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Outback archive: unorthodox historical records

Dr Darrell Lewis, 4 June 2008

Introduction - Murranji Track

Thank you very much everybody for coming. The area that I'm talking about - the outback archive - obviously exists throughout the outback, but the part of it that I'm going to talk about is along the Murranji Track. Along the Murranji Track they eventually established bores and put in water tanks. The water tanks were mostly made of sections of curved, flat, galvanised iron. They weren't corrugated, they were flat sheets, but they were curved into sections and bolted together. And these became noticeboards for the travellers, mostly drovers but other travellers as well, to put up just their name perhaps, but also grievances and a lot of social history, pictures and drawings.

Map of Australia showing Murranji Track

A lot of them were done in charcoal, some were in pencil, some were scratched and others with red paint from the paint they used for the piping. They also used to paint the tanks with bitumen paint as a preservative, and then they would scratch into that so there was a sort of negative effect.

The Victoria River district proper to the west of the Murranji Track is in effect an extension of the Kimberley, and the Kimberley is the home of the boab tree. The boabs live for centuries and if you cut into them or they are damaged in some way, the bark heals within the damaged area. It doesn't fill in. So if you carve your name on it and carve it more than, say, a quarter of an inch deep, it's there for the life of the tree.

Aborigines used to do this before whites ever came. The early explorers mentioned coming across trees with pictures on them done by Aborigines. But once the first Europeans came, all over Australia they would mark trees with 'B' for Burke, 'LL' for Ludwig Leichhardt or whatever, and the following settlers did the same, as have people done ever after right up until now. If you go along the Victoria Highway you will see this year's crop of tourist graffiti carved or painted on the trees.

My talk will be in two parts. First, I've done a lot of work on the surviving graffiti on the water tanks on the Murranji Track. I'll show you a selection of the graffiti that I've found. Second, I've recorded the historic inscriptions on about 120 boab trees and I'll show you a selection of those inscriptions.

Murranji Track tank graffiti

Murranji waterhole. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

That tree in the foreground, a coolibah, has a scar on it. That is actually where the surveyor who surveyed the track in 1914 left his surveyor's marks on the tree.

Primarily I'm not talking about the trees and the track; I'm talking about the graffiti on the sides of those panels on the Murranji bore. This photo was taken eight or nine years ago. It's since had a hurricane wire fence put around it with a locked gate to preserve the graffiti on it from anybody else coming along today and painting over it.

Murranji bore taken around 2000. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

There were about seven or eight bores along the track. The windmills are down on all the other bores, either destroyed by storms or deliberately taken down. The tanks survive in some of the bores, although on one site they've been stolen by local station people and re-erected on their stations, along with the graffiti. And some of the others have corrugated sides so they weren't very useful at being a noticeboard. These tanks at the bore sites became known as the bagman's gazette - bagmen being the men who travelled around with packhorses and lived out of their pack bags. Every time anyone arrived at one of these bore sites, the first thing they would do, virtually, was to rush up and see what the latest instalment of the bagman's gazette was. They would have a good laugh and then add to it, no doubt.

There's not much bitumen left on the tanks any more, but this is an example of a protected part of the tank. A few weeks ago at my latest book launch [The Murranji Track: Ghost Road of the Drovers], Ian McBean, one of the last Murranji drovers, came down for it. This inscription says: 'Peter Costello, cooking for Ian McBean. Droving from VRD1961.'

Graffiti scratched on Murranji bore. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

Most of the surviving inscriptions on the tanks are in lead pencil or they are scratched with a knife blade or a nail. The drovers didn't hold back, as you see from reading this inscription. Because the corrugated iron is a mottled grey, it's very difficult to photograph it. There's no contrast in most cases, unless it's done with some other paint - there are a few which are done in white or in red and a few which may be in pencil but are clear enough. What I've been doing for years now is sticking up sheets of plastic over those panels with blue tack and tracing off the inscriptions so I can get a black and white version for posterity in the same hand, if you like, otherwise you just can't show it with photography. And the tanks can talk, as you will see. As for the rest, I don't know.

Tracing of graffiti on tank (with profanity removed). Photo: Darrell Lewis.

Tracing of graffiti by 'Slip' Prendergast. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

'Slippery' Claude Prendergast on horseback, 1955. Courtesy: BC Mettam collection, Northern Territory Library.

You had passing drovers. 'Slippery' Prendergast was one of three brothers who were drovers.

He says 'watered' or 'mustered' - probably watered – 'the rushing Newrys', which means cattle from Newry station. They used to refer to their cattle as from the station. So they were VRDs; they were Newrys; they were Ords.

And he passed there in 1955.

Tracing of graffiti by Charlie Yeeda. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is an inscription by Charlie Yeeda. I've met him, and last I knew he was still alive. He lives over near Halls Creek. I went to see him and interviewed him. He was clearly quite proud of the fact that he could read and write because his name appears on quite a few of the tanks.

As you can see, he passed 'with drover Jack Green with 23 hundred mob'. They did have an exceptionally large herd that year. They combined two herds and they had a lot of trouble. They left very late in the year when it was wet season and they had all kinds of problems. But there's the record.

Tracing of graffiti by Bruce Simpson. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

The 'B Simpson' at the top is Bruce Simpson. He is still alive. He is very well known and has written quite a few books. He writes very good books on the droving and outback life. The second part of the inscription says, 'If you want to be a big 'gun' drover drop your strides to Bingle and go West' - Bingle being the overall boss in charge of all the Vestey stations. So if you wanted to get some Vesteys cattle, that is what you had to do.

When I traced this stuff off, sometimes with tracing you can actually pick up what the word is when you couldn't recognise it beforehand but sometimes you can't. The bottom part is a bit illegible, but it is something about 'from Cloncurry' to something or other. But you get the first part of it and you know what he's on about.

Various drovers have told me about either one drawing or the same drawing done again and again of someone dropping his strides to Bingle and turning over his shoulder and saying, 'Does this mean I'll get the Vesteys herd this year, Mr Bingle?', or something to that effect. They all laugh about it to this very day but, unfortunately, only one man ever had a photograph and his wife said, 'That's disgusting, give it to me,' and she destroyed it.

Tracing of scab union queens listing. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This one had me bluffed – what does 'scab union queens' mean and then there is a list of names. I know some of these names were drovers. I've met Bill Cussen; I've only heard of the others. It turns out that this is actually an indictment against these named people, because what happened was, in the 1940s the drovers would come into Wave Hill to get the Vesteys cattle. Wave Hill was a depot for the other Vestey stations. They'd bring the cattle to Wave Hill and then they'd supply the drovers to take them to Queensland. They all decided that they weren't being paid enough per head per 100 miles. So they went down to the head station and fronted Mr Bingle, I believe – but anyway they fronted whoever was there in authority and said, 'We want more money,' and whoever was in charge said, 'Oh look, I'm sorry, boys, Vesteys has decided not to send any cattle this year after all.'

So then they went back to their camp very dejected because, as they rode from Camooweal and places like that across the Territory, they obtained stores on credit from the one or two stores that were on the track. If they weren't going to get a herd of cattle then they were in debt and weren't going to be able to pay it back. So they sat around for a week or two. The Vesteys boss let them stew, and then he came down one day in his truck and said, 'Vesteys has decided to send the cattle this year but only at the old rate'. And these were the fellows who first accepted the deal; they broke the strike. So they got written up there for all-comers to be aware of their breaking the strike.

Tracing of graffiti pictures. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

There are also pictures and drawings. These are among the best ones, I think, these fabulous portraits of highly individualised characters, plus the cow of course and also a Mexican-style sleeping man.

Tom Cleary was a renowned horseman back in the 1950s in the Territory. I don't know who the others are - I can't see. These were actually so finely etched, probably with a nail or a pocket knife, that I'd walked past them quite a few times tracing other materials. I only put the plastic up to see what I could decipher by tracing and, as I started to do it, I could suddenly see them, but they were almost invisible until you looked really closely. That's often the case.

It's a bit like tracing rock paintings. It's the same sort of thing. You can start tracing and not realise what the full picture is until you look at it so intently and actually start to fill it in. Then suddenly it will jump out at you that it's a Tasmanian tiger or whatever it is.

Tracing of 'Elvis' on the track portrait. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

Then there is Elvis riding on the track.

Tracing of graffiti portraying Ned Kelly holding up a stockman or a ringer. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

And there is Ned Kelly on the track too. It was a pretty important place with all the most famous people – the place to be seen. He looks remarkably like the character off an Uncle Toby's oats box with a helmet on, but that doesn't matter. Note the fabulous spurs as well.

Tracing of graffiti on tank (with profanity removed). Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is a very rough one - this is the full size of the tank, in red paint. As you can see, someone didn't give a damn about the following cattle, let his herd into the water and completely ruined it for the next traveller, and he was denounced.

I've been told by some of the old-timers, there are two names put forward as to who that was. One was Puddling Paddy, because apparently he made a habit of it.

Another one was Fred Martin, who was a great big fellow known as the 'whispering baritone' because of his deep, quiet voice. I've read the police journals, and Fred was into cattle duffing and all kinds of things. He was quite a character.

Whoever did it, this fellow didn't quite know, but that is 1941. So that was painted up there 67 years ago and is still quite legible.

That's the last of the Murranji Track images of graffiti on tanks. I'll now look at inscriptions carved on boab trees.

Boab tree inscriptions

I've recorded about 120 boab trees with historic inscriptions. This is a selection of some interesting ones.

Photo of marked trees near Koolendong waterhole. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

There are still Aboriginal carvings to be found. In this photo there's an emu or some sort of bird. That's up on Bradshaw station in the north of the Victoria River district.

It's a stock camp site as well, because a waterhole is just down the back where those trees are - a waterhole full of salt water crocodiles too, I might add.

Photo of Gregory expedition's carved boab tree, 1855-56. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

Then you move to the settlement times. This is the Gregory's boab tree on the Victoria River where the Gregory expedition had its base camp for about nine months in 1855-56. When the expedition was leaving, the expedition artist, Thomas Baines, carved up the date of arrival - July 2nd, 1855 - and the date of departure on the tree.

'Letter in forge' carved by Gregory's expedition on Victoria River. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is my photograph of a nearby tree. They had a blacksmith's forge at the camp. When they left they put some letters in the back of the forge and then filled it up with pig iron and other stuff and wrote on the tree. You can see 'letter in forge'. About seven or eight years ago I went there with Tom Griffiths.

Darrell Lewis tracing off inscription on boab tree

That photo shows how I've been tracing things off. That inscription one didn't quite need it because it wasn't so far around, but I did it anyway. You can just outline the inscription, bring it home and then at your leisure fill it in. It's quite a lot of work to fill in the big writing. You have to buy these gigantic felt-tip pens and spend a lot of time doing it, but you get a fabulous line drawing version of the inscription on the tree.

Tracing of all the graffiti around Gregory boab tree. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is Gregory's tree done that way and photographed and unrolled. Obviously you can see the main inscription of the dates and also 'Letter in Oven' also on this tree. But here you have 'LC'. The first manager of Victoria River Downs who went out there and pioneered the station in 1883 was Lindsay Crawford. I have documents where he talks about going to this tree. When he was first going from the station up to the Victoria River to meet the first boats bringing stores in, he overshot the upper reaches of the river and he mentions seeing the tree and he obviously carved his initials on it.

That is William Wilshire, the infamous policeman. He is also on record as having visited the tree and carving his initials. Only a matter of a few months later the Northern Territory Government Resident visited the area and called in to look at the tree. He wrote that 'some vandal has carved WHW on this tree and they should realise this is important historical', blah blah. He knew exactly who it was, I'm sure. He knew the policeman was out there.

At the far right-hand side it's not quite legible but that is actually the word 'Torch', which is the name of a ship which was sent by the government to check up on the expedition to make sure they were doing all right, because no-one had heard from them for nine months. He got there some weeks after. He's found the 'Letter in the Forge' inscription and someone has carved up the name of the ship on the tree.

'TF' is probably Taz Fitzer, who was a policeman in that district on and off for about 30 years in the 20s, 30s and 40s. I don't know why it would be '84' underneath, if it relates to his initials at all.

Then there is an emu track which is most likely Aboriginal. I don't know who the others are. It could be brands - I don't know.

Photo taken around 1911 of Victoria River depot store near Timber Creek. Johns collection at NT Library.

This is an early photograph of the depot store taken in about 1911. It was established in about 1905. There were a number of boab trees around the area that were renowned in folklore as the place of many a big binge from the local ringers going there and getting plastered.

Close-up showing graffiti on boab tree outside depot store.

But from this closeup of the tree, you can see that the inscription is 'REE'. It is actually WREE and it refers to Walter Rees who was a stockman in that district from about 1887 to the mid to late 1890s. He had been there obviously to meet the boats. The boats were coming from 1884 on and dropping the stores at the banks. You would have to be there to meet them with your wagons. They couldn't just leave the stores on the riverbanks because some of the locals would raid the supplies. This fellow had obviously carved his name on this tree long before the store was even built. That's from an early historic photograph, so I'm getting some of the early records from old photographs.

Photo of boab tree on Humber River station with Gordon inscription on it. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is on Humber River station which is more or less in the central Victoria River district. In 1908 the local settler, Brigalow Bill Ward, who had a very small block of land of about 500 square miles, was speared and killed. When the police finally figured this out they came down to Victoria River Downs [VRD] homestead, which is about 30 miles away, and that night a bush Aboriginal came into the blacks' camp at VRD and speared someone in the camp. I forget exactly why he speared him or if they knew, but anyhow the next day they tracked him - they believed he was one of the fellows who'd murdered Brigalow Bill - right into the ranges for about 50 or 60 miles. This creek coming down is only a tributary of the main creek. There is an inscription on this tree in the centre of the photo.

Gordon inscription on boab tree. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

On this tree is carved this inscription: 'Gordon shot' and then with an arrow that is pointing up the side creek. It looks like '18' and '10' but I think it is probably meant to be 1910, because that's the year when they finally were tracking this fellow down and they'd finally caught up with him on the headwaters of that little creek. He resisted arrest; he threw spears; and they shot him. It's interesting that someone in effect created a memorial to an Aboriginal outlaw through this inscription.

Photo of boab tree with inscription made by Hansen in 1907 or 1909.

This is another early photograph. On the tree I think it says 'Hansen builder' and then the word overland abbreviated and 'NSW to WA'. There is a date on it, 1907 or 1909. He was a builder, as it says. On the way he'd built the Timber Creek police station, which is still standing there, and is now a little museum at Timber Creek. There have been two police stations after that.

Photo of fallop inscription on other side of Hansen boab tree. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

But on the other side of this tree is this inscription which says, 'The fallop O'Keefe the great I am.' And I thought: what is a fallop? It's not in the dictionary. I went to the National Dictionary Centre here at the Australian National University and put it to them and they eventually tracked it down. Fallop has several meanings from British dialects in the Celtic areas - some in Scotland, some in Ireland and some in parts of England. Some would have the spelling slightly different, but it's clearly the same word. The main meaning seems to be something very large and unpleasant like some great big lump of rotten meat perhaps or something that is tattered and torn and falloping in the wind.

Someone here didn't like Mr O'Keefe and reckoned he was 'the great I am'. I happen to have found in the Northern Territory Times in 1928 a little snippet about drover O'Keefe which says:

O'Keefe being of extra large stature could not negotiate the bullwaddy scrub on the Murranji Track successfully, although his bullocks did so. When seen, O'Keefe was tattered and torn and would have won a special prize at any fancy dress ball.

I can't help but think that somebody read that who didn't like him and knew that word, someone who is from those areas, and wrote it up. This is the only known record of that word 'fallop' in any document of any kind in Australia. It's amazing what you find on the boab trees.

Boab with Tunney inscription carved in 1902 situated next to Victoria Highway. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This boab tree is right next to the Victoria Highway and the inscription says 'J Tunney 26' something '02'. He was actually a natural history collector working for the Western Australian Museum. He was landed at Wyndham with a wagon and travelled overland collecting what he could. He obviously camped near here. There is a big rocky ridge on the right-hand side of this photo, a place where you would go looking for different kinds of animals perhaps.

Tunney continued through to Darwin and then he went out to the East Alligator and was out there quite a while. He was also collecting for an American institution at the same time. He was some sort of contract or freelance collector who was employed by these institutions. He's carved it there quite deeply. I don't know who put the head on top of it, whether that is supposed to be him or it's a later edition.

Royal Hot inscription on boab tree. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This inscription says the 'Royal Hot' which is actually the Royal Hotel. There is a series of these hotels down the East Bains River, which had been a stock route from the early settlement times through to about 1920, roughly. There is the Club Hotel and the Oriental Hotel with a big bottle carved onto it. I asked one of the old-time locals, Charlie Shultz, about it. He said that was when the drovers were coming down. In the morning the drovers would take the cattle off camp and the cook would pack up and clean up. He'd usually have a wagonette and he'd travel and pass the cattle. He could travel faster and he would go ahead to a prearranged place and set up camp and have the dinner ready for when the drovers got there. Obviously they had a bit of spare time and whoever it was – as I say, his skin was cracking from lack of alcohol - so he'd carve up the Royal Hotel or whichever hotel it was. Without Charlie Shultz's input, I would never have had a clue what that was about.

There's a big waterhole just down behind. Boab trees are good for a camp site because the trunk is so wide that you are going to get full shade throughout the day pretty much. There is always going to be one side or the other which has got good shade. They are landmarks as well. Even if there's a lot of boab trees around, they are still good landmarks. And once they are marked like that, they are even more of a landmark because you can say, 'We'll go down to the Royal Hotel, and I'll meet you there,' or whatever.

Photo of Venus Quick beside her inscribed boab tree, 1953. Venus Quick collection at NT Library.

This is a photograph of Venus Quick. Venus is still alive and is about 95 years old. She wanted a taste of northern Australian droving and cattle life, so she contacted Charlie Shultz of Humber River and came up and spent a dry season with him and helped him muster cattle on his place. Charlie used to send cattle to Queensland but he also took cattle to the Wyndham meat works. Venus was a very good horsewoman. She helped him out and went on the trip from Humber River to Wyndham.
At one of the camps on the way, Emu Springs I think it was, she says in her diary that she spent two and a half hours carving up this inscription. I haven't actually relocated this one yet but I haven't been along that section of the stock route to look. It's nice to know how long it took. It didn't take all that long really. Those boabs, they are soft enough that you can dig a pocket knife into them and hack out a groove without too much trouble, although it takes you quite a while nevertheless. I'll find that inscription one day - unless the tree is dead.

Retribution camp boab tree with carving all the way around. Photo: Darrell Lewis.

This is the Retribution Camp boab tree. I was told about this tree by some locals. They didn't give it the name. They just said that there is stuff carved on this tree. You can see it's a very big old boab tree. I photographed it all at the time and I have done it all again since. Sometimes there's no contrast between the outside of the groove and inside. Usually there is with some sort of lichen making it darker, but when they are not clear enough in contrast, what I've learnt to do with the boab inscriptions is that I have been getting a big handful of grass and burn it. I then gather up the ashes into a container, mix a bit of water into it and make a slurry out of the ashes and charcoal and make it into a paint. I then thinly smear that into the grooves. It doesn't look like a paint but it darkens the grooves and you can get a good contrasting photograph.

in this case after I'd done all that, some years later some people who'd been to the tree said, 'It's looking sick. Some of the branches had broken ends and they were looking like they were rotting.' I thought 'I want to make a better record of this because it has inscriptions a long way around it.' So I went out there and put the plastic sheets up. You stick up the sheets with thumb tacks and then you can trace off the stuff. I did that. I don't know if the tree is still there. I haven't been there for about five years. That boab tree would be many centuries old.

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Date published: 22 September 2009