Michael Keenan's Outback Life - Cattle Farmer Surviving the Drought

Michael Keenan is a fifth generation cattle and wheat farmer from the high plains south west of Coonabarabran. He has one of those lean Irish faces and a deeply furrowed brow. Great grandfather James Keenan arrived in Sydney from Ireland in 1825. He was a second son on the family farm, and in those times in Ireland, it was join the priesthood or migrate to America or Australia for those not destined to inherit land. William Wentworth, the colony's famous early settler and explorer soon employed him. Wentworth commissioned James to form pastoral stations in the Macquarie river valley (reference to James Keenan---Australian Men of Mark.) In the 1840's James purchased his own run known as Keenan's Bridge, near Orange. In the 1920's the Keenan family moved 250 kilometers north and acquired two properties---Myall Plains and Biamble, in the Castlereagh River loop. Michael grew up on Myall Plains, rock climbing in the Warrumbungles and riding in picnic races.

Life on the land used to be fun. His mother use to say that he learnt to track before he could talk. Reared in the bush as an only child, Michael rarely saw other children until he was sent away to a little school run by Irish Nuns.

Michael's parents sometimes provided the classic conflict between the "Orange and the Green," his mother a Protestant. A strong woman, she saw to it that Mike ended up at The Kings School, Parramatta. Always homesick, Michael left school to work with his father on Myall Plains. Often restless as a young man, Michael took a job in Sydney. "I went to work at a shop in the city on Monday and by Thursday lunchtime I had claustrophobia." He walked out and never collected his pay packet. After that experience Michael went outback. "It was the early 1960's," Mike recalled. "I boarded a plane in Sydney at 7.30.a.m. and landed at Longreach in western Queensland at 6.00 p.m. "On the big stations the old boarding school mold was soon knocked out of me."

Upon his return from Queensland Michael met Sarah (he's always loved her name) at a Merriwa bachelor and spinsters ball. Always called Sal, he loved her soft voice and zest for life. They danced the night out and Michael visited her in Sydney. When they married Sarah was just 20 and Michael 23.

At that time rural Australia was enjoying considerable prosperity. People were optimistic, living in a vibrant culture. It was a wonderful environment in which to rear children and Mike and Sal had four sons. Little did they know so much would change on the land in the 1970's and 1980's? The blissful way of life was to disappear forever, beginning with the great cattle crash in 1974. But despite the hard life on the land Mike doesn't plan to retire. He doesn't believe in it. "You keep striving until you drop."

The love of the land is clear in Keenan's writing. He wasn't an author before, though he'd written two manuscripts, which lay untouched at one publisher or another. The desire to write had been nurtured in correspondence courses but had never bloomed. Shortly after leaving the property to go droving in Queensland, during the mid 1990's drought, he began to keep a diary and was amazed how fate provided an increasing tempo of excitement and real life drama. "The first book simply fell into my lap."

In October 2000 Mike was the subject of the ABC television
program ---"Australian Story," which focused on the theme of his
first book---"The Horses Too Are Gone." .