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Robert Bruce Plowman
The Man From Oodnadatta
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In the late 19th Century, the Christian Churches became increasingly concerned about people living in the Outback and the lack of religious, and other services. The Congregational ministers began travelling out to remote areas in the 1890s. In 1894 the Smith of Dunesk Mission in South Australia sent out a Presbyterian Minister to areas north of Beltana in South Australia and a nursing service was established at Oodnadatta in 1907.
The young Rev Dr John Flynn, founder of what is today known as Frontier Services, had worked in rural and remote areas of Victoria and was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church to look at the needs of Outback people. His report to the Presbyterian Assembly in 1912 resulted in the establishment of the Australian Inland Mission, of which he was appointed Superintendent.
The Man from Oodnadatta. Written in 1933 by Robert Bruce Plowman (1886-1966) about his work with the Australian Inland Mission in that area between 1912 and 1917. In October 1912 he was appointed by the Presbyterian Church to assist the Rev John Flynn in Beltana. Before the year was out, he had travelled as far as Wooltana. In February 1914 he was stationed at Oodnadatta.
It was soon reported that Plowman had initiated the employment of camels for his mission work. He had bought some for his journeys in the Oodnadatta district, and proposed to make his first trial in handling them, after some practical lessons, of course, by visiting the squatters and their families.
In 1915 he reached the northern boundary of his parish at Tennant Creek. That year he travelled more than 3,000 miles with his camels and went as far south as William Creek and Blanchewater. At the end of his contract in October 1917 he went back to Melbourne. He would produce several books, among the better known were The Boundary Rider and Camel Pads. However, the Man from Oodnadatta became the best known. An absolute must-read book.
On 17 May 1934 the Central Queensland Herald wrote a review of the book.
Plowman has endeared himself to all with whom he has come in contact, and to thousands more who have accompanied him in imagination over his parish of 160,000 square miles, per medium of his true and simple record. Though known to thousands as 'the Padre,' Mr. Plowman was really a layman, and offered to do honorary service for that wonderful organization, the Australian Inland Mission, for five years.
During that period the Church granted Mr. Plowman the status of a fully ordained minister. At the end of the five years, the happenings of which are recorded in his books, Mr. Plowman was invited to go on to the ministry, but a severe, nervous breakdown prevented this and so 'the Padre' became Mr. again and has so remained.
At the time The Man from Oodnadatta was written, Mr Plowman was desperately ill with the dreaded rheumatoid arthritis, for over four years, during winch time his life was despaired off many times. During the whole of the period, he was unable to walk a step and while writing the original draft of the book and correcting it, he never had a suit of clothes on for the whole of the time, but was clad in pajamas and dressing gown.
Suffering excruciating agony, with hands so painful as to cause the author to stop frequently, he carried on with dogged perseverance. But of such stuff are the Scots made. The whole of the manuscript of Mr. Plowman's book, approximately 120,000 words, was written from memory, after an absence of 14 years from Central Australia. The typescript was done by the author, using two fingers only.
There is nothing sensational in The Man from Oodnadatta. Nor are there any extraordinary characters or conversations, and as Professor Murdoch remarks. you will sometimes wonder why the author thought it worth setting down . . . But the cumulative effect of all these trivialities of incident and commonplaces of talk is that you find printed on your consciousness, indelibly, I believe, a picture of life as it is really lived in Central Australia; and of the people who live it.
People who doubtless have their defects like the rest of us, but who are taking them as a whole, free from the meaner vices und singularly rich in the root virtues of hardihood, courage, generosity and loyalty to one another. One leading critic questioned whether '... the book's very artlessness wasn't the highest form of art, for behind these apparent simplicities lay the whole facts of life.
Some time ago Mr. Plowman received a letter from one of the characters of his book, thanking the author on his own, and on that of many other men of the outback, for the fair way he had written of them all. On January 24 last Mr. Plowman was invited by the Church to assist in the marriage service, when his niece was married to a nephew of the late Mr. Gunn (the Maluka of 'We of the Never Never'). This very nice and particularly fitting compliment was paid to The Man from Oodnadatta in token of the Church's recognition of his services during his Australian Inland Mission days.
The Western Mail, Perth, published this book review on 1 August 1935.
It was in the days before the railway had reached Alice Springs; before the motor trucks had churned to dust the camel pads of the Northern Territory; before the aeroplane and wireless had come to the inland, that a young padre set out from Oodnadatta one April morning to travel the round of his parish.
His journey, by camel, would take him five months, for his parish was 160,000 square miles in extent, and he would travel 2,500 miles before he returned to his base at Oodnadatta. And during the whole of that journey, he would pass through only one township worthy of the name, Alice Springs, at that time surely the most isolated township in Australia. In "The Man from Oodnadatta," R.B. Plowman, "The Padre," tells the story of his journey, of the country, and of the people of the inland.
Although told in the simple language of the outback, there could be no more fitting panegyric to the men and women who pioneered the inland than this story of hardship and isolation. When we, who live in the comfort and security of civilisation, are brought face to face with the dangers and difficulties our pioneers have fought against, we are apt to become rather ecstatic. We murmur comfortably, "Wonderful. What grit; what endurance; what a will to succeed!" It is not that we don't appreciate the qualities of these men and women; we mean well, but we just don't understand.
For the man of the outback is not given to effusion; he is not moved by the plaudits of the crowd. If he could hear us, he would probably think that we were nice fellows, but talked rather a lot and rather extravagantly about nothing, and pick up the nose line of his camel team ready to start on the next stage of 200 miles. The padre does not offend by effusion, for he himself is a man of the inland. To the people he visited he was more than a padre. He was postman, carrier, doctor, teacher, spare cattleman, and odd-job man about the place.
In a foreword which forms an excellent aperitif to the book (not that one is needed) Professor Walter Murdoch says: "This book is one which quite obviously and unmistakably tells the truth. And I may add as an afterthought, that it tells the truth about a subject in which, as an Australian I am interested, and of which, like most Australians, I am shamefully ignorant; namely, Australia. It is safe to say that the vast majority of Australians are acquainted with the merest fringe of the great continent. . . .
The Australia they do not see is the real Australia, the most Australian Australia. City life is, one imagines, pretty much the same everywhere. ... If there is anything distinctively Australian, in nature or in human nature, to find it you will have to leave the city and wander in the outback. If you shrink from wandering there in the literal sense . . . you can at least wander there in imagination, companioned by the padre whose simple and true record lies before you. . . .
But the great wonder is the little company of men and women to whom he introduces us. I feel immensely grateful to him for not sentimentalising over these people, for not gushing over their fine qualities. Only very occasionally is he moved to express his admiration, his pride in kinship with them. There are no sentimental incidents in the book, or hardly any; the only dramatic moment is when he finds himself threatened by the blackfellows boomerang. There are no extraordinary characters; there are no extraordinary conversations; the talk is just ordinary talk so ordinary that you will sometimes wonder why the author thought it worth setting down.
And in like manner there are incidents so trivial that you will wonder, not merely why he recorded them, but why he ever noticed them at all. But the cumulative effect of all these trivialities of incident and commonplaces of talk is that you find printed on your consciousness, I believe indelibly, a picture of life as it is really lived in Central Australia, and of the people who live it. ... In a score of years, the face of life in this part of the world will have changed greatly. 'The Man from Oodnadatta' will then be an historic document of great value, because of its unswerving fidelity to contemporary fact. It will have a place, I predict, among the classics of our literature."
The padre's plant consisted of two riding camels, Robin and Cabool, and three pack camels, Ameer, Doctor and Shah. Cabool a fast and comfortable riding camel, carried the padre and his personal camp gear, and Dick, the padre's native boy, rode on Robin. "The Parish" was an oblong strip extending from 20 miles south of Oodnadatta to Tennant's Creek, and through the centre of it ran the only link with civilisation, the Overland Telegraph Line.
Its area, 160,000 square miles, was 39,000 square miles greater than the combined area of England, Scotland and Ireland, yet the total population of this vast area was only 400 white people. On the north-ward stage of his 2,500-mile journey the padre would deviate eastward of the telegraph line to call at the isolated cattle stations. Tennant's Creek marked the northward limit of his journey and he would then return to Oodnadatta, travelling through the stations to the west of the telegraph line.
The journey the padre describes is typical of his work. On the second day out from Oodnadatta, after a journey of 74 miles, the padre reached Hamilton Bore Station, and saw the first buildings since leaving his base. Steadily northward, to the little store at Blood's Creek, the padre travelled, then branched eastward to pass through the Federal and Mt. Dare cattle stations.
From there he deviated south-east to an out-station, Alindum, situated at the Junction of Abminga Creek and the Finke River. There he held church, baptized the children and held school. At the next station he married a native man and woman in a bough shed erected under a gum tree, then audited the station accounts and made out the income tax returns. At every station he was welcomed with suppressed eagerness, for did he not bring news of the outside world, parcels and letters from friends on other stations, help and advice?
Retracing his steps along the Finke River, the padre's camel string ambled into Charlotte Waters on the Overland Telegraph Line, and then turned north-ward again to Old Crown Point station. The homestead of the station had been moved to the south end of the run on the Finke River and the old homestead on the overland route had been turned into a store. A southward-bound mob of cattle was camped in the old stockyard on the night the padre arrived. The atmosphere was hot and oppressive with the ominous lull of an approaching storm.
During the night the storm broke and the maddened cattle burst the yard and stampeded. Racing to where their horses were tethered, the men galloped after the thundering mob. Listening as he lay on his stretcher on the verandah of the pub, the padre heard the men turn the mob in the inky darkness and bring them back under control. One of the drovers galloped over to the store as the cattle were brought back to the yard, and asked the padre for assistance in yarding the stock.
The padre gave it willingly, and crouched at the entrance to the stockyard to keep the cattle which were still in the yard from breaking out to join their mates. It was not the first time he was to be pressed into service in handling cattle. "Want any assistance?" the padre inquired at the next cattle station, Maryvale, as he saw a mob of calves being yarded for branding. "I'll be jolly glad of your help," came the grateful reply.
"As it happens, I will be very short-handed, as the men are split up into teams for mustering, and I won't have a white man with me, and only one grown black. So you will come in handy." So the padre helped the boss to throw the mickies, then held their heads firm while the boss unsexed them, notched their ears, and applied the red hot branding iron to their shoulders. The scratch team averaged 50 calves an hour. That night the padre mended the station gramophone with a screw taken from an old watch, soldered leaks in several household utensils, and set out next morning to muster cattle at an out station.
The job of the boss and the padre was to round up the small mobs of cattle which came in to water at night. Already 500 head had been run into the big stockyard. A wide range of the yard stretched away towards the water, and the object was to get behind the cattle while they were drinking, and drive them quietly along the wing and into the yard. How "quietly" some of them went, the padre was to find out as the night progressed. Mounted on the boss's thoroughbred cattle horse, a magnificent chestnut, trained to the night work, the padre drove his first mob of cattle slowly along the wing to the yard.
Just as they were about to enter the gate, a bullock wheeled and made off at full gallop down the wing of the yard. Without waiting for guidance, the chestnut wheeled like a flash, and set off at full gallop, almost unseating the padre, who dropped his stock whip and did not recover his wits until 100 yards had been covered at full gallop. Suddenly the bullock propped and turned about, and the horse, expecting the move, did the same just as suddenly. The padre was thrown on to the animal's neck, and regained the saddle crabwise as the chestnut galloped headlong through the darkness.
After a time, the padre became accustomed to his horse's lightning turns and twists. Towards morning there was nearly a tragedy. Rolled in her rugs, the boss's sister was sleeping near the gate of the yard on the outside of the wing along which the cattle were yarded. From a small mob which the padre was yarding a bullock broke away and charged towards the yard on the outside of the wing. Although he could see nothing in the darkness, the padre knew that somewhere in the path of the charging bullock lay the sleeping form of a woman.
Riding like a madman until he was well ahead of the bullock, the padre turned his horse and galloped straight at the fence at right angles to the course of the charging beast. Within a few feet of one another, both bullock and horse propped, the horse sliding on its haunches until its chest almost touched the rails of the fence.
In a poignant story of a 950-mile journey to take a sick child to a doctor, the padre gives some idea of that shadow that hung over the women of the inland in the early days-lack of medical aid. An idea of the isolation of the station where the tragedy occurred may be gauged from the fact that the nearest settled doctor was 750 miles away. The only doctor nearer at hand was the travelling doctor, who patrolled nearly 300 miles of railway south of Oodnadatta. The nearest nurse was at the Australian Inland Mission Hostel, at Oodnadatta, 250 miles to the southward, and the family doctor was in Adelaide 950 miles away.
Although only 23, the young wife and mother had been married nearly seven years. The eldest child was a girl of five, the next a boy of two, and the third child a baby in arms. The little boy became mysteriously ill and, becoming alarmed the father rode 36 miles to the nearest telegraph station to seek advice from the doctor in Adelaide. The doctor replied, asking for fuller information, so the father rode the 36 miles back to the station to confer with his wife.
Next day he made the journey again to the telegraph station, but again the doctor asked for fuller information. Again he rode home, and next day returned a third time to the telegraph station, and, after 216 miles of hard riding in three days received the following reply from Adelaide: "Sorry cannot diagnose. Better bring child down." In a buggy that lurched and bumped with every yard of its progress, drawn by a team of half-wild horses that had to be broken in during the journey, the little family made its way to Oodnadatta, camping beside the road at night, and pushing on with all speed at the first break of day.
When nearly a week later, they arrived at Oodnadatta, the A.I.M. sister was unable to diagnose the case, and the family had to leave on a three-day journey by train to Adelaide. In Adelaide the family doctor and a specialist were unable to diagnose the case, and the child died.
After resting in Alice Springs, the padre pushed on steadily northward along the telegraph line to Barrow Creek. There he had to break in a new camel to replace Cabool, who had become tender-footed and was being left behind for a spell. From Barrow Creek he headed north-east to the wolfram fields at Hatch's Creek, and then struck north-west across 120 miles of uninhabited and practically unexplored country to Tennant's Creek.
During this last leg of his journey, he had only a rough map drawn by one of the wolfram miners to guide him. He was accompanied on the first day of the journey by a bad native who was known to have several murders to his credit, a rather questionable guide in such a desolate area. It was arranged that the native guide should be sent back to Hatch's Creek with a letter after the first day's journey.
It was thought that he would not attempt "any funny business" so close to the mines, but that it was too risky for him to accompany the padre the whole journey. This was done, and the padre completed the last 100 miles of his journey guided only by his own bushcraft and the crude map.
With his long journey northward ended, the padre turned south from Tennant's Creek, following the telegraph line as far as Ryan's Well before heading south-east to Arltunga, Dick, the padre's faithful native boy had been left in Alice Springs for a holiday with his people during the northward journey and the padre had been accompanied since leaving Alice Springs by another boy named George, a somewhat unprepossessing specimen.
In the vicinity of Ryan's Well, George entered his own territory, and immediately became sulky about going on with the white man. One morning as the camels were being saddled George went on strike, and when the padre ordered him brusquely to saddle the camels, he whipped a boomerang from his saddle and drew back his arm for a throw. But the padre was quicker. Leaping at the blackfellow he crashed his fist into his face, and the boomerang clattered to the ground. Until he reached civilised surroundings the padre carried his revolver loose in its holster, and at night slept with his hand on his rifle.
At the little township of Arltunga, which lies in the MacDonnell Ranges to the east of Alice Springs, the padre held church in the bar parlour of the little pub. The hymns were sung to the accompaniment of a wheezy gramophone, and the only unforeseen incident occurred when the "organist" put on the wrong record, and the gramophone blared forth "Flannigan's Wedding" instead of "Nearer My God to Thee."
Crossing the telegraph line again at Alice Springs, the padre picked up Dick, his own native boy, and was glad to leave George behind. From Alice Springs he went due west to the Hermannsburg Mission, then south through station after station, many of them in the earliest stage of development, until he returned to the telegraph line at Blood's Creek.
Although he was nearly home, the padre was faced with considerable delay on the journey from Blood's Creek to Oodnadatta, for he had to carry a sick man and another with an injured knee. Both were going to Oodnadatta for treatment. At last Oodnadatta was reached and the padre hooshed his camels down in the narrow little street near the boarding house. The 2,500-mile journey was over.
In an author's note to the book, which might quite well be an epilogue, the padre says: "Central Australia is rapidly changing. The extension of the railway from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs has been mainly responsible. Opal has been discovered near Oodnadatta. Where the mail camels plodded laboriously on their 10-day trip, the mail is carried the same distance overnight, and is delivered in the morning. The tiny township of Alice Springs has grown amazingly, has a government resident, a resident doctor, and a number of new and up-to-date homes.
Close by the hut where the padre nursed Texas through his illness, the Australian Inland Mission has erected a wonderful model nursing home or medical hostel. Motor trucks are driving the camel strings off the roads. Aeroplanes come and go quite frequently. Goldfields have been rediscovered; where a lone fossicker or two hunted for gold in the ranges, well-equipped prospecting parties now search scientifically.
The long dead Tanami field has come to life under a new name, and London capital is being used for its development, while it actually boasts a township of its own. The boundaries of the occupied country have been extended. Bob of Idracowra has shifted out into new country to get away from what he himself has called the clothes-line (fences).
The padre now drives a motor truck, although he still has recourse now and then to the camels. Should the present development continue, and there is every reason why it should, it seems that the padre's prophecy will be amply fulfilled, and that within 10 years of a railway reaching Alice Springs there will be 10,000 people living in this country.
A year later, on 18 April 1936 the Mercury newspaper of Hobart stated that
Plowman's books of Australia and its open spaces of the central areas reveal the hardships and kindness of those persons who, though living in the present age, are the real pioneers of Central Australia. A padre, whose parish extends over thousands of square miles in the sparsely populated regions, is the leading character in the book of primitive Australian life. Although it is not a story, the reader accompanies the padre in his tour of his enormous parish, seeing the hardships experienced by the people outback.
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