary, of comparable age, worked in the station kitchen. I never figured what she did but she was the “Queen of the Kitchen”.
On this particular day we had finished early and settled into dinner camp in the dry creek bed, about 100 yards from the old Speewah homestead. It was now rubble, tin and the original ant bed floor. A rocky outcrop on both east and west side. Well Collins and Kelly started their stories. Becoming more and more exaggerated, one endeavouring to out do the other. And as one would expect,mostly lies. Probably all lies. It was entertaining. I was 21 and was quite sucked in. Along comes Paddy Carol and Tiger who was carrying a portable radio. I can clearly recall what Paddy said, “maybe boss you might like to hear this”, one small step for man and one big one for mankind. You will know just what I am talking about. Well we all were intrigued. Blown away. We listened and listened repeatedly for a long time.
For some reason Paddy started talking about early days there at Speewah, where he had worked I figured, about 1918. The blacks used to spear the station cattle, seems like they developed a taste for beef. The station owner, a name many will recognise, had Paddy shoot the blacks. Blacks shooting blacks was not altogether uncommon. I was going to shoot this gin and piccaninny says Paddy but Mary hit me over the head with a billy can and laid me out. We all know a strike with a billy can would not lay a person out and I always figured Mary must have had it full with water or a good size rock in it. Well Paddy is laughing as he tells this story, each sort of giggle he’s jumping a little off his seat which would have been a stump or flour tin. Tiger wasn’t doing alot of laughing. Paddy seems to make the story fairly long winded and in the end tells us the piccaninny is Tiger, here with us today.
So here is a unique story. Man on the moon and man in our presents who shot blacks in this very same place we are now in the Speewah. The mythical land where men are big and workhard, bullocks grow big and one can erect many miles of new fencing each day. In fact there were no fences in the Speewah or any where else in the Kimberleys for that matter.
Now Tiger’s wife was also Mary which is a favourite name for gins. Station owners named the kids. Boys born during WW2 have a reoccurrence of Winston and Churchill. Some after a motor car manufacturer or aeroplane type. These station owners had great imaginations and may well have gone on to write labels for wine bottles . But that’s getting away from the story isn’t it. Tiger’s wife Mary was in the leprosarium near Derby WA. Tiger asks if I could please post a letter to her. Tiger could write even though the word leprosarium was written many times on the envelope. I would think a mission station had taught him. I commend the mission and also Tiger.
The aboriginals worked those days and they were likeable people. Welfare has degraded them like it does all people of all races.
A popular country and folk singer here in Australia named Slim Dusty has a song about Paddy from Turkey Creek. That is close by the Speewah and I have often wondered if it were Paddy Carol who was a gentle and proud person I once knew. I will never know now.