Alright!!!! Alright!!!! If you must know, here goes. I’m old, extremely grumpy, have dreadful looks, (nowhere as nice to look at as 40 miles of bad road). Was born like that, wasn’t lying a gateway and a thousand head of cattle walked over my head. Have reached that stage in life where only horses, cattle dogs, and such like are the only things that can get along with me.

Life sure couldn’t get much better.  It’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to ‘Utopia’.

The looks are the result of having my hat reshaped while my head was still in it. The mouth isn’t much better either. That’s from tangling with pub dentists. 

I’m a bushman through and through, and very proud of it. Sort of ‘Jack of all trades’, but master of none. Have done most bush jobs at one time or another, including fencing (my Father was a contractor on the old Leichhardt Rabbit Board fence, which stretches from Brigalow in the South to Yallaroi in Central Queensland), yard builder, tank sinker, shearer and crutcher, drover, station hand/horseman, plant operator, etc adfinitum.

Did anything really, to ensure the family was cared for as well as I was able.  Spent most of my life in the bush, until driven out by bad times out West, and the fact that our children were getting on toward school age.

Joined the Queensland Police Force in 1968, and after the initial training period, where I was assessed as being suitable for any bush Station, I was transferred to the City Station right in the middle of Brisbane, and spent one year walking the City beats, riding Police Motor cycles, VIP driving from the Police Depot, and relieving at other inner city Stations. Never saw a lot of crime, but being a ‘bush boy’ and the fact that mini skirts were in fashion, I think I could be forgiven.

Transferred to the Police Photographic Section where I remained as an “Official Police  Photographer” until 1979 when I was dug out and transferred to the Stock Investigation Squad of the CIBranch.  

Early in my photographic career the powers that be noted that as I wasn’t over intelligent, I would possibly make a Bomb Technician (that’s the official name for a bomb delouser) I spent many happy, informative, very busy, and interesting hours with the Australian Army Ordnance at the RAAOC Centre at Bandiana and Wirlinga on the NSW/Victorian Border learning about substances and other things that go “Bang” and flatten all the ends of ones fingers. (Very interesting and not too bad while practicing, but a bit stressful when it came to the ‘real thing’).

I spent over twenty years doing that amongst other duties.

Very early on in my time as a photographer, our old Inspector Bardwell, found that I wasn’t too bad with weapons, so I was drafted into the old Police Emergency Squad, (sort of SWAT team).  In the early 1970s Aircraft Hijacking became all the rage, and again the powers that be decided to start an “Anti-Hijacking Unit”. As a result I was issued with a set of sniping rifles and became the first “Official Anti-Hijacking’ sniper in the Queensland Police Force, a position I held alone for a number of years, until another was brought up to the standard of marksmanship required. I remained on the Unit for around nine years until it was decided for me to transfer into the Stock Investigation Squads, part of CI Branch.

That was about the time they discovered that only horses, cattle dogs and cattle, along with miscellaneous other wild life were the only things that had any chance of getting along with me!! AHHH!! Heaven on earth!). 

After three years with the Brisbane based Stock Squad, I was promoted to the Cloncurry Stock Squad as Officer in Charge with one other man (poor bugger), to take care of about 349,000 square miles. Kawanyama (the old Mitchell River Mission) on the Mitchell River as the extreme Northern boundary, to the South Australian border below Birdsville for the Southern boundary. We were also Sworn In Special Constables for the Northern Territory, South Australia, and New South Wales, so could cover a lot of country if it were necessary.

I loved it all. Barramundi in the Northern streams and Yellowbelly in the South. Both the tucker of kings (AND, me of course). 

I first wandered into the Northern Territory at around eighteen years of age, and there made my first major mistake. I came out of it and back into Queensland. Even though Queensland was and is a great place to be, the Territory was real frontier country. It is also well known as the worlds largest outdoor lunatic asylum that’s being run by the inmates.

I would have fitted in with no trouble at all.

I left Cloncurry in 1985 with a heavy heart and failing health, and transferred to Bundaberg. Found that the greatest thing about Bundaberg was the Rum Distillery, which produces the most nourishing nectar since mothers milk. Really, the only failure with it that I can see, is that it doesn’t come in such cute little containers.

I don’t like the coast much, the sea tastes awful. It makes lousy tea, and the more sugar you put in it, the worse it tastes, and it’s full of things that bite or sting, but the family followed me about the bush for over 40 years, so now it’s my turn to make a few sacrifices.

My little wheels fell right off at the end of the eighties, and I lay down and slept for around 20 to 22 hours a day for nearly two and a half years. It definitely was not a good part of my life. I never got over it, and was awarded the DCM (Don’t come Monday) in 1994.

I still live out of a pill bottle.

I still go bush whenever I get the chance. Get out to Longreach on most years to attend the Annual Drovers Reunion at the Stockmans Hall of Fame, and I also accompany my mate on Anzac Day at Longreach and Ilfracombe, and occasionally at Winton. The mate belongs to the Light Horse Association and generally leads the marches along with the local (Winton) Light Horse Troop. At Longreach and Ilfracombe, when Winton cannot attend, he gets the assistance of local people or youths from the Longreach Pastoral College, which also supplies the troop horses from the College plant.

Of recent years I have driven bush in my specially set up van, and just wander about after the Reunion, and have found that the Wellshot Hotel at Ilfracombe and Clancys Overflow Hotel in Isisford both sell excellent food, make you very welcome and best of  all sell great drinkies, and I should know. I’ve tried most bush hotels and quite a few along the coast too. The Wellshot Hotel also has a marvelous collection of the most beat up hats you could find in any one place anywhere. (One can only wonder what the heads that once lived in them looked like. I know what mine looks like. The mind actually boggles at the very thought).

I’ve got friends and acquaintances all through the inland and I love to get away and see them and to meet new ones. It’s so good to get around them, one feels completely at home.

To me, a stranger is only a friend I haven’t met yet, and it’s up to me to change that.

My interests include everything and anything to do with the bush, and our heritage,  photography in all its forms (I’m a qualified photographer), collecting anything I can lay my hands on, (as a Bower Bird, I excel), working with metal, both in manufacture and repair. I am also handy with a set of spanners, and have done quite a bit of mechanical work around my neighbours. I’ve been so busy that I sometimes wonder where I found the time to go to work.

I spend a bit of time writing about a life time of experiences, and have contributed to a couple of books, the most recent being “Stories from the Bullymen”, a book by Retired Senior Sergeant Vince Walker.  

I also played the Scottish Bagpipe for many years, and was one of the founding members of the Cleveland (Qld) RSL Pipe Band, and also played on occasions with Queensland Police Pipes and Drums. The Great Highland Bagpipe produces the sweetest music of  all, although the smaller Chamber Pipe sounds just beautiful indoors. I feel that, should I be one of the Chosen, then when all the other music in heaven has died away, one may cock his ear and still hear the pipes in the distance.

Now, having not much in the way of lungs left, I cannot keep the wind up to my pipes, I have bought a Concertina and am presently learning to play it. Just now, me and said Concertina aren’t getting along all that well, but I’ll keep at it and hopefully with time will achieve a glorious victory.

I think the Concertina should be fun, and I love music. Hopefully I may still be able to create havoc around the bush pubs and gatherings again.

Heather and I presently live on a small property just outside Bundaberg, close to the Burnett River. I still have most of my goodies (which Heather calls junk) in a very large, very untidy shed. 

I’m an inveterate reader and have quite a large library, mostly Australiana, and just about every subject except fiction. I’m very interested in human psychology, and have quite a number of books on the subject. The years spent as a policeman made me interested in what causes humans to do the things they do.

I still don’t know.

I absolutely adore children, and all wildlife. To me they are completely honest and much more reliable and trustworthy than adults humans. At home, Heather and I have two very spoiled, fat cattle dogs, one young jenny donkey, and an ancient Jenny which is probably older than I. I saved her from being sold to a knackery in 1985 when I first came to Bundaberg, and she was an old donkey then. Apart from looking sort of old and being very over weight, she still looks much the same as when I paid twenty dollars to keep her from becoming pet meat so many years ago.

For many years now we have had a kind of orphanage, with unwanted animals and birds, along with the greatest collection of ‘freeloading’ birds around. Most only come in when food is in short supply, and except for the Double Bar finches, go again when things get better for them. The finches are highly skilled ‘freeloaders’.

With the exception of Millie the young donkey, all our present pets and most of those we have had for the last twenty or so years have been rescued from ‘death row’. They were unwanted, or deserted, and have, in return, provided us all with countless hours of  companionship and contentment. They are and always have been a little mentally deficient, and, as such, we all get along as one big family.

Our place is such a happy joint, much like a mental asylum that’s being run by the inmates.

I always feel completely at home, and after being away for a while, I look forward to coming home to face whatever havoc that just happens to be occurring at the particular time. There’s  hardly ever a dull moment around our little piece of Heaven.

Lately I’ve been driving another mate around the country as he has hip/back problems, as well as a dose of Prostate Cancer, and doesn’t drive all that well. I drive into Brisbane when he has to see his Doctors, and, as I have, over the time I have known him, inflicted him with the ‘photography bug’, we occasionally go off around the country on photographic forays looking for interesting things to take pics of. He’s into Digital while I’m a dyed in the wool film buff,  although I am now doing more digital work than film, mainly because of the excellent quality now being produced with digital and also the convenience and cost involved.

 Went out into the Carnarvon Ranges recently, through Moura to Rolleston and on to the Carnarvon Gorge, then on through Injune, and across to Taroom, up to Theodore, and back through Cracow and Eidsvold to home, AND NEVER saw nor heard, a dingo, our old Native Dog. To me, this a crime, as during the 1970s whilst I was helping a writer to illustrate a book he was working on, the country was full of them. One could always see a dog or two anywhere in these ranges. Now, with the assistance of “The Bleading Heart Industry”, misinformed politicians, 1080 poison, and a country overpopulated with “know nothing beaurocrats”, our old Native Dog is almost gone.

The old fellow arrived here with the Aborigine, yet, the “fat heads” will not acknowledge him as “native”, nor even his right to live. I love the bush and every thing in it, and fear our our old Native Dog is going the same way as the Tasmanian Tiger. There is going to come a time when they are all gone and suddenly someone in a higher up place will suddenly wake from his or her slumber and then try to get them back. Too bloody late then!!!

However, with the demise of the Dingo, other creatures which were kept under control have suddenly became a problem. Wallabies, Kangaroos, and wild Pigs have multiplied to almost plague proportions, and are eating themselves and everything else that relies on grass, out of  food too. IF ONLY, we’d leave our environment alone and let Mother Nature do her thing without our interference.

I think we’d all be better off.

Bill Brown, one of my mates, and I have also got interested in Native Bees, those marvelous little insects that don’t bite. I’ve had a hive of them for years now and love the little blokes. I have noted on many occasions that these little bees can get into the blossoms with no trouble, where the larger honey bee often breaks off the flower in their attempts. With native Macadamia trees for instance, every flower broken off the tree means one less nut being available at harvest time. They soon add up. It does look like I may well doing more with my little native bees.

There!!!!!! Now you know a little about me, I s’pose I’ll never hear from you again.

Really, tho’, I think I have an absolutely gorgeous nature. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it, altho’ my believers are pretty thin on the ground.

Thanks for taking the time to get acquainted and take care in these turbulent and sometimes dangerous times.

Gordon Storer will be sharing his stories at ‘The Stockmen’ event in Longreach, Saturday 31st October.  Check the calendar for more details.

Gordon Storer.