by JIM LOW

Hod Cay Tooraweenah Goorianawa Wallaby Maze Beni Bridge

Hod Cay lives in Coonabarabran in the north west of New South Wales. He has lived there since 1965 when he came as a ranger employed by the Pastoral Protection Board. His area of control extended over three million acres and his job allowed him access to anywhere in that area. “I got to know this area in a physical sense probably better than anybody alive because I just went all day on any road through properties. I had access to any property I wanted.” Over the years he also developed a deep fondness for this part of Australia. “I don't think that it's a country you readily fall in love with but when you really get to know it, as intimately as I did, you do. There's so many wonderful things in it.” Places visited started to gain special meaning for him, especially the Warrumbungle Ranges where he could literally escape to “another world”, as he puts it. Hod has always been a lover of poetry. It is like, he says, “something that was born in me”. It is not surprising that he began expressing his feelings for, and knowledge of this area, in poetry. He regards himself as a landscape poet who writes about “the pleasant side of landscape, the beauty of the countryside and the …mystic thing about the bush”. Warrumbungle Roundabout, a collection of his poems, was published in 1981. Some of his poetry has also been put to music. In July 2001 he was interviewed by Rob Willis and Jim Low for the National Library of Australia's Oral History Collection. The information in this article comes from that recorded interview. Hodshon Cay was born in May 1925 at Toowoomba, Queensland. As a child he lived “an open outdoor life”, somehow prophetic of the importance that the outdoors would play throughout his life. He also developed a love of reading, guided in the main by his father. His paternal grandfather came from England in the 1840's, settling at Newbridge on the Loddon River in Victoria. Hod's father fought in the trenches during World War 1. Hod and his sister were from his father's second marriage, his first wife having died during the war. His mother's parents were pioneers in the Gympie and Maryborough districts of Queensland. Like many families during the depression years, life was very difficult. A small family inheritance helped pay for a private school education from primary school until he left Toowoomba Grammar School at 17 years of age to go jackerooing at Giligulgul. During the nine months he was there, he was paid 17 shillings per week, which included his board and keep. His day began at 4.30 with the lighting of the fire, finding the cows and milking them, separating the milk, rounding up the horses and splitting wood – all this was accomplished before breakfast. In 1943, a few days after turning 18, he returned to Toowoomba and enlisted in the AIF. He was first sent to Tenterfield where he spent nine months in training. By law, a soldier had to be aged 19 before being sent overseas. When he was finally sent overseas, Hod was wounded during the landing at Balikpapan ( a town on the east coast of what was then Dutch Borneo, now a part of Indonesia) in 1945. On his discharge from the army in March 1946, he returned to jackerooing. For the next six years he worked at Meandarra and Mt Victoria in Queensland. He learnt much about stock and horses during these years. He then applied successfully for the job of boss musterer at Portland Downs. He remained there for another two and a half years, advancing to overseer and then stud overseer. After returning from a trip to England, he married and then took up a job as overseer and later manager of a property in the Tamworth area. He stayed there for twelve years before brief periods in Yass and Sydney. In 1965 Hod became a ranger at Coonabarabran with the Pastoral Protection Board. In his first year there, the country experienced arguably the worst drought ever in Australia's history and saw the last great movement of travelling stock in New South Wales. His time at Portland Downs had provided him with considerable experience in the handling of large mobs of stock. This experience now proved invaluable. The problems involved in controlling the mobs of stock, along with their drovers and owners, provided Hod with a rigorous but satisfying introduction to his new position. He was responsible for the maintenance and all the improvements on those stock routes. His job as a ranger also involved the inspection of stock and the control of communicable diseases. In his time Hod has witnessed the many changes that have occurred in rural Australia. He has seen the impact of government decisions on the bush, the results of over regulation, “the brain drain” to the cities and the plight of the farms and country towns. Hod has “knocked with friendship” on the door of this area and for many years it has opened up to him its wisdom. Therefore when someone with the wisdom and experience of Hod Cay expresses an opinion on the state of the country west of the Divide, it is definitely worth a listen and more than casual consideration. This interview, for the oral history collection of the National Library of Australia, is a valuable inclusion and deserving of wide accessibility. SIMPLY AUSTRALIA ARCHIVES | EMAIL SIMPLY AUSTRALIA | RESOURCES | HOME | ISSUE 5 This webpage © 2002 Simply Australia