Bore-pulling camps must dream of beeps. On the Barkly Tablelands, on the grasslands, there are two sources of water, one from above, one from below. Water is everything. The more water, the more cattle. The rain came, and the Rankin River flowed, and every dip and fold of the landscape became a water source. The cattle were hard to muster, not just because of the mud, but because they were spread out, and had no need of the permanent water sources. But soon the puddles dried up, the river stopped flowing, broke up into a series of waterholes of varying depth and lifespan. The carrying capacity was thus restricted. Bores were the answer. From memory, there were more than a hundred of them on Alex, and a dozen or so on Soudan. I know, because I ran them for quite a while, in my little, white, light 4WD ‘zuki. Each bore had a tripod, about eight metres high, so the bore-pullers could pull up the pump in sections, with pulleys, with a truck. That’s all they did, travel around the station pulling and servicing pumps. The truck would pull up a section of pipe, or shaft, they’d clamp the top of the next one, then unscrew that section. The truck would come forward and they’d lay out that section and attach the cable to the next. Forward and reverse, forward and reverse, beep, beep, beep. I couldn’t have done it. The reverse warning would have driven me mad.

Tripods could be discerned through the heat- and dust-haze only indistinctly at first, like Omar Sharif riding his camel to the well through mirage. Often you weren’t clear if you were seeing it or not, let alone how far away it might have been. In the ‘zuki, I could watch them clarify as I approached, the resolution marking the passing of time and distance. When the season got hot, and the camp was ‘shiftin’ cattle’, moving them from boggy, dried-up waterholes to permanent water at a bore, the tripod was the aim-point. It was a vision of hope, clarity, relief, survival. Sometimes it was illusory, delusional, a product of wishful thinking. The pace of the cattle determined how long it took to get there. The mob controlled the passage of time. The end result was guaranteed; only the duration was uncertain. One hoof in front of the other, sometimes dazed with dehydration, our being was subsumed in this pursuit of the shimmer.

Bos taurus indicus cattle walk better, but they’re wilder, you lose bos taurus cattle to heat, and bos indicus to the scrub. Sometimes the small, red shorthorns (bos taurus) at Soudan walked alright, especially if the wind was blowing the right way and they could smell water ahead. The time of day made a big difference. Only a few times did I see ‘the cattle slowly stringing’. Brahmans (bos indicus), maybe, not shorthorns.

I filled my head with memorising poetry. I owe my rendition of The Geebung Polo Club to recalcitrant shorthorns. I swapped Jabberwocky for that and The Man from Snowy River, exchanging lines with Jamie, the literate head stockman, as we met at the end of each run up the wing or along behind the swaying tails. You can decide if it was a good deal. The rhythm of hoofbeats made learning lines easier.

There’s this hiatus, when you’re not even sure you can see the tripod. One day, in the hiatus, they just stopped, so we stopped, so time stopped. The waterhole that had sustained the cattle for six months was behind them. It was a mud-puddle, a deadly bog. Ahead was water as clear as diamond. Every now and again, I thought I could see a tripod. Maybe. It was hot. The cattle couldn’t see the tripod and wouldn’t have known what it meant. All they knew was that the water was behind them, and it was the time of day for them to drink, and to camp. Even bos taurus taurus cattle have siesta-time. So, we were jammed.

I think I lived a lifetime, and the tripod did not become any more distinct. Our heads throbbed and we worked the tail and the wings and cracked our whips, and that one would take a few steps, but when you turned your attention to another, it would stop, and when you turned back to it, the other one would stop. They looked at you in a puzzled sort of way, as if to say, “’Mad dogs and Englishmen’, much?”. Perfect for a clean shot, but we were keeping them alive that day. The ones in the middle of the mob were oblivious to our blandishments and threats. Pressure doesn’t transmit far through a motionless crowd of bulky animals. Inertia ruled.

I don’t recall the tripod resolving itself that day. All I remember is the hazy, half-seen ghost of it, and the bovine refusal to put one hoof in front of the other in search of some resolution. Sometimes I’m still there, and all I have left is hope that the hazy, shimmery thing I think I can see is real. When pushing one beast ahead a few steps is about all you can hope for and the beasts of the mind seem to block the passage of time. Shiftin’ cattle, there was no possibility of simply abandoning the job. Nowadays, wistful memory is the treatment. These moments evoke horse sweat and dust and working leather, and a peculiar cavern of deep, deep despair. But now I know that beyond, if you just continue, powerless, lies serene acceptance, sublime resignation, and poetry, to the steady rhythm of the saddle. I don’t remember getting to the tripod but, hey, here I am, so I must have survived, that day and all the others.