Tales and Trials Down Under. George Lockyer

– so was a good buy. But interest rates were 20% and it was tough going.”

      Mick and Anne then fought a legal battle with the Government that would result in 200,000 acres of the property becoming part of the Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park and a World Heritage Site, containing fossil deposits that tell the evolutionary history of some of the most distinctive and isolated mammals in the world, dating back 25 million years.

      Mike isn’t very forthcoming on the details, saying simply that it’s ‘a long story’ and I don’t press him. “I think we were the first station to have land forcibly taken from us. But the Governor General signed the papers and that was that. The compensation was a piddle-up-a-post. Like I say, it’s a long story and hurtful one,” he dismisses it with an, “anyway it was a good fight. Then the lead and the zinc mines came up there and the Aboriginals moved in. They were never that interested when we were just mustering cows, of course,” he says with pursed-lips and a shrug.

      Then in 1996 they sold up and purchased the 165,000-acre Split Rock Station, 160 kilometres to the south. “It was largely undeveloped, so for the next eight or nine years we went contract mustering and droving to supplement the place.”

      Mick and Anne would take all their horses, trucks, camping gear and seven or eight employees to go muster other people’s cattle for a daily fee, he explains.

      “We’d go up into the Gulf, to places like Cliffdale, Beesbrook and Escott. Some pretty wild places, but it was exciting. We’d round them up, move them to the yard, brand ‘em, do pregnancy testing and weening – all the normal things. So, after all the expenses there was a bit of cream and this paid to develop Split Rock.”

      “And three kids at boarding school,” adds Anne. I ask Mick how many people it takes to run a property of that size. “Not many,” he says, “you just have to work harder, day and night when you’re still young,” he says and hands me another VB.

      Then, when one of their sons decided he wanted to become a butcher, Mick and Anne bought the butcher shop in the town of Camooweal, not far from Split Rock Station and while they were at it, bought two more in Mt Isa. Mick would slaughter his own cattle at Camooweal and take them to Mt Isa for sale.

      “So, you’re a bit of an entrepreneur then?”

      “Well,” replies Mick, nodding in acknowledgement, “we did that for about ten years, and meanwhile had bought another two properties at Tambo.”

      With Anne now living and working in Mt Isa as a councillor, and Mick constantly travelling between Split Rock and Tambo, they decided to a buy property half-way between, which is how they ended up near Winton at Windamere Station. “It’s an ideal situation. If we’re trucking cattle from Split Rock, where we breed, to Tambo, we can give ‘em a blow for a couple of months here. So, there it is George, that’s our life,” says Mick as he opens another can of XXXX for him and his mate Dan who hasn’t taken off his battered akubra and has been silent so far.

      Mick and Anne have been married almost 40 years and have three sons. One works in the mines at Mt Isa, one is an electrician in Cairns, while the other one, William, runs Split Rock Station, while not working as a contract chopper pilot. “They’re all good boys,” says Mick.

      Dan suggests that I visit Will at Split Rock as he’s not ‘far off the track’ and he’s more articulate than his father, 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.