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Text: 'A Barcoo Cocktail' v2 Chapter 4, Characters 1

from plowie, 25.06.09

Amongst his many memorable works, the late Andrew Barton (The Banjo) Patterson immortalised some of the great personalities who were part and parcel of the scene of early Australia, but who would have drifted into obscurity had it not been for the dedication of this gifted poet, historian and chronicler.

One of his subjects was Anthony Considine, and another was Jim Carew. I urge you to seek out the two of Patterson's poems with these names as titles, for a glimpse of the kind of people upon whom our true early history is founded.

In my own case, during my life at Yaraka, I can recall one chap especially worthy of note, who was very much a part of the scene there, although like so many such people, disliking to be named or even to talk much about himself. Nonetheless I will take the risk, and try to convey something of the nature of a very special man named Charles (Charlie) Donnelly.

When 'The Banjo' wrote of Jim Carew as being:

"Born of a thoroughbred English race,----

----Sitting his horse with an easy grace," he could well have been speaking of Charlie Donnelly of Yaraka.

Charlie was a true gentleman in every great sense of the term. He was much addicted to the oblivion induced by liquor, for which few would condemn him, and in my experience he never let that factor interfere with the lives of others. He was tall and wiry, and when mounting a horse he simply floated from the ground to the saddle with a wonderfully fluid and graceful motion. He worked, generally as a boundary rider on various properties around Yaraka, and as such he was a solid and reliable employee.

Charlie had a few party tricks which we got him to perform from time to time. At the age of around 70 he could place his palms flat on the floor without bending his knees! He could stand on a fruit case and touch the floor with his fingertips, again without bending his knees!

Charlie Donnelly had served in the First World War as an officer in the Australian Light Horse Brigade. During one of his several tours of duty he was taken prisoner, and spent a considerable time thereafter in the tender care of the enemy.

Over the years, having shared many a 'jug' with Charlie in the bar at Yaraka, I finally got to the bottom of a rather tantalising mystery. Often, secretly, I had wondered about Charlie's thumbnails. Both of them were permanently split down the middle, although they seemed to cause him no trouble.The injury was so perfectly symmetrical and almost surgically designed that I felt that it could not have happened purely by accident. Very gradually I worked round to the subject, slowly gaining his confidence, until in the most self effacing and forgiving of terms he revealed that it had happened while he was a P.O.W. During a long interrogation his thumbs had been clamped very hard to the edge of the Commandant's desk with ordinary carpenter's 'C' clamps! I dared not ask about the outcome of the 'interview', but in my mind there is no doubt that Charlie had the will and courage to resist.

Charlie has long since been riding through the peaceful fields above, but it is men of his stature and endurance who forged the heritage at the core of all that is Australian. That heritage is ours to cherish and to hold dear for ever. May we never forget it!

Another character of a totally different kind was Jimmy Morrison. He was only briefly stationed at Yaraka, as the relieving railway Stationmaster. In that capacity he stayed with us for six years. On that basis a permanent post at Yaraka would presumably entail signing up 'for the term of your natural life'! Jimmy had two great weaknesses, those being grog and racehorses. In spite of this he was a man of real ability and was possessed of a keen mind. We generally agreed that had it not been for the grog he would probably have gone on to become Queensland Commissioner for Railways.

Two little incidents will serve to demonstrate his sharpness of mind.

I was at the railway station waiting for the weekly train to arrive, and Jimmy was sitting on the steps of his office talking racehorses to a kindred soul. The talk was rapid fire with neither party taking much notice of the other, each being more intent on conveying his own message. It was in the days when the railway still used a ticker-tape machine for all their internal communications. The machine received a message in Morse code, and printed the relevant dots and dashes on a long strip of paper running between two reels. It was an elementary form of tape recorder. The message could later be decoded visually and written down, though Jimmy seldom bothered to put a new reel of paper on the machine.

On this occasion the machine started its distinctive rattling, and Jimmy seemingly ignored it. When it stopped he went into the office and wrote out two pages of the message which he had mentally recorded while talking racehorses to his friend. That was quite a feat, and knowing the man there is no doubt that the message would have been word perfect!

Jimmy had another trick which takes some beating. I had loaded 34 bales of wool on the truck and took the load to Yaraka to be railed to the market in Brisbane. As usual I filled out the manifest, listing each bale with its number, the owner's mark and its weight in the old Imperial system of tons, hundredweight, quarters and pounds. A bale might have the figures of 3 cwt, 2 qrs, 24 lbs, and the total load be 4 t, 1 cwt, 3 qrs, 12 lbs. As there were 28 lbs to the quarter, 4 qrs to the hundredweight and 20 cwt to the ton, adding the weights of 34 bales was quite a process. Add the column of pounds and divide by 28 to get quarters, with a few pounds left over. Add the quarters and divide by 4 to get hundredweight, with a few quarters remaining, Then add the hundredweight and divide by 20 to get tons. It meant working in three different arithmetic bases just to do one sum!

I gave the manifest to Jim Morrison, and he blew me off the face of the planet. With the tips of his fingers as pointers he started at the bottom, and working up line by line he added up the weights of the 34 bales. He took about one and a half seconds for each line, and wrote down the total weight in tons, hundredweight, quarters and pounds. That was Jimmy Morrison; a sad waste of potential brilliance.

When you are bored on a wet Sunday afternoon, try a bit of mental arithmetic involving the simultaneous use of base 28, base 4 and base 20. It is guaranteed to keep you out of mischief for a while!

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