|
AVINGTON STATION, Queensland, Australia - Des Fallon is lying on his back in some bushes, wiggling his upraised legs and grunting. Sounds as though he's in either pain or love.
Why is a grown man acting like this on a remote, sere outback plain? Because he's the world champion emu caller, that's why. At least Des, blocky and spry proprietor of Avington Station (what we'd call a cattle ranch), says he is. Since I'm not acquainted with that calling, I'll take his word - and performance - for it.
A couple hundred yards away a half-dozen emus glance in our direction.
"They're curious. Get your camera ready," Des instructs my friend Aurelio. Here's a man who can talk, grunt, and shake legs at the same time. Brilliant.
Emus can shake a leg, too. Run like hell. But these tall, wild, and wondrous birds - cousins of the ostrich and the cassowary, but found only in Australia - can't get off the ground. Flightless. Long-necked and long-legged - the Big Birds of the bush, but a long way from Sesame Street - they look, at a distance, like walnuts on toothpicks, topped by strands of uncooked spaghetti.
But they are coming closer, muddy-looking six-footers, their big eyes popping, apparently magnetized by Des's carryings-on.
"Photo op - now!" he commands, knowing his quarry.
Clickety-click. Aurelio is snapping, just in time. Seeing that the object of their inspection is only Des, the emus wheel and retreat fast. Gone in a swirl of dust.
Though impressed, Aurelio wonders, "Des, are these the house emus - just part of the act?"
"Absolutely not, love. Just because they live on my property doesn't mean they're tame or recruited from the zoological branch of Central Casting. They have minds of their own. Not much, as minds go. But they do find me irresistible, as you've seen."
He claims no such mastery over kangaroos. But there are so many of them romping and pogoing on his acreage that even the rankest camera-pointer is going to get the picture. Why, if even a fraction of the population gave up their tails for conversion to ever-popular kangaroo tail soup, these dry plains would be tastily flooded.
Jovial Des and Norma Fallon have been a hard-laboring cattle-raising couple for almost half a century. However, now they're "taking it easy" at Avington, a relatively small spread way out here in the Queensland sticks - 9,500 acres.
"We're in what you Yanks call the hospitality business," says Norma, an energetic grandmother, irrepressible despite being crushed nearly to death in a terrible accident a few years ago. She was run over by a runaway tractor. "Curtailed my tennis for a bit, love," she says, smiling, while making breakfast pancakes and eggs for three paying guests in her kitchen.
Norma, good enough as a junior to play mixed doubles tournaments with future Hall of Famers Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, remains a tough partner when guests get the urge to use the Fallons' lighted court next to the tidy tin-roofed, frame homestead. It's a typical rouge-toned country court - ant bed - like those on which Queensland farm boy wonders Rod Laver, Mal Anderson, and Roy Emerson grew up.
Laver recalled in his autobiography, "The Education of a Tennis Player": "You just knock over some of those ant hills, or termite mounds, with a tractor, spread it and roll. Makes a nice gritty red court, sort of like clay." Those insect-built protruberances, about the size of traffic cones, are everywhere.
Although Avington is down-home, bed-and-breakfast atmosphere, it sports a landing strip that can accommodate small jets, and a rough but serviceable nine-hole golf course. There are horses for riding, squirmy sheep for shearing (by the adventurous), the caffe latte-shaded Barcoo River for a refreshing skinnydip. Or shady porches on the widespread 130-year-old house for napping and doing nothing.
"No," says Des, "you don't have to help with the cattle unless you want to. They don't belong to us anyway. Norma and I are beyond that now. We rent the ranges to other owners. We're just a place with plenty to do and plenty not to do. We can handle 16 guests in the homestead, 30 in the outbuildings, and have room for unlimited camping. The only thing you don't want to miss are the meals."
Absolutely.
Driving in from Barcaldine the day before, after alighting from the Spirit of the Outback, the overnight train from Brisbane, we were ambushed by hunger.
"No worries," said Helen Heath, steadily at the wheel of the Land Rover for the rutted 60-mile thump-bumping overland push across the bush as kangaroos, emus, and bustards streaked through the twilight of a ranch called Home Creek Station. "Des will have the barbie going when we get there."
An East African feeling pervaded as the sun, crashing on a grassy expanse, seemed to set fire to a forest of acacia-resembling, low and delicately-branched boree. A blazing sky that went on forever was smudged with dark clouds that prompted Aurelio to remark, "Charcoal. I hope he's got that grill flaming with plenty of charcoal."
He did. Des, was chef-ing over home-grown steaks, sausages, and lamb chops in an arbor adjoining the house. Norma had salad, beer, and wine on the table, with apple crumble and ice cream to follow. Post-dessert liquid, a cloudburst, leaked through the canvas roof.
Nobody cared because by that time Des, the venerable ringer (cowboy), was up and cracking his stockman's whip as he recited in lusty, twangy baritone, and from memory, "The Man From Snowy River," a poetic saga by the bygone bard of the Outback, "Banjo" Patterson:
"When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull - /It well might make the boldest hold their breath, /The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full /Of wombat holes, and any slip was death. /But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head, /And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer, /And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed, /While the others stood and watched in very fear"
Pausing for malten oiling of the larynx, he then charged into the next stanza, and to the end - "The Man from Snowy River is a household word today, /And the stockmen tell the story of his ride" - as though Des was aboard that cow pony himself.
Avington, a single-story structure of several additions over the years, purchased and restored "from dumpy condition" by the Fallons nine years ago, has eight neat bedrooms. Frogs in our bathroom are friendly and unobtrusive. Wick, the resident black cat, is a frequent visitor. A lulling cross-room breeze shuffles through our door that is open to a porch, and out a window. Stars chaperoning the Southern Cross splatter across the sky like an explosion in a marshmallow factory.
Sleep comes swiftly, and dreams of emus like stilt-legged sugar plums go dancing in our heads.
|