The Campbell Brothers

Graham and Rod Campbell. Graham was my best man when I was married, and I was

Rod’s best man when he was married. I first met these brothers when I was sent over to

the developing Rawlinna Station as a “sub overseer”. Rawlinna was the largest sheep

station in the world. Three thousand eight hundred square miles “of bugger all” on the

western edge of the Nullarbor plain. Two hundred and forty miles east of Kalgoorie. That

was the last of the pastoral country in Australia to be opened up in the 1960’s.

Rod was the Manager, and when I arrived in 1962 he and a young station hand were

living in a tent a few kilometres south of the railway town of Rawlinna.

After a month or so we built a corrugated iron shed at the present site of Rawlinna

Station, further west. I was there for almost a year and a half, but Rod spent a lot longer

and was responsible for it’s early development. Today it is one of the leading sheep

stations in Australia running up to one hundred thousand sheep. At the same time,

Graham, Rod’s older brother, was in the area with Peter Hogg, the first water borer

contractor over there. In between time Graham would join us doing station work well

before the first sheep arrived. Most of our work involved looking after the various

contractors including stone tank builders and fencers.

Before I left the area in 1963, Rod, Peter Hogg and I took up a pastoral lease located

around one hundred kilometres east on the open Nullarbor. For 20 cents a square mile.

Peter Hogg and I pulled out leaving Rod with what is now Kybo Station running both

sheep and cattle. At the time, for a number of years, Rod and Graham were contract

fencing in the area and I would spend a number of summers working with them.

About that time Rod married Jill McDonald from Cocklebiddy Station and Roadhouse

down on the Eyre Highway. The McDonald family were a pioneering pastoral family who

had moved down to the Eyre Highway from the Kimberley. Much of this Nullarbor story is

written up in some of my books.

Soon after they were married, and after Graham and my fencing operation was washed

out after a massive dump of rain, I joined the family spending a month at the Sydney

Show. The family was also involved in “show biz”, selling toffee apples, waffles,

dagwood dogs and fairy floss at the various capital city shows. That extraordinary

month is also written up in “go with the flow”. About this time Graham was getting in to

a very different “profession”. He had always been something of a “bush lawyer”. He

would spend hours sitting around a camp fire discussing every subject under the sun.

He had a great retentive memory and was very difficult to get the better of in a debate.

At the same time, he was extraordinary generous, on a number of occasions leaving his

own work to drive miles over bush tracks to help out another “Nullarbor battler”. I think

this is one factor why he was so successful in his political career. He had later taken up

a share in Kybo Station with Rod and Jill, but sold that, and purchased and orange juice

and milk run in Kalgoorlie. He nominated for the Liberal Party, but they didn’t want to

know him. So, determined to be a politician, no matter what, he was accepted in to the

Labor Party. Kalgoorlie had been a safe Liberal seat for many years. Graham’s strategy

with the orange juice and milk run business was to literally meet every citizen in

Kalgoorlie...from the Mayor to the frequenters of the infamous Kalgoorlie brothels. He

had a good way with people and had no trouble getting his message across – evidenced

by him winning the seat for Labor with a very large majority.

He had twenty years in Canberra as the Member for Kalgoorlie, which is the largest

political seat in the world.

It is interesting how he yarded up the Aboriginal vote. Those days always in “his bag of

fruit”, (suit) he visited Warburton Aboriginal Settlement in the Warburton Ranges

between the Gibson and Great Victorian desert. At the time their water bore had broken

down and they were carting water for miles. None of the European staff knew how to fix

it. Taking off his suit coat and tie, and with a couple of Aboriginal offsiders he soon found

the problem. A hole in the second pipe down the column. The word spread like wild fire

and so he had the Aboriginal vote.

Graham is now retired in Kalgoorlie and Rod passed away earlier this year.