I’ll never forget roll-yer-own, coughing, cursing, tell it as it was, Nicholas Tallack. He was a bushman of wide experience, and with a swag of stories for every one of them.

Nick Tallack was my favourite yarn spinner, and in this episode of Red Dust Tapes Nick will wax lyrical about camels and donkey teams.

And later, we’ll chuff/clunk/whistle our way at a leisurely pace in the boiler room and wheelhouse of Murray River paddlesteamers, in the jolly good company of stokers and captains, and hear stories of the river in flood, to when the blazing sun turns the flows into mud.

Then let’s go from fresh water to salt, to the ‘mosquito fleet’, the coastal ketches of South Australia, in the company of a man who was a deck boy, and had all manner of rough and tumble humorous tales to tell.

But let’s return to those bullocky stories … ah, the romance of travel by bullock wagon, with a mob of (mostly) docile bullocks, two-abreast, 28 or 30 of them yoked up and plodding serenely along a dusty road, while you just lean back against the bales of wool piled high above you, content under the warm sun, taking the occasional sip from your canvas waterbag …

Yeah, right mate. Pull the other leg.

That well-known colonial-era song, ‘The Old Bullock Dray’ makes it sound like being a bullocky was an idyllic life. But as we’ll find out, the reality was about mud, sand dunes, broken axles, sweat and curses.

I’ll bring you all manner of stories, including of a 13 year-old bullocky who would do his homework by lantern light, and after hauling loads through the Victorian goldfields, saved all his cash and returned to give it to his dear old mum.

From there we’ll go further south, to Tasmania, to meet an old bloke who will teach us bullocky language, as he describes the muddy job of hauling logs out of those deep and dark forests.

So let’s go slow slogging, with Red Dust Tapes.

Hop on your horse, let's go. And be warned: your bottom will be rubbed raw after just one a day in the saddle. And you could be heaving and swaying up there for several months.

I have some fascinating people to introduce you to. Like the late, legendary Bill Gwydir, who used to drove thousands of cattle thousands of kilometres, through the sweaty monsoonal mud of Queensland, then through the heat and cold and endless sand of South Australia. Bill's stories, of a childhood raised in the saddle, and of horses going blind in sandstorms, are riveting.

Then there's Aboriginal singer-songwriter Kev Carmody, who was also just a young boy when he first accompanied his parents. He recalls the hardships endured by his mother, then sings of it in 'Droving Woman'.

Another Aboriginal woman, a decade earlier, had an even harder life. Evelyn Crawford recounts this life with clarity and humour, in her book, 'Over My Tracks.'

This, and many other adventures await you, in 'Our Andy's Gone With Cattle', the story of the Drovers.

In this chapter:

The convict who tried a ‘fool’s gold’ trick – twice;

The real gold rushes and the birth of the swaggie;

The arrival of the Chinese goes off like fireworks, so here comes the White Australia Policy;

Grog and mayhem on the goldfields;

Duck for cover! It’s the bushrangers;

Defiance, death, and Justice – the Eureka Stockade;

… And to finish, a delightful interview I had with an old bloke who in the late 1890’s used to tramp up through the snow, past the gold mining camps, to the top of Australia’s highest peak carrying the mail.