The Hat on His Coffin

Welcome to The Back Verandah.

Last month I told you I was writing a new book, and that it had been percolating inside me for 30 years. I promised you the story of where it began.

This is it.

In October 1996, news reached us on Tocal Station, west of Longreach, that Arthur Egan had died.

He was the cowboy gardener from Rosedale Station, a quiet man who had lived a hard and remarkable life: raised in an orphanage, working on stations from the age of 12, married twice, and lost both wives. I didn’t know him well, but we’d always say g’day when we saw each other.

That night, I opened my diary and wrote about him.

“Poor Arthur had a terribly hard life... His life story would have been of great historical value to Australia. It's a shame he didn't record his yarns at the Hall of Fame as an unsung hero. He would have been too modest for that. RIP dear Arthur."

A few days later, I stood at Arthur's graveside during his funeral in the Longreach cemetery. And there, resting on his coffin, was his old hat.

"He would have liked that," I wrote in my diary after the funeral.

Arthur never wrote a memoir. Nobody, to my knowledge, wrote one for him. His yarns, his orphanage beginnings, his decades on the stations, his two lost wives — all of it gone with him.

I didn't understand it at the time, but standing at that graveside was the moment this book began.

Arthur's story was gone before it was written down. Don't let that happen to you, or to the person you're thinking of right now.

If you missed last month's letter about the book, you can read it here.

With care, Natalie

Natalie Stockdale,

The Memoir Writer www.thememoirwriter.com.au