Before the Road Trains: The Long Walk South - Cattle, Drovers and the Spirit of the Outback

Every year, around the anniversary of the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942, we remember the shock and courage of those dark days.

What is less often told is what was happening across the vast cattle lands of Queensland and the Northern Territory at the very same time.

While Darwin burned and the north braced for invasion, thousands of cattle were being walked south; away from the threat; in some of the greatest droving feats in Australian history.

Many Australians of an older generation will remember the classic 1946 film The Overlanders, starring Chips Rafferty. Inspired by the wartime movement of northern cattle, the film captured the courage, endurance and quiet determination of the drovers who undertook one of the greatest cattle drives in our history.

Though dramatised for the screen, it preserved something precious - the spirit of the men and women who lived and worked in the vast Australian interior when the nation needed them most.

The Long Walk

Before the big diesel road trains revolutionised the industry in the 1950s and 1960s, almost all cattle destined for the major sale yards at Roma and Rockhampton travelled on the hoof.

A mob of 800 to 1,500 head, driven by a team of five to eight men, a cook and a horse tailer, might cover 600 to 1,000 kilometres over eight to fourteen weeks. They followed the old stock routes - faint tracks worn into the red earth by generations of hooves.

Incidentally, according to one of our readers, the horse tailer, usually the youngest member of the camp, was in charge of the care of the precious horse plant. It was demanding work and often the first step in a bush career. More than one seasoned drover began as the lad who looked after the horses.

The daily rhythm was hard but precise:

• Start before dawn while the ground was cool.
• Rest through the worst heat of the day.
• Push on again in the late afternoon.
• Camp the mob at night, with riders circling and singing softly to keep the cattle settled.

A sudden stampede could scatter the mob for miles. Recovering them might take days. Drying waterholes, flooded river crossings, poison weeds and cattle tick were constant threats. Many mobs arrived at the sale yards thinner and lighter than when they had left.

In fact, the film was referred to as a meat pie western. 

I think The Overlanders fits the description beautifully because it has all the ingredients of a classic western:

• a dangerous journey,
• ordinary heroes,
• magnificent landscapes,
• cattle instead of longhorns,
• and an enemy that is often the country itself.

In many ways, Chips Rafferty's laconic - man of few words - stockman is Australia's equivalent of the American cowboy - less flashy perhaps, but every bit as tough and deeply tied to the land. 

And I rather like the thought that while America had its cowboys and six-shooters, Australia had drovers, campfires, billies of tea and that feels very Australian indeed.

The Men Who Did It

These were not romantic film characters. They were tough, often underpaid bushmen - ex-soldiers, station hands and adventurers. Many had served in the First World War. Some would later serve in the Second.

While the nation feared Japanese invasion in the north, these men were moving valuable breeding stock and slaughter cattle south to safer country and to the great sale yards that helped feed both the civilian population and the war effort.

Their work was quiet, essential and largely uncelebrated.

The women left behind on the stations were every bit as vital. They ran properties, raised children, fixed windmills, managed the books and kept entire stations operating while husbands, fathers and sons were away for months at a time.

Arrival at Roma and Rockhampton

When a big mob finally reached the sale yards, it was an event.

The cattle would be held in receiving paddocks and then walked into the pens in smaller lots. Auctioneers with powerful natural voices - there were no microphones then - called the bids in the open air amid clouds of dust, shouting buyers and the bellowing of nervous cattle.

Roma, with its famous bottle trees along Heroes Avenue, and Rockhampton, the self-styled "Beef Capital of Australia", saw thousands of head change hands on good sale days.

The drovers, gaunt and dust-covered, would deliver their charges, collect their pay and often disappear into the nearest pub for a well-earned celebration before turning around and doing it all again.

The End of an Era

The coming of road trains in the 1950s and 1960s changed everything.

A journey that once took months could suddenly be completed in days. Losses fell dramatically. Cattle arrived in better condition, and drovers could spend more time with their families.

Yet many old hands missed the life they had known - the campfire yarns beneath a million stars, the lonely night watches, the deep satisfaction of bringing a big mob safely to its destination after hundreds of kilometres on foot.

It marked the end of one of Australia's last great nomadic occupations.

Why It Matters

These droving journeys were about far more than moving cattle.

They formed part of the living fabric of outback Australia - a time when men and women worked with the land on its own terms and accepted its hardships without complaint.

The same spirit that built the stock routes and the great sale yards at Roma and Rockhampton is still there today, even if the road trains now do the heavy lifting.

Next time you see a big road train thundering along the highway with "Roma" or "Rockhampton" painted on the side, spare a thought for the men and women who once walked those same cattle the hard way - through drought, flood and war - so the nation could eat and the industry could survive.

They were the quiet ones. The unsung custodians of the stock routes and the open road.

And without them, much of northern Australia would never have been built.

Lest we forget the quiet ones who kept the herds moving.