Cattlemen in Pearls pays tribute to women in the beef industry

“She was clearly a clever, committed cattleman, she was drop-dead gorgeous, and she was always kind.” 

“While I’ve known Margaretta for most of my life, I’d never had the pleasure of meeting her equally engaging sisters Caroline Briggs, Ticker Turner and Bizzy Fahey.

“Including the Innes sisters in Cattlemen in Pearls was a given; including them all in one story was my particular joy; and challenge. Hearing and writing other people’s stories, is invariably an honour and a privilege. 

“And so it was with The Women of Walla chapter. They’re close friends as well as sisters and I expect them, when they’re together, to be arguing the finer points of their story over a drama or two for the rest of their lives.

“Sharing their collective story was an education and so much fun!”

There’s a scene in The Man from Snowy River in which Jim Craig complains to Jessica Harrison, that her aunt is trying to turn him into a butler. Jessica commiserates telling him, “Well, she’s trying to make a lady out of me.”

Had they seen the movie back in the middle of the last century, Mrs Phyllis Innes of Walla and her mother, Mrs Margaretta Grocott, might well have rolled their eyes in sympathy with the aunt.

Ticker Turner, the third of the Innes sisters well remembers her gentle but very aristocratic grandmother trying to coax her to practice the piano and sing.

Once a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra herself, their exceptionally musical Granny Grocott had pretty much admitted defeat with her two eldest granddaughters, Margaretta and Carolyn.

But she still had hopes for Ticker who not only could sing, but did so beautifully.

Ticker’s face lights up delightedly as she says, “Poor Granny. Dad would come through the house calling, ‘Come along girls. Time to feed up’ and we’d drop everything and run.”

Collectively, and in the company of their youngest sister Bizzy, the sisters rock with laughter as they agree that their mother had great hopes for them furthering their education after boarding school so that they might do something other than cattle work.

They did try but her aspirations were dashed when all of them, one after the other, ended up back at Walla working with their father and brother and falling more and more in love with the Brahman cattle that continue to be their favourites. 

While the manners and graciousness of their mother and grandmother have clearly been instilled in all of them, three of the Innes sisters continue to be proud hands-on cattlemen and the fourth their most ardent supporter.  

Having arrived a couple of years after her brother Rob, Margaretta Morgan is the eldest of the sisters and second child of Hugh and Phyllis Innes. 

Her first clear memory is standing on the edge of the fast-flowing Burnett River with her father in 1942 watching dead cattle, trees and assorted other debris washing past on a burgeoning flood. Fortunately, it broke the bank on the other side and the homestead escaped the deluge.  

Ironically, her sister Carolyn’s most vivid early memories are of the 1946 drought. Quieting her usual fulsome drawl, Carolyn explains, “I was about five. I can remember these old Hereford cows were dying. I found a cow bogged in a near empty waterhole, with her head in the water. I held her head in my lap in the mud until Dad found me. I remember Dad telling Mum about me sitting there in the mud holding the dead cow’s head…” As a consequence of that drought, Hugh started thinking about Brahmans. 

Despite the challenges of nature, all of the Innes women remember an idyllic childhood. 

As he had with Rob before her, as soon as Margaretta was old enough, Hugh put her on a pony and lead rein and took her with him wherever he went on horseback. It took the Innes kids no time at all to learn to ride and when they started school at Wallaville, they rode the 10 kilometres there and back every day. 

At school, they joined a crowd unsaddling in the school horse paddock and Margaretta grins as she says, “At the end of the day, if you were lucky and one of the big kids liked you enough, they’d saddle up your pony for you.” Mostly Rob helped her until she was big enough to saddle up on her own and, accordingly, she helped Carolyn when she started school.  

In turn, Ticker rode with Carolyn when she first went to Wallaville School but then someone started a bus run and she and Bizzy, the youngest Innes, walked down to the front gate to catch it. Or if their timing was good, they hitched a ride on the railmotor that ran past Walla. They’d wave the train driver down and jump aboard. 

Apart from their genetic connection and background, it’s their love of cattle, preferably Brahmans, that has been the significant common denominator in the lives of these clever, intrepid, resilient and resourceful Women of Walla.