AustLit

'Banjo Ryan's stories focus on the brutality perpetrated by the policeman Gordon Stott and black tracker Kurnmali. Ryan either witnessed these incidents or heard about them during his time working on Waterloo and Limbunya Stations. The incidents would have occurred in the 1940s when Mounted Constable Gordon Stott was posted to Timber Creek. Unsurprisingly, none of the Timber Creek Police Journals" record such incidents. The journals are difficult to read due to Stott's handwriting, which makes dating Banjo Ryan's individual stories problematic. But it is clear from entries over the years that he spent much time patrolling stations south-west of Timber Creek, including Waterloo, Kildurk, Limbunya and Victoria River Downs. Other sources corroborate these accounts of travel. In 1948 he is recorded as having left his dog Barry with Natalie Simmons, the governess at Victoria River Downs.15 He also travelled to Fitzroy Station just east of Timber Creek regularly. The registration of a rifle is given as the reason Stott visited Waterloo Station in Banjo's first story and indeed, a large part of these patrols involved enforcing the registration of firearms, vehicles and dogs, according to the Timber Creek Police Journals.' (Introduction)