This is not brigalow, but you get the idea.

Writers like details. So much can be evoked by, say, the glow of a gidgee ember-pile at dawn. The smell of an approaching squall. The calloused hands of Tom Joad, or  the masterful passage describing the journey of a turtle across the highway, in The Grapes of Wrath. The intricate evocations of cloud colourscapes in Das Boot.

Perhaps it’s because memory works that way. Often, it’s just the fleetest image or impression that stays with you. A dismissive glance; a few words; a sunset. When I was a kid we did this trick where you get someone to take ten deep breaths and hold, then bear hug them around the chest until they pass out. We did it, I think, for the sake of the altered consciousness that accompanies coming to. The texture of the carpet left a deep impression not only on my cheek but in my memory. Tiny, easily overlooked moments, colours, textures, that you carry around for no particular reason, when a thousand thousand others have disappeared.

Then there’s careening wildly at flat gallop across a tussocky paddock, headlong toward a creek, with a thick tree-line on the other side looming rapidly, able only to hang on to this mammoth creature, whose overwhelming strength and determination are matched only by your complete helplessness. Bigfoot had a way of leaving an impression.

It could be a question of loyalty, but mustering horses is different from mustering cattle. Horses know cattle are of a lower order. Other horses might be mates. The horse you’re riding may transfer its allegiance to the mob you’re trying to catch. Also, the musterees can travel as fast as you can.

Simon told me horses have intelligence roughly equivalent to a three year-old child. Anyone who’s had anything to do with three year-olds knows that they are canny, observant, skittish, innovative and occasionally malevolent. Later, at Soudan, a horse I was breaking damn near drove two-thirds of my spine out of my arse by charging at full gallop under the large branch of a tree. He knew exactly what he was doing.  Since breakers had naming rights, I called him Arbor.

He got his tongue over the bit. A bit doesn’t work on a horse’s lips, but fits in a bony gap between the front incisors and the rear molars of their lower jaw. Simon would encourage empathy and gentle persuasion by getting you to put a teaspoon on the bridge of your nose and press. “I don’ wanna ever see you jerkin’ the reins”, he said, and I spent long periods on the young horse he gave me, the palomino, Quiver, just gently putting pressure on the bit, until she put her head down and took a step backwards. Now, generally within minutes of getting on a new horse, I can make it walk backwards, and still be my friend.

If they put their head up, you lose the pressure on the sensitive part of their jaw. If they get their tongue over the bit, you lose all use of it or the reins. If they’re experienced, they know this. If you’re inexperienced, they know that, too. They’re sensitive like that. Bigfoot had experience, and he knew that if he put his head up high, I would have no way of disrupting his bold bid for freedom. On the other side of the creek he would scrape me off his back under those trees, no worries. I had learned to keep the reins down and loose, but this is hard to do while clinging desperately to them as a life-saving measure. I had not yet learned how to safely decamp from a horse going at full speed.

Flat gallop has a way of clearing the mind. In several hundred metres, including a majestic moment of weightlessness as we crossed the ditch of the creek in a long bound, there was nothing in my mind but pure, essential, ecstatic terror. I could vaguely hear the calls of the boss to let them go, the horses we’d been attempting to muster, whom Bigfoot was now determined to join. When we hit the trees I instinctively put my head down, forward. This manoeuvre saved my life, later, in the Arbor incident. This time it just meant the branch that swept me out of the saddle hit sideways right across the top of my head and knocked me clean out. Instant death.

Coming to from the kid’s game was a serene moment of transition, inducing a flooding sensation in the body and a dream-like sensibility capable of grasping the importance of the texture of carpet. The strange things is, when you’re unconscious you don’t necessarily stop moving. This time, I regained sensation in the bed of another creek, trying to get a purchase in the fluid sand, seemingly attempting unsuccessfully to stand up, spitting blood out of my mouth. The boss, who had ridden up at a more leisurely pace in the interim, was not pleased.

“Fuckin’ useless jackeroo cunts can’t stay on a fuckin’ horse for ten minutes straight.” This wasn’t Simon, this was the manager, a less sympathetic sort of a fella. I had been foisted upon him by his father, the owner of the company. From this speech, and other indications, I suspect he thought of me more as a liability than an asset, with some justification. Instead of arranging for the flying doctor, he told me to walk back through the trees, to where we had initially disembarked from the truck. “Turn off the trough there, and bring the truck around to the other gate.” He gave me directions.

Half the paddock was brigalow scrub, the other half open grassland. We had started at one gate, at the scrub end, and mustered the horses through the trees onto the open part, towards another gate. At some point, as we closed in on the destination, they had decided they preferred the bush life, and weren’t keen on going back to work after their spell. Picking the weakest point in the line, namely yours truly atop the traitor Bigfoot, they broke through it and departed at speed towards the trees with me in involuntary hot pursuit. There was no way they were coming back out of the brigalow that day. If we turned off the water source at the scrub end, they would be around the one in the open grassland next time.

By this time I had recovered enough to realise I wasn’t badly injured. There was a large scratched patch of skin beside my right eye, in which the flies were already taking a keen interest. It’s remarkable how well-protected your eyes are. There a was a fence I could follow to the gate, so I wouldn’t get lost. “Come and pick us up at the other gate. And don’t take too long. That’s half a fuckin’ day we just wasted.”

I continued on foot along the fence. Solitude, the aftermath of panic, the exhilaration of survival and the altered consciousness that accompanies coming to; all contributed to a mystical frame of mind. I noticed details. The flies crawling over the hand I covered my wound with didn’t bother me particularly. The bush is not silent: wind-noise, flies, birds, creaking branches, footfalls. The light bathed me. Dapple. Flutter. Reptiles slithered and crawled. Ants everywhere.  The canopy could be a metaphor for stained glass. Whenever people mention connection to country, I think of that sensation, that half hour of timeless brigalow dreaming.