Page 128 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
Because, boy, oh boy, did she have news for him.
EPILOGUE
Bruno Krauss was born on the SSPartizanka, a ship that left Malta on 15 December 1947, carrying 808 immigrants bound for Australia. He was the first and only child of Rudi and Marlene Krauss.
Rudi and Marlene—my grandparents—were married on Marlene’s eighteenth birthday a month after the Second World War came to an end. The cost of passage to a country far from depressed and war-torn Germany was promised to them as a wedding present by a relative whose name has been lost to history, and the young couple hoped to turn this windfall into a new life as farmers. Upon disembarkation in Sydney on 15 January 1948, they found work and accommodation here in the Snowy Mountains on a cattle property, where Marlene supplemented the family income as a seamstress for local families.
By 1956, they’d tucked away enough savings to convince the bank manager down in Cooma to lend them the money to buy two hundred acres of poorly cleared scrub country on Gorge Road. Bruno, who was eight at the time, took one look at the property that was to be his new home and fell in love.
The story goes he gave his mother the run around when she tried to interest him in reading and writing, until he learned the local school had a paddock and the kids were welcome to arrive on horseback. Of course, this meant he needed a horse, which cost money his parents didn’t have, but Bruno was nothing if not enterprising, stubborn and determined. He chopped wood, he sold eggs, he convinced Marlene that he deserved a hefty commission when he talked the neighbour into paying his mum to sew school clothes for his eight children.
Bruno was saddled up and attending school in no time, but he’s been happy to tell anyone who’d listen in the years since that the real lessons he learned there, until he left school for good at the age of fifteen, all happened riding down and back up the mountain on horseback.
Bruno loved to ride.
He was soon getting odd jobs in the district as a ringer, and at sixteen he took off mustering for two years, returning home only when the news of his mother’s untimely death reached him. He told his father that Ironbark Station’s cattle were not enough to keep him home; Bruno saw his future in the breeding and training of stockhorses. Rudi—perhaps grieving or perhaps just glad to have his son home again—put his savings into Bruno’s hands and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
Bruno has not been shy about telling all of us that grit and determination are the two qualities that a man—or a woman—needs most. I suspect that is because these are the qualities he learned from his parents and from his years pursuing his dream.
Ironbark Station stockhorses can be found in the studbook record of any number of champion horses—campdraft, rodeo, polo—the list goes on. Where Ironbark’s true success lies, however, is in the working horses it has bred, trained and sold over the years. The stayers, who do the work, day in, day out.
Bruno’s philosophy on life was one of endurance. Of overcoming setbacks. Of cracking on until he met with success. Was he a stubborn old goat? Often. Did he have a softer side? Sometimes. Am I proud of him? Yes.
He lies now at rest in the family plot along with his wife, my mother, and his parents Rudi and Marlene. We are grateful to Marigold Jones for her hard work in negotiating with the authorities so he could be buried here on the station rather than in the cemetery in Hanrahan. Bruno had little patience for regulations that didn’t suit him, and he gave Marigold more than her share of grief when she informed him, some years back, that he might want to be commencing negotiations with Barry O’Malley.
Hannah and I hope to carry on with the stockhorse breeding program at Ironbark. We have Lynette and her offsider Bill here to guide us, and pretty soon—any day now, if Hannah’s girth is any indication—we’re hoping to have an enterprising, stubborn and determined kid of our own who we can pass all our chores to.
Wait, no, Hannah made me cross that last bit out.
We’re hoping the newest member of the Krauss family will feel as much love for Ironbark Station as Bruno did, and as we do.
Dad, if you’re lurking somewhere in the snow gums making sure I’m getting this speech right, I just want to say: I’m sorry it took us so long to sort ourselves out. I guess maybe some of that stubbornness you’re famous for might run in my veins, too.
Mrs L, I can see you, and there’s no need to nod in agreement with quite such enthusiasm.
Here’s to you, Dad. And to your legacy, which I am proud to say encompasses not just fifty years of stockhorse breeding, but extends also to the custodianship of some of Hanrahan’s fine old buildings, to a lifetime spent here in the Snowy Mountains among friends and family and, most importantly, to the next generation of the Krauss family.
Eulogy reprinted with permission of the writer, Tom Krauss The Hanrahan Chatter, April Edition
TheSnowy River Star, p.16
