and Mick readily agrees.
I get onto the topical subject of the lack of rain. “You used to be able to rely on it,” says Dan.
“The first storms would come in November along with the Melbourne Cup,” offers Mick, “you’d either be fighting fires or rained in – But not anymore. It’s like sex mate – you never know when you’re gonna get it,” another sip of beer, “but I’ve never had a bad bit of rain yet!”
“Do you put that down to global warming?” I ask, knowing from an earlier chat that he’s a bit of a sceptic.
“No – put that down to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd being Prime Ministers!”
“Seriously though,” says Anne, “since about 2000 the weather’s gone crazy. Nobody gets flooded out anymore. We used to spend weeks on a station because we couldn’t get out.”
“I remember,” adds Mick, “at Riversleigh we lived between two big rivers and it rained so much one year, we couldn’t get out for four months. The big wet just doesn’t come any more.”
I then ask him the same thing I asked ‘John Arnold’ back in Longreach. “Have you had many injuries?” and get a similar answer.
“No, not really. You get more these days through lack of experience. It’s all about CS George. Common fuckin’ sense!”
When I talk about the future of life on the land in Australia, Mick suggests that I should probably talk to Anne if I want an intellectual viewpoint. “I just believe,” says Anne, who joins us at the bar, “that if things carry on the way they have these last few years, I can’t imagine all the cattle properties remaining sustainable. I think we’re going to have lots of people moving off the land. Hopefully they’ll move into the smaller towns where they’d be most welcome, but they’ll probably go to the cities.”
“That’s what the Government want,” says Mick, who I suspect is something of a conspiracy theorist. “Last year 30 people moved out of Winton. Where properties used to have a dozen or so people living on them, now there’s just a mother and father.”
“Take this house, George. It was built by the Mitchells and they had 12 kids,” says Anne.
“That’s coz she said, ‘yes’ more often,” jokes Mick.
Mick still enjoys his work, though at 62 he says he’s isn’t a fan of yard work, as he’s not as mobile as he once was. And with technology he feels the fun has gone out of it. “It may have been harder years ago but there was a certain camaraderie. You’d work with a bunch of good blokes and camp out in your swags and stay with the cattle. You didn’t come home to wi-fi and the internet. Some people who come out to work in the bush don’t want to start at the bottom. But they won’t progress unless they do it hard and there’s no easy way with cattle.”
Mick reckons he tolerates a lot more that he would have 30 years ago. I suggest that perhaps he’s mellowed a bit. “I’ve just learned to compromise I think,” he says.
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