Life on early Outback sheep and cattle stations could get pretty lonely – not only for the shepherds in their isolated huts, but also for the manager and the homestead employees.
On the more remote stations, even the occasional passing traveller was a source of some excitement – someone with news from the outside world, someone to while away an evening with, swapping yarns, sharing the odd drink.
Christmas and Easter provided the chance for a welcome break – an excuse for having sporting events, either among the station employees or in competition with folk from the surrounding stations – which could be twenty or more miles away. On these occasions cricket matches, sprinting challenges and horse races were typical events.
Umberatana was a typical remote station, and we are lucky to have a good description of the sporting events on Christmas Day 1867. Managers Samuel and Robert Stuckey organised a four-a-side cricket match, in which Robert Stuckey and Thomas Flett excelled in their bowling. Visitors from neighbouring Illinawortina Station helped fill up the teams.
After the cricket, a number of two-horse races were organised, along with a trotting match. Proceedings at the track finished up with a hurryskurry.
As evening approached the whole gathering retired to Umberatana Homestead for a Christmas dinner, after which Samuel Stuckey’s wife treated them to some excellent piano playing – something rarely experienced in such a remote part of the North.
In 1870 Umberatana Station held a mid-year race meeting. By now, the event was a bit more formal, with stewards, starters and, of course, a judge. The organising committee appointed as judge a drover by the name of Harry Collins. Harry had very recently arrived in the district with a mob of a thousand or more cattle which he and a couple of mates had brought down from Queensland, pioneering the Strzelecki Creek as a cattle droving route. This was a feat that had quite impressed the locals – no one had considered it possible to bring cattle through that great expanse of dry, sandy desert country. Harry’s horse-riding skills had particularly impressed the locals at Umberatana – and those at neighbouring Blanchewater Station where they had sold all their cattle.
By all accounts the races went well, and the judge proved eminently suited to the task. Harry and his mates then moved south to Blinman, where they treated the locals to stirring tales of their trip down from Queensland – tales of huge snakes, alligators (no doubt perenties, giant goannas up to two and a half metres in length)), floods and the like. They met many groups of Aboriginal people, all of whom proved to be friendly and helpful. After a few days relaxing at Blinman they headed south on the mail coach to Adelaide.
Harry’s offsiders, George Dewdney and William Rook, used their share of the money from the venture to sail to New Zealand and set up new lives. Harry, perhaps less wisely, decided to gradually work his way back to Queensland across the back-blocks of New South Wales. It was to be a couple of years before the law caught up with him and put him on trial at the Roma Court charged with one of Australia’s most daring cattle rustling exploits.
At the Roma trial Harry (under his real name Henry Arthur Readford) had to front up to a jury of twelve of his peers. The evidence about the identity of an imported white bull that Harry had sold to the Walke brothers at Wallelderdene on the southern end of the Strzelecki Creek seemed good enough to gain a conviction. However the prosecution’s main witness about the original theft of the cattle proved to be quite unconvincing in Court – particularly when he was forced to admit that he was an escapee from the Brisbane lunatic asylum. The jury came in with a ‘not guilty’ verdict, much to the outrage of the judge.
Much was said and written about the jury’s decision, and the government reacted by removing the Roma Court from the judicial circuit – they were of the belief that it was impossible to find enough honest jurors in Roma to conduct reliable trials. There was, however, some valid argument that the evidence, as presented, was circumstantial and quite open to a ‘not guilty’ verdict.
Harry went on to have a few more brushes with the law, but eventually owned or managed several cattle stations in western Queensland and over the border in the Northern Territory. He became involved in an ambitious scheme to find a stock route from Western Queensland to Coolgardie in Western Australia. He was drowned in 1901 while crossing the flooded Corella Creek in the Northern Territory.
Harry is best remembered not as Harry Collins or Harry Readford but as one part of the composite but fictional character Starlight in Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms. And to round the story off, even Rolf Boldrewood’s name was an invention – his real name was Thomas Alexander Browne and, appropriately for the Starlight story, he was variously a pastoralist, a magistrate and a writer.
… some useful links …
Christmas Day in the Far North – Umberatana Races 1867
Harry Collins judges at the Umberatana Races, 1870
Harry Collins and colleagues at Blinman, 1870
Harry Readford biography – Wikipedia
Letter defending the Roma Court decision in Regina v Readford 1872
Reminiscences about Harry Readford and the Readford family, 1901