CESS RODERICK,
OOBAGOOMA, KIMBERLEY
‘TIL SHE DROPPED HER STRIDES’
This story is an extract from the book “‘Til She Dropped Her Strides” by Roger Garwood and Trish Ainslie published in 1991. The book was one of a series which documented the traditional lifestyles in the Australian outback which were under threat from an increasingly modernised society.
Cess Rodrick, Cess to his mates, is an eccentric hermit. He lives under the shade of a giant boab in the middle of an army firing range, formerly Oobagooma station. A large family of much loved pigs, his only permanent company, are all named after politicians.
Cess under his Boab Tree with some of his pigs. © Roger Garwood
The story goes, that couple of young hunters were, unbeknownst to them, at Cess’s water hole and were feeling a little trigger-happy. As they sat there one of the old pigs came to quench his thirst. Within a few seconds it was stone cold dead – a bullet through the head.
Cess, disturbed by the rifle fire, appeared from out of the bush, clad only in a ‘cock rag’. He took one look at the dead hog and strolled over to the happy hunters. Jabbing his old 303 rifle firmly into the rips of one of them he announced, “Young man, do you realise that you’ve just shot Doug Anthony?”
The young blokes fled and reported Cess’s actions to the local police and were told,
“What d’ya expect if you kill one of Cess’s pigs?”
Cess was not wearing a naga or ‘cock rag’ when we found him but a pair of threadbare King Gee’s. Modesty was of no consequence – his balls were swinging a little below the short’s lower limits. His feet were bare and an old cotton cap topped him off. A grey beard travelled in several directions. His wrinkled, tanned, skin was clinging to his bony figure, more as an act of faith than an essential of life.
His camp was a well kept clearing. On one side was a large leafless boab. In the shade of its trunk was an old iron bedstead. In the centre of the clearing a vintage Land Rover rested on the remains of its tyres. Floodwater from the recent wet season had left the vehicle standing on mounds of dried mud. The back of the vehicle was covered with a corrugated iron sheet which endeavored to protect a variety of large flour tins. Cess was testing all brands of plain flour.
His kitchen consisted of a few sheets of tin supported by empty flour drums. On the sheets were more drums which contained the essentials of a bush life. Salt, flour, tea and sugar. Also a few soot black billies.
He was pleased to see us and as we spoke he busied himself brewing tea over his campfire, the only solid structure in sight. Small mud walls supported the hot plate.
This was a long way from his native Sydney.
“Yes, Sydney. I was born right on Sydney Harbour, 1910. The bridge is there now, the north pylons. Nelsons point over the other side.
“Sydney changed in my short time there. I was only there for a few years before I went to the bush [but] I was there all the time the bridge was being built, right down there in Clarence Street, working for the war service homes commission. The back window overlooked all the shipping. There we were, six stories up. You could see the overseas liners and cargo boats. We was there and never took much notice of the bridge going up.
Cess in his kitchen © Roger Garwood
“Eventually they got the arch up and oh!! everyone threw parties. Then they used the arch to build the rest of the bridge, you know, hang things off it.
“I used to know the people around the Riverena there. A bloke rang me up one day and said ‘Go and see…’ I forget the name of the people. I went into this office in Melbourne, a very nice polite little bloke, beautifully dressed – and he had a typist! Anyway, this old bloke bashed me ear, took me to lunch and then put me on the ship to Fremantle! He sent me to his property over at Carnarvon. “That was a good trip.
The tucker they dish up on the ships… First class mate”.
“I lobbed into Carnarvon and things altered drastically. I tried to find out how the hell to get to this so and so place. The publican says ‘I’ll show you, the mail driver that goes there – you better see him”. So I saw the mail driver and he says, ‘Come and give us a hand and I’ll tell you.”
“I worked for him for two days for nothing’ – loading him up. Then he says, ‘We’re going first thing in the morning, you’d better camp here tonight’.
“Away we went to the next day, took us all day to get to the bloody station. Rough roads with that big load of stuff. We had a three ton International, big pumped up wheels. Four by ten tyres, that high, great big ones. And we pulled two trailers!
“I had my first blooming camel driving experience on the station. I had to get the camels and yoke ’em up, about twenty-six of ‘em and deliver the bore drain – a bore drain about thirty miles long through six paddocks. “Did the whole lot in a day. The old camel, he walks along – except when he gets near the acacia bushes, he’ll drag his mate over and they’re all getting the drain. Those acacia bushes, they love it.
“I stayed there for about four years. It was great property that place, a real good’n.
“The old boy, he folded up and went home to Victoria. The manager bloke, he said, ‘You’d better have a go at this’. I said, ‘Oh I think it’s time I moved on mate, I’ve had enough’. All the hard work. Christ! I was about half the weight I am now … Like a bloomin’ kangaroo dog’s pup!
Oobagooma is remote, on the flat country north of Derby. Bob McCorry is one of Cess’s few visitors.
“I headed out there after one wet. He was still there, now he’d lived out there from October to April with nothing, only bull meat. Anyhow I said to him, ‘How the bloody hell did you survive?’
“Wicked plagues of grasshoppers’, he said. ‘When the green grass comes, after a few inches of rain, then the grasshoppers come. Before they get wings they hop’.
“He used to render the bull meat down and get the fat out of it. He’d catch handfuls of these little hoppers and throw them into the boiling fat and that’s how he’d eat them!
“He never had any contact with the outside world. We used to save all the newspapers for him and once every six months he goes through them and give us a burst on the state of the country. That’s how he got the name of all the politicians for his pigs!
“He’d leave tea in matchboxes in tree stumps in certain areas. He leaves them along the way, these little extra stores, matchboxes or tobacco tins.
“He hated penning cattle or donkeys or anything. He didn’t like you taking anything off the country. He chucked a big mob of donkeys once. Some Americans wanted to shoot them for pet food … they got about five cents a pound. Anyway he walked in, saw all these donkeys in this paddock and let them go.
“I mustered one time and had some big old-age bullocks in the yard, not many, fourteen or fifteen, and he let them go. He thought they should die in the country”.
NOTE:
We photographed and interviewed Cess Roderick in 1990. The quoted text is a direct transcription from our conversations with him. Other material was told us by Joe Napier who would drive to see Cess every few months. We visited Cess a few months after the book “Til She Dropped Her Strides” was published in 1991. He had moved from his camp to an aged care facility in Derby.
Cess wearing his at’ – © Roger Garwood
He didn’t want to live in the building but was allowed to make a camp – without his family of pigs – in the grounds of the facility which is where we were able to give him a copy of the book and a some of the photographs we had taken. He looked at the pictures of himself and said:
“Who’s that?” “It’s you Cess.” we replied. “Oh … I thought some bugger ‘ad pinched me ‘at” he said. We drove back into Derby and something dawned on me. “Do you know why he said that?” I said to Trish. “No” “Well Cess hasn’t got a mirror, He hadn’t got a clue what he looked like until he saw the pictures!”
‘TIL SHE DROPPED HER STRIDES’ by Roger Garwood and Trish Ainslie
Many thanks to Roger Garwood for sending me this ‘Ripping Yarn’.
Moya Sharp
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I met Cess back in 1980. I was a Nurse in Derby. Another nurse and I got bogged near Oobagooma station. We walked to the station and found some camp beds to sleep on. At 3 am we heard banging and cursing – Cecil was pinching/ getting food from the station fridge. The staff were away for some RNR in Darwin at the time. We met Cess and had a lovely chat to him, met his pet pigs as they came to visit at dawn and heard how he named them after Australian politicians – based on their personalities. He gave us a jar of tea and would tell us how to operate the radio ( he enjoyed our company apparently). We visited him regularly until our time in Derby finished. He told us he went to Derby every wet season and got completely inebriated for a week or two. His return plane ride was pre booked and, no matter what was said by Cecil, he was to be dropped back at his camp to sober up and rejoin his pigs. Catherine McNelis ( and Judy Rahn)
Hi Catherine What a great story, I will pass it on to Roger who took the photos and told me Cess’s story, he will be so pleased. he sounds like he was quite a character. I particularly love this story as we also had pet pigs when I was young, they were called Wilberforce and Walter. (: