2 April 1936

ARRESTING A STRAWBERRY BULLOCK

An Irish Constable's first Outback Adventure

If there are any more than seven, heavens, Constable Denis Ryan felt in the eighth one of delight, as he gazed for the twentieth time at the official notification. 'Eight years a copper on beat in Dublin,' he chuckled, 'and devil a bit of a rise. Here I am just six months in the ferce out here, and it's a mounted trooper I'm to be.'

Ryan was not to know that a mistake had been made at police headquarters, nor be cognisant of the fact that in the transfer shuffle another Constable Denis Ryan had been in tended for mounted duty at Logville. Had the wrong Constable Denis Ryan been gifted with ordinary intelligence, he would have realised that a mistake must have been made; but, in his self-satisfied egotism, such a thought never entered his head. He believed in following the accepted doctrine in the police force— obey orders without asking questions. The ludicrous aspect of the appointment did not enter his head at all. Lack of forethought again, for the ex Dublin copper had never ridden a horse.

The drizzling rain and muddy roads of Logville did not damp Ryan's ardor in the slightest; and if he had not expected the township band to welcome his arrival, he, at least had looked forward to being met with warmth by the Logville sergeant. "It'll be a surprise I'll be giving the sergeant," he reflected, getting over his disappointment at not finding that worthy at the little railway station. It was going to be a greater surprise than Ryan anticipated. An unfortunate one, too, for him; for Sergeant O'Regan was having one of his periodical painful weeks— painful for himself and all who came into contact with him. Sergeant ORegan was subjected to gout, invariably attended by liver complications.

Formalities having been got over within the precincts of the little Logville police station, Constable Denis Ryan came back to earth simultaneously with a roar from the sergeant of, "What? You can't ride a horse? Why the hell——!" Rage mixed with pain brought forth a groan from O'Regan, as, forgetting for the moment his throbbing foot, he stamped the ground to give emphasis to his remarks. 'Don't stand there like a damned clown!' he fumed. 'Why didn't you tell headquarters you couldn't ride?'

'It's not for a good policeman to question his superior officer,' replied Ryan rather meekly, his usual sangfroid deserting him before the sergeant's rage. ''I'll soon learn to ride a horse," he added, gaining courage as O'Regan turned to get his crutch. 'What!' bellowed the sergeant. 'You'll be riding back in the train to morrow; that's the riding you'll learn. O-oh! Damn. this foot— !' 'Is it a bad foot ye have, sergeant?' sympathetically asked the crestfallen Ryan. "No, can't you see me waltzin' round the room," raged O'Regan, making a painful effort to rise. "Of course I've got a sore foot; don't ask such damned silly questions."

Hobbling to the doorway, O'Regan yelled his orders as though Ryan was deaf. 'See that road there? Well, now listen! Follow that road but for six miles till you come to where there's some bullockies camped. There's a fellow there named Dunn who's been workin' a strawberry bullock that don't belong to him. Go out there and bring him in. Don't waste any time either, but by the size of your feet you'll make a better walker than you ever will a rider. You don't want handcuffs; he'll come quiet. Now get a move on!' 'It's me that'll do any duty, sergeant,' replied Ryan, anxious to get as far away as he could from the sergeant's wrath.

* * * *

'Which of you gents is Dunn the bullocky?' asked Ryan, all hot and tired after his long tramp through mud almost up to the tops of his boots. 'It's a strawberry bullock you have, Dunn, which don't belong to you. Which is Dunn, and which be the strawberry bullock?' Knowing looks passed between the half dozen bullock drivers seated round the fire. 'What's this come amongst us?' must have been their thoughts, as without moving Dunn pointed out a down-horned brindle bullock, peacefully grazing near the waggons. 'That's Strawberry right there, sergeant,' he drawled. 'Have a look at him, you'll see the brand on his ribs.'

If he saw them, Constable Ryan did not heed the grins that passed between the unperturbed but amazed group round the fire. He walked across quickly to the unconcerned bullock, waved his hand in an authoritative manner and said, 'Strawberry, I arrest you in the name of the law!'

'Strike me pink! . . . Ssh! Don't laugh!' whispered Dunn to his amazed companions. 'We'll have some fun with this chap.' Springing into activity Dunn grabbed a rope. "Here, sergeant, put this on him," he said. "He's that quiet he'll eat out of your hand. You're going to take him in?" Dunn; and his companions might have been forgiven had they regarded the scene before them as an optical illusion— the aftermath of one of their periodical jamborees. But they were cold sober. "This'll be worth a ton of free beer," grinned Dunn, as he rejoined his mates, after having helped Ryan to secure the brindle bullock to the pole of one of the wagons. As Constable Ryan sat down to the meal pressed upon him by Dunn, they all offered advice as to the best means of getting the prisoner safely to his destination. The event promised to be a good joke for them, and one which they looked forward to telling in the local hotel with, much glee.

'Good luck, sergeant,' said Dunn, as the constable led off his prize. 'Take him steady for the first mile, and you'll hit the town before dark.' A burst of unrestrained mirth from the bullockies coincided with the disappearance of Ryan and the brindle bullock, round the corner of the road. 'Blimey! 'What price O'Regan when he sees what's on?' laughed Dunn, as he and the others hurried away to change their clothes, preparatory to setting off on the trail of the bullock arresting constable. "We'd better keep sober tonight," counselled one of his mates, "or O'Regan'll clink the lot of us."

* * * *

Had the few inhabitants of Logville been about, the light from a full moon would have caused them to gasp at the sight that met their eyes as a tired but willing Constable Ryan pulled and heaved; the brindle bullock evidently thought the joke had gone far enough, as far as he was concerned. He did not object to doing his bit when yoked with his mates, but to be pulled along with a rope round his neck was some thing beyond his understanding. But the bullock's apparent stubbornness only served to heighten Ryan's fading strength; and he tugged and heaved as he had never done before.

''Well, I made the arrest, sergeant,' gasped Ryan, almost out of breath with the exertion of getting the bullock into the horse yard at the back of the sergeant's house. 'Where did you leave him? Bring him here!' 'But, sergeant, I have him tied secure in the horse yard,' replied Ryan. 'You what! Horse yard be damned! What do you think a cell's for. Go and get him!' To protest or even explain would only bring forth abuse from the sergeant, thought Ryan. A glance at the width of the doorway made him wonder. During those few fleeting seconds Ryan wondered many things. It was with relieved feelings that he heard O'Regan tell him to wait. "Here, get those cell keys," snapped the sergeant. "I'll come with you."

A titter of suppressed laughter failed to reach O'Regan's ears, as he hobbled along behind a still wondering Ryan. 'Here they come,' whispered one of the assembled group of bullockies, ducking his head back behind the horse box behind which they were hiding. 'Well, I'm damned! What the hell -.. .!' O'Regan could not express himself properly. He was too dumb-founded even to curse, an accomplishment for which he was noted. Instead he leaned against the horse yard rails, glaring in amazement, first at the bullock and then at Ryan. But his pent-up feelings at last assumed control, and if Constable Denis Ryan had never heard a continuous flow of lurid language before, he heard it then from an exasperated O'Regan. Breathless, after one of his best performances to date, as far as continuity of epithets was concerned, O'Regan's face was a study of wrath in the moon light. 'God only knows what I can do with such a blithering fool as you,' he finally concluded, beaten for anything further to say. 'Put a rope round his neck and call him Strawberry, sergeant,' came in a roar from behind the horse stall, as regarding the performance over, the bullockies hurried away. — A.N.M.

'Obeying Orders'

Many years ago a young man walked down the jetty at Port Lincoln and asked the fishermen and ketch masters, whose vessels were moored nearby, if they wanted a helper. As he candidly admitted that he had no experience of the sea, his services were declined by nearly all the men.

The owner of one cutter, however, stood thinking for a time. 'I badly want help,' he announced, 'and I'll give you a trial. But understand this right at the start. You've had no previous experience of boats, so you'll have to do exactly what I say. An order is an order. You can't take any risks on a boat.' The young man agreed, and the fisherman replied, "Then get your dunnage right away. I have six baskets of snapper in the well and I want to sail over to Port Pirie and sell them there. We must be in at the wharf by daylight tomorrow.''

The young man ran off to get his gear and within an hour the cutter was sailing down the harbour before a fresh sou'-westerly. The owner of the cutter took the tiller until they were well out in the Gulf, then he told his new hand to take the helm and see how he shaped at steering. He made a good job of it after a bit of practice; when night fell a faint glow appeared on the horizon ahead. 'That's the light off Wallaroo,' the fisherman announced. 'Take the helm again, steer straight for that light, and call me when we're unde the light. I'm going below to get a bit of sleep.'

Left alone on the deck, the new hand sat with his legs in the after cockpit and the tiller gripped in his right hand, as he had been instructed to do, and kept the cutter's head on the distant light. For hour after hour he sat steering, listening to the humming of the rigging and the smash and hiss of the seas as the cutter bowled along; the distant glow of the light became brighter and finally appeared as a tiny spot of brightness which broadened to a star-like brilliance, faded away, and flowed again with the regularity of the beat of a clock pendulum. And all the time he kept in mind two things; he was to obey orders and sail 'under the light.'

Finally he considered that it was time to call the fisherman. The slide of the cabin hatch rasped back, the fisherman put his head over the coaming then rave a shout of horror, sprang to the tiller, and luffed the cutter up into the wind, while from the gallery around the spindle-legged lighthouse the keeper made sarcastic comments upon his navigation. The new hand had obeyed orders implicitly. To him, 'Sail up under the light' meant exactly that, and he had done it. When the fisherman recovered from his fright he told the new hand that 'sailing under' a cliff, cape or lighthouse meant going close to it—some half-mile or so distant — and did not mean that one was to try to pass between the piles of the lighthouse tower, or try to make the boat take a short cut overland.

After that experience, the fisherman took good care to explain the meaning of every order to his new hand. The new chum assistant made a good seaman and today is one of the best-known and most capable fishermen sailing round our coasts. But it took him a long time to live down the story of how he nearly wrecked a cutter on his first voyage by steering straight for a lighthouse and waiting until it was a bare hundred yards ahead before he called the skipper.— 'John Dory.'

Beating The Council

Many years ago wild dogs and kangaroos were so numerous on some of the stations on lower Eyre Peninsula that trappers made good money by combining kangarooing and trapping dingoes. The various district councils paid 20/ per scalp for wild dogs caught within their council boundaries.

Joe Gordon was trapping on Crown lands at a rockhole. He was doing very good business, but had not been heard of for some time, till one day he turned up at a meeting of a district council with a story of hard luck. He said that a bushfire had swept over the country where he had been trapping and had destroyed his camp and all his kangaroo skins, amounting to several hundreds, and also 12 dingo scalps. This catastrophe was such a serious setback to him as to be almost ruinous, because in addition to the loss of the skins and scalps all his camp equipment had been destroyed. He had therefore come in to enquire whether the council would pay him for the scalps. This they could not do, and Joe was told that, although the members sympathised with him, they could not pay.

As Joe was leaving the council chamber very dejectedly, one member facetiously asked, 'If the scalps were destroyed, why didn't you bring in the legs of the dogs? Then we might have considered the matter.' At the next meeting of the council, at which the regular chairman was absent, Joe turned up again, carrying a wheat sack from which he dumped 48 feet, a complete set of legs for 12 dingoes, and informed the council members that he had done as they had suggested and had gathered the feet from the places where he had trapped the dogs.

The members of the council were non plussed for a time, but when they had got over the surprise occasioned by Joe's action, they informed him that the suggestion of collecting the legs was only made jokingly, and they could not pay. Joe became very annoyed at this, and informed them that it was no joking matter with him. He put up such a good case that on a vote of members, it was decided that he was entitled to payment. He accordingly collected his £12 and left.

At the next sitting of the council, at which the chairman was present, the latter remarked as soon as the minutes were read, 'Well, gentlemen, you were had. I think that most of you know that Joe worked for me on my run for several years. Well, my black boy informs me that he recently saw strange horse tracks at several places on the run and followed them up, and found that they belonged to Gordon's horse. He also found that, Joe had visited the various places where he had trapped dogs while working for me, and had collected all the feet of the dogs at these places and brought them in to you.' This was found to be true, and was the joke of the district for some time; but proving it against Joe was another matter. He may have had his scalps destroyed by fire, and then again he may not. However, he got the benefit of the doubt.—C.H.A.

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1936, April 2). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92343631