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at the Marist Brothers’ Sacred Heart College in Adelaide. He was expelled, along with two others, for drinking red
wine under the chapel. Just turned 14, he left home and headed for the outback where he got a job as a stockman
on Todmorden Station near Oodnadatta. Over the next few years he worked on many stations in Central Australia,
including Alcoota, Bond Springs and Erldunda stations, before moving on to Broken Hill.
In 1949 Garrison joined the Royal Australian Navy. He served as a stoker-mechanic on HMAS Australia,
HMAS Quadrant and HMAS Warramunga, which, according to Garrison, was known as the ‘Wandering Mongrel’.
His navy time took him to the Philippines and to New Guinea. After leaving the navy in 1955, Garrison worked at
a variety of jobs in Victoria.
In 1958 he met up with an old Alice Springs mate, ‘Rajah’ Holmes, in the London Club Bar in Melbourne
and decided to head back to Central Australia. His first stop was Helen Springs Station. Over the next few years
Garrison travelled the Territory, working on stations such as Inverway, Nicholson, Eva Valley and Alexandria
Downs. He did all sorts of jobs: stockman, fencing, driving or droving. In the bush, The Bulletin, with its Red Page
containing Australian stories and poems by writers such as Lawson and Patterson, was popular material around
the campfires at night. An avid reader with a good memory and a powerful speaking voice, Garrison added poems,
particularly those that told a good story such as Patterson’s ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ and ‘The Man From Snowy
River’ to his repertoire of bush yarns. It was at the Daly Waters pub that another dimension was added to his
stock of ballads, when Bill ‘Little Bear’ Petrie of Nutwood Downs Station gave Garrison a copy of Songs of a
Sourdough by the Canadian writer Robert Service. The bawdy ballads of the wild gold-rush days in the Yukon in
Alaska such as ‘The Shooting of Dan McGraw’ and ‘The Ballad of Eskimo Nell’ were tailor-made for Garrison’s
gravelly voice.
Garrison roved the Northern Territory outback for years, bull-catching on St Vidgeon Station, working for
the five Whitely brothers on Goodparla, on Gimbat Station near Coronation Hill, for Jack Kitto at Rumbalara
and Max Bright at Stapleton. He also worked at Mallapunyah and drove trucks for Ian Worth’s ‘Circus’ at the
Eveleen Mine near Pine Creek. Every station, and every name has a story. Travelling from place to place also
provided Garrison with material for yarns, such as the time he fell out of a boat on the Stuart Highway, and the
trials and tribulations he faced in attempting to get a lift to Threeways miles from anywhere and carrying a pair
of oars! Although he often made large sums of money, Garrison never became rich. One of his favourite stories
is about a one-eyed saddler at Camooweal who promised him ‘stick with me, boy, and you’ll be fetlock deep in
sovereigns’.
In the late 1960s Garrison started spending more time in Darwin. He still went off to follow whatever station
work was going, but always returned to Darwin. ‘Cowboy Bill’s’ tall figure with its Texan ten-gallon cowboy
hat soon became a familiar sight around the town. The hat, apart from giving him his nickname, also served
as Garrison’s bank stuffed, when he was in the money from a job, with bank notes. When the money ran out,
there were always the police cells, ‘You could get a good night’s sleep and the breakfast was always first class’.
The police soon got wise to this trick, and Garrison is on record as being the only Territorian ever banned from
Territory police stations. In the 1960s Garrison was a regular entrant in the Yarn Spinning competitions held at
the Hotel Darwin. The event, revived and enlarged in the 1990s, was the World Yarn Spinning Championship and
featured such renowned yarn-spinners as author Frank Hardy and radio identity Mike ‘Prickle Farm’ Hayes.
Garrison always made the finals, but the night, with the bright lights, large audiences and intense media coverage
did not really suit his laconic, laid-back style of delivery, or temperament. He was at his best with just a few people,
and a few drinks, in a local watering hole.
Garrison lived permanently in Darwin in the early 1990s and could often be found in one of his favourite old
haunts, the Hotel Darwin, entertaining friends and visitors with his stories and memories of over 50 years of living
and working in the outback, a style of life which had just about vanished. Although he turned down several radio
and recording offers, he finally allowed a Darwin friend to tape his anecdotes for the purpose of a book on his
life. The title was taken from the quote by the old one-eyed saddler at Camooweal: Fetlock Deep in Sovereigns:
The Life and Times of ‘Cowboy Bill’ Garrison.
Interviews with W J Garrison, 1995; Northern Territory News archives, files on ‘Cowboy Bill’ Garrison and ‘Great Yarn Spinning Competition’;
S Williams, ‘Fetlock Deep in Sovereigns’, unpublished, 1995.
EVE GIBSON, Vol 3.GEORGE, (ALEXANDER) JOHN (1944– ), Army officer and first Commanding Officer of the North West
Mobile Force, an integrated Army Reserve unit in the Northern Territory and Kimberley, raised by George in
1981 to provide a widely-based strategic reconnaissance and surveillance capacity on the approaches to northern
Australia.
Born in Sydney on 24 September 1944 and educated at Coffs Harbour High School, John George entered
the Army as an apprentice in 1960. He subsequently transferred to the Infantry Corps in 1962 and served in the
airborne platoon of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (RAR). He graduated from the Officer Cadet
School (OCS), Portsea in December 1964 and was posted to 2RAR at Enoggera, with which battalion he saw
active service in Vietnam from May 1967 to June 1968, particularly in the Phuoc Tuy and Bien Hoa provinces.
On return to Australia from Nui Dat, and on promotion to Captain, he commenced duty with the Special Air
Service Regiment (SASR) at Swanbourne as Intelligence Officer. He then served with the 5th Army Recruiting
Unit after which he held a series of staff appointments in Western Command. He returned to the Army Apprentices
School as Adjutant, and from January 1973 was the Officer Commanding A Company of 3RAR at Woodside in
South Australia while, in January 1976, he entered the Australian Staff College at Queenscliff.