Twenty-Five — Truck Cripplin’ and Bull Tipplin’

By comparison to top-hatted penny-farthing marathoners, the balance of the cattle work at Twenty-Two mile was standard stuff. We moved cattle from pen to pen, occasionally leaping onto or over the metal panels to avoid the rebels in the crowd. We branded and castrated and dehorned and ear tagged. In a single day we processed 431 calves through the calf catch and back to their waiting mothers. The critters bawled and balked and baled up in the runways, forcing us to untangle them with whistled cajoleries and vigorous prodding. By the end, several hundred bullocks had been loaded onto cattle carriers and the rest released into the vast paddocks for another year of unmolested grazing. Again, our efforts left behind pounded ground, organic debris, and a return to the sparsely punctuated quiet of the bush.  We spent several days deconstructing the portable yard, again stacking the vast quantity of metal onto vehicles before transporting it to the next muster site in Bull Creek, where the entire process would repeat itself. Before the season was finished we would complete this cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction five times.

Even as I gained experience working with the tools and animals at Bullo, the potential for disaster remained a constant. Indeed, on the first day transporting the bulky gear to Bull Creek, my inattention cost the enterprise dearly. I was driving the King, with Danielle as passenger, a full load roped into place in the bed of the small pickup. We were in good spirits, with the first chopper muster behind us and the path ahead clearly delineated. As we jostled down the rudimentary dirt track between Twenty Two mile and Bull Creek she and I sang songs—American Pie, Delta Dawn, the Gambler. Suddenly the truck shuddered violently and stalled. Danielle blanched when she scanned the instrument panel. I followed her eyes and read the temperature gauge, pinned past the red warning mark.

“Oh, bloody hell! We’ve overheated her! Pop the bonnet!” She said as she hopped from the truck. I joined her to see white foam seeping from the radiator cap. From the engine compartment arose a symphony of pings and hisses. We reflexively stepped back several paces for fear of some component rupturing fatally, taking us with it.

“Oh Christ!” I said with a sinking feeling in my stomach. “That doesn’t look good at all.”

“No, mate, it doesn’t,” said my fair companion. “We’ll give it a few minutes to cool down then see what happens.”

After most of the noises had subsided, Danielle dug an old towel out of the backseat and piled it upon the radiator cap. She slowly loosened the device, unleashing an absolute geyser of radiator fluid into the air. She jumped clear as we watched as the geyser flow. Time has the quality of standing still in such moments. When an action is expected to last several seconds a minute is an eternity. This eruption, the most impressive display of engine overheating I have ever seen, continued at least that long. Even after the liquid water discharged completely, a vigorous current of steam continued to blow from the radiator.

“Bloody hell, Dave, weren’t you keeping an eye on the temperature gauge?”

I wasn’t man enough to tell Danielle that the only thing I had my eye on as we’d rolled along in song was her lovely self.

“I guess not, darlin’. S’pose I was having too much fun,” I said sheepishly.

“Well it won’t be much fun when Charlie sees what we’re up to.” A dark look moved across her face. “That won’t be much fun at all.”

After a half hour we poured several gallons of water into the radiator from the large eskies we always carried in the bush. With a hopeful grimace, Danielle turned the key. Nothing beyond the click of the starter emanated from the engine.

“Not much to do but give it some time,” sighed Danielle. “I’ve never seen a display quite like that. We’ve been moving through a lot of sand with this big load. I should have been keeping my eye on the temperature gauge at least, even if you weren’t.” She gave me a disapproving look which cut me to the quick.

She had no business taking the blame. This wasn’t my first day; I knew better. I mean, I could have pleaded temporary insanity on account of being in the thrall of the beautiful young woman. I don’t think that would’ve gained me much ground. Though Danielle’s sweet side showed itself regularly at the homestead, when there was work to be done she showed a relentlessly and occasionally severely humorless side. Flirting with the lass while standing before a critical piece of station hardware I’d just transformed into Old Faithful was a losing strategy.

I’d come to attribute her prickly persona to an overcompensation, of sorts. I believed her to be quite a softy, by inclination, who’d cultivated a grumpy manner as accommodation to the demands of a difficult life. That she, to my mind, occasionally took the hard-ass thing too far I was willing to chalk up to immaturity. The girl was barely nineteen years old, operating in a theater too demanding for most men.

Yet here we were, stranded dozens of miles from home, having driven our vehicle to inoperability on one of those few occasions when she’d let down her guard, given into a moment of my own too-easily conjured gaiety. I wasn’t optimistic I would see that side of her again anytime soon.

“So what’s our next move?” I asked tentatively.

“Well Dave, we wait. We sit here and do bloody well nothing and wait.” Her lovely eyes were narrowed, her full lips pinched. Any delusions of making progress on wooing the young woman, an aspiration I’d nurtured from the moment I first set eyes on her, evaporated in a mist as fine as that we’d witnessed spewing from the crippled vehicle.

Eventually, we heard the clatter of another vehicle making its way our direction. Within minutes, Charlie was standing with us, his hands on his hips, gazing knowingly into the engine block.

“She’s not going anywhere. Looks to me like you’ve warped the headcover. Gonna need a complete overhaul.” Charlie looked at Danielle and I. “Who was driving?”

“I was, Charlie,” I said ruefully.

“And where was the temperature gauge?” The big man asked me.

“Well, by the time I looked at it, it was well into the red,” I said, shading the truth slightly. The fact is that it was entirely past the red by the time I bothered to look.

“And is that when you shut the engine off?”

“In truth, I did not notice anything until the engine failed on us.”

Charlie shook his head and said nothing for a moment. He then turned to Danielle.

“And what were you doing?”

“Well, Charlie, I–I–“ she stammered, “I didn’t see it either.”

“All this sand, all that weight, and you were paying no mind to the engine temperature?”

I did not need to bite my tongue to resist divulging that we were more paying more attention to our journey through Billboard’s Hits of the 70s than our journey to Bull Creek.

“No, I wasn’t. I stuffed up. I’m sorry, Charlie,” the girl said with a heartfelt pain.

“Wait, you stuffed up?” I blurted out. “I was driving! I stuffed up! I screwed up. You had nothing to do with it!” This wasn’t an act of gallantry on my part, but a recognition of a simple truth. To my eyes, Danielle had no part in this calamity.

“Yeah, you stuffed up Dave. You surely did,” this was Marlee speaking, “whenever you’re in a vehicle you pay attention to what in hell the vehicle is doing. But you’re still learning. Danielle knows this. You’re a rookie. She has no excuse.”

My face flushed in humiliation. I’d worked very hard to raise expectations among these people regarding my diligence and commitment. To hear that the bar was still set so low, that I could not be expected to keep an eye on a temperature gauge? The King wasn’t a B-1 bomber, for Christ’s sake. It has three gauges and a speedometer. This was not rocket science.

Yet I had no defense. I hadn’t watched the gauges. Due to that elementary failure, I’d fried a critical piece of equipment. Their low expectations were merited. I seethed at the inescapable conclusion.

“Guys, I am truly sorry. I will pay for this. Take it out of my paycheck. I should have been watching.” Even as I made this offer, which would cost virtually everything I’d earn at Bullo, I knew that my credibility couldn’t be re-purchased, even at a premium price. Vehicles themselves can be replaced, but credibility is more akin to a sandcastle. Sandcastles aren’t for sale. And once washed away, the only option is to begin rebuilding.

“No,” said Charlie evenly, “We’ll get it back to the shop and see what we can do. We asked you to drive it over here. You were doing your job. What’s done is done. Let’s take it from here.”

Over the following weeks Charlie and Uncle Dick, especially, set their minds towards rehabilitating the overtaxed work truck. I’m not certain where they scavenged a new headcover for the engine bloc. The head encloses an engine’s combustion chambers, confining the explosions which power movement. I assume some piece of the rubble surrounding the workshop suited perfectly the men’s needs for the rebuild. I may be being over-optimistic in my assumption; it’s possible that the closest the fellas could get was ‘close enough’. I fear that’s more likely the case; the King, when returned to daily chores, proved a lesser version of itself. Recalcitrant, hesitating, underwhelming—the old dog had been neutered. Its spirit was gone. And, from then on, every time I put it to use, gasping and wheezing as we moved along, I found my spirit sputtering as well.

Considerably more gratifying than contemplations of my ineptitude was the bullcatching which began the day after Bull Run’s yards were emptied. It’s likely that American ranch life includes an activity which mirrors bullcatching in Australia’s Top End. It’s likely—rogue bulls are undesirable in any herd—but I’ve never seen anything similar to our afternoon’s entertainment in any depictions of American Western life onscreen.

In Australia, or, at least, at Bullo River Station, bullcatching means hopping into a modified World War II-era Jeep with the roof, windshield, and windows removed, and one important addition added to the bull bar on the vehicle’s grill. Upon this stout bar two truck tires are mounted, slightly wider than the vehicle itself. With this crescent of overhanging radial rubber a driver can come up alongside a scrub bull and press the tire into the bull’s hindquarters in a rural PIT maneuver, similar to what we see highway patrolman back home do when pursuing a fleeing vehicle. By bumping the hindquarters of either a street racer or an ornery bovine its front quarters drift the opposite direction. So by pushing the hindquarters away our subject would find itself directly in the path of the jeep’s bull bar. A quick acceleration followed by hard braking knocks the bull on its side, its legs extending underneath the front bumper of the vehicle. At that point an accomplice jumps out of the jeep and binds the animal with straps.

What I’ve offered here is a dry recitation of a process which, when moved from the page to the bush, is half-crazy. The bulls we sought were those who’d eluded the muster, the orneriest of the ornery. This self-selected gang of tough old buggers were sure to be no more enthusiastic about our one-on-on pursuit than they’d been about joining their friends in the muster. This seemed to me a cage match, a bare-knuckled bounty-hunt for half-ton fugitives with marginal IQs and a world-class ill-temper. What could go wrong? Better; how could it possibly go right?

Bullcatching day found me seated alongside Marlee in the bull catcher. We ripped along the main track from home in the blue dawn, heading towards the paddocks surrounding Twenty Two mile. With the cold morning air rushing upon my unshielded face I felt like Gen. Patton bustling importantly into Vienna in our vintage military conveyance. But when we left the track and began bouncing about the scrub, I felt more like the protagonist in Whack-a-Mole, my knees and shoulders bouncing violently within the constraints of my seatbelt.

“Hang in there, Dave,” cried Marlee, the scent of fresh bull meat filling her nostrils as she wheeled madly into the bush. “We’ve got some ground to cover today!”

Within a few minutes we saw a sturdy scrub bull munching lazily at a tussock of grass several hundred yards to our right. Marlee turned the wheel sharply and headed toward the undesired Lothario.

“When I’ve got him down you hop out and tuck his tail between his legs! Pull up and he won’t be able to rise!” I was familiar with this mechanism for keeping cattle from getting to their feet. “Then take your strap and bind his two rear legs together. Take your second strap and lock his front legs. You’ll be right then!” As with most of Marlee’s instructions, the idea sounded straightforward. Executing—after discovering—the particulars was where things got sticky.

Marlee zoomed towards the bull. As we drew close, it sensed our predation and began trotting away. When we were within ten yards the bull notched up to an ungainly gallop, its shoulders then haunches rising and falling quickly in seesaw motion. Marlee pulled up alongside the fleeing fellow, then inched within a foot of its hips. We bounced wildly across the irregular terrain. When the bull turned its head to survey its pursuer long silvery strands of saliva spun from its mouth, tracing several feet behind, until the viscous threads met our front grill. With a practiced timing Marlee yanked her steering wheel to the right and the meaty beast, thrown off balance, veered to its left, stumbled, and fell directly in front of the Jeep. With an adrenaline-charged enthusiasm I leaped from my seat and ran to the downed critter. I’d pulled two leather belts off the collection looped around the roll bar over the rear seat of the jeep. Marlee expertly placed her front bumper against the animal’s ribcage. I rooted around for a moment in the spinifex to locate Ferdinand’s tail, wrapped it under the leg, and secured the captive bull.

Marlee radioed our position to Danielle, who was following in a six-wheel drive army hauler Charles Henderson had scored years ago via his military contacts. This monster was a war machine, capable of handling any terrain while hauling beefy loads, making it the perfect vehicle for carrying scrub bulls out of the bush. The truck’s flatbed had been outfitted with a heavy duty cage. Inside the cage hung an electric winch. Danielle pulled the truck alongside the frustrated bull as it lay in the grass, wild eyed and snorting. We lowered a smooth ramp built into the side of the vehicle’s cage. Marlee hopped onto the bed to unwind the winch’s cable.

The next procedure spoke volumes to me about the incredibly sturdy composition of these musclebound critters. Marlee secured the wire cable around the bull’s horns. She activated the winch, the wire rope tightened, and the bull was pulled by its head up the ramp and into the truck. Now, this beast would have weighed a full ton. Watching the big fellow being dragged by its horns, akin to lifting a person off their feet by their ears, made me cringe. Bulls are built differently than humans, mercifully, but I couldn’t shake the desire to go visit my chiropractor after watching the uncomfortable spectacle.

But the big bull didn’t suffer by the process. Once in the truck we carefully loosened the straps holding the bull’s feet in place. He skittered to his feet, shaking off the insult by putting his head down and challenging us nose-to-nose. He tested the metal piping with a dynamic sweep of his broad horns.

Marlee threw a length of rope around his neck, then secured the other end to one of the cage bars. With our subject secured, Marlee and I hopped back into the bullcatcher and headed out to find our next quarry.

By the end of the day we’d captured eight bulls, fellows who would have otherwise spent the year spreading their scrubby seed amongst the heifers, producing a generation of youth less desirable than the Brahmin stock Sara and the girls had begun to introduce several years earlier. Our scrubbies bulls were destined for the meat works. Though we Westerners like our chops fatty, many Pacific Islander and Asian palettes prefer lean beef for the chopped and marinated preparations those cuisines feature.

Bullcatching occupied Marlee, Danielle, and me for the next several days. We ended up extracting nineteen scrub bulls from the fifteen thousand acre paddock we’d recently mustered. Each pursuit was its own adventure, with Marlee wheeling wildly across the untamed terrain, regularly whooping as she careened left and right, accelerated and braked with abandon. The girl was clearly enjoying herself; it was all I could do to keep from being ejected by her Mad Max imitation. It was thrilling and harrowing at the same time, ripping around the outback in an open-air vehicle with an unleashed Marlee Henderson at the controls.

My duty was, with one exception, routine. Typically the animals were exhausted by the time we bumped them to the ground, and Marlee was expert at pinning them gently but securely with the Jeep. One time, however, we executed the PIT maneuver on an animal within only ten seconds of locating it. Marlee bumped and it fell on its side, but its momentum carried it onto its back, then over onto its other side completely. I jumped the gun and exited my seat before Marlee could secure the bull in its new position. As I ran to tuck its tail, I was a dozen feet from the Jeep. As I seized the great beast’s tail it rose and began running away. It didn’t take more than a few of my brain cells for me to realize I’d put myself in a bad spot. When the bull turned to see what manner of impertinent creature was hanging onto its tail, he and I shared eye contact, six feet apart. Its mien wasn’t inviting conversation.

“Watch out, Dave!” yelled Marlee in alarm. “Don’t let go of that tail!”

She needn’t have worried; scratching its chin was not in the cards, and a sprint back to the Jeep invited disaster. My sole connection to a happy future consisted of my grip on the animal’s tail.

I’d seen Charlie pull a nifty maneuver in the yards; he’d thrown full-sized cows to the ground by manipulating their tails. He’d grasp the animal’s tail, then, when the cow turned to look at him, Charlie would pull the tail sharply to the same side as the cow’s turned head. This tug compromised the animal’s center of gravity, dropping it onto its side. The critical element involved timing the pull for that brief moment when the animal’s head turned completely around.

Pulling this cow tipping maneuver in the yards with cows is tricky enough. I’d upped the ante by putting myself in a position to practice cow-tipping with a pissed-off scrub bull in the middle of the bush. If I released the tail I’d be able to take no more than two steps before I would’ve been performing Stupid Human Tricks upon the concrete slab of the bull’s forehead, or playing hide-and-seek with its horns. I hung onto that tail with every ounce of energy I possessed, and when the bull again turned to look at me I tugged with all I had. The big beast barely budged. Instead he attempted to hook me, the bastard. I danced away, his sloppy tail still in my hands. He decided to run; I had no choice but to half run and half water ski behind him. After a short excursion, he stopped again to investigate the nutcase trailing from his keister. I knew my opportunity to come out of this encounter with my various bones remaining in their appropriate sockets was dwindling. With his massive head no more than three feet from my waist, I threw my entire weight to that same side and was astonished to see the massive creature fall like a sawn great oak.

“You got him!” screamed Marlee from close behind. “Now wrap that leg!”

I snapped out of my wonderment at what I’d accomplished and, leaning back in order to keep my head away from the powerful kicks of the downed bull, I passed its tail between his hind legs, and lifted his leg high. I put my foot against his flank to prevent him from freeing himself by rolling. In an instant, Marlee was there with two leather straps and the bull was secured.

“Christ, mate, why didn’t you get back in the Jeep when you saw he wasn’t pinned?”

“I don’t know,” I said breathlessly, “I guess I was committed.”

“Yeah, I think you need to be committed, running around the bush holding a bull by its tail. Don’t get out of the bullcatcher until we’ve got the thing trapped, will you?”

“Shoot, Marlee, what’s the fun of that?!” Exhilaration had replaced the fear coursing through my veins. I’d brought the big fella down, and I knew I had a story to tell.

Marlee had her own story to tell. That night, at the dinner table, Marlee offered a proposal.

“I think we oughta sell the bull catcher. We might get a few dollars for her. Then, when we need to do some bullcatching, we’ll just drive Dave out into the bush and let him run ‘em down. He’d be right keen on the enterprise, eh Dave?!”

“Or maybe we just outta trade it in for an ambulance if that’s what we’re gonna do. He’ll soon enough have a face on him like a kicked in jam tin, getting run over by a bloody great bull,” contributed Danielle. I fancied she said this with a hint of concern on her face.

“I reckon we’ll be putting a new head gasket on you pretty soon, mate, if you keep up those kind of antics.” Charlie eyed me with a level gaze, but his slight smile and the direct quality of the insults I was receiving let me know they were all, in fact, quite impressed by what I had done. I felt, in that moment, more a member of the ringer fraternity than at any point until then. Usefulness is a valuable currency on station life, and while unnecessary risks aren’t encouraged, at the end of the day getting the job done is a ringer’s reason for being. My success with the bull shaded slightly the sting I felt for causing the calamity with the King.

“Sure guys, I’ll give it a go,” I said with exaggerated bravado, “I get some exercise and we save a little gasoline. Why not?”

“Sounds good,” said Charlie, then added with a wry grin, “So the only time you need a vehicle to take down an animal is when you’re off to get a killer then, eh Dave?”

Now, why Charlie had to bring up my roadkill beef expedition in the moment of my greatest glory I will never know, but this much is certain — the juxtaposition certainly got a big laugh from Sara and the girls.