Cotton Sally
or Stegosaurus Pie
or Stegosaurus Pie
The ancient earth divulges a
well-kept secret as a work gang of unfortunates tackle a sea of weeds.
Loose parcels of the furry white horehound blighted riven sweeps beyond
the blue and steady outlines of the King William Ranges. It was the one thing
that stock wouldn’t eat. There were documented cases of sheep gnawing off their
own legs rather than eat the furry white horehound. The bitter herb pocked the
land, and where it didn’t there were swathes of rancid blackberry, ferocious in
the gullies. This is where the rabbits romped too, and the foxes who grew plump
upon them, and here and there were spectacular outbreaks of that florid floosey
Salvation Jane. The noxious capeweed, looking as innocent as a daisy, was
introduced in 1924, a bumper year for transplanted pests. It rolled across the
plains and valleys in a festival of bleached yellow with its black eye gazing
upwards at the sky in maniacal wonder. The worst offender, however, and yet the
most majestic, was the fiercely prickled milk thistle, tall, purple,
good-looking, aristocratic, but replete with sour juices. Locals sometimes
called her Cotton Sally, for the in late summers when even blowflies lobbied
against the heat she went all wooly and the flat, dreary acres fluffed up with
hordes of drifting fairies. Only camels and mad bulls would even attempt a
nibble. Territorial, jealous of inches, she denounced her rivals in perforating
incisions. She seemed good enough to smell, but any creature who did received a
spiky fist of ill-will in the face. She came all the way from Scotland where
she was only slightly better behaved.
It became a matter of lop-sided contingency, therefore, for the Lands
Department, beholden to blessed pioneers, to thus induct expensive schemes, and
the Country Party campaigned on a platform of earnest control. It wasn’t until
the minority Argyle government, elected on the promise of ‘Jobs For White Joe’,
that there were gangs assembled, an army of trudgers, conscripted into the
broad-pastured endlessness. The Minister held up Cotton Sally in Question Time
and assessed the opposition as tardy. “As we speak, Mr Speaker,” he spoke,
“teams of intrepid gentlemen venture forth!” The region beyond the riverflats,
as crisp as brittle, pokey hills with granite understorey mixed, regrettably,
with grimey grey clay, was among the various selected. Summer that year was
ugly. Summer that year had a beaky nose and squinty eyes and a tight, sullen
mouth with sun-chapped lips covered in herpes. Vast plumes of thistle cotton roared
over the huge dry paddocks in shifting drifts of outright abandon. Every
fluffball carried the seeds of lament. It gave pastoralists the cheesy night
horrors. Grown men succumbed to a dread of lint. It was decided to station the
“unit”, as it was called, at the Lands Department testing ground outside of
Restless Pleasure. From there the “unit” could wander on, brave men blazing
away both barrels with 24D.
This particular unit, stationed at the testing ground, consisted of the
usual dozen and were equipped with a truck and sprayers and a meanly stretched outfit
of old canvas tents. Quite apart from what the minister might have spoken,
these “intrepid gentlemen” were, bar two of them, unlucky rustlers on a
make-work undertaking. The two exceptions were the Man-in-Charge, a
departmental lacky, and his invariably pissy offsider. There was Ralph Bowie,
M.I.C., twenty years a departmental lacky, and proud of it. There was also his
offsider Jock Gotham, pretty pissy, aspiring. He was an expert at being reckless
with dangerous chemicals. Under this purview, therefore, were an assortment of
social drivel. There was Teddy Mayfair, unemployed. Monk ‘Monkey’ Gilson, very
out of work. Craig of the Monobrow, between jobs at that precise time. Then
there was Billy Such, a former sailor who had once strangled a Belgian to
death. Augustine Farley, one of the twenty-six Farley sons famous in Banning
Flats, was among them just because there was no room left in the bedroom and he
needed somewhere to sleep. Gustav Rockingwell, an unhealthy specimen, didn’t
have his papers. Alf Apple who, ironically, had been an orange grower in the
lilting irrigations south of Elegant Ridge, had gone bankrupt up to his noodle
and this was his reward. There was, furthermore, a cook, an Aboriginal chap
named Channing G. Sportsworth III, and a dwarfish man named Aberfoyle Everest,
also ironic - everyone called him ‘Mount’ - inducted just for being short. Thus
the spray gang. The unions complained. Why couldn’t an Irishman do the cooking?
Since when are dwarves able bodied men? Gustav Rockingwell sounds almost like a
German!
They set out into the bleak tusks of February. There was no defined
traffic onwards from the Restless Pleasure testing ground, so they managed
tough terrain. The M.I.C. and his deputy had a schedule, but the other men
couldn’t give a frankfurt’s knob. In the main, they were determined to be idle.
The truck, rusty and uncertain, rattled up the corrugated roadways, and when
they came to an infestation they stirred the canisters and primed the blasting
guns and cut down the purple heads just as they went all cottony in the wind.
Young Farley snipped the fence wires. Alf Apple backed the truck up to the
furrow. Gustav and Craig took orders to man the sprayers. The paddocks were massive.
The thistle had claimed entire landscapes of it and bristled in pointy
defiance. Small portions at a time, the spray gang cut Cotton Sally down,
knocking out her stiff artichoke legs right from under her. It seemed a
pointless extrapolation. The horizon was a hundred miles away in the Kingdom of
Weeds. Farmers grappled with the barren dust. Landholders were able to put in
requests. Ralph and Jock had maps and plans of tracks and a long list of
grieving lambers who had watched their paddocks swallowed up by the
blue-tongued wanton and were advocates of subsidies and socialism for the rural
man. The Lands Department had a charter to serve their needs.
After a full day of spraying, the party would often settle at designated
sites accompanied by heaps of roadbase and three million stars. Teddy Mayfair
had the knack of raging fires. They threw on a kettle and boiled a fierce
tisane and Monkey Gilson added some gum leaves for flavour. The kerosene
lantern had a pump action. Spraying weeds gave a man the hunger fits, and
Gustav Rockingwell grew wretched. He complained of being ragged in the belly.
He had a cough and liver spots and a wheezing stomach. The cook was undettered.
He’d been called a boong before. Ralph, the Lacky, reminded the Germanic all
about a cook’s revenge.
“That’s true,” affirmed Billy Such, drawing on experience. “On a ship,”
he said, “if you gnargle the cook you’ll be spewey all the way from Port
Jackson to Batavia.”
The Germanic looked over at Channing G. Sportsworth III who was just
then slicing rabbit chops.
Jock Gotham, being pissy, toked with scintillation on his roll-your-own
and said he sincerely feared and respected cooking men. He didn’t care if it
was a boong, a gyp, a coolie or a leperous Chinese fishwife; they held the
strings to a spray man’s innards. The spray fumes often made him nauseous, but
a good meal at the rear of the session in the vast airs of the southern eve
settled his apprehension. He’d been with the Lands Department for a floss of
tidy years and might have made a Man-in-Charge but for being pissy and his
tendency for night sweats.
The cook, for his part, had a repertoire of three dishes: Rabbit Stew,
Rabbit Casserole and Rabbit Medley. They all looked and tasted exactly the same
but he would announce them every starry evening with aplomb.
“I’ve got a big treat for you whitefellas tonight,” he’d call out during
a lull, waving his chopping knife around. “Rabbit casserole!”
All the whitefellas would cheer as if it was a break from the usual.
Mount Everest was on the aborigine’s side.
“I don’t get it, chef,” said the dwarf. “Why are they cheering? It’s the
same dish!”
“I don’t know,” admitted the cook, quietly, “But I’m not going to tell
them.”
Who can understand the ways of white men anywaze? he did wonder.
Inspired, he was thinking of adding Rabbit Goulash to the menu as a special
surprise.
In any event, the next morning it was back to killing thistles and
soaking the good earth in 24D.
* * *
It occurred, in this context, that the spray gang one morn surpassed a
drastic hillock among the rocky features of the King William Ranges. The
Ranges, of course, run north to south and obscure the coming sun. In a bleak
land-shadow, desperately dry, a fool from the city had purchased a slather of ruined
acres from a toothy land-shark in Adelaide on the promise he could grow
potatoes. The soil was like cement. In the first year he managed to grow three
potatoes - three - in all his many allotments. Then came Cotton Sally. She
rampaged across the paddocks ablaze with grey-green needles. He was on Ralph
Bowie’s list. The property was remote and lunar, chunky with rock-work and, in
the fallow patches, outbreaks of prickly pear. This was no direct concern of
the spray gang, though, whose only grievance was with the pearly milk thistle, ostenatious
and offensive. It was a noble gait. She stood upright. But she was as vicious
as a disappointed lassie from Glasgow. She was all over this property like a
dose of the dribbling groin rash. It was a hazard. These were intrepid
gentlemen who rarely washed. They camped out in bursts of three weeks, then
drove back to the Restless Pleasure testing ground to drink all their earnings
in cycle.
Craig of the Monobrow was driving for a change. The men bartered
cigarettes and exchanged cool sardonic banter. Billy Such said that he once
strangled a Belgian to death, and he was just reminding every one of this fact
to underline his aversion to gentle teasing. The Farley boy from Banning Flats
made observations on the weather. “There’s a bit of cloud,” he noticed. But it
was far away and thin and streaky. In a quiet corner the cook and the dwarf
whispered other observations.
“The weather? Hot!” said the dwarf, sarcastic. As if February would
agree to be anything else. They were among the dim.
The Aborigine nodded indeed.
A single track took them across the girth of the land, deep into the
grey clay. They pulled up and dismounted and prepared to continue the war. It
was a point where the thistles were thick and bitter. There were patches of the
inedible horehound on the edges. It was the only companion the thistle would
permit. The Man-in-Charge ordered Gustav and Craig to man the sprayers and Alf
Apple leant a hand. Suction was powered by a deisel engine on the back. The
M.I.C. himself took care of that.
“You blokes get onto this corner,” he directed, “I want to get this done
by lunch time.”
Monkey Gilson snorted loud and said, “Pig’s arse!”
A million thistles laid down their challenge.
“You shouldn’t speak to your M.I.C. like that,” said pissy Gotham.
No one cared.
“We’ll get it done when we get it done,” said Alf Apple sagacious. It
was his philosophical position.
As this went on, however, the cook and the dwarf sought refuge from the
wasteland. There were boulders avast, heavy munga of the earth, and a slight
pinnacle of high ground and nooks of shade. Rabbits abound. The cook could catch
them with his bare hands. The two veered upwards. The deisel started chugging
and the first mists of spray wafted from the guns. The plan, as usual, was to
dowse one section then drive along. It was going to take them forever.
Mount Everest led the way. Channing G. Sportsworth III surveyed the
primordial topography as the sun started eeking over the hilltops.
Their conversation was a continuation of other days.
Mount Everest had plans to one day go to Sydney. He spoke of ways to
become a millionaire. The cook was softly spoken and contemplative and
considered it a rare disposition for a dwarf in a spray gang killing Cotton
Sally. He himself had plans to go to Rockhampton where his brother lived.
“You’d like Sydney,” said the dwarf. “It’s got a big bridge and you
could get a job as a cook.”
“I can only cook three things,” the cook admitted though.
They climbed some further boulders. There was a sharp cut of shadow ready
for when the sunbeams hit and noon came searing.
The drawf thought it over. “Yeah,” he agreed, “And they’re all the same.
Pity.”
He saw the limitations.
It was then, amidst the cut, sheltered by great rock, that the two of
them, opening forth, suddenly saw the cave. It had been covered by sandy rubble
but the recent wind storms had loosened the obscurity. The indigenous chap
scooped down and pushed the few stray thistles aside. There was a cave front,
it was true. From the angle you could see down deep inside. It seemed to
descend.
The two glanced aloft.
“Will we have a look?” wondered the Mountain.
“Why not?” wondered the Aborigine.
The dwarf was small enough. He climbed down within.
The thistles, meanwhile, had drawn first blood. Ralph the Lacky tripped
on a malee root and fell face first into a nasty bed. Apart from pissy Gotham,
the spray gang laughed until they all needed to urinate on the side of the
truck, further irony. Ralph’s thistle stings were bleeding. Vengeful, he
ordered the Germanic and the Monobrow to not hold back but to train their
nozzles upon Cotton Sally that she might know to never mess with the Victorian
Department of Lands ever again. The gang resumed. They cranked up the deisel to
the highest gear. Alf took the wheel. Cotton Sally swayed in the blistering
breeze.
Among the rocks, the dwarf disappeared. Channing G. Sportsworth III
looked on.
“Can you see down there?” he called.
“Sure can!” the dwarf responded. Then, going hence, there was a long
silence until he expressed his massive fascination. Tremendous adherence!
Awesome encounter! Great quadrupeds of the palaeocene!
“Blood hell!” cursed the Mountain. “You really ought to come down and
see this chef!” His voice was muffled in the cavenous wonder.
“What is it?” the cook wanted to know.
The dwarf had to coax him through the narrow entry hole. Once under, all
was revealed.
“So what is it?” the cook asked again, this time before the skeletal
ruins of a considerable beast. The hole was dark - as holes are dark - but a
bright shaft adjusted their eyes and they could easily see the shapes and the
frame.
“I’II tell you what it is!” said the dwarf. “It’s a bloody stegosaurus, that’s what it is!”
He knew his dinosaurs.
The sandy twists had uncovered its final rest. Three hundred acres of
vicious thistles had kept the cave occluded. It was in some disarray but its
huge hips and whacking jawline were plain to understand. Some manner of
dinosaur any how, was intruder from a former age.
“We’re rich!” Mount Everest announced.
“How do you figure?” asked the cook.
The dwarf was instantly excited.
“We’ve just discovered an archaeological treasure, my friend. It must be
worth a fortune!”
Not only did he know his dinosaurs, he knew his market forces.
Channing G. Sportsworth III gave it some serious thinking. His round
mellow face remained unchanged.
“I don’t see any reason,” he began, “to tell the Man-in-Charge about it,
though. Do you?”
Mount Everest entirely agreed.
“I don’t see any reason to tell anybody about it,” he said, vowing certitude.
But he supposed that he could find a buyer in Sydney. The bleak land is
bereft of treasures. Here and there are opal mines and a zinc pit or two, the
endeavour of completely foolhardy men. The water that’s dredged up from the
bores is red and brown and smells of the far-reaching devil. They call intrepid
gentlemen on spray gangs “thistle rich”, meaning dirt poor, and this be where
the expression comes from even though those who use it no longer remember
anymore. ‘He’s thistle rich’ means poor enough to be conscripted to the rural
scheme, camping out beneath the circling sky in gangs of twelve or more. How
bright the starry rafters! The dwarf and the cook realised it was their lucky
day. What about the fool whose land it happened to be on? He needn’t know about
it either. The ancient beast held all its secrets. Its head was intact. The
texture of bone was showing. They would cover up the caveway and come back in
the relative calm of autumn. No one need know till then.
“There are museums,” said the dwarf, “that specialise in this sort of
thing.”
Some men find mere artifacts. Some find song-lines across the unshod
desert. Some find nuggets of gold. Some men, even short men, black men, find
stegosauruses hiding in the rocks midst oceans of unfriendly weeds.
* * *
The night came slowly. Evening lingers in the plains at the back of the
King William Ranges. The M.I.C. started yelling and so did pissy Gotham. Billy
Such threatened to strangle them both. The team poured a belly-load of 24D over
the purple menace, and she stung, and she imbibed the heady toxin. They were
behind schedule by a King William mile. The dimensions of the land just laughed
at their puny application. They sprayed all day but only trimmed around the
edges. There were banks of blackberries in the gullies, the harbour of new
vermin.
Upon dark the gang lit a hardwood fire and slipped on a billytin of
eucalyptus tea again. They sat on logs and rolled slim cigarettes. Channing G.
Sportsworth III started slicing up the rabbit chops.
The men were discussing who were the bigger bastards, the Scots or the
Poms? Alf Apple had been born in Cornwall and was mightily offended. Gustav had
a continental point of view. Teddy Mayfair thought that Scotsmen, not unlike
New Zealanders, whom they resembled, he said, couldn’t be trusted near sheep
and he offered his own views on the real purpose of the kilt. After a while,
the department lacky broke the spell of the fireside by listing the sites that
were scheduled on the dusty morrow. It was a rough test of reality. They go
until the tank is empty. Then they go back, siphon it all, and drive onwards to
another landholder’s purple nightmare. They were paid enough for tobacco and a
hold-over stipend collected at the end of active duty.
“I’ve got a big surprise for you hardworking whitefellas tonight,”
yelled the cook during a star-studded lull. The fire crackled. “Stegosaurus
pie!”
The men looked up, paused, then cheered and stomped. Anything but
rabbit.
- O. Spaniel Murray
