but not before visiting their friends Keith and Agnes Brummel. One of the family visited me on a daily basis, bearing gifts of some sort and I soon had a collection of pyjamas, singlets and panties. How spoilt I felt, and how grateful. After I was let out of hospital I went and stayed with Mr and Mrs Brummel and their family: Don, Lynette and Shirley in Dirranbandi.
Mr Brummell was a returned soldier from the Second World War and he was bed ridden most of the time. His legs were partly paralysed and he was dreadfully white, painfully thin and of course had other problems as well. Their children were quite a bit older than I was. They had a large vegetable garden out the back and chooks and dogs and a fluffy white cat I could play with. I stayed with the Brummels for several weeks. The worry was I would break open the stitches and living in dirt as we did would not bode well for me. With the flies, horse and sheep poo, heaps of dust, not to speak of dogs being more than happy to jump up and give you a lick or three as a greeting, it was safer for me to stay where I was with the Brummels. I quickly learnt it was a nice way to live!
I had my own bed, three nice meals a day and if there was pumpkin on the plate I was not forced to eat it like Mum made me do. I was treated how I thought royalty would be treated and they were a very kind and loving family. They loved paddy melon jam and on Mr Brummel’s good days someone would carry him out to their car and with his wife and me, we would go tripping down the road looking for paddy melons. Mrs Brummel would take a picnic for us. Although I was excited to get back with my family, I was a spoilt brat by the time I returned to the bush. I missed the luxury and the spoiling of the Brummels, but that was quickly knocked out of me.
The Brummel’s son Don went on a couple of droving trips with us and one day Dad bought a horse in Dirranbandi and it had to be taken some miles out to the camp. The distance was too far to lead the horse with the reins out the side window of the truck, so Dad asked Don to help him load the horse into the back of the truck. Dad backed the truck into a deep table drain so the horse did not have far to jump. Then Dad hopped into the back of the truck, holding the reins in his hands, and tried to pull the horse in. Don was supposed to gee him up from behind, and this was not too successful so they swapped places. Don was in the back of the truck and Dad was outside with a rope around the horse’s backside and heaving on it, the horse was shying back and trying to escape and rearing a little. Don could not quite get the knack of how to pull the horse in with brute force so Dad yelled to Emmie, ‘Hit the bastard on the arse.’ She grabbed the loose end of rope and gave the horse a huge whack on the bum. It smartly jumped onto the back of the truck and Don just as smartly jumped up onto my parents’ bed, away from the horse. A great feat of agility for a young lad.
While in this district, we all got “sandy blight” or conjunctivitis as it was really called. It was dreadful and we kept catching it off each other. All that yucky muck in our eyes and when we woke in the morning, we couldn’t see a thing until our eyes were washed out with warm salty water. We got this on and off for a while and eventually grew out of it. Another problem was the flies stung our eyes and we would end up with a bung eye. Flies are a dreadful nuisance and the biting flies did not have to be near you for long before they stung. This was the beginning of the “Great Australian Wave”, trying to stop the pesky bastards from landing on our face. We learnt how to squint and pull faces or to shoo them off before they could sting. If you were carrying a handful of wood or steel pegs for the sheep break, you had no free hands to shoo the flies away. There was no Aerogard in those days.
One time we had a mob of sheep on the road between Dirranbandi and St. George and it was time for fresh meat. Dad was skinning a sheep and the St. George policeman drove past in his car, did a U-turn and came back. As the cop drove his vehicle over the tough black soil and large tussocks of dry grass, Dad quickly slashed the ears of the dead sheep’s head and threw them to Gus our dog who was panting nearby. The ears had the station owner’s branding on them so that made short work of getting rid of the evidence. Dad then cut the brand off the skin and stuck it up the sheep’s backside. Dad rolled the carcass back on top of the wool and casually lit a cigarette, waiting coolly to greet the cop.
When the cop pulled up, Dad had a chat with him and asked, ‘Do you want to wait around? You can have half the sheep.’ He continued to dress the sheep but the skinning knife was a bit blunt and as he walked off to sharpen his knife, the cop asked him what he was doing. Dad told him and the cop said, ‘Here, have my pocket knife.’
Obviously, he had no idea how to skin a sheep. After the sheep was cut in half and then quarters, the cop assured Dad he could cut the chops etc. so Mum found an old sheet that was kept for wrapping the fresh meat in. Dad wrapped it up and said to the cop, ‘It’s a bit hot mate.’
The cop replied, ‘It will be cool by the time I get back to the station.’
This always tickled our fancy as we knew what the double talk meant: “hot” meat was code for stolen.
Sometime after this the policeman had his young daughter with him. We were giving her a ride on one of the ponies and she was highly delighted with this treat. The cop asked Dad if he had any strays and Dad said, ‘Yes, but we will be putting it out of the mob tonight.’ He said this to let the cop know he did not condone stray sheep in his mob.
The cop surprised him by saying, ‘Why do you want to do that?’
Dad promptly caught the offending sheep, tied its four feet up so it could not jump around and plopped it into the boot of the car and away they went. Lamb chops for dinner!
A year or so later, Dad decided that Mum should get her driver’s licence and Dad drove into Dirranbandi and pulled up opposite the police station. The cop looked up from doing his paperwork and said, ‘What can I do for you, Mick?’
‘The Missus wants to get her driver’s licence,’ Dad replied.
‘But she’s been driving for years,’ the cop said.
‘Yes, I know that but she still wants it!’
‘Where is she now?’ the cop asked.
‘Out in the truck,’ said Dad. ‘You had better take her for a test.’
All through this, Mum had been in the truck scared stiff. When she came inside, the policeman stood her up against the wall and took note of her full name, height and age. He then copied this information onto another precious piece of paper and handed it to Mum with a flourish. ‘All legal now, Mrs Kemp,’ he said.
Dad asked the cop what did he owe him and the cop replied, ‘That will cost you a sheep, one of those “hot” bastards.’
These policemen became our best friends and often received some “hot” meat. The “good” stock inspectors also received legs of lamb or whatever was available as they never failed to bring our mail and loaves of bread when they passed by.
Being such a large family, Mum and Dad never went anywhere without a loaf of bread and a tin of fig jam, a tin of cream or possibly a nob of devon to help out with any invitation to a meal. Also, it was not uncommon to be asked to come for dinner and bring your own or a portion to add to the dinner being arranged. If we had a “killer” (a sheep to be killed to be eaten) the meat would be shared. Living on the reserve we had to be careful of killing stock in the area. If a killer was needed, Dad and Col would drive a few miles out of town, send a dog to round up a sheep, and they would kill it on the spot, hide the evidence and bring the carcass back. Dad would sometimes drive out to a property where he had worked and they would sell him a sheep. Dad was very protective of his reputation and although he never appeared bothered to steal a sheep, he didn’t want to get caught doing it. Most stations, whether sheep or cattle, carried their killers in the horse paddock so they were handy to get when necessary. Station killers were always fat lambs or no older than two tooth
