'Tough enough, brave enough': What it takes to be a cowboy in the NT's Top End

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

It's late afternoon at a dusty rodeo arena in rural Darwin, and a growing crowd is watching on as women compete in barrel racing, guiding horses around an obstacle course plotted by 44-gallon drums.
A persistent dust cloud hovers at ground level, stirred up by the rhythmic canter of a new horse entering the arena every minute or so.
For many spectators who have driven in from Darwin and nearby towns, the Noonamah Rodeo is an exaggerated spectacle of rural life.
A road train cab perched above the arena spews flames at various intervals.
There's a half-time freestyle motocross show, and the live country music playing will continue until the early hours of the morning.
For urban visitors, it's a rare chance to pull on the RMs and a Ringers Western work shirt or to flaunt a slightly more polished cowboy-core 'fit inspired by celebrities like Orville Peck or Beyoncé.
But for others, it is serious business.
Backstage, dozens of young men in sturdy boots, well-worn jeans and wide-brimmed hats are standing, talking among themselves.
It seems most of them know each other from the rodeo circuit, and they aren't afraid to call themselves "cowboys".
One of them is UK-born Jack Milsom.
Just a year ago, at 25, he left his small home town in the Adelaide Hills seeking a life on a remote Top End cattle station, with no idea what to expect.
One year on, he's buckling up a pair of tasselled leather chaps in the shadow of this rodeo arena by a roadside pub.
Jack says he's always been drawn to the idea of life on the land, and so one day, with "literally only directions, not knowing how the pay was or what I was doing" he got in the car and drove 3,200 kilometres north.
"Looking at stations and what not, I thought 'that lifestyle is for me', and took the jump," he says, in his blended British-Australian accent.
"I thought, bugger it, you only live once.
"It's just so free. You get to work on the land every day, the boss is cruisy, you get to go back to the workshop at the end of every day.
"Everyone has a beer, a yarn, and rinse, wash, repeat."
For the men and women who work on remote Top End cattle stations — part of a community of workers often based hundreds of kilometres from each other — events like this one are important.
As well as a rare chance to socialise, they are an opportunity to compete in that celebrated event of cowboy culture, the rodeo.
Women typically compete in barrel racing, while the men ride bulls.
When he's not riding unruly livestock for a crowd of thousands, Jack is driving heavy machinery at Old Mount Bundy Station, near Jabiru, where he lives and works.
He is quick to clarify that station life is not easy, but affords an undeniable sense of freedom.
"Don't get me wrong, the work's hard and you do long hours, but it's very rewarding work," he says.
In a yard behind the arena — a quasi-locker room for competitors, bordered by nothing more than temporary cyclone fencing — a handful of other bull riders are preparing for a night of rural entertainment.
The cowboys get changed in full view of thousands of spectators queuing up to enter the venue, pulling gear out of worn duffel bags that litter the ground.
Splayed open in the dust, they contain a variety of cattlemen's accoutrements like brushes, bull-ropes, talcum powder and leather-related products.
Straddling a saddle in the dirt as he adjusts his stirrups, Jack says that before each rodeo, he applies rosin to the inside of his chaps, in the hopes he'll stick to his saddle as he's being thrown around.
Nearby, other competitors are tying and tightening various intricate knots in the bull-ropes which will bind them to the huge animals they'll be riding in just minutes.
It's a struggle to spot anyone not wearing a wide-brimmed hat of one variety or another.
Not many look like the felt type you might associate with The Man from Snowy River. Instead, most Top End cowboys and cowgirls prefer hats made of thatched straw.
"Wide-brimmed hats, they go back a long way for cattlemen. It's what drovers wore," Jack explains.
"You see cattlemen with bigger brims and felt hats, that's actually a tool when you're out working with cattle on horseback.
"You use the top of your hat. You flip it upside-down and give your horse a drink, and also it keeps you safe from the sun."
As well as a good hat, Jack says durable denim is essential for a cowboy, because when "you're playing with cattle in the yard, you get hooked, they [your jeans] get ripped".
And while a big belt buckle might seem like a cowboy staple, it's not something just anyone can wear.
"You do see a lot of people trying to act like they've got a buckle and stuff but, see, some of the cowboys around here, they've actually earned it, they've done the hard yards," Jack says.
Most rodeo spectators from Darwin and surrounds are wearing what New South Wales competitor Dean Wallace sees as a less authentic interpretation of cowboy western wear.
While many spectators will stay at the arena into the early hours of the morning for an after-party, Dean says most of his fellow competitors will "go back to their utes for a sleep" or a quiet beer.
"I think the ones that highlight a bad view of cowboy culture are the ones that dress up for tonight, get on the piss, try to fight someone and get carried out," he says.
"You see some people who dress up just for tonight and they've never actually seen a paddock, stepped in s*** or touched a sheep."
Dean isn't keen on the suggestion cowboys are proud of their differences from "city slickers", and says rather than being concerned about their identity, most cowboys just don't care.
"There are moral standards for a cowboy, and you shouldn't have to think about what those are," he declares.
But he explains that the cowboy identity can't simply be adopted by anyone.
"It's just being tough enough to handle whatever gets thrown at you, brave enough to do whatever you have to do and looking after those around you. I guess that's my view of a cowboy," he says.
While Dean says the cowboy identity usually comes with growing up in a pastoral family, he believes it is not impossible to become one — but it takes hard work.
"I'm all for anyone that wants to get into it," he says.
"If you put your hat on, put your boots on and you're willing to work for it, that's all there is to it.
"I'm telling you, if you go from a lifestyle where you're not used to it and you try to get into it, you'll quickly figure if you're a cowboy or not."
As the final bull is taken back to the yards and the night-time entertainment starts warming up, as if on cue, Dean and his fellow bull riders begin to pack up and head to their utes, leaving the crowd of partygoers behind them in the settling dust.