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and, with uncertain mails, infrequent visitors and no doctors, the struggle to raise a family in the Depression years
was a battle well won.
In October 1944, not long after the first fat bullocks from Mallapunyah had been sold, and some dreams were
being realised at last, disaster struck. Elizabeth, then nearly 50, and a young son, Mick, were lost in the bush while
looking for lost donkeys. October is always a searing, blazing month, and as days of fruitless search continued,
the hearts of the family sank. Men and horses, police with Aboriginal trackers, even a plane searched the hills and
creeks for weeks, but could not find a trace of either. Stock camps from several Tablelands stations and MacArthur
River came to help, and her husband George rode out daily for six months searching from some answer, some sign.
There was none.
Elizabeth Darcy has left behind a monument to her spirit, courage and hard work; a flourishing, family-owned
cattle station, still run by five of her sons.
Family information.
FIONA M DARCY, Vol 1.DARCY, GEORGE JOHN (1890–1971) teamster, pioneer and pastoralist, was born on 12 July 1890 at
Hughenden, Queensland, the third child of Edward James Darcy and Alice Klein. His father came from Ireland,
and was a carrier who later held a contract for the Burketown to Camooweal run. He is buried where he died, in
March 1916, beside the track at Sandy Creek, Lawn Hill Road, in the Gulf Country. George’s mother was born in
Irish Town, Toowoomba in 1868. Her mother came from Irish farming stock in Cork, and her father George Klein,
also a carrier, from rural stock in Germany; so when George was a child, his background was composed of horse
teams, teamsters, harness and farmers—horses and the land were in his blood. His parents had eight children,
and George remained close to his brothers and sisters all his life. After his father’s death, he was a witness at his
mother’s wedding to Thomas Laffin at Rocklands Station, Camooweal, in 1917.
Family history says that father and son were working together on old Edward’s wagon, and accidentally,
the shaft fell on Edward’s head. When he was roused from unconsciousness, he ‘sacked’ George in no uncertain
terms. After this argument with his father, George followed many different occupations. He shot kangaroos, worked
on the railway line extending westward from Hughenden, and carried supplies for the copper mining township of
Kuridala, up the Cloncurry River. He did some droving also. His first excursion into the MacArthur River area
occurred when he came out in 1917, aged 27, to help drive fat cattle into Queensland.
Either that year, or the next, he arrived at Brunette Downs, on the Barkly Tableland, looking for work. He was
in his prime, and though not a tall man, (unlike his sons) he had massively strong arms and chest. Irish blood and
temper made for a firm character. His temper was quick to rise, but he never held a grudge, and after a fistfight
would happily settle down to share a bottle of rum with the loser. Arriving at Brunette with his two horses, one to
carry himself and one his pack, he asked for work, telling the manager he knew horses and wagons. He was made
welcome, and was told there was a wagon and plenty of work for it and horses ready to be broken into harness.
George arranged to purchase the wagon, to work it for Brunette until he had it paid off, which he did by 1929.
He carried stores from Borroloola to Brunette and other Tableland stations such as Alexandria, Creswell and
Anthony’s Lagoon.
As he was leaving Brunette in 1918 on a trip, the manager asked if he would escort a young woman to
Borroloola, as she was on her way home to Pine Creek after being tragically widowed at Brunette. George escorted
Elizabeth Hopkins and her two young children, and told his Aboriginal offsider, Demon, to get her horses in the
mornings. Elizabeth became ill on the way and Demon’s wife Jackie-Jackie helped her back to health. After this,
she rode on the wagon, instead of shyly staying behind with her packhorses and children. As the wagon approached
Borroloola at the usual rate of 16 kilometres a day—it would have taken a month to reach from Brunette—the young
couple must have wondered if they would ever see one another again, but fate intervened with a devastating
attack of ‘sandy blight’, which completely, though temporarily, blinded George. Elizabeth told him she was quite
competent at harnessing horses, and all George had to do was tell her which animal went in which place, and that
he could do that anyway with his eyes shut. As he had helped her, so she helped him back to Brunette Downs with
his new load of stores. Thus, the partnership and marriage of George and Elizabeth Darcy was begun.
While George worked his wagon slowly across the Barkly Tablelands, and down the MacArthur River to
Borroloola, he must have looked closely at the country through which he travelled. Elizabeth and her two children,
and the first two young Darcy children, settled first at Top Springs on the main track, only 14 kilometres west
of Mallapunyah homestead today. An old bushman and miner, Mick Fay, made over his copper lease to George,
as Mick felt he was dying. George had always been good to him, carrying his supplies from Borroloola on the
wagon without charge. This lease was on the Kilgour River, about one and a half kilometres above the gorge where
Mick had a small house. George already had at least two mineral licences, taken out in 1920 and 1921, when they
moved to Kilgour in 1922 with children, goats, fowls, horses and, very importantly, seeds. Several more children
were born to the Darcys there. The garden flourished, the goats and horses multiplied, but then in 1928 disaster
struck. The waterhole, so necessary to garden, stock and humans, dried up. With the assistance of an Aboriginal,
they located the present site of the family home, Mallapunyah Springs, some 24 kilometres north of the Kilgour
mine. They moved there, planting mango trees and a vegetable garden as soon as possible on the deep, rich alluvial
soil beside the Mallapunyah Creek, where the several springs bubble out of the ground.
In 1929, probably early in the year when it was too wet to use the wagon, George built dip yards at Anthony’s
Lagoon, managed to finish paying off the wagon, and had enough money left over to purchase iron for the roof
of the house they were building at Mallapunyah. In 1928 George applied for a miscellaneous lease of 40 acres