Camooweal has always been the home for drovers.

Fine horsemen and women, good cattle men and excellent bushmen.

They were walking there mobs down the Murranji and across the Barkly Tableland to the Georgina Stock Route in weather fair and foul for well-nigh the first hundred years of settlement.

In those days Georgina stockmen could tell who owned the mobs long before they read the brands or earmarks.

They could tell them by their size, their horns, their colour and their conformation.

Early droving was by pack horse or dray.

The advent of the road train, that mechanical marvel of the 50s that modern stockman on wheels, wiped out dozens of drovers just as the car in the 1920s had put hundreds of teamsters off the road.

The droving of stock over long distances with no facilities not knowing what lay ahead, no routes, no roads, no medical help, no telegraph, no signposts and often very long dry stages called for a special grit, special knowledge, initiative and courage.

These were the ‘Knights of the Saddle’ living on a horse or in their swags.

They made little fuss about diet.

Corned beef and damper with sometimes dried fruit was their daily fare and a spud or two was tossed in to balance their diet.

They used pigweed for greens and a ‘duff’ for Sundays, if they were lucky.

Drovers lived in fear of a cattle rush; they often had not slept for days on end and if the women and children had a hard life following the teams it was certainly a much worse existence for the family droving these large mobs across the downs with children doing the work of men.

There were plenty of ‘crashes’ caused by the frightened stampeding sock.

Jack Clarke on the road with 1250 Rocklands bullocks camped for a night on Smokey Creek and during the night six inches of rain fell, so the creek spread out over its banks.

Harry Nolan was the man on watch and as the ground was covered with water, he galloped into the creek trying to block the restless bullocks and lost his horse.

They were a week putting the mob back together again.

At Para Pituri Waterhole in the Georgina a man on watch had a similar experience.

He, however, swam right in behind the lead and steadied them on the other side.

For the reasons above most drovers recited Banjo Patterson or Henry Lawson or sang around the cattle to soothe them down and keep themselves alert.

Just after the rabbit fence was erected, a drover was days getting his cattle through the gateway.

A heavy wind was blowing creating heavy dust ahead of the bullocks blotting out the gateway.

To add to his problems, the boundary rider was there for the two days to see that the irate drover did not resort to cutting the fence for which there was a heavy fine.

Remember, that in the main the Northern Territory was stocked from the Queensland side and that explains that the stock routes are east to west.

In those very early days when routes were uncharted the boss rode on ahead choosing the route, then the leader followed his tracks with the stock flanked by outriders following after them.

There is, however, still the isolation, the dust, the loneliness, the oppressive heat and demon drought as well as the never ending sameness of those everlasting plains.

How far have we really come?

Although discovered some 120 years ago, this part of North West Queensland today is largely dormant, patiently awaiting some imminent happening it seems.

Did the hardy old pioneers and their courageous women endure so much in vain?

They drove their stock and tramped those vast ‘Plains of Promise’ and ‘Barkly Plains’ with such high hopes: they pushed their scoops to build earth tanks and chopped countless cords of wood to fire steam engines with some expectation of better days, some promises surely.

They used the skills and knowledge available to them as I expect each generation must do.

Geographical remoteness and financial drought have inhibited and frustrated everyone’s dreams ever since. In proving that ‘those that sow do not always reap many were to be buried by the roadside.

They exported all their people and imported all their skills as Australia grew more urbanised and the declining bush numbers weakened their political muscle.

Towns like Camooweal have lost much of their pioneer spirit swallowed up by the larger centre, as mechanisation, transport and communications have altered the face of the country.

Perhaps it is true, the colonisation of Australia began at the wrong end. Governments of every persuasion are at some time or other going to have to define their policies regarding these isolated townships.

Are they to be allowed to slowly die as service after service is denied to their citizens in this supposedly ‘egalitarian’ country of ours?

Are they to be always ‘doubly’ taxed for education and medical facilities and denied access to others for the dubious privilege of living in isolation? 

The ‘losers’ in this battle of the frontier have been in my opinion the people of the small isolated communities, those very communities that sustained and supported the early development of this tremendous North West frontier. My book, Camooweal Centenary 1884-1984 has been my attempt to make you, the reader realise that too little is known of the silent pioneers of this great frontier and the contributions hey have made to Australia.

Researched by Kim-Maree Burton. First published in The Border and Beyond – Camooweal 1984-1994.

Photographs courtesy of Mrs Ada Miller.