A month or so after Charlie’s passing, I gave Sara and Marlee one final hug, then paid my respects to Stumpie and Uncle Dick. Dick was assembling one of those huge C-Band satellite dishes as I bid my farewell. Television was days away from arriving at Bullo just as I left, with cell phone technology and the internet not far behind. The abject isolation so intrinsic to my experience of Bullo was thinning like the morning mist, and it was impossible for me to conceive of what that new day might bring.
I climbed into a ute with Danielle and we began the long drive to Darwin. She would return home with a truckload of needed supplies, and I was headed to Darwin Harbour to ship out on a live animal transport freighter, carrying cattle and water buffalo to Indonesia, along with a half dozen camels destined for the zoo in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.
Danielle told me along the drive of her mother’s fear of Danielle running off with me when I left. Sara obviously was able to read the energy between the vibrant lass and me. But Danielle and I both knew a life together was never in the cards. She and I were of different worlds, worlds incompatible with each other. She had no desire to live in mine, and hers remained, even after eight months, too foreign for me to contemplate joining. For all the things I loved about the outback, its vast openness and intense privacy, much of station life requires a mastery of the mechanical arts. As much as anything, I learned at Bullo that I have neither native inclination nor constitutional enjoyment for turning wrenches. I’d come to admire the immense capability of these folks in that department, but had cultivated no interest in mastering it for myself.
And though, as two young and vigorous individuals, there can be no doubt there was a chemistry between us, if Danielle was to continue in the life she loved she would need a partner for whom the full range of technical abilities necessary in a rural existence were second nature. For my part, I had other seas to sail before settling down. So in late 1988 we departed from each other with a long hug and warm smiles and I clambered onboard the M/S Christina for my seafaring adventure.
Over the next several years, Danielle and her mother and sister reconstituted their ambitions for Bullo. The new brahmin stock Charlie had been advocating were brought in, increasing the herd’s value significantly. This allowed them to retire a great deal of the debt left behind by Charles Henderson.
In 1990 Marlee nominated her mother for the Qantas Australian Businessperson of the Year award, and Sara was bestowed with the honor. Overnight, Sara’s days became a whirlwind of speaking engagements and interviews. Her memoir, From Strength to Strength, became a national bestseller, soon to be followed by three more books. At long last the Bullo matron, in whose eyes I’d often seen an affecting sense of unwelcome isolation, experienced a great degree of adulation for the extraordinary sacrifices she made and difficulties she overcame in her life at Bullo.
Sara Henderson’s Bullo River quickly became a popular destination spot for adventure tourists, who could ride in a chopper or go into the bush on horseback, or bump along with Marlee or Danielle in the bullcatcher. By all accounts, it was a happy and prosperous time. Because of the new opportunities offered by the internet, I was able to follow some of their adventures from my home outside Los Angeles, where I live with my wife Doreen and our two children, themselves intrepid adventurers.
Some time in the mid-1990s things began to fall apart for the Henderson women. As an outsider to the situation I’m not going to reflect on what might have been behind the falling-out. That is their story to tell, not mine.
I was deeply saddened to read the news when Sara passed away in 2005, after a five-year battle with cancer. It was a comfort to know that she became during her lifetime the toast of her native land. She was never anything but gracious and welcoming to me, an outsider, and I’ll be forever grateful to her for the opportunity she offered, and for the wonderful stories she shared. As all of Australia eventually learned, that charming woman could spin a yarn.
Marlee remarried, an Austrian traveler interestingly, then wrote her own story, Bullo: The Next Generation. She ended up running Bullo with her husband, Franz, and their two boys, until they sold the property in 2015. The live export ban on Australian cattle going to Indonesia, imposed in 2011 due to concerns regarding slaughterhouse conditions in that country, took a heavy toll on Bullo, and many of the Northern Territory cattle operations. Marlee became a prominent public voice on the issue of live export, the lifeblood of Australia’s rural folk.
Shortly before selling the property Marlee made the newspapers for crash landing her small plane on the banks of the Bullo River, then swimming across the crocodile-infested water to seek rescue. This is right in line with the Marlee I knew—fierce, indomitable, outspoken. As with her mother, she treated me always with an elemental if challenging kindness. I hold my memories of her near to my heart and wish her all possible happiness in her life outside Bullo.
Danielle moved on as well, marrying a cattleman, then making a home on a sprawling ranch in western Queensland. Danielle and Martin have four children, all raised with the work ethos and toughness the outback demands. The Henderson legacy of fearless embrace of the rural life sits safely with Danielle’s brood. She herself remains a beautiful and eminently capable woman, the master of a spartan lifestyle whose demands and complexities we city folk know not at all. I will forever be in her debt for the gentle instruction and warm company she offered me during my traipse through her enchanting and often confounding world.
Peter remains on my personal map, thanks to the boon of social media. That man who befriended the incompetent stranger so in need of friendship remains to this day a friend in regular contact. He went on from Bullo to a full life, conquering with integrity and the aplomb one would expect the disparate worlds of sheep ranching and coal mining and goat husbandry. His and Diane’s son, born not long after he left Bullo, serves in the Australian armed forces. Peter spends most of his time these days on a small island paradise off the coast of Tasmania. Never the slacker, he busies himself with various duties wherever he finds his presence and talents needed and welcomed, which is pretty much everywhere his eternally happy-go-lucky spirit takes him.
And Charlie? Charlie was buried not far from Maitland Downs, in the western Queensland town of Mareeba. His sister Mary and two brothers, Stephen and John, still live in the area, still live on the land. I had the chance to meet Mary not long ago. She thinks of Charlie often, and I know we both were filled to the brim with gratitude over the opportunity to sit and talk with another person who cherishes the memory of that remarkable man. It quickly became clear that, though his body lies in Mareeba, Charlie’s spirit accompanies us both each and every day.
So I know that Mary won’t mind if I speak for her, and for Peter and the Hendersons as well, in saying that we’re certain our lives are richer for our time spent with Charlie, and for the big man’s continuing presence in our hearts.
The first thing I’d noticed about Australia upon arrival was the clarity of the sunlight. It’s appropriate, I suppose, that my lasting memory of the place should be the incandescent example of a life lived with such clarity of purpose. As with all forces of nature, Charles William Harding Ahlers left an indelible impression on those of us who knew him.
This opportunity to share his story with the world has been a blessing, and I appreciate every one of you readers who’s been along for the ride.
Dave Sturgis
August 24, 2020
Barking in Nutwood 