BEEF 2027; Fairer Recognition of the Hearts that Made this Nation
The lone stockman—whether ringer, drover, jackaroo, or cowboy—has long symbolized the vastness and ruggedness (or perhaps the masculinity) of the Australian west, represented in events and tributes like Longreach’s Stockman Hall of Fame and Rockhampton’s Beef Australia. This stylized, often romanticized, image helps us picture the tribute or event, yet it only reflects a portion of the human story in the Australian livestock industry.
What about the plus one? The women of the west—shouldn't their image stand alongside the lone stockman?
Together, these images would more accurately depict what the Stockman Hall of Fame or Beef Australia stand for. A testament to the industry and all the people involved.
Women and the roles they performed, and continue to do so, are indeed recognized in the history of the Australian livestock industry. The Stockman Hall of Fame itself exists thanks to Nancy Button (née Coade), whose initiative and drive led to its establishment in Longreach. Her contribution is acknowledged at the entrance to the impressive building. However, it is the large statue of the male ‘Ringer’ that dominates, both physically and mentally, shaping our expectations of the Hall's stories.
Banjo Patterson's romanticized image of Clancy ‘out on the Cooper’ (Clancy of the Overflow) only tells part of the story. If Clancy had a partner, where was she and what was she doing, while Clancy was droving? As you will discover at the Stockman Hall of Fame, some women accompanied their partners as drovers, even head drovers. More often, they were home alone for months, raising children, cooking, caring, gardening, repairing, teaching, nursing, protecting—waiting for their husbands to return, not for respite, but simply for adult company in their isolated existence.
The epic tales of mega-properties like Bowen Downs and its offshoot, Mt. Cornish, capture the imagination, due to their size and thus devastating the effects of drought, flood, and Harry Redford’s cattle duffing. The Hall of Fame features the story of Edward Roland Edkins, the first manager of Mt. Cornish, who drove 10,000 cattle from the Gulf to Bowen Downs. Longreach honours Edward Roland Huey Edkins, the son of Edward and known as the father of Longreach, with Edkins Memorial Park. Yet, what about Edwina, Edward's wife, and Huey's mother? Her story, ‘for love they faced the wilderness,’ is equally remarkable. The daughter of a Tasmanian doctor, she left Melbourne in 1866 with Edward, becoming the first white woman in the Gulf country. She composed music, including for George Essex Evans poem, "Women of the West," and served as the region's de facto doctor.
Where would the father of Longreach be without his mother?
As we look forward to Beef Australia 2027 in Rockhampton, the Beef Capital of Australia, it would be a sign of the event’s maturity to include the image of a woman alongside the stockman in its main imagery and logo. Not be the ancillary, arguably generally overlooked, ‘plus one’. George Essex Evans wrote, “the hearts that made the nation were the Women of the West.†Recognizing their contributions, in a more prominent way, further enriches our understanding of the past and duly honours more of those who shaped our nation's history.
They left the vine-wreathed cottage and the mansion on the hill, The houses in the busy streets where life is never still, The pleasures of the city, and the friends they cherished best: For love they faced the wilderness -the Women of the West. The roar, and rush, and fever of the city died away, And the old-time joys and faces-they were gone for many a day; In their place the lurching coach-wheel, or the creaking bullock-chains, O'er the everlasting sameness of the never-ending plains. In the slab-built, zinc-roofed homestead of some lately taken run, In the tent beside the bankment of a railway just begun, In the huts on new selections, in the camps of man's unrest, On the frontiers of the Nation, live the Women of the West. The red sun robs their beauty and, in weariness and pain, The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again; And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say The nearest woman's face may be a hundred miles away. The wide bush holds the secrets of their longing and desires, When the white stars in reverence light their holy altar fires, And silence, like the touch of God, sinks deep into the breast Perchance He hears and understands the Women of the West. For them no trumpet sounds the call, no poet plies his arts They only hear the beating of their gallant, loving hearts. But they have sung with silent lives the song all songs above? The holiness of sacrifice, the dignity of love. Well have we held our fathers creed. No call has passed us by. We faced and fought the wilderness, we sent our sons to die. And we have hearts to do and dare, and yet, o'er all the rest, The hearts that made the Nation were the Women of the West.
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George Essex Evans, 1901