The Rogue Prince
The evening breeze found him. Rolling down the valley, it perfumed itself with the eucalyptus before finding and flowing over his body like a lover. He had stopped fighting by now, for all his strength had not been able to unravel the belts that were wrapped around his hooves, the belts cut from the hides of his kin.
Now his sky-facing eye was filling with what would be his last view of the stars, as the ants and the flies tried to make sense of what was lying on the earth. He’d been born out here, without a vet. For a year, as he grew, he followed his mother, for eighteen months until fully developed. Once he’d stopped drinking her milk, she showed him where to find water, which plants were best to eat, and paths up the craggy mountains.
Once, these mountains had towered above the earth, but erosion had worn them down until this isolated range looked like the last of their broken bones. It was why there was no point in erecting fences, no point in growing crops, not that there was enough water out here for crops. No, the best use of this vast land was beef cattle.
Once a year, they’d round up all the cattle they could find, but since there was so much space, you didn’t even try to remain hidden. You could live and grow without ever knowing that another species, not only hunted you but farmed you. And he grew strong. So strong that other bulls steered clear of him, knowing that once a cow was in heat, he’d be a competitor. More than this, if no other young bull matched his brawn, then driven by the universe’s craving to replicate, he’d collect a herd of cows and defend his unfolding lineage until his strength gave out, and that was years away.
But now his cows were gone. Locked up in a corral, as he lay here a prisoner to all that didn’t make sense. His ears were primed to the dingoes who were feasting on the carcass the cattle musterers had left. He had no name, no tag, no brand, and if it wasn’t for me, writing this, the breeze, that was trying to soothe him, would be the only history book his existence was recorded in.
I was around the campfire then. All day, in Luke’s four-wheel drive buggy, wrapped in bull bars, until it looked like a Mad Max extra. It had been the most intense four-wheel driving I had ever experienced as these musters smashed through the scrub, attempting to steer the cattle towards the yards where the abattoir trucks would collect them. Most of the cattle were compliant. Keeping their calves close, they strolled down the landscape’s only dirt road, compliantly following one of the musterers on his buggy, as the other musterers, on their buggies, kept pace on all sides.
Perhaps some of the mothers had experienced this before, when they’d been rounded up and branded and tagged. Who knew. I did see one mother and her calf make a break for it. Together they charged up one of the broken mountains, only to be stopped by Luke and another musterer, who tore through the scrub to cut off their escape. Head up and panting, she took both buggies in, evaluated, then finally relented and trotted back to the herd, which was even further down their dusty last road.
In this quieter time, as we followed the compliant cattle, Luke told me that the reason they had to ‘roll the bulls,’ like the one we’d left prostrate on the dirt, was that they were a danger to the greater herd. They called them the Scrub Bulls, and when they discussed them, they did so with respect. Born unaware that man existed, these bulls could grow to maturity with no natural predator to challenge them. A horny prince of all they surveyed, their strong veins were pumped full of liberty, and they were unaware they were part of our food chain. And when they became aware that something was wrong, as these buggies appeared and attempted to round them up, not only would they fight, but any calf they had sired would also go down swinging. They would even attack the huge but placid bulls the pastoralist had purchased to breed a herd of compliant cows—cattle who not only walked into their last corral but calmly led their calves into the trucks. No, these bulls, without realizing it, had a quality that had to be cut out of the herd before they infected the other cows with freedom.
These were the freshest steaks I’d ever eaten. I’d watched them shoot the cow that they designated as a killer. Not because it had killed them, but because it had suffered a broken leg, they were allowed to kill it. As the young Aboriginal musterer had approached it with his rifle, I’d watched the cow turn her great head to him, as if she too wanted it over. I’d then helped cart great chunks of the meat the musterers had cut off the carcass and helped fill the rear of the ute.
In my hands, the meat had been warm, like the day’s sun was still in it, and the musterers, with their knives, had carved her up like professional butchers, leaving the rest for the dingoes. The only difference between us and those wild dogs was that we were grilling ours, and the meat was incredible. With nothing but a sprinkling of salt, the steak, and I had three, tasted better than any steak from any restaurant I’d ever been to. After a day of hunting, this must have been what our ancestors had experienced.
The helicopter pilot was here too. He never sat, just stood slightly away from us and watched the fire as humans had always watched campfires. All day I’d watched him fly his helicopter in a way I’d never seen. He was like a dragonfly, tearing over a pond, vanishing, reappearing, sometimes facing down the earth as he drove the cattle out of the areas even the buggies couldn’t traverse.
He told me that he spent weeks out here, flying from one station to another, where they accommodated him. Or, if the station was too far away, he’d land in the bush and sleep in the swag he kept on the passenger seat. For a man who lived his life on the edge and flew like he was taunting death, he was not much for words. I did get him to admit that he might have landed in places that humans had never been, such was the immensity of space out here. And with eyes on the fire, he nodded to this.
After he’d hit the sack, I was told that this pilot was the last, as there were plans to replace them with drones, who would do the job for far cheaper and if they crashed, who cared. A few days later, we used our own drone, a tiny thing, to approach a herd of Brahmas, and to my astonishment, it worked. I was able to steer them this way using only an app on my phone. Perhaps that was the view he was observing in the flames.
With a few beers and full bellies, we started recalling the day. It was a novelty for them to have someone around who had tried to document what they did for a living. Capture this part of the story that ended up in the city in your hamburger. The dirt of the day was still on their clothes and matted in their hair. There was no talk of transitioning out here, not tonight; these were men. A few weeks later, one of them would end up in the hospital with a broken arm, after another bull managed to gore him.
But tonight, as they gently petted the camp cat, who would curl around their shoulders like a living stole, Luke, my host, had only spent one day in school. The rest of his education had been over the radio. He’d grown up in these stock camps and was still here. He was also unvaccinated, as were his little team and a few of the musterers. They were working out here, on the harder properties, the more isolated ones, because the station owner couldn’t recruit anyone else.
I’d met Luke on the lawn of Parliament House in Canberra. He and his mate and son had driven down there, all the way from Mt Isa, to participate in the great march. In their cowboy hats, they had stood out from the crowd, and with his warm smile and infectious laugh, he had attracted a lot of fans.
We were here now to see what it was that would motivate these men to undertake such a journey, just to attend a protest. They had driven down here to try and remind the government and anyone else who would listen that this was a free country, and that our precious liberties were under attack. The freedoms our forefathers had left their country to defend.
But that was then, and this was now. A time where our government and their propaganda machine were working together, like these musterers, to convince their fellow Australians to compliantly walk into the vaccination centers, with their children, to take what Greg Hunt had declared was an experiment. A time where the same machine attacked anyone who challenged this, by calling them anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.
In Melbourne, I had watched others and had experienced myself being thrown, face down to the ground, by the government’s musterers; the police, were handcuffed and prone, you wondered not only about your future but the future of us all.
As the campfire danced on, some of these weary cattlemen vanished into their swags, as Luke drove our team of documentarians back to his smaller ranch. I was cold by then, and because the day had passed too quickly, these men hadn’t been able to return to the bound bulls, so they had decided to return in the morning and drag them up onto the trucks that would take them to the meatworks.
Years passed, and I still see that bull, alone and questionably handcuffed to the earth, his breath creating clouds of mist as his sky-facing eye filled with the stars that most of us can’t see from the city. Creeks, upon rivers, up tides of stars, whose distant currents would still be flowing tomorrow, even though this prince would no longer be here.
Michael Gray Griffith
10/06/25
Would you be interested in a novel of these collated essays, or perhaps you have a book of your own you want published, if so please contact John Stapleton who will soon publish them.
These are his details:
John Stapleton
Commissioning Editor
A Sense of Place Publishing
Emails:
john.stapleton@gmail.com
asenseofplacepublishing@gmail.com
Skype: mr.john.stapleton
Websites:
http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/
https://johnstapletonjournalism.com/
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