You go, Cowboy!

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“If anyone wants a killer, come and see me after,” called the compere as we waited for the first of the afternoon’s activities to begin. “Saves ’em being taken back to Dubbo. Get yourselves a killer,” he urged.

My ears did a double-take, rewinding the last few seconds. And then remembered.

Welcome to the bush. Where men are men, and sheep are afraid. Or, more accurately, in the mutton-bustin’ event we were about to watch, kids ride sheep and the sheep then head for the pot. Less “kill-ers” than “kill-ees”.

I took a break from the events in the ring to wander over and top up our drinks. The motherly lady on the other side of the bar looked up with an all-enveloping smile as I approached.

“How’re you goin’ today?”

“Good, thanks. And you?”

“Aaaw… goooood, thanks. And how’re you enjoyin’ yourself?”

“Very much, thank you!” Conscious of my English accent; consciously trying to disguise it in an effort to blend in just a little bit…

“That’s good. And what can I get you?”

The slow-drawled preliminaries make me pause. Nothing’s so urgent in this part of the world that these can be constrained. Courtesy and warmth amidst the dust and laid-back excitement on the second day of Tibooburra’s Gymkhana and Rodeo.

We’d intended to drive the 250 km north to this erstwhile mining community’s annual jamboree the previous day, but a forthcoming public holiday had necessitated a trip in the opposite direction to sort out some red tape in Broken Hill. Instead, delayed further by the change to daylight savings, we set off in the middle of the Sunday morning, unsure exactly what to expect. A search on Google for “Tibooburra Gymkhana 2010” had shed little light: “Two days of action packed outback Rodeo and Gymkhana, mixed with some boot scootin and crazy family fun events”. Your guess was as good as mine…

The countryside in this distant part of New South Wales is looking phenomenal. The last ten years of drought have broken with twelve months’ good rains, and the desert is well and truly in bloom. Driving west from Sydney the previous weekend, I had been amazed by the number and variety of plants in flower, as well as the carpeting of vegetation the entire way across, and this continued as we drove north into Corner Country (so-called because of the proximity of the geometrically-drawn borders of Queensland and South Australia). Fields of Darling peas stretched off into the distance. Roadsides were lined with tall paper daisies and Australian hollyhocks. The Cobham Lakes were full, milky-brown with stirred-up sediment, and a creek or two still contained water reflecting the eucalypts above.

We pulled off at the “heritage township” of Milparinka, the only other surviving settlement in this part of New South Wales, to see if the Albert Hotel would provide us with a sarnie and a beer, but, sadly, the place was a ghost town. Not even that. Echoes of an old Western’s film-set, long since abandoned to the winds and the dust. So much for the “substantial township” of the late nineteenth century with its four hotels, bank, shops, library, newspaper office, police station and courthouse, school, post office, telegraph connections to Sydney, and twice-weekly coach services from Wilcannia and Broken Hill. A local community group keeps the place going as a tourist attraction, but even they were gone that day, and the old hotel well and truly closed. Feeling as if we’d somehow invaded an open grave, we turned round and returned to the highway.

“But this is Kamanjab!” I exclaimed as we drove into Tibooburra half an hour later, immediately struck by its similarity to an oft driven-through town in north-western Namibia. Wide dusty streets at the intersection of a couple of highways. A couple of pubs-cum-hotels. A petrol station or two, and a stocks-practically-everything-you-can-think-of supermarket. Even the landscape was identical. Kamanjab, on the fringes of Damaraland, is surrounded by rocky outcrops; “Tibooburra” means “heaps of rocks” in the local Aboriginal language, and it’s not difficult to see how it got its name.

Despite being in the throes of its annual party, the town seemed deceptively quiet. Still wearing off the night-before’s hangover, perhaps? A sharp nose detected the smell of frying steak, so we parked in the company of a few dozen 4-WDs and utes and followed our noses. Round the corner, under the extended awning of what seemed to be an industrial shed, we walked into the American Mid-West. Wall-to-wall Stetsons and Mr Levi’s best. Fried steak and onions. Upturned beer barrels. There were even a few pairs of cowboy boots emerging beneath the denim. Everything bar the gun holster. Reality seemed to have taken a lunch-break. I perched on a railing with my Ketchup-ed chips, and took a deep breath.

The morning had comprised motorbike events, and folks now were taking a more or less well-earned break before the afternoon’s activities. I was hoping for “real” rodeo this afternoon, rather than the motorised version, my wishes fuelled by the sight of a couple of horses being saddled up in the distance. No hard hats here; leather chaps and Stetsons; cowboy saddles. This could have been a hundred years’ ago, were it not for the unisex wearing of denim, and the Country’n’Western music being piped over the PA system…

“I love to have a beer with Duncan
I love to have a beer with Dunc.
We drink in moderation
And we never ever ever get rollin' drunk
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Duncan
'Cause Duncan's me mate, yeah”

It wasn’t all The Eagles and Dolly P, even if some of the Australian input was a touch predictably Midnight Oil and the suchlike, but I do love how you can always rely on the Aussies to write a song about the essential things in life, keeping the lyrics nice and simple…

After inviting offers for the later consumption of the first of the afternoon’s stock, the compere summoned the riders for the “mutton bustin’”. A disjointed group of small persons, varying from four to seven in age, and from small and round to gangly in shape, scuttled across the ring, hard hats to the ready - a courtesy nod to the health & safety folks out there. Half a dozen adults were on hand to lift them over the barriers where, in turn, they were introduced to their ride. When the child was properly mounted - or, at least, balanced - on a confused bundle of wool, the gate would open and the sheep would scuttle out as best it could, sometimes struggling even to stand properly under the weight, or leggy-ness, of the child on board. More often than not, the child would take a tumble in the first second or two, swiftly picked up by a bevy of cowboys. Occasionally, an overly protective father would try to hold onto both the child and his/her mount as the sheep left the starting blocks, but this would be taken into account in the judging and, more often than not, didn’t do the child or the sheep any favours. One young girl delightedly managed to stay on top of her sheep all the way to the far barrier, and easily took the afternoon’s prize. I’ll wager this wasn’t her first time. In the meantime, the erstwhile mounts gathered together on one side of the ring with the magnetism of their flocking instinct, and wondered what exactly had just happened to them, their bemusement writ large.

Next up was the “open saddle bronc”, the semi-suicidal attempt by Man (the women here seemed far too sensible to engage in this enterprise) to conquer unruly Horse. Here the horses were also being judged, the most “active” being kept aside for a future professional career in unseating those reckless enough to try and ride them. One or two barely managed more than a buck across the ring. Sadly, a short-lived career as dog meat was likely to beckon. Each rider was built up in advance by the compere. Here was the best rider of the previous day, the up-and-coming talent of the weekend, the holder of the Guinness Book of Records’ record for longest time spent on a mechanical bronco… Few managed to hang on until the eight-second whistle. Coming off before this disqualified the attempt. Once the rider was in the dirt, attention switched to the three mounted cowboys in the ring who would round up the horse, and herd it through the gates to clear the ring for the next contender.

After the horses came the cows. And I mean “cows”. Apart from the prize bull ride at the end of the afternoon, the bovine mounts were female. But these weren’t the placid versions I knew from the fields of Nottinghamshire, or even the grumpier ones on the hills of the West Highlands of Scotland. These were mean sheilas, all right, and they weren’t going to tolerate anyone demeaning them by getting on board. While horses essentially buck in two dimensions, cows and bulls throw in a neat little butt-twist in mid-air, making them exceedingly unpredictable. Add in the much-reduced harnessing - only a rope thrown a couple of times around the animal’s girth - and you really do have a recipe for lots of bruises - if not worse - time after time. But cowboys seem to bounce. And, after all, they were being reminded to sign their waivers… The lawyer in me winced. Still, if sheer stupidity in the name of entertainment is admirable, I took my hat off to these lads.

Once the prize bull’s rider had picked himself out of the dust, his attempt to hang on sadly short-lived, the ring’s events were over for the day, but the evening was just about to start. No rush in the morning for these guys: it was a public holiday. However, we had a fair drive ahead of us and no wish to hit a ’roo or two in the dusk on the way back, so began our way south, stopping only in Packsaddle for a drink, a sunset and the closing stages of the rugby league grand final. This was more the Australia I knew - beer and ball-sports. We’d left the Wild West behind for another day.

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Photos

for those not au fait with GPS...
... this means it is 585 km until the next turning on the road back to Broken Hill... Imagine leaving London for Edinburgh and not having to make another turn until the Borders...