Our Cunnamulla Fella

Before you make the rabbit stew you've got to catch the rabbit, he would chant as he spent hours and hours teaching Ryan and I to ride. How many city kids knew three ways to hold the reigns on a horse bridle, to check inside their boots for snakes, how to shoot an airgun or boil a billy tea? How many city kids had pulled a calf from the pregnant cow tied about the 4WD? Well not me, but Ryan did.

With our Cunnamulla Fella it was dinner in front of Frank and Kay from Channel 7 news, a quick kip before a comeback later for the evening movie. After dinner in our pjs and slippers, we'd stomp happily through the damp grass, torches in hand, hunting for the horses to treat them to their evening biscuit. Morning runs in the ute or the jackeroo for papers and scratchies were ritual. Always a scratchie, one for all four of us. Over morning cuppas we would all laugh over our meagre luck, $15 was probably our biggest win, but in the bigger picture weren't we lucky.

Our Cunnamulla Fella was tough as nails and soft at heart. If he said we could do something, then we could do it. On horseback staring down a steep and sandy descent that would take us splashing across the river - he said we could do it, so ok who were we to doubt it, and we did it. I thought I was the Man from Snowy River on a grand adventure.

Bushman's treatments for the order of the day. Sharp words were only once traded and it was the day I'd had enough of sitting over the boiling hot bowl of steam and eucalyptus with a tea towel wrapped around my head, he wouldn't let me stop until my asthma let up, and you know what, it bloody well worked. 'Course it bloody did' he would grin.

We know the Cunnamulla Fella was a horseman through and through, but whether it was a running race at QE2, a soccer game at Mitchy or softball games from Brisbane to Toowoomba, he and Nana were there.

He'd come to the phone - 'Renee or Ryan of the Overflow' he would slowly say as his greeting. The 'Over and Out' when it was time to wrap up. Always a cap or a hat, always a leather belt, even if it was to hold his trackies up!

Our Cunnamulla Fella battled back from illnesses and ailments, like a cat with nine lives, and he was in our lives longer and larger than we could have ever hoped for. Even in hard times we would laugh. Whether he was telling us that Nana could only get the token role of triangle player in the church choir so they didn't have to hear her sing, or when we were talking about the vegetable garden he was looking after at the village. 'Looks great Pa,' I would say 'Cool you are doing that' - 'Yeah,' he said. Then 'No, not really, it's pretty shit'...and we both just laughed..and of course there were the politically incorrect moments when his dark sense of humour would emerge, you know those times you know you shouldn't be laughing, but it's just too funny.

And now our Cunnamulla Fella has said bye for now, and he's back on his beloved Bessie, and out droving with the boys...

From Clancy of the Overflow

Clancy's gone a droving 'down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars.