A Town like Alice

18th, 1903, which began, 'I, James Nelson Macfadden of Lowdale Manor, Kirkby Moorside, in the County of Yorkshire, and of Hall's Creek in Western Australia, do hereby revoke all former wills… etc.' I knew nothing of Hall's Creek at that time, but I noted the name for future investigation. That is all there was.
    I got Marcus Fernie on the telephone that afternoon at his office at the BBC and asked if I could have a ticket for 'Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh'. I had to tell him something about Joe Harman in order to get it because there seemed to be considerable competition, and he came back at once with a demand that Harman should be interviewed for the programme 'In Town Tonight'. I said I'd see him about that, and he promised to send over the ticket. Then I got on to old Sir Dennis Frampton who has a herd of pedigree Herefords at his place down by Taunton and told him about Joe Harman, and he very kindly invited him down for a couple of nights.
    I got back to my flat at about seven o'clock; I had arranged for dinner there. Joe Harman was there, and he had been to the Bank and the hotel, and he had brought his suitcase round to my spare room. I asked if he had found his father's house at Hammersmith.
    "I found it," he said. "Oh my word, I did."
    "Pretty bad?"
    He grinned. "That's putting it mild. We got some slums in Australia, but nothing like that. Dad did all right for himself when he come away from that and out to Queensland."
    I offered him a glass of sherry, but he preferred a beer; I went and got him a bottle. "When did your father leave this country?" I inquired,
    "1904," he said. "He went out to the Curry, to Cobb and Co. They used to run the stage coaches, before motors came. He must have been about fifteen then. He fought in the first war with the Aussies at Gallipoli."
    "He's dead now, is he?"
    "Aye," he said. "He died in 1940, soon after I joined the army." He paused. "Mother's still alive. She lives with my sister Amy at the Curry."
    "Tell me," I said, "do you know a place called Hall's Creek?"
    "Where the gold was? Over by Wyndham, in West Australia?"
    "That will be the place," I said. "There are gold mines there, are there?"
    "I don't think they work it now," he said. "There was a lot of gold there in the nineties, like in Queensland, in the Gulf country. I've never been to Hall's Creek, but I've always thought that it would be like Croydon. There was a lot of gold at Croydon, oh my word. It lasted for about ten years, and then they had to go so deep for it, it didn't pay any longer. Croydon had thirty thousand people one time, so they say. Now it's got two hundred. It's the same at Normanton and Burketown-Willstown's the same. All gold towns at one time, they were."
    "You never heard of anybody called Macfadden over at Hall's Creek, did you?"
    He shook his head. "I never heard the name."
    I told him I was getting a ticket for 'Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh', and that they wanted him to broadcast on Saturday night. He agreed diffidently to do this; when the time came I listened in and thought he did it surprisingly well. The announcer shepherded him along quite skilfully, and Harman spoke for about six or seven minutes about the Midhurst cattle station and the country down below the Gulf of Carpentaria that he called the Gulf country. Marcus Fernie took the trouble to ring me up next day to tell me how well it had gone. "I only wish we could get more chaps like him now and then," he said. "It makes a difference when you hear the real McCoy."
    I put him on the train on Sunday down to Taunton to see Sir Dennis Frampton's cows. He had not much time left, because a ship of the Shaw Savill line was leaving on the following Friday morning for New Zealand and Australia, and I had managed to get him a cheap berth on that. He came back on the Wednesday full of what he had seen. "He's got a bonza herd there, oh my word," he said. "I learned more about raising up the quality of stock there in two days than I'd have learned in ten years in the Gulf country. Of course, you couldn't do the things that he does on a station like Midhurst, but I got plenty to think about."
    "You mean about breeding?"
    "We don't breed for quality at all in the Gulf," he said. "Not like you set about it here in England. All we do is go out and shoot the scrub bulls when you see them so you keep the best ones breeding. I'd like to see a herd of pedigree stock out there, like he's got. I never see such beasts outside a show."
    After dinner I