I grew up in the Wild West, the wild western suburbs of Sydney, in the 1950s and 60s. In some surprising ways it was just like the American Wild West of the 1850s and 60s.
We knew all about the real Wild West from TV series like “The Lone Ranger”, “Rin Tin Tin” and “Hopalong Cassidy”. We knew about riding the range on horseback, cattle rustlers, cruel people called cowpunchers (what a way to make a living), campfires, surprise attacks by gangs of vicious looking outlaws as well as tough Western habits like never taking a shower and living on beans, black coffee and, in the case of Hopalong, an exotic drink we had never sampled called sarsaparilla.
Western Housing and Livestock. Like the pioneers of the American Wild West, our experience was do-it-yourself homesteading. My father built the family house himself by hand, from whatever building materials he could get in a time of post war shortage. Dad had no power tools at all, just a hand saw, hammer, nails, fibro cement cladding, and paint (for insulation). Later on we lived in Wyoming (Wyoming Avenue that is) on our quarter acre Western spread. How Wild West was that? Wyoming is still called the Cowboy State and was home to Buffalo Bill Cody himself.* We didn’t have cattle, but we did have cowboy hats. And we did have chooks roaming the range in the backyard. While the chickens lacked horns to gore someone to death, they could take out your eye with their vicious beaks if you got too close to them. Predators included ticks that would suck half the blood out of our pet cat if we didn’t tick them off first. My father eventually moved on from chooks and he began to farm a herd of thousands of vicious flying creatures called bees. If you were stung by a few of these frantic foragers, you’d be lucky to last an hour before the unbearable pain went away. One day the bees stampeded** taking the beloved Queen of the Bees to form a new colony in a small tree. The backyard was filled with bees flying everywhere, apparently aiming to seize control of the property, like a massive band of Western bandits galloping around whooping and hollering and buzzing. However, they hadn’t reckoned on the power of our friend Don Wayne, master beekeeper, who used his smoke gun pacifier, a broom handle and animal cunning to round up the bees into a huge bucket with a bee proof lid. They were taken into exile to a hive way out in the Badlands even further west, beyond the legendary Blue Mountains.
Wild West dangers. Deadly foes lurked on our vast western land holding of 7 million square centimetres. One afternoon we found our cat confronting not a rattlesnake, but a rearing, tongue flicking, fang baring Red Bellied Black Snake. The family cat (Prince by name and nature), acquitted himself like a true western hero, dodging and weaving and meowing fiercely to keep the serpent distracted until my elder brother appeared like the US cavalry. He dispatched it with his bare hands by beating it to death with a brass curtain rod, which he no doubt kept in his saddlebag especially for snake defence.
Another danger in the Wild West of Sydney was stray gunfire. One Saturday afternoon we heard a loud crack and we found a bullet hole in one of the front windows. I was sure it was a bullet hole because I’d seen exactly the same patterns appear when outlaws attacked the law abidin’ clean livin’ ranchers’ homesteads in Hopalong Cassidy on TV – or was it Bonanza? Dad closely examined the bullet hole and found the offending bullet lying on the floor. He declared it to be a nail and said that Bill Schott across the road must have fired it while mowing his front lawn. I’d never seen a Western TV episode where the sharpshooter tried to kill someone with a suburban lawnmower, but I was sure that was the right explanation. And it was quite true. Bill Schott’s mower had run over a nail lying carelessly on his front lawn and fired it (in the days before grass catchers) straight through our front window. Fortunately, Bill apologized for his stray shot and offered to replace the window glass, thus avoiding the need for a 30 year feud between the two families. It was rough and tough living out in the Wild West, I can tell you.
Living the Wild West lifestyle. When we needed a horse to chase outlaws or to flee from them at full gallop, while turning around and shooting our water pistols, then we jumped on the one stabled in the backyard. It was in the form of makeshift stirrups, reins and saddle, nailed to a large horizontal branch of a backyard tree. This horse was tethered just near the backyard incinerator/campfire and underneath the treehouse hideout. If we wanted to imitate evil Western train robbers derailing locomotives with explosives then we could use our pocket money to buy fireworks such as penny bungers for cracker night. Though they would not stop a train, these explosions sounded impressive and could blast an old tin can at least half a metre into the air . We were sure this would terrify the neighbours or at least wake them up from their afternoon nap.
The danger, hardship and romance of TV westerns spoke to our Wild West hearts for we knew that we too came from the Wild West. Though it is many years since I moved away, I still wear with pride the invisible badge of having been born a true blue Westie***.
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* truewestmagazine.com/article/exploring-buffalo-bills-wyoming
** also known as “swarming” in bee language.
*** ” “Westies” (are) often stereotyped as people from the outer suburbs who are unintelligent, undereducated, unmotivated, unrefined, lacking in fashion sense, working-class or unemployed” Wikipedia: “Westie (person)” .
© Geoff Milton 2021
