Mick and the Manager: Two Goondiwindi Cattlemen

Abstract

This is the story of two very different men - an Aboriginal stockman, Mick Lynch, and a station manager, Tom Atkinson - whose lives touched for a period during the first half of the 20th century on a cattle station in southern Queensland. It is also my story, or at least part of my story, as Tom Atkinson was my father. The book can be read too as an historical account of life in the Queensland bush during a period that followed the early conflict between the indigenous people and the new settlers - well before the advent of television, computers and mobile phones. On a personal level I have found it necessary in some chapters to call on my memory and imagination to recreate certain details about the lives of Mick and Tom and their interaction with each other. Such chapters appear in the present tense. By adopting this approach I feel I have been able to delve into essential truths concerning the two men which might otherwise have been overlooked in a more rigid academic study. Having said this, I must emphasise that all stories are structured around events that actually happened. 'Ah,' I hear you say. 'It is a kind of dual biography interspersed with autobiography and some history, both Aboriginal and European.' You would of course be right in thinking this. However, there is a fourth protagonist that stands behind this book and determines the lives of all those who pass across its pages. That protagonist is the Queensland bush.