A life in the wild Kimberley

(Warning: This report includes names of deceased Indigenous people.)

WILD and wonderful West Australian true outback adventures are among the greatest stories never told except at campfires.

Thankfully, however, these unwritten historical accounts no longer include third-generation Kimberley cattleman John Wells.

Thanks to his wife Janet, John’s raw reflections of the 1960s, 70s and 80s have been collated and published in a riveting book, They Even Paid Me.

Biography. The raw reflections of a third generation Kimberley cattleman and an era now gone. Approx 500 pages(photos incl.) $35 plus postage $14

This insightful, entertaining and colourful insight into Kimberley life brings out the uniqueness, excitement and terrifying lives endured by our state’s stockmen, station hands and their partners and wives. 

Janet, who was brought up in a sheltered English environment and met John in Derby in 1973 while on a working holiday, encountered the north-west lifestyle head-on.

“John was drop-dead gorgeous. It was just a matter of this was the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with, whatever hardship we had to face,” she told me.

Four decades on, after reading books written loosely around Kimberley themes, John and Janet committed to recording the truth, dictated by John in his drawl into a tape machine operated by Janet.

“I said to John this has to be in your words, your way of speaking,” said Janet, 69, a sometime writer and poet, who recorded the Kimberley adventures over two years including a rapid around-Australia road trip together.

The couple retired to Capel on 40 hectares, a long way from their north-west stamping grounds where cattle properties are closer to 400,000 hectares.

“I didn’t think too much ahead when my life in the Kimberley began. As long as we were together, that was all that mattered,” mother-of-two Janet said.

John says Aborigines played a vital, supportive role in all his work and adventures, guiding him in bush ways from a young boy, with approval from his parents. Often, John was the only white man in cattle mustering teams.

“All but one of them that I was close to have passed now, many were much younger than me. Aborigines always treated me very well. It was hard work, hard living. None would do that today,” John, 77, told me. 

John Wells at Number Four Yards. Meda July 2006

John, his father and grandfather successively managed West Kimberley cattle stations for 70 years up till 1988. 

“Station life was in my blood,” says the twice-married father-of-four.

John’s adventures, in 500 pages, include the role of horses in the days without vehicles, planes and helicopters: colts, mustering horses, broncos, camp horses, night horses and mules. 

Huge cattle herds, numbering thousands, were mustered across some of the world’s biggest cattle properties in blistering hot days and freezing nights and into saleyards at ports for shipment.

Injuries and sickness to men and animals – including their beloved dogs – plus tropical weather storms, cyclones, fires, snakes and wild animals, flooded rivers and creeks, dwindling food and unreliable water supplies were constant companions for the weathered stockmen.

On one trip during the dry season, it began to rain but the team continued branding cattle through the day. With everything wet, they decided to wait another day for everything to dry. And another day… and another. It rained for 10 days.

“The blacks camped under one tarpaulin and I camped under the other with all the food, gear, packs. I was the only white man. The blacks went out during the day catching goannas. It was pretty miserable,” John said in the book.

But even when the rain finally stopped, rivers and creeks were too full to cross for six weeks.

Another time; “we were camped at Mundooma, we were out with packs. That is, eight or 10 mules packed-up with all our food, swags, horseshoes, salt and flour, everything. 

“Quite often no-one would come with us to cook so I’d be head stockman and camp cook as well.

“I’d be up in the morning to get breakfast, go mustering all day or branding. Sometimes we wouldn’t get back till 9pm, then I’d have to feed the blokes. After that I had to cook for the next day. Something for tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch and tea

“This is how it went all the time: Two men’s job for one man’s pay.”

John names a good bunch of Aboriginal stockmen: Tommy May, Michael and Eddie Bear, Ringer Campton, Brian Djigar, Ben Bibingnulli, George Numburra, Windbag, Rastus, Harry Martin and Big John.

“They were all good men.”

Supreme horseman Michael Bear was trying to divert a bull attempting to cross a creek.

“The bull shoved man and horse over the edge of an 8ft-high creek bank,” said John.

“As the pair were falling, Michael was off the horse and as they hit the creek bed he landed on both feet in front of the horse, still holding the reins. He was an extraordinarily capable and agile man.”

When a rodeo came to Broome, John headed there during a break from work and nominated for a bareback wild horse heat, his first rodeo ride.

“I lost timing, my legs came up and I ended up with my shoulders on the horse’s rump. He gave a kick up which sent me up higher. The last thing I remember seeing were my legs up in the air and his hind legs coming towards me. I didn’t know anything after that.”

John regained consciousness but collapsed and a doctor was called, insisting John rested. But within an hour John was registering for another rodeo ride.

After their decades in the Kimberley, with changes to station ownership and methods, the couple left in 1994 with Janet first securing a job at Bunbury Regional Hospital and John following.

“I left the Kimberley behind me and drove down to rejoin the family and start a new life in the south-west,” said John.

Copies of They Even Paid Me by Janet R. Wells ($34.95 plus postage), www.janetwells.com.au/books.html or Email: janetwells3@gmail.com.au

Previous articleHit the hay, boost immunity
Next articleDiscover ancient paintings and gold history
Lee Tate
Journalist, commentator, broadcaster and author. Lee, columnist for Have a Go News has reported for The Australian Financial Review, The Australian, The West Australian, Sunday Times, Albany Advertiser, Melbourne Herald, Launceston Examiner, Business News and national magazines. Lee has covered federal politics, industrial relations and national affairs. A public speaker, newspaper columnist and author of two books, Lee co-hosted 6PR’s current affairs radio. He also co-founded a stable of national business newsletters. Lee is former communications manager for a non-profit, mental health carers’ organisation.