It was a scrubber.
A wild bull, born in the scrub, aggressive and territorial.
Lean and muscular, it was thick necked, broad and hefty across the shoulders … legs pumping in a prance peculiar to the animals ranging across the mountains and ridges.
Minnie first sighted it in the late evening light, yesterday.
It stood high on the ridge above the campsite, back arched, head down, pawing at the ground, lit by the rays of the dying sun.
She saw it and hoped it was on its way somewhere else.
Adam left their camp early the next morning to barter their wool clip and get supplies from Ipswich. He’d be back by the end of the week.
She’d heard the bull bellow in the distance, around mid-morning. The noise came from further up on the ridge.
“Good,” she thought, “he’s moving on!”
Then she laughed at herself.
Why should she fear a bull?
When they’d moved onto their selection at Maroon, snakes were her fear.
And they were fearful.
There were so many of the nasty, hateful creatures.
They were everywhere in the bush.
Once they had set up camp at Maroon, Adam built a hut out of timber slabs.
When they moved in she thought: “How snug. How safe.”
Then the snakes moved in.
They coiled about the beams and made their way into the bed.
She had to check for them every day.
Nasty, hateful creatures.
After a few months, she no longer screamed when she found one. She just set about killing it or making the unwanted nasty, hateful thing leave her home.
She’d learned quickly what it meant to be a settler’s wife.
Adam was proud of her.
They’d first settled on the Ipswich Reserve on a farm at a place others were now calling Mutdapilly. They’d grown cotton on their selection for nearly eight years, from the time they were first married.
It had been a good life.
The work was hard but in those first years, they’d made good money.
The neighbours weren’t close like when she lived with her parents and brothers in Bressau in Germany, but really, they weren’t too far away and she enjoyed the gatherings after church every Sunday.
Then the market for cotton turned sour and it was hardly worth the backbreaking toil to harvest their crop.
Soon after, Adam decided they would sell up their farm as there was “money in wool” but they would need a lot more country to run a good sized flock.
“There’s good land to be had out at a place called Maroon.”
They packed up their belongings, their seven-year-old daughter, Annie and baby Auguste, and with the flock of 1,000 sheep Adam had bought at Gatton, they headed for Maroon.
Minnie remembered helping Adam load the dray. Three month’s worth of provisions, two hoes, an axe and a saw - a top heavy load.
They’d made it as far as the One Eye [Milbong] the first night.
On their arrival they learned that the wagon track through to Sweet’s place [Coulson] wasn’t finished yet - the old bridle path was still being widened.
So they set up camp near the waterhole and waited … it was only for a couple of weeks, but for Annie it was a holiday. No farm work, just tending the baby and the milk cow, while Adam, Annie and the stockman they hired on, kept the sheep on the move.
They were off again as soon as the track opened and next camped under the dray at Johnson’s place [Dugandan].
It was lonely, lonely country.
Johnson’s was the first house they saw after leaving Peak Mountain [Peak Crossing], although there were probably more hidden in the scrub.
Lonelier still was the country around their Maroon selection, around what they named Adam’s Creek.
Their land was in scrub country, hard on the children and hard on the sheep.
And then there was the problem of those snakes … nasty, hateful creatures.
Dingoes and hawks marauded the flock regularly but they were able to get their wethers and wool off to Cribb and Foote in Ipswich. It took five days from Maroon to herd the sheep and take the laden dray through to the market.
Within a couple of years, Adam was talking about moving again, about taking up a selection closer to Ipswich.
And so here they were on a selection at Black Rock Creek - part of the old Coochin run - but it felt no less isolated, no less lonely, even though it was one day closer to market.
When they had first set up here, their stockman had left and Annie was again helping her father shepherd the sheep.
Nearing ten years old and spending her life looking after the sheep.
Ah, well, there had been naught else they could do until they could entice another stockman out here. And Annie was in the habit of it, even after they found a man willing to work out in this lonely country.
He was here now - out in the far paddock looking after the flock and Adam had taken Annie with him to Ipswich as a special treat.
Not that there would be much money for anything more than a few sweeties.
The country was in drought.
Bad, bad drought.
Adam had heard from a distant neighbour that the Drought of ‘77, as the newspapers were calling it, was the worst anyone had seen - even the old hands who had worked on the station runs for 30 years.
They themselves had already lost a good number of sheep. The weaker ones who couldn’t get enough goodness from the dry, sun-browned grasses or were picked off by the ever present dingoes and hawks.
Adam said they had less sheep now than when they went to Maroon. At one time they had about 3,000 but the flock was now numbered 700.
At least at Black Rock, as she liked to call it, there weren’t so many snakes.
She had been thinking about that this morning, as she was settling Auguste in her cot.
Nothing too much to fear here … then she saw the scrubber.
She’d heard about these wild bulls, the cattle that bred up in the scrubs after straying from the station runs.
They were wild and mean. But she hadn’t seen one herself, except that big bull on the ridgeline last night.
Why would anyone fear a bull?
Yet there was something about it that sapped her courage when it came running up from the creek … headed straight for the camp.
It had to be a bull with that thick neck and heavy brow.
Brindled, broad and bullish … just like people said they were … a curious mixture of Zebu, Devon and Durham.
I should run, grab Auguste and run.
My feet won’t move. It’s coming up fast. I didn’t know cattle could run fast.
A fast and furious bull. How strange.
Good. I’m moving. Pick up Auguste, hide in the tent.
The dog’s barking. The bull’s heading for the dog tied up under the dray.
Smash.
The bull has charged the dray. It’s gone over. All that meat curing on the dray. It’s all over the ground. All that work covered in dirt.
The dog is still barking. Can’t see it. The bull can’t see it. It’s using its head and horns to push around the canvas cover. Hooves ripping the canvas, breaking the wooden spines. The dog yelps. The bull must have stood on it.
No more barking. The only sound is the huffing of the bull.
It stops. Stands still. I let go the tent flap but it catches on something. Doesn’t close.
The bull must have seen the movement.
It’s coming this way.
I can see its head.
Don’t move, hold Auguste tight, don’t move.
Crack … crack.
That’s a whip. The stockman must have come. What’s his name? Can’t think.
Crack … the bull bellows. Loud too loud. Can’t hear, can’t think.
Crack.
Can’t see the bull.
Now the stockman’s bellowing. Swearing.
Look out. Look and see what’s happening. Move. Move slowly.
I see the bull. He’s in the scrub. It’s not the bull I can see, it’s the scrub moving as he pushes through.
Gone. But how far?
I hear myself telling the stockman to stay and guard the camp.
I’m going up on the ridge. I’ll spend the night up there.
Grab a blanket, a billy, a bit of food. Throw it in a sack.
I didn’t sleep. Auguste slept, fretfully.
I didn’t … couldn’t … didn’t know why I wanted to sleep up here.
I wanted to be high above that smashing, snorting, huffing hellish beast.
Funny, I was out alone in the bush. No tent. Only a blanket for a cover. But I didn’t think about snakes once throughout the night.
Daylight. At last.
I wander to the edge of the ridgeline.
I see the beast.
He’s walking off away from the camp.
Strolling.
Thank God in Heaven!
Author’s Note: This is my interpretation of a brief tale recounted to a newspaperman from in 1936.
The essence of the story told by Wilhelmine Bartholomai of her early times in the bush is factual. The first person recount, Minnie’s thoughts, are from my imagination.
And to finish the facts of the story, the family of Minnie and her husband Adam increased by another daughter and four sons - Eduard born 1878, Arthur born 1882, Hermann born 1883, Louisa born 1887 and Carl born 1889.
By the time their second son was born in 1882, they had moved off the frontier, as it was referred to back then, and purchased two homestead blocks near the Dugandan Homestead, where they established a successful farm.
Bartholomai Bridge near the intersection of Milford Road and Rifle Range Road was named in their honour.
Adam died in 1910 aged 76, by which time the couple had retired to a home in Church Street. Wilhelmine died in 1939, aged 90.