Tom Buzzacott

My Uncle Sallay told me this story long before I went to Leigh Creek to live with my family. I would’ve only been sixteen years old or so at the time. This story is about a man called Tom Buzzacott. An aboriginal friend of Uncle’s who was around the Leigh Creek / Marree area back then. The Buzzacott name is probably still around the place up there.

A Leigh Creek father couldn’t find his little boy and was of course a very worried man. The father and other searchers ran into Tom and knew that he did a bit of tracking for the police etc., so they enlisted his help. They showed him the tracks that they knew belonged to the little boy in the hope that he could somehow follow them up and find the little boy. Uncle recalled, Old Tom took one quick look and knew straight away whose foot prints they were. “That’s the butchers little boy”, he said. One quick look was all it took. Tom set off following a trail that no one else could see, let alone follow, but it was clear as day to him. “He pass here not long ago”, Tom advised. No one else saw anything. Nothing at all. They found the little fellah playing with tin cans in a place he often visited apparently when he wanted to be on his own. I’m seventy-six years old as I’m writing this but I remember that story like it was yesterday. People like this and what they could do, and did do, should not be forgotten. I’ll never forget, that’s for sure.

Brumby Running on Mungerannie

I was brumby running on Mungerannie Station when I was 15 or 16 years old back in 1960. We would round up the wild horses on motor bikes and run them into yards that were specially built for the purpose. The ‘breakers’ would then break the horses and when we had enough, Uncle Sallay and me would cart them to Melbourne where we sold them to Coles Brothers who shipped them over to India for the Indian Army. It was one tough job and those I worked with were one tough mob.

They hadn’t invented the trail-bike as yet so the bikes we used to run the horses were powerful road bikes with the muffler removed. They were noisy as, which frightened the horses of course. Which was the general idea. The bikes we used were ‘Harley Davidson’s; ‘Triumph’s’ ‘BSA’s’ etc. Big. Heavy 650cc road bikes. As we were riding fast over sand hills we spent most of our time standing up on the bike. We were always glad to see the end of the day let me tell you.

Back in those days, the Birdsville Track was basically all sand. The actual track was where the last vehicle had managed to get through. The reason there was no grass or foliage on the sand hills back then was because the cattle were ‘driven’ by drovers and, of course, the cattle ate every blade of grass as they walked their journey to the rail head in Marree. Now these sand hills and strong winds don’t mix. Apart from the inconvenient sand flying around the place, the wind also cuts one side of a sand hill as straight as a brick wall.

One runner went out to scout for the horses but came to grief when he raced up a sand hill and fell some distance down the other side. The wind had cut it away. The fall broke his water bottle that was fixed onto his handle bars. He started his bike to check that and it started. He checked himself over and it was all good, so he switched off the bike and intended to drive home when he’d recovered.

Later, the bike refused to start. It was summer time and well over 100 deg …..(45 deg today). We all went out find him when we realised there was something wrong. We could track him fairly easily in the sand but when we eventually found him he was nearly dead. He was delirious and his tongue was swollen from thirst and hanging out of his mouth so that he couldn’t close it. One of the group had a bottle of water and intended to give it to him but Uncle stopped him, “You’ll kill him”, he said. Uncle wet a rag and wiped the man’s lips on occasion. This was the most moisture the man was allowed until the Flying Doctor came when we got back to Mungerannie Station. This was typical of some of the problems that people faced in the north, back in those early days.

Listen to “Where Country Is” - a song written for Slim Dusty by Barry Moyses

The photographs on this page have been selected from the Leigh Creek Old Town Project archives, and the Internet, to illustrate these stories. Barry only owned a “prehistoric” Kodak Box Brownie at the time and not many of his original photos have survived the test of time…..besides it was too hard to carry a box camera on a motorbike while brumby running ………….