Free To Ride a Fine Horse by Mary Durack Page B

Fremantle.
    â€˜Well,’ he asked anxiously, ‘what did you think of Kimberley?’
    â€˜We had a hard time,’ Stumpy Michael said, ‘but we found the country everything we could desire.’
    When Alexander Forrest began to talk of how cattle could be shipped to Cambridge Gulf, Stumpy Michael and Tom Kilfoyle were amused.
    â€˜We’re station men, not dairy farmers,’ Michael laughed. ‘How many ships would we need to bring eight thousand head of stock?’
    â€˜But how will you get them all that way?’ Forrest asked.
    â€˜We will drove them, of course, as we have always done.’
    â€˜But it’s more than two thousand five hundred miles—farther than from London to Moscow! However will you do it?’
    â€˜We’ll work that out as soon as we get back,’ Michael told him.

12
The Big Trek Begins
    P ATSY and Mr Emanuel were both in Sydney to meet the party on its return and plans began at once for taking cattle, sheep and horses to stock the new country.
    Mr Emanuel decided to take up land along the Fitzroy River and arranged for a ship to take his two sons and a flock of sheep to the site of the present port of Derby. Patsy, his two brothers and Tom Kilfoyle had taken up large tracts of country on either side of the Ord and Behn Rivers and planned to overland cattle and horses from Thylungra.
    To some it seemed an almost impossible undertaking, for although many long droving treks had been made in Australia, nothing of this length had been contemplated before. The distance was far greater even than it appeared on the map, for droving expeditions must follow winding river courses in search of water and crossing places and often go miles out of their way in search of good grass. They knew that they would have to travel at least three thousand miles, striking north from Thylungra to the Gulf and then heading out west across the territory and into the western state.
    The great bushman, Nat Buchanan, whom Patsy and John Costello had met before trying their luck in Queensland, had pioneered several successful droving treks into the Territory for big southern companies.Others attempting much the same thing had failed tragically. Men had lost their lives and entire mobs of cattle perished in very much less ambitious treks than the one now planned. Even some of his own admiring relations thought that this time Patsy was going rather too far in offering tracts of land and shares in stock to any experienced young relatives who would undertake to drove the cattle to Kimberley.
    â€˜Such a long way to go and so many risks to take to pioneer a property,’ they said.
    â€˜It’s not a property I’m offering you,’ Patsy exclaimed. ‘It’s a principality!’
    Few could resist his enthusiasm for long, however, and soon he had volunteers to take charge of several big mobs totalling nearly eight thousand head of cattle and two hundred horses. Among these were Darby Durack’s three elder boys, John, Patrick and Michael, now grown to manhood and known generally, to avoid confusion, as ‘Big Johnnie’, ‘Black Pat’ and Long Michael’. Their father had died some years before and their lives up to this time had been spent entirely among cattle and horses, pioneering little stations and undertaking long droving trips. ‘Big Johnnie’, in charge of a mob of two thousand cattle, was to be his cousin Patsy’s partner in the new venture, while ‘Long Michael’ and ‘Black Pat’ were to drove for Stumpy Michael in return for a share in his Ord River property.
    Tom Kilfoyle and another relative named Tom Hayes had gone into partnership with Patsy’s youngest brother Jerry in both land and cattle and several other relatives were to make up their party.
    Before leaving they had discussed every detail of the route and tried to think of everything that mightarise. A condition of taking up land in Kimberley had