IN BAD COMPANY — CHAPTER I — CHAPTER II — CHAPTER III — CHAPTER IV — CHAPTER V — CHAPTER VI — CHAPTER VII — CHAPTER VIII — Regina v. Stoate . Charged with Arson. — CHAPTER IX
1
Bill Hardwick was as fine a specimen of an Australian as
you could find in a day's march. Active as a cat and strong
withal, he was mostly described as 'a real good all-round
chap, that you couldn't put wrong at any kind of work that a
man could be asked to do.'
He could plough and reap, dig and mow, put up fences
and huts, break in horses and drive bullocks; he could milk
cows and help in the dairy as handily as a woman. These
and other accomplishments he was known to possess, and
being a steady, sensible fellow, was always welcome when work
was needed and a good man valued. Besides all this he was
the fastest and the best shearer in the district of Tumut, New
South Wales, where he was born, as had been his father and
mother before him. So that he was a true Australian in
every sense of the word.
It could not be said that the British race had degenerated as
far as he was concerned. Six feet high, broad-chested, light-flanked,
and standing on his legs like a gamecock, he was
always ready to fight or work, run, ride or swim, in fact to
tackle any muscular exercise in the world at the shortest
notice.
Bill had always been temperate, declining to spend his
earnings to enrich the easy-going township publican, whose
mode of gaining a living struck him as being too far removed
from that of honest toil. Such being his principles and mode of
life, he had put by a couple of hundred pounds, and 'taken
up a selection.' This means (in Australia) that he had
conditionally purchased three hundred and twenty acres of
2Crown Land, had paid up two shillings per acre of the upset
price, leaving the balance of eighteen shillings, to be paid off
when convenient. He had constructed thereon, chiefly
with his own hands, a comfortable, four-roomed cottage, of the
'slab' architecture of the period, and after fencing in his
property and devoting the proceeds of a couple of shearings
to a modest outlay in furniture, had married Jenny Dawson, a
good-looking, well-conducted young woman, whom he had
known ever since he was big enough to crack a stockwhip.
In her way she was as clever and capable; exceptionally
well adapted for the position of a farmer's wife, towards which
occupation her birth and surroundings had tended. She was
strong and enduring in her way, as were her husband and
brothers in theirs. She could milk cows and make excellent
butter, wasn't afraid of a turbulent heifer in the dairy herd, or
indisposed to rise before daylight in the winter mornings and
drive in the milkers through the wet or frozen grass. She
could catch and saddle her own riding-horse or drive the
spring cart along an indifferent road to the country town.
She knew all about the rearing of calves, pigs, and poultry;
could salt beef and cure bacon—in a general way attend to all
the details of a farm. Her father had acquired a small
grant in the early colonial days, and from its produce and
profits reared a family of healthy boys and girls.
They had not been educated up to the State school standard
now considered necessary for every dweller in town or country,
but they could read and write decently; had also such knowledge
of arithmetic as enabled them to keep their modest accounts.
Such having been the early training of Bill's helpmate, it was
a fair augury that, with luck and good conduct, they were as
likely as any young couple of their age to prosper reasonably,
so as eventually to acquire a competence, or even, as indeed not
a few of their old friends and neighbours had done, to attain
to that enviable position generally described as 'making a
fortune.'
For the first few years nothing could have been more
promising than the course of affairs at Chidowla or 'Appletree
Flat,' as their homestead was formerly named, in consequence
of the umbrageous growth of the 'angophora' in the meadow
by the mountain creek, which bordered their farm. Bill
stayed at home and worked steadily, until he had put in his
3crop. He cleared and cultivated a larger piece of ground
with each succeeding year. The seasons were genial, and the
rainfall, though occasionally precarious, did not, during this
period, show any diminution. But annually, before the first
spring month came round, Bill saddled the old mare, and
leading a less valuable or perhaps half-broken young horse,
packed his travelling 'swag' upon it and started off for the
shearing. Jenny did not particularly like being left alone for
three months or perhaps four, with no one but the children,
for by this time a sturdy boy and baby girl had been added to
the household. But Bill brought home such a welcome
addition to the funds in the shape of the squatters' cheques,
that she hid her uneasiness and discomfort from him, only
hoping, as she said, that some day, if matters went on as they
were going, they would be able to do without the shearing
money, and Bill could afford to stop with his wife and
children all the year round. That was what she would like.
So time went on, till after one more shearing, Bill began
to think about buying the next selection, which an improvident
neighbour would shortly be forced to sell, owing to
his drinking habits and too great fondness for country race
meetings.
The soil of the land so handily situated was better than
their own, and, as an adjoining farm, could be managed without
additional expense.
The 'improvements' necessary for holding it under the
lenient land laws of New South Wales had been effected.
They were not particularly valuable, but they had been
passed by the Inspector of Conditional Purchases, who was
not too hard on a poor man, if he made his selection his
'bona fide home and residence.' This condition Mr. Dick
Donahue certainly had fulfilled as far as locating his hard-working
wife Bridget and half-a-dozen bare-legged, ragged
children thereon, with very little to eat sometimes, while he
was acting as judge at a bush race meeting, or drinking
recklessly at the public-house in the township.
So now the end had come. The place was mortgaged up
to its full value with the bank at Talmorah, the manager of
which had refused to advance another shilling upon it.
The storekeeper, who had a bill of sale over the furniture,
horses and cows, plough, harrow, and winnowing machine, had
4decided to sell him up. The butcher and the baker, despairing
of getting their bills paid, declined further orders.
Poor Bridget had been lately feeding herself and the children
on milk and potatoes, last year's bacon, and what eggs the
fowls, not too well fed themselves, kindly produced.
Jenny had helped them many a time, from womanly pity.
But for her, they would often have been without the 'damper'
bread, which served to fill up crevices with the hungry brood—not
that she expected return or payment, but as she said,
'How could I see the poor things hungry, while we have a
snug home and all we can eat and drink?'
Then she would mentally compare Bill's industry with
Dick's neglect, and a feeling of wifely pride would thrill
her heart as she returned to her comfortable cottage and
put her children, always neatly dressed, to sleep in their
clean cots.
As she sat before the fire, near the trimly-swept hearth,
which looked so pleasant and homely, though there was but
a wooden slab chimney with a stone facing, a vision arose
before her of prosperous days when they would have a ring
fence round their own and the Donahues' farm—perhaps
even an 'additional conditional lease,' to be freehold eventually—afterwards
a flock of sheep and who knows what in the
years to come.
'The Donahues, poor things, would have to sell and go
away, that was certain; they couldn't prevent them being
sold up—and, of course, Bill might as well buy it as another.
The bank manager, Mr. Calthorpe, would sell the place,
partly on credit, trusting Bill for the remainder, with security
on both farms, because he was sober and industrious. Indeed,
he told Bill so last week. What a thing it was to have a
good name! When she thought of the way other women's
husbands "knocked down" their money after shearing, forty
and fifty pounds, even more, in a week's drunken bout, she
felt that she could not be too thankful.
'Now Bill, when shearing was over, generally took a small
sum in cash—just enough to see him home, and paid in the
cheque for the season's shearing to his bank account. It was
over sixty pounds last year, for he sold his spare horse—a
thirty-shilling colt out of the pound, that he had broken in
himself—to the overseer, for ten guineas, and rode home on
5the old mare, who, being fat and frolicsome after her spell,
"carried him and his swag first-rate."
'As to the two farms, no doubt it would give them all they
knew, at first, to live and pay interest. But other people
could do it, and why shouldn't they? Look at the Mullers!
The bark hut they lived in for the first few years is still there.
They kept tools, seed potatoes, odds and ends in it now.
Next, they built a snug four-roomed slab cottage, with an
iron roof. That's used for the kitchen and men's room.
For they've got a fine brick house, with a verandah and
grand furniture, and a big orchard and more land, and a
flock of sheep and a dairy and a buggy and—everything.
How I should like a buggy to drive myself and the children
to the township! Wouldn't it be grand? To be sure they're
Germans, and it's well known they work harder and save more
than us natives. But what one man and woman can do,
another ought to be able for, I say!'
And here Jenny shut her mouth with a resolute expression
and worked away at her needle till bedtime. Things were
going on comfortably with this meritorious young couple, and
Bill was getting ready to start for the annual trip 'down the
river,' as it was generally described. This was a region
distant three hundred miles from the agricultural district where
the little homestead had been created. The 'down the river'
woolsheds were larger and less strictly managed (so report
said) than those of the more temperate region, which lay near
the sources of the great rivers. In some of them as many as
one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred thousand
sheep were annually shorn. And as the fast shearers would
do from a hundred to a hundred and fifty sheep per day, it
may be calculated, at the rate of one pound per hundred,
what a nice little cheque would be coming to every man
after a season's shearing. More particularly if the weather
was fine.
Bill was getting ready to start on the following morning
when a man named Janus Stoate arrived, whom he knew
pretty well, having more than once shorn in the same shed
with him.
He was a cleverish, talkative fellow, with some ability and
more assurance, qualities which attract steady-going, unimaginative
men like Bill, who at once invited him to stay till
6the morning, when they could travel together. Stoate cheerfully
assented, and on the morrow they took the road after
breakfast, much to Mrs. Hardwick's annoyance, who did not
care for the arrangement. For, with feminine intuition, she
distrusted Janus Stoate, about whom she and her husband
had had arguments.
He was a Londoner—an 'assisted' emigrant, a radical
socialist, brought out at the expense of the colony. For which
service he was so little grateful that he spoke disrespectfully
of all the authorities, from the Governor downward, and
indeed, as it seemed to her, of respectable people of every rank
and condition. Now Jenny, besides being naturally an intelligent
young woman, utilised her leisure hours during her
husband's absence, for reading the newspapers, as well as any
books she could get at. She had indeed more brains than
he had, which gift she owed to an Irish grandmother. And
though she did by no means attempt to rule him, her advice
was always listened to and considered.
'I wish you were going with some one else,' she said with
an air of vexation. 'It's strange that that Stoate should
come, just on your last evening at home. I don't like him
a little bit. He's just artful enough to persuade you men
that he's going to do something great with this "Australian
Shearers' Union" that I see so much about in the newspapers.
I don't believe in him, and so I tell you, Bill!'
'I know you don't like Unions,' he answered, 'but see
what they've done for the working classes! What could we
shearers have done without ours?'
'Just what you did before you had anything to do with
him and his Union. Do your work and get paid for it.
You got your shearing money all right, didn't you? Mr.
Templemore's cheques, and Mr. Dickson's and Mr. Shand's,
were always paid, weren't they? How should we have got
the land and this home, but for them?'
'Well, but, Jenny, we ought to think about the other
workers as well as ourselves—"Every man should stand by
his order," as Stoate says.'
'I don't see that at all. Charity's all very well, but we
have our own business to look after and let other people
mind theirs. Order, indeed! I call it disorder,—and them
that work it up will have to pay for it, mark my words. You
7look at those children, William Hardwick, that's where you've
got to give your money to, and your wife, and not a lot of
gassing spouters like Janus Stoate, who don't care if their
families starve, while they're drinking and smoking, talking
rubbish, and thinking themselves fine fellows, and what fools
you and the rest are to pay them for it.'
'Well, but the squatters are lowering the price of shearing,
Jenny; we must make a stand against that, surely!'
'And suppose they do. Isn't wool falling, and sheep too?
Aren't they boiling down their ewes, and selling legs of
mutton for a shilling apiece? Why should they go on paying
a pound a hundred when everything's down? When prices
rise, shearing'll go up again, and wages too—you know we
can get mutton now for a penny a pound. Doesn't that
make a difference? You men seem to have no sense in you,
to talk in that way!'
'Well, but what are we to do? If they go on cutting
down wages, there's no saying what they'll do next.'
'Time enough to think about that when it comes. You
take a fair thing, now that times are bad, it'll help them that's
helped you, and when they get better, shearing and everything
else will go up too. You can't get big wages out of small
profits; your friends don't seem to have gumption enough
to see that. I'm ashamed of you, I really am, Bill!'
'Well, I must go now—I daresay the squatters will give
in, and there'll be no row at all.'
'What do you want to have a row for, I should like to
know? Haven't you always been well treated and well fed,
and well paid?—and now you want to turn on them that did it
for you, just as if you were one of those larrikins and spielers,
that come up partly for work, and more for gambling and
stealing! I say it's downright ungrateful and foolish besides—and
if you follow all the Union fads, mark my words,
you'll live to rue the day.'
'Well, good-bye, Jenny, I can't stop any longer, you're too
set up to be reasonable.'
'Good-bye, Bill, and don't be going and running risks at
another man's bidding; and if you bring that man here again,
as sure as my name's Jane Hardwick, I'll set the dogs on
him.' And here Jenny went into the cottage, and shut the
door with a bang, while Bill rode down the track to join his
8companion, feeling distinctly uncomfortable; the more so,
as he reflected that he and Jenny had never parted in this
way before.
'You've been a long time saying good-bye,' said that
gentleman, with a sneering accent in his voice; 'that's the
worst of bein' married, you never can follow your own
opinions without a lot of barneyin' and opposition. It's a
curious thing that women never seem to be on the side of
progress—they're that narrow-minded, as they don't look
ahead of the day's work.'
'My old woman's more given to look ahead than I am,'
said Bill seriously. 'But, of course, we all know that we
must stick together, if we expect to get anything out of the
employers.'
'Yes, yes—by George, you're quite right,' said Stoate, as
if Bill had enunciated an original and brilliant idea. 'What
I and the workers want is to bring the capitalists on their
knees—the labour element has never had its proper share of
profits in the past. But we're going to have things different
in the future. How was all the big estates put together, and
them fine houses built, except by our labour? And what do
we get after all, now the work's done? We've never had our
fair share. Don't you see that?' Here he looked at Bill,
who could find nothing to say but—
'I suppose not.'
'Suppose not? We've as much right to be ridin' in our
buggies as the man as just passed us with that slashin' pair.
Our labour made the land valuable—built the houses and
put up the fences. Where do we come in, I ask you?'
'Well, I suppose the men that worked got their wages,
didn't they?' answered Bill. 'There's been a deal of employment
the last few years. I did pretty well out of a fencing contract,
I know, and my mate started a big selection from his share.'
'Yes, yes, I daresay, that's where you fellers make the
mistake. If you get a few pounds slung to you by these
capitalists, you don't think of the other poor chaps walkin'
about half starved, begging a meal here and a night's lodging
there. What we ought to go in for is a co-operative national
movement. That's the easiest of all. One man to find the
money.'
'Is it?' Bill could not help saying, interrupting the flood
9of Stoate's eloquence. 'I've always found it dashed hard to
find a few pounds.'
'I don't mean fellers like us; we work hard—a dashed
sight too hard for all we get. I mean the regular professional
capitalist, in a manner of speakin', that's got his money by
buying land, when the Government oughtn't never to have
sold it, if they'd had any savey, or had it left him by his
father, as had robbed the people some other way. Well, he
finds the money, you and I the muscle—and mark you, they
can't do nothin' without that—and others, smartish chaps as
comes from the people mostly, finds the brains.'
'And what after that?'
'That's what I'm a-coming to,' answered Stoate pompously.
'When the sheep's shorn, the fat ones sold, the wheat reaped,
and the money put in the bank, we all divide fair, according
to our shares. So much for interest on capital, so much for
labouring work, so much for head work, so much for light,
easy things like clerking, as most any fool can do.'
'That sounds pretty fair,' replied Bill, scratching his head,
as he endeavoured to grasp the complex conditions of the
scheme. 'But who's to boss the whole thing? There must
be a boss?'
'Oh, of course, there'll be a council—elected by the people—that
is of course the shareholders in each industrial, co-operative
establishment; they all have votes, you know. The
council will do all the bossing.'
'Oh, I see, and all share alike. One man's as good as
another, I suppose.'
'Certainly, all have equal rights; every man willing to work
has a right to have work found for him by the State.'
'But suppose he won't work when it is found for him?
You and I have known plenty of coves like that.'
'Well, of course, there is a difference in men—some
haven't the natural gift, as you may say—don't care for
"hard graft," but you must remember no one'll have to work
hard when labour's federated.'
'How'll the work be done, then?'
'Why, you see, every one will have to do four or six hours
a day, rich and poor, young and old, from sixteen to sixty.
Before that their eddication [Mr. Stoate's early environment—his
father was a radical cobbler—had fixed his pronunciation of
10that important word inexorably], this eddication, I say (which
is the great thing for a worker, and enables him to hold his
own against the employers, who've always had a monopoly of
it), has to be attended to. After sixty, they've to be pensioned off,
not wanted to do no more work. And as Bellamy says in his
Looking Backward (a great book, as all our chaps ought to read)—"If
every one in the State worked their four hours a day, the
whole work of the world could be easy done, and no one the
worse for it."'
'That sounds well enough,' said Bill thoughtfully, 'but I'm
afraid it wouldn't wash. A lot of chaps would be trying for
the easy parts, and those that were cast for the rough and
tumble wouldn't do it with a will, or only half and half. And
who's to draft 'em off? The fellers elected to do it would
have all the say, and if they had a down on a chap—perhaps
a deal better man than themselves—they could drop him in
for the lowest billets going.'
'That could all be set right in the usual way,' replied
Stoate, pompously mouthing his words as if addressing an
imaginary audience. 'Every member of the Association
would have the right of appeal to the Grand Council.'
'And suppose they didn't side with the workin' feller—these
talking chaps, as like as not, would hang together—he'd
have to grin and bear it. He'd be no better than a slave.
Worse than things are now. For a man can get a lawyer, and
fight out his case before the P.M., and the other beaks.
They're mostly fair and square—what I've seen of 'em.
They've no interest one way or the other.'
'No more would the Grand Labour Council.'
'Don't know so much about that, working coves are
middlin' jealous of one another. If one chap's been elected
to the Council, as you call it, and another feller opposed him
and got beat, there's sure to be bad blood between them, and
the man that's up like enough'll want to rub it into the man
that's down—and there'd be no one to see fair play like the
beaks.'
'Why, you're getting to be a regular "master's man."
That's not the way to talk, if you're goin' to be a Unionist.'
'Oh, I'll follow the Union,' replied Bill, 'if things are
going to be fair and square, not any other way, and so I tell
you. But if it's such a jolly good thing to put your money in
11a station and share and share alike with all the other chaps,
why don't some of you Union chaps put your money together?—lots
of you could raise a hundred or more if you didn't
drink it. Then you could shear your own sheep, sell your own
wool, and raise your own bread, meat, vegetables—everything.
You could divide the profits at the end of the year, and if
running a squatting station's such a thundering good thing,
why you'd all make fortunes in no time. What do you say to
that now?'
'Well, of course, it sounds right enough,' answered Stoate,
with less than his usual readiness. 'There's a lot of things to
be considered about afore you put your money into a big
thing like that. You've got to get the proper sort of partners—men
as you know something about, and that can be
depended on for to work steady, and do what they're told.'
'Do what they're told? Why, ain't that the one thing you
Union chaps are fighting the squatters about? They're not
to be masters in their own woolsheds! The shearers and
rouseabouts are not to obey the squatters' overseer, they must
work as the Union's delegate tells 'em. What sort of fake
d'ye call that? Suppose I'm harvestin'—my crop's not much
now, but it may be, some day—d'ye mean to say I'm not
to talk sharp to my own men, and say "do this" or "do
that"? And a delegate walkin' up and down, makin' believe
to be boss, while I'm payin' for the wages and rations, and
horses and thrashing-machine, and the whole boiling, would I
stand that? No! I'd kick him out of the place, and that
dashed soon, I can tell you!' And here Bill's eyes began to
sparkle and his fists to tighten on the reins as if he itched to
'stand up to his man,' with steady eye and watchful 'left,'
ready for the first chance to 'land' his adversary.
The sun was scarcely an hour high when the wayfarers
came in sight of the village-appearing group of edifices
familiarly known as a 'sheep station.' The 'men's hut' came
first into view—a substantial dwelling, with horizontal sawn
slabs and shingled roof, a stone chimney and a dining-room.
Boasting a cook, moreover, of far from ordinary rank. A
superior building, in fact, to the one which the owner of the
station thought good enough for himself for the first few years
of his occupation of North Yalla-doora.
12This was the abiding-place of the resident labourers on the
station; men who received a fixed weekly wage, varying from
a pound to twenty-five shillings per week, with board and
lodging additional. The Australian labourer is catered for on
perhaps the most liberal dietary scale in the world. He is
supplied with three meals per diem, of beef or mutton of the
best quality, with bread à discrétion, also tea (the ordinary
drink of the country) in unlimited quantity, with milk and
vegetables if procurable. Condiments, sauces, and preserves,
if his tastes run that way, he has to pay for as extras.
They can be procured, also wearing apparel, boots, and all
other necessaries, at the station store; failing that, at the 'township,'
invariably found within easy distance of any large station.
Besides the 'men's hut' comes next in rank the 'shearers'
hut,' dedicated to those important and (at shearing time)
exclusive personages; the sheep-washers', the rouseabouts'
huts, all necessary different establishments; as also the
'travellers' hut,' set apart for the nomadic labourer or 'swagman,'
who sojourning but for a night is by the unwritten law
of Bushland provided with bread and meat, cooking utensils,
water, and firewood gratis.
Then, at a certain distance, the woolshed—with half an
acre of roofed, battened yards and pens—the 'big house,'
the stable, the horse-yard, the stock-yard, the milking-yard,
with perhaps half-a-dozen additional nondescript constructions.
It may easily be imagined that such buildings, scattered
and disjointed as they were, had much more the appearance
of a village than of a single establishment owned, managed,
and supported by one man (or one firm), and absolutely subject
to his orders and interest.
'Might as well stop here to-night,' said Stoate; 'it's twenty-five
mile to Coolah Creek for to-morrow, and the road heavy in
places. Look at it! There's a bloomin' township to belong
to one man, and us travellin' the country looking for work!'
'It took a lot of labour to put up all the huts and places,
not to count in the shed and yards, you bet,' said his companion,
who had been silent for the last half-hour, 'and many
a cheque was drawed afore the last nail was drove in. I
know a chap that's made a small fortune out of Mr.
Templemore's contracts, and that's got a farm to show for it
to-day. What's wrong with that?'
13'Why, don't you see? Suppose the State had this first-rate
block of country, cut it up in fair-sized farms, advanced
the men the money to put up their places and crop it the first
year, see what a population it would keep. Keep in comfort,
too,' he continued, as he refilled his pipe and made ready for
a leisurely smoke. 'Let me see, there's fifty thousand acres
of freehold on this North Yalla-doora run, besides as much
more leased. Divide that into nice-sized farms, that'd give
us a thousand fifty-acre lots, or five 'underd 'underd-acre ones.
See what a crowd of families that'd keep.'
'And suppose there come a dry season,' queried Bill
rather gruffly, 'how about the families then? I've seen the
sheep dyin' by hundreds on this very place—and the whole
forty thousand 'd 'a died in another month if rain hadn't come.
But I'm gettin' full up of this Union racket. Small farms in
a dry country's foolishness. Where are we goin' to camp?
Look at the grass on that flat! And I've seen it like a road.'
'It ain't bad near the creek,' said his companion. 'You
can let the horses go while I go up to the overseer and get a
bit of ration.'
'There's no call to do that. See that bag? My old
woman's put bread and beef enough in that for a week
anyhow, besides bacon, and tea, and sugar.'
'That's all right,' answered Stoate airily, 'but we may as
well get fresh mutton for nothing. They always give
travellers a pound or two here, and a pannikin of flour. It
comes in handy for cakes.'
'Well, I'm d—d!' said Hardwick, unable to contain his
wrathful astonishment. 'D'ye mean to tell me as you're
a-goin' to beg food from this squatter here and take his
charity after abusing him and all belonging to him and
schemin' to ruin 'em? I call it dashed, dirty, crawling
meanness, and for two pins I wouldn't travel the same side of
the road with you, and so I tell you, Janus Stoate.'
There was a snaky glitter in Stoate's small, black eyes as
he met for an instant the bold gaze of the Australian; but,
with characteristic cunning, he turned it off with a half laugh.
'Why, Bill, what hot coffee you're a-gettin', all over a little
joke like this 'ere. Now I feel as I've a right to be fed on
the road when I and my feller-workers bring our labour to
the door—in a manner of speakin'. We've no call to think
14ourselves under obligation to the squatters for their "miserable
dole," as our Head Centre calls it. It's only our due when
all's said and done.'
'Miserable dole,' growled Bill, now engaged in taking off
his pack. 'That's a dashed fine name to give free rations,
to the tune of half-a-dozen sheep a night, and a couple of bags
of flour a week, which I know Tambo did last shearing. A
lot of chaps going about the country askin' for work, and
prayin' to God they mayn't find it—and abusin' the people
that feed 'em on top of it all. I wonder the squatters don't
stop feedin' travellers, and that's all about it. I would if I
was boss, I know, except the old men.'
'How about the sheds and the grass when the weather gets
dry?' asked Stoate, with a sidelong glance of spite.
'That's easy enough, if a chap's a d—d scoundrel; but
suppose he's caught and gets five years in Berrima Gaol, he'd
wish he'd acted more like a white man and less like a myall
blackfellow. But stoush all this yabber. You boil the billy,
while I get out the grub and hobble the horses. I feel up to
a good square feed.'
So did Mr. Stoate, apparently, as he consumed slice
after slice of the cold corned beef and damper which Jenny
had put up neatly in Bill's 'tucker bag,' not disdaining divers
hunks of 'brownie,' washed down with a couple of pints of
'billy tea,' after which he professed that he felt better, and
proceeded to fill and light his pipe with deliberation.
By this time the hobbled horses had betaken themselves
through the abundant pasture of the river flat, and their bells
sounding faint and distant, Bill declared his intention of
heading them back, in case they should try to make off towards
the home they had left. He returned in half an hour, stating
that they were in a bend and blocked by a horseshoe
lagoon.
Both men addressed themselves to the task of putting up
the small tent which Bill carried, and bestowed their swags
therein, after which Mr. Stoate proposed that they should go
over to the men's hut, and have a bit of a yarn before they
turned in.
Bill remarked that they had to be up at daylight, but
supposed that an hour wouldn't matter. So the wayfarers
strolled over to a long building, not far from the creek bank,
15which they entered without ceremony. They found themselves
in the presence of about twenty men, in the ordinary
dress of the station hand, viz. tweed or moleskin trousers and
Crimean shirt. Some had coats, but the majority were in
their shirt sleeves. There were mostly of ages between twenty
and forty, differing in nationality, speech, and occupation.
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia were represented.
A Frenchman, two Germans, a coloured man (American),
besides a tall, well-made Australian half-caste, who spoke much
the same English as the others, but had a softer voice, with
rather slower intonation.
At one end of the large room was an ample fireplace, with
a glowing wood fire, around which several men were sitting or
standing, mostly smoking. Others were seated at the long,
solid dining-table reading, for in one corner stood some fairly
well-filled bookshelves. One man was writing a letter.
A few were lying in their bunks, rows of which were on
either side of the room. A certain amount of quiet conversation
was going on. There was no loud talking, swearing, or
rude behaviour of any sort, and in spite of the bare walls and
plain surroundings an air of comfort pervaded the whole.
Stoate was greeted by several of the younger men, one of
whom was disposed to be facetious, as he exclaimed—
'Hulloa, my noble agitator, what brings you here? Goin'
to call out the shearers, and play the devil generally, eh?
You've come to the wrong shop at North Yalla-doora—we're
all steady-going coves here.'
'I suppose you're game to stand up for your rights, Joe
Brace, and not afraid of getting your wages raised, if the Union
does that for you?'
'If it does,' rejoined Joe sarcastically; 'and who's to go
bail for that, I'd like to know? You and your crowd haven't
done any great things so far, except make bad blood between
masters and men—when everything was peace and goodwill
before, as the parson says.'
'Well—what's that? Yer can't get nothin' in the world
without fightin' for it—I reckon we're going to have a bit of
war for a change. Yes, war, and a dashed good thing too,
when men have to take orders from their feller-men, and be
worked like slaves into the bargain.'
'Brayvo, Janus, old man!' replied the other, with mock
16approval. 'I see what it's come to. You're to be a delegate
with a pot hat and a watch-chain, and get four pound a week
for gassin', while us fools of fellers does the hard graft. That's
your dart, to sit alongside of Barraker and the rest of the
people's try-bunes—ain't them the blokes that stands up and
says, like Ben Willett, as we're trod on, and starved, and treated
worse than nigger slaves?'
'So you are, if you only knew it. Look at all this here
country-side in the hands of two or three men, as sucks your
blood, and fattens on it!'
'The boss here ain't too fat, if that's what's the matter, and
we're not a very hungry-lookin' crowd, boys,' said the speaker,
looking round. 'We've got good wages, good food, a book
or two to read, and a table to write our letters at. You've
been loafin' in Melbourne, Janus, and got oppressed there—spent
all your money, forgot to buy a decent rig-out (them's
last year's boots as you have on), come on the roads to beg
from station to station, and abuse them as feeds you, after
your belly's full. What do you say, Paddy?'
The man whom he addressed folded up the sheet upon
which he had been writing, and rising from the form on which
he sat, stood before the fire, displaying an athletic figure, and
determined countenance, lighted up by a pair of glancing blue
eyes, which proclaimed his nationality.
'I say that this strike business is all d—d rot, run by a lot
of sneaks for their own ends. They're the vermin that fatten
on the working-men, that are fools enough to believe their
rubbish—not the squatters, who've mostly worked hard for what
they've made, and spent it free enough, more power to them!
Where's there a man on North Yalla-doora that's got anything
to complain of? We're well paid, well fed, well cooked
for, eh, Jack? and as comfortable in our way as the boss is in
his. More indeed, for we've got a shingled roof, and his is
box-bark. The travellers' hut's shingled, so is the rouseabouts'.
He's never had time to have his own place done up, though
he lives like a gentleman, as we all know.'
'Yer 'arf a gentleman yerself, ain't yer, Mister O'Kelly?'
replied Stoate sneeringly. 'No wonder yer don't take no
interest in the workers—the men that makes the wealth of
this country, and every other. Yer the makin's of a first-class
"scab," and if the chaps here was of my mind you'd be put
17out of every hut on the river.' Before the last word was fully
out, O'Kelly made a couple of steps forward with so vengeful
a glare in his blue eyes that Stoate involuntarily drew back—with
such haste also, that he trod on the foot of a man behind
him and nearly fell backward.
'You infernal scoundrel!' he cried; 'dare to take my name
into your ugly mouth again, and I'll kick you from here to
the woolshed, and drown you in the wash-pen afterwards. I've
done a man's work in Australia for the last five years, though
I wasn't brought up to it, as some of you know. I've nothing
to say against the men who gave me honest pay for honest
work, and whose salt I've eaten. But skulking crawlers like
you are ruining the country. You're worse than a dingo—he
don't beg. You come here and whine for food, and then try
to bite the hand that feeds you. Didn't I see you at the
store to-night, waiting for grub, like the other travellers?'
'No, yer didn't then,' snarled Stoate.
'Well, I have before this, and more than once. I expect
you're loafing on your mate, who's a decent fellow, and the
sooner he parts company with a hound like you, the better.
But this is our hut, and out you go, or I will, and that's the
long and short of it. Come on, Joe!'
'The public's not on for a sermon to-night, Janus, old
man,' said the young fellow before mentioned. 'Paddy's got
his monkey up, and it'll be bloody wars if you don't clear.
Yer mate's a cove as we'd like to spend the evenin' with, but
the votin's agin yer, Janus, it raly is.'
'I came in with Stoate,' said Bill, 'and in course I'm
here to see it out with him, man to man. But this is your
hut, and not ours, mate, so we'd better get back to our camp—good-night
all!'
18
The sun-rays were slowly irradiating 'the level waste, the
rounded grey' which accurately described the landscape, in
the lower Riverina, which our travellers had reached after a
fortnight's travel, and where the large and pastorally famous
sheep station of Tandāra had been constructed. Far as the
eye could range was an unbroken expanse of sea-like plain,
covered at this spring time of year with profuse vegetation—the
monotony being occasionally relieved by clumps of the
peculiar timber growing only amid the vast levels watered by
the Darling. The wilga, the boree, and the mogil copses
were in shape, outline, and area so curiously alike, that the
lost wanderer proverbially found difficulty in fixing upon any
particular clump as a landmark. Once strayed from the faint
irregular track, often the only road between stations thirty or
forty miles apart—once confused as to the compass bearings,
and how little hope was there for the wayfarer, especially if
weary, thirsty, and on foot! The clump of mogil or wilga
trees, which he had toiled so many a mile in the burning afternoon
to reach, was the facsimile of the one left, was it that
morning or the one before? More than once had he,
by walking in a circle, and making for apparently 'creek
timber' at variance with his original course, found himself at
the same clump, verified by his own tracks, and the ashes of
his small fire, as the one which he had left forty-eight hours
ago.
Reckless and desperate, he takes the course again, feeling
weaker by two days' hard walking—footsore, hungry—above
all, thirsty, to the verge of delirium. Let us hope that he falls
in with a belated boundary rider who shows him an endless-seeming
19wire fence, which he commands him to follow, till he
meets the jackaroo sent with a water-bag to meet him. If
this good angel (not otherwise angelic-seeming) 'drops across'
him, well and good; if not so, or he does not 'cut the tracks'
of a station team, or the lonely mailman going a back road,
God help him! Soon will the crows gathering expectant
round a pair of eagles, telegraph to the sharp-eyed scouts of
the wilderness that they may ride over and see the dried-up,
wasted similitude of what was once a man.
No such tragedy was likely to be enacted in the case of
our two shearers. They were fairly mounted. They had
food and water to spare. Bill was an experienced bushman,
and both men had been along this track before. So they
followed the winding trail traced faintly on the broad green
sheet of spring herbage, sometimes almost invisible—or wholly
so, where an old sheep camp had erased the hoof-or wheel-marks—turning
to the right or the left with confident accuracy,
until they 'picked up' the course again. Wading girth-deep
through the subsidiary watercourses—billabongs, cowalls,
and such—bank high in this year of unusual rain and plenty
(they are synonymous in riverine Australia, 'arida nutrix'), and
scaring the water-fowl, which floated or flew in countless flocks.
That gigantic crane, the brolgan (or native companion),
danced his quadrille in front of them, 'advance, retire, flap
wing, and set to partner,' before he sailed away to a region
unfrequented by the peaceful-seeming but dangerous intruder.
Crimson-winged, French grey galah parrots fluttered around
them in companies, never very far out of shot; the small
speckled doves, loveliest of the columba tribes, rose whirring
in bevies, while the
swift-footed 'emu' over the waste
Speeds like a horseman that travels in haste.
To the inexperienced European traveller beholding this
region for the first time, all-ignorant of the reverse side of
the shield, what a pastoral paradise it would have seemed!
Concealed from his vision the dread spectres of Famine,
Death, Ruin, and Despair, which the shutting-up of the
windows of Heaven for a season, has power to summon
thereon.
This was a good year, however, in pastoral parlance.
20Thousands of lambs born in the autumnal months of April
and May were now skipping, fat and frolicsome, by the sides
of the ewes, in the immense untended flocks. They had
been but recently marked and numbered, the latter arithmetical
conclusion being obtained by the accurate if primitive
method of counting the heaps of severed tails, which modern
sheep-farming exacts from the bleeding innocents. The
percentage ranged from ninety to nearly a hundred, an
almost abnormally favourable result.
How different from the famine years of a past decade, still
fresh in men's minds, when every lamb was killed as soon
as born 'to save its mother's life,' and in many stations
one-half of the ewes died also, from sheer starvation; when
immense migratory flocks, like those of the 'mesta' of their
Spanish ancestors, swept over the land, destroying, locust-like,
every green thing (and dry, too, for that matter), steering
towards the mountain plateaux, which boast green grass and
rill-melodies, the long relentless summer through—that
summer which, on lower levels, had slain even the wild
creatures of the forest and plain, inured from countless ages
to the deadly droughts of their Austral home.
When the kangaroos by the thousand die,
It's rough on the travelling sheep,
as 'Banjo' sings.
This station, when reached, presented a different appearance
from North Yalla-doora. The prairie-like plain, far as the eye
could reach, was bisected by a wide and turbid stream, flowing
between banks, now low and partly submerged, now lofty and
precipitous; occasionally overhanging as if cut away by the
angry waters, in one of the foaming floods which, from time to
time, alternated with seasons when the shallow stream trickled
feebly over the rock-bars in the river-bed.
The buildings were large, but less complete in appearance
than those of Yalla-doora. An air of feverish energy pervaded
the whole establishment, which seemed to denote that time
was more valued than finish, for the pressing work in hand.
The windings of the river could be distinctly marked by the
size of the great eucalypts which fringed the banks, refusing to
grow away from its waters. How often had they been hailed
with joy by the weary wayfarer, athirst even unto death, who
21knows that his trials are over, when from afar he sights the
'river timber.' And now, the signs of the campaign were
visible. Men rode in at speed from distant parts of the
immense area known as Tandara 'run.' From the far
horizon came nearer and yet nearer the lines of unladen
waggons, with long teams of lagging horses or even bullocks,
from twelve to twenty in number.
Far from fat and well-liking were these necessary beasts of
draught, but sure to leave the station frolicsome and obese
after a few weeks' depasturing upon the giant herbage which
for a hundred leagues in every direction waved in vast meads
like ripening corn. An assemblage of tents and hastily constructed
shelters on a 'point' of the river proclaims the 'camp'
or temporary abode of the expectant shearers and rouseabouts,
wool-pressers, ordinary hands, and general utility men,
upon every large run at shearing time, but more especially
on so exceptionally important a property as that of Tandara.
'By George! there's a big roll up on Steamer Point this
time,' said Bill. 'I've shorn here twice, and never seen as
many afore. There won't be stands for half of 'em when the
roll's called.'
'No more there will,' said Stoate, as he looked in the
direction of the populous camp, where much talk and argument
seemed to be going on. 'And them that wrote and got
their names put down months back won't have a rosy time of
it neither.'
'Why not?' queried Bill. 'Ain't they done right to come
and shear when they promised last year, and got the cove to
keep places for them?'
'Oh, I didn't mean that, though I don't hold, mind you,
with taking places such a dashed long time before shearin's
on. It's hard on a chap, when he comes to a shed after
travellin' three or four 'underd mile, to be told that all the
stands is took up. But there'll be a big row all the same.'
'How's that?'
'Why, Drench the delegate told me, the last place we
stopped at, that orders had come up that if the boss wouldn't
give in to the Shearers' Union agreement the men were to be
called off the board.'
'Hunter won't stand it,' said Bill. 'You take my word.
He's always been a good employer; no man can deny that.
22Good wages, good rations, and pays cash on the nail when the
men want it. Don't even give cheques, and that blocks the
publican, because a chap can pay as he goes, and needn't
hand his cheque over the bar counter. But I know what he'll
say to the delegate, or any other man that tells him he's not
to be boss in his own shed.'
'What'll that be?' asked Stoate, with a sidelong look, half
of curiosity, half of concealed malice.
'He'll tell 'em to go to hell and mind their own business,
and leave him to look after his; that he'll see the Union and
every one connected with it d—d first before he'll give up
the right to manage his own property in his own way.'
'We'll show him different—that is, the Union will,' said
Stoate, correcting himself hastily. 'His property! Who made
it? who dug the tanks and put up the fences, and shepherded
the sheep afore they was paddocked? and built the blooming
shed, as is an emblem of tyranny, to my thinking—when
every man ought to have his five 'underd or a thousand ewes
of his own, and a neat little place to shear 'em in? His
property! I say it's our property. We made it—with the
labour of our 'ands—and we ought to have the biggest say in
the managin' of it.'
'What about buyin' the sheep and cattle, and the horses,
and the payin' of wages this year?' said Bill. 'Suppose they
come o' theirselves, "kinder growed," as the nigger gal says in
that book about slavery in America, as Jenny read out to me
last winter.'
'Wages be hanged!' retorted the disciple of Henry George
and Bellamy. 'Our labour makes the fund out of which they
pays their bloomin' wages, as they call 'em—infernal skinflints,
as they are. It's dashed easy for them as gets the profits of
our hard earnin's to dribble a trifle back, hardly enough to
keep us in workin' order, like them team 'orses as is just
turned out—a bite of chaff, and that's about all.'
'Well, only for the chaff, they'd be deaders the first dry
season—down from weakness for a week or two, with their
eyes picked out by the crows, and the ants eatin' 'em alive.
I've seen the wild "brumbies" like that. I expect they ought
to go on strike for stable keep, and three feeds of oats a day?'
'Men and 'orses is different—you can't compare 'em, in
the way of their rights.'
23'No; I know you can't,' answered Bill. 'The horses are
a dashed sight the straightest crowd of the two. Howsomever,
we shan't agree on them points, if we talk till Christmas. You
take your way, and I'll take mine. But look here, Stoate, if
there's goin' to be any of this burnin' and smashin' racket, as
I've heard tell of, I'm not on. Mind that—don't you make
any mistake! I've a bit of property of my own, as I've worked
hard for, and I'm not goin' to hurt another man's savin's,
Union or no Union, for all the Labour delegates in Australia,
and so I tell you.'
Stoate did not speak for a few moments, then his eyes
once more assumed the covert look of malice which they had
worn before, as he said slowly—
'That means that you're not game to stand up for the
rights of your horder, and you'll act the spy on the men as
does.'
Bill's grey eyes blazed out with so sudden a light, as he
made a half movement to jump off his horse, that Stoate
involuntarily tightened his rein, and touched his leg-weary
steed with the one spur of which he made constant use. But
Bill resumed his saddle seat, and putting strong constraint on
himself, replied: 'I'm that game as I'll give you a crack on
the "point," as 'll stop your blowin' for a bit, if you'll get
down and put your hands up. You're a light weight, and not
very fit, or I'd knock some of the gas out'n yer now if you'd
stand up to me. Not as you would—you're a deal better at
talkin' than fightin', let alone workin'. But you and me's
mates no more, mind that. You clear out with your moke,
and make your own camp, and don't you come anigh me
never again, or I'll give you what for, in a style you'll
remember till the shearin' after next.' And so saying, Bill
touched up his horse, and went off at a hand gallop, with his
pack-horse—which by this time had learned to follow his
companion steed—after him. Mr. Stoate regarded this
action on the part of his whilom companion with baleful eye
and resentful feeling, which at length found vent in these
memorable words—
'You're very flash, Bill Hardwick, with your fresh 'oss
and yer packer. S'pose you think you've left me in a hole,
all for a few words on these blarsted, hungry, grinding
squatters; but I've seen better coves'n you straightened afore
24to-day. And by——! I'll be even with yer before the year's
out, as sure as my name's Janus Stoate!'
After which pious resolve, Mr. Stoate jogged sullenly
onward to the head station, where his sense of the dignity of
labour did not prevent him from joining a crowd of men,
who were in turn receiving the ordinary bush dole—viz. a
pound or two of fresh beef or mutton, in addition to a pint
pannikin of flour. As there were at least forty or fifty men
who received these components of two substantial meals—supper
and breakfast—it may be guessed what a daily contribution
the squatter was required to make toward the
support of the nomadic labourer of the period.
With respect to that universally recognised Australian
institution, the 'travellers' hut,' to which Mr. Stoate betook
himself, on receiving his free supper and breakfast materials,
an explanation may not be out of place. In the good old
times, 'before the war,' in the pre-union days, and when owing
to the smaller size of pastoral properties the hands required
were necessarily fewer, the chance labourer was made free of
the 'men's hut.' In those Arcadian days the men's cook
prepared his meals, and he sat at meat with the permanent
employés.
This was all very well, when one or two casual guests at
the outside were wont to arrive in an evening. But when, in
consequence of the growth of population, and the increase of
stock, the units were turned into scores, with a possibility of
hundreds, the free hospitality had to be restricted.
Complaints were made by the permanent hands that the
pilgrim was in the habit of picking up unconsidered trifles,
when the men had gone to work after breakfast, and absconding
with the same. The cook, too, expostulated, inasmuch as the
'traveller,' after availing himself copiously of the meals set
before him, generally took the precaution of loading himself
with 'cooked food' sufficient for the next day or two, whereby
he, the cook, was kept baking and boiling all day and half
the night, in addition to his ordinary work.
For some or all of these reasons, the 'travellers' hut' was
decided upon. A roomy and substantial structure, placed
near the creek or dam, as the case might be, at a certain
distance from the other buildings, to which all future travellers
not being gentlefolk, coming with introductions to the
25overseer's quarters, or 'the big house,' were relegated.
'Bunks' or sleeping-places, a table, and stools were mostly
provided; also a load of firewood, an axe, a frying-pan,
bucket, and iron pot.
Wayfarers henceforth came under the obligation to cook
for themselves. The frying of chops, the boiling of beef and
the baking of cakes—operations, with which every bushman is
familiar, not being considered to be hardships worth speaking
of. The stock of firewood was kept up, it being found that,
in default, the uninvited guests felt no delicacy in burning the
interior fittings, or even the doors and window frames. To
this sanctuary, Mr. Stoate, in place of his former comfortable
camp with Hardwick, was fain to betake himself. It was
half a mile 'down the creek,' and he cursed freely at being
told by the overseer that he must turn out his horse in the
'strangers' paddock,' another half-mile farther, and on no
account to put him into the homestead horse-paddock.
'I'm not going to have all the feed ate up that I've saved
for the station horses,' said that functionary, in decided tones,
'and so I tell you. You shearers and rouseabouts think it's
nothing, I suppose, to find grass for a hundred or two horses,
and a mob of bullocks big enough to stock a small run.
But you'll have to pay for your grass one of these fine days,
if you don't mind your eye.'
'D'ye think a man's to walk all over the bloomin' bush,
lookin' for work and carrying oats and hay with him, if he's
got a moke?' growled Stoate. 'The squatters have got all
the blessed country, and they grudge a pore man a mouthful
of food, and every blade of grass his horse eats.'
'A poor man!' said the overseer. 'What sort of a poor
man d'ye call yourself, Stoate? Your cheque last year, what
with fencing and shearing, was over forty pounds for three
months' work. You've neither wife, chick nor child (not in
this country, anyhow). What have you done with your
money? Spent it in town; now you come up here crawling
and begging for the bread you eat, and doing all the harm you
can to the men you're living on. Why don't you keep a
pound or two for the road, like Bill Hardwick and other chaps?
Then you needn't be beholden to any one; and if you like to
talk rot to the men that are fools enough to trust you, that's
their look-out. But to come here and to every station along
26the river begging for food and trying to harm the men you're
living on is mean, d—d mean, and treacherous to boot.
If the boss was of my way of thinking, he'd never let you
inside a shed of his, or pay you another pound for shearing,
and now you know my mind,—take your grub.'
And then Mr. Macdonald, an athletic Australian Scot, who
towered above the short though wiry Londoner as does a
mastiff above a lurcher, poured the pannikin of flour into the
'tucker bag' which Stoate held out, and cutting off a lump of
fat mutton tossed it contemptuously at him.
Stoate caught the meat before it fell, and looked at the
overseer with evil passions writ plain in his sullen face and
snaky eye, as he said: 'You might come to be sorry for
this some day, boss, big as you are!'
'Yes, you sneaking hound, I know what that means.
But I've got old Harry Bower (who used to shepherd here
long ago, before he turned bushranger) as night-watchman
at the shed, in case some of you dogs that disgrace the
Shearers' Union take a fancy to light it up. He was a man
when he took to the bush. You'd do it and fellows like you,
only you haven't the pluck. He's got a double-barrelled gun,
and swears by his God he'll use it if he catches any curs
sneaking about the shed after dark. The grass is too green
to burn for a month or two, but if I come across you near
a bush fire, after shearing, I'll shoot you like a crow. So
take that with you—and do your worst.'
Mr. Macdonald, though a born Australian, had inherited,
it will be seen, the characteristic 'perfervidum ingenium.'
It seemed imprudent of him to speak so openly before
the crowd of shearers and 'bona-fide travellers,' so called.
But a bold, declared policy is sometimes more diplomatic
than a halting, opportunist one. The men knew that war
was declared, given certain acts of aggression or intimidation
on their part. Severe sentences would unquestionably follow—if
convictions were secured before the courts. On the
whole, though they did not fear him, they respected him more
for his openness and decided action.
'He's a man that hits out straight from the shoulder,' said
one young fellow. 'I like that sort. You know where you
have 'em. I don't hold with all this Union racket. It does
more harm than good, to my mind. The most of these
27delegates is reg'lar blatherskites, as I wouldn't trust to carry
a pound note across the street. Pretty coves to make laws
for the likes of us.'
'I'm dashed sorry I ever had any truck with this Union
crowd,' said his mate, as they walked away. 'I'd never no
call to complain, as I know. If I didn't like a man's ways
in his shed, I didn't shear there. There's plenty more. I
don't fancy free men like us shearers bein' under one man's
thumb, and him lookin' out for himself all the time. It's too
much of the monkey for me, and I'm not goin' to stand it
after this season, no matter what comes of it.'
The minor troubles having been surmounted, the roll-call
read over, the rouseabouts settled and contented—each man
in receipt of twenty-five shillings per week, with everything
found on a scale of liberality, not to say profuseness, huts,
cooks, wood and water, beef and mutton, tea and sugar,
vegetables—everything reasonable and unreasonable, in fact,
that the heart of bushman could desire.
The shearers, in number nearly a hundred, were apparently
placated by being allowed to shear for the first time at
Tandara under 'Union Rules,' a copy of which was posted
up in a prominent part of the shed, setting forth that on
certain points of dispute, if such should arise, the Delegate,
that important, dignified personage, should have the power
of joint decision with the shed manager. Wool had gone
down nearly one-half in price, fat sheep as much or more;
but holding to a modern doctrine that wages were not to be
regulated by profits, and that Labour and not Capital provided
the wage-fund, the same rate of payment per hundred sheep
as was paid in more prosperous times had been exacted by
the shearers' representatives. This was agreed to under protest,
though considered inequitable by the proprietors of North
Yalla-doora and other representative sheds as the lesser evil,
compared with that of a delayed shearing and perhaps ruined
wool clip. A truly serious matter.
For the same reason the Union Rules had been accepted
by several proprietors, though much against the grain, and the
woolshed ticketed for the first time as a 'Union Shed.' This
was done under the impression that a feeling of loyalty to the
principles which professed to guide the Shearers' Union would
ensure steady and continuous work.
28It was a concession to expediency, unwillingly made by
Mr. Hunter and others at the last moment, in the hope of
'getting the shearing over quickly'—a matter involving great
gain or loss. The latter, in this particular era of low prices
of wool and stock of all kinds, cattle and horses, as well as
sheep, approaching the margin of ruin, ominously close. 'If
the fellows shear decently and behave themselves, I don't
care what they stick up in the shed, or what they call their
confounded Union. They shore well enough for me and
Anderson last year, so I shall go on with them as long as
they treat me well. You might as well do so, too.'
This had been the reasoning of Mr. M'Andrew, one of
Mr. Hunter's neighbours, a shrewd, somewhat self-seeking
man of the world. And it had a savour of argument about
it. 'What did it matter,' he had said, 'how other squatters
looked at the question? All they had to think of was to
get their own work properly done, and let every man mind
his own business. He was not sure that the Pastoral
Association did much good. It only set the men and
masters more at odds with each other. A great deal of this
ill-feeling and strike had been brought on by such proprietors
as old Jackson, M'Slaney, and Pigdon. Men notoriously
hard and grasping in their dealings with their employés—cutting
down wages, the price of shearing and contract bush
work, in every way possible; feeding, housing, and paying
their people badly, while charging exorbitant prices for necessaries—flour,
meat, shears, tobacco—all things, in fact,
which they could not carry with them and were bound to
buy from the station store. These pastoralists were primarily
responsible for the dissatisfaction which had led to the strikes
and rioting. For his part, as he had always acted fairly
and squarely with his men, as everybody knew, it was not
to be expected that he should be compelled to pay up for
a contest which he had no share in bringing on.'
This had seemed fair reasoning to that class of men who
are glad of any excuse to avoid paying cash out of pocket
and to the avowal of a decided policy. But there were other
squatters equally averse to unnecessary outlay, who, possessing
more forecast and logical acumen, refused on principle to
make terms with the shearers' or any other Union. They
had stated their grounds of dissent from the policy of opportunism,
29and, what was more important, acted upon them with
courage and consistency.
'This station,' said Archibald Douglas Kinross, 'chiefly
freehold land, with the sheep depasturing thereon, is my
property, as the law stands at present. And I claim the
right of every Briton to manage his own affairs in his own
way. To employ persons to do my work—my work, you
understand, not any one else's—as I shall choose, in my own
way and after my own taste. If any section of workmen does
not wish to work for me, they are at liberty not to do so. I
leave them absolute freedom in that respect; but if they accept
my pay and my employment, they must do my work as I choose—not
as they choose—all socialistic sophistry notwithstanding.
'Australia still contains men willing to work for high
wages and good food, and to do what they are told by a
fair employer, and if I am threatened or my property injured
by lawless ill-disposed persons, I shall appeal to that statute
under which law and order have hitherto, in Australia, been
vindicated. Moreover I, Archie Kinross, am not going to
place myself under the heel of any body of men calling themselves
by one name or another. Once concede Trade Unions
their right to coerce the individual, and farewell to that
freedom which has so long been the Briton's boast.
'Every man who had the misfortune to acquire or inherit
property would, as the so-called Unions gained power by
cowardly subservience or mistaken reasoning, be at the mercy
of an irresponsible, ignorant, perhaps more or less unprincipled
committee, anxious to blackmail those more fortunately placed
than themselves.
'They would be told how many servants they were to
employ, and what they were to pay them; feed, clothe, and
otherwise provide for them. Not improbably, other concessions
would be gradually exacted. The whole result being
reached in a state of modified communism, certain to end in
bloodshed and revolution. A social upheaval, which all history
tells us is the invariable precursor of a military despotism.'
After ever so much trouble, worry and anxiety, arising from
the offensively independent and even obstructive attitude of the
shearers at all the sheds in the Lower Darling and elsewhere
in New South Wales, a start was made at Tandara.
30Jack Macdonald, bitterly aggrieved that his employers
should have given in, was almost out of his mind with the
irritating, puerile demands and objections which he had to meet.
'In old days he would have knocked down the ringleader,
and told the sympathisers to "go to the devil"—that they
need never show up at this shed or station again. Never
should they get a pound of mutton or a pannikin of flour
from the store, if they were dying of hunger; that they were
ungrateful dogs, and here—at Tandara of all places, known
for the most liberal station in the whole blooming district for
pay and rations, where useless old hands were pensioned and
kept on at make-believe work, when no one else would have
had them on the place; where more expensive improvements—huts,
fencing, tanks, wells, and stock-yards—had been
made and put up, than on any station from the Queensland
border to the sea. And now, what had come of it all?
'Where was the gratitude of the working-man, who, with
his fellows, had been fed, lodged, and supported in good seasons
and bad—when wool was down and money was scarce, and
half the squatters on the verge of ruin? When the shed was
down with influenza last year, didn't the wife and daughters of
the "boss," who happened to be staying over shearing that
year, make jelly, sago puddings and cakes, all sorts of blooming
luxuries for the men that were going to die (by their own
account), and couldn't hold their heads up?
'And now, because labour was scarce, owing to the Coolgardie
goldfield having broken out, and the season coming on
early, with the burr and grass seeds ripening every day, they
must try and ruin their best friends, the squatters—threatening
to strike for this and that—faulting the meat, the bread, the
sugar, the tea, every mortal thing (far better than ever they'd
been used to), and all at the bidding of a fellow like Stead, a
man that had been educated at the expense of the State, people
putting their hands in their pockets to pay for his schooling.
And this is the first use he makes of it. It was enough to
make a man feel ashamed of the colony he was born in,
ashamed of being an Australian native, enough to make him
clear out to South Africa, where the Boers and blackfellows
were said to be no great things, but couldn't be such sneaks
and dogs and thieves as his countrymen here.'
Jack Macdonald repeated this unreserved statement of
31opinion so often, for the benefit of all whom it might concern,
that he began to know it by heart, and half thought of standing
for the district, when the next election came round. However,
the men liked him, and didn't mind his hard words, knowing
that they held the key of the position, and that he was powerless
if he wanted his sheep shorn. He couldn't afford to kick
them out, however much he might wish so to do. All the
sheds in the district were short of men, and if the shearers
left in a body, the year's clip would suffer ruinous loss and
injury. So they turned up their noses at the beautiful, fat,
well-cooked mutton,—said 'they wanted more chops.' To
which Macdonald sarcastically replied 'that he supposed they
must grow a new breed of sheep, all chops.' In spite of their
five meals a day, early breakfast, tea and 'brownie' at eleven
o'clock, dinner at one, afternoon tea at four o'clock, and
supper at half-past six, they were not satisfied, and, indeed,
would not have gone without a second supper at 9 P.M. if the
cook had not refused point-blank, and being a fighting man of
some eminence, invited the deputation to 'step outside and
put up their hands,' one after the other.
However, as before mentioned, a start was made, and
though the quality of shearing was no great things, and Mr.
Stoate, duly elected Shearers' Delegate, produced his appointment
and walked up and down the shed, with great dignity,
carefully ignoring Macdonald, and ostentatiously writing or
telegraphing to W. Stead, Esq., President of the A.S.U.,
Wagga Wagga,[1] N.S. Wales, some kind of progress was made,
and the super's face began to lose its saturnine expression.
The weather, which in the early days of spring had been
showery and unfavourable, changed for the better, and the
heaviest of the flocks having been shorn, 'big tallies'—a
hundred and thirty, and even one hundred and fifty or sixty—began
to be made.
The discontented shearers even, whose minds had been
unsettled by specious, communistic talk, prophesying a general
distribution of property among the wage-earners, according to
the gospel of Bellamy, commenced to be more or less
satisfied. Visions of the big cheque, to which each man was
adding now (prospectively) at the rate of from a pound to
thirty-five shillings a day, commenced to float in the air.
32All was comparative peace and joy. Macdonald, it is true,
had a trifling altercation with Mr. Janus Stoate one Friday
afternoon, during which the last-named gentleman received a
telegram, which he put into his pocket, after reading it, with a
sneering smile. 'You'll know directly who's master on this
floor—you, the hired servant of a capitalist, as is livin' on the
blood of these pore ignorant chaps; or me, that's been elected
by the workers of the land to see as they gets justice from
their grindin' employers.'
Macdonald made one step towards the insolent underling,
as might the second mate of a north sea whale-ship, if cook
or fo'c's'le hand dared withstand him, while the wrathful
glitter in his eye caused the offender to alter his tone. But
the thought of the shearing, now three-parts through, being
delayed on his account, was even a stronger controlling force.
Halting, with an effort, he glared for a few seconds at the
contemptible creature, that yet had such power of annoyance,
as if he could crush him with his heel. Then with studiously
calm and measured tones, he said: 'You'd do great things
if you were able, Mr. Delegate Stoate. If I had my way,
I'd have you shot and nailed up on a barn door, as they do
your namesakes in the old country. That's the only way to
treat varmint, and it's a pity it isn't done here.'
The man received this little compliment with an attempt
at cynical self-possession, which his shifty, malignant gaze
belied, as the small eyes gleamed with reptilian malice. 'I'll
learn yer,' he hissed out, 'to talk to the people's chyce as if
he was the dirt under yer feet.' 'Men of the Australian
Shearers' Union,' he said, raising his voice to a shrill cry,
'listen to me, and drop them shears—every man Jack of yer.
D'ye know what's in this bloomin' tallagram? A strike's
ordered. D'ye hear?—a strike! Here's the wire from the
Head Centre at Wagga.
'"By order of the President and Council of the Australian
Shearers' Union. Every shed in the Darling district, Union
or non-Union, is hereby commanded to come out and stop
working instantly on receiving this notice from the Delegate
of the Branch, under penalty of being reported to the Council
of the Union at Headquarters.
Signed by me, W. Stead,
At Wagga Wagga, this 30th September 189-."'
33
This was a bombshell with a vengeance. The anarchist, who
threw it metaphorically, would have had no scruples—except
those of personal apprehension—in casting a dynamite duplicate
on the shearing floor. A sudden confusion filled the shed.
Murmurs and sullen rejoinders were made, as the more
prudent division of the men recognised that their shearing
cheques, the outcome of weeks of hard work, were doomed
to delay, perhaps to forfeiture. Some openly withstood the
triumphant delegate, others, less impulsive, were disposed to
temporise, while 'I thought this was a Union shed' remarked,
with slow impressiveness, a gigantic native, considerably over
six feet in height, whose wiry, muscular frame and tremendous
reach stamped him as one of the 'ringers' of the shed.
'Ain't the Union Rules put up there?' pointing to the copy
ostentatiously affixed at the end of the shed for reference.
'What's this darned foolishness, stoppin' men that's only a
week's work between them and a big cheque?'
'You can read and write, I suppose,' replied Mr. Stoate
contemptuously. ('Better nor you,' murmured a young
fellow just within earshot.) 'Is them words on the telegram,
what I told the men of this shed, and are you thereby
ordered to come out, or are you not? That's what I want
to know. Are you a-goin' to defy the Union? Think a bit
afore you chance that and turn "scab."'
'I'm goin' to think a bit—just so,—and I hope you other
chaps'll do the same, and not rush into law, like a bull at a
gate, and lose your money, because of any second fiddle in
the land. As to being a "scab," Delegate Stoate, I'm no
more one than you are, perhaps not as much, if the truth's
34told. But don't you say that to me again, or I'll pitch you
through one of them skylights, with one hand too.' And
here the giant stretched forward his enormous fore-arm, and
looking upward to the skylight in the roof of the woolshed,
made as though there would be no unusual difficulty in the
feat. 'Show me that telegram, please; this step wants consideration.'
'Ain't you goin' to obey the Union?' demanded Stoate
with a great assumption of dignity. 'P'raps you ain't aweer,
men, as this is a serious act of disobedience, which I shall
report accordin'.'
'That's all very well,' answered the dissenter, whose unusual
height, as he towered above his fellows, seemed to give him
a certain title to leadership. 'I'm as good a Unionist as any
man here; but I see no points in chuckin' away our money
and hurtin' an employer who's been fair and square with us.
Where's he gone against our rules? I ask you all. Isn't the
rules put up at the end of the shed, all ship-shape and reg'lar?
Didn't we stop shearin' for two days last week, and the
weather fine, because the delegate here said the wool was
damp? I didn't feel no damp, nor my mate neither, and we
lost two dashed good days' work—a couple of pounds each
all round. Now, I don't want to go dead against the Union,
though I can't see the fun of losin' a goodish cheque, and, as
I say, hurtin' a gentleman as never did any man here a bad
turn. Let's try a middle course. Suppose we pick a man
as we all can trust, and send him to Wagga. He can interview
the Head Centre there, and make sure, afore we chuck
away our stuff, whether every Union shed's bound to come
out, or whether, under partic'lar circumstances like this here,
we can't cut out the shed afore we go. I move a resolution to
that effect.'
'And I second it,' said Bill Hardwick. 'I want to take
my money home to my old woman and the kids; I've got a
lot to do with it this season, and so, I daresay, have most
of you, chaps. I don't see no sense in clearin' out now, when
we've got fifty or sixty pound a man, to take and goin' off
with neither money nor grub. Of course, we can wait to be
paid out of Union funds, but we know what that means.
Those that votes for Jim Stanford's motion, and fair play,
hold up your hands.'
35The scene that followed was hard to describe. A forest of
hands was held up, while there rose a babel of voices, some
laying down the law, others expressing a doubt of the prudence
of flouting the mysterious powers of the A.S.U., in the midst
of which Mr. Stoate, standing upon the wool table, vainly
attempted to make himself heard.
The controversy continued until the dinner-bell rang, by
which time it was clear that the sense of the meeting was
overwhelmingly in favour of Stanford's amendment.
So, in spite of Stoate's threats and envious malice, a
steady-going, middle-aged shearer of known probity and experience
was chosen and despatched to Narandera, en route
for Wagga Wagga, for further instructions. In the meantime,
it was agreed to go on with the shearing, to which the men
addressed themselves with such energy and determination,
that when the knock-off evening bell sounded, the tallies
were larger than on any preceding afternoon of the week.
Jack Macdonald was delighted, though he refrained from
open commendation, as he noticed that all the fast shearers
made a point of shearing carefully and giving no room for
disapprobation on his part.
Mr. Stoate viewed the whole proceedings with unconcealed
disgust, and talked big about taking down the names of
every man in the shed, and so reporting them that they
would never get another 'stand' in a Union shed. He found,
however, that except among the young, unmarried men, and a
few reckless spendthrifts, who were carried away by the specious
ideas at that time freely ventilated, he had little influence.
Stanford and Hardwick were noted men—honest, hard-working,
and respected as 'ringers,' and as such, leaders in
their profession. As Stanford bent his long back, and lifted
out a fresh sheep every few minutes from the pen, with as
much apparent ease as if the big, struggling seventy pound
wether had been a rabbit, a feeling of industrial emulation
seemed to pervade the great shed, and each man 'shore for
his life,' as old Billy Day expressed it—'and that dashed neat
and careful, as if there was a hundred pound prize at next
Wagga Show hangin' to it.'
'Wait till George Greenwell comes back,' said Stoate—'and
he ought to be here inside of eight days, as he can get the
rail from Narandera—and see what you'll have to say, then.'
36Of course, telegrams had been sent, and arrived with
reiterated command from the Napoleon at Wagga Wagga—to
lay down their arms, or rather their shears, as ordered.
And this was the crowning injustice and treachery of the
ukase—that all the Union sheds in New South Wales, where
the proprietors had surrendered their independence, and
pocketed their pride, at the bidding of expediency, were
penalised. Those squatters who 'bowed not the knee to
Baal,' and fought out the contest, with sheds half full of
'learners,' and strangers from other colonies, brought over by
the Pastoral Association, as well as the free shearers, who,
intimidated by the Union guerillas, were often injured and
hindered as to their lawful work, were now in a far better
position. They were able to laugh at the surrendering
squatters.
'You have given in,' said they; 'sacrificed principle and
set a bad example for the sake of getting quickly through
this season's shearing. You betrayed your pastoral comrades,
and are now betrayed by the Union; you are left in the lurch.
Serve you right!'
So, 'deserted in their utmost need,' with half-shorn sheep,
and no hope of fresh men—as the non-Union sheds had
secured most of the available labour—they were in a pitiable
condition, neither help nor sympathy being procurable;
while many of the free sheds were shearing steadily and
comfortably, with a 'full board.'
In seven days, Mr. Greenwell was expected to appear.
He could ride to Narandera in three days; twenty-four hours
would take him to Wagga Wagga, after stopping for the night
at Junee Junction. This was far and away the finest railway
station in New South Wales, perhaps in Australia, having
not only an imposing structure connected with the railway
proper, but a very fine hotel, erected by the Government
of New South Wales, liberally managed and expensively
furnished.
There, the railway passenger could spend the night, or a
week, if he so decided, being sure that he would be called at
the proper time, either by night or day, to be despatched on
his journey in an enviable and Christian state of mind.
The days passed on at Tandara, the week was nearly over.
Such quick and clean shearing had never been done there
37before. The last day of the allotted time approached. Greenwell
had not arrived, but surely he would turn up on the
morrow.
Stoate was uneasily anxious. He hinted at treachery.
But Greenwell, a regular, downright 'white man,' could not
be 'got at.' Every one scoffed at the idea. One of the
rouseabouts, who had known better times, hummed the refrain
of 'Mariana in the moated grange': 'He cometh not, she said.'
Worst of all, from Stoate's point of view, the shearing would
be finished in two more days. The shed would then be paid
off—shearers, pressers, rouseabouts, the cook and his mate,
everybody down to the tar-boy. If their emissary didn't come
before then, he might just as well not come at all. The
'might, majesty, and dominion' of the Australian Shearers'
Union, with 20,000 members in all the colonies, which
had aimed at one great 'Australian Labourers' Union' in
town and country, would be set at nought. They had planned
the inclusion of every worker—that is, muscle-worker, for
brains didn't count—from the ship's cook of the coaster to the
boundary rider on the Lower Darling or the Red Barcoo; from
the gas-stoker in Melbourne or Sydney, where they hoped to
plunge the cities into darkness, to the stock-rider, behind his
drove of Queensland bullocks; and the back-block carrier, with
his waggon and team of fourteen unshod Clydesdales or
Suffolks.
And now, in the case of the Tandara shed, one of
the best known and oldest stations on the Darling, this
campaign against capital was to end in defeat and disappointment.
Stoate groaned in despair, as the eighth day arrived and
no messenger. For the last forty-eight hours he had been
looking anxiously for the cloud of dust at the end of the long,
straight road across the endless plain, which heralded the
approach of team, coach, or horseman.
As if to aggravate the Strike leaders, and all connected
with that beneficent institution, the weather had been
miraculously fine. No spring storms had come out of the
cloudless sky, not so much as a 'Darling River shower'—four
drops upon five acres,' in the vernacular—had sprinkled
the red dust of the plain, to give the delegate the excuse to
declare the sheep too wet to shear, and so lose a day.
38Nothing, in fact, happened. And on the noontide hour of
the fourth day succeeding the week, Tandara shed 'cut out.'
The 'cobbler,' the last sheep—a bad one to shear, and so
considerately left for 'some one else,' by every man who
picked out of the large middle pen—was lifted aloft by
Stanford, amid the jeers of the men, now preparing with stiff
backs and aching sinews to surrender their task for a full
week at any rate, before they 'struck' the next shed, lower
down the river.
'I could shear him,' said he, regarding the closely wrinkled
'boardy' fleece, 'if he was covered with bloomin' pin-wire.
My word! isn't it a pity that Greenwell didn't turn up afore?
Eh, Mr. Delegate? D'ye think the Union'll guillotine us,
same as they did chaps at the French Revolution? I'm off
to Launceston in case of accidents. My cheque'll keep me
for the rest of the summer, in a country that is a country—not
a God-forsaken dust-heap like this.' Thus speaking, and
shearing all the while, with punctilious precision, Mr. Stanford
trimmed the 'cobbler' with a great affectation of anxiety, and
dismissing him down the shoot of the pen with a harmless
kick, said, 'Good-bye, and God bless you, old man; you make
eighty-nine—not a bad forenoon's work.'
'Come along, men, down to the office,' said Macdonald,
'your money's ready for you—the storekeeper and I were up
pretty nigh all night getting the accounts made out. You'll
enjoy your dinners all the better for having your money
in your pockets. The rouseabouts and shed hands can
come in the afternoon. They won't want to leave before
morning.'
'Who's that coming along the Wagga road on a grey
horse?' said a sharp-eyed young shearer. 'By Jing! I
believe it's Greenwell. Whatever can have kep' him, Mr.
Stoate?'
'Never mind him,' said Macdonald. 'John Anderson,
this is your account; look it over. £45:10:6. You'll
take a cheque; here it is—sign the book. I'll take you all
by the alphabet.'
As the men stood round the little room at the side of the
big store, that served for the station office, the traveller on the
grey horse rode slowly towards them.
The men were in a merry humour. Their keen eyes had
39recognised horse and rider afar off. It was the messenger
who had so signally failed in coming up to time. He was
received with a storm of ironical cheers and derisive exclamations.
'Halloa, George—where yer been? To Sydney and
back? Got warrants for us all? To think as we should
ha' cut out, and you on the road with an order from the
Head Centre in your pocket! Come along, Mr. Delegate, and
talk straight to him.'
These and the like specimens of humorous conversation
were shouted at the unlucky emissary, who, as he came up
and wearily dismounted, evidently knew that an explanation
would be demanded of him.
Stoate walked out with a solemn and dignified air to meet
him. 'Well done, Mr. Delegate, give it to him from the
shoulder. He's a jolly telegraph, ain't he? Why, Joe
Kearney the sprinter could have run all the way and beat
him, hands down.'
'Will you oblige me by statin' the cause of your delay on
a mission of importance to the Union and your feller-workers?'
'Now then, George, speak up—give us the straight
griffin. What was it? Honour bright; did yer join a circus?
Was there a good-looking girl in the way? And you a married
man. For shame of you!'
Between the awful visage of Mr. Stoate and the running
fire of chaff from his mates, Greenwell looked rather nonplussed.
However, girding himself for the contest, he mustered up
courage, and thus delivered himself.
'Well, boys, the long and short of it is, I was took ill at
Junee, on the return journey, and after stayin' a day, just as
I was startin' back, some old mates of mine, as had just cut
out at Hangin' Rock, come along, and—well, the truth's the
truth, we all got on a bit of a spree. Now the murder's out,
and you can make the best of it. I don't see as there's anything
broke, so far.'
'Anything broke,' retorted Stoate indignantly. 'Hasn't the
shed been cut out, in direct disobedience of orders, and the
Union treated with contempt?'
'We're just gettin' our cheques,' called out a young fellow
40at the back of the crowd. 'Jolly awkward, ain't it? But
I'll get over it, and so'll Dick Dawson.'
When the weighty matter of the payment was over, and
the men were finishing their 'wash and brush up,' getting up
their horses and settling their packs, one of the older men
approached Stanford, who was quietly proceeding with his
preparations, and thus addressed him—
'Now, Jim, you knowed that chap afore, didn't yer?
Hadn't yer no notion as he might get on a "tear," with money
in his pocket, and half nothin' to do like?'
Mr. Stanford made no verbal answer, but drawing himself
up to the full height of his exalted stature, looked down into
the interrogator's face, with an expression of great solemnity. It
is just possible that he may have observed a slight deflection
in the corner of his left eye, as he relaxed the severity of
his countenance, while he observed resignedly, 'Well, it might
have been worse; I've got the boss's cheque for £57:14s.,
and a few notes for the road in my pocket, this blessed
minute.'
'Mine's a shade more'n that,' replied 'Long Jim,' with
deliberation. '"All's well that ends well" 's a good motter.
I've done enough for this season, I reckon. I had a fairish
fencing contract in the winter. It'll be time enough to think
about the "dignity of labour" and the "ethics of war"
(wasn't that what the Head Centre called 'em?) afore next
shearin' comes round. I'm off to a cooler shop across the
Straits.'
The shearing at Tandara having ended satisfactorily to the
shearer, the sheep-washers, the rouseabouts, the boundary
riders, the overseers, to every one connected with the establishment
in fact, from the 'ringer' to the tar-boy, all of whose
wages and accounts were paid up to the last hour of the last
day, in fact to every one except Mr. Janus Stoate, whose
remuneration was in the future, a great silence commenced to
settle down upon the place so lately resounding with the
'language used, and the clamour of men and dogs.' The
high-piled waggons, drawn by bullock teams of from twelve to
twenty, and horse teams of nearly the same number, had rolled
away. The shed labourers had walked off with swags on their
backs. The shearers, many of whom had two horses, poor
in condition when they came, but now sleek and spirited, had
41ridden off with money in both pockets, full of glee and playful
as schoolboys. The great shed, empty save for a few bales
of sheepskins, was carefully locked up, as were also the
shearers' and the other huts. Even Bower, the grim night-guardian
of the woolshed, liberally remunerated, had left for
Melbourne by Cobb and Co.'s coach. There, among other
recreations and city joys, he betook himself to the Wax-works
in Bourke Street.
As with hair and beard trimmed, newly apparelled from
top to toe, he wandered around, looking at the effigies of
former friends and acquaintances, now, alas, cut off in their
prime, or immersed in the dungeon of the period for such
venial irregularities as burglary, highway robbery, manslaughter,
and the like, his gaze became fixed, his footsteps arrested.
He stands before the waxen, life-like presentment of a grizzled
elderly man, in rough bush habiliments, his hat a ruin, his
clothes ragged and torn, his boots disreputable. A double-barrelled
gun rests on his shoulder, while above his head is
a placard, on which in large letters could seen by the staring
spectator—
'Harry Bower, the Celebrated Bushranger.'
Cut to the heart, not so much by the heartless publicity of
the affair as by the disgraceful attempt to brand him as a
dirty disreputable-looking individual, he glared angrily at his
simulacrum. 'And me that was always so tasty in my dress,'
he muttered. So saying, he seized the hapless figure by the
arm, and dragging it along with wrathful vehemence, made for
the door.
'Oh, Mr. Bower, Mr. Bower!' cried the proprietress,
'ye'll ruin him—I mane yerself. Sure ye wouldn't go to
injure a poor widdy woman, and all the people sayin' it's your
dead imidge.'
'Imidge of me, is it?' shouted Bower, the furious, ungovernable
temper of the 'long sentence convict' breaking out.
'I'll tache ye to make a laughing-stock of Harry Bower,
this day. Ye might have dressed me dacent, while ye wor
about it.'
So saying, he dragged the inanimate malefactor through the
door, and casting him down upon the Bourke Street pavement,
42commenced to kick him to pieces, to the great astonishment
of the crowd which speedily gathered around him. A rumour
had started that 'Bower the bushranger was killing a man
outside the Wax-works,' and before many minutes the street was
blocked with men, women, and children, lured to the spot by
the expectation of seeing a real live bushranger in the exercise
of his bloodthirsty vocation.
A few minutes later—having dissevered several vital portions
of the 'Frankenstein' individual, and, like Artemus Ward's
enthusiastic Bible Christian, who 'caved Judassis' head in,'
more or less demolished the victim—Mr. Bower, desisting,
stalked moodily up the street, his peculiar reputation not
leading any one to volunteer pursuit. There was no constable
in sight, so the Mrs. Jarley of the establishment was left to
her lamentations, and the dubious satisfaction of a remedy
by civil process.
Next day, below startling headlines, similar paragraphs
appeared in the leading journals.
'An Ex-Bushranger.
'Assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
'About three o'clock yesterday afternoon, such denizens
of Bourke Street as were passing Mrs. Dooley's interesting
collection of Wax-works were alarmed by the spectacle of an
aged man of athletic proportions, who had assaulted an
individual of similar age and appearance; had thrown him
down on the pavement, and was savagely kicking him about
the head and the body; indeed it was feared—such was the
fury of his gestures—that he was actually trampling the unfortunate
victim of his rage to death. None dared to interfere,
every one appeared paralysed; but after one or two public-spirited
individuals had started for the Swanston Street police
station, an adventurous bystander called out, 'Why, it's a wax
figure.' Though a shout of laughter greeted the announcement,
no one cared to remonstrate with the hero of so many
legends—the man who, long outlawed, and captured after a
desperate resistance, had barely escaped the gallows for the
manslaughter of the warders of the hulk President in a
frustrated plot for escape—the dreaded bushranger, Henry
Bower. We have since learned that this attempt at felo de se43(in wax)—for the injured individual turned out to be a
fairly correct likeness of himself—can only be proceeded for
as a debt, which Bower in his cooler moments will not be
averse to liquidating, he having returned from the bush with
a reasonably large cheque, earned in the service of an old
employer, who gave him a berth at a couple of pounds a week
as night-watchman of his woolshed. In these times of
disturbance and incendiary troubles, most of our readers will
concur with our opinion, that old Harry Bower, with his
double-barrel, not swayed by frivolous objection to bloodshed,
was, in such a position of trust, "the right man in the right
place."'
When the shearers took their cash or cheques as each elected,
and departed, splitting into small parties, on different routes,
division of opinion took place likewise. Bill Hardwick openly
declared his intention, as did several others, to 'cut the Shearers'
Union' and go 'on their own' for the future. 'I've had
enough of this Union racket,' said he, as, lighting his pipe,
and jogging off with his two fat horses, saddled and packed, he
prepared to take the 'down river' road. 'I don't see no
points in being bossed by chaps like this Stead, and callin'
theirselves chairmen and presidents, and what not—fellers as
have done dashed little but blather this years and years.
They've turned dog on the squatters as trusted 'em and "went
Union," and deuced near done us out of six weeks' hard graft
at this very shed. We've got our cash, boys; that'll carry
us on for a bit. But suppose we'd turned out when that
galoot at Wagga wanted us to, where should we be now?
Travellin' the country without a shillin' in our pockets,
our shearin' money forfeited by the next police magistrate
(and serve us right, too, for bein' such bally fools), and
summonses and warrants out against every man on the
board. I'm full of Mr. Head Centre at Wagga, with his
top hat, and gold chain, and his billiards, as our money
goes to pay for. But he won't get none of mine to monkey
with, nor you either, Janus Stoate, and so you may tell him
next time you wire.'
'I'll report your language to the Union secretary, William
Hardwick, never fear,' replied Stoate, fixing his snaky eye
upon him. 'You'll soon know which is the strongest—you
44or the Association, as protects the workers' interests. So
I warn you, and all others as is fools enough to stand by
you.'
'That'll do, Mr. Delegate,' said Bill; 'don't you go to
bully me. Say another word, and I'll give you a smack or
two, that'll make a better yarn when you're touching up the
tell-tale business for the Head Centre. I'm off to Moorara,
where there's 300,000 sheep to shear, and a board only half
full. Who's comin' my way?'
There had been a hum of approbation when Bill finished
his humble oratorical effort, after which a dozen of the best
and fastest shearers announced their intention to go with him,
to the wrath and despair of Mr. Stoate.
'I'll be even with you, Bill Hardwick,' he yelled, 'and
you too, Johnny Jones—see if I don't. You'll get no stands
from us this year, nor next either.'
A hundred and fifty miles below Tandara. A red-walled
promontory overlooking the Darling, in this year a broad,
majestic stream, with anabranches of equal breadth and
volume running out for many a mile, where the river steamers
took their course, cutting off corners, and, because of the depth
of water in this most bountiful season, almost indifferent to
obstacles. Here stood the great Head Station of Moorara.
Miles of fencing of substantial character surrounded it on all
sides. There was none of the ordinary carelessness as to
finish, popularly supposed to be characteristic of back-block
stations 'a thousand miles from everywhere,' as had been
said descriptively by an imaginative tourist. On the contrary,
every hut, paling, fence, gate, wall, and roof in that immense
holding was in what old-fashioned English country people
called 'apple-pie order.'
Everything was mended and kept right, up to date. Six
carpenters and three blacksmiths lived on the premises all the
year round. There was no waiting until that pastoral millennium
'after shearing' arrived. Everything was done at once, and
done well. The 'stitch in time' was an article of the faith at
Moorara, and, as such, religiously observed. If any superficial
judging tourist, observing these things, ventured to remark
that such improvements must have cost a mint of money, or
to hint a doubt whether such a place 'paid,' he was frowned
45down at once and haughtily reminded that this was Moorara,
the property of the Hon. Mr. M'Cormack, whose sheep shorn
last year (this was one of his long list of stations) would total
up to over a million!
Just calculate what so many fleeces come to, the average
weight being eight or nine pounds, and the value per head
rarely under as many shillings. Then, of course, there are
the other stations, carrying six hundred thousand high-class
merino sheep!
Now the woolshed to which Bill and his ten or twelve
companions were bound was one of which the owner had
'stood out' from the first against the tyranny of the Shearers'
Union.
As Bill and his companions journeyed down the river,
rumour reached them of serious developments of the Great
Strike. This protest against the alleged dictation of Capital
had reached its culminating stage. The o'er-vaulting ambition
of the State-school educated Mr. Stead, the originator
and prime mover of the Civil War, which was now fully
recognised, had struck a blow at the State itself—that State
under which he had been bred and nurtured, fed, protected,
and presented with a 'free, compulsory, and secular education.'
He had justified the forebodings of old-fashioned Conservatives,
who had always doubted the wisdom of educating the labouring
classes at the expense of the ratepayers, of breeding up
an army of enemies to Capital and to the settled order of the
Government.
And now the long-threatened result had come to pass—a
revolt against order and good government, a deliberate
attempt to subvert the Constitution under the specious guise
of federated labour. It had commenced with a quarrel between
the cook's mate of a coasting steamer and the so-called
'delegate' of the crew, spreading with portentous rapidity,
like the bush-fires of the land, until it enveloped the stock-riders
of the Paroo and the teamsters of 'the Gulf.' It
menaced life and property. It attempted to plunge cities into
darkness by 'calling out' the gas-stokers. It essayed to
paralyse commerce by intimidating the carriers, whom it forbade
to convey the wool—the staple Australian export—to the
wharves, by restraining the wharf labourers from loading the
vessels.
46But, in these two instances, the common-sense of the city
populations came to the rescue. The young men of the
learned professions, of the upper classes—in the true sense of
the word—came out to play a man's part in the interests of
law and order. They manned the gas-works, and, amid furnace-heat
and grime, provided the necessary labour, all unused as
they were to toil under such conditions. The cities were
not wrapped in darkness, and the streets were not made ready
for the spoil by the burglar, the garrotter, and the thief. A
line of wool teams was driven down the principal street of
Sydney by barristers and bankers, by clerks and merchants,
chiefly young men, high-couraged and athletic. But on the
foremost waggon, high-seated behind his four-horse team,
which he tooled with practised ease, might be recognised the
leonine visage and abundant beard of Winston Darling, the
Explorer, the Pioneer Squatter, the well-known Pastoral Leader
and Ruler of the Waste.
The streets were crowded with yelling, blaspheming, riotous
Unionists, with difficulty kept within bounds by a strong body
of police.
Stones were thrown, and foul epithets freely used. But
though one youthful driver had his head cut open, no further
damage was done. And the wool was safely conveyed to the
wharves and shipped in spite of the threatening demeanour of
the assembled thousands.
These amateurs, native-born Australian gentlefolk, worked
for weeks, from six to six, in many instances galling the hands,
which were wholly unused to such rude treatment. But they
kept at it till the stubborn conflict subsided, and not till then did
they fall out of the ranks of the 'muscle-workers,' who in this
and other instances have arrogated to themselves the title
of the only workers in this complex and many-sided body
politic.
This demonstration was chiefly confined to the seaports.
When, however, the Ministry was sufficiently strong to call out
the Volunteer regiments, their disciplined action gained control
of the disorderly mobs, and order was regained, without discouraging
delay.
But in the bush, far from help, police or military protection,
matters were far otherwise. Lonely stations were terrorised.
Large camps of armed and apparently desperate men were
47formed, who intimidated those non-Union shearers and bush
labourers who neither conformed to their rules nor submitted
to their dictation.
They were in many cases captured, so to speak, assaulted,
maltreated, and illegally restrained from following their lawful
occupation. The carriers' horses or bullocks were driven away
or slaughtered, their waggons, in some instances, burned.
These outrages were directed against men and their
employers who had dared to be independent, to exercise the
right of free Britons to manage their own affairs and their own
property.
It may easily be imagined how bodies of two or three
hundred men, well armed and mounted, could terrorise a
thinly-populated country. Specific acts of incendiarism and
other offences against property were frequent. Woolsheds
were burned with their contents, sometimes to the value of
thousands of pounds; fences were cut and demolished;
bridges and telegraph lines destroyed; in short, no lawless
action which could result in expense and loss to the pastoralist,
or those of the labourers who defied the New Tyranny, was
omitted.
48
Some explanation of the Great Australian Strike of 1890,
which lasted in more or less virulence and intensity until
1895, producing widespread damage and ruinous loss, may
not here be out of place.
This important industrial conflict exhibited the nearest
approach to civil war which Australia has known. It originated,
as did certain historical revolutions and mutinies, from
an occurrence ludicrously insignificant compared with the
magnitude of the results and the widespread disasters involved.
A fireman was discharged by the captain of a coasting
steamer belonging to the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company,
whereupon the Seamen's Union took up the matter, the
man being their 'delegate,' and demanded his reinstatement.
He had been 'victimised,' they asserted, by the chief
steward, who must be dismissed or the fireman reinstated.
The Cooks' and Stewards' Union, in the interests of the chief
steward, held an inquiry, in conjunction with the Seamen's
Union, to which the fireman belonged. The result failed to
substantiate any charge against the chief steward. But the
Seamen's Union decided to hold the captain responsible,
threatening to take the crew out of the ship. No inquiry was
asked of the owners.
About a month after the threat the crew gave notice, and
were paid off. The captain had received the following
letter:—
'Seamen's Union Office,
Sydney, July 1890.
'Captain ——, Steamer ——.
'Dear Sir—We are instructed by the members of the above
Society to state that we intend to have our delegate ——
49reinstated on board. If he is not reinstated by the return of
the ship to Sydney, the crew will be given twenty-four hours'
notice.
'We intend to protect our members from being victimised
(sic) by chief stewards and others, and intend at all hazards to
have him reinstated.—I remain, yours truly,
'The President and Acting Secretary.'
'Sydney, 6th July 1890.
'The Acting Secretary.
'Sir—With regard to your letter as to the discharge of a
fireman from the steamer Corinna, the captain informs me
that the chief steward had nothing whatever to do with the
discharge. The fireman made no complaint about his food.
He was discharged in the Company's interests, but there is no
objection to his joining any other of the Company's vessels.
The captain also was not aware that he was a delegate, and
had nothing to do with his discharge. It seems strange that
men should leave the Company without explanation, while the
Company is denied the same right.—I remain, etc.'
Now, what in the world had the colliers of Newcastle,
N.S.W., to do with the injustice or otherwise meted out to the
fireman through that powerful and distinguished official, the
ship's cook, or even by the chief steward? Such would be
the common-sense view of any ordinary person, especially if
he had been reared in the belief that 'mind your own business'
was a maxim of weight and authority, verified by the
lore of ages. Not so thought the leaders of the mining community.
A fatal fascination appeared to have actuated one
and all under the influence of a false and specious principle.
No sooner had the steamer arrived at the Agricultural
Association's wharf desiring a cargo of coal than the miners
'came out' of the Sea Pit, at that time in full work. Then
the Northern Colliery owners, justly indignant at this breach
of agreement, stopped work at all the pits under their control.
Fourteen days' notice should have been given by the miners,
on the terms of their agreement.
There was no grievance between master and man, and yet
at the bidding of an outside person the miners abandoned their
work without notice.
The Unionist shearers, at the instigation of their dictator,
50hasted to join the revolt. They commenced to formulate
an agreement imposing higher pay, shorter hours, the supervision
of sheds by workmen appointed by themselves, the
deposition of the rule of the employer over his own work, as
to his own property, in his own woolshed.
Then the employers, up to that time slow to move and
more or less disunited, saw that the time had come for them
to combine against the tyranny of a communistic organisation.
The Shearers' Union, however, as represented by their president,
thought it improper of other people to form Unions.
They began to threaten as follows:—
'Should the employers maintain their present attitude, the
trades' organisation will be compelled to use every means to
win their cause, methods which at present they have avoided.
'For instance, they could call out all the shearers (sic), and
at one blow cause widespread disaster. [This they did later on,
including those who, in reliance on their promises, were shearing
under Union Rules.] The effects of such a step would be
to paralyse the whole industry of the colony. In Victoria,
shearing is only just commencing. In New South Wales it is
barely half over. At the Labour Conference in Sydney it was
decided that the Western miners be called out next day. This
meant cutting off the sole remaining coal supply of the
colony. Decided also that all the shearers, rouseabouts, and
carriers be called out. Instructions sent accordingly.
'In New South Wales alone this will affect 22,000 shearers,
15,000 rouseabouts, 10,000 carriers also, together with all
affiliated trades, such as butchers, bakers, grocers, and compositors.
Whether the railway men will be included cannot
be now ascertained.'
As a sample of the class of arguments used to set class
against class, and to inflame the minds of the bush labourers
against their employers, the following circular, signed by the
leaders, and privately distributed, may serve as a specimen.
It was headed:—
An Appeal to Station Labourers.
'A shed labourer's lot is not a happy one. To work all
hours and to endure all manner of privations. To work hard
for a miserable starvation wage. A victim of capitalistic greed
and tyranny. Suffering worse treatment than the negro slaves51of the Southern States of America. The reason for this being
that they have had no means of protection. Let them unite. Let
them be men, free men, and have a voice in the settlement of
the terms at which they shall sell their labour.
'The rights of the labourers will then be recognised.
Capital will no longer have Labour by the throat. The mighty
heritage of a glorious independence is in their grasp.
'Let them rise above the bondage of capital, and be a unit
in that which will make one powerful whole—the General
Woolshed Labourers' Union of Australia!'
That this sort of language was calculated to arouse the
passions and heighten the prejudices of uneducated men may
well be conceded. The ludicrous comparison with the
'wrongs of slaves' in the Southern States of America might
raise a smile, had not reports of outrages, unhappily but too
well authenticated, followed this and similar proclamations.
However, the Employers' Union and the Pastoral Association
were not minded to submit tamely to the oppression of
a 'jacquerie,' however arrogant, as the following extract
from a metropolitan journal, under date 22nd September
1890, will show:—
'In Sydney that picturesque procession of lorries, loaded
with non-Union wool, and driven by leading merchants and
squatters, will once more betake itself through the streets, and
may be the signal of actual civil war. These waggons, with
their unaccustomed drivers, embody in a dramatic shape that
aspect of the strike in which the Unionists have morally
the weakest case. The shearers have undertaken to make
Unionism compulsory at one stroke, in every woolshed in
Australia, by the tyrannical process of forbidding every bale of
wool shorn by non-Unionists to reach a market. Why must
merchants and squatters, at the risk of their lives, drive these
particular bales of wool to the wharf? We frankly hope that
the wool "boycott" will break down hopelessly, ignobly. All
reasonable men are against this fatal blunder of the Unionists.'
Commencing in 1890 among men 'who go down to the
sea in ships,' the revolt against employment and authority
spread among 'all sorts and conditions of men' dwelling in
the continent of Australia. All trades and occupations by
which the muscle-workers of the land, falsely assumed to be
the only labourers worthy of the name of 'working-men,' were
52attempted to be captured and absorbed. To account for the
readiness with which the new gospel of labour was accepted,
it must be borne in mind that many of the better-educated
labourers and mechanics had been for years supplied by their
leaders with so-called socialistic literature. They had in a
sense sat at the feet of apostles of the school of Henry George
and Mr. Bellamy.
The former was convinced that all the 'riddles of the
painful earth' might be solved by the taxation and gradual
confiscation of land; this plausible-appearing policy would
remove all the oppressions and exactions under which the
excellent of the earth had so long groaned. Mr. Bellamy's
method of procuring universal happiness, solvency, and contentment
was simple and comprehensive. Every adult was
to be compelled to labour for four hours of the day—no one
to be permitted to work for more than this very reasonable,
recreational period. Every one to be pensioned when he or
she reached the age of sixty.
By this happy apportionment of the primeval curse, every
one would be obliged to furnish a sufficient quantity of labour
to provide for his own and other people's wants.
No one would be expected to do a full day's work—always
unpopular as a task, and suspected to be unwholesome.
Dining and Music Halls, an artistic atmosphere, with all
mental and physical luxuries, to be provided by the State, in
exchange for Labour Coupons of specified value.
It cannot be doubted that speculative theories of this
nature, proposals for minimising labour and dividing the
wealth, accumulated by the industry and thrift of ages, among
individuals who had neither worked nor saved for its maintenance,
had a wide-reaching influence for evil among the
members of the Labour Unions. Dazzled by alluring statements,
they were ready to adopt the wildest enterprises,
founded on delusive principles and untried experiments.
Perhaps the most important of the Utopian projects,
which at the close of the conflict found favour in the eyes of
the Unionists, was that of a Communistic settlement in
Paraguay, to which the leader, an Americanised North Briton,
gave the name of New Australia. This was to be somewhat
on the lines of the settlement so delicately satirised by
Hawthorne in the Blithedale Romance.
53It was decided by a caucus of certain wise men of the
Union that a country where the dietary scale for working-men
was the most liberal in the world, the hours of work the
shortest, the pay the highest, the climate the most genial,
the franchise the most liberal, was not adapted for British
labourers. It was accordingly agreed to establish a co-operative
community in a foreign land, where brotherly love
and the unselfish partition of the necessaries of life might
exhibit to an admiring world an ideal State, free from the
grasping employer and the callous capitalist. This modern
Utopia they proposed to call New Australia. Money not
being so scarce among Australian labourers as, from the
tremendous denunciations of their leader, which freely compared
them to negro slaves (only worse paid, fed, and driven),
might have been supposed, they were expected to pay sixty
pounds each towards the charter and freight of a suitable
vessel.
This notable plan they carried out. One man indeed sold
a cottage in a country town for £400, and putting the cash
into the common fund, sailed away for South America amid
great jubilation from the Radical press and Labour organs;
thankful, however, before long to work his passage back to
England.
Hope and Mr. W. G. Spence told a flattering tale before
experience came to the audit. A tract was found in the
Paraguayan Chaco—'234,000 acres, well watered and
timbered—splendid land,' thus described in the New Australia
newspaper, the journal of the New Co-operative Settlement
Association, Wagga, New South Wales, 28th January 1892.
In September 1893 two hundred and sixty New Australians
arrived to take possession of the Promised Land. Even
on board ship differences of opinion arose. In December
there was a notable desertion. The 'five-meal, meat-fed
men' doubtless thought sadly of poor 'Old Australia,' where
they had no dictator and few privations, save those irreparable
from high wages and good food. They missed many things
for which they had been the reverse of thankful, when supplied
gratis. They even missed the police and the magistrate.
One man at any rate did, who was thrashed for impertinence,
and could not so much as take out a summons for assault.
They must have gasped when they saw, in their own journal,
54in answer to questions—'A. K. If you didn't like it, you
could leave. The equal annual yearly division of wealth
production would enable you to ship back to Australia, if you
wanted to.' Many wanted to, but the Dictator's reply, slightly
altered from that of Mr. Mawworm in The Serious Family,
was—'We deeply sympathise, but we never refund.' As to how
the deserters got to Buenos Ayres, on their way 'home,'
doubtless many tales of adventure could be told. The equal
partition did not work out well. No one had a right to
anything, apparently—milk for a sick child—a razor—any
trifling personal possession, when all had a right to everything.
The dissatisfaction deepened to despair. The 'rest is silence.'
Migration to the 'Gran Chaco' is played out.
The Shearers' Strike drifted into the Shearers' War. Not
vigorously dealt with at the beginning by the Government of
any colony, it emboldened the agitators, who called themselves
tribunes of the people, to suggest bolder assaults upon the law,
to carry out yet more dangerous disturbances of the public
peace.
The specious process of 'picketing'—an illegal practice
involving insult and intimidation, under the transparent guise
of 'persuasion'—was tacitly permitted. Becoming habituated
to the assembling in force, armed and drilled in military
fashion, it was patent to the lowest intelligence that the
Government, if worthy of the name, must confront these
menacing and illegal levies.
The tardy Executives, which had watched the ill-usage of
free citizens, the burning of woolsheds, the killing of stock,
with apparent apathy, now became alarmed and ordered out
the Volunteer regiments. Directly a disciplined contingent,
properly armed and officered, took the field, the pseudo-guerillas
disbanded and disappeared. If prompt measures
had been taken at the start, years of demoralisation and
damage, loss of wages, and ruin of property would have been
saved both to employers and workmen.
Such a disgraceful incident as that reported from Bowen
Downs in July 1895 might never have occurred.
'A private message states that two attempts have been
made within three days to poison free shearers here. On
the first occasion eight men were poisoned; on the second,
forty-nine.'
55A Barcaldine telegram states: 'Forty-nine fresh cases
reported from Bowen Downs. Strychnine suspected to have
been put into the meat and sago pudding used by the men.
A letter received states that the scenes in the shed at Bowen
Downs were beyond description. The men, contorted with
agony, lying about in all shapes. One man named Thomas has
since died. He is not known in the district. Name probably
an assumed one. Richardson, one of five brothers, said to be
very bad; also Christie Schultz; a second death expected.
'Bowen Downs was managed by Mr. Fraser for a Scottish
Investment Company. It is expected that 250,000 sheep
will be shorn there this year. Sharing in the "strike troubles"
last year (1894), the sheep were shorn by free labourers and
some Unionists.
'They followed the example of Howe and others on the
Barcoo run, and went to work in defiance of the Union
mandate. This year many of the same men returned to the
station to shear.
'The authorities had previous information that poisoning
was likely to be resorted to on some stations. The Aramac
and Mutta-burra police are at the station. No evidence
was attainable against the authors of this cowardly crime,
resulting in one murder at least, and the possible death of a
score or more of their fellow-workmen. It is significant,
however, as against the theory of accident, that the injured men,
well-nigh sick unto death, were free shearers.
'It is notorious that elaborate preparations have been made
for committing further outrages on property, and violence on
persons. Hitherto the Government has erred on the side of
insufficient precaution and protection to loyal subjects.
'Violence and intimidation, on the other hand, have been
approved by the Labour Federations. A demand is made by
them that employers should not be allowed the right to
employ any but Union men, on Union terms. Such an edict
is inadmissible in a free country. So Sir Samuel Griffith,
C.J., of Queensland, stated the case.
'The Moreton Mounted Infantry left by the Wodonga for
the seat of the disturbance. In consequence of further outrages
by the so-called Labour organisations, one of which was
the shooting of a team of working bullocks, eleven in number,
belonging to a non-Union carrier, Colonel French has been
56sent to the north with a force of 130 men, having also a
field-piece and a Gatling gun. The Union leaders had
boasted of the wreck and ruin of squatting property which
would follow the strike.'
In the second year of the revolt a special parade of the
Queensland Mounted Infantry was ordered. They were
ready to a man. In view of the outrages already committed,
and the justifiable expectation of more to follow, military
protection was manifestly needed. This drew forth a pathetic
remonstrance from the 'General Secretary of the Australian
Labour Federation.' He was virtuously indignant at the
whole force of the Government being 'strained to subjugate
the wage-earners of the central district, under the dictation of
capitalistic organisations.' It was emphasised that 'the
Australian Labour Federation's steady influence had always
been used to substitute peaceful agitation and moderation for
needless suspension of industry. The Government is urged
to use its influence to induce organised capitalism to meet
organised labour in the conference.'
The high official so addressed replied: 'The Government
is merely endeavouring to maintain law and order; to punish
disorder, violence, and crime. The existing state of matters is
misrepresented by the Labour organs.'
As might have been expected, manslaughter and arson, if
not murder and spoliation, did result from this and similar
teachings. Some of these crimes were undetected, others
were partially expiated by imprisonment; while in more
instances the wire-pullers—the deliberate and wilful offenders
against the law of the land—escaped punishment. But when
the burning of the Dundonald took place, with the capture of
free labourers by disguised men, the tardy action of the
Executive was accelerated. That the apprehensions of the
dwellers in the pastoral districts, and their appeals to the
Government of the day in the first years of the strike, were not
without foundation, an extract from a letter taken, among
others, from the person of an arrested 'labour organiser,'
affords convincing proof.
'Queensland Labour Union, Maranoa Branch,
'Roma, 10th March 1891.
'Dear George—It is a mistake collecting our men at the
57terminus of the railway. Better to split them up in bodies
of a hundred and fifty each. One lot to stop at Clermont,
another at Tambo; others at outside stations, such as Bowen
Downs, Ayrshire Downs, Richmond Downs, Maneroo, West-lands,
Northampton, and Malvern Hills. Say a hundred and
fifty at Maranoa; same below St. George. Every station that
a hundred and fifty men came to would demand police protection
from the Government. Then, if you wanted to make
a grand coup, send mounted messengers round and have
all your forces concentrated, away from railways if possible,
and force the running by putting a little more devil into the
fight. They will have no railways to cart the Gatling guns
and Nordenfeldts about.—Yours, etc.
Ned ——.'
Such were the missives which passed between the 'labour
organisers' and their 'brother officers.' Small wonder that
the rank and file were stirred up to deeds of wrong and
outrage, stopping short by accident, or almost miracle, of
the 'red fool-fury of the Seine.' Imagine the anxiety and
apprehension at the lonely station, miles way from help, with
a hundred and fifty horsemen, armed and threatening, arriving
perhaps at midnight—the terror of the women, the mingled
wrath and despair of the men. And the temperate suggestion
of the labour organiser to 'put a little more devil into the
fight, to force the running!'
Doubtless it would, but not quite in the manner which
this calculating criminal intended. Such a wave of righteous
indignation would have been evoked from the ordinarily
apathetic surface of Australian politics, that the culprits and
their cowardly advisers would have been swept from the face
of the earth.
If it be doubted for a moment whether the serious acts
of violence and outrage alluded to were actually committed,
or, as was unblushingly asserted by the so-called democratic
organs, invented, exaggerated, or—most ludicrous attempt at
deception of all—got up by capitalists and squatters for the
purpose of throwing discredit upon Unionists, let a list of acts
perpetrated in deliberate defiance of the law of the land be
produced in evidence.
The Dagworth woolshed had seven armed men on watch,
as the Unionists had threatened to burn it. Among them
58were the Messrs. Macpherson, owners of the station. When
the bushranger Morgan was killed at Pechelbah, in their
father's time, they hardly expected to have to defend Dagworth
against a lawless band humorously describing themselves as
Union Shearers.
In spite of their defensive operations, a ruffian crawled
through and set fire to the valuable building, which was totally
consumed.
They were armed, and shots were freely interchanged.
One Unionist found dead was believed to be one of the
attacking party.
The 'Shearers' War' languished for a time, but was still
smouldering three years afterwards, as on the 4th of August
1894 the Cambridge Downs woolshed was burnt. This was
a very expensive building, in keeping with the size and value
of the station, where artesian bores had been put down, and
artificial lakes filled from the subterranean water-flow. Money
had been liberally, lavishly spent in these and other well-considered
improvements, aids to the working of the great
industrial enterprise evolved from the brain of one man,
and having supported hundreds of labourers and artisans for
years past. In the great solitudes where the emu and kangaroo
or the roving cattle herds alone found sustenance, the blacksmith's
forge now glowed, the carpenter's hammer rang, the
ploughman walked afield beside his team, the 'lowing herd
wound slowly o'er the lea,' recalling to many an exiled Briton
his village home.
The 'big house,' the squire-proprietor's abode, rose, garden-and
grove-encircled, amid the cottages and humbler homes
which it protected—a mansion in close resemblance, allowing
for altered conditions and more spacious surroundings, to
homes of the Motherland, which all loved so well. At what
cost of head and hand, of toil, and danger, and hardship, ay,
even of blood, let the headstones in the little shaded graveyard
tell! And now, when long years, the best years of early
manhood, had been expended freely, ungrudgingly in the
conflict with Nature, was the workman, the junior partner
in the enterprise, well paid, well fed and housed during the
doubtful campaign, the loss of which could smite to ruin the
senior, to lay his rash destroying hand upon the beneficent
structure he had helped to raise?
59Pulling down in suicidal mania, at the bidding of a secret
caucus, the industrial temple, which so surely would whelm
him and his fellows in its ruins!
Ayrshire Downs woolshed followed suit. At Murweh, the
roll of shearers was about to be called, and fifty thousand
sheep were ready for the shears, when it was set on fire and
burned—all the preparations for shearing rendered useless. A
makeshift woolshed would probably be run up, which meant
loss of time—hasty indifferent work, a few thousand pounds
loss and damage inevitable. At Combe-Marten a station
hand was shot, and several prisoners committed to take
their trial at Rockhampton. The woolshed at Errangalla
was burned to the ground.
The Netallie shed, with eighty thousand sheep in readiness,
was attempted to be set on fire—kerosene having been profusely
exhibited for the purpose—but, with all the goodwill
(or rather bad) in the world, the plot miscarried. After a
riot at Netallie a large force of Unionists attempted, but
failed, to abduct the free labourers.
At Grasmere woolshed the police were compelled to use
firearms. Shortly before 9 P.M. a hundred Unionists came
to Grasmere, and gathered at the men's huts, saying that they
were armed and determined to bring out the free labourers.
Sergeant M'Donagh said they could not be allowed to do so.
He was felled to the ground, and the door of the free
labourers' hut smashed in with a battering-ram. Shots were
exchanged between the police and the Unionists. Two of
the latter were wounded. One free labourer fired with a
revolver. The attacking party then retired, taking the wounded
men with them.
The police overtook them, and, taking charge of the
wounded men, conveyed them to Wilcannia Hospital in a
buggy. One was shot in the left breast; the other near the
same spot. The bullet travelled to the back, near the spine.
From the size of the bullet it would appear to have been fired
by a free labourer, the police navy revolvers carrying a
larger bullet.
Unaware of the extreme length to which 'the ethics of
war' (to use a phrase grandiloquently applied in one of Mr.
Stead's harangues) had been pushed, Bill Hardwick and his
comrades rode gay and unheeding 'down the river.'
60They were within a dozen miles of Moorara, and had
travelled late in order to get to the station that evening, as
shearing had commenced. An unwonted sight presented
itself. Before them lay a large encampment, from which
many voices made themselves heard, and around which were
fires in all directions. 'Hulloa!' said one of the men, 'what's
all this? Have they moved the station up, or what is it?
Have the men got to camp here because of the grass, and
ride to Moorara and back, like boys going to school?'
'By Jove! it's a Union Camp,' said Bill; 'we'd better look
out. They're a rough lot here by all accounts. They might
go for us if they hear we've dropped the A.S.U.—for a bit.'
'I don't see as they can do much,' said a grey-haired
man, one of the best shearers in the shed. 'We've come
last from a Union shed. We've no call to say more nor that
till we get to Moorara.'
'That's all right,' said a younger man, who, like Hardwick,
was a selector on the Upper Waters, 'but that sweep Janus
Stoate might have wired to the delegate here and put us
away. Anyhow, we'll soon see.'
'Who goes there?' suddenly demanded a voice from the
pine scrub. 'Who are you, and where from?'
'Who are you, if it comes to that?' answered Bill. 'Is
this here an army, and are you goin' to take the bloomin'
country, that a man can't ride down the river on his own
business?'
'We'll soon learn yer,' said the man who had challenged.
'Where are yer from last?'
'From Tandara. It's a Union shed, I believe, and we shore
under Union Rules.'
'We know all about that. What's yer name—is it William
Hardwick?'
'I never was called anything else,' answered Bill, who,
now that he had got his monkey up (as he would have said),
cared for nothing and nobody.
'Well, yer accused by the delegate, as was in charge of
that shed, of disobedience of orders; also of conspiring to
bring the Union into contempt, and of being on the way, with
others, to shear at a non-Union shed against the interests of
the Australian Workers' Federated Union. What d'ye say in
reply to the charge?'
61'Go to the devil,' said Bill, at the same time spurring his
horse. But the strange man jumped at his bridle-rein, and
though Bill got in a right-hander, before he could get loose,
armed men broke out of the pine clump, and, rifle in hand,
forced the party to dismount.
'Tie their hands,' said the leader. 'We'll show the bally
"scabs" what it is to pal in with the squatters, as have ground
down the workers long enough. March 'em up to the camp
and bring 'em afore the Committee.'
'This is a jolly fine state of things,' said one of the
younger men of Bill's party. 'I used to believe this was a
free country. One would think we was horse-stealers or
bushrangers. Are ye goin' to hang us, mate?'
'You hold yer gab, youngster, or it'll be the worse for you.
We'll straighten yer a bit, afore yer goes shearin' again in
the wrong shed,' said a man behind him, sourly, at the same
time giving him a blow on the back with the butt-end of a
rifle.
'By——! if my hands was loose, I'd give yer something
to remember Dan Doolan by, yer cowardly, sneakin', underhand
dog, crawlin' after fellers like Stoate, keepin' honest men
out o' work, and spendin' it on spoutin' loafers. Well, we'll
see who comes out on top, anyhow,' upon which Mr. Dan
Doolan relapsed into silence—being 'full up,' as he would
have expressed it, of 'Government of the people, by the people,
for the people,' in its logical outcome.
Arrived at the camp, they were surrounded by a crowd of
men, looking less like workmen of any kind than an array of
freebooters. Nearly all had arms. Others had apparently put
them by for the night. They affected a raffish, semi-military
rig, and evidently regarded themselves as revolutionists;
which, in point of fact, they were. Not as yet, perhaps, ripe
for a policy of plunder and bloodshed, but within measurable
distance of it—needing but an accidental contest with the
police or a well-defended station (and there were such) to be
irrevocably committed to it.
A great show of form and ceremony was aimed at, as Bill
and his companions in captivity were brought before half-a-dozen
serious-looking individuals, seated before a table outside
of a tent of larger than average size. One man was in the
centre, and was addressed as Mr. President.
62'Have you brought the suspected individuals, mentioned
in the communication received by the Committee this morning,
before us?'
'Yes, Mr. President. Here they are. We found them
close by the camp, a-ridin' towards Moorara.'
'What are their names?'
The apprehending personage read out from a telegraph
form the names of William Hardwick, Daniel Doolan, George
Bond, Donald MacCallum, James Atkins, Joseph Warner,
John Stevens, Cyrus Cable, Thomas Hyland, John Jones,
William Murphy, Jacob Dawson, and Martin Hannigan.
'You stand charged with obstructing the work of the
Delegate of the A.S.U. at Tandara, and disobeying an order
to come out, sent by the duly authorised Vice-President at
Wagga Wagga. How do you plead?'
'Is this a bally Supreme Court?' inquired Bill. 'What are
we to plead for? I never signed no agreement to obey a pair
of loafers like Stoate and Stead. I've seen one of 'em beg
rations from a squatter, layin' by to do him all the harm in
his power, and the other tried his best to take their money
out of the pockets of hard-working men at Tandara. You
may talk till you're black in the face, I'm not goin' to play at
court work, for you or any other blatherskite, and so I tell
you.'
'Remove these men to the lock-up hut, and place a sentry
before the door,' said the chairman, with dignity.
So Bill and Co. were hauled off, and bundled into a small
hut, where they spent the night without food or bedding.
Their swags had been considerately taken care of, and
their horses turned out among the camp herd for the night.
This done, they listened to the order given to the sentry to
shoot any man that attempted to come out; and much
musing upon the strange condition in which they found
themselves in their native country, spent the night in a most
unpleasant state of discomfort.
As for the corps d'armee—as they, no doubt, considered
themselves to be—they were more jovial and self-contained.
Songs and recitations were given, apparently met with
admiration and applause. Rifles and revolvers were discharged,
as well to have the loading replaced as to inform
any employés of the adjoining station that the camp was
63armed, and considered itself to be an independent, well-provided
contingent. Orations were made by speakers filled
with detestation of the tyranny of the squatter, and the
malignant nature of all Capital, except when diverted into the
pocket of the virtuous (and muscular) working-man.
Hints were thrown out, not too closely veiled, of the
retribution in store for those treacherous enemies of the
working-man, who, instead of supporting him, like brothers,
against the curse of Capital, presumed to have opinions of
their own, and exercised the right of private judgment even
against the interests of their own Order—this was a great word
with them. Dark suggestions were made with regard to a
cargo of free labourers (otherwise 'scabs' or blacklegs) now
coming down river in a steamboat. They were to be met
and 'dealt with,' after what fashion the speakers did not as
yet enlighten their hearers.
When the wire-pullers of the Australian Shearers' Union
had converted or terrorised the labourers of the land to such
an extent that employers were met at every turn by exorbitant
demands, or impossible regulations, it became necessary to
form a Pastoral Association to oppose the tyranny. For it
was evident that unless united action was taken they would
be no longer permitted to manage their own affairs.
The work and wages connected with an immense export,
with a property to the value of hundreds of millions sterling,
were to be regulated by irresponsible impecunious agents,
chosen by a plebiscite of labourers naturally unfitted for the
direction of affairs involving important national issues.
Some idea of the magnitude of the interests involved may
be gathered if it is considered that the cost of management of
the vast flock of sheep depastured on the freehold and Crown
lands of the colonies necessitates the paying away annually not
less than £10,000,000 sterling, most of which is expended
for wages, for shearing, and for stores. Shearing, which lasts
for a considerable period of each year, finds employment for
25,000 shearers, and the extra hands required in connection
with this work may be put up at 10,000 to 12,000.
The following figures tend to further explanation of the
position:—Value of freehold land on which stock is depastured,
£200,000,000 sterling; value of sheep and plant,
£100,000,000 sterling. The income from the properties is,
64as nearly as possible—from wool, say £22,000,000, from
surplus stock £5,250,000, and stock £27,250,000.
The outgoings will be—for wages, carriage, stores,
£10,000,000; interest on £300,000,000 capital at 5¾
per cent, £17,250,000; total outgoing, £27,250,000. The
returns are comparatively small, taking the whole of the population
together.
The frequent droughts, causing the loss of millions of
sheep, with other ills and ailments fatal to stock, have not
been taken into the calculation. The properties as a whole
will bear no increase in cost of management.
Another reason which actuated the employers, pastoralists,
merchants, and others connected with the pastoral industry,
was that the sudden withdrawal of their labourers was attended
with greater loss and expense than, say, in the case of mines
or shipping. The mines could be closed, the ships laid up.
Expenditure on the part of owners would then cease until
the strike was ended. But, on the far back stations, wells
had to be worked, wood carted for machinery, edible shrubs
cut for starving sheep, in default of which immediate loss of
stock to a very great extent would take place.
65
One of the methods which the Pastoralists were compelled to
use to defeat the attempted domination of the Shearers' Union
was to import free labour: men who were contented to work
for high wages and abundant food; to obey those who paid,
lodged, and fed them well. It may here be stated that the
fare in shearing time, provided for the shearers, the station
hands, and the supernumerary labourers, was such as might
well be considered not only sufficing and wholesome, but
luxurious, in any other part of the world. Three principal
meals a day, consisting of beef or mutton, good wheaten
bread, pudding, vegetables when procurable; three minor
repasts of scones and cakes, with tea ad libitum; the whole
well cooked, of good quality, with no limitation as to quantity.
Where is the rural labourer in Europe similarly provided?
Agencies were established in the principal towns of the
colonies. Men were hired and forwarded to such stations as
were in need. The cost of transit was paid by the associated
employers. They were forwarded by rail, by coach, on horseback,
or by steamer, as such transit was available. An unfair,
even illegal system of intimidation, under the specious name
of 'picketing,' to prevent the men thus engaged from following
their lawful occupation, came into vogue. Unionists were
stationed along roads or near stations, nominally to 'persuade'
the free labourers not to fulfil their agreements, but, in reality,
to threaten and abuse, not infrequently with brutal violence
to assault and ill-treat the nonconformists.
The majority of the Unionists were well-intentioned men,
led away by specious demagogues; but among them were
lawless ruffians, who, ignorantly prejudiced against their
66superiors and even their equals, who had risen in life by the
exercise of industry and thrift, were capable of any villainy,
not even stopping short of arson and bloodshed. Up to this
time the Ministry of the day had been tardy and over-cautious,
both in the protection of property and in the punishment of a
criminal crew. But they were gradually coming to a determination
to stop such disorders summarily. The strong
arm of the law was invoked to that intent. For too frequently
had peaceable workmen, under the ban of the Unionist tyranny,
been captured, ill-treated, robbed, and temporarily deprived
of their liberty.
Grown bold by previous toleration, the Union Camp by
Moorara had determined to make an example of this
particular steamer, with her load of free shearers and rouseabouts—to
teach them what the penalty was of withstanding
the Australian Shearers' Union and bringing a load of
blacklegs past their very camp.
It was nearly midnight when a scout galloped in to
announce that the Dundonald was within half a mile of the
camp, on her way down river with fifty free labourers on board.
'By the God of Heaven,' shouted a dissolute-looking
shearer, 'we'll give them a lesson to-night, if we never do it
again. I know the agent well—a d—d infernal swell,
who looks upon working-men as dogs, and talks to them like
the dirt under his feet. I told him I'd meet him some day,
and that day's come.'
'Come along, lads,' shouts an evil-faced larrikin from a
city lane; 'let's give it 'em hot. We'll burn their bloomin'
boat, and have roast blackleg for breakfast.'
'You'd as well mind your eye, my lad,' said a slow-speaking,
steady-going Sydney-sider, from Campbelltown.
'Seth Dannaker's the skipper of this boat—I can hear her
paddles now, and he'll shoot straight if you meddle with his
loadin'. You're not the sort to face Seth's pea-rifle, 'nless yer
got a fairish big tree in front of yer.'
Upon this discouraging statement, the product of 'a city's
smoke and steam'—under-sized, untended from childhood,
grown to manhood, untaught save in precocious villainy—slunk
into the background, while from the centre of a group
emerged the man who had posed as the 'President of the
Council,' and thus addressed the crowding shearers:—
67'Bring out Bill Hardwick and them other "scabs." We'll
have 'em in front when the shootin' begins. It'll do 'em good
to feel what their friends' tyranny's brought the people to.'
The sentry was directed to quit his post, and a score of
eager hands competed for the privilege of dragging out the
weary, famished men, and rushing with them to the river-bank,
while with slow, reverberating strokes the measured
beat of the paddles was heard, as the dimly-lighted hull of
the steamer showed amid the ebon darkness—the throbbing
of her overpowered engines sounding like the heart-beats of
some monstrous creature, slow-emerging from the channels
of a prehistoric morass.
'Boat ahoy!' shouted the President, with an accent
telling of a seaman's experiences. 'Heave to, and let us
have a look at your passenger list.'
'Who the hell are you, anyway?' was returned in answer—the
intonation confirming the Sydney-sider's information.
'What's my passenger list to you? I'm bound to Moorara,
and the men on board hev' their passage paid—that's all I've
to look to. Full steam ahead!'
A derisive laugh was the only answer from the river-bank.
But the skipper's complacency was of short duration, as a
violent shock almost dislodged him from the bridge, and
made every bit of loose timber, or unsecured deck cargo,
rock and rattle again. The Dundonald had gone full speed
against a wire rope, or rather against two twisted together,
which had been feloniously taken from a punt higher up the
river, because the misguided lessee had carried across free
labourers.
A yell of exultation burst from the excited crowd, now
fully determined to board the obnoxious steamer, while a
voice from their midst, after commanding silence, called out,
'Steamer ahoy!'
'Well, what is it? What do you want, stopping me on a
voyage? You'd as well take care; I'm a quiet man, but a
bad one to meddle with.'
'We want those infernal traitors you've got aboard.'
'And suppose I won't give up my passengers?'
'Then we'll burn yer bloomin' boat, and roast them and
you along with it. Don't yer make no mistake.'
'Then you'd better come and do it.'
68At this defiance, a chorus of yells and execrations ascended
through the warm, still air, as a hundred men dashed into the
tepid waters of the smooth stream, the slow current of which
hardly sufficed to bear them below the steamer's hull. Like
a swarm of Malay pirates, they clambered on the low rail of
the half barge, half steamer, which had done her share in
carrying the wool-crop of the limitless levels so many times to
the sea. But her last voyage had come. The crew
stubbornly resisted. Many a man fell backward, half stunned
by blows from marline-spikes and gun-stocks—though as yet
only a few shots were fired—and more than one of the rioters
narrowly escaped death by drowning. But the 'free
labourers,' disordered by the suddenness of the onslaught,
fought but half-heartedly. Outnumbered by ten to one, they
were driven back, foot by foot, till they were forced aft, almost
to the rail, before the skipper yielded.
A few shots had been fired from the bank before the
charge through the water was made, in the pious hope of
hitting the captain or one of the crew; better still, a free
labourer. They were promptly returned, and one of the men
nearest the leader fell, shot through the body. But at that
moment the leader's strident voice was heard. 'Stop firin';
I'll shoot the next man that holds up a gun. Let's catch 'em
alive and deal with 'em and their blasted boat afterwards.
There's enough of yer to eat 'em!'
When the surrender was imminent, the skipper had one of
the boats lowered—a broad-beamed, serviceable, barge-like
affair, in which great loads had been conveyed in the flooded
seasons—and putting a white cloth on to the end of his rifle-barrel,
called for a parley. It was granted.
'See here, yer darned pirates! I want a word or two.
There's a ton of powder on board, and the man you wounded
with your cowardly first shoot is sitting on a chair beside a
coil of fuse, with a sperm candle and a box of matches.
It's a sure thing he won't live, and he don't love the men
that took his life, foul and coward-like. I'm to fire this
revolver twice for a signal, and next minute we'll all go to
hell together, sociable like. Jump into the boat, men, and
take your guns, some grub, and a tarpaulin. Those that like
may stay with me—I stop with the ship.'
If there's anything that undisciplined men fear, it is an
69explosion of gunpowder. They did not know for certain
whether there was any on board. But if there was, there
was no time to lose. A panic seized them, one and all.
The crew descended into the boat in good order, obeying the
captain's commands. His cool, decided voice imposed upon
the rioters. They tumbled into the river by scores—knocking
over their comrades and even striking them, like men in a
sinking vessel, under the influence of fear—until the last man
had reached the bank, when they even ran some distance in
their terror before they could rid themselves of the fear of
hearing too late the thunderous roar of the explosion, and
being hurled into eternity in an instant.
The free labourers, on the other hand, from having assisted
in the navigation of the steamer in her slow voyage from
Echuca, had made themselves acquainted with every nook and
cranny and pound of cargo on the boat. They knew that
there was no magazine, nor any powder, and, divining the
captain's ruse, made for the opposite bank with all convenient
speed. Those who could swim, lost no time; and
those who could not, escaped into the bush, undisturbed by
the privateering crowd that had been so valorous a few
minutes before.
When the boat returned and not before, the captain
descended with deliberation, remarking, 'Now, lads, we've
got a clear track before us. There ain't no powder, there
ain't no wounded man, and I reckon them long-shore skunks
will find themselves in an all-fired mess when the police come.
There's a big body of 'em only ten miles from here, at
Moorara Station. We'll just make camp and have a snack—some
of us want it pretty bad. We'll build fires to
warm those that's wet—wood's plenty. Leave 'em burning
and make down river so's to warn the police under Colonel
Elliot. The Union army won't cross before morning, for
fear of the old tub blowing up and making a scatteration
among 'em.'
The programme was carried out. The night was of
Egyptian darkness. Supper was hastily disposed of. The
fires were freshly made up, and shortly afterwards the whole
contingent took the down-river road and by daylight were
miles away from the scene of the encounter.
The unusually large body of police which had been ordered
70up by the Government, to join with another force on the
Darling, had made rendezvous at Moorara, having heard from
a scout that mischief, rather above the ordinary limit, was
being enacted near Poliah. When, next morning, the captain
and crew of the Dundonald, with the greater portion of the
free labourers, arrived, a strong sensation was aroused. This
was an unparalleled outrage, and, if unchecked, meant the
commencement of Civil War, plain and undisguised.
What horrors might follow! A guerilla band, with its
attendant crimes—murder, pillage, outrage! Such a band of
reckless desperadoes, armed and mounted, like a regiment
of irregular horse, was sufficient to terrorise the country;
gathering on the march, till every criminal in the land that
could steal a horse and a gun would be added to their ranks
in a surprisingly short time.
Once launched on such a campaign of crime, the country
would be ravaged before a military force could be organised.
The proverbial snowball may be arrested at the first movement,
but after gathering velocity, it descends the mountain-side with
the force and fury of the avalanche.
The colonel in command of the Volunteers was a soldier
to whom border raids in wild lands, with a wilder foe, was
not unfamiliar. 'Boot and saddle' was sounded. Without
a moment's unnecessary delay, the troop was in full marching
order along the 'river road,' a well-marked trail, heading for
Poliah.
The night was still dark, but comparatively cool. No
inconvenience was felt as the men trotted briskly along and
joked as to the sort of battle in which they would engage.
'Bless yer, they won't fight, not if there was another
thousand of 'em,' said a grizzled sergeant, 'and every man
with the newest arm invented. I've seen mobs afore. Men
as ain't drilled and disciplined never stands a charge.'
'They've got rifles and revolvers, I know,' said a younger
man, 'and they can shoot pretty straight, some of 'em.
Suppose they keep open order, and pepper us at long
range? What's to keep 'em from droppin' us that way,
from cover, and then makin' a rush?'
'There's nothin' to keep 'em, only they won't do it,' replied
the sergeant oracularly. 'They know the law's agin' 'em,
which means a lot in Australia—so far. Besides that, they've
71never faced a charge, or don't know what it's like to
stiffen up in line. You'll see how they'll cut it when they
hear the colonel give the word, not to mention the bugle-call.
Why, what the devil——?'
Then the sergeant, ending his sentence abruptly, almost
halted, as a column of flame rose through the night air,
sending up tongues of flame and red banners through the
darkness which precedes the dawn.
'D—d if they haven't burned the bloomin' steamer!'
quoth he. 'What next, I'd like to know? This country's
going to the devil. I always thought it was a mistake
sending our old regiment away.'
'Halt!' suddenly rang out in the clear, strong tones of
the colonel—the voice of a man who had seen service and
bore the tokens of it in a tulwar slash and a couple of bullet
wounds. 'These fellows have set fire to the steamer, and of
course she will burn to the water's edge. They will hardly
make a fight of it though. In case they do, sergeant, take
twenty men and skirt round so as to intercept their left wing.
I'll do myself the honour to lead the charge on their main
body, always supposing they wait for us to come up.'
The character of the resistance offered proved the sergeant's
estimate to be absolutely correct. A few dropping shots were
heard before the police came up, but when the rioters saw the
steady advance of a hundred mounted men—an imposing
cavalry force for Australia—saw Colonel Elliot, who rode at
their head with his sword drawn, heard the clanking of the
steel scabbards and the colonel's stern command, 'Charge!'
they wavered and broke rank in all directions.
'Arrest every man on the river-bank with firearms in his
hands,' roared the colonel. The sergeant, with a dozen of
his smartest troopers, had each their man in custody a few
seconds after the order was given—Bill Hardwick among the
rest, who was fated to illustrate the cost of being found among
evil-doers. One man alone made a desperate resistance, but
after a crack from the butt-end of a carbine, he accepted his
defeat sullenly. By the time his capture was complete, so
was the rout of the rebel array. Hardly a man was to be
seen, while the retreating body of highly irregular horse
sounded like a break-out from a stock-yard.
Matters had reached the stage when the stokers at the Gas
72Works were 'called out,' and the city of Melbourne threatened
with total darkness after 6 P.M.
Then a volunteer corps of Mounted Rifles was summoned
from the country. The city was saved from a disgraceful panic—perhaps
from worse things. The Unionist mob quailed at
the sight of the well-mounted, armed, and disciplined body of
cavalry, whose leader showed no disposition to mince matters,
and whose hardy troopers had apparently no democratic doubts
which the word 'Charge!' could not dispel.
At the deserted Gas Works, aristocratic stokers kept the
indispensable flame alight until the repentant, out-colonelled
artisans returned to their work.
This was the crisis of the struggle—the turning-point of
the fight; as far as the element of force was concerned, the
battle was over. It showed, that with proper firmness, which
should have been exhibited at the outset, the result is ever
the same. The forces of the State, with law and justice behind
them, must overawe any undisciplined body of men attempting
to terrorise the body politic in defence of fancied rights
or the redress of imaginary wrongs.
The rioting in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney was
promptly abated when the citizen cavalry, 'armed and accoutred
proper,' clanked along Collins Street in Melbourne, while
Winston Darling led the sons of his old friends and schoolfellows,
who drove the high-piled wool waggons in procession
down George Street in Sydney to the Darling Harbour
Warehouses.
Much was threatened as to the latter demonstration, by
blatant demagogues, who described it as 'a challenge; an insult
to labour.' It was a challenge, doubtless—a reminder that Old
New South Wales, with the founders of the Pastoral Industry—that
great export now reaching the value of three hundred
millions sterling—was not to be tyrannised over by a misguided
mob, swayed by self-seeking, irresponsible agitators.
No doubt can exist in the minds of impartial observers
that if the Ministries of the different colonies over which this
wave of industrial warfare passed, in the years following 1891,
had acted with promptness and decision at the outset, the
heavy losses and destructive damage which followed might
have been averted.
But the labour vote was strong—was believed, indeed, to
73be more powerful than it proved to be when tested. And
the legislatures elected by universal suffrage were, in consequence,
slow to declare war against the enemies of law and
order.
They temporised, they hesitated to take strong measures.
They tacitly condoned acts of violence and disorder. They
permitted 'picketing,' a grossly unfair, even illegal (see Justice
Bramwell's ruling) form of intimidation, employed to terrorise
the free labourers.
The natural results followed. Woolsheds were burned,
notably the Ayrshire Downs; the Cambridge Downs shed, 4th
August 1894; Murweh, with 50,000 sheep to be shorn—roll
to be called that day. Fences were cut, bridges sawn through,
stock were injured, squatters and free labourers were assaulted
or grossly reviled.
Everything in the way of ruffianism and disorder short of
civil war was practised, apparently from one end of Australia
to the other, before the Executive saw fit to intervene to
check the excesses of the lawless forces which, well armed and
mounted, harassed the once peaceful, pastoral Arcadia.
At length the situation became intolerable; the governing
powers, with the choice before them of restraining bands of
condottieri or abdicating their functions, woke up.
It was high time. From the 'Never Never' country in
remotest Queensland, from the fabled land 'where the pelican
builds her nest' to the great Riverina levels of New South
Wales, from the highlands of the Upper Murray and the Snowy
River to the silver mines of the Barrier, a movement arose,
which called itself Industrial Unionism, but which really
meant rebellion and anarchy.
It was rebellion against all previously-accepted ideas of
government. If carried out, it would have subverted social
and financial arrangements. It would have delivered over the
accumulated treasure of 'wealth and knowledge and arts,'
garnered by the thrift, industry, and intelligence of bygone
generations, to one section of the workers of the land—the
most numerous certainly, but incontestably the least intelligent—to
be wasted in a brief and ignoble scramble.
The list of outrages, unchecked and unpunished, during
this period, makes painful reading for the lover of his country.
A distinguished and patriotic member of the 'Australian
74Natives' Association,' in one of his addresses before that body,
declared 'that, for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed of
his native country.' That feeling was shared by many of his
compatriots, as day after day the telegrams of the leading
journals added another to the list of woolsheds deliberately
set on fire, of others defended by armed men—sometimes,
indeed, unsuccessfully.
When the directors of the Proprietary Silver Mine at
Broken Hill saw fit to diminish the number of miners, for
which there was not sufficient employment, it was beleaguered
by an armed and threatening crowd of five thousand men.
A real siege was enacted. No one was allowed to pass the
lines without a passport from the so-called President of the
Miners' Committee.
For three days and nights, as the Stipendiary Magistrate
stated (he was sent up specially by the New South Wales
Government, trusting in his lengthened experience and proved
capacity), the inmates of the mine-works sat with arms in their
hands, and without changing their clothes, hourly expectant
of a rush from the excited crowd.
The crisis was, however, tided over without bloodshed,
chiefly owing, in the words of a leading metropolitan journal,
to the 'admirable firmness and discretion' displayed by the
official referred to—now, alas! no more. He died in harness,
fulfilling his arduous and responsible duties to the last, with a
record of half a century of official service in positions of high
responsibility, without a reflection in all that time having been
cast upon his integrity, his courage, or his capacity.
More decisive action was taken, and was compelled to be
taken, in Queensland than in the other colonies.
There, owing to the enormous areas necessarily occupied
by the Pastoralists, the immense distances separating the holdings
from each other, and, perhaps, the heterogeneous nature
of the labour element, the acts of lawlessness became more
serious and menacing. A military organisation was therefore
found to be necessary. Volunteers were enrolled. Large
bodies of these troops and of an armed constabulary force
were mobilised, and many of the incidental features of a civil
war were displayed to a population that had rarely seen firearms
discharged in anger.
The nomadic population had been largely recruited from
75the criminals of other colonies, who, fleeing from justice, were
notoriously in the habit of crossing the Queensland border,
and evading a too searching inquiry.
These were outlaws in the worst sense of the word;
desperate and degraded, conversant with undetected crime,
and always willing to join in the quasi-industrial revolts,
unfortunately of everyday occurrence.
In these, bloodshed was barely avoided, while hand-to-hand
fights, inflicting grievous bodily injury, were only too common.
76
After the burning of the Dundonald, a score of the rioters
had been arrested and imprisoned. But owing to the confusion
of the mêlée and the prompt dispersion of the Unionists
it had been found difficult to procure the necessary identification
and direct evidence of criminality. Thus, after some
weeks of imprisonment, all were discharged except six
prisoners, among whom, unfortunately for himself and his
family, was that notorious malefactor, William Hardwick. Fate,
in his case, would appear to have leaned to the wrong side!
His appearance and manner had so favourably impressed
the Bench of Magistrates, before whom, after several remands,
he and his fellow-prisoners had been brought, that they were
on the point of discharging him, when Janus Stoate was
tendered by the Sub-Inspector of Police in charge of the
case as a material witness for the Crown. He had kept in
the background after he saw the affair well started, taking
care to be heard protesting against violence on the part of the
Unionists. Having been sworn, he admitted his connection
with them, to the extent of belonging to the camp and having
acted as a delegate, appointed by the Council of the Australian
Shearers' Union. He had worked last at Tandara woolshed.
At that station the men had completed their contract and
been paid off in the usual way. He as delegate had received
notice from the President of the Union to call out the shearers
before shearing was concluded. They declined, temporarily,
and a messenger, elected by the men, was sent to Wagga
Wagga for further instructions.
Before he returned, the shed had 'cut out'—finished
77shearing, that is. He could not say he approved of the
arrangement, but was glad that the contract was completed
and all settled amicably. He was an upholder of passive
resistance, and could bring witnesses to prove that he dissuaded
the men from violence.
'Did he know the defendant, William Hardwick?'
'Yes, very well—he was sorry to see him in this position.'
'Had he seen him inciting or assisting the men who were
concerned in the burning of the steamer?'
'No, he could not say that he had, but——'
The witness was urged to explain, which he did, apparently
with unwillingness.
'He had seen him standing by the river-bank, with a gun
in his hand.'
'Did he discharge the gun?'
'Yes, he did; he saw him put the gun to his shoulder and
fire.'
'Was it directed at any one of the crew of the Dundonald?'
'He could not say that. The night was dark—just before
daylight. He fired at or near somebody, that was all he could
say.'
'That will do.'
Another Unionist witness was brought forward. This man
was actuated by a revengeful spirit towards the free labourers,
and especially towards those shearers that had opposed the
Union. He therefore gave damaging evidence against Bill
and his companions. He swore that he had seen Hardwick—that
was his name, he believed—anyway he was the 'blackleg'
now before the Court—loading and firing, like some of the
camp men.
He was warned not to use the expression 'blackleg,' as it
was disrespectful to the Court. Such conduct might lead to
his being committed for contempt of Court and imprisoned.
The witness had 'done time' in another colony, been
before a Court more than once or twice probably. He
laughed impudently, saying, 'He didn't mean no offence, but
it was 'ard on a man, as was true to his fellow-workers, to
keep his tongue off such sneaks.'
This was one of the cases where a magistrate, not being
able to deal effectively with a witness, will take as little
offence as possible, so as to get him out of the box and have
78done with him. In a city or county town such a man would
be sent to gaol for twenty-four hours, for contempt of Court,
to appear next morning in a chastened frame of mind. But
as the fire-raisers were to be committed for trial and forwarded
under escort to the Circuit Court at Wagga Wagga, nothing
would be gained by delaying the whole affair for the purpose
of punishing a single witness.
So poor Bill, being asked by the magistrate what he had
to say in his defence, made a bungling job of it, as many an
innocent man, under the circumstances, has done before, and
will again.
'He could only state, that though seen among the Unionist
rioters, he was there under compulsion; that he and his
mates, who had come from Tandara, had determined, after
seeing the unfair way in which the sheds that "shore Union"
had been ordered out, to cut loose from the tyranny. But
they had been captured by the rioters at Moorara; made
to carry arms and stand in front, where they were nearly being
shot. As God was his Judge, he never fired a shot or meant
to fire one. He would far rather have emptied his gun at
the fellows who had robbed and ill-treated him—for his
horses, saddles, and swag were "put away," he believed, his
cheque and loose money were gone, and he had nothing but
what he stood up in. What call had he to hurt the boat, or
any one aboard her? It was the other way on. The witnesses
had perjured themselves, particularly Janus Stoate, who had
eaten his bread and borrowed money from him in times
past, and now was swearing falsely, to ruin him, and rob his
wife and children of their home. He had no more to say.'
Unluckily for poor Bill, several of the accused, who were
guilty, had made substantially the same defence. They were
proved, by the evidence of the crew of the Dundonald and
the police, to have been actively aiding and abetting in the
outrage. One, indeed, who tried to look virtuous and made
a plausible speech, had been seen pouring kerosene over the
doomed steamer, preparatory to her being set on fire.
This prejudiced the Bench against all defences of the same
nature as Bill's. He might, of course, have called on his
mates, who had left the Tandara shed with him, resolving to
sever all connection with the Union. They would, of course,
have been able to corroborate his story, and have ensured
79his discharge. But, here again, Fate (or else blind Chance,
which she too often resembles) was against him. 'Fortune's
my foe,' he might have quoted, with reason, had such literary
morceaux been in his line.
One of the shearers from Tandara, being a smart bushman,
had escaped, in the uncertain light and confusion of the mêlée,
and discovering the horses of the party, feeding by themselves,
in an angle of the station fence, caught the quietest of the lot,
annexed a stray halter, and ran them into a yard. He then
returned to the insurgents, and mingling with the crowd,
managed to warn his comrades, except Bill, who was wedged
in between two armed men, with another at his back, by
special instruction of Stoate. Leaving unostentatiously, they
escaped notice, and providing themselves with saddles and
bridles from the numbers which lay on the ground outside of
tents, or on horizontal limbs of trees, departed quietly, and by
sundown were many a mile away on the road to the next non-Union
station. They would not have abandoned their
companion had they the least idea of what he was likely to
undergo at the hands of the law; but the last thought that
could have entered into their heads would be that he was liable
to arrest and trial in connection with the burning of the steamer.
So, believing that they might run serious risk by remaining
among the excited, dangerous crowd, at the same time being
powerless to do him any good, they decided to clear off.
As there was sworn evidence to incriminate him without
available witnesses to testify in his favour, the Bench had no
alternative but to commit William Hardwick for trial at the
next ensuing Assize Court, to be holden at Wagga Wagga.
Thither, with the other prisoners, ruffians with whom he
could neither sympathise nor associate, was poor Bill, manacled
and despairing, sent off in the up-river coach, a prey to anxiety
and despondent imaginings.
What would be Jenny's feelings when she saw in an extract
from the Wilcannia Watchman, too faithfully copied into the
Talmorah Advertiser:—
'Outrage by Unionists.
'Burning of the "Dundonald."
'Arrest and trial before the Bench of Magistrates at
Tolarno. William Hardwick, John Jones, J. Abershaw,
80T. Murphy, and others, committed for trial at next Assize
Court. Severe sentences may be looked for.'
Jenny's distress at this announcement may be imagined.
She had not heard from Bill since he left Tandara, at which
time he had written in good spirits, mentioning the amount of
his cheque, and his resolution to cut loose from the Shearers'
Union (which he was sorry he ever joined), and more particularly
from Stoate and all his works.
'It's that villain, and no one else,' cried poor Jenny. 'I
knew he'd do Bill a mischief before he'd done with him—a
regular snake in the grass. I'd like to have a crack at him
with a roping pole. He's worked round poor Bill, some road
or other, who's that soft and straightforward, as any man could
talk him over—and yet I wonder, after what he wrote——'
And here Jenny took Bill's last letter out of her homely
treasure-chest, read it once more and cried over it, after which
she dried her eyes and changed her dress, preparatory to
seeking counsel of Mr. Calthorpe, the banker in the township.
This gentleman received her sympathetically, and heard all she
had to say, before giving an opinion.
In small and remote centres of population such as Talmorah
the bank manager is, even more than the clergyman or the
doctor, the 'guide, philosopher, and friend' of the humbler
classes, whom he chiefly advises for their good, and, in
moderation, aids pecuniarily, if he can do so, with safety to the
bank. He is often young, but, from a wider than ordinary
outlook on men and affairs, endowed with discretion beyond
his years. For Jenny and her husband he had a genuine
liking and respect, based chiefly on his knowledge of character,
but partly on the creditable state of Bill's bank account.
'It's a bad business, Mrs. Hardwick,' he said, when Jenny
had concluded her story in a fit of weeping, which she could
not restrain. 'And Bill's the last man I should have expected
to be mixed up with this affair. It's wonderful what harm
this strike business is doing all over Australia. However, it's
no use thinking of that. The question is, how to help your
husband out of the trouble, now he's in it. He's only committed
now—which doesn't go for much. It's the trial before
the Judge and Jury we have to look to.'
Here Mr. Calthorpe took down a file of newspapers and
looked through them. 'Yes, I thought so; to be tried at
81next ensuing Assize Court at Wagga. You'd like him to have
a lawyer to defend him, wouldn't you?'
'Of course I would,' replied the loyal wife. 'We've
worked hard for our bit of money, but I'd spend the last
shilling of it before Bill should go to gaol.'
'Quite right. Bill's man enough to make more—his
liberty's the main thing. Well, I'll send a letter by this
night's mail to the Manager of our bank at Wagga and ask
him to see Mr. Biddulph, the solicitor—I was stationed there
years ago—and he'll get him off if any one can. Money is
wanted, though, to pay witnesses' expenses—you must be
prepared for that.'
'Whatever's wanted, let him have, in God's name,' Jenny
cried recklessly. 'You know Bill's good for it, sir, and I've
butter-money saved up of my own. Bill always let me keep
that. I've got it in this bag. It will do to begin with.'
'Never mind that,' said the banker, good-humouredly. 'I
have your deeds, you know, and the balance is on the right
side of your account. So don't be down-hearted, and I'll let
you know as soon as I hear from Biddulph. Good-bye, and
keep up your spirits; fretting won't do you any good, or Bill
either. All right, Mr. Mason,' he said, as his assistant, after
knocking, looked in at the door; 'tell Mr. Thornhill I can see
him in a minute.'
'I'll never forget your kindness,' said Jenny, as she shook
hands warmly with the friend in need. 'You'll let me know
directly you hear anything.'
'You may depend on that. Good-bye till Saturday; the
up-river mail will be in then.' As she passed out, a stoutish,
middle-aged man came in.
'Morning, Calthorpe. Comforting the widow or the orphan?
Saw she was in trouble.'
'Deuced hard lines,' said the Manager gravely. 'Very
decent people—selectors at Chidowla, near Curra Creek. Her
husband's got into trouble—committed for trial about that
burning of the Dundonald.'
'Serve him right, too. Those Union fellows are playing
the deuce all over the country. If they're not stopped there's
no saying what they'll do next. The country's going to
the devil. The Government won't act with decision, while
property is being destroyed and life menaced every day. I
82don't blame the men so much; it's these rascally agitators
that ought to suffer, and they mostly get out of it.'
'I'll never believe that Bill Hardwick went in for the steamer-burning
business,' said the banker, 'though he seems to have
got mixed up with it somehow. There's some cur working it,
I'm sure. He's got a decent stake in the country himself.
He'd never risk losing his farm and the money that he's saved.
I won't believe it till it's proved.'
'But he must have been with those Union fellows or they
couldn't have arrested him,' answered the squatter. 'What
was he doing in a Union Camp? Comes of keeping bad
company, you see. I'm sorry for his wife—she seems a good
sort; but if a man takes up with such people, he must pay
the penalty.'
And then the Manager went keenly into his client's business,
removing all thought of Bill's hard luck and Jenny's sad
face from his mental vision. But after his day's work was
done, and his books duly posted up, as he took his usual
walk round the outskirts of the township, the 'case of William
Hardwick, charged with arson in the matter of the steamer
Dundonald,' recurred again and again with almost painful
iteration.
'Must be a put-up job!' he ejaculated, as he turned towards
the unpretending four-roomed cottage which served
him for dwelling-place, office, and treasure-house. His clerk
and assistant, a young fellow of twenty, in training for higher
posts when the years of discretion had arrived, slept there
with him.
But both took their meals in the best hotel of the township
(there were only two)—a more interesting way of managing
the commissariat than house-keeping where servants were
scarce, as well as presenting distinct advantages from the
cooking side. It may be added that they were never absent
from the bank at the same time.
In addition to the convenience of the latter arrangement
a country banker in Australia finds his account in a general
suavity of demeanour. Bits of information then fall in his
way, which a less cordial manner would not have attracted.
At the ordinary table of the Teamsters' Arms, Talmorah,
being a great 'carrying centre,' all sorts and conditions of
men were represented. Not that the partially renovated swagman
83or bullock-driver sat at meat with the correctly attired
squatter, station-manager, or commercial traveller. Such is
not the fashion in rural Australia. Meals, except in case of
illness, are not served in private rooms—a limited staff of
servants forbidding such luxury. But a second table is provided,
of which the lower tariff practically effects a separation
between the socially unequal sections. If not, a hint is never
wanting from the prudent but decisive landlord.
At the bar counter, however, a nearer approach to democratic
equality is reached; and it was here that Mr. Calthorpe
caught a few words that decided him to ask for a glass of beer,
while a rather heated argument was being carried on.
'Heard about Bill Hardwick fallin' in, over that steamer-burnin'
racket?' queried a sunburnt teamster, whose dust-enveloped
garb and beard proclaimed a long and wearisome
trail.
'We all heard of it,' answered the man addressed—an
agricultural-appearing person, not so distinctively 'back-block'
in appearance as the first speaker—'and we're dashed sorry
it's true in this quarter. Bill's a neighbour of mine, and a
straighter chap never stepped. I don't hold with that sort of
foolishness that the Union's been carryin' on lately. I joined
'em and so did Bill, and I'd be as well pleased I hadn't
now, and so'd he I reckon. But as for him helpin' to burn
a steamer, I'd just as soon believe he'd stick up this bank.'
'Banks is one thing and Union leaders is another,' decided
the man from the waste, finishing a portentous 'long sleever.'
'But a chap's fool enough to go with his crowd now and
again; he don't care about being ticketed as a "blackleg."
Why shouldn't Bill do it as well as another?'
'Because he's the wrong sort; he's married and has a
couple of kids. His wife's a hard-working, savin' kind of
woman as ever you see—always at it from daylight to dark.
Besides, he's lookin' to go in for another selection. That's
not the sort of chap that goes burnin' sheds and steamers.
It's a bloomin' plant, I'll take my oath.'
'That's your notion, is it?' quoth the teamster, who, having
imbibed as much colonial beer as would have half-drowned a
smaller and less desiccated man, was disposed to be confidential.
'I wouldn't say as you're far out. I was comin'
by Quambone with Bangate wool—forty-five bales of greasy—it's
84now onloadin', and I'd a yarn with a chap that was in the
Union Camp at Moorara. He kep' as far back as he could,
and cleared out first chance. Of course they was all mixed
up when the firin' came, and some of 'em, as hadn't wanted to
go too far, took their chance to cut it. But afore he went, he
heard Stoate ('you know him?'—the listener nodded) tell
another of the "committy," as they called theirselves, "that
he'd fix up Bill Hardwick if it come to a trial—if any man
had to do a stretch over it, he'd not get off."
'"How'll you work that?" says the other cove. "He's
never gone solid along of us; and now he'll be dead agen
Unionism, and no wonder. He told some one this morning
he'd lost his shearing cheque."'
'So that's the way they nobbled him,' said his hearer.
'Infernal bloomin' scoundrels to swear a man's liberty away.
Bill's got a friend or two yet, though, and money in the bank,
though some of them spoutin' loafers has his cheque in their
pockets. So long.'
The gaunt, sun-baked teamster departed to turn out his
bullocks, and generally recreate after his journey, deferring
till the morrow the pleasant process of receiving his cheque
for carriage and safe delivery of his valuable load—over five
hundred pounds' worth of merino wool.
But Mr. Calthorpe, the banker, who, without listening to
the whole conversation, had caught Bill's name occasionally,
touched Donahue's arm (for that perfunctory agriculturist it
was) as he turned reluctantly homeward, and questioned him
concerning his late acquaintance's words.
Nothing loath, indeed gratified with the chance of
placating the local potentate who wielded the power of
life and death (financially) over him and others, he cheerfully
disclosed all that he had heard, being, moreover, a good-natured,
obliging sort of fellow, as indeed thriftless persons
often are.
'Now, look here, Donahue!' said the great man. 'I've a
liking for Hardwick, whom I've always found a steady and
industrious chap, that it's a pleasure to help. Some men are
not built that way, Dick'—here he looked Donahue squarely
in the face. 'They idle their time, and spend the money
drinking and horse-racing that ought to go to paying their
debts and keeping the wife and children.' Mr. Donahue
85looked embarrassed, and gazed into the distance. 'But I
want your help to take this business out of winding, and
if you'll work with me, I might—I don't say I will, mind you—recommend
the Bank to give you time to pay off the
arrears on your selection.'
Dick Donahue, whose cheerful demeanour covered an
aching heart and remorseful feelings whenever he thought
of the possibility of the family losing their home because of
his want of steady industry, turned round, almost with the
tears in his eyes, as he said, not without a touch of natural
dignity—
'Mr. Calthorpe, I'd do what I could for Bill, who's a
better man than myself, with all the veins of my heart—as
poor old father used to say—and ask no return in the world;
and for Jenny Hardwick, who's been a good head to Biddy
and the children (more shame for me that they wanted help),
I'd risk my life any day. And if you think well of givin' me
more time to pay up, I've got a fencing contract from Mr.
Dickson, after the New Year, and I'll never touch a drop till
it's finished, and give you an order on him for the lot.'
'All right, Dick, we can arrange that; you work like a
man and do your duty to your family, and you'll find a friend
in me.' He held out his hand, which the repentant prodigal
shook fervently, and turned away without another word.
Nothing more was said on that day, but in the following
week Richard Donahue, fairly well turned out, and riding a
horse 'fit to go for a man's life,' as he expressed it, started
'down river,' leaving Mrs. Bridget in a state of mind very
different from that with which she ordinarily regarded her
husband's absence from home 'on business,' always uncertain
as to return and rarely satisfactory as to remuneration.
86
The inland town of Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales,
historically celebrated as the dwelling-place of the Tichborne
Claimant, where that lapsed scion of the aristocracy followed
the indispensable but not socially eminent occupation of
butcher, was, if not en fête, pardonably excited at the arrival
of the Judge and officers of the Assize Court to be holden
on the morrow.
This traditional spectacle—almost as interesting as the
Annual Race Meeting or the Agricultural Show—was afforded
to the inhabitants at half-yearly intervals. The curiosity
aroused by these unfamiliar personages, before whom were
decided the issues of freedom or imprisonment, life or death,
was concentrated and intense. The Judge who presided,
the Bar, the Deputy Sheriff, the Crown Prosecutor, the
Associate, were objects of admiration to the denizens of a
city three hundred miles from a metropolis—chiefly ignorant
of other than rural life, and to whom the ocean itself was
almost unknown. To the jurymen, culled from the town
dwellers and the surrounding farms, the summons to aid in
the administration of justice was a memorable solemnity.
The compulsory withdrawal from their ordinary avocations
was fully compensated by urban pleasures, and doubtless
aided their intelligent comprehension of the laws of the land.
Among the townspeople a certain amount of social festivity
was deemed appropriate to the occasion.
It may therefore be imagined that among the young men
and maidens the infrequent procession of the Judge's carriage,
escorted by the Superintendent of Police and half-a-dozen
87troopers, well armed, mounted, and accurately turned out,
created a thrill of pleasurable anticipation.
These feelings were heightened by the fact that Wagga
(as, for convenience, the thriving town on the Murrumbidgee
River was chiefly designated) stood at the edge of a vast
pastoral district, being also bounded by one of the finest
agricultural regions of Australia.
The cases to be tried at this sitting of the Court concerned
as well the great pastoral interest as the army of labourers,
to whom that interest paid in wages not less than ten millions
sterling annually.
Punctually as the Post-office clock struck ten, the Court
House was filled, great anxiety being shown to behold the
six prisoners, who were marched from the gaol and placed
in the dock, a forbidding-looking, iron-railed enclosure with
a narrow wooden seat. On this some promptly sat down,
while others stood up and gazed around with a well-acted
look of indifference. Bill Hardwick had never been in such
a place before, and the thought of what Jenny's feelings would
be if she had seen him there nearly broke his heart. He sat
with his head covered with his hands—the picture of misery
and despair. He knew that he was to be defended—indeed
had been closely questioned long before the day of trial about
his conduct on the eventful morning of the burning of the
Dundonald.
He had asserted his innocence in moving terms, such as
even touched the heart of the solicitor, hardened as he was
by long acquaintance with desperate criminals as well as cases
where plaintiffs, witnesses, and defendants all seemed to be
leagued in one striking exhibition of false swearing and prevarication
calculated to defeat the ends of justice.
'That's all right,' said the lawyer, 'and I believe every
word you've said, Bill, and deuced hard lines it is—not that
I believe defendants generally, on their oath or otherwise. But
you're a different sort, and it's a monstrous thing that you
should have to spend your hard-earned money on lawyers and
witnesses to defend yourself from a false charge. But what
we've got to look to, is to make the Judge and jury believe
you. These d—d scoundrels that were on for burning the
boat, saw you with a gun in your hand while the affair was
going on, and will swear to that, back and edge. Your friend
88Stoate, who isn't here yet, but will be up in time for the trial,
will clinch the nail, and he can bring the constable to back him
up, who saw you holding a gun. He doesn't say more than
that, but it goes to corroborate. The jury must go by sworn
evidence. There's only your own statement, which won't
weigh against deponents, who've apparently nothing to gain
on the other side.'
'It's all the spite of that hound Stoate,' cried out Bill
passionately. 'He was crabbed for my belittling him in the
Tandara shed. He's put those Unionists up to ruining me, and
I'll break his neck when I get out, if I have to swing for it.'
'No, you won't, Bill! If you get a sentence, which I hope
you won't, when you come out you'll be so jolly glad to find
yourself free, that you won't want to go back even for revenge.
But never mind that for the present; we must look things in
the face. It's a thousand pities you couldn't get some of
those chaps that were driven into the hut along with you, by
the Unionists, the first night. Any idea where they've gone?
Know their names?'
'They went down the river, I heard say. They're hundreds
of miles away by this time. What's the use of knowing their
names?'
'That's my business. It's wonderful how people turn up
sometimes. Come, out with their names—where they came
from—all you know about them.'
Thus adjured, Bill gave their names and a sketch of
personal appearance, home address, and so on. 'All of them
were natives, and some of them, when they were at home,
which was not often, had selections in the same district.' This
being done, Mr. Biddulph folded up the paper, and left Bill to
his reflections, telling him that he could do nothing more for
him at present, but to 'keep up his pecker,' and not to think
the race was over till the numbers were up.
This quasi-encouragement, however, availed him but little.
'He had lost his shearing cheque; and here was money,' he
sadly thought, 'being spent like water, to prove him innocent of
a crime for which he never should have been charged. His
wife would be nearly killed with anxiety, besides being made
aware that they could not now think of buying Donahue's or
any other selection. How everything had gone wrong since
he rode away from home that morning with Stoate (infernal,
89blasted traitor that he was!), and had been going from bad to
worse ever since. It was against Jenny's advice that he joined
the Union. She had a knack of being right, though she was not
much of a talker. Another time—but when would that be?'
So Bill—'a hunter of the hills,' more or less, as was the
Prisoner of Chillon—had to pass the weary hours until the day
of trial, and he could exchange the confinement of the gaol
for the expansive scenery of the dock—restricted as to space,
certainly, but having an outlook upon the world, and a sort of
companionship in the crowd of spectators, lawyers, and
witnesses, finishing up with the Judge.
At this judicial potentate Bill looked long and wistfully.
He had an idea that a Judge was a ruthless administrator of
hard laws, with a fixed prejudice against working-men who
presumed to do anything illegal, or in fact to trouble themselves
about anything but their work and wages. However,
he could not fail to see in this Judge a mild, serious, patient
gentleman, showing greater anxiety to understand the facts of
the case than to inflict sentences. Still, he was only partly
reassured. Might he not be one of those benevolent-seeming
ones—he had heard of such—who would talk sweetly to the
prisoner, reminding him of the happy days of childhood, and
his, perhaps, exemplary conduct when he used to attend
Sunday School—trust that he intended to lead a new life, and
then paralyse him with a ten years' sentence, hard labour, and
two days' solitary in each month?
He did not know what to expect. Wasn't there Pat
Macarthy, who got three years for assault with intent to commit
grievous bodily harm (certainly he more than half killed the
other man)? Well, his wife worked his farm, and slaved away
the whole time, denying herself almost decent clothes to wear.
At the end of his term, he came out to find her hopelessly
insane; she had been taken to the Lunatic Asylum only the
week before.
Bill hardly thought that Jenny would go 'off her head,' in
the popular sense. It was too level and well-balanced. But if
he was sentenced to three or five years more of this infernal,
hopeless, caged-in existence, he expected he would.
The prisoners that he had watched in the exercise yard
didn't seem to mind it so much. But they were old and worn-out;
had nothing much to wish themselves outside for.
90Others did not look as if they had worked much in their lives—had
indeed 'done time' more than once, as the slang phrase
went, content to loll on the benches in the exercise yard and
talk to their fellow-convicts—not always after an improving
fashion. But to him it would be a living death. Up and
out every morning of his life at or before daylight,—hard at
work at the thousand-and-one-tasks of a farm until it was too
dark to tell an axe from a spade,—how could he endure this
cruel deprivation of all that made life worth living?
Fortunately for him, in one sense, the day of his trial was
absolutely perfect as to weather. Bright and warm—it was
late December—the sky unflecked by a single cloud. But
there was a cool, sea wind, which, wandering up from the
distant coast, set every human creature (not in sickness, sorrow,
or 'hard bound in misery and iron'), aglow with the joy of
living. It raised the spirits even of that plaything of destiny
known among men as William Hardwick, so that as the
whispering breeze stole through the open windows of the Court
he held up his dejected head and felt almost like a man again.
The proceedings commenced, the jury had been impanelled.
The Crown Prosecutor threw back his gown, and fixing his
eyes on the Judge's impassive countenance opened the case.
'May it please your Honour, you will pardon me perhaps
if, before calling witnesses, I sketch briefly the state of affairs
which, more or less connected with the strike of 1891, has
developed into a condition of matters perilous to life and
property, and altogether without precedent in Australia.
'From a determination on the part of the seamen on coasting
steamers to refuse work unless certain privileges were
granted to them by the owners, a commencement was made
of the most widespread, important, and, in its effects, the most
disastrous strike ever known in Australia. Into the question
of the adequacy or otherwise of the wage claimed, it is not my
intention to enter.
'The consequences, however, of the refusal of these seamen
and others to continue at work except under certain conditions,
were far-reaching, and such as could not have been
reasonably anticipated. The revolt, as it was called by the
leaders of the movement, spread from sea to land, and
throughout all kinds and conditions of labourers, with
startling rapidity.
91'Many of these bodies of workmen could not have been
thought to have been concerned with the original dissentients,
by any process of reasoning. But by the leaders of
the rebellion—for such it may truly be designated—the
opportunity was deemed favourable for the promulgation of
what are known as communistic or socialistic doctrines.
More especially was this observable in the conduct of a large
body of workmen, members of the Australian Shearers' Union.
Guided by ambitious individuals of moderate education but
considerable shrewdness, not wholly unmingled with cunning,
the shearers, and indeed the whole body of labourers connected
with the great wool export, had been misled. They
were asked to believe that a conspiracy existed on the part
of the representatives of capital, whether merchants, bankers,
or landholders—indeed of all employers, whether private
individuals or incorporated companies—to defraud the labourer
of his hire.
'Inflamed by seditious pamphlets and utterances, shearers
and others banded themselves together for the purpose of
intimidating all workmen who were unwilling to be guided by
the autocratic Unions, and arranged on their own terms with
employers.
'Not only did they, by "picketing,"—an alleged method of
moral suasion, but in reality a policy of insult, annoyance,
and obstruction,—forcibly prevent other workmen from following
their lawful occupations, but they commenced to destroy
the property of the pastoral tenants, believed to be opposed to
Union despotism. As a specimen of the inflammatory
language used, perhaps your Honour will permit me to read
an extract from a paper published in the (alleged) interest of
the working classes.'
His Honour 'thought that however such extracts might
indicate a tendency on the part of certain sections of workmen
to engage in acts of violence causing injury to property,—a
most lamentable state of feeling, in his opinion,—yet the
Court was directly concerned to-day with only specific evidence
as to the complicity of the prisoners in the crime of arson on
which they were arraigned. He thought the extract at this
stage irrelevant.'
'After drawing the attention of your Honour and the jury
to the seditious, dishonest statements referred to, I will briefly
92refer to the lamentable list of outrages upon property, not
stopping short indeed of personal violence and grievous
bodily injury.
'Matters have reached such a pitch that a state of civil war
may be said to have commenced. If not only the country
but the towns and cities of Australia are not to be theatres of
bloodshed, outrage, and incendiary flames, from which, by
the mercy of Providence, Australia has up to this period been
preserved, the law in its majesty must step in, and adequately
punish the actors in the flagrant criminality as to which I have
to address your Honour this day.'
The prisoners, having been duly arraigned, with one
accord pleaded not guilty. The last name was that of
William Hardwick. Just before his name was called, room
was made in the crowded Court and a seat provided by the
Sergeant of Police for a woman with two children, whose
travel-worn appearance denoted recent arrival.
Bill turned his head, and in that fragment of time recognised
Jenny with their little boy and girl. His name had to
be repeated a second time. Then he drew himself up, squared
his shoulders, and looking straight at the Judge, said 'Not
Guilty' in a voice which sounded throughout the Court, and if
it had not the ring of truth, was a marvellous imitation.
Poor Jenny, who had preserved a strained, fixed look of
composure, broke down at this juncture. The sight of her husband,
standing in the dock with men of crime-hardened and to
her eyes of guilty appearance—one of whom, indeed, wore leg-irons,
which clanked as he moved—overcame all attempts at
self-possession. Her sobs were audible through the whole Court.
'Wife of the prisoner, your Honour,' explained the
sergeant. 'Just off the coach; been travelling twenty hours
without rest or sleep.'
'Had she not better stay in the witnesses' room?' suggested
the Judge sympathetically. 'Refreshment can be brought to
her there.'
But Jenny, though temporarily overcome, was not the
woman to give in at such a time. Wiping her eyes, 'I've
come a long way, if you please, your Honour,' she said, 'to hear
my man tried on a false charge, if ever there was one; and I
hope you'll let me see it out. I'll not disturb the Court again.'
It was a piteous spectacle.
93Little Billy Hardwick, a precocious, resolute youngster
'rising five,' looked for a while with much gravity at his
father, and then said, 'Is this a church, mother? Why
doesn't father come out of that pew?'
Jenny was nearly overcome by this fresh assault on her
sympathies, but accentuating her order by a shake, replied,
sotto voce, 'It's not a church, Billy; but you mustn't talk, or
else a policeman will lock you up in prison.' The child had
heard of prisons, where bad people were locked up, even
in Talmorah, where the primitive structure was, in his little
mind, associated with the constable's children, who used to play
therein when the cells were empty. He would have liked
further explanation, but he read the signs in his mother's
set face and closed lips, and spoke no more; while the little
girl, holding on to her mother's gown, mingled her tears with
those of her parent. Jenny Hardwick was 'not much in the
crying line,' as an early friend had said of her, and was besides
possessed of an unusual share of physical courage as well as of
strength of mind. So, when she had hastily dried her eyes,
she gave every indication of being as good as her word.
'Call the first witness,' said the Crown Prosecutor, anxious
to get to work. This proved to be the Captain of Volunteers,
who marched into the box accordingly.
'Your name is Gilbert Elliot, formerly of the 60th Regiment,
now commanding a mounted Volunteer force. Were you at
Moorara on the Darling on the 28th of August 1894?'
'I was.'
'Please to state what you did and what you saw then.'
'When the troop reached Poliah, at the date mentioned,
I saw the steamer Dundonald floating down the river. She
was on fire and burning fiercely. Apparently no one was
on board. There was a large camp of armed men—several
hundreds—whom I concluded to be Union shearers. They
were yelling and shouting out that they had just burned the
—— boat and would roast the crew and captain for bringing
up "blacklegs." I called upon them to disperse, and as they
made a show of resistance I ordered my men to charge.
They commenced to retreat and disperse, upon which I
caused all the men to be arrested who had arms in their
hands, and who were pointed out to me as having fired at the
crew of the steamer or having set fire to the vessel.'
94'Do you recognise the prisoners before the Court?'
'Yes; all of them.'
'Your Honour, I appear for prisoner William Hardwick,'
said a shrewd, alert-looking person, who had just then bustled
into the Court and appeared to be well known to the legal
section. 'May I ask to have the captain's evidence read over
to me? Ordinarily I should not think of troubling your
Honour or delaying the business of the Court; but I have
travelled from Harden, and, being delayed on the road, have
only this moment arrived.'
'Under the circumstances, Mr. Biddulph, the evidence of
Captain Elliot may be read over from my notes.' This was
done.
The witness's evidence was proceeded with.
'Was there any show of resistance by the men assembled
in the camp?'
'There was a movement as if they were disposed to fight.
They outnumbered my troopers more than six to one, but at
the first charge they wavered and dispersed. They made no
opposition to my arresting the prisoners before the Court.
One of them, the one now in irons, made a desperate resistance,
but was not supported.'
'Now, Captain Elliot,' said Mr. Biddulph, 'will you look
at the prisoner at this end of the dock; do you remember
him?'
'Perfectly. He had a rifle in his hand when I ordered
him to be arrested.'
'Did he resist?'
'No.'
'Did he say anything? If so, what was it?'
'He said, "I'm not here of my own free-will. I've been
robbed and ill-treated by these men. I was forced to carry
this gun. You can see that it has not been discharged. My
mates (there are several of them) can prove that." I asked
him where they were. He said he did not know.'
'Then you had him arrested, though he disclaimed taking
any part in the unlawful proceedings? Did you not believe
him?'
'I did not. As it happened, other prisoners made substantially
the same defence who had been seen firing their
guns just as we rode up.'
95'That will do, captain.'
The next witness was called.
'My name is Humphrey Bolton. I am a Sergeant of
Volunteers, and came up from Moorara by a forced march as
soon as we heard that the steamer was burnt. When we
struck the camp there were six or seven hundred men, most
of them armed. They appeared very excited. I saw the
steamer drifting down the river. She was on fire. I saw
a barge with a number of men in it. I noticed the Unionists
standing on the bank of the river and firing from time to time
in the direction of the barge. The men in the barge were
bending down and lying in the bottom as if afraid of being
hit. I did not hear of any of them being hurt; a few shots
were fired back, and one man in the camp was wounded.'
'What happened next?' said the Crown Prosecutor.
'Captain Elliot ordered me to capture all men on the
river-bank who had arms in their hands. The six prisoners
before the Court and about a dozen others were taken in
charge accordingly.'
'Did the crowd resist their capture?'
'They made a show of it at first, but as soon as we charged,
they gave way and cleared off in all directions.'
'Now, sergeant,' said Mr. Biddulph, 'look at the prisoner
William Hardwick. Had he arms?'
'He was carrying a gun.'
'Did you see him fire it?'
'No.'
'Did you examine it, when he said it had not been fired?'
'Yes, the captain ordered me to do so; it had not been
fired recently.'
'Wasn't that proof that he was speaking the truth?'
'How could I tell? He might have been going to fire, or
picked up one that had not been used. Besides, my officer
told me to arrest him, and, of course, I obeyed orders. He
was in company with men who had just committed a felony, at
any rate.'
'I see—evil communications. You may go down, sergeant.'
The next witness was the captain of the Dundonald.
'My name is Seth Dannaker, Master Mariner, out of
Boston, U.S.A. I was lately in command of the steamer
Dundonald—now at the bottom of the river Darling. I had
96come from Pooncarrie, carrying forty-five free labourers, last
Saturday, without obstruction or disturbance. I took wood on
board, and tied up, with swamp all round, a little below Poliah.
We heard that a large camp of Unionists were waiting to attack
us there; they had wire ropes across the river. We had steam
up all night and a watch was kept. About four o'clock A.M. a mob
of disguised men rushed on board the boat, and took possession
of her. They knocked me about, and put me and the crew on
board the barge, now moored at Moorara. They afterwards
set the Dundonald on fire. She drifted down the river, and
finally sank. They took possession of the free labourers, and
counted them. They had guns and revolvers, threatening to
shoot me and all who resisted them. I have lost all my personal
effects, including money. I thought this was a free country;
now I know it isn't.'
Cross-examined by Mr. Carter, appearing for the prisoners—with
the exception of William Hardwick.
'You say you were threatened by one or more of the
Unionists. Can you recognise any of the prisoners now
before the Court?'
'Yes; the man in irons. I was told his name was Abershaw.
He put a revolver to my head, swearing he would shoot me
if I resisted; also that he would burn the b——y steamer,
and roast me and the Agent of the Employers' Association for
bringing up blacklegs.'
'Was he sober?'
'I cannot say. He was much excited, and more like a
madman than any one in his senses. Two or three men
struck me. I cannot identify any other prisoners. I had left
my revolver in the cabin, or I should have shot some of them.'
'Did you see any persons firing at the vessel or crew?'
'Yes; there was a line of men on the bank firing with rifles
at the crew. They wounded two of them. I cannot identify
any of them.'
Cross-examined by Mr. Biddulph.
'Will you look at the man in the corner of the dock nearest
to you? Did you see him firing or carrying a gun?'
'I never saw him at all, to my knowledge. Of course there
was confusion.'
Next witness. 'My name is James Davidson. I am the
Agent of the Employers' Association. On or about the
9728th August 1894, I came up in the Dundonald in charge of
free labourers (forty-five) to a spot near Poliah. The police had
been sent for from Tolarno. We had heard of the Unionists
intending to obstruct the boat, and so kept watch above and
below. Next morning, just before daylight, a number of men
rushed on board. One of them pointed a gun at the man who
tried to set the boat free, threatening to kill him if he moved.
They went into the wheel-house, and struck the captain; I
heard them tell him they would kill him and burn the boat. He
was knocked about badly. I got a few blows before the leaders
got the men quiet. Then they started getting my men out.'
By the Crown Prosecutor. 'Whom do you mean by your
men?'
'The free labourers.'
'Did they resist, or go quietly?'
'Some went quietly—others resisted, and were thrown overboard.
A few were only in their shirts, as they had not had
time to dress. They were then set up in a line and counted,
to see if they were all there. A guard was put over them.'
'Was the guard armed?'
'Yes. Another gang was busy unloosing the steamer, and
preparing her for the fire. They smashed in the cabins and
stole everything. Nothing escaped them when they began to
pillage. I lost my portmanteau, clothes, and money. Everything
was taken out of my cabin, leaving me nothing but the
clothes I had on.'
'Were the Unionists much excited?'
'Excited?—raving mad, I should call it. We were lucky
to get off with our lives. Fortunately, few persons were injured.
We received every attention when we got to Moorara. There
is a large Union Camp at Tolarno. They have given out
that they intend to burn two more steamers, for carrying free
labourers.'
'Do you identify the prisoners in the dock?'
'Two of them. The man in irons struck the captain, and
said he would burn the boat and roast him alive. The one
with the large beard was the one who said he would shoot the
man who was unloosing the cable. The others I have no
knowledge of.'
By Mr. Carter. 'Did you see the prisoner William Hardwick—the
one at this end of the dock?'
98'Not that I am aware of.'
'You said you lost some money?'
'Yes, ten or twelve pounds; it was in a purse in my portmanteau.
I had to draw on the Association for a few pounds,
as I was left penniless and without a change of wearing apparel.'
'I suppose that was a form of "picketing," in accordance
with the "ethics of war."'
'"Pickpocketing," I should call it.'
'One moment, Mr. Davidson,' interposed Mr. Biddulph, as
the Agent turned to leave the witness-box. 'Did you see
the prisoner at this end of the dock, carrying a gun or in any
way joining in this creditable work?'
'I never saw him at all.'
'That will do.'
'Call Janus Stoate, witness for the Crown.'
As his name was mentioned, Bill turned his head towards
the door where the witnesses came in, with a look of
murderous hate, such as no man had ever seen before on his
good-natured countenance.
Jenny, as she looked anxiously towards the dock, hardly
knew him. By that door was to walk in the man who had
eaten many a time at his humble but plentiful table, and in
return had treacherously denounced him, ruined his character,
helped to deprive him of his hard-earned wages, gone near
to render his children paupers, and break his wife's heart. A
man of his easy-going, confiding character, easily deceived, is
not prone to suspicion, but when injured—outraged in his
deepest, tenderest feelings—is terrible in wrath. As Bill unconsciously
clenched his hands, and stared at the open door, he
looked as one eager to tear his enemy limb from limb.
But the thronged Court was disappointed, and Bill's vengeance
delayed, as no Janus Stoate appeared.
Mr. Biddulph, who had left the Court, now appeared in
company with a mounted trooper, whose semi-military attire
told of a rapid ride. He spoke in a low voice to the Sub-Inspector
of Police, who thereupon proceeded to address the
Judge.
'If your Honour pleases, there will be a trifling delay
before this witness can give his evidence, owing to circumstances
to which I cannot at present allude. As the hour for
your Honour's luncheon has nearly arrived, may I suggest a
99short adjournment? I can assure your Honour that I make
the application for sufficient reasons.'
'I am opposed,' answered the Judge, 'to adjournments in
criminal cases; but on Mr. Sub-Inspector's assurance, I consent
to relax my rule. Let the Court be adjourned until half-past
one o'clock.'
There was a gasp of relief, half of satisfaction, half of disappointment,
from the crowd as they hurried from the Court
to snatch a hasty meal and ventilate their opinions.
'It's another dodge of the Government to block our workers
from gettin' justice,' said one oratorical agitator, partially disguised
as a working-man, and whose soft hands betrayed
his immunity from recent toil. 'It's a conspiracy hatched
up to block Delegate Stoate's evidence agin that blackleg
Hardwick.'
'You be hanged!' said a rough-looking bushman, who had
just hung his horse up to one of the posts in front of the
Murrumbidgee Hotel. 'You won't have so much gab when
you see Delegate Stoate, as you call him, before the Court,
and some one as can tell the truth about him. Bill Hardwick's
as honest a cove as ever walked, and he is a worker,
and not a blatherskite as hasn't done a day's work for years,
and sets on skunks like Stoate to rob honest men of their
liberty. Don't you stand there gassin' afore me, or I'll knock
your hat over your eyes.'
There was presumably a majority of Mr. Stoate's own
persuasion around listening to the foregoing remarks, but the
onlookers did not seem inclined to controvert this earnest
speaker's arguments—seeing that he was distinctly an
awkward customer, as he stood there, obviously in hard
condition, and eager for the fray.
'See here now, boys,' said a large imposing-looking policeman,
'sure it's betther for yees to be gettin' a bit to ate and a
sup of beer this hot day, than to be disputing within the
hearin' of the Coort, and may be gettin' "run in" before
sundown. Sure it's Misther Barker that's sittin' the good
example.' Here he pointed to the agitator, who, after
mumbling a few words about 'workers who didn't stand by
their order,' had moved off, and was heading straight for the
bar of the Murrumbidgee Hotel.
This broke up the meeting, as the Union labourers were
100anxious to hear the conclusion of the case, Regina v. Hardwick
and others, and were not unobservant either of the unusually
large force of police which the Resident Magistrate of
Wagga Wagga, a man of proverbial courage and experience, had
called up, in anticipation of any émeute which might arise as
a result of this exciting trial. At half-past one o'clock the
Judge, accompanied by the Deputy Sheriff, took his seat
upon the Bench, and the Court was again formally declared
open.
As the name Janus Stoate was called by the official, in a
particularly clear and audible voice, every eye was turned
toward the door by which the Crown witnesses entered, and
that distinguished delegate walked in, closely accompanied by
a senior constable.
His ordinarily assured and aggressively familiar manner
had, however, deserted him; he looked, as the spectators
realised, some with surprise, others with chagrin, more like a
criminal than a Crown witness.
Bill's gaze was fixed upon him, but instead of homicidal
fury, his whole countenance exhibited unutterable scorn,
loathing, and contempt. As he turned away, he confronted
the spectators and the Court officials generally, with a cheerful
and gratified expression, unshared by his companions in
misfortune.
Even they regarded Stoate with doubt and disfavour.
Deeply suspicious and often envious of their fellow-workmen
who attained parliamentary promotion, and more than that,
a fixed and comfortable salary, they were skilled experts in
facial expression. In the lowered eyes and depressed look
of Mr. Delegate Stoate they read defeat and disaster, not
improbably treachery.
'The beggar's been squared or "copped" for some bloomin'
fake,' said the prisoner on the other side of the man in irons.
'He's goin' to turn dog on us, after all.'
'If I don't get a "stretch,"' growled the other, 'his blood-money
won't do him no good.'
'Silence in the Court,' said the senior Sergeant, and
Mr. Stoate was duly sworn.
'Your name is Janus Stoate, and you are a shearer and
a bush labourer?' said the Crown Prosecutor.
'That is so, mostly go shearin' when I can get a shed.'
101'Now, do you know the prisoners in the dock? Look at
them well. Their names are William Stokes, Daniel Lynch,
Hector O'Halloran, Samson Dawker, Jeremiah Abershaw, and
William Hardwick.'
'Yes, your Honour; I've met 'em as feller-workers. I
don't know as I've been pusson'ly intimate with 'em—except
prisoner Hardwick.'
'He does know him, to our sorrow, the false villain!' cried
out Jenny, coming a pace forward with a child in each hand,
and delivering her impeachment before any one could stop
her. 'Ask him, your Honour, if he hasn't lived with us, lived
upon us I call it, for weeks at a time—and now he's going to
bear false witness and ruin the family, body and soul.'
'Is this the person who interrupted before?' said the Judge.
'Order must be kept in the Court. Let her be removed.'
Here the Deputy Sheriff said a few words in a low tone to
his Honour. 'Indeed!' said the Judge mildly. 'She must
control her feelings, however. My good woman, if I hear
another interruption, it will be my duty to have you removed
from the Court.'
'Mrs. Hardwick,' said Biddulph, when Jenny's sobs had
ceased, 'don't you make a fool of yourself, you're hurting
Bill's case. I thought you had more sense. Do you want
me to throw it up?'
This settled poor Jenny effectually, and humbly begging
pardon, she promised amendment, and kept her word—only
regarding Stoate from time to time with the expression which
she had assumed at times when a native cat (Dasyurus) had
got into her dairy.
'Were you at a place called Poliah, on the river Darling,
on or about the 28th August last?'
'Yes, I was.'
'Was there a camp there of Unionist shearers?'
'There was workers of all sorts, besides shearers, rouseabouts,
and labourers, also loafers.'
'Very likely; but what I want you to tell me is, were they
chiefly shearers? In number, how many?'
'Well, say six or seven 'underd.'
'You acted as a delegate, I believe, under rules of
the Australian Shearers' Union, at several stations during
shearing?'
102'I was app'inted as delegate by my feller-workers, and
acted as sich on several occasions.'
'What were your duties as a delegate?'
'I 'ad to be in the shed while shearin' was goin on, to
see the rules of the Australian Shearers' Union was carried
out strickly, and that the men got justice.'
'In what way?'
'Well, that they wasn't done out of their pay for bad
shearin', when they shore reasonable well; that they got
proper food and lodgin', and wasn't made shear wet sheep,
which ain't wholesome—and other things, as between employer
and employee.'
'As delegate, did you go to Poliah? and did you see a
steamer called the Dundonald on the river?'
'Yes, I did.'
'Did you see a number of men rush on board of her, and
take the free labourers out of her?'
'No. I was at the back of the camp persuadin' of the
men not to use no vi'lence. Then I heard a great hubbub,
and guns fired. After that I saw the steamer afire and
drifting down river.'
'Did you see who set it on fire?'
'No.'
'Did you see who fired the guns?'
'No; I heard the reports of 'em.'
'Did you see any men on the bank with guns in their
hands?'
'Yes; a line of 'em along the river.'
'Were the prisoners now before the Court there?'
'They might have been, I can't speak positive.'
'Was the prisoner Hardwick there carrying a gun?'
'I can't be sure. He might have been. I thought I saw
him, but I wasn't near him, and I can't be sure in my mind.'
'You can't be sure?' asked the Crown Prosecutor angrily.
'Didn't you swear at the Police Court at Dilga that you saw
him not only holding a gun, but firing it towards the
steamer? I'll read your deposition. "I saw the prisoner
holding the gun produced. He appeared to have been
firing it."'
'Now, Mr. Stoate, is that your signature? and how do you
account for your going back on your sworn evidence? You're
103intelligent enough—in a way. I am at a loss to understand
your conduct.'
'Well, I was a bit flurried at the time—confused like.
The police came down and charged the mob, and a lot of the
shearers cleared out.'
'Then you won't swear that Hardwick held the gun, or
fired it?'
'No; I wasn't near enough to him to be dead certain. It
was a man like him.'
'Your Honour,' said the Crown Prosecutor, 'this is a
most extraordinary change of front on the part of this witness;
it amounts to gross prevarication, if not something worse. I
may have occasion to prosecute him for perjury. You may go
down, sir.'
'Not yet. With your Honour's permission, I propose to
cross-examine the witness,' interposed Mr. Biddulph. 'Now,
Mr. Delegate Stoate, is Janus your Christian name?'
'Yes.'
'Janus, is it? Sounds more heathen than Christian; more
suitable also, if I mistake not. Now, Janus Stoate, you're
my witness, for the present—remember that—and I advise
you to be careful what you say, for your own good, and don't
"suppose" so much as you did in your answer to my learned
friend. You and Hardwick were on friendly terms before
shearing, and came down the river together?'
'Yes, we were friends, in a manner of speakin'.'
'Were you friends or not? Answer me, and don't fence.
Have you not stayed at his house often, for more than a week
at a time?'
'Yes, now and then—workers often help one another a
bit. I'd 'a done the same by him if he'd 'a come along the
road lookin' for work.'
'Given him house-room, and three meals a day for a week
or more, I daresay. But, let me see—have you a house?'
'Well, not exactly. I live in Melbourne.'
'Where?'
'At a boarding-house.'
'You left his house, then, for the shearing, the last time you
were there. You had board and lodging for the previous
night, and came down the river to North Yalla-doora together;
is that so?'
104'Yes.'
'Did you say you were a delegate before the shearing
began?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'For no reason in partic'lar.'
'Did you and he have a dispute on the road, and part
company before you came to North Yalla-doora?'
'Well, we had a bit of a barney, nothing much.'
'Oh! nothing much? You were at Tandara while the
shearing was going on; and did he and others refuse to
come out on strike when you produced a telegram from the
Head Centre, or whatever you call him, at Wagga?'
'He refused to obey the order of the properly app'inted
hofficer of the Australian Shearers' Union; and was disrespectful
to me, pusson'ly.'
'Did you then say that you would make it hot for him at
the next shed?'
'I don't remember. But I was displeased at his disloyal
haction.'
'Disloyal to whom? to the Queen?'
'No, to a greater power than the Queen—to the People,
as is represented by the Australian Shearers' Union.'
'Very good; keep that for your next speech. You'll find
out something about the powers of Her Majesty the Queen
before long.'
'Do you not think, Mr. Biddulph,' said the Judge, with
much politeness, 'that you have tested this part of the cross-examination
sufficiently?'
'It was necessary to prove malice, your Honour; but I will
proceed to the witness's acts and deeds, which are more
important. Now, Mr. Delegate, answer these few questions
straightforwardly.'
'I am on my oath, Mr. Lawyer.'
'I am aware of that; I don't attach much importance to
the obligation, I am sorry to say. Did you not say to the
President of the Shearers' Committee, during the riot, which
might have ended in murder, and did end in arson—"Send a
couple of men with Bill Hardwick and put him in the front
with a rifle"?'
'Nothing of the sort.'
105'If it is sworn by a respectable witness that he heard you,
will you still deny it?'
'Certainly I will.'
'Call Joseph Broad. (I merely call this witness to be
identified, your Honour.) Did you see this man at the
shearers' camp?' to Stoate.
'I saw him there, but that's all.'
'That will do, Broad; go out of Court for the present.
Did you hear your President speak to him?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
'Did Lynch and another man stand on each side of Hardwick
on the bank of the river, and threaten to shoot him if
he didn't stop there and hold out his rifle?'
'I didn't hear them.'
'Now listen to me, and be very careful how you answer
this question. Did you stand close behind him with a
revolver and say, "Don't you move for your life"?'
'Not that I remember. We was all crushed up that close
together, as the crew of the steamer fired into us, that a man
couldn't tell who was next or anigh him.'
'Very probably. That will do. Stay,' as Mr. Stoate turned
away, and left the witness-box with a relieved expression.
'Go into the box for a moment. How did you come here—walk
or ride?'
'Rode.'
'Rode your own horse?'
'No, a police horse; I came up with Sergeant Kennedy.'
'Oh, then, he lent you a horse—very kind of him—and
accompanied you here. How was that?'
'Well, I believe there was some sort of a case trumped-up
against me.'
'Oh! some kind of a trumped-up case, was there? We'll
hear more about that, by and by. That will do for the
present, Mr. Delegate.'
The witness then left the Court, followed by the strange
trooper, so closely indeed, that but for the absence of handcuffs
he might have been thought to have been in custody.
'Call Sergeant Kennedy.'
John Kennedy, being duly sworn, deposed as follows:
'I am a senior Sergeant of Police, stationed at Dilga, on
Cowall Creek, which runs into the Darling. I saw the last
106witness at Tandara Run on December the 20th instant. He
was given into my custody by Mr. Macdonald, the manager,
charged with wilfully and maliciously setting fire to the run.
I searched him in his presence and found on him two
half-crowns, a knife, a meerschaum pipe, a plug of tobacco,
two sovereigns, a copy of Union Shearers' rules, a letter, and
a cheque. The cheque was drawn by John Macdonald in
favour of William Hardwick, dated 10th October. The
amount was £55: 17s.'
When this announcement was made an audible murmur
arose from the body of the Court, even a few hisses were
heard, which were promptly suppressed. Bill opened his eyes
in wonder and amazement, and then turned to where Jenny
sat crying peacefully to herself, but not from grief. Their
money had been recovered, their traitorous enemy disgraced
and confounded. She, in her mind's eye, saw her home
once more glorified with Bill's presence—a free, unstained
man. God was merciful, and she despaired no longer of His
goodness.
'You didn't observe anything in the rules of the A.S.U.
as to pocketing the cash of all shearers unfriendly to the
Union? No? Then you may go down.'
'I have no questions to ask this witness,' said the Crown
Prosecutor, with emphasis—'at present, that is to say.'
So Mr. J. Stoate, who had departed with the trooper, was
for greater safety and security lodged in the modern substitute
for the dungeon of the Middle Ages, until the Judge,
after the finding of the jury, should have pronounced sentence
or otherwise on the other prisoners.
107
'Call Cyrus Cable!' for the defence. As the long-legged,
bronzed Sydney-sider lounged up to the witness-box, Bill's
face, which had assumed a more hopeful expression, became
distinctly irradiated. For this man was one of the shearers
who had travelled down with him from Tandara, and had
agreed to drop all connection with the Union and its
revolutionary tactics. They had both been imprisoned at
Poliah; had suffered wrong and indignity at the hands of
the insurgents. How had he come up from the Darling,
just in the nick of time? Bill didn't know, but if he had
seen Dick Donahue outside of the Court he might have
guessed.
'My name's Cyrus Cable, native of Bathurst. I'm a
shearer in the season; have a selection at Chidowla, this
side of Tumberumba. I know some of the men in the dock;
saw them at Poliah when the row was on and the steamer
was burnt.'
'Will you point out any of the prisoners that you can
identify?'
'Well, there's Bill Hardwick, an old mate of mine—and
fellow-prisoner, if it comes to that. It's dashed hard lines
on him to be scruffed and gaoled by those Union scallowags,
first for not joinin' 'em, and then locked up and tried because
they ill-treated him and he couldn't get away. I call that a
queer sort of law.'
The witness is requested to confine himself to answering
such questions as are put to him, and not to give his opinion
as to the law of the land.
'Do you identify any other prisoners?'
108'Yes. I saw that beauty with the hobbles on, fire his
gun at the crew on the boat twice; I saw him reload. He
was one of the men as hustled Bill, and the rest of our
mob that came from Tandara, into the tent and set a guard
on us. I took notice of him then, and can swear to him
positive.'
'Was the prisoner Hardwick with the rioters?'
'Yes, like me, because he couldn't help himself. I heard
the President, as he calls himself—there he is, the t'other
end of the "bot" (I mean the dock, but it's so like a branding
pen)—say to that Janus Stoate, him as passed the wire with
our names when we left Tandara—"Put a good man on each
side of Bill Hardwick, so's he can't stir, and they'll take
him for a Unionist and keep pottin' at him. What fun it'll
be!" and he laughed. "I'll be behind him," says Stoate,
"so he won't have no chance of boltin'." That's the way
it was worked to bring Bill, as straight a chap as ever
sharpened shears, into this steamer-burnin' racket.'
'How was it that you and your mates left your comrade
in the lurch?'
'Well, we cleared as soon as the police came. The
Union men bolted in all directions and left the free labourers
to mind themselves. We thought Bill was comin' after us,
and never missed him till we were miles away.'
'Did you not return to rescue him?'
'No fear! We thought the police might run us in for
"aidin' and abettin'." It was every man for himself, and the
devil take the hindmost.'
The witness was reprimanded for levity, and directed not
to refer to the devil unnecessarily. In cross-examination he
stated that he took particular notice of the man in irons, as
he had repeatedly struck him and his mates with the butt-end
of his rifle. Like the other rebels, he was very brave against
unarmed men, but cut it when the police showed they meant
business.
'Have you not a revengeful feeling against the prisoner
Abershaw, the one who is (very improperly, in my opinion)
brought into the Court in leg-irons?'
'Well, I've the feelings of a man, and I don't cotton to a
cowardly dog who kept rammin' the butt-end of his gun into
the small of my back, when I couldn't defend myself. But
109I'm here to speak the truth, and to get justice for an innocent
man.'
'I suppose you were told that you would be paid your
expense for attending this trial?'
'I got a Crown subpœna. So did Martin.'
'Who served it to you?'
'A police constable at Toovale.'
'Was anybody with him?'
'Yes, Dick Donahue. He told me and my mate, Martin
Hannigan, that Bill Hardwick was to be tried at Wagga for
burnin' the Dundonald and shootin' at the crew. "That be
hanged for a yarn!" says I. "Fancy Bill, with a farm and a
wife and kids, settin' out to burn steamers and kill people!
Holy Moses! Are you sure he didn't rob a church, while he
was about it?" But he said it was no laughing matter, and
he might get three years in gaol. So of course we come, and
would have turned up if we'd had to do it on foot and pay
our own expenses!'
'Of course, your Honour will note this witness's evident
bias?' said the counsel for the prisoners.
'I shall take my notes in the ordinary manner,' said the
Judge. 'It is not necessary for counsel to suggest points of
practice to a Judge before he addresses the Court at the
conclusion of the evidence.'
'Your Honour will perhaps pardon me; I thought it might
have escaped your notice.'
'I trust, Mr. Carter, that nothing escapes my notice in an
important criminal case. Let the next witness be called.'
'Martin Hannigan is your name?' said Mr. Biddulph.
'You were at Poliah Camp on the 28th of August, were you
not? Do you know the prisoners before the Court?'
'Some of them. I know Bill Hardwick, and the man with
the leg-irons, but not his name. Yes; I know the one with
the black beard—they called him the President.'
'Who called him by that title?'
'The shearers, or rioters, or loafers, whoever they were.
They were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, if you
ask me.'
'Never mind answering what you are not asked. What
did you see them do?'
'Well—Mr. President and his mob, all armed, made Bill
110and me and eight or nine other chaps that came down from
Tandara, prisoners of war, in a manner of speakin'—"robbery
under arms" I call it, for they boned our swags, our horses,
our grub, and our pack-saddles. I found the horses, when
they were boltin' from the police, or we should 'a never
seen 'em again; two of us had to ride bareback. I seen
that gaol-bird there—he's "done time," I'll take my oath—and
another man shovin' Bill Hardwick between them towards
the river-bank—one of 'em was puttin' a gun into his hand—swore
he'd shoot him if he didn't carry it. I saw one of 'em
fire at the boat. I'd not swear he hit anybody. I heard the
"President" say, "We'll burn the bally boat; that'll learn
'em to bring 'scabs' down the river." I saw the steamer
blaze up after the crew and free labourers was out. Then
the police came, and Martin, my mate, and I cleared for our
lives. We caught our horses in a bend and rode down the
river to Toovale, when we got a non-Union shed, and wired in.
That's about all I know.'
By the Crown Prosecutor.
'Your name is Martin Hannigan. Are you an Irishman?'
'No, nor an Englishman either. I'm an Australian, and
so was my father. What's that to do with the case?'
'I thought you were rather humorous in your evidence,
that's all. The Irish are a witty race, you know.'
'So they say. I've never been there. Anythin' else you'd
like to ask me?'
'Only a few questions. When were you served with a
subpœna to attend this Court, and where?'
'At Toovale, on the Lower Darling. The policeman came
to the shed where Cable and I were working and served
us. Dick Donahue came with him, and told us that Bill
Hardwick was being tried with the other men for burning the
Dundonald.'
'Didn't you know before? That seems strange.'
'Well, we were workin' hard to make up for lost time, by
this strike foolishness, and we were too dashed tired at night
to go in for readin' papers, or anything but supper and a
smoke.'
'I suppose Donahue told you all about Hardwick's being
arrested, and you had a talk over the case—what evidence
you could give, and so on.'
111'He didn't say much about evidence. He knew we was
there, and seen all there was to see; might have felt something
too, if a bullet had come our way—they were flying
pretty thick for a few minutes. I seen that President chap fire
once, and load again.'
'And that was all that passed?'
'Yes, pretty well all; we weren't "coached," if that's
what you mean.'
'You swear that you saw that man fire, and load again?'
'Yes.'
'Did you see the free labourers?'
'Yes, forty or fifty; some looked damp, as they had
been chucked into the river. Some had only their shirts on.
They were stood up in a line, and counted like a lot of store
cattle. They cleared off like us, when the police came, and the
Union fellows bolted. We passed little mobs of them makin'
down the river.'
'You swear you didn't see Hardwick fire his gun?'
'It wasn't his gun, and he didn't shoot.'
The sensational part of the trial was over; other witnesses
were examined for the defence. They agreed in 'swearing
up' for the prisoners before the Court, always excepting for
Bill Hardwick. 'The other four men had exhibited great
mildness, and a desire for peace. They had not seen the
captain of the Dundonald assaulted; they saw the steamer on
fire—they didn't know how it had started burnin'—might
have been from kerosene in the cargo—it often happened.
There was some shooting, but the crew of the steamer fired
first. They didn't see any of the prisoners firing at the boat,
except William Hardwick. Would swear positive that he
had a gun, and loaded, after he fired every time—yes, every
time. Saw no men thrown overboard. Some of them swam
ashore, but they did it of their own accord.'
These witnesses broke down under cross-examination.
The Crown Prosecutor made a brief but powerful address
to the jury, pointing out discrepancies in evidence, and the
manifest perjury committed by the last witnesses. He trusted
the jury would not overlook their conduct, and appraise their
evidence at its true value.
The counsel for the defence, a well-known barrister, made
a long and impassioned appeal to the jury 'to excuse the
112more or less technically illegal acts, which, he admitted, could
not be defended. It was, however, in the line of "rough
justice," the origin of which was a long series of capitalistic
tyranny and oppression. They had suffered long from inadequate
payment for their skilled labour, for shearing was no
ordinary muscle work which could be performed by the mere
nomadic labourer of the day. It required an apprenticeship,
sometimes lasting for years. It was difficult, and exhausting
beyond all other bush labour, having to be performed at
a high rate of speed and for long hours, unknown to the
European workman. The food was of bad quality, the
cooking rude. The huts in which they had to dwell, worse
than stables, nearly always. They had besides to travel long
distances, expensive in time lost and wayside accommodation.
For all these reasons, they had come to the conclusion that
the question of pay and allowances, with other matters, required
reconstruction, and failing to obtain a conference with
the Employers' Union—a combination of squatters, merchants,
bankers, and plutocrats generally—they had used the only
weapon the law allowed to the workers of Australia and had
organised a strike.
'The labour leaders had in all cases counselled moderation
and constitutional action for the redressing of their wrongs.
But—and it was by none more regretted than by the labour
organisers themselves—rude and undisciplined members of the
Union had resorted to personal violence, and had injured the
property of squatters and others, believed to be desirous of
crushing Unionism. Some allowance might be made for
these men. They saw their means of livelihood menaced by
cargoes of free labourers, bought up like slaves by the capitalistic
class. They saw their wages lowered, their industry
interfered with—the bread taken out of their mouth, so to
speak—by a wealthy combination, which had no sympathy for
the workers of the land, who had by their labour built up this
enormous wool industry, now employing armies of men and
fleets of vessels.
'Were they, the creators of all this wealth, to be put off with
a crust of bread and a sweating wage? No! They had been
worked up to frenzy by a plutocratic invasion of their natural
rights; and if they crossed the line of lawful resistance to
oppression, was it to be wondered at? He trusted that his
113Honour, in the highly improbable event of a verdict of "guilty,"
would see his way to inflict a merely nominal term of imprisonment,
which, he undertook to say, would act as an effective
caution for the future.'
His Honour proceeded to sum up. 'In this case, the
prisoners were charged with committing a certain act, distinctly
a criminal offence, punishable by a term of imprisonment.
He would not dilate upon the collateral results, but impress
upon the jury that all they had to consider was the evidence
which they had heard. Did the evidence point conclusively
to the fact that the prisoners had committed the crime of
arson—the burning of the steamer Dundonald—then and there,
on the 28th of August last, on the waters of the Darling River?
With the conflicting interests of the pastoral employers, and
the rate of wages, or the propriety of strikes, or otherwise, they
had nothing whatever to do. He would repeat, nothing whatever
to do.
'Did they believe the evidence for the prosecution? He
would take that evidence, seriatim, from his notes.
'First there was that of the officer of Volunteers, which was
direct and circumstantial. He deposes to having seen the
steamer Dundonald floating down the river, burning fiercely
then, with apparently no one on board. He saw a large camp
of armed men, who shouted out that they had burnt the
steamer, and would roast the captain and crew, for bringing up
blacklegs. This last expression, he was informed, meant non-Union
labourers. He caused the arrest of several men with
arms in their hands, pointed out to him as having fired at the
crew of the vessel, or having set fire to her. Among them was
the prisoner Hardwick, who had a gun in his hand.
'The next witness was the sergeant of Volunteers. He
saw the burning vessel, the crowd of armed men, and also
men firing in the direction of a barge containing the crew
presumably. He arrested by the colonel's order the six
prisoners now before the Court, as well as others. They had
arms in their hands.
'Captain Dannaker of the Dundonald deposed to a very
serious state of matters. He had as passengers forty-five free
labourers. Before daylight, a band of armed, disguised men
boarded the vessel—of which they took full possession. Their
action was not far removed from that of pirates. They
114threatened with death the captain, the crew, the agent of the
Employers' Union, several of whom were assaulted, and ill-used.
They "looted" the steamer, to use an Indian term—smashing
cabins and appropriating private property. These
unlawful acts they completed by forcing the free labourers to
land, compelling the crew to go into the barge, setting the
steamer on fire and casting her away, after which she was
observed to sink. He also saw men on the river-bank firing
at the crew and passengers. He identifies Abershaw, the
prisoner in irons, as the man who assaulted and threatened
him. He did not notice prisoner Hardwick.
'Mr. Davidson, the agent of the Employers' Union, corroborates
the foregoing evidence in all particulars. He himself
was assaulted, as were the free labourers. He saw the rioters
throw some of the free labourers overboard. He saw them
unloosing the steamer and preparing it for burning. His
clothes and money were taken out of his cabin. He
identifies Abershaw, but not prisoner Hardwick. He identifies
Dawker, the man with the large beard, as the "President," so
called.
'The witness for the Crown, Janus Stoate, gave, in his (the
Judge's) opinion, unsatisfactory evidence after the adjournment.
He described himself as a shearer; also a delegate
appointed by the Shearers' Union. Though present at the
scene of outrage, he apparently saw no one conduct himself
indiscreetly, with the exception of his friend and fellow-shearer,
William Hardwick. He swears that he saw him load and fire
a gun in the direction of the steamer. He did not see the
two prisoners Abershaw and Dawker, identified by the other
witnesses, say or do anything illegal. He heard the report of
firearms, but could not say who used them, except in the case
of Hardwick. In several respects his evidence differed from
that given before the Bench of Magistrates at Dilga Court of
Petty Sessions, when the prisoners were committed for trial.
He admitted in cross-examination having had a quarrel with
Hardwick at Tandara woolshed, and to having arrived here
in custody.
'Sergeant Kennedy, of the New South Wales Police,
deposes to the arrest of this witness at Tandara station, on
a charge of maliciously setting fire to the grass on the run,
and to finding in his pocket, when searched, a cheque drawn
115in favour of William Hardwick for £55: 17s., said prisoner
having previously testified as to its being lost or stolen.
'He would tell the jury here that he had no confidence
whatever in the evidence of the witness Stoate. He appeared
to have prevaricated, and also to have been actuated by a
revengeful feeling in the case of William Hardwick, though,
strange to say, he was apparently without eyes or ears in the
case of the other prisoners, all of whom had been positively
identified as having been seen in the commission of unlawful
acts. In conclusion, he would entreat the jury to examine
carefully, to weigh well, the evidence in this very serious
and important case, and with close adherence to the obligation
of their oaths, to bring in their verdict accordingly. The
Court now stands adjourned till two o'clock.'
The jury were absent more than an hour, and during that
time Mr. Biddulph persuaded Jenny to have a cup of tea,
and otherwise refresh herself and the children, who had outstayed
their usual meal-time.
She, with difficulty, was induced to touch anything: dead
to all ordinary feelings, as she described herself, until Bill's
fate was decided. 'How can I think of anything else?' she
exclaimed passionately to Dick Donahue, who, with unfailing
optimism, tried to convince her that Bill must be let off, and
next day would be with her and the children on the way to
Chidowla.
'How can we tell?' said she. 'Wasn't there Jack Woodman,
and the lawyers told him he must be let off on a point
of law, instead of which he got three years, and he's in gaol
now.'
'Ah! but that was for cattle-stealing,' replied Mr. Donahue;
'and Jack had been run in before, for duffing fats off Mount
Banda—tried too, and got off by the skin of his teeth. This
time he shook a selector's poddies, and the jury couldn't stand
that. But Bill's innocent, as everybody knows. See what the
Judge said about Stoate's evidence! I'll bet you a hat to a new
bonnet that Bill's out a free man this afternoon, and that
Stoate's in the dock for settin' fire to Tandara, with a six to
one on chance of seem' the inside of Berrima Gaol, and those
four other chaps to keep him company.'
Jenny couldn't help relaxing into a wintry smile at this
reassuring prophecy. But her face assumed its wonted
116seriousness as she said, 'Well, Dick Donahue, you've been a
staunch friend all through this trouble, and I'll never forget
you and Biddy for it as long as I live, and Bill won't neither.'
'Don't be troubling yourself about that, Mrs. Hardwick,'
said Donahue. 'You were a good friend to her and
her children before all this racket—they would have wanted
many a meal only for you. But I'm a changed man. I've
some hope before me, thanks to Mr. Calthorpe; and if Bill
will go partners with me, we'll be Hardwick and Donahue,
with a tidy cattle-station one day yet.'
'The Court's sitting,' called out some one, 'and the jury's
agreed.' A rush was made by all interested persons and the
spectators generally. Not a seat was vacant as the Court
official demanded silence, and the Judge's Associate proceeded
to read out the names of the jurors, who, headed by their
foreman, stood in line on the floor of the Court.
'Are you agreed, Mr. Foreman, on your verdict?'
'We are.'
'How do you find?'
'We find William Stokes, Daniel Lynch, Hector O'Halloran,
Samson Dawker, and Jeremiah Abershaw guilty of arson, and
we find William Hardwick not guilty.'
The verdict of guilty was received in silence. A number
of the spectators were Unionists, and though the more sensible
members of the association had always been opposed to lawless
proceedings, yet from a mistaken sense of comradeship they
felt bound not to repudiate the acts of any of their confraternity.
No doubt at the next ballot the voting would have
been almost unanimous against injury to property, and such
outrages as the law's slow but sure retribution has never yet
failed to overtake.
But when the verdict of 'Not Guilty' was announced, there
was a cheer which it tasked the stern mandate of the Deputy-Sheriff
and the vigorous efforts of the police to suppress.
Jenny did not hear much of it, as the fateful words had
barely been pronounced when she fell as if dead. She was
promptly carried out into the witnesses' room, and measures
taken for her recovery. When she came to herself, Bill was
bending over her, and the children, smiling amidst their tears,
were holding fast to one of his hands.
117Anxious as both husband and wife were to shake the
Wagga dust from their feet and get away up the river to their
half-deserted home, Bill's Court work was not yet concluded.
He was constrained to appear again in the memorable cases
of Regina versus Stoate, charged with arson, and the same
Gracious Lady (who impersonates Nemesis on so many
occasions over such a wide area of the earth's surface) versus
Stoate, charged with 'larceny from the person.'
No sooner had the jury been dismissed, and, with the
witnesses, were wending their way to the office of the Clerk
of the Bench, expectant of expenses, than the Crown
Prosecutor addressed his Honour, representing that only at
luncheon had he received the depositions in a fresh case—he
referred to that of Regina versus Stoate. He was aware that
the cases just disposed of had been supposed to conclude the
sitting, and that his Honour was expected at Narrabri the
day after to-morrow; but under the peculiar circumstances,
as several of the witnesses and two members of the legal
profession who were concerned in the last case were to be
briefed in this, he trusted that his Honour would overlook
his personal discomfort, and consent to deal with this case at
the present sitting of the Court.
His Honour feared that the jurors and witnesses in the
heavy cases at Narrabri might suffer inconvenience by
the postponement of his departure; but, as the adjourning
of this case to the next Assize Court—nearly five months—would
more seriously affect all concerned, and as he was
opposed on principle to prisoners on committal being detained
in gaol, or defendants delayed one week longer than was
actually necessary, he would accede to counsel's very
reasonable request.
'Let another jury be impanelled, Mr. Associate, and then
adjourn the Court until ten o'clock to-morrow morning. I
shall consider the evidence taken in the previous cases, and
deliver the sentences at the opening of the Court. The
prisoners may be removed.'
On the following morning the five prisoners were again
placed in the dock, looking anxious, and more or less
despondent, with the exception of Abershaw, the man in
irons. He was a hardened offender, and reckless as to what
might befall him in the shape of punishment. He had served
118terms of imprisonment in another colony. Like many criminals,
he had unfortunately not taken warning by previous penalties,
as it was less than a year since he had been released. He
looked around with an affected contempt for his surroundings,
and smiled at an occasional sympathiser in Court with
unabashed defiance.
But, as the Judge commenced to address the prisoners
before announcing the sentences, the look of tension on
the other men's faces was painful to witness, and even he
appeared to feel the seriousness of the situation.
'William Stokes, Daniel Lynch, Hector O'Halloran, Samson
Dawker, Jeremiah Abershaw, you have been found guilty, on
the clearest evidence, of a dangerous and concerted attack
on society. If organisations of this kind were permitted—if
lawless bodies of men, organising themselves with the discipline
of a military force, were permitted to go about the country
interfering with honest men—there could be no safety for any
one in the community. I am gratified to find that the jury have
arrived at the only conclusion rational men could arrive at in
such a case, and with no more time spent in deliberation than
was necessary to consider the case of each man separately. I
do not suppose that, excepting the residents of the neighbourhood
of Poliah and the Lower Darling region generally, people
are fully aware of what has been going on there.
'I have had a tolerable knowledge of the country, but I
had no idea, until I came to try this case, what a state of
things existed in the locality mentioned in depositions—a
state of things probably unparalleled in the history of New
South Wales.
'I should not have thought it possible that six or seven
hundred men could camp on a main stock route, by a
navigable river, for the purpose of preventing honest men
going to work, much less could capture, bind them as prisoners,
and hold them as such.
'Let any one contemplate what may follow if this kind of
thing is permitted. There would be an end of liberty and
safety; but the law exists for the protection of all, whether
high or low, in the community, and those who take part in
proceedings of this kind must expect to have every man's
heart hardened against them. If a man's liberty were interfered
with, if his life were threatened by overwhelming
119numbers, he and every other honest man is entitled to
protect himself by taking the lives of those who come upon
him. This, in law, is termed justifiable homicide; on the
other hand, if lawless persons take life, they are guilty of
murder.
'Having explained the law on intimidation, I will pass on
to the circumstances more immediately surrounding the case.
It is proved beyond doubt that the Dundonald steamer
was deliberately and wilfully set on fire by the prisoners and
others. If any person had perished in the flames by their act,
or if, when shooting at the vessel, any of the crew or passengers
had been killed, they would now be on their trial for murder.
'As it is, they have, most properly, been found guilty of
arson by the jury, a crime punishable, under Victoria No. 89,
section 6, with imprisonment with hard labour, and solitary
confinement.
'I accordingly sentence Samson Dawker, who has been
referred to as the "President," and Jeremiah Abershaw, to
three years' imprisonment with hard labour, and periods of
solitary confinement, both to be served in Berrima Gaol.
The other prisoners do not appear to have been so actively
employed in these unlawful, demoralising acts. They are
therefore sentenced to two years' imprisonment only, with
hard labour. I cannot conclude my remarks without stating
that I fully agree with the verdict of acquittal by the jury in
the case of William Hardwick, who might have been deprived
of his liberty by a conspiracy of unprincipled persons, had not
the jury rightly discriminated as to the manifest unreliability
of the evidence against him. He therefore is enabled to
leave the Court, I have pleasure in stating, without a stain
upon his character.'
'May it please your Honour,' said the Crown Prosecutor,
'the prisoner before the Court is charged with wilfully
and maliciously setting fire to the grass of the Tandara Run.
I purpose calling the arresting constable and the manager, Mr.
Macdonald; also the aboriginal Daroolman, who is exceptionally
120intelligent. The case will not be a lengthy one. Call
Senior Sergeant Kennedy.'
'My name is John Kennedy, Senior Sergeant of the New
South Wales Police Force, stationed at Dilga, on the Darling.
I called at Tandara station on duty. I there saw Mr.
Macdonald, the manager. He remarked that there had been
no rain for a month, and the grass was very dry. He requested
me to accompany him a few miles on the up-river road. He
mentioned that a man named Stoate had left shortly before,
having been refused rations, threatening "to get square with
him." He considered him a likely person to set fire to the
Run, and was just going to track him up.
'I agreed, and put my black boy on the trail. After riding
two or three miles, the boy pointed to the tracks leaving the
road and making towards a sandhill. We rode fast, as we
saw smoke rising. The aboriginal said "that one swaggie
makum fire longa grass, me seeum lightem match." We saw
a man kneeling down, and galloped towards him. Apparently
he did not hear us coming; as he looked up he seemed
surprised. The grass around him had just ignited and was
burning fiercely. There was no wood near. Mr. Macdonald
seized him by the arm, saying, "You scoundrel! You're a pretty
sort of delegate! I thought you were up to some mischief."
Prisoner seemed confused and unable to say anything. The
black boy picked up a brass match-box, half full of wax
matches; also a half-burned wax match. The match-box
(which I produce) had J. S. scratched on one side. Prisoner
declined to say anything, except that he was going to boil his
billy. There was no wood, nor any trace of roadway in the
vicinity. I arrested him on the charge of setting fire to the
Tandara Run. He made no reply. On searching him I
found the cheque referred to in my former depositions, it was
drawn in favour of William Hardwick for £55: 17s., also a
knife, two sovereigns, and some small articles. I conveyed
him to the lock-up at Curbin, where he appeared before the
Bench of Magistrates, and was committed to take his trial at
the next ensuing Assize Court. We put out the fire with
difficulty; if it had beat us it might have destroyed half the
grass on the Run.'
John Macdonald, being sworn, states:
'I am the manager of Tandara station. I have known the
121prisoner, off and on, for some years, as a shearer and bush
labourer. He came to me on December 20th and asked for
rations. He was on foot. I said, "You had better ask the
Shearers' Union to feed you, I have nothing for agitators;
you tried to spoil our shearing, and now you come whining
for rations." I threatened to kick him off the place.
'He went away muttering, "I'll get square with you yet."
Being uneasy, I mounted my horse, and shortly afterwards the
last witness and a black boy came up, and at my request
accompanied me. The boy followed his track till it turned
off the main road in the direction of a sandhill. As we rode
nearer, a small column of smoke rose up. We found prisoner
standing by the fire, which had just started. I saw the black
boy pick up the box of matches (produced in Court) from
under prisoner's feet. It was marked J. S., and was nearly
full of wax matches. The black boy pointed to a half-burnt
match, close to the tuft of grass from which the fire had
started. I said, "You scoundrel! You're a pretty sort of
delegate!" I saw the sergeant take the cheque (produced)
for £55: 17s., payable to William Hardwick, out of his
pocket. If we had been five minutes later, all the men in the
country couldn't have put the fire out; it would have swept
the Run.'
'What would have been the effect of that?' asked the
Judge.
'We might have had to travel 100,000 sheep, which alone
would have needed fifty shepherds, besides the expense of cooks
and ration-carriers, with tents, provisions, and loss of sheep.
Altogether it would have meant an expenditure of several
thousand pounds at the very least—besides injury to the sheep.'
'Have you any questions to ask, prisoner?' said the Judge.
'None,' said Mr. Stoate. 'These witnesses are at the beck
of the capitalistic class, and will swear anything.'
Richard Donahue and the black boy corroborated the
previous evidence, the latter saying, 'Me seeum light when
piccaninny match-box tumble down alonga that one fella
tarouser.'
Being asked if he had anything to say in his defence, Mr.
Stoate elected to be sworn, taking the oath with great
solemnity, and making a long-winded, rambling defence, in
which he abused the capitalists, the police, the bankers, and
122the selectors, who, he said, were all in a league with the
'plutercrats' to crush the Union workers, and grind down the
faces of the poor. With regard to the cheque, he had picked
it up, and intended to restore it to Hardwick. If that man
swore that he never gave him or any other man authority to
take care of his money, he swore what was false. It was a
common custom among mates. If the jury convicted him on
this trumped-up charge, which any one could see was manufactured,
he would willingly suffer in the cause of his fellow-workers.
But let the oppressor beware—a day of reckoning
would come!
123
The Court was not very full. The 'fellow-workers' to whom
Stoate so often referred had made up their minds about him.
Open warfare, rioting, plunder, even arson or bloodshed, in a
moderate degree they would have condoned. But to be
caught in the act of setting fire to a Run, and detected with a
stolen cheque in your pocket—that cheque, too, belonging to
a shearer—these were offences of mingled meanness and
malignity which no Union Caucus could palliate. 'He's a
disgrace to the Order; the Associated Workers disown him.
The Judge'll straighten him, and it's hoped he'll give him a
good "stretch" while he's about it.'
This was the prejudicial sentence. And having made up
their minds that their over-cunning ex-delegate by dishonourable
imprudence had played into the hands of the enemy, few of the
Unionists took the trouble to attend, for the melancholy pleasure
of hearing sentence passed on their late comrade and 'officer.'
So, the evidence being overwhelming, the jury found Mr.
Stoate guilty, and the Judge, having drawn attention to the
recklessness and revengeful feeling shown by the prisoner—not
halting at the probable consequences of a crime against
society, by which human life might have been endangered, if
not sacrificed—sentenced him to five years' imprisonment with
hard labour. He was immediately afterwards arraigned on the
charge of 'stealing from the person,' and the sergeant's evidence,
as well as that of Hardwick, was shortly taken. Being again found
guilty, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment—which,
however, the Judge decreed to be concurrent, trusting that the
longer term of incarceration might suffice for reformation. In
conclusion, he again congratulated William Hardwick on the
124recovery of his money and his character, both of which he had
so nearly lost through association with men who had banded
themselves together to defy the law of the land, and to
attempt illegal coercion of workmen who differed from their
opinions.
Such associations often led to consequences not foreseen
at the time. Many a man had cause to blame them for loss
of liberty, if not life. He trusted that this lesson would be
received in the way of warning, and that he and all honest
working-men who had witnessed the proceedings in this Court
would go home resolved to do their duty in their own station
of life, not following blindly the lead of agitators, however glib
of speech, who might prove as unprincipled and dangerous
guides as the prisoner who had just received sentence.
No time was lost, it may be imagined, by Bill and Jenny
in 'clearing,' as they expressed it, for Chidowla. The coach
for Tumut held a very cheerful load when he and she, in
company with Dick Donahue, who had covered himself with
glory, and had a satisfactory outing as well, took their seats.
Bill wished to cash his newly-found cheque, but Jenny—practical
as usual—persuaded him to give it to her for transmission
to Mr. Calthorpe.
'I brought down a pound or two that I'd got stowed away,
and there'll be just enough to take us back without breaking
the cheque. Mr. Calthorpe's stood by us, and we must do
our level best to get square again, and show the bank as he
knows the right people to back. I'll go bail we'll do it inside
a year, if we don't have any more delegate and Union business,
eh, Bill?'
'No fear!' replied Bill with emphasis. 'I'm another man
now, though I won't get the feel of them handcuffs off me for
a month o' Sundays. I'm goin' to be a free labour cove, to
the last day of my life. And Janus Stoate's where he wanted
to put me, d—n him! I hope he feels comfortable. But
I'll never give the clever chaps as lives on us fools of shearers
a chance to work such a sell again. Dick, old man, you
stood to me like a trump. We must see if we can't go in for
a partnership, when we're turned round a bit. What do you
say, Jenny?'
'I say yes,' said Jenny, 'with all my heart. Biddy's
milkin' those cows of ours now, or I don't know what I'd 'a
125done. I believe if we put both our selections into a dairy
farm we could make money hand over fist. But we must
have more cows; this cheque of Bill's—and Jenny slapped
her pocket triumphantly—now we've got it, will buy near a
dozen, and we'll soon make a show.'
Dick Donahue, for the first time in his life, found hardly anything
to say. He gripped both their hands, but brought out little
more than 'Thank ye, thank you both! You've given me a new
lease of life, and I'll—I'll keep my side up—now I've something
ahead of me, or my name's not Dick Donahue. Thank God,
it's a grand season, and that gives us a clear start, anyhow.'
When they arrived at Tumut—some time after dark, but all
well and happy—they found Biddy awaiting them with the
spring cart, which she had driven over. There were a few
stumps on the road, but Bill's eyes were good, so that they
got home safely and with a superior appetite for the supper
which Biddy had set out for them. This they discussed with
their friends, who had much to hear and tell; after which the
Donahues drove away and left them to the enjoyment of their
home, which looked like a palace to Bill, after his misfortunes
and adventures.
They were both up, however, before sunrise next morning,
and at the milking-yard, where they found everything just as it
should be. In the dairy, moreover, there was a keg of butter
three-parts full, which Biddy had made during their absence.
Bill was thinking of going into Talmorah after breakfast, when
a boy galloped up with a letter from Mr. Calthorpe, requesting
him not to come in till Saturday (the day after next), as a few
friends and fellow-townsmen wished to meet him at two o'clock
at the Teamster's Arms to show their regret at his undeserved
persecution, and to present him with an Address,
expressive of the same.
'Bother it all,' said Bill, 'I wish they'd let a fellow alone.
I suppose I shall have to make a speech.'
'Oh, you must go,' said Jenny. 'Mr. Calthorpe wants
you, and we mustn't be ungrateful after all he's done for us.
Besides, didn't you make one at Tandara, when the shed had
cut out, after "long Jim Stanford" euchred the Head Centre
at Wagga? My word, you were coming on then; next thing
you'd 'a stood for Parliament, or been elected delegate, any
way.'
126'See here, Jenny,' replied Bill. 'I suppose I'll have to
say something when they give me this Address, as they call it;
but after that's over, if any one but you says a word about our
"feller-workers" or "criminal capital," or any bally Union rot
of that kind, I'll knock him over, as sure as my name is Bill
Hardwick.'
Bill and Jenny went into Talmorah a little before twelve
o'clock on Saturday morning, the former to meet his friends,
and the latter to pay in the celebrated cheque to their account,
and have a few words with the banker; also, to make quite
sure that Bill didn't have more than a whisky or two on the
auspicious occasion. When the meeting was assembled in the
big room at the Teamster's Arms, they were astonished at the
number of townspeople that turned up. Some, too, of the
neighbouring squatters appeared, whom they only knew by
name, and that Bill had never worked for. The clergyman,
the priest, the opposition banker, the storekeepers, great and
small, were there—in fact, everybody.
Saturday afternoon in country places is a recognised
holiday, except for shop assistants; and as they have on other
days of the week much leisure time on their hands, they do
not object. It is a change, an excitement, and as such to be
made the most of.
A long table had been laid on trestles in the 'hall' of the
principal hotel, a room which had been used indifferently in
the earlier days of Talmorah, when it was a struggling hamlet,
for holding Divine service, police courts, and 'socials,' which
included dancing, singing, recitations, and other expedients
subversive of monotony.
Couples had been married there by the monthly arriving
minister; prisoners sentenced to terms of imprisonment, even
hanged, after depositions duly taken there and the verdict of a
coroner's jury. Political meetings had been held, and on the
election of a member for the district it had been used for a
polling booth, so that it was well and favourably known to the
inhabitants of the town and district, and no one had any
difficulty in finding it. It was now more crowded than on
any occasion recalled by the oldest inhabitant.
Mr. Thornhill, the principal landowner in the district, holding
the position by reason of his wealth, power, and popularity,
127which is generally yielded to the squire in the old country,
was unanimously elected chairman, and opened the proceedings.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he commenced—'for I am pleased
to see so many of the former present, as also my good friends
and neighbours in the district, who have worked with me in
peace and harmony for so many years—(murmur of applause)—we
are met together this day to do an act of simple justice,
as well as of neighbourly kindness, by welcoming back to his
home and friends a man whom we have all known personally
or by report as an honest, straightforward, industrious settler.
A man of small means, but a son of the soil, and the head of
a family. (Interjection—"No; Jenny's the boss.") (Laughter.)
My friend who corrected me, doubtless with the best intentions,
is aware, as I am, that a good wife is the very sheet-anchor
of success in life—(cheers)—and that probably, if our
friend Hardwick had taken her counsel rather than that of agitators
and false friends, he would not have suffered the pecuniary
loss, anxiety, and—er—inconvenience which we so deeply
regret this day. (Great cheering.) However, that is past and
gone; we have now a pleasurable aspect of the case to dwell
upon. We congratulate our friend, Mr. William Hardwick,
and his good and true wife, upon their return to their home
and their neighbours, by whom they are so deservedly respected.
(Immense cheering.) In this connection it should not be
overlooked that the high character, the result of years of
honest industry, neighbourly kindness, and upright dealing, was
of signal advantage in the time of need. By it they had
gained staunch friends, who stood by them in the day of
adversity. Mr. Calthorpe, the manager of the Bank of Barataria,
had done his best for them, and they knew what a power
for good a gentleman in that position could be in a country
place. (Loud cheering.) Their neighbour, Mr. Donahue,
had mustered important witnesses for the defence in a manner
which only a good bushman, as well as a good friend, could
have accomplished, while Mrs. Donahue had personally managed
the farm and the dairy in Mrs. Hardwick's absence.
(Repeated bursts of cheering.) Other friends and neighbours,
among whom he was proud to number himself, had helped in
the matter of expense, which, as everybody knew who had
anything to do with law and lawyers, was unavoidable. (Cheers
128and laughter.) Though here he must admit that his friend
Mr. Biddulph's professional services were invaluable, and if
ever he or any of his hearers got into a tight place—well, he
would say no more. (Great cheering and laughter.) He
would now read the Address. Mr. William Hardwick, please
to stand forward.'
Here Bill advanced, looking far from confident. However, as
he confronted the chairman, he held up his head and manfully
faced the inevitable, while the following Address was read:—
'To Mr. William Hardwick of Chidowla Creek.
'Dear Sir—We, the undersigned residents of Talmorah,
desire to congratulate you and Mrs. Hardwick upon your
return to your home and this neighbourhood, during your long
residence in which you have been deservedly respected for
industrious, straightforward conduct. We have sympathised
with you sincerely, while regretting deeply the unmerited
persecution by which you have suffered. We feel proud to
think that residents of this district were chiefly instrumental in
establishing your innocence, their evidence having caused his
Honour, Judge Warrington, to discharge you "without a stain
upon your character." We beg to tender you this address,
signed by the principal inhabitants of this town and district,
and to beg your acceptance of the purse of sovereigns which
I now hand to you.'
Bill's self-possession failed him under this ordeal, and he
nearly dropped the purse, which contained fifty sovereigns.
Jenny had put her head down between her hands. This
seemed to suggest to Bill that somebody was wanted to
represent the family. So turning, so as to have a view of
the assembled neighbours, as well as the Chairman, he
managed to get out with:
'Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,—I'm no hand at a
speech, as perhaps most of you know. I did make a try in
the woolshed at Tandara just before the Shearers' War bust
upon us. I don't deny as I might have come on a bit, with
practice; might have been promoted as high as to be a Union
Delegate—(laughter)—but bein' among the prisoners of war,
when the naval battle of the Darling River took place, I was
"blocked in my career," as the sayin' is. I found myself in
gaol pretty soon after, when it was explained to me, for the first
(and, I hope, the last) time, what steel bracelets were like.
129The next place where I had to talk was in the dock,
when I made a speech with only two words in it. They was
"Not Guilty." (Cheers.) I'm in for a longer one now, and
then I'll shut up for good, and never want to hear another
sham-shearer talk rot, or hear the gag about Unionism again,
as long as I live. I don't join another one, no fear! (Cheers.)
And now, I just want you to believe, all my old friends as
have turned up to stand by us in this handsome way, and Mr.
Thornhill, the Chairman (and if all squatters were like him
there'd never have been a strike, or the thought of one), I
hope you'll believe that Jenny and I feel your kindness to the
very bottom of our hearts, and that we shall remember it to
our dying day.' Here the cheering burst forth; stopped and
began again, until one would have thought it never would
have ended.
By this time, however, tables had been covered with an
array of bottles of wine and beer, and certain viands in the
shape of sandwiches, tongues, hams, rounds of beef, biscuits,
and cakes of various hue and shape—all things necessary for
a cold but generous collation. The corks being drawn, the
sound wine and beer of the country was set flowing, when
Bill's health and Jenny's were drunk with great heartiness
and fervour.
The Chairman then proposed—'His friend Mr. Calthorpe,
in fact, the friend of all present, as the gentleman who, by
equipping Richard Donahue and sending him to find and
notice witnesses for the defence, had done yeoman's service
for the worthy pair they had met to honour that day.'
In the course of an effective speech in return for the toast
of his health, which was enthusiastically honoured, Mr.
Calthorpe stated that the directors of the bank which he had
the honour to serve always supported their officers in any
extra-commercial action—as he might call it—in favour of
honourable constituents, such as William Hardwick and his
wife. He might take this opportunity to inform them that
a partnership was in train, and would probably be arranged
under the style of 'Hardwick and Donahue,' as these worthy
yeomen had decided to join their selections, indeed to take up
additional, conditional leases and devote themselves to dairy-farming
on a large scale. They hoped to secure a share of
the profits of butter-making which were attracting so much
130attention in their district of Talmorah, for which the soil,
climate, and pasture were so eminently adapted. He might
inform them that he had applications in the names of each of
the partners, for nine hundred and sixty acres of conditional
leasehold. This, with the original selections, would form
an area of two thousand five hundred and sixty acres. They
would agree with him, a tidy grazing-farm on which to
commence the dairying business! Furthermore, he would
take this opportunity of stating that there was every prospect
of a butter-factory being established in Talmorah within twelve
months. He trusted that the new firm's enterprise would
inaugurate, in that method, one of the most profitable labour-employing
industries, by which our graziers, big and little,
have ever benefited themselves and advanced the interests
of the town and district at large.' (Tremendous cheering.)
When the applause had subsided, the prospective partners
lost no time in getting off, Jenny being aware that all
conversation after such proceedings was liable to conclude
with the 'What'll you have?' query—one of the wiles of the
'insidious foe.' Bill confessed to two or three 'long-sleevers,'
the day being warm and the lager beer cool; but Dick Donahue,
who had 'sworn off' before the priest for two years, before he
went down the Darling, had touched nothing stronger than
tea. Upon reaching their homes, the whole four resumed
their working clothes and busied themselves about the farms
until sundown. 'We'll sleep better to-night, anyhow,' said
Jenny as, after putting the children to bed, she sat by Bill
while he had his after-supper smoke in the verandah. 'But
we must be up at daylight; it will give us all we know to get
the cows milked and breakfast over and clean things on, for
church in the township. For we'll go there, Bill, as we've
good right to do, after all that's come and gone—won't we?'
'Right you are, Jenny; seems as if we'd been took care of,
somehow.'
So the old mare missed her Sunday holiday, and had to
trot into Talmorah between the shafts of the light American
waggon—the capital all-round vehicle, that in the bush
answers so many different purposes; and the Donahues went
to their chapel, where, no doubt, Father Flanagan congratulated
them on their improved prospects, while admonishing Dick to
be more regular in his 'duty' for the future.
131From this time forward the fortunes of the firm of
Hardwick and Donahue steadily improved and prospered.
The wives and husbands were eminently suited for co-operative
farm management.
Biddy could milk a third more cows in the morning than
any other woman in the district, and had won more than one
prize for butter at the Agricultural and Pastoral Show.
Jenny was not far behind her in these industries, but in the
curing of bacon and hams had rather the best of it, by the
popular vote. Dick was the smarter man of the two, having,
moreover, a gift of persuasive eloquence, which served the firm
well in buying and selling stock; this department having
been allotted to him. He was thus able to get the change
and adventure which his soul loved, and as he stuck manfully
to his pledge, he wasted no time, as formerly, in his attendance
upon shows and auction sales.
He began to be looked up to as a solid, thriving grazier,
and with hope before him, and increased comfort in his home
and family, pressed forward with energy to the goal of success
which he saw awaiting him. His children were well fed, well
clothed, and well schooled, holding up their heads with the
best of the other yeoman families.
Bill worked away with his old steadiness and perseverance,
not envying the change and occasional recreation which
Mr. R. Donahue came in for. 'He had had enough of that
sort of thing to last him for the rest of his life. His home,
with Jenny and the children [now an increasing flock], was
good enough for him,' he was heard to say.
There was also a run of good seasons, which in Australia
is summed up and may be exhaustively described in one word
Rain, with a large R by all means. The grass was good; so
were the crops; so were the prices of butter, cheese, and
milk.
The factory at Talmorah was a substantial, well-equipped,
scientific institution, the monthly cash payments from which
caused the hearts of the storekeeper and the tradesmen of that
rising township to sing for joy. The only persons who discussed
the change from 'the good old times' with scant approval were
the publicans, who observed that the farmers sent the monthly
cheque for milk to their account at the Banks of Barataria or
New Holland, and their orders by post to the tradespeople,
132instead of 'going into town like men and stopping at the hotel
for a day,' whenever they sold a ton of potatoes or a load of
wheat.
From such modest commencements many of the most
prosperous families in New South Wales and Victoria have
made their start in life. Such families not infrequently hold
the title-deeds of thousands of acres of freehold land. Contented
to live economically and to re-invest their annual
profits, they acquire large landed estates. As magistrates and
employers of labour their position year by year becomes one
of greater provincial importance and legislative influence. In
physique, energy, and intelligence their sons are an honour to
their respective colonies, and a valued addition to the loyal
subjects of the British Empire—that Empire, in whose cause
they are, even as I write, sending the flower of their youthful
manhood to a far-off battlefield, holding it their proudest
privilege to fight shoulder to shoulder with the 'Soldiers of
the Queen.'
133
MORGAN THE BUSHRANGER
AND OTHER STORIES
MORGAN THE BUSHRANGER — Morgan's Death, told by the Manager.
135
For several years the announcement 'I'm Morgan,' uttered
in the drawling monotone which characterises one section of
Australian-born natives, sufficed to ensure panic among ordinary
travellers, and if it did not cause 'the stoutest heart to quail'
in the words of the old romancers, was seldom heard without
accelerated cardiac action. For the hearer then became aware,
if he had not earlier realised the fact, that he was in the power
of a merciless enemy of his kind—blood-stained, malignant,
capricious withal, desperate too, with the knowledge that the
avenger of blood was ever on his trail, that if taken alive the
gallows was his doom, beyond doubt or argument. A convicted
felon, who had served his sentence, he bore himself as one
who had suffered wrongs and injustice from society, which he
repaid with usury. Patient and wary as the Red Indian, he
was ruthless in his hour of triumph as the 'wolf Apache' or
the cannibal Navajo exulting with a foe, helpless at the stake.
An attempt has lately been made to rehabilitate the
memory of this arch-criminal, so long the scourge and terror
of the great pastoral districts lying between the Upper Murray
and the Murrumbidgee rivers. We are not disposed to deny
that there were individuals not wholly abandoned among the
misguided outlaws who ravaged New South Wales in the
'sixties.' There was usually some rude generosity in their
dealings with victims. They encountered in fair fight, and
bore no ill-will to the police, who were paid to entrap and
exterminate them. They were lenient to the poorer travellers,
and exhibited a kind of Robin Hood gallantry on occasion.
Among them were men who would have done honour to their
native land under happier auspices. For, with few exceptions,
they were sons of the soil. But Daniel Morgan differed from
136Gardiner, Hall, and Gilbert, from the Clarkes and the Peisleys,
from O'Malley and Vane, from Bourke and Dunn. He
differed as the wolf differs from the hound, the carrion vulture
from the eagle. His cunning on all occasions equalled his
malignity, his brutal cruelty, his lust for wanton bloodshed.
Rarely was it, after one of his carefully-planned surprises,
when he swooped down upon a defenceless station, that he
abstained from injury to person or property.
He was skilful and persevering in discovering his 'enemies,'
as he called them,—a not too difficult task,—for he had abettors
and sympathisers, scoundrels who harboured and spied for
him, as well as those who, fearing the vengeance of an
unscrupulous ruffian, dared not refuse food or assistance.
Those whom he suspected of giving information to the police
or providing them with horses when on his trail he never
forgave, often wreaking cruel vengeance on them when the
opportunity came. He would reconnoitre from the hill or
thicket for days beforehand. When the men of the household
were absent or otherwise employed, he would suddenly appear
upon the scene, to revel in the terror he created; certain to
destroy valuable property, if indeed he did not imbrue his
hands in blood before he quitted the spot.
It was, for the most part, his habit to 'work' as a solitary
robber; he rarely had a companion, although in the encounter
with Mr. Baylis, the Police Magistrate of Wagga Wagga, when
that gentleman showed a noble example by bravely attacking
him in his lair, it is supposed that his then companion was
badly wounded. Mr. Baylis was shot through the body, but
that man was never seen alive again. The popular impression
was that Morgan killed him, so that he might not impede his
flight or give information. The tale may not be true, but it
shows the quality of his reputation.
It seems wonderful that Morgan should have been so long
permitted to run the gauntlet of the police of two colonies.
It may be doubted whether, in the present efficient state of the
New South Wales force, any notorious outlaw would enjoy so
protracted a 'reign,' as the provincial phrase goes. He had
great odds in his favour. A consummate horseman like most
of his class, a practical bushman and stock-rider, with a command
of scouts who knew every inch of the country, and
could thread at midnight every range and thicket between
137Marackat and the Billabong, Piney Range and Narandera, it
was no ordinary task to capture the wild rider, who was met
one day on the Upper Murray and the next morning among
the pine forests of Walbundree. Horses, of course, cost him
nothing. He had the pick of a score of studs, the surest
information as to pace and endurance. In a horse-breeding
district every animal showing more than ordinary speed or
stoutness is known and watched by the 'duffing' fraternity,
fellows who would cheerfully take to the road but for fear of
Jack Ketch. It may be imagined how easily the hackney
question is settled for a bushranger of name and fame, and
what advantages he has over ordinary police troopers in
eluding pursuit.
I was living on the Murrumbidgee during a portion of his
career, in the years 1864 to 1869. He was seen several times
within twenty miles of my station, and I have had more than one
description from temporary captives, of his appearance and
demeanour. There is not an instance on record of his having
been taken by surprise, or viewed before he had been employed
in reconnoitring his antagonist.
Some of his adventures were not wholly without an element
of humour—although the victim well knew that the turn of a
straw might change the intent, from robbery to murder. The
late Mr. Alexander Burt, manager of Tubbo and Yarrabee,
was riding on the plains, at a distance of ten or twelve miles
from the head station, when a horseman emerged from a belt
of pines. He wore a poncho, but differed in no respect from
ordinary travellers. Without suspicion he rode towards the
stranger. As he approached and, bushman-like, scrutinised
horse and man, he observed the JP brand, and recognised the
animal as one stolen from the station. A tall, powerful Scot,
Mr. Burt ranged alongside of the individual in the poncho
and reached over to collar him. At that moment a revolver
appeared from under the poncho, and a drawling voice uttered
the words 'Keep back!'
It was unsafe to try a rush, and the snake-like eye of the
robber told clearly that the least motion would be the signal
for pulling the trigger.
'What's yer name?' queried the stranger.
'My name is Burt.'
'Then Burt—you get off—that—horse.'
138Being unarmed, he had no option but to dismount.
And with this parting injunction he rode slowly away,
leading Mr. Burt's horse, while that gentleman, cursing his
hard fate, had to tramp a dozen miles before relating the foregoing
adventure.
At another time he surprised the Yarrabee Station, 'bailing'
Mr. Waugh the overseer, Mr. Apps, and others of the employés
of Mr. John Peter, but beyond placing the JP brand in the
fire, and swearing he would put it on one of them, as a suitable
memento, he did nothing dreadful.
At Mr. Cochran's of Widgiewa, as also at Mr. M'Laurin's
of Yarra Yarra, preparations were openly made for his
reception; yet, though he made various threats of vengeance,
he never appeared at either place.
At Round Hill Station, near Germanton, he enacted one
of his murderous pranks. Suddenly appearing in the shed at
shearing time, he terrorised the assembled men, fired on,
wounded and threatened the life of the manager. After
calling for spirits and compelling all to drink with him, he
turned to ride away, when, incensed by a careless remark, he
wheeled his horse and fired his revolver at the crowd. A
bullet took effect in the ankle of a young gentleman gaining
shearing experience, breaking the bone, and producing intense
agony. Appearing to regret the occurrence, Morgan suggested
to another man to go for the doctor. Having started, Morgan
followed at a gallop, and overtaking him, said with an oath,
'You're not going for the doctor—you're going for the police.'
With that he shot the unfortunate young man through the body,
who fell from his horse mortally wounded.
About the same time he was seen by Police Sergeant
M'Ginnerty riding near the Wagga Wagga road. Having no
suspicion, he galloped alongside, merely to see who he was.
Without a moment's hesitation Morgan fired through his poncho.
The bullet was but too sure—it may be noted that he rarely
missed his aim—and the ill-fated officer fell to the ground in
the death agony. He coolly propped up the dying man in a
sitting posture, and there left him.
139When it is considered that he killed two police officers,
besides civilians, Chinamen, and others, and that he shot a
police magistrate through the body (inflicting a wound nearly
fatal, the consequences of which were suffered for years after),
it will be admitted that he was one of the most formidable
outlaws that ever roamed the Australian wilds.
He is said to have encountered a pastoral tenant, of large
possession, whom he thus accosted—
The witness was understood to deny, or, at any rate, shade
off the unpopular act.
'Piney Range,' near Walbundree, was understood to be at
one time the robber's headquarters. Here he was harboured
in secret, and more comfortably lodged than was guessed
at by the public or the police. The 'boys' were a horse-and
cattle-stealing band of rascals—now fortunately dispersed—who
generally made themselves useful by misleading the police,
as well as by giving him notice of hostile movements. Towards
subsidising them the spoils of honest men were partially
devoted.
But this did by no means satisfy the 'terrible cross-examiner.'
'You look here now! If yer don't drop it, the—very—next—time—I—come—over—I'll—shoot—yer.
For—the—matter—of—that—I—don't—know—whether—I—won't—shoot—yer—now.'
And as the dull eyes fastened with deadly gaze upon the
captive's face—he looking meanwhile at the mouth of the
levelled weapon, held in the blood-stained hand of one who at
any time would rather kill a man than not—be sure Mr.
Blank's feelings were far from enviable.
To one of his victims he is reported to have said—
Fancy performing on the light fantastic before such a
critic!
A cheerful squatter (who told me the tale) was riding
through his paddocks one fine afternoon, in company with his
family and a couple of young friends of the 'colonial experience'
140persuasion. They were driving—he riding a handsome blood
filly. In advance of the buggy, he was quietly pacing through
the woodland—probably thinking how well the filly was coming
on in her walking, or that fat stock had touched their highest
quotation—when he was aware of a man sitting motionless
on his horse, under a tree.
The tree was slightly off his line, and as he approached it
the strange horseman quietly rode towards him. He noted
that he was haggard, and dark-complexioned, with an immense
bushy beard. His long, black hair hung on his shoulders.
His eyes, intensely black, were small and beady; his air sullen
and forbidding. He rode closely up to the pastoralist without
word or sign. Their knees had nearly touched when he drew
a revolver and pointed it at his breast, so quickly that there
was hardly time to realise the situation.
'Which—way—are—yer—goin'?'
'Only across the paddock,' was the answer.
'You—come—back—with—me—to—that—buggy.'
By making a slight detour, they came in front of the
vehicle, the occupants of which were perfectly unsuspicious of
the strange company into which the head of the house had
fallen.
Then he suddenly accosted them, levelling the revolver,
commanding them to stand, and directing the young gentleman
who was driving to jump to the ground. He was famed
for his activity, it is said, but the spring made on that occasion,
at the bidding of Morgan, beat all former records. The other
young gentleman, though of limited colonial experience, was
not 'devoid of sense,' as he dropped two five-pound notes from
his pocket into a tussock of grass, whence they were afterwards
recovered.
After relieving all of their watches and loose cash, the
bushranger asked the proprietor whether he had seen any
police lately.
'Yes, two had passed.'
'And—you—fed—'em, I expect? I'm half—a—mind—to
blow—the bloomin'—wind—through—yer.'
'What am I to do?' queried the perplexed landholder.
'I should feed you if you came by. I can't deny them what
I give to every one that passes.'
'D'ye—know—who—I—am?'
141'I never met you before, but I can pretty well guess. I've
never done you any harm that I know of.'
'It's—a—dashed—good—thing—yer—haven't. What's—that—comin'—along
the road?'
'The mail coach.'
'How—d'ye—know—that?'
'Well, it comes by every day about this time, and of
course I know it.'
And with this precept and admonition the robber departed,
to the infinite relief of all concerned. In a few minutes they
heard the pistol shot with which he 'brought-to' the mail-coach.
'Blest if I seen a speck of him till he fired the revolver
just over my head,' said the driver afterwards. 'I was that
startled I wonder I didn't fall off the box.'
No harm was done on that occasion, save to Her Majesty's
mails, and the correspondence of the lieges. My informant
gathered up the strewed parcels and torn sheets into a large sack
next morning, and forwarded them to the nearest post-office.
In Morgan's whole career there is not recorded one
instance of even the spurious generosity which, if it did not
redeem, relieved the darkness of other criminal careers. He
had apparently not even the craving for companionship, which
makes it a necessity with the ordinary brigand to have a
'mate' towards whom, at any rate, he is popularly supposed to
exhibit that fidelity which he has forsworn towards his kind.
Rarely is it known that Morgan pursued his depredations in
concert with any one. He may have had confederates,
harbourers he must have had, but not comrades.
He was never known to show mercy or kindness towards
women. When they were present at any of his raids, he
seems either to have refrained from noticing them or to have
derided their fears. There is no record of his having
suffered their entreaties to prevail, or to have ceased from
violence and outrage at their bidding.
Subtle, savage, and solitary as those beasts of prey which
have learned to prefer human flesh, and once having tasted
to renounce all other, Morgan lurked amid the wilds, which
he had made his home, ever ready for ruffianism or bloodshed—a
142fiend incarnate—permitted to carry terror and
outrage into peaceful homes, until his appointed hour of
doom. This was the manner of it.
Peechelbah Station, on the Murray, was a big scattered
place, a regular small town. There was the owner's house—a
comfortable bungalow, with a verandah all round. He and
his family had just come up from town. My cottage was half a
mile away. I was the Manager, and could ride or drive from
daylight to midnight, or indeed fight, on a pinch, with any man
on that side of the country. I was to have gone up to the 'big
house' to have spent the evening. But it came on to rain, so
I did not go, which was just as well, as matters turned out.
I was writing in my dining-room about nine o'clock when
a servant girl from the house came rushing in. 'What's the
matter, Mary?' I said, as soon as I saw her face. 'Morgan's
stuck up the place,' she half whispered, 'and he's in the
house now. He won't let any one leave the room; swore
he'd shoot them if they did. But I thought I'd creep out and
let you know.'
'You're a good lass,' I said, 'and have done a good night's
work, if you never did another. Now, you get back and
don't let on you've been away from your cups and saucers.
How does he shape?'
'Oh, pretty quiet. Says he won't harm nobody. They're
all sitting on the sofa, and he's got his pistols on the table
before him.' And back she went.
Here was a pretty kettle of fish! Many things had to be
done, so I pulled myself together, and set about to study the
proper place for the battle. It was no use trying to rush the
house. There were a lot of hands at work on the place and in
the men's huts. But in those days you couldn't be sure of half
of them. I had a few confidential chaps about, and I intended
to trust entirely to them and myself. I was a good man in
those days, as I said before.
But here was Morgan in possession—one of the most
desperate, bloodthirsty bushrangers that had ever 'turned out'
in New South Wales or Victoria. Nothing was surer than, if
we made an attempt to besiege the house, he would at once
143shoot Mr. M'Pherson, and his partner Mr. Telford, who
happened to be there with him.
So I had to be politic or all would go wrong.
I first thought of the money. For a wonder I had four
hundred pounds, in notes, in my desk. I had got them from
the bank to buy land, which was to be sold that week. I
didn't often do anything so foolish, you may believe, as to
keep forty ten-pound notes in a desk.
The next thing, of course, was to 'plant' it. I made it
into a parcel, and taking it over to the creek, hid it under the
overhanging root of a tree, in a place that Mr. Morgan, unless
he was a thought-reader, like the man we had staying here the
other night, would not be likely to find.
This done, I sent my body-servant down to the men's hut,
to tell them all to come up to my place—that I wanted to
give them a glass of grog. Grog, of course, is never allowed
to be kept on a station by any one but the proprietor or
manager. But I used to give them a treat now and then, so
they didn't think it unusual.
I mustered them in my big room and saw they were all
there. Every man had his glass of whisky, as I had promised.
Then I said: 'Men! There's a d—d fellow here to-night that
you've often heard of—perhaps seen. His name's Morgan!
He's stuck up the big house, with Mr. and Mrs. M'Pherson
and the family. Now, listen to me. The police will be up
directly. I intend to surround the house. But I don't want
any of you fellows to run into danger, d'ye see? It's my
order—mind that—that you all stop in here, till you have the
word to come out. Antonio!' I said—he had been with me
for ten years and was a determined fellow; a sailor from the
Spanish main, half-Spanish, half-English, and afraid of
nothing in the world—'Antonio, you stand near the door.
My orders are that no one leaves this room to-night till I tell
him. The first man that tries to do so, shoot him, and ask no
questions.'
'By ——! I will,' says Antonio, showing his white teeth
and a navy revolver.
The men looked queer at this; but they knew Antonio,
and they knew me. They had had a glass of grog, besides, and
I promised them another by and by. This pacified them; so
they brought out some cards and set to at euchre and all-fours.
144They were safe. I had made up my mind what to
do. I never intended Morgan to leave the place alive. I
had sent off for the police, and among the men I could trust
was a smart fellow named Quinlan, a dead shot and a steady,
determined man. He had several times said what a shame it
was that a fellow like Morgan should go about terrorising the
whole country, and what fools and cowards people were to
suffer it. He had his own gun and ammunition, and, when I
told him, said he wanted nothing better than to have a slap
at him.
We weren't so well off for firearms as we might have been,
for I had hid a lot of loaded guns in an empty hut, ready to
get hold of in case of sudden need. Confound it, if some of
the boys hadn't taken them out the day before to go duck-shooting
with. However, we rummaged up enough to arm the
picked men, and kept watch.
It was a long, long night, but we were so excited and
anxious that no one felt weary, much less inclined to sleep.
Mr. Telford was in the house with Mr. M'Pherson, and he
chaffed Morgan (they told me afterwards) about having his
revolvers out in the presence of ladies. However, he couldn't
get him to put them away. He was always most suspicious.
Never gave a man a chance to close with him. He was well-behaved
and civil enough in the house, and, I believe, only
wished one of the young ladies to play him a tune or two on
the piano. He drank spirits sparingly, and always used to
call for an unopened bottle. He was afraid of being poisoned
or drugged. Some of his friends wouldn't have minded much
about that even, as there was a thousand pounds reward for
his capture, alive or dead. I have good reason for thinking,
however, that one or two of the 'knockabouts' would have
given him 'the office,' if we hadn't got them all under hatches,
as it were.
Daylight came at last. I've had many a night watching
cattle in cold and wet, but none that I was so anxious to end
as that. Of course I knew our man wouldn't stop till sunrise.
He was too careful, and never took any risks that he
could help.
And at last, by George! out he came, and walked down
towards the yard where his horse was. I had pretty well
considered the line he was likely to take, and was lying down,
145the men on each side of me, as it happened. But, cunning
to the last, he made M'Pherson and Telford come out with
him, one on each side, not above a yard away from him. As
he passed by us we couldn't have fired without a good chance
of shooting one of the other two. So we let him pass—pretty
close too. However, when he'd passed Quinlan, the track
turned at an angle, which brought him broadside on; it
wasn't to say a very long shot, nor yet a very close one. It
was a risk, too, for of course if he had been missed, the first
thing he'd have done would have been to have shot M'Pherson
and Telford before any one could have stopped him. But
Quinlan had a fair show as he thought, and let drive, without
bothering about too many things at once. That shot settled
the business for good and all. His bullet struck Morgan
between the shoulders and passed out near his chin. He fell,
mortally wounded. In an instant he was rushed and his
revolvers taken from him. He lay helpless; the spine had
been touched, and he was writhing in his death agony, as
better men had done before from his pistol.
The first thing he said was, 'You might have sent a fellow
a challenge.' One of the men called out, 'When did you ever
do it, you murdering dog?' He never spoke after that, and
lived less than two hours.
The police didn't come up in time to do anything; no
doubt they would have been ready to help in preventing his
escape. But I was only too glad the thing had ended as it
did. The news soon got abroad that this man—who had
kept the border stations of two colonies in fear and trembling,
so to speak, for years—was lying dead at Peechelbah. Before
night there were best part of two hundred people on the place.
I can't say exactly how much whisky they drank, but the
station supply ran out before dark, and it was no foolish one
either. 'All's well that ends well,' they say. We've had
nobody since who's been such a 'terror' to settlers and
travellers. But I don't want to go through such a time again
as the night of Morgan's death.
HOW I BECAME A BUTCHER — A VISION OF GOLD
146
I was wending my way to Melbourne with a draft of fat cattle
in the spring of 1851, when the public-house talk took the
unwonted flavour of gold. Gold had 'broken out,' as it was
expressed, at a creek a few miles from Buninyong. Gold in
lumps! Gold in bushels! All the world was there, except
those who were on the road or packing up. A couple of
hundred head of fat cattle were not, perhaps, the exact sort
of impedimenta to go exploring with on a goldfield, but it was
hard to stem the tidal wave, now rolling in unbroken line
towards Ballarat. Men agreed that this was the strange new
name of the strange new treasure-hold. I incontinently pined
for Ballarat. I sold one-half of my drove by the way,
purchased a few articles suitable for certain contingencies, and
joined the procession; for it was a procession, a caravan,
almost a crusade.
The weather had been wet. The roads were deep.
Heavy showers, fierce gales, driving sleet made the spring
days gloomy, and multiplied delays and disasters. None of
these obstacles stayed the ardent pilgrims, whose faith in their
golden goal was daily confirmed, stimulated ever by wild
reports of luck. The variety of the wayfarers who thronged
that highway, broad as the path to destruction, was striking.
Sun-tanned bushmen, inured to toil, practised in emergencies,
alternated with groups of townspeople, whose fresh complexions
and awkward dealings with their new experience stamped
them as recruits. Passengers, who had left shipboard but a
week since, armed to the teeth, expectant of evil. Mercantile
Jack, whose rolling gait and careless energy displayed his
calling as clearly as if the name of his ship had been tattooed
147on his forehead. Other persons whose erect appearance and
regular step hinted at pipe-clay. Carts with horses, ponies,
mules, donkeys, even men and women, in their shafts.
Bullock drays, heavily laden, in which the long teams at
fullest stretch of strength were fairly cursed through the
slough, to which the army column ahead and around had
reduced the road. Bells! bells! bells! everywhere and of
every note and inflexion, dog-trucks, wheel-barrows, horsemen,
footmen, lent their aid to the extraordinary mélange of sights
and sounds, mobilised en route for Ballarat.
Slowly, 'with painful patience,' as became experienced
drovers, we skirted or traversed the pilgrim host. We
drove far into the night, until we reached a sequestered
camp. A few days of uneventful travelling brought us to the
Buninyong Inn. This modest hostelry, amply sufficient for
the ordinary traffic of the road, was now filled and overflowed
by the roaring flood of wayfarers. The hostess, in daily
receipt of profits which a month had not formerly accumulated,
was civil but indifferent. 'I might get supper,' she dared say,
'but could not guarantee that meal. Her servants were
worked off their legs. She wished indeed that there was
another inn; she was tired to death of having to provide for
such a mob.'
When I heard a licensed victualler giving vent to this
unnatural wish, as I could not but regard it, I recognised the
case as desperate, and capitulated. I managed to procure a
meal in due time, and mingled with the crowd in hope of
gaining the information of which I stood in need. My
assistants were a white man and a black boy. The former
was a small, wiry Englishman, formerly connected with a
training stable. He called himself Ben Brace, after a famous
steeplechaser which he had trained or strapped. Hard-bitten,
hard-reared, mostly on straw and ashplant, as goes the nature
of English stable-lads, to Ben early hours or late, foul weather
or fair, fasting or feasting were much alike. Of course he
drank, but he had enough of the results of the old stable
discipline left to restrain himself until after the race was
run. I had therefore no feeling of apprehension about his
fidelity.
For the time was an exciting one, and had not been without
its effects upon all hired labour, though things had not
148developed in that respect as fully as when a year's success had
made gold as common as shells on the seashore. Then,
indeed, by no rate of wages could you ensure the effective
discharge of the indispensable duties of the road. When
every passing traveller who spoke to your stock-riders, or
requested a light for a pipe, had nuggets of gold in his pocket,
'or knowed a party as bottomed last week to the tune of
£1200 a man,' it was small wonder that, valuable as their
services were conceded to be, they should themselves deem
them to be invaluable. Independent, insolent, and ridiculously
sensitive as drovers became, it became an undertaking
perilous and uncertain in the extreme to drive stock to
market.
I have seen the only man (beside the proprietor) in charge
of three hundred head of fat cattle confronting that sorely-tried
squatter, with vinous gravity and sarcastic defiance, as thus—'You
s'pose I'm a-goin' to stay out and watch these ——
cattle while you're a-sittin' in the public-house eatin' your
arrowroot? No. I ain't the cattle dorg. I'm a man! as
good as ever you was, and you can go and drive your bloomin'
cattle yerself.'
This fellow was in receipt of one pound per diem; his
allegations were totally unfounded, as his master had done
nearly all the work, and would have done the remainder had
the instincts of a large drove of wild cattle permitted. I saw
my friend's grey eyes glitter dangerously for a moment as he
looked the provoking ruffian full in the face, and advanced a
step; then the helplessness of his position smote him, and he
made a degradingly civil answer.
I was fortunate in not being likely to be reduced to such
destitution. Besides Ben, the black boy Charley Bamber
was at exactly the right age to be useful. Of him I felt
secure. He was a small imp whom I had once brought
away from his tribe in a distant part of the country and
essayed to educate and civilise. The education had progressed
as far as tolerable reading and writing, a perfect
mastery of that 'vulgar tongue' so extensively heard in the
waste places of the earth, joined with a ready acquaintance
with the Bible and the Church Catechism. He would have
taken honours in any Sunday School in Britain. The civilisation,
I am bound to admit, was imperfect and problematical.
149But the son of the forest was quick of eye, a sure tracker,
and the possessor of a kind of mariner's compass instinct
which enabled him to find his way through any country,
known or unknown, with ease and precision. He was a
first-rate hand with all manner of cattle and horses, when
freed from that unexorcised demon, his temper. It was
simply fiendish. Bread and butter, shoes and stockings,
the language of England and the language of kindness, had
left that inheritance untouched. In his paroxysms he would
throw himself upon the earth and saw away at his throat
with his knife. This instrument being generally blunt, he
never succeeded in severing the carotid artery. But he often
looked with glaring eyes and distorted features, as if he would
have liked in this manner to have settled the vexed question
of his creation. Strange as it may appear, the incongruity
of his knowledge with his tendencies was to him a matter of
wrathful regret. Being reproached one day for bad conduct
by the lady to whose untiring lessons he owed his knowledge,
he exclaimed, 'I wish you'd never taught me at all. Once,
I didn't know I was wicked; now I do, and I'm miserable.'
The pony which he always rode, a clever, self-willed scamp
like himself, once took him under the branches of a low-growing
tree, scratching his face in the process. Lifting the
tomahawk which he generally carried, he drove it into the
withers of the poor animal. On reaching home he confessed
frankly enough, as was his custom, and appeared grieved and
penitent. He was sorry enough afterwards, for the fistula
which supervened necessitated a tedious washing every morning
with soap and water for twelve months. This attention
fell to his lot with strict retributive justice, and before a cure
was effected he had ample leisure to deplore his rashness.
With all his faults he could be most useful when he liked.
He was so clever that I could not help feeling a deep interest
in him, and during the expedition which I describe he was
unusually well-behaved.
Having put the cattle into a secure yard, and seen my
retainers comfortably fed and housed, I betook myself to
the coffee-room. This apartment was crowded with persons
just about to visit, or on their return from visiting, the
Wonder of the Age. The conversation was general and
unreserved. I was amused at the usual conflict of opinion
150with regard to the duration, demerits, and destiny of the
Australian goldfields.
The elderly and conservative colonists took a depressing
view of this new-born irruption of bullion. 'It tended to
the confusion of social ranks, to the termination of existing
relations between shepherds and squatters, to democracy,
demoralisation, and decay. Had other nations, the Spaniards
notably, not found the possession of gold-mines in their
American colonies a curse rather than a blessing? Would
not the standard value of gold coin be reduced? Would not
landed property be depreciated, agriculture perish, labour
become a tradition, and this fair land be left a prey to
ruffianly gold-seekers and unprincipled adventurers? The
opposition, composed of the younger men, the 'party of
progress,' with a few democrats enragés, scoffed at the words
of wary commerce or timid capital. 'This was an Anglo-Saxon
community. Capacity for self-government had ever
been the proud heritage of the race. We had that sober
reasoning power, energy, and innate reverence for law which
enabled us to successfully administer republics, goldfields,
and other complications fatal to weaker families of men.
With such a people abundance of gold was not more undesirable
than abundance of wheat. Glut of gold! Well, there
were many ways of disposing of it. Civilisation developed
the need for coin nearly as fast as it was supplied. A
sovereign would be a sovereign most likely for our time.
Land! The land of course would be sold, cut up into farms
for industrious yeomen, and high time too.'
The destiny of our infant nation was not finally settled
when I slipped out. I had mastered two facts, however,
which were to me at that time more immediately interesting
than the rise of nations and the fall of gold. These were the
increasing yields at Ballarat, and that, as yet, the diggers were
living wholly on mutton, of which they were excessively tired.
Long before daylight we were feeding our horses and
taking a meal, so precautionary in its nature that (more
especially in Charley's case) the question of dinner might
safely be entrusted to the future. With just light enough to
distinguish the white-stemmed gums which stood ghostly in
the chill dawn, we left the sleeping herd of prospectors and
politicians and prepared for a day of doubt and adventure.
151Silent and cold, we stumbled and jogged along, something
after the fashion of Lord Scamperdale going to meet the
hounds in the next county, for an hour or two. Then the
sun began to cheer the sodden landscape, the birds chirped,
the cattle put their heads down, life's mercury rose.
We had reached the historic Yuille's Creek, upon the
bank of which the great gold city now stands. Then it was
like any other 'wash-up creek'—a mimic river in winter, a
chain of muddy water-holes in summer. As I looked at the
eager waters, yellow with the clay in solution, as if the great
metal had lent the wave its own hue, I felt like Sinbad
approaching the valley of diamonds, and almost expected to
break my shins against lumps of gold and silver. I determined
to advance and reconnoitre; so, leaving Ben and
Charley to feed and cherish the cattle until my return, I put
spurs to old Hope, and headed up the water at a more
cheerful pace than we had known since daylight. I turned
the spur of a ridge which came low upon the meadows of
the streamlet. I heard a confused murmuring sound, the
subdued 'voice of a vast congregation,' combined with a
noise as of a multitude of steam mills. I rounded the
cape, and, pulling up my horse, stared in wonder and excitement
upon the strange scene which burst in suddenness
upon me.
On a small meadow, and upon the slopes which rose
gently from it, were massed nearly twenty thousand men.
They were, with few exceptions, working more earnestly, more
absorbingly, more silently than any body of labourers I had
ever seen. They were delving, carrying heavy loads, filling
and emptying buckets, washing the ore in thousands of
cradles, which occupied every yard and foot of the creek,
in which men stood waist-deep. Long streets and alleys of
tents and shanties constituted a kind of township, where
flaunting flags of all colours denoted stores and shops, and
St. George's banner, hanging proudly unfurled, told that the
majesty of the law, order, and the government was administered
by Commissioners and supported by policemen.
I rode among the toilers, amid whom I soon found friends
and acquaintances. On every side was evidence of the magical
richness of the deposit. Nuggets were handed about with a
careless confidence which denoted the easy circumstances of
152the owners. The famous 'Jeweller's Point' was just yielding
its 'untold gold,' and one sanguine individual did not overstate
the case when he assured me they were 'turning it up
like potatoes.' I ascertained that, with the exception of an
occasional quarter from an adjoining station, the grand army
was ignorant of the taste of beef, that mutton was beginning
to be accounted monotonous fare, and that he who reintroduced
the diggers to steaks and sirloins would be hailed
as a benefactor and paid like a governor-general.
Having ascertained that this society, in which no trade
was unrepresented, contained several butchers, I presented
myself to these distributors, my natural enemies. I found
that the abnormal conditions among which we moved had
by no means lessened our antagonism. We did battle as of
old. They decried the quality of my cattle, and affected to
ignore the popular necessity for beef. Thinking that I was
compelled to accept their ruling, they declined to buy except
at a low price. I retired full of wrath and resolve.
Had I come these many leagues to be a prey to shallow
greed and cunning? Not so, by St. Hubert! Sooner than take
so miserable a price for my weary days and watchful nights,
I would turn butcher myself. Ha! happy thought! Why
not? There was no moral declension in becoming a butcher,
at least temporarily; all one's morale here was bouleversé.
'Tis done. 'I will turn the flank of these knaves. Henceforth
I also am a butcher. Chops and steaks! No! steaks
only! Families supplied. Ha! ha!'
I returned to the cattle, which I found much refreshed
by the creek side. We drove them to the bank of the great
Wendouree Lake, then a shallow, reedy marsh, made a brush
yard, established ourselves in the lee of a huge fallen gum,
and passed cheerfully enough our first night at Ballarat.
Next morning I commenced the campaign of competition
with decision. I gave Charley a lecture of considerable
length upon his general deportment, and the particular duties
which had now devolved upon him. He was to look after
or 'tail' the cattle daily by the side of the lake; to abstain
from opossum hunts and other snares of the evil one; to look
out that wicked men, of whom this place was choke-full, did
not steal the cattle; to rest his pony, Jackdaw, whenever he
could safely; and always to bring his cattle home at sundown.
153If he did all these things, and was generally a good boy, I
would give him a cow, from the profit of whose progeny he
would very likely become a rich man, when we got back to
Squattlesea Mere. He promised to abandon all his sins on
the spot. As the cattle stood patiently expectant by the
rails, I sent a bullet into the 'curl' of the forehead of a
big rough bullock. The rest of the drove moved out with
small excitement, and the first act was over.
We flayed and quartered our bullock 'upon the hide,'
a 'gallows' being a luxury to which, like uncivilised nations,
we had not attained.
I chose a location for a shop in a central position among
the tented streets, being chiefly attracted thereto by a large
stump, which was a—ahem—butcher's block ready made,
divided our animal into more available portions, and with
modest confidence awaited 'a share of the public patronage.'
At first trade was slack—the sun became powerful—the
flies arrived in myriads—a slight reactionary despondency
set in—when lo! a customer, a bronzed and bearded digger.
I think I see his jolly face now. 'Hullo, mate! got some
beef? Blowed if I didn't think all the cattle was dead!
We're that tired of mutton—well, I ain't got much time to
stand yarnin'. Give us a bit now, though. Thirty pound—that'll
do. Here's a sov'ring. Good-bye.'
Myself.—'Tell the other fellows, will you?'
'All right. Won't want much tellin',' shouted my friend,
far on his way.
My soul was comforted. It was the turn of the tide.
Another and another came who lusted for the muscle-forming
food. Towards evening the news was general that there was
'beef in Ballarat.' The tide flowed and rose until the last
ounce of the brindled bullock had vanished, and I was left
the owner of a bag of coin weighty and imposing as the
purse of a Cadi.
'My word, sir, we'll have to kill two to-morrow,' quoth
Ben, 'if this goes on; and however shall we manage to cut
'em up and sell too?'
'Well, we'll see,' said I confidently; 'something will turn up.'
As we returned to our depôt by Wendouree, we met by the
wayside a middle-aged man sitting on a log in a despondent
mood. He was the only man I had yet seen at Ballarat who
154was not full of hope and energy. I was curious enough to
disturb his reverie.
'What's the matter?' said I. 'Have you lost your horse,
or your wife, or has the bottom of your claim tumbled out,
that you look so down on your luck?'
'Well, master, it ain't quite so bad as all that, but it isn't
so easy to get on here without money or work, and I was
just a-thinkin' about going back to Geelong.'
'I should have thought every one could have got work
here, by the look of things.'
'Well, a many do, but I am not much with pick and
shovel. I'm gettin' old now, and I can't a-bear cookin'. Now,
I was as comfortable as could be in Geelong, a-workin' steady
at my trade. I was just a-thinkin' what a fool I was to come
away, surelye!'
'What is your trade?'
'Well, master, I'm a butcher!'
There must be good angels. One doubts sometimes.
But how otherwise could this man, an unimaginative Englishman,
lately arrived, not easy of adaptation to strange surroundings,
have been conveyed to this precise spot, planté là, that
I might stumble against him in my need? I could have
clasped him in my arms.
But I said, with assumed indifference, 'Well, I want a man
for a week or two to do slaughtering. You can have five
shillings a day, and come home with us now, if you like.'
'Thank ye, master, that I'll do, and main thankful I be.'
When we reached the fallen tree, which, like a South Sea
cocoa-palm, supplied nearly all our wants (being fuel, fireplace,
house, furniture, and one side of our stock-yard), the
cattle were in, the camp kettle was boiling, and Charley, standing
proudly by the fire, received my congratulations. Our
professional comforted himself internally. We regarded the
past with satisfaction and the future with hope, and were
soon restoring our taxed energies with unbroken slumber.
Next day we slew two kine, ably assisted by our new man,
who, however, looked rather blank at the absence of so many
trade accessories. Our bough-constructed 'shop' on the flat
became a place of fashionable resort, and the conversion
of cows into coin became easy and methodical. Having real
work to do, I donned suitable garments, and as I stood forth
155in blue serge and jack-boots, wielding my blood-stained axe
or gory knife, few of the busy diggers doubted my having
been bred to the craft. One or two jokes sprang from this
slight misapprehension.
'Ah! if you was at 'ome now, and 'ad yer big cleaver,
yer'd knock it off smarter, wouldn't yer now?' This was a
criticism upon my repeated attempts to sever an obstinate
bone with a gapped American axe.
On the first day of my butcherhood I had bethought me
of the cuisine of my old friend the Commissioner, which I
essayed to improve by the gift of a sirloin. Placing the
exotic in a gunny-bag, I rode up to the camp, and said to
the blue-coated warder, 'Take this joint of beef to Mr.
Sturt with my compliments.' I had no sooner completed the
sentence than I saw an expression upon the face of the
man-at-arms which reminded me of my condition in life.
Gazing at me with supercilious surprise, he called languidly
to a brother gendarme, 'Jones, take this here to the Commissioner
with the butcher's compliments!' For one moment
I looked 'cells and contempt of court' at the obtuse myrmidon
who failed to recognize the disguised magistrate; but the
humour of the incident presenting itself, I burst into a fit
of laughter which further mystified him, and departed.
I was now settled in business. I diverted a large share
of the trade previously monopolised by my rivals, who now
bitterly regretted not having disposed of me by purchase.
Every night I went up to the Government camp with my bag
of coin, which I delivered over for safe keeping. As many
friends were located there, with them I generally spent my
evenings, which were of a joyous and sociable character.
The conditions were favourable. Most of us were young;
we were all making money tolerably fast, with the agreeable
probability, for some time to come, of making it even
faster.
The exodus from Melbourne was exhaustive. There,
daily to be seen in red shirt and thick but very neat boots,
stood the handsome doctor of 'our street' by the cradle,
for which he had abandoned patients and practice. Next to
him, with constant care lowering the ever-recurring shaft-bucket,
was a rising barrister. Hotel servants, tradespeople,
farmers, market-gardeners, civilians, cab-drivers, barbers, even
156the tragic and the comic muse, had enrolled themselves among
the players at this theatre, where the popular drama of
'Golden Hazard' was having a run till further notice. The
ranks of the 50th Regiment were thinned by desertions in spite
of the utmost vigilance; while the ships in the bay were likely
to be reduced to the condition of the world's fleet in Campbell's
Last Man.
Pitiable the while was the position of the squatters,
especially of those who held sheep. On a cattle station the
proprietor or manager, with the assistance of a boy or two,
can do much. It is not so with sheep. Particularly was it
not so in those pre-fencing days. In vain the sheep-owner
doubles his men's wages and removes apparent discontent.
He tries to think that matters will go on pretty well till
shearing. One night comes a traveller, a wretch with a bag
of gold. Next morning a shepherd is missing, and so on.
We gave a little festa one evening in honour of a friend
who had sold his share in the claim and wisely gone back
to follow his profession in town. The conversation had a
philosophical turn, and it was debated whether or no the
country would come well out of the ordeal to which, particularly
on account of its uneducated classes, it was being
subjected. Some one expressed an opinion adverse to the
result upon national morality and progress.
'I hold a directly opposite conviction,' said Jack Freshland.
'So do all the men who, like me, have seen order
produced from chaos in California. "Scum of the universe"
was a complimentary description of her population.
"Hell upon earth" was a weak metaphor explanatory of
her social state. Look at her now—self-regenerate, orderly,
honestly progressive in every phase of industry. I don't say
that you run no chance of being shot; accidents will happen
when fellows' belts and coat pockets are full of loaded
revolvers, whisky being cheap. But you run far less chance
of being robbed than in London or Paris. When I came
away you might leave your valuables scattered about your
tent for days. No one dared to touch them. I don't know
whether we shall come to ear-marking pilferers and hanging
horse-stealers, but this is an Anglo-Saxon population, and in
some way, I will stake my existence, order will be preserved.'
'Talking of horse-stealers, I found Fred Charbett's "Grey
157Surrey" the other day,' said Moore O'Donnell, 'in rather
queer company.'
'That's the horse he won the Ladies' Bag at the Port
Western Races with,' I cried out eagerly, 'a tremendous mile
horse, but no stayer. Had he a large D brand?'
'He had then; and a large S—if that stands for sore back—that
ye could see a mile off.'
'He is a flat-ribbed horse,' I explained, 'and any one with
a bad saddle might give him a back in a day that a week
couldn't cure. How glad old Fred will be to see him again!
Who is the ruffian that has him now?'
'One Moore O'Donnell. Maybe ye wouldn't mind putting
your interrogation in another form, Mr. Boldrewood, if it's
agreeable to ye?'
'A thousand pardons, really—but I didn't understand that
you had taken possession of him.'
We all laughed at this, and Jack Freshland said, 'Come,
Moore, you old humbug, tell us how you stole the poor
fellow's horse. It's all very well for Boldrewood to back you
up with his alphabetical evidence. I don't believe half of
it. You'll be up before the beak if you don't mind.'
'Give me the laste drop of that whisky,' said O'Donnell,
stretching his long legs, 'and I'll tell you all how I compounded
a felony, for there is the laste flavour of that about the transaction.
I was mooning about looking for old "Paleface,"
when, after a great walk, I came upon the villain in company
with a strange grey, also in hobbles. You know what a hot
brute mine is: the stranger was about the same. Neither
would dream of allowing me to catch him. So, after a long
chase, I arrived at home, exhausted and demoralised, with
just sufficient strength left to put them into the bullock
yard. I refreshed myself from the whisky-jar, and after lunch
and a smoke, feeling better, I strolled out to look at the grey.
I thought we had been introduced. Of course, there he was,
the great Surrey, no less. The last time we met, I had seen a
sheet pulled off with pride by a neat groom, just before Fred
took him down to the races. Here he was, dog-poor, rough-coated,
and with a back fit to make one sick; D on the
shoulder, 2B under the mane. Identification complete.
"Such is life," thought I. "Just as one's in fine hard condition,
with all the world before you, and lots of money and
158friends, you get stolen, or come to grief, grass-feeding, and an
incurable sore back!"'
'Rather a mixed metaphor, if I may be allowed a friendly
criticism,' said a dark-haired, quiet youngster named Weston,
who had been reading for the bar 'before the gold,' as people
distinguished the former and the latter days. 'I don't quite
follow who lost the money, or did you or the horse suffer from
the sore back?'
'Go to blazes with your special pleading,' shouted O'Donnell.
'Can't a man make the smallest moral reflection among ye, a
lot of profligate divils, but he must be fixed to logical exactness,
as if he was up for his "little go"? Ye've no poetry in
ye, Weston, divil a bit. It's a fatal defect at the bar. Take
my advice in time, or I wash my hands of your future prospects.
And now hear me out, or I'll stop, and the secret will be buried
with me.'
'Go on, Moore; you won't be the last of your line, will
you?'
'How do you know, sir? None of your Saxon sneers.
The O'Donnell! Ha! ye villain, I'm up to you this time.
Next day, as big a ruffian as ever ye seen came up to the tent
and asked me "what I meant by stealin' a poor man's 'oss."
"See here now," says I, "the stealing's all the other way, it
strikes me. He belongs to a friend of mine, who would never
have sold him. He may have strayed and got into pound,
and you may have bought him out, or you may—pardon me—have
stolen him yourself."
'"I bought him off Jem Baggs, as got him out of Burnbank
Pound," replied he doggedly.
'"That may be true. I think not, myself. This is what I
am going to do. The horse is in my possession, and there
he will remain. You can either take him, if you are man
enough (and I pointed this remark with the butt of my
revolver), or you can summon me before the Bench, or take
this £5 note for your claim. Which will you do?" He held
out his dirty paw for the fiver with a grin, as he said, "All
right, you can 'ave 'im for the fiver. He ain't much in a cart,
anyhow."'
'Hurrah!' sung out half-a-dozen voices together. 'How
glad old Fred will be to see him again. What did you do
with him? Hasn't Bill Sikes re-stolen him yet?'
159'I sent him back by a stock-rider next day. He is safe at
"The Gums" by this time. I'm dry, though. You wouldn't
think it, now! Pass the whisky.'
'I say,' said Maxwell, 'there's a feller which is a poet in
this company. Wasn't that a ballad, Aubrey, that you pulled
out of your pocket just now, among all those tailors' bills, or
licences, or whatever they were? Let's have it.'
This was addressed to a fair-haired youngster who was
arguing with great interest and eagerness the relative fattening
merits of shorthorns and Herefords.
'Well, it's something in the scribbling line. If you want
it, you must read it though; I'll be hanged if I will. Writing
it has been quite bother enough.'
'Well,' said Maxwell, 'it's not every fellow who can read, or
spell either, for the matter of that. I'll read it myself, sir;
perhaps you may find the effect heightened. Now listen, you
fellows; a little sentiment won't do none of us any harm.
What's it called? H—m!
'I see a lone stream rolling down
Through valleys green, by ridges brown,
Of hills that bear no name;
The dawn's full blush in crimson flakes
Is traced on palest blue, as breaks
The morn in orient flame.
'I see—whence comes that eager gaze?
Why rein the steed in wild amaze?
The water's hue is gold;
Golden its wavelets foam and glide
Through tenderest green—to ocean-tide
The fairy streamlet rolled.
'Forward, Hope, forward! truest steed,
Of tireless hoof and desert speed,
Up the weird water bound,
Till echoing far and sounding deep,
I hear old Ocean's hoarse voice sweep
O'er this enchanted ground.
'The sea! Wild fancy! Many a mile
Of changeful Nature's frown and smile,
Ere stand we on the shore;
And yet that murmur, hoarse and deep,
None save the ocean surges keep—
It is the cradles' roar!
160'Onward! I pass the grassy hill
Around whose base the waters still
Shimmer in golden foam,
Oh! wanderer of the voiceless wild,
Of this far southern land the child,
How changed thy quiet home!
'For, close as bees in countless hive,
Like emmet-hosts that tireless strive,
Swarmed, toiled, a vast strange crowd;
Haggard each face's features seem,
Bright, fever-bright, each eye's wild gleam;
Nor cry, nor accent loud.
'But each man delved, or rocked, or bore
As if salvation with the ore
Of the mine-monarch lay;
Gold strung each arm to giant might,
Gold flashed before the aching sight,
Gold turned the night to day.
'Where Eblis reigns o'er boundless gloom,
And in his halls of endless doom
Lost souls for ever roam,
They wander (says the Eastern tale),
Nor ever startles moan or wail
Despair's eternal home.
'Less silent scarce than that pale host,
They toiled as if each moment lost
Were the red life-drop spilt;
While heavy, rough, and darkly bright,
In every shape rolled to the light
Man's hope, and pride, and guilt.
'All ranks, all ages, every land
Had sent her conscripts forth to stand
In the gold-seekers' rank;
The bushman, bronzed, with sinewy limb,
The pale-faced son of trade, e'en him
Who knew the fetters' clank.
* * * * *
''Tis night; her jewelled mantle fills
The busy valley, the dun hills,
'Tis a battle-host's repose;
A thousand watch-fires redly gleam,
Where ceaseless fusillades would seem
To warn approaching foes.
'The night is older. On the sward
Stretched, I behold the heavens broad
When, a Shape rises dim;
Then clearer, fuller, I descry
By the swart brow, the star-bright eye,
The gnome king's presence grim.
161'He stands upon a time-worn block;
His dark form shrouds the snowy rock,
As cypress marble tomb;
Nor fierce, yet wild and sad his mien,
His cloud-black tresses wave and stream,
His deep tones break the gloom.
'"Son of a tribe accurst, of those
Whose greed has broken our repose
Of the long ages dead;
Think not for naught our ancient race
Quit olden haunts, the sacred place
Of toils for ever fled.
'"List while I tell of days to come,
When men shall wish the hammers dumb
That ring so ceaseless now—
That every arm were palsy-tied,
Nor ever wet on grey hillside
Was the gold-seeker's brow.
'"I see the old world's human tide
Set southward on the Ocean wide,
I see a wood of masts;
While crime and want, disease and death,
By rolling wave and storm-wind's breath
Are on these fair shores cast.
'"I see the murderer's barrel gleam,
I hear the victim's hopeless scream
Ring through these sylvan wastes:
While each base son of elder lands,
Each witless dastard, in vast bands,
To the gold city hastes.
'"Disease shall claim her ready toll,
Flushed vice and brutal crime the dole
Of life shall ne'er deny;
Disease and death shall walk your streets,
While staggering idiocy greets
The horror-stricken eye!
'"All men shall roll in the gold mire,
The height, the depth, of man's desire,
Till come the famine years;
Then all the land shall curse the day
When first they rifled the dull clay,
With deep remorseful tears.
'"Fell want shall wake to fearful life
The fettered demons; civil strife
Rears high a gory hand;
I see a blood-splashed barricade,
While dimly lights the twilight glade
The soldier's flashing brand.
162'"But thou, son of the forest free!
Thou art not, wert not foe to me,
Frank tamer of the wild!
Thou hast not sought the sunless home
Where darkly delves the toiling gnome,
The mid-earth's swarthy child.
'"Then be thou ever, as of yore,
A dweller in the woods and o'er
Fresh plains thy herds shall roam;
Join not the vain and reckless crowd,
Who swell the city's pageant proud,
But prize thy forest home."
'He said; and with an eldritch scream
The gnome king vanished, and my dream—
Day's waking hour returned.
Yet still the wild tones echoed clear,
Half chimed with truth in reason's ear,
And my heart inly burned!'
'Well done, Maxwell, old fellow; didn't think you could
read so well! I haven't been asleep above two or three times.
I enjoyed it awfully. Particular down on us. Your underground
friend, though, prophesies war, famine, and mixed
immigration! Cheerful cuss!'
'Mr. Aubrey, will ye oblige me by coming before the
curtain. It's proud I am to know ye. I have seen worse,
sir, let me tell ye, in the pages of the Dublin University
Magazine, where the name of Moore O'Donnell is not
entirely unknown. I would like to repate to ye a short ode
of my own on——'
'Rush oh! at Cockfighter's Flat,' burst in a new man—Markham—impetuously.
'That's all the talk now, my boys!
They say the gold's thicker than the wash, shallow sinking,
and lots of water. Jackson just told me; he's off there
to-morrow to buy gold and go to Melbourne with it. I'm
away, then. Any of you chaps join me?'
'I don't mind taking a look,' said Maxwell. 'I've half a
mind to turn gold-buyer myself. It's a paying game.'
'It's an awfully risky one,' said Freshland. 'A man takes
his life in his hand once he's known to carry gold. I know a
fellow who started from here for Melbourne a fortnight since,
and has never turned up.'
'Perhaps he's bolted,' suggested a cynic.
'Perhaps so,' answered Freshland carelessly; 'but if so,
163his wife, from her looks, they tell me, is not in the secret.
I'm afraid it's the old story,' continued he, gazing mournfully
into space. 'I know well how it's done. I can see it all as
I sit here. A fellow goes stepping along the road through the
Black Forest, whistling cheerfully and thinking of the ounces
he has in his belt, or of what has gone down by the escort, of
a piano for his wife, of the children who will have grown so,
of the pleasant Christmas they will spend together, when, just
where the creek crosses the road, One-eyed Dick and Derwent
Bill step suddenly out.'
'"Morning, mates," says he, "fine weather after the rain."
'"Thundering fine," growls the one-eyed ruffian. "This
yere's a fine day for us, anyhow. Done well at the Point,
young chap?" As they talk they attempt grim jocularity,
but their eyes, cold, sinister, watchful, betray their intent as
they close upon him.
'"For the love of God, for my wife and children's sake,
spare my life!" gasps the poor fellow; "you shall have every
shilling I have in the world."
'"We ain't a-going to hurt ye. Just come off the road a
bit, will yer?" says the crafty brute. Pah! I can't bear to
think of it. Next summer some bullock-driver finds a skeleton
lashed to a tree, in the thickest part of the scrub.'
'I say, Freshland,' I pleaded, 'don't. I've got a couple of
miles to walk in the dark to-night. I think I'd rather hear
that kind of story by daylight. But I must be off now. We
tradesmen, you know! Good-bye.'
I walked back through scattered tents and darksome trees,
moaning in the midnight, as the breeze swept through them.
I was unable to banish Freshland's horrible tale from my
mind, and was decidedly relieved when the yard of our
encampment loomed into view. The cattle were lying down,
Ben was smoking his pipe on guard, all was safe. Murderers
and burglars were exercising their talents elsewhere. I was
soon in a land where the mystery of permitted evil troubled
me not.
My career at Ballarat was, however, drawing to a close.
While we were transacting our al fresco breakfast, a 'real
butcher' made his appearance with proposals for the purchase
of my remaining cattle, and the collateral advantages of stock-in-trade,
plant, and goodwill. 'Why had I not come to him
164in the first instance?' he asked with good-humoured surprise.
Some accident had prevented me hearing of him. Mr. Garth
laughed, and said he was in a small way compared to the
others, with whom I had disagreed. I may say here, that it
would be hard to pass through the populous, wealthy, energetic
city of Ballarat now, without hearing much about Mr. Garth,
owner of farms, mills, hotels, mining companies, what not.
I was pleased with his frank, liberal way of dealing, and
augured favourably of his future career. He was the ideal
purchaser, at any rate. He adopted, without a word of
dissent, my prices, terms, and conditions.
With the conclusion of breakfast the whole affair was
arranged. The cattle-edifices, tools of trade, and journeyman
butcher were delivered as per agreement; Charley was sent
for the horses, Ben was ordered to pack, the route was given,
and in an hour we had turned our backs upon Ballarat.
I sent Ben and Charley back to the station, presenting the
former with a coveted brown filly, and the latter with a white
cow, as good-conduct badges. They reached home safely,
after a journey of a couple of hundred miles, a 'big drink'
indulged in by Master Ben on the road notwithstanding.
For myself, I went to Melbourne, having business in that
deserted village. I had much difficulty in getting my hair
cut, by the only surviving barber. The site of my shanty and
block now trembles under the traffic of a busy street. The
'lost camp' at Wendouree Lake is valuable suburban property.
Steamers run there. Why did I not buy it? If I had taken
that, and one or two other trifling long shots, I might have
been living in London like Maxwell, or in Paris like Freshland,
if a stray Prussian bullet has not interfered with his matchless
digestion. However, why regret these or any seeming errors
of the past? They are but a few more added to the roll of
opportunities, gone with our heedless youth, and with the
hours of that 'distant Paradise,' lost for evermore.
MOONLIGHTING ON THE MACQUARIE
165
There are different kinds of work connected with the management
of cattle-stations in the far bush of New South Wales.
Some of them strike the stranger as being curious. At any
rate, most people have not heard of them before, or if they
have, don't know much. Something depends upon finding
the cattle which you are required to manage. Didn't Mrs.
Glass say, before yarning about hare soup, 'First catch your
hare'? Right she was! If you'll come with me to the
Wilgah brakes, 'Hell's Cages,' and 'Devil's Snuff-boxes' of the
Lower Macquarie, you will see the pull of the 'first catch'
arrangement. Don't suppose for a moment that ours is a
neglected herd. If you were to see the stud animals—chiefly
Devons and Herefords, for we found that the 'active
reds' could pace out many a mile from the frontage in a dry
season, and be back at their watering-place while a soft shorthorn
would be thinking about it, and, of course, losing flesh.
As I was saying, if you saw our 'Whitefaces' and 'Devon
Dumplings,' you wouldn't think that. But those M'Warrigals,
that we bought the place from long ago, were careless beggars;
thought more of their neighbours' calves—some people say—than
minding their own business and doing their proper station
work. Now the back of the run is scrubby in parts, and the
cattle there are 'outlaws' that increase and multiply. They
get joined by other refugees and breakaways—brutes with no
principle whatever. We seldom see them, as they have got a
nasty habit of feeding at night, like tigers and lions and other
wild animals. When we do see them—by day—they break
away, scatter, and charge. All the horses and dogs in the
country wouldn't get them.
166What are we to do? There are some famous bullocks
among them—rather coarse, perhaps, but rolling fat—ugly
with fat, as the stock-riders say. And as cattle are a first-class
price just now, and the feed grand all the way to market, there's
no use talking; we must have a shy at them. It won't do
for me, a native-born Australian, and manager of my father's
best cattle-station, to be beaten by anything that ever wore
a hide. Have 'em we must. The new paddock is just finished.
We are going to muster the other side of the run—the quiet
side—the day after to-morrow, and if we can make a good haul
out of these 'scrub danglers' we shall have together as fine a lot
of fat cattle as ever left the Macquarie.
And how are we going to do it? There are half-a-dozen
as good hands on this Milgai Run, including the black boys
Johnny Smoker and Gundai, as ever rode stock-horse or
followed a beast. And yet, if we rode after this lot for a
month we shouldn't get more than a couple of dozen, tear our
clothes to rags, stake our horses, and get knocked off in the
Wilgah scrubs—after all get next to no cattle—that's what I
look at. Still, there is a way—and only one way—that we
may fetch 'em by, and perhaps in one night. I'm going to
tell you about it. We must moonlight 'em.
It is a strange thing—and I've no doubt it was found out
by some rascally 'duffer,' some cattle-stealing brute that went
poking about after his neighbours' calves (but the amount of
cleverness they show when it's 'on the cross,' no man would
believe, unless he knew it from experience)—it's a strange
thing that wild cattle are twice, ten times, as easy to drive by
night as they are by day. Whether they are afraid—like
children—whether they can't see so well, or what it is, I don't
know. But every old stock-rider will tell you that all cattle,
particularly wild ones, are much easier to handle by night
than by day. Another reason is, they go out a long way into
the open plains to feed at night. Whereas by day they lie
in their scrubs like rabbits near a hole, and directly they hear
a whip, or a voice, or a stick crack almost, they're off like a
lot of deer. Not that I ever saw any; but one thinks about
the red deer listening and then popping into fern-brakes and
heather-glens. Perhaps I shall see them some day, who
knows, if cattle keep up?
Well, we had to wait for a day or two, till the moon rose,
167about ten o'clock. When the moon rises soon after dusk,
they keep about the edge of the timber, and are ready to
dash back directly they see or hear any one. But when it's
dark for some hours before the moon rises, they'll go out far
into the plains and feed as steadily as milkers.
Well, we sent word to our neighbours and mustered up
about twenty men. We went into the timber at sundown,
near a point where we thought they wouldn't come out, and
hobbled our horses. We had brought something to eat with
us, and made a billy of tea; and after we lit our pipes, it was
jolly enough. My stock-rider, Joe Barker, was one of the
smartest riders and best hands with cattle on the river, but, as
is sometimes the case with good men and good horses, he had
a queer temper. I wanted him to bring his old favourite, Yass
Paddy, as good and sure a stock-horse as ever heard a whip.
But no, he must bring a new mount that he'd run out of the
wild mob!—a good one to go and to look at, but the biggest
tiger I ever saw saddled. Joe was put out about something,
and I didn't like to cross him. A stock-rider is a bad servant
to quarrel with, unless all your run is fenced, or very open.
Besides, with his riding, a donkey would have been 'there
or thereabouts.'
So we sat and talked, and smoked, and looked about for
an hour or two. At last the time came. We pouched our
pipes, saddled up, and headed for the plains, making a point
for a few trees a good way out, near where the lot we were
after often fed. We didn't talk much, but rode far from one
another, so as to have a better chance of seeing them. At
last Gundai rode up alongside me, and pointed ahead. I
looked and saw something dark, which seemed to change line.
There were no Indians, no wolves, no buffaloes, in our part of
the world. It might have been horses, of course, but we were
soon near enough to see tails—not horses'—and a big mob too.
Cattle, by Jove! and the heaviest lot we have seen together
since the general muster, many years since, just after we bought
the station. 'All right, boys! we're in for a good thing.'
They were, of course, scattered, feeding about, looking as
quiet as store cattle. The regular thing to do was, of course,
known to most of us. A couple of the smartest riders must
start to 'wheel' them, one on each side. Charley Dickson
and the black boy, Gundai, were told off. You couldn't lick
168Charley, and Gundai was the most reckless young devil to
ride that ever broke down a stock-horse. But just at this
pinch we want 'em to be pretty quick. Never mind about
horses' legs, we look to them afterwards. Off they go like
mad Arabs. You can see the dust and dry grass sent up by
Gundai's horse's hoofs, like a small steam-engine. We hear
the rolling gallop of the heavy bullocks, as the big mob of
cattle all raise their heads and make off in a long trailing
string—like a lot of buffaloes—directly they hear the first
horse. We ride steadily up in line, so as to intercept
them in the rush they will be sure to make back towards the
scrub. In the meanwhile Charley and Gundai have raced to
the two ends of the string, and are ringing and wheeling, and
doubling them up together, till the mob is regularly bothered.
Then we go at them, still in well-kept line, and at whichever
point a beast tries to 'break' he finds a horseman ready
to 'block' him. There is no shouting, whip-cracking, or
flash work generally. The great thing is to ride like ten
men and be always ready to head or stop a breaking beast,
which can be done at night by only showing yourself. No
row or nonsense; it only makes the cattle worse. Always be
in your own place, and do your work without crossing any
one else's line; that's the only way with cattle. Of course
we don't mind their running a little wide as long as they are
heading out into the plains, and not back towards their scrub
forts and hiding-places. So we let them trot a bit, keeping
one man ahead to stop them if they get too fast, as they might
get winded, and then charge and have to be left on the
plains. We keep steadily behind them, while they are streaming
out well towards the middle of the plain, and in a direction
that by a little judicious 'edging' will land them at the Milgai
stock-yard.
Of course there are well-known incorrigibles that have
escaped many a muster, and will be sure to try it on now.
'There goes the grey-faced bullock. Look out! Look out!'
shouts a stock-rider, as an enormous red bullock, with a
speckled Hereford face, turns deliberately round, and, breaking
through the line of horsemen, makes straight for 'Hell's
Cage.'
I am riding Wallaroo, the best stock-horse on the river—at
least that is my belief and opinion. I race at him, and we
169go neck and neck together for a hundred yards, at a pace that
would win the Hack Stakes at a country meeting. Wallaroo's
shoulder is jammed against the bullock, his head just behind
the brute's great horns. At the batt Greyface is going, of
course, he is occasionally on the balance. As I rush the
game little horse against him, again and again, I can feel his
huge bulk tremble and shake. I am too near for him to
horn me, unless he had time to stop and turn, which, of
course, I take care that he has not. After a while he edges
round a bit, then a little more, then he sees the cattle and
makes straight for them as they are moving past in the original
direction in front of him. I slacken pace for an instant, and
as I do so, drop the twelve foot stockwhip on to him with
a right and left, which sends him right up among the tail
cattle. He breaks no more for a while, and we are getting
on pretty well. We know our direction now. Some of
the cattle have got rather blown, and their tongues are out.
We round them up, and let them stand for a bit to recover
breath.
Off we go again. Can't stay here all night. They can run
for miles in the scrub, and why not now? Much more steady
this time. Begin to give it up. 'Hullo, what's that?' 'The
brindled leader has doubled on us this time.' This was
another regular outlaw. He was called 'Leader' because he
was never far from the two or three foremost cattle wherever
he was. Many a camp had he been on. Many a man had
had a turn at him. But the inside of a yard he hadn't seen
for years. He generally waited till the mob had gone some
distance; when he did turn there was no stopping him. Joe
Barker to-day must have a try at him. Away he went. His
horse had not been behaving quite the fair thing, and Master
Joe was in a great rage accordingly. Away he went, as I
said, driving his spurs into the horse, and nearly jumping on
to the brindled bullock's back, when he caught him up. He
flogged for a bit without trying to turn him, and no man in
these parts could use a whip with Joe Barker; he always had
it in great order, oiled and lissom, with first-rate hide fall, and
the exact thing in crackers. As the whip rose and fell, every
cut marking itself in blood on the brindle's quarters, we all
knew that he hadn't had such a scarifying for years, if he
ever had. This was only to let him taste what the whip, in
170Joe's hands, was like. He knew, bless you, that it was no
good to try and turn 'Leader' at first. After he'd smarted
him enough, he went broadside on, and let him have it about
the near side of his face. He could sit on his horse at a hard
gallop and flay a beast alive. After a bit the brindle began
to feel it hot. He turned and made a dangerous rush at
Joe. It wasn't so easy to get away as you'd think, because
the horse was partly sulky, and had it taken out of him a good
deal. We had stopped the cattle, and were looking at the
fun. He did get away, however, and flogged that bullock
over the face and eyes until he was more than half blinded.
Then he turned again and made for the scrub. At him,
broadside on, went Joe, still flogging to the inch—forward,
backward, every way, all on the near side, till the brindle
could stand it no longer. He sidled and sidled away; lastly,
he turned right round, and, as soon as he saw the cattle again,
made for them like a milker's calf, Joe following up and warming
him all the way in.
The fight wasn't over though, for Joe had been punishing
his horse for being awkward, and the horse's sides and the
bullock's back must have been all of one colour if we could
have seen. I mentioned that Joe Barker had the devil's own
temper; it carried him too far this time. The horse was a
sour, peculiar animal, partly nervous, partly determined, as all
the worst buck-jumpers, and what people call vicious horses,
are. There are very few really vicious horses. Half of it is
ignorance or stupidity on the part of the horse or his rider—generally
the last, sometimes both. In this case I think there
was vice. At the last few strides, as Mr. Leader, regularly
blown and bullied, was dashing into the tail cattle, with the
intention of working up to the front as usual, Joe gave his
horse two or three tremendous drives with the spurs, standing
up and letting him have them right. He then brought the
double of the whip down over his head, swearing at him for
the sulkiest brute he had ever crossed. It wasn't proper
treatment for any horse, but he was beside himself with rage;
and I made up my mind to speak to him in the morning
about it after we had the cattle all safe. The horse took the
law into his own hands, or feet, or fingers, or whatever they
are. The geological fellows tell you once upon a time horses
had three toes, and all but the middle one became unfashionable,
171and finally hooked it. I know country where a three-toed
horse would come in very handy. But Joe's horse
showed now he hadn't mistaken his character. He gave a
snort as if he had just seen a man for the first time, propped
dead, and in a couple of seconds was bucking away, as you
may swear he did the very first time he was crossed. I
thought it served Joe right, and nobody was uneasy, as he
could sit anything with a horse's skin on. But this one kept
bucking sideways, front ways, every way, rearing and kicking,
and what I never saw any horse but a wild one do, biting and
snapping like a dog at Joe's foot every time he turned his
head round. Joe, of course, kicked him in the mouth when
he got a chance, and the horse was just done when he caught
his jaw accidentally in the stirrup-iron—his under jaw. Here
he was fixed. He swung round and round with his head all
on one side till he got giddy, and fell with a crash before any
one could get to him. It was a hard bare place, as luck
would have it. Joe was underneath him. We lifted him with
his thigh smashed, and a couple of ribs broken. Here was a
pretty thing—ten miles from home, and our best man with
his leg in two. However, there was no help for it. We let
go his horse, put the saddle under his head for a pillow (and,
except that this one was rather hot, it isn't such a bad one),
left a black boy with him till we could send a cart from the
station, and started on.
After this none of the cattle gave any trouble till we were
quite within sight of the yards. There was a large receiving
paddock outside of these again, into which I intended to put
the mob for the night, as I fancied we could get them into the
drafting yards better by daylight. But anything of the nature
of post and rails is very terrifying to the uneducated 'Mickies'
and 'clear-skins.' They are always likely to bolt directly they
see a fence. The bullocks might follow them, and if much
confusion arose and there was a little timber there, we might
lose the lot. So our troubles were not over yet.
But for the wild young bulls and the unbranded heifers
born and bred in the thick covert of the 'Cage' and the
'Snuff-box,' both belonging to the infernal regions, I had a
different kind of help. As the mob now moved slowly on, the
old cows roaring, the calves chiming in, the bullocks occasionally
giving a deep low bellow, making, like all cattle off their
172bounds, noise enough for four times the number, I knew that
assistance was not far off. So it turned out, for about two
miles from home we were met by two black dogs, walking
slowly to meet us. A brace of very powerful and determined,
not to say ferocious-looking animals they were. Half bulldog,
half greyhound, they took about equally after both sides
of the house. They were moderately fast and immoderately
fierce, most difficult to keep back from bloodshed. They had
required an immense amount of training, which in their case
meant unmerciful licking, before they could be brought to
obey orders. In their own line they couldn't be beat. They
were too slow to follow horses all day, but, as they were fond
of cattle work, they always came out a mile or two to meet us,
when they heard the whips and the well-known sounds.
Danger and Death, as I had christened the brothers, were
known all up and down the Macquarie.
Now I felt quite safe for the first time since we had started,
and as we closed up a little round the cattle, I looked
anxiously for a 'break.' It was not long in coming. A three-year-old
bull and a splendid red heifer charged back, and
broke in regular fancy scrub style. Danger luckily took the
heifer; she was clearing out like a flying doe. Danger was a
good deal the quickest on his feet. Death was as sure as his
namesake. He had his customer by the muzzle before he had
gone any distance, and a loud roar, half of rage, half of pain,
told us he was brought to bay. It was not a bad fight. The
bull raised him from the ground more than once, and dashed
him down with such force as would have satisfied any ordinary
dog. But his mother's blood was strong in him, and, after an
unavailing resistance, the dog having shifted his hold, and
taken to the ear in preference, Micky was half dragged, half
driven into the mob, among which, for security, he immediately
rushed. Meanwhile the red heifer, rather 'on the leg' and
not too fat, forced the pace, so that I really thought she was
going to run away from old Danger. But he lay alongside
of her shoulder doing his best, and every now and then
making a spring at her head. At last he nailed her, and as
he stopped and threw all his weight against her, with his
terrible grip on her nostrils, her head went right under, and
she fell over on her back with such force that she lay stunned.
I thought she had broken her neck. When she got up she
173staggered, stared piteously all round, and finally trotted after
the cattle like an old milker. We had only one more break,
just as they were going through the paddock rails. Then we
had a wing—fine thing a wing, saves men and horses, too—and
the whole lot were in and the rails up before they knew
where they were going.
Next day we put them in the strong yard, without much
trouble, and after drafting the cows, calves, strangers, and
rubbish, we had over a hundred of as good fat cattle as ever
left our district. We picked out a few of the out-and-outers,
including the grey-faced bullock and Leader, and 'blinded'
them, after which they travelled splendidly, fed well, and gave
us no trouble on the road down. Isn't it cruel? Not particularly.
We don't put their eyes out. We run them into
the 'bot.' The bot is a 'trevis' or pen, high, strong, and so
near the size of a beast that they can't turn round after they've
been inveigled into it. Then we can do what we like with
them. They may roar and knock their horns about, or kick
if they're horses—they can't hurt you. For 'blinding' we cut
a broad flap of greenhide, and hang it over the face of any
bullock that has bad manners. It is secured above and
below. It works wonders. He can't see in front of him,
only out of the corners of his eyes. Sometimes he runs
against trees and things. This makes him take greater care of
himself. He mostly follows the other cattle then, and in a
week feeds like an old milker. We were nearly selling Greyface
and Leader for a pair of working bullocks before we got
down.
Poor Joe was a long time before he got round. He was
never the same man again. We dropped in for a first-rate
market in town, and so were handsomely paid for a night's
'moonlighting on the Macquarie.'
AN AUSTRALIAN ROUGHRIDING CONTEST
174
In June 1891, at Wodonga, on the Murray River, in the
colony of Victoria—on the opposite bank to Albury, a town of
New South Wales—was arranged an exhibition for testing the
horsemanship of all comers, which I venture to assert had but
few parallels.
Prizes were to be allotted, by the award of three judges of
acknowledged experience, amounting in all to about £20.
Much interested in matters equine, 'nihil equitatum alienum
me puto,' I traversed the three miles which separate the
border towns in a cab of the period, and arrived in time for
the excitement.
The manner of the entertainment was after this wise. An
area of several acres of level greensward was enclosed within
a fence, perhaps eight or ten feet high, formed of sawn battens,
on which was stretched the coarse sacking known to drapers
as 'osnaberg.' This answered the double purpose of keeping
the non-paying public out and the performing horses in.
I had heard of the way in which the selected horses were
saddled and mounted; I was therefore partly prepared. But,
tolerably versed in the lore of the wilderness, I had never
before seen such primitive equitation.
About thirty unbroken horses were moving uneasily within
a high, well-constructed stock-yard—the regulation 'four rails'
and a 'cap'—amounting to a solid unyielding fence, over
seven feet in height.
That the steeds were really unbroken, 'by spur and snaffle
undefiled,' might be gathered from their long manes, tails
sweeping the ground, and general air of terror or defiance.
As each animal was wanted, it was driven or cajoled by means
175of a quiet horse into a close yard ending in a 'crush' or lane
so narrow that turning round was impossible. A strong, high
gate in front was well fastened. Before the captive could
decide upon a retrograde movement, long, strong saplings were
thrust between his quarters and the posts of the crush. He
was therefore trapped, unable to advance or retire. If he
threatened to lie down, a sapling underneath prevented that
refuge of sullenness.
Mostly the imprisoned animal preserved an expression of
stupid amazement or harmless terror, occasionally of fierce
wrath or reckless despair. Then he kicked, plunged, reared—in
every way known to the wild steed of the desert expressed
his untameable defiance of man, occasionally even neighing
loudly and fiercely. 'Twas all in vain. The prison was too
high, too strong, too narrow, too everything; nothing but
submission remained—'not even suicide,' as Mr. Stevenson
declares concerning matrimony, 'nothing but to be good.'
This, of course, with variations, as happens perchance in
the married state irreverently referred to.
Before the colt has done thinking what unprincipled wretches
these bush bipeds are, a 'blind' (ingeniously improvised from
a gentleman's waistcoat) is placed over his eyes, a snaffle
bridle is put on, a bit is forced into his mouth; at the same
time two active young men are thrusting a crupper under his
reluctant tail, have put a saddle on his back, and are buckling
leather girths and surcingle (this latter run through slits in the
lower portion of the saddle flaps) as if they meant to cut him
in two.
This preparatory process being completed in marvellous
short time, the manager calls out 'First horse, Mr. St. Aure,'
and a well-proportioned young man from the Upper Murray
ascends the fence, standing with either leg on the rails,
immediately over the angry, terrified animal.
What would you or I take, O grey-besprinkled reader, to
undertake the mount Mr. St. Aure surveys with calmest confidence?
(We are not so young as we were, let us say in
confidence.)
Deftly he drops into the saddle, his legs just grazing the
sides of the crush. 'Open the gate!' roars the manager. 'Look
out, you boys!' and, with a mad rush, out flies the colt
through the open gate like a shell from a howitzer.
176For ten yards he races at full speed, then 'propping' as if
galvanised, shoots upwards with the true deer's leap, all four
feet in the air at once (from which the vice takes its name), to
come down with his head between his forelegs and his nose
(this I narrowly watched) touching the girths.
The horseman has swayed back with instinctive ease, and
is quite prepared for a succession of lightning bounds, sideways,
upwards, downwards, backwards, as he appears to turn
in the air occasionally and to come down with his head in the
place where his tail was when he rose.
For an instant he stops: perhaps the long-necked spurs
are sent in, to accentuate the next performance. The crowd
meanwhile of 600 or 700 people, mostly young or in the
prime of life, follow, cheering and clapping with every fresh
attempt on the part of the frenzied steed to dispose of his
matchless rider. Five minutes of this exercise commences to
exhaust and steady the wildest colt. It is a variation of
'monkeying,' a device of the bush-breaker, who ties a bag on
to the saddle of a timid colt, and he, frightened out of his
life, as by a monkey perched there, tires himself out, permitting
the breaker to mount and ride away with but little resistance.
Sometimes indeed the colt turns in his tracks, and being
unmanageable as to guiding in his paroxysms, charges the
crowd, whom he scatters with great screaming and laughing as
they fall over each other or climb the stock-yard fence. But
shortly, with lowered head and trembling frame, he allows
himself to be ridden to the gate of egress. There he is halted,
and the rider, taking hold of his left ear with his bridle-hand,
swings lightly to the ground, closely alongside of the shoulder.
Did he not so alight, the agile mustang was capable of a
lightning wheel and a dangerous kick. Indeed, one rider,
dismounting carelessly, discovered this to his cost after riding
a most unconscionable performer.
A middle-aged, wiry, old-time-looking stock-rider from
Gippsland next came flying out on a frantic steed without a
bridle, from choice. For some time it seemed a drawn battle
between horse and man, but towards the end of the fight the
horse managed to 'get from under.'
One horse slipped on the short greensward and came over
backwards, his rider permitting himself to slide off. The next
animal was described as an 'outlaw,' a bush term for a horse
177which has been backed but never successfully ridden. She, a
powerful half-bred, fully sustained it by a persevering exhibition
of every kind of contortion calculated to dissolve
partnership. At one time it looked as if the betting was in
favour of the man, but the mare had evidently resolved on a
last appeal. Setting to with redoubled fury, she smashed the
crupper, tore out one of the girth straps, and then performed
the rare, well-nigh incredible feat of sending the saddle over
her head without breaking the surcingle. This is the second
time, during a longish acquaintance with every kind of horse
accomplishment, that I have witnessed this performance. It
is not always believed, but can be vouched for by the writer
and about five or six hundred people on the ground. I felt
the girth, and saw that the buckle was still unslacked.
The rider, Mortimer, came over the mare's head, sitting
square with the saddle between his legs, and received an
ovation in consequence.
The last colt had been driven into the crush 'fiercely
snorting, but in vain, and struggling with erected mane,' and
enlarged 'in the full foam of wrath and dread,' when another
form of excitement was announced. A dangerous-looking
four-year-old bullock was now yarded in the outer enclosure,
light of flesh but exceeding fierce, which he proceeded to
demonstrate by clearing the place of all spectators in the
shortest time on record.
Climbing hurriedly to the 'cap' of the stock-yard fence,
they looked on in secure elevation, while the toreadors
cunningly edged him into the crush, and there confined him
like the colts. Here he began to paw the ground and bellow
in ungovernable rage. At this stage the manager thus
delivered himself: 'It's Mr. Smith's turn, by the list, to
ride this bullock, but he says he don't care. Is there any
gentleman here as'll ride him?'
With Mr. Smith's natural disinclination for the mount the
crowd apparently sympathised. The bullock meanwhile was
pawing the earth and roaring in a hollow and blood-curdling
manner, as who should say, 'Let me at him; only let me have
one turn with hoof and horn.' To the unprejudiced observer
the mount seemed one that no gentleman would court or
even accept.
However, the Gippslander, removing his pipe from his
178mouth, calmly remarked, 'I'll ride him,' whereupon the crowd
burst out with a cheer, evidently looking upon the offer as one
of exceptional merit.
There was no bridle or saddle in this case. A rope was
fastened around the animal's body, and with this slender
accoutrement only, the stock-rider deposited himself upon the
ridge of the red bullock's back. Then the gate was opened,
and out he came in all his glory.
No one that has merely observed the clumsy gambols of
the meadow-fed ox can have an idea of the speed and agility
of the bush-bred steer, reared amid mountain ranges and
accustomed to spurts up hill and down, with a smart stock-horse
rattling by the side of the drove, always making excellent
time, and not infrequently distancing their pursuers amid the
forests and morasses of their native runs.
This one had a shoulder like a blood horse, great propelling
power, and stood well off the ground, with muscular
arms and hocks to match.
He reared, bucked, and plunged almost with the virulence
and variety of the colts, and when, after a prolonged and
persevering contest, he gradually managed to shift his rider on
to his croupe, and thence by a complicated and original twist
of his quarters dislodged him, it was felt by the spectators
that he had worthily sustained the honour of the stock-riding
fraternity. Cheers resounded from all sides, as the crowd
returning to a centre surrounded the fallen but not disgraced
combatant. I think the boys were privately disappointed that
the bullock did not turn to gore his antagonist, but he was
too much excited for such an attack. He made a bee-line for
the fence, which, all-ignorant of its flimsy nature, he did not
attempt to jump or overthrow, contenting himself with running
by the side of it until he came to the corner, where a gate
was cunningly left open for his departure. After a respectable
'cap' had been collected for the veteran, who was more than
twice the age of the other competitors, the prizes were
distributed, and the entertainment concluded.
As an Australian I may be slightly prejudiced, but I must
confess to holding the opinion that our bush-riders in certain
departments are unrivalled. The South American 'gaucho'
and the 'cow-boy' of the Western States are, doubtless, wonderful
horsemen, but they ride under conditions more favourable
179than those of our bushmen. The saddle of the Americans is
the old-fashioned Spanish one—heavy, cumbrous, and, besides
the high pommel and cantle, provided with a horn-like fixture
in front, to which the lasso is attached generally, but which serves
as a belaying-pin and a secure holdfast for the rider in case
of need. The tremendous severity of the heavy curb-bit must
also tend to moderate the gambades of all but the most vicious
or untamed animals. Besides all this, the horses ridden by
them are mere ponies compared to the big, powerful Australian
colts, and as such easier to control.
But let the stranger, when minded to try his horsemanship,
find himself upon a 'touchy' three-year-old, and how insecure
does his position appear! He is a good way off the ground,
which said ground is mostly extremely hard. The colt is
nearly sixteen hands high, and feels strong enough in the loins,
if fully agitated, to throw him into a gum-tree. The single-reined
snaffle, to which he trusts his life, is of the plainest,
cheapest description of leather and iron. The saddle is the
ordinary English saddle, fuller in the flap and pads, but otherwise
giving the impression of being hard, slippery, and affording
but little hope of recovery when once the seat is shaken.
When, with nothing but this simple accoutrement, or perhaps
a rolled bag, strapped in front of the pommel, our bushmen
ride, as I have described, it must be conceded that no horsemen
could be less indebted to adventitious aid.
In the peculiar, strictly Australian department, known as
'scrub riding,' no one not 'to the manner born' can be said
to hold a candle to them.
The home of the half-wild herds of cattle and horses is
frequently mountainous, thickly-wooded, and rocky. Amid
these declivitous fastnesses in which they are reared, the outliers
of the herd acquire speed, wind, and activity, which must
be known to be believed. Through these interlaced and
thick-growing woodlands, down the rocky ridge, across the
treacherous morass, away go the cattle or the wild horses at a
pace apt to take them out of sight and hearing in remarkably
short time. The ordinary horseman, able to hold his own
fairly well on road or turf, even in the hunting field, here finds
himself hopelessly at fault. Not wanting in pluck, he does
his best for a mile or more. But he knocks his knee against
one tree, his shoulder against another, and narrowly escapes
180dashing his brains out by reason of a low-lying branch, which
knocks off his hat, and might easily—he reflects—have performed
the same office for the head which it covered. He
realises the disability under which he labours by reason of not
being able to calculate his distance from the unyielding timber
in front, beside, around; at the same time to distinguish the
route of the fast-vanishing 'mob' (Anglice, drove), while all
his skill and strength are required to control a stock-horse, if
such a mount has been provided for him, which clambers
along hillsides and tears down the same with the sure-footedness
of a mule, while he leaves the full responsibility of
directing his headlong career to his rider. When at the end
of several miles the visitor pulls up, he is entirely out of the
hunt. Neither men, horses, dogs, nor cattle are within sight
and hearing. He is not accustomed to tracking, nor perhaps
is the ground favourable to such practice. Nothing is left for
him but to follow on as nearly as may be in the direction of
the riders, fortunate if, some hours after, he is hunted up by a
man sent in search of him, or, more fortunate still, has left all
path-finding to his horse, and joyfully recognises the homestead,
which comes into sight much sooner than he expected.
In contrast to this exploit, behold the sons of the waste
under the same circumstances. Riding along with apparent
carelessness, several pairs of sharp eyes are piercing the forest
glades in every part of the foreground. One man has descried
the outline of a group of slowly-moving forms, or it may be
but a single beast, high up a hillside in the gorge of a mountain-range,
the depths of a narrow brook, traversed ravine—it
matters not. It is the herd they are seeking, or a section of
it. The quick-eyed scout gives a low whistle, perhaps holds
up his hand; the signal is understood. Bridle-reins are
gathered up. No word is spoken, but each man has his horse
in hand as they move slowly towards the grazing or stationary
outliers. A few minutes bring them nearer, within perhaps
good wheeling distance, when a sentinel gets view or winds
them, and the whole troop is off like a shot. Each horse, but
a minute since stumbling along at a 'stockman's jog' or a
go-as-you-please walk, starts into top speed as if for a mile
heat. The men, taking a 'bee-line,' ride straight for the fast-vanishing
cattle, as if there was not a tree or a rock within
miles. How they do it is a never-ending marvel to the uninitiated.
181But they will not only keep with the outlaws, but out-pace
and out-general them; wheeling them at critical places,
racing ahead and rounding them up; eventually, with mingled
force and diplomacy, hustling them across a country without
track, road, or apparently natural features, till dead-beat and
defeated they are landed in the high, secure stock-yard, from
which some of their number at least will never emerge alive.
THE MAILMAN'S YARN AN OWER TRUE TALE
182
'Rum things happen in the bush, you take my word for it,'
suddenly broke out Dan M'Elroy as we were sitting smoking
round a camp fire, far back in the 'Never Never' one night.
The whole tract of country west of the Barcoo was under
water that summer. We were all stuck hard and fast, about
fifty miles from Sandringham, waiting for the creeks and
cowalls to go down. They weren't small ones either—twenty
feet deep in some places and half a mile wide. There were
a dozen teamsters with wool-waggons, Jim and me and two
black boys with four hundred head of fat cattle from Marndoo.
A police trooper bringing down a horse-stealer for trial, committed
by the Bench there, made up the party. The prisoner
was made comfortable—only chained to a log for safety. Here
we were, waiting, waiting, and had to make the best of it. We
walked about in the daylight, and did a bit of shooting.
We'd put up a bough yard for the cattle, more for the exercise
than anything else; and to make the time pass we'd taken to
telling yarns. Some of them were that curious I wish I
hadn't forgotten 'em. But this one that Dan told that night
I shall remember to my dying day. He was the mail contractor
between St. George and Bolivar Run, a weather-beaten
Bathurst native, as hard as iron-bark, who'd have contracted to
run the mail from the Red Sea to Jordan in spite of all the
Arabs if they'd made it worth his while. He was afraid of
nothing and nobody. In his time he had been speared
by blacks, shot at by bushrangers, fished for dead out of
flooded creeks, besides being 'given up' in fever, ague, and
183sunstroke in exploring of mail routes through the 'Never Never'
country. Hairbreadth escapes were daily bread to him. He
seemed to thrive on 'em, but this one must have been out of
the common way.
He looked round over the great plain, where we could
see the glimmer of water on every side by the light of the low
moon, just showing, red and goblin-like. A murmuring wind
began to whisper and sob among the stunted myall, swaying
the long streamers as if they were mourning for the dead. It
felt colder, though we'd piled up the logs on the fire lately,
when he filled his pipe and said: 'We'll turn in after this, but
you may as well take it to sleep on. It was nigh twenty year
ago it happened, yet it comes back to me now as fresh as I saw
it that cursed night. You chaps remember,' he said, taking a
good steady draw at his pipe, by way of starting it and the
yarn at the same time,—'you remember, as I told you, I was
running a horse mail between Marlborough Point and Waranah,
somewhere about '68. A different season from this, I tell
you. No rain for about eighteen months, and when the
autumn came in dry, with the nights long and cold, the sheep
began to die faster than you could count 'em. I had a fairish
contract, and though the mail was a heavy one, I was able to
manage it by riding one horse and leading a packer. A
terrible long day's ride it was—three times a week—eighty-five
mile. Of course I had a change of horses, but I didn't get
in till eleven or twelve at night to Waranah. The frosty nights
had set in, and sometimes, between being half-frozen and dead-tired,
I could hardly sit on my horse. It was getting on in
June, and still no rain, only the frosts getting sharper and
sharper, when I came along to a sandhill by the side of a billabong
of the Murrumbidgee, about ten miles from Waranah.
There was a big water-hole there; it was a favourite camping
place between the township and Baranco station. I was later
than usual, and it was about midnight when I got to this point.
Through a weak horse as had knocked up I'd had to walk five
miles. I was nigh perished with the cold; hungry too, for I'd
had no time to stop and get a feed; and as I'd been in the
saddle since long before daylight, you may guess I was pretty well
tuckered out. A particular spot, too, when you come to think
of it. The sand-ridge ran back from the water-hole a good
way (there was a big kurrajong-tree beside it, I remember), and
184spread out near upon a mile till you got into a fair-sized plain.
The ridge—that's the way of 'em in dry country—was covered
as thick as they could stand with pine-scrub. An old cattle-track
ran right through to the plain, where they used to come
to water in the old days when Baranco was a cattle-run. I
was dozing on my horse, dog-tired and stiff with the cold, when
I came to the water-hole at the foot of this sandhill. I always
used to pull up there and have a smoke; so I stopped and
looked round about, in a half-sleepy, dazed kind of way. I
felt for my box of matches, and I'm dashed if they weren't
gone—shot out, I expect—for I'd been working my passage
and been jumbled about more than enough. That put the
cap on. I felt as if I'd drop off the horse there and then. I
never was one for drinking, and I didn't carry a flask. How
I'd get on the next couple of hours I couldn't think.
'All of a sudden a streak of light came through the darkness
of the pine-scrub to the left of me. It got broader and
broader. It wasn't the moon, I knew, for that wouldn't show
till nigh-hand daylight. It must be a fire. Somebody
camping, of course; but why they didn't stop by the water,
the regular place, with good feed and open ground all round
them, I couldn't make out. I was off like a shot, and hung
up my horses to the kurrajong tree, which stood handy. It
was too thick to ride through the pine saplings, and I thought
the walk would freshen me up. I started off quite jolly with
the notion of the grand warm I should have at the fire, and
the pipeful of baccy I'd be able to borrow. It was a big fire
I saw as I stumbled along, getting nearer and nearer the head
of an old-man pine, the branches as dry as timber, and would
burn like matchwood. I could see three men standing round
it. As I got nearer I was just going to halloo out, partly for
fun and partly for devilment, when the wind blew the flame
round, and made one of the men, who was poking a pole into
the fire, shift and turn his face towards me. Mind! I was in
the dark shadow of the pines. The glare of the fire lit up his
face and those of the two other men as clear as day.
'The man's face, as it turned towards where I was standing,
had such a hellish expression, that I stopped dead and drew
behind an overhanging "balah" that grew among the pines. He
seemed to be listening. Another man with an axe in his hand
said something to him, when he walked a few steps down the
185track towards me and stopped. My God, what a face it
was! No devil out of hell could have looked more fiendish
than he did. It was like no human face I'd ever seen. I
began to think I was asleep, and dreaming of a story in a
book.
'They were not more than twenty yards from where I stood.
My heart beat that loud I was afraid they'd hear it. My hair
stood on end, if any one's ever did, while as the tall, dark man
began to poke the fire again, and pushed something further
into it that was not a log of wood, I deuced near fainted, and
beads of perspiration rolled down my forehead and face. What
did I see that caused every drop of blood in my veins to turn
to ice? What the strange man stirred in the fire, making the
sparks to fly all round among the red glowing embers, was a
corpse! There was no mistaking the dreadful shape. One
arm stuck out. The legs were there, the skull blackened and
featureless, and, Heavenly Father! beyond and in the middle
of the heap of glowing embers lay another shape huddled
together, and showing no angle of limb or bone. The other
man, with a broom of boughs tied together, was busy sweeping
in all the pieces of charcoal, so as to prevent the flame from
spreading through the tall, dry grass. At a short distance
I could make out a tilted cart, such as hawkers use in the
bush. "By——!" said the man with the pole, "I'll
swear I heard a stick crack. Any traveller as come to
the water-hole and followed the track up, 'll have to be rubbed
out, and no two ways about it. It will be our lives against
his!"
'"Haven't we had blood enough for one day?" says
the other man. "By George! when I think of these
two poor chaps' faces, just afore you dropped 'em with the
axe, I'd give all we've made ten times over to have 'em alive
again."
'"You always was a snivelling beggar," says the tall man.
"If you'd had your back scratched at Port Arthur half as
often as me, you'd think no more of a man's life than a wild
dog's. I believe it must 'a been one or a wallaby as made
the stir."
'I've faced a trifle of danger, and seen some "close calls"
in my time, but nothing came near that half-hour I spent there
till I could make myself steady enough to stir. I couldn't sit;
186I was too done to stand; so there I had to crouch down and
wait till I got the chance to go back on my tracks.
'All the time they kept pushing the bodies into the centre
of the fire, without stopping, as they got smaller and smaller.
Two of the men were at this dreadful work, while the third
was sweeping round every edge of the fire. At last the two
men I first saw, sat down on a log close handy and began to
smoke. Now was my chance. I crawled from my tree and
crept along the cattle-track till I come to where my horses
were standing. I mounted one, somehow, and took the other's
bridle. I rode steady enough for a while, and then, hustling
the poor brutes into a hand-gallop, kept along the road to
Waranah till I reached the gate at the boundary of the run.
Even then I felt as if I was hardly safe. I looked round and
could almost see witches and devils following me through the
air, and waving ghosts' arms in every bough of the stunted
trees through which the road wound.
'When I saw the lights of the little township, I was that
glad that I shouted and sang all the way up to the hotel where
the mail was delivered. I had a strange sort of feeling in my
head as I rode up to the door. Then I reeled in my saddle;
everything was dark. I remembered no more till at the end
of a week I found myself in bed recovering from fever.
'I suppose I'd been sickening for it before. What with
hot days, cold nights, and drinking water out of swamps and
dry holes that were half mud and half—pah! something you
don't like to think of—the wonder is we bushmen don't get
it oftener. Anyhow I was down that time, and next morning
it seems they had the doctor to me. He was a clever man
and a gentleman, too, my word! He fetched me round after
a month, but I was off my head the first week, and kept raving
(so they told me afterwards) about men being knocked on the
head and burned, hawkers' carts, and Derwenters, and the big
water-hole by Budgell Creek.
'They thought it was all madness and nonsense at first, and
took no notice, till one afternoon Mr. Belton, the overseer of
Baranco, comes riding into town, all of a flurry, wanting to
see the police and the magistrate, Mr. Waterton. This was
what he had to say:—
'There had been some heavy lots of travelling sheep passing
through the station, and he was keeping along with them for
187fear they might miss the road and not find it again till they'd
ate off a mile or two of his best grass. All of a sudden a mob
of the Baranco weaners ran across a plain and nearly boxed
with 'em. Mr. Belton gallops for his life—I expect he swore
a bit, too—and was just in time to head 'em off into the pine-scrub
by the sandhill. They took the old cattle-track over
towards the water-hole, he following them up, till all of a sudden
he comes plump on a hawker's cart!
'This pulled him up short. He let the sheep run on to
the frontage and got off his horse. He knew the Colemans'
cart. They always stayed a night at Baranco. When they
passed, a week since, they were to make Waranah that night.
What the deuce were they doing here? Hang the fellows!
were they spelling their horses? Feed was scarce. No! they
were not the men to do that. Honest, straight-going chaps
they'd always been.
'He walked over to the cart. Something wrong surely!
The big slop-chest was open. The cash-box, with lock smashed,
was empty. Boots, clothes, tobacco, which they always
had of the best, lying scattered about. Where were the poor
fellows themselves? If they had been robbed, why hadn't
they gone to the police at Waranah and complained?
Whoever had done this must have camped here in the middle
of the scrub. Then there'd been a fire over by the big pine-stump—an
"old man" fire too. Wonder they hadn't set a
light to the dry grass? No rain for the half-year to speak of.
No; they had been too jolly careful. Swept in the twigs and
ashes all round. Curious fire for bushmen to make too—big
enough to roast an ox. He stares at the ashes; then gropes
among them with his hand. My God! What are these
small pieces of bone? Why, the place is full of them. And
this? and this? A metal button, a metal buckle—one, two,
three—twelve in all.
'It comes back to him now that three travellers left the
Baranco men's hut the same morning as the Colemans—one
a tall, dark, grey-haired old hand, with a scar across his face.
He gets his horse with a long sort of half-whistle and half-groan
and rides slow, in a study like, toward the township.
The next day the magistrate, Mr. Waterton (he's a squatter,
but sits most times when the Police Magistrate isn't on hand),
goes out with the Sergeant of Police and the best part of the
188townspeople of Waranah. He holds an Inquiry. The doctor
attended and gave evidence that he had no doubt whatever
that the bones formed part of human skeletons. The surface
of the fire was raked over, and a lot of metal buttons and
buckles—as many as would be used for two pairs of trousers—with
other remains of clothing, were found. A verdict of
"wilful murder against some person or persons unknown"
was returned.
'On the second day after the murder three men crossed
the Murray River pretty high up, near a public-house. Their
ways were suspicious. One of them fired off a revolver. They
had on new suits of clothes, new boots with elastic sides, and
no end of tobacco of a queer brand—not known in those
parts. Large swags too! The boss of the crowd was a tall,
dark man, with a scar and grey hair. He was the man who
fired the revolver and used wild language. The police from
Crowlands picked up the trail so far. If they had followed
hard on, like the Avenger of Blood (as the feller says in the
play), they might have run down the murderin' dogs. But the
publican had a bad memory. He couldn't remember seeing
any out-of-the-way travellers cross the river that week. So
the police turned back, and lost the scent for good and all.
'A queer enough thing about the matter was, that directly
after the Inquiry was published, a telegram was sent from the
poor fellows' friends to the sergeant at Waranah. He was to
look under the lid of the big slop-chest and he'd find a false
top that slid back—very neat made, so that people mostly
wouldn't notice it. Behind this was a drawer, and in it
notes and cheques. They never kept more than a fiver or
so in the cash-box, and told the secret to their relatives before
leaving town. Sure enough the sergeant finds the secret-drawer,
and in it, after being in the open bush nearly a fortnight,
£90 odd in notes and good cheques, which of course
he sent to their friends. The villains only got £4 and a
fit-out of clothes and tobacco. The police never could get
wind of these wretches for years after. However, they
dropped on the man with the scar, whose name was Campbell.
He was sworn to as the man who left Baranco with the other
two on the day of the murder, as the man as had new clothes
and tobacco (such as nobody but the Colemans sold in the
district) two days after. It was proved that they were all
189hard up and ragged when they left Baranco. The evidence
was in dribs and drabs. But they pieced it together, bit by
bit. It was good enough to hang him, and hang him they
did. I swore to him as the man I saw at the fire that terrible
night. And now, mates, I'll turn in. There's no fear of
being burned to bits here, is there? Good-night all!'
DEAR DERMOT
190
Somehow the days of my youth seem to have been inextricably
mixed up with horses. How I loved them, to be sure!—thought
of them by day, dreamed of them by night. Books
and girls might temporarily enter into competition as objects
of engrossing interest; but the noble animal must have had
possession of my thoughts for a large proportion of the waking
hours.
From boyhood the proprietor of studs more or less
extensive, I was quick to discern excellence in other people's
favourites. My mind was stored, my imagination fired,
besides, with tales of equestrian feats, performed chiefly by
Arab chiefs and other heroes of old-world romance. In
a chronic state of expectancy, I was always ready to do
honour to the legendary steed, so rarely encountered, alas!
save in the bounteous realm of fiction.
When, therefore, I did fall across 'the courser of the
poets,' or his simulacrum, I was prepared to secure him at a
fancy price; holding that if I could recoup the outlay by
selling a pair of average horses of my own breeding, the
luxury of possessing a paragon would be cheaply purchased.
And would it not be? Albeit there are multitudes of
people to whom one horse, save the mark, is much like
another. For them, the highest joy, the transcendent
sensation of being carried by 'the sweetest hack in the world,'
exists not. But to him who recognises and appreciates the
speed, the spirit, the smoothness, and the safety of the
'wonderful' hackney, there are few outdoor pleasures possessing
similar flavour.
It is more than half a century, sad to relate, since I first
191took bridle in hand. During that time I have ridden races
on 'the flat,' over 'the sticks,' and have backed for the first
time a score or more of wholly-untried colts. I have tested
hundreds of saddle-horses, over every variety of road, at all
sorts of distances, in all ranges of climate, and after this
extended experience I unhesitatingly pronounce Dermot, son
of Cornborough, to be in nearly all respects the finest example
of the blood hackney which I ever mounted. The 'sweetest,'
etc., he certainly was. Almost too good for this wicked world.
The birth of this unrivalled steed was mainly due to one
of the magnates of the earlier Victorian era, himself an example
of the strangeness of that destiny which shapes our ends in
life. A member of a family of financial aristocrats, domiciled
in London and Paris, with which capitals our friend was
equally familiar, Mr. Adolphus Goldsmith scarcely dreamed
in youth of 'colonial experience.'
But something went wrong with the finance arrangements
of his near relatives. A crisis culminated, and the necessity
arose for Goldsmith (fils) applying himself to the stern realities
of life. He had previously performed the strictly ornamental
duties of a young man about town. But with a cool
perception of the situation, characteristic of the man, and
a steadfast determination to conquer adverse fate, the whilom
élégant of the Bois de Boulogne and the Row looked over
the map of the world, picked his colony, giving the pas to
Victoria, the then fashionable El Dorado for younger sons
and vauriens, converted the remnant of his fortune into
letters of credit, and sailed for Port Phillip.
As an Englishman by birth and rearing as well as adoption,
Mr. Goldsmith had sported park hacks and ridden to hounds
in his day. He possessed the Englishman's love for horses.
Visions, therefore, arose of improving the breed in the new
country which he was about to patronise, and incidentally
devoting himself to agricultural pursuits.
Distrusting, however, his suitability for the necessary
purchases and arrangements, he sensibly cast about for a
coadjutor, fully instructed in bucolic lore, to whom he might
confide details.
He was successful beyond expectation, inasmuch as he
induced Mr. Hatsell Garrard, a gentleman farmer from the
midland counties (whose love of all genuine sport had,
192combined with a run of bad seasons, probably rendered rent-paying
temporarily arduous), to accompany him as General
Manager to Australia. And whoso recalls his fresh-coloured
countenance, his pleasant smile, his shrewd blue eye, his neat
rig and bridle-hand, reproduces out of memory's storehouse
the ideal yeoman from 'Merrie England.'
Mr. Garrard promptly demonstrated a knowledge of his
business by purchasing Cornborough, son of Tramp, a
grandson of the immortal Whalebone. For this sole
achievement he deserves a statue, and in that Pantheon which
future Victorians may rear for the founders of their prosperity
and glory, the square-built, genuinely English figure of Mr.
Garrard should find a place. What a responsibility was cast
upon him when you come to think of it! How easily might
he have chosen an equally blue-blooded, but leggy, rickety,
pernicious weed, such as has so often been foisted upon
unwary breeders.
Instead of which, he enriched us with the noble, whole-coloured,
brown horse, choke-full of the best blood in England,
of medium height, but perfect in symmetry, soundness,
faultless in wind and limb, temper and courage, fated to be
the long-remembered sire of racers, hacks, and harness horses
of the highest class—to be honoured in life, regretted, ay,
sincerely mourned, in death. For on his unexpected demise,
his disconsolate owner was discovered in such a state of
prostration and grief that every one thought his wife must be
dead, or, at any rate, some relative near and dear.
Truly, the squatter of the 'forties' was from one reason or
another a man sui generis, with whom the present pastoral era
furnishes few parallels. Mr. Goldsmith, in addition to other
accomplishments (did he not challenge Charles Macknight to
a bout at single-stick, duly fought out within the precincts of
the Melbourne Club?) was a musical connoisseur and no
mean performer. When the comfortable cottage at Trawalla
was completed, albeit stone-paved and bark-roofed, the
drawing-room contained a handsome piano, to which, after
dinner, the proprietor mostly betook himself. There, in
operatic reminiscences and compositions of impromptu merit,
he was wont to wander from the realms of reality to a dreamworld
of sweet sounds and brighter souvenirs. How one
envied him the delicious distraction!
193So the Trawalla estate had birth and beginning. It was a
first-class 'run' in those simpler times; well watered, with
picturesque alternations of hill and dale, plain and forest. The
'shepherded' sheep had unfailing pasture and ample range.
There were no fences in those days, excepting around the
horse-paddock.
Temptations to over-stocking were fewer, and chiefly—in
default of boundary—took the form of an invasion of some
neighbour's territory, a trespass which his shepherds were
prompt to resent. Thus, the natural grasses were but moderately
fed down, and, with the autumn rains unfailing in that
district, assumed a richly verdurous garb, scarcely so frequent
in the wire-fenced decades. I do not recall the name of the
deserving but less fortunate pioneer, the first or second
occupant of this desirable holding, from whom Mr. Goldsmith
purchased the 'right-of-run,' with probably a mere handful of
stock. With cash in hand, he was doubtless enabled to make
an advantageous purchase, and thus enter upon his predecessor's
labours; once more, as it turned out, to place his
foot on fortune's ladder.
Far from London and Paris, Ascot and Goodwood, as he
found himself, the erstwhile man about town was not wholly
debarred from congenial society. William Gottreaux, another
musical enthusiast, was at Lilaree; Hastings Cunningham at
Mount Emu; Donald and Hamilton, Philip Russell, and
other gentleman pioneers within an easy ride. He became a
member of the Melbourne Club, then in Collins Street, upon
the site of the Bank of Victoria. The late Sir Redmond
Barry was his early and intimate friend. (I took charge of a
small package of tobacco, on my homeward voyage, from the
Judge, as it seems that particular brand was not procurable in
Paris.) When things were settled at Trawalla and the stock
manifestly improving, with Cornborough in a snug loose-box,
and the sheep increasing fast, the owner of Trawalla found a
reasonable amount of recreation, as comprised in frequent
sojourns at the Melbourne Club, and the enjoyment of the
metropolitan society of the day, quite compatible with the
effective supervision of the station.
Thus, on the advancing tide of Victorian prosperity, then
steadily sweeping onward, unknown to us all, Trawalla and its
owner were floated on to fortune—a gently gliding, agreeable,
194and satisfactory process. The sheep multiplied, the fleece
acquired name and repute—one couldn't grow bad wool in
that country, however hard you might try. Cornborough
became a peer of the Godolphin Arabian in all men's eyes,
and the A.G. brand, on beeve-or horse-hide, an accredited
symbol of excellence. A purchase of waste land at St. Kilda,
made solely, as he informed me, in order to qualify as a
legislator, turned out a most profitable investment.
Swiftly the golden period arrived when, after the first years
of doubt and uncertainty, it became apparent to holders of
station property that nothing prevented them from clearing
out at a highly satisfactory price, and leaving the conflicting
elements of dear labour, high prices, and a heterogeneous
population, to settle themselves as best they might. Mr.
Goldsmith, now free to return to Europe, seriously considered
the claims of the Rue de Bellechasse, Faubourg St. Germain,
as contrasted with Collins Street and the Melbourne Club.
It may be that the owner of Trawalla would have decided
upon continuous occupation, with a view to founding an
estate, if his sons, who visited Victoria in 1851, had exhibited
any aptitude for the life of Australian country gentlemen.
But Messrs. Edward and Alfred Goldsmith, who had been
educated chiefly in Paris, when they visited their father in
1851, did not take kindly to his adopted country. Cultured,
polished young men, yet decidedly more French than
English, Parisians to their finger-nails in all their tastes
and habitudes, they grieved and irritated their Australianised
parent.
Chiefly they lacked the adventurous spirit which would
have enabled them to behold, mentally, the grand possibilities
of a colonial possession. All their sympathies were with their
lost Eden, the Paris which they had quitted. In Victoria they
beheld nothing but the distasteful privations of a new country,
hardly redeemed from primeval sauvagerie. The roads were
rough, the beds hard, the cookery—'Ah, mon Dieu!—lamentable,
indescribable.'
It was a good time to sell, and though the Trawalla estate
of to-day represents a considerably larger sum than Mr. Simson
gave for the run and stock, perhaps our old friend was not so
far out when he decided to let well alone and retire upon a
fair competency.
195To that end the stud was sentenced to sale and dispersion;
many a descendant of the lamented Cornborough went to
enrich the paddocks of friends and well-wishers. I think Mr.
Hastings Cunningham bought the greater number of the brood
mares and young stock, at an average rate per head.
Now, Dermot was the old gentleman's hack. (Was he
old, or, perhaps, only about forty-five? We were decided then
as to the time of life when decay of all the faculties was
presumed to set in.) I many a time and oft admired the swell,
dark bay, striding along the South Yarra tracks with aristocratic
elegance, or, more becomingly arrayed, carrying a lady in the
front of a joyous riding-party. His owner was un galant
uomo, and the gentle yet spirited steed was always at the
service of his lady friends.
So when, one day at the club, he suggested to me to buy
Dermot—more than one lady's horse being required in our
family at that time, and only fifty pounds named as the price—I
promptly closed.
Dead and buried is he years agone; but I still recall, with
memory's aid, the dark bay horse, blood-like, symmetrical,
beauteous in form as aristocratic in bearing. 'Hasn't he the
terrifyin' head on him?' queried an Irish sympathiser, somewhat
incongruously, as he gazed with rapt air and admiring
eyes at the tapering muzzle, large, soft eyes, and Arab frontal.
Delicate, deer-like, strictly Eastern was the head referred to,
beautifully set on a perfectly-arched neck, which again joined
oblique, truly perfect shoulders. Their mechanism must have
been such, inasmuch as never did I know any living horse with
such liberty of forehand action.
Walking or cantering down an incline, shut but your eyes,
and you were unable to tell by bodily sensation whether you
were on level ground or otherwise. He 'pulled up' in a way
different from any other horse. Apparently, he put out his
legs, and, lo! you were again at a walk. No prop, shake, or
jar was perceptible. It was a magical transformation. An
invalid recovering from a fever could have ridden him a day's
journey. No one could fall off him in fact.
He who had no peer was born
amid the green forest parks of Trawalla, at no great distance
from Buninyong, or the historic goldfield of Ballarat.
196His sire, Cornborough, than whom no better horse ever left
England, was a brown horse, like The Premier and Rory
O'More; like them, middle-sized, symmetrical rather than
powerful. Among the early cracks that owed their speed and
courage to him were Cornet, Bessie Bedlam, Beeswing, Ballarat,
The Margravine (dam of Lord Clyde), with many others, now
half forgotten. Cornet was, I think, the first of his progeny
trained. He ran away with most of the two-year-old stakes of
the day, to be ever after known as a fast horse and a good
stayer. I remember his beating Macknight's St. George at
Port Fairy, in a match for £100, and winning various other
stakes and prizes. His half-sister, Mr. Austin's Bessie Bedlam,
was one of the most beautiful race-horses ever saddled. I
well remember her running in old days, and can see her now,
stepping along daintily with her head up, like an antelope.
She won many a race, and was successful as a stud matron
after turf triumphs were over. Beeswing was also good, but
not equal to her. Ballarat was a great raking, handsome
chestnut mare, bred by Dick Scott, a stock-rider of Mr.
Goldsmith's. She must have had a good turn of speed,
inasmuch as she won the All-aged Stakes in Melbourne, as a
three-year old. The Cornboroughs, like the Premiers, were
remarkable for their temperate dispositions. They had
abundance of courage, but no tendency to vice of any kind.
On his dam's side Dermot boasted Peter Fin (Imp)
as grandsire, and other good running blood. His pedigree
was incomplete, thus leaving him open to a suspicion of being
not quite thoroughbred. But the stain—the 'blot on the
scutcheon,' if such there was—showed neither by outward sign
nor inward quality.
Then, as to paces. He walked magnificently, holding up
his head in a lofty and dignified manner; his mouth of the
lightest—velvet to any touch of bit—but withal firm. He had
always been ridden with a double bridle, and showed no
provincial distaste to bit and bridoon. If required to quicken
his pace from a fast but true walk, he could adopt a rapid
amble, so causing any ordinary stepper to trot briskly. And
then his canter—how shall I describe it? Springy, long-striding,
yet floating, improving his speed at will to a hand-gallop
if you merely shook the reins, and as readily, smoothly
subsiding at the lightest sustained pull.
197With such a horse under you it seemed as if one could go
on for ever. Mile after mile fled away, and still there was no
abatement in the wonderful living mechanism of which the
spring and elasticity seemed exhaustless. The sensation was
so exquisite that you dreaded to terminate it. When at length
you drew rein, it was, so to speak, with the tears in your eyes.
Then the safety of this miraculous performance. You
were on a horse that never was known to shy or bolt, and
that could not fall down. Nature had otherwise provided.
With such a balance of forehand, he may have at rare intervals
struck his hoof against root or stone, clod or other obstacle,
but trip, blunder, fall—these were words and deeds wholly
outside of his being. With legs of iron, and hoofs that matched
them well, never once did I know Dermot to be lame during
all the years of our acquaintance.
Fortunately for me, and for society generally, he was not
quite fast enough for promotion to a racing stable. He was
thus enabled to elude the turf dangers and so pass his life in
a sphere where he was loved and respected as he deserved.
With regard to his stamina. I rode him a distance of
seventy miles one day, being anxious to get home, during the
last ten miles of which he waltzed along with precisely the
same air and manner as in the morning—with thirteen stone
up, too. In addition to other qualities, he was an uncommonly
good feeder: would clear his rack conscientiously, and eat all
the oats you would give him. I never knew him to be tired,
or met any one that had heard of his being seen in that
condition.
His graceful, high-bred air, his large, mild eye and intelligent
expression, warranted one in crediting him with the
perfect temper which indeed he possessed. So temperate
was he, that the lady whose palfrey he habitually was (as
such, beyond all earthly competition) was in the habit of
sending him along occasionally at top speed in company,
confident in her ability to stop him whenever she had the
inclination.
He was utterly free from vice, either in the stable or out of
it. But, if uniformly gentle, he was always gay and free—that
most difficult combination to secure in a lady's horse. An
angel enclosed in horse-hide, such was 'Dear Dermot.' The
doctrine of metempsychosis alone can account for such a
198consensus of virtues—an equine prodigy, a wonder and a
miracle. Generations may roll by before such another
hackney treads Australian turf. We are not of the school
which decries the horses, the men also, of the present day.
There are, there must be now, as good horses, as gallant
youths, as ever new or old lands produced. But Dermot—may
he rest in peace!—was a very exceptional composition.
And I must be pardoned for doubting whether, as a high-caste
saddle-horse, I shall ever again see his equal.
THE STORY OF AN OLD LOG-BOOK
199
Notwithstanding our share in New Guinea and the debateable
land of the New Hebrides, besides the proposed cession
of Santa Cruz, the Sydney of 'the thirties' wore the look of
being more in touch with the South Sea Islands and the
Oceanic realm generally, than at present. The wharves were
redolent of the wild life of The Islands and the mysterious
land of the Maori. Weather-beaten sailing-vessels showed a
sprinkling of swarthy recruits, whose dark faces, half strange,
half fierce, were mingled with those of their British crews.
Hull and rigging bore silent testimony to the wrath of wind
and wave. There were whale-ships returning in twelve months
with a full cargo of sperm oil, or half empty after a three
years' cruise, as the adventure turned out.
Schoolboys were fond of loitering about among them,
wondering at the harpoons, lances, and keen-edged 'whale
spades,' at the masses of whalebone and spermaceti, or the
carved and ornamental whales' teeth, of which Jack always
had a store.
In the forecastle of one ship might be seen the tattooed
lineaments and grim visage of a Maori; from another would
peer forth the mild, wondering gaze of a Fijian. Bows and
arrows (the latter presumably poisoned), spears, clubs, and
wondrous carved idols were the principal curios, nearly always
procurable.
The whale fishery was at that time a leading industry.
Sperm oil figured noticeably among the first items of our
export trade. Merchants made advances for the outfit and all
necessaries of the adventure, trusting in many instances for
repayment to the skill, courage, and good faith of the commander.
200No doubt losses were incurred, but the lottery was
tempting. The profits must have been considerable. Sperm
oil, before the discovery of gas or petroleum, was worth eighty
or ninety pounds per ton. A large 'right whale' was good for
eighty barrels, eight barrels going to the tun. He was a fish
worth landing. To get back to the ship, even after hours of
hard pulling and the chance of a stove boat, towing a monster
worth nearly £1000, was exciting enough.
The crew, like shearers of the present day, were proverbially
hard to manage. They did not receive wages, but a share in
the net profits—a 'lay,' as it was called. The ship was, in
fact, a floating co-operative society. This did not prevent
them—for human nature is weak—from committing acts
distinctly opposed to the spirit as well as the letter of the
agreement. They got drunk when they had the chance.
They occasionally mutinied. They resisted the mate and
defied the captain. They proposed to take savage maidens
for their dusky brides, and to live lives devoid of care in The
Islands. It strikes landsmen as a curiously dangerous and
anxious position for a captain, who had to confront a score or
two of reckless seamen with the aid only of the officers of the
ship. Yet it was done. The peril dared, the ship saved, and
order restored time after time, by the resolute exercise of one
strong will and the half-instinctive yielding of the seamen to
the mysterious power of legal authority.
Before me as I write are the well-kept and regularly-entered
pages of a whale-ship's log-book, the record of a voyage from
Sydney harbour over the Southern main, which bears date as
far back as April 1833. In that year again sailed the stout
barque, which had done so well her part in bringing us safely
to this far new land. Her course lay through the coral reefs
and Eden-seeming islands of the Great South Sea; along the
storm-swept coast of New Zealand; among the cannibals of
New Ireland and New Britain; among the as yet half-unknown
region of the Solomon Islands and Bougainville
Group. As to the dangers of such a voyage, one incident of
the strange races that people these isles of Eden is sufficiently
dramatic. A boat's crew had pulled over to an inviting
looking beach within the coral ring for the purpose of
watering. As the boat touched the beach, stem on, one of
the crew sprang ashore with the painter in his hand. A cry
201escaped him and the crew simultaneously, as he sank to his
neck in a concealed pit, a veritable trou-de-loup. He hung on
to the rope fortunately, and so pulled himself up and into the
boat again.
Not a native was in sight. But the treacherous pitfalls
being probed and laid bare, the intention was manifest. A
line of holes was discovered in the sands, nine or ten feet in
depth, cone-shaped and sloping to a narrow point, where were
placed sharp-pointed, hard-wood stakes, the ends having been
charred and scraped. Sharp as lance-heads, they would have
disabled any seaman luckless enough to fall in, especially in
latitudes where Jack prefers to go barefooted. Forewarned,
walking warily, and 'prospecting' any dangerous-looking spot,
they succeeded in unmasking all or nearly all of these man-traps,
into which the ambushed natives expected them to fall.
They were ingeniously constructed: the top covered with a
light frame of twigs and grass, sand being sprinkled over all.
Any ordinary crew would have been deceived.
When they reached the village they found the property of
a boat's crew, who had been surprised or betrayed. One
piece of evidence after another came to light. Last of all, the
oars, on the blades of which were marks of blood-stained
fingers closed in the last grasp which the ill-fated mariner
was to give.
Righteous indignation succeeded this gruesome discovery.
A wholesale burning of the town and canoes was ordered. A
shower of arrows was sent after the departing boat, as the
murder isle was quitted with a distinct sense of relief. It is
not improbable that similar experiences have been repeated
during the last few years. In those days the 'labour trade'
did not exist, and to 'black-birding' was no scale of profit
attached.
There is a pathetic simplicity about this unvarnished
record of perilous adventure, after the close of half a century.
One looks reverently upon the yellow pages which photograph
so minutely the daily life of the floating microcosm. The
course, the winds, the storms, the calms, the days of failure
and good fortune! The huge sea-beast harpooned and half
slain, yet cunning to 'sound' deeply enough to pay out all the
line, or, the iron 'drawing,' finally to elude capture altogether.
Then again what a day of triumph when the hieroglyph show
202six whales killed and 'got safely alongside.' Midnight saw
the boilers still bubbling and hissing; the tired crew with
four-and-twenty hours' severe work before them, after, perhaps,
half a day's hard pulling in the exciting chase.
Then out of the endless waste of waters rises the lovely
shape of the fairy isle. 'Mountain, and valley, and woodland'—a
paradisal climate; a friendly, graceful, simple race,
reverencing the stranger whites, with their big canoe and loud
reverberating fire-weapons; or, on the other hand, sullen and
ferocious cannibals, sending flights of poisoned arrows from
their thickets, or surrounding the ship with a swarm of canoes,
full of hostile savages, eager to climb her deck to slay and
plunder unchecked.
It is characteristic, perhaps, of the greater simplicity of
manners, and steadfast inculcation of the religious observances
of that era, that on board the ship referred to, Divine
service was regularly performed on each recurring Sunday.
If whales were sighted, however, the boats were lowered; and
on one Sunday afternoon two whales were killed. It was
obviously a part of the unwritten code of salt-water law that
whales were not to be allowed to escape under any
circumstances, upon whatever days they were sighted by the
look-out man. As it was tolerably certain that the ship would
be more than once in jeopardy from hostile attacks, a few guns
and carronades were mounted; boarding-nettings were not, I
presume, overlooked. The old Ironsides' maxim, 'Trust in
Providence and keep your powder dry,' was in effect a
strictly observed precaution.
How strange it seems to think of the altered conditions
made by the passing away of a generation or two! Cold is
now the hand which traced the lines I view; stilled the hot
blood and eager soul of him who commanded the ship—a
born leader of men if such there ever was.
Of the crew that toiled early and late at sea, through sun
and storm,—that drank and caroused and fought and gambled
on shore when occasion served,—how small the chance that
any one now survives!
With reference to the Solomon Group, which has been
visited by many a vessel since the barque safely steered her
course through shoal and reef, insidious currents and
treacherous calm, matters seem to have been much about the
203same as at present. At some islands the natives were simple
and friendly; at others, sullen and treacherous, ready at all
times for an attack if feasible; merciless and unsparing when
the hour came.
To refer to the Log-book.
'Monday, July 22, 1833.—At Bougainville; several
canoes came off, trading for cocoa-nuts and tortoise-shell.
'Monday, July 29.—Beating along the coast of New
Georgia. Canoes came off; traded for cocoa-nuts and
tortoise-shell. Shipped Henry Spratt, who left the Cadmus
last season. [A bad bargain, as future events showed.]
'August 8.—Sent the boats ashore at Sir Charles Hardy's
island. At 7 P.M. boats returned, having purchased from
the natives, who were very friendly, a quantity of cocoa-nuts
and a pig. Discovered an extensive harbour on the west side.
'September 4.—Sent boats ashore at New Ireland;
natives particularly friendly.
'Saturday, October 5.—Bore away for the harbour of Santa
Cruz. At 2 P.M. cast anchor in thirty fathoms, one mile from
shore. There an adventure befell which altered existing
relations.
'Sunday, October 6.—Sent casks on shore and got them
filled with water. Next day got two rafts of water off, and
some wood. Purchased a quantity of yams from the natives.
'Tuesday, October 8.—Hands employed in wooding,
watering, and stowing away the holds. The natives made an
attack on the men while watering, and wounded one man
with an arrow. Brought off natives' canoes, and made an
attack on their town, which was vigorously contested.
Another of the ship's company severely wounded. All hands
employed getting ready for sea.
'Wednesday, October 9.—At 4 A.M. began to get under
weigh. Discharged the guns at hostile village. Men in
canoes shot their arrows at the ship. Volley returned.
'October 19, 1 P.M.—Henry Stephens, seaman, died of
tetanus, in consequence of a wound inflicted by a native of
Santa Cruz with an arrow. The burial-service read over him
before the ship's company. Strong winds and high seas at
midnight.
His midnight requiem, mariner's fitting dirge,
Sung by wild winds and wilder ocean surge.
204The author of The Western Pacific and New Guinea
(Mr. H. H. Romilly) states in that most interesting work,
that in September 1883 a Commission was appointed by M.
Pallu de la Barrière, then Governor of New Caledonia, to
inquire into the nature of the arrows, commonly reported to
be poisoned, so much in use among the natives of the surrounding
islands.
The conclusions arrived at (Mr. Romilly states) by the
Commission are only what were to be expected. 'It has long
been known to me, and to many other men in the Pacific who
have studied the question, that the so-called poison was, if not
exactly a harmless composition, certainly not a deadly one.
Of course, ninety per cent of the white men trading in the
Pacific believe, and will continue to believe, in the fatal effects
of poisoned arrows. The Santa Cruz arrow, usually considered
the most deadly, is very small, commonly about two feet in
length, while the New Hebrides arrows are much heavier,
capable of inflicting a mortal wound on the spot. Carteret,
more than a hundred years ago, was attacked by the natives
of Santa Cruz. Of the ten men hit, three died from the
severe nature of their wounds. No mention is made of tetanus.
If any of his men had died from so remarkable and terrible
a disease, Carteret could hardly have failed to mention the
fact.'
With all due respect and deference to Mr. Romilly, we
must take the liberty of siding in opinion with the 'ninety per
cent of white men trading in the Pacific,' and believe that the
arrows are poisoned—are deadly and fatal, even when only a
scratch is produced. The deaths of the unknown sailor, Henry
Stephens, sixty-seven years ago, and of the late lamented
Commodore Goodenough recently, both from tetanus, surely
constitute a marvellous coincidence. It is hard to believe
that nervous predisposition was the proximate cause of tetanus
in two persons so widely dissimilar in mind, station, and education.
Carteret's three seamen possibly died from the same
seizure; though, having many other things to attend to, the
ancient mariner failed to record the fact.
In addition to the excitement of killing and losing their
whales, being wrecked on a coral reef or hit with poisoned
arrows, our mariners were fated not to run short of dramatic
action in the shape of mutiny.
205This was how it arose and how it was quelled:—
'Thursday, September 1883, off New Ireland.—At 4 P.M.
calm, the ship being close under the land and driving
rapidly, with a strong current, farther inshore. The captain
ordered the starboard bow boat to be lowered for the purpose
of towing the vessel's head round in such a position that the
current might take her on the starboard bow, and cause her
to drift off shore. The boat was consequently lowered, and
the mate ordered Henry Spratt to take the place of one of the
boat's crew, who was at that moment on the foretop-gallant
masthead looking out for whales. Spratt refused to do so,
saying that he didn't belong to any boat, and that it was his
watch below. He continued to disobey the repeated orders
of the mate till the matter was noticed by the captain, who
called out, "Make that man go in the boat," when he at length
did so, but in an unwilling manner and muttering something
which was not distinctly heard.
'On the boat being hoisted up, the captain addressed
Spratt in the most temperate manner on the subject of his
insubordination, and warned him as to his future conduct.
'Spratt became insulting in his manner and remarks, and
ended by defying his superior officers and forcibly resisting
the mate's attempt to bring him from the poop to the main
deck for the purpose of being put in irons. While the irons
were preparing, he bolted forward, and evading every attempt
to secure him, stowed himself below in the forecastle. The
crew evincing a strong disposition to support this outrageous
conduct, the captain armed himself and his officers, and
ordered the chief mate to bring Spratt from below. He
refused peremptorily, and struck the mate several blows, attempting
to overpower him and gain possession of his sword. After
receiving two or three blows with the flat of the sword, he
was, with the assistance of the third mate, conveyed on deck
and made fast to the main-rigging.
'While the prisoner was being made fast, the greater part
of the crew came aft in the most mutinous and tumultuous
manner, exclaiming against his being flogged, and questioning
the captain's right to do so.
'They were ordered forward, and some of them (Murray
in particular) showing a disposition to disobey and force
themselves aft, the captain found it necessary to strike them
206with the flat of his sword, and to draw a rope across the deck
parallel with the mainmast, warning the crew to pass it at
their peril.
'The captain then, calling his officers around him, instituted
a trial, and the whole of Spratt's conduct being calmly considered,
he was unanimously sentenced to three dozen lashes.
'One dozen was immediately inflicted, and the prisoner
was then asked if he repented of his misconduct, and would
faithfully promise obedience for the remainder of the period that
he should be permitted to remain on board. This promise
being given, and the greatest contrition being expressed, he was
unbound, and the remainder of his sentence commuted. As,
however, he was considered a dangerous character, orders were
issued that he should be treated as a prisoner (having the
liberty of the deck abaft the mainmast) till he could be
landed at New Georgia (the island from which he shipped),
or elsewhere, if he thought fit.'
This émeute, which might have ended easily enough in a
second Mutiny of the Bounty,—or as did happen when the crew
of a whale-ship threw the captain overboard on the coast of New
Zealand,—having been quelled by the use of strong measures
promptly applied, the ordinary course of events went on uninterruptedly.
On September 8 (Sunday, as it happened)
two whales were killed. The canoes came off and hailed as
usual. A violent gale seems to have come on directly the
boiling was finished. They were alternately running under
close-reefed topsails, wearing ship every four hours, being at
5 P.M. close under the high land under Cape St. Mary.
Pumps going every watch, sea very high, ship labouring heavily—then
close to Ford's Group. The gale lasted from Monday
to the following Friday at midnight. One fancies that from
the 'captain bold' downwards, they must have had 'quite a
picnic of it.'
Spratt was what is known to South Sea mariners as a
'beach-comber'—one of a proverbially troublesome class of
seamen. He had, probably, left the Cadmus for no good
reason. However, the treatment seems to have cured him,
as on September 1 we find the entry:—'Returned Spratt to his
duty at his own request, he having promised the utmost
civility, attention, and obedience. Fresh breeze and head sea
till midnight,' etc.
207On Saturday, April 27, 1833, the good teak-built barque
cleared the Sydney Heads, outward bound, and on Saturday,
May 10, 1834, at 4 P.M., saw the heads of Port Jackson, and
at midnight entered, with light winds from north-east.
'Sunday, May 11, 1834.—Calm; the boats towing the ship up
harbour. Pilot came on board. [They had come in without
one—such a trifling bit of navigation, after scraping coral reefs
by the score and being close inshore, with strong current
setting in, not being worth considering.] At 5 P.M. came to
anchor abreast of batteries. Most of the hands went ashore.'
And here, as 'Our Jack's come home again,' let us conclude
this story of an old Log-book.
A KANGAROO SHOOT
208
Another month has passed. The calendar shows that the
midwinter is over, and still the much-dreaded New England
cold season has not asserted itself. Such weather as we have
had in this last week of June has been mild and reassuring.
Certes, there have been days when the western blast bit
shrewdly keen, and ordinary garments afforded scant protection.
In the coming spring there may be wrathful gales, sleet
and hail—snow, even. We must not 'hollo till we are out of
the wood.'
In the meantime it is not displeasing to see a trifle of mud
again—marshes filling with their complement of water; to
hear the bittern boom and the wild drake quack in the
reed-bordered pool,—sights and sounds to which I have been
a stranger for years and years.
The showers have refreshed the long-dry fallows, and a
goodly breadth of wheat is now looking green and well-coloured.
But to-day I marked three ploughs in one field, availing of
the favourable state of tilth. The ordinary processes of a
country neighbourhood are in full swing. Loads of hay, top-heavy
and fragrant, meet you from time to time upon the
metalled highway. A pony-carriage passes, much as it might
do in the narrow lanes of Hertfordshire or Essex. The
straggling briar and hawthorn hedges have been trimmed
lately. All things savour strongly of the old land, from which
the district takes its name. As in England, the guns are now
in use and request; and amid my peregrinations it chances
that I fall upon a custom of the country, which is partly of
the nature of work and partly of play.
Yes, it is a kangaroo drive or battue—a measure rendered
209necessary by the persistent multiplication of these primeval
forms, and their tendency to eat and destroy grass, out of all
proportion to the value of their skins.
To this gathering I am bidden, and gratefully promise to
keep tryst, divining that certain of the neighbours and notables
will attend, with wives and daughters in sufficient abundance
to warrant a dance after the sterner duties of the day.
And while on the subject of sport and recreation, how little
is there worthy of the name in the country districts of Australia.
Fishing is there none, or bait fishing at the best; hunting is a
tradition of our forefathers; shooting, an infrequent pleasure.
Since the introduction of the railway many of the ordinary
travelling roads have been practically deserted. The well-tried
friend or the agreeable stranger no longer halts before the
hospitable homestead; months may pass before any social
recreation takes place in the sequestered country homes
which were wont to be so joyous. But just at the exact period
when such resources were strained, the too prolific marsupial
has come to the rescue. He it is who now poses as the
rescuer of distressed damsels, and ennuyées châtelaines,
wearying of solitary sweetness as of old; and yet he is classed
by reckless utilitarians and prosaic legislators as a noxious
animal! Behold us, then, a score of horsemen gaily sallying
forth from a station of the olden time,—one of those happy,
hospitable dwellings, where, whatever might be the concourse
of guests, there was always room for one more,—well mounted,
and mostly well armed with the deadly chokebore of the
period. The day is cloudy and overcast; but no particular
inconvenience is apprehended. The majority of the party are
of an age lightly to regard wind or weather. The conversation
is free and sportive. Compliments, more or less equivocal,
are exchanged as to shooting or horsemanship, and a good
deal of schoolboy frolic obtains. Dark hints are thrown out
as to enthusiastic sportsmen who blaze away regardless of
their 'duty to their neighbour,' and harrowing details given of
the last victim at a former 'shoot.'
As we listen to these 'tales for the marines,' uncomfortable
thoughts will suggest themselves. We recall the grisly incident
in The Interpreter; when at a 'wild-schutz' the Prince de
Vochsal's bullet glides off a tree-stem and finds a home in
Victor De Rohan's gallant breast. Might such a contretemps210occur to-day? Such things are always on the cards. May
not even the rightful possessor of this susceptible heart be
widowed ere this very eve, and the callow Boldrewoods be
rendered nestless? No matter! One can but die once. It
won't be quite so hot as Tel-el-kebir. Even there survivors
returned. So we shake up our well-tried steed, shoulder the
double-barrel, and ruffle it with the rest, serene in confidence
as to the doctrine of chances.
And now after three or four miles' brisk riding o'er hill and
dale—the country in these parts may certainly be described as
undulating—we come upon a line of recently 'blazed' trees.
These are half-way between a ravine or gully, and the crest of
a range, to which it runs parallel. As the first man reaches
a marked tree, he takes his station, the next in line halting as
he comes to the succeeding one. The distances between are
perhaps seventy or eighty yards, and each man stands sheltered
on one side of his tree-trunk. The number of guns may be
some ten or fifteen. The beaters, horsemen also, have gone
forward some time since, and our present attitude is one of
expectation.
In about ten minutes a sound as of galloping hoofs is
heard upon the western side, of ringing stockwhips, shouts and
yells, then nearer still the measured 'thud, thud' which tells of
the full-grown marsupial. Bang goes a gun at the end of the
line; the battle has begun. A curious excitement commences
to stir the blood. It is not so much unlike the real thing.
And a line of skirmishers in close quarters with an enemy's
vedette would be posted like us, and perhaps similarly affected
by the first crackling fire of musketry. Two more shots right
and left nearer to our position; then half-a-dozen. A volley
in our immediate neighbourhood raises expectation and excitement
to the highest pitch. 'May Allah protect us! There
is but one Prophet,' we have but time to ejaculate, and lo!
the marsupial tyrant of our flocks and herds is upon us in
force. Here they come, straight for our tree, seven or eight
of all sizes, from the innocent 'joey' to the grim ancient, 'the
old man,' in the irreverent vernacular of the colonists.
Now is our time. We step bravely from behind our tree
and bang into the patriarch's head and shoulders, as for one
moment he arrests his mad career in wild astonishment at our
sudden apparition.
211He staggers, but does not fall. Habet, doubtless; but
the half-instinctive muscular system enables him to carry off
the balance of a cartridge of double B.
As the affrighted flock dashes by, we wheel and accommodate
the next largest with a broadside. It is more effective; a
smashed hind-leg brings down the fur-bearing 'noxious animal,'
which lies helpless and wistful, with large, deer-like eyes. A
smart fusilade to the left reveals that the fugitives have fallen
among foes in that direction.
The small arms being silent, we quit our trees, each man
scalps his victims, giving the coup-de-grâce to such of the
wounded as need a quietus. No quarter is given—neither
age nor sex is spared. Even the infants, those tender weaklings
the 'joeys,' are not saved. It is the horrible necessity of
war—a war for existence. As thus: If the kangaroo are
allowed to live and multiply, our sheep will starve. We can't
live if they don't. Ergo, it is our life and welfare against
Marsupial Bill's, and he, being of the inferior race, must go
under.
One wonders whether this doctrine will be applied in the
future to inferior races of men. As the good country of the
world gets taken up, I fear me pressure will be brought to
bear by the all-absorbing Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, and Slavs
upon the weaker races. Wars of extermination have been
waged ere now in the history of the world. They may be yet
revived, for all we can predicate from existing facts.
As we go down the line the scalps are collected in a bag.
We are thus enabled to compare notes as to success. One
gentleman has five kangaroos lying around him; he is not
certain either whether an active neighbour has not done
him out of a scalp. The collecting business having been
completed, a move is made for the horses, hung up out of
danger, and another paddock is 'driven' with approximate
results.
A good morning's work has been done, and a sufficiency of
bodily exercise taken by one o'clock, at which time a move is
made towards a creek flat, where on the site of a deserted
sheep-station, with yards proper, of the olden time, a substantial
picnic lunch is spread. Appetites of a superior description
seem to be universal, and a season of hearty enjoyment
succeeds to that of action.
212The spot itself might well have stood for the locality
sketched in Lindsay Gordon's unpublished poem. Strange
that the poetic gift should enable the possessor to invest
with ideal grace a subject so apparently prosaic and homely
as a deserted shepherd's hut.
Can this be where the hovel stood?
Of old I knew the spot right well;
One post is left of all the wood,
Three stones lie where the chimney fell.
Rank growth of ferns has well-nigh shut
From sight the ruin of the hut;
There stands the tree where once I cut
The M that interlaced the L.
What more is left to tell?
As we were converging towards this spot before lunch,
the smart shot of the gathering was made. A forester
kangaroo, demoralised by the abnormal events of the day,
came dashing up towards the party. He wheeled and fled as
we met, and a snap shot but staggered him. Then one of
the party dropped the reins on his horse's neck, and with a
long shot rolled him over, dead as a rabbit.
A succession of 'drives' make a partial clearance of each
paddock, all being taken in turn. The short winter day,
accented by heavy showers in the afternoon, begins to darken
as we ride homewards, damp but hilarious. The day had
been successful on the whole. Plenty of fun, reasonable
sport, manly exercise, and a fair bag. Nearly a hundred legal
'raisings' of 'h'ar' prove that the average has been over ten
head per gun. Dry clothes, blazing fires, a warm welcome
and sympathetic greetings, await us on arrival. The advantage
of bearing trifling discomfort, to be compensated by unwonted
luxury, presents itself to every logical mind. The dinner
was a high festival, where mirth reigned supreme; while the
ball in the evening—for had not all dames and demoiselles
within twenty miles been impressed for the occasion?—fitly
concluded the day's work with a revel of exceptional
joyousness.
If there be a moral connected with this 'study in Black
and White' it must be that while most people (excepting the
advocates for the abolition of capital punishment) admit that
it is a good and lawful deed to clear the 'noxious' marsupial
213off the face of the earth, we trust that the process will not be so
swift as to bring speedily to an end such enjoyable gatherings,—these
sociable murder parties, wherein business and
pleasure are happily conjoined, as in the battue at which I
had the happiness to be present.
FIVE MEN'S LIVES FOR ONE HORSE
214
'Yes; it does seem a goodish price to pay for a half-bred
mare—worth ten pound at the outside,' said old Bill, the
cook for the rouseabouts at Jergoolah Station, one wet evening,
as the men gathered round the fire after supper, with their
pipes in their mouths. It had been wet for three days, so
there was no shearing. Very little work for the other men
either—half a hundred strong—as the wet-fleeced sheep were
best left alone. The shearers were sulky of course. They
were eating (and paying for) their own rations. But the
ordinary 'pound-a-week men,' whose board, with lodging, was
provided for them gratis, were philosophically indifferent to
the state of the weather.
'I don't care if it rains till Christmas,' remarked a dissipated-looking
youth, who had successfully finished a game
of euchre with a dirty pack of cards and an equally unclean
companion. 'It's no odds to us, so long's the creeks don't
rise and block us goin' to the big smoke to blue our cheques.
I don't hold with too much fine weather at shearin' time.'
'Why not?' asked his late antagonist, staring gloomily at
the cards, as if he held them responsible for his losses.
'Why not?' repeated the first speaker; ''cause there's no
fun in watchin' of bloomin' shearers makin' their pound and
thirty bob a day while we can't raise a mag over three-and-six—at
it all hours like so many workin' bullocks, and turned
out the minute shearin's over, like a lot of unclaimed strangers
after a cattle muster.'
'Why did ye come here at all?' asked a tall, broad-shouldered
'corn-stalk' from the neighbourhood of Penrith;
'nobody asked yer. There was plenty for the work afore you
215struck in. It's you town larrikins that spoil the sheds—blackguardin'
and gamblin' and growlin' from daylight till
dark. If I was the boss I'd set bait for ye, same's the
dingoes.'
'You shut up and go home to yer pumpkin patch,'
retorted the card-player, with sudden animation. 'You
Sydney-siders think no one can work stock but yourselves.
You've no right this side of the Murrumbidgee, if it comes to
that; and I'd make one of a crowd to start you back where
you come from, and all your blackleg lot.'
'Put up your hands, you spieler!' said the New South
Wales man, making one long stride towards the light-weight,
who, standing easily on guard, appeared in no way anxious to
decline the combat.
'Come, none of that, you Nepean chap,' said a good-humoured,
authoritative voice; 'no scrappin' till shearin's
over, or I'll stop your pay. Besides, it's a daylight start
to-morrow morning. I've a paddock to clear, and the glass
is rising. The weather's going to take up.' This was the
second overseer, whose word was law until the 'cobbler' was
shorn, and the last man with the last sheep left the shed
amid derisive cheers. After a little subdued 'growling,' the
combatants, there being no grog to inflame their angry
passions, subsided.
'What's that old Bill was sayin' about horses and men's
lives? I heard it from outside,' demanded the centurion.
'Any duffing going on?'
'Why, Joe Downey passed the remark,' made answer a
wiry-looking 'old hand,' then engaged in mending one of his
boots so neatly that he might have passed for a journeyman
shoemaker, had it not been an open secret that he had
learned the trade within the walls of a gaol, 'that if a man
was to "shake" a horse here and ride him into Queensland,
he'd never be copped.'
'Oh, he wouldn't, eh? And why did Bill get his hair
off?'
'Well, Bill he says, "You're a d—d young fool," says
he. "I've seen smarter men than you lose their lives over a
ten-pound 'oss—yes, and bring better men to the same end."'
'But he said something about five men,' persisted the
overseer. 'What did he mean by that?'
216'What did I mean by that?' said the old man, who had
now drawn nearer, in stern and strident tones. 'Why, what
I say. It's God's truth, as I stand here, and the whole five
of 'em's now in their graves—as fine a lot of men, too, as ever
you see—all along of one blasted mare, worth about two
fivers, and be hanged to her!'
The old man's speech had a sort of rude eloquence born
of earnestness, which chained the attention of the variously
composed crowd; and when Mr. Macdonald, the overseer,
said, 'Come, Bill, let's have it. It's a lost day, and we may
as well hear your yarn as anything else before turn-in time,'
the old man, thus adjured, took his pipe out of his mouth,
and seating himself upon a three-legged stool, prepared to
deliver himself of a singular and tragic experience.
William James, chiefly referred to as 'old Bill,' was a true
type of the veritable 'old hand' of pre-auriferous Australia.
Concerning an early voyage to Tasmania he was reticent.
He referred to the period ambiguously as 'them old times,'
when he related tales of mystery and fear, such as could have
only found place under the régime of forced colonisation.
No hirsute ornament adorned his countenance. Deeply
wrinkled, but ever clean-shaved, it was a face furrowed and
graven, as with a life-record of the darker passions and such
various suffering as the human animal alone can endure and
live. Out of this furnace of tribulation old Bill had emerged,
in a manner purified and reformed. He gave one the
impression of a retired pirate—convinced of the defects of
the profession, but regretful of its pleasing episodes. Considered
as a bush labourer, a more useful individual to a
colony did not live. Bill could do everything well, and do
twice as much of it as the less indurated industrialist of a
later day. Hardy, resourceful, tireless, true to his salt, old
Bill had often been considered by the sanguine or inexperienced
employer an invaluable servant. And so in truth
he was, until the fatal day arrived when the 'cheque fever'
assailed him. Then, alas! 'he was neither to hand nor to
bind.' No reason, interest, promise or principle had power
to restrain him from the mad debauch, when for days—perhaps
for weeks—all semblance of manhood was lost.
However, he was now in the healthful stage of constant
work—well fed, paid and sheltered. Cooking was one of his
217many accomplishments: in it he excelled. While, despite
his age, his courage and determination sufficed to keep the
turbulent 'rouseabouts' in order. In his leisure hours he
was prone to improve the occasion by demonstrating the folly
of colliding with the law—its certain victory, its terrible
penalties. And of the gloomy sequel to a solitary act was
the present story.
'I mind,' he began—pushing back the grey hair which he
wore long and carefully brushed—'when I was workin' on a
run near the Queensland border. It's many a long year ago—but
that says nothin'; some of you chaps is as young and
foolish as this Jack Danvers as I'm a-goin' to tell ye about.
Well, some of us was startin' a bit of a spree like, after
shearin'; we'd all got tidy cheques; some was goin' one way
and some another. Jack and his mate to Queensland, where
they expected a big job of work. Just as we was a-saddlin'
up—some of us had one neddy, some two—a mob of horses
comes by. I knew who they belonged to—a squatter not far
off. Among 'em was a fine lump of a brown filly, three year
old, half bred, but with good action.
'"That's a good filly," says Jack—he'd had a few glasses—"she
could be roped handy in the old cattle-yard near the
crick. Lead easy too, 'long with the other mokes."
'"Don't be a darned fool, Jack," says I; "there'll be a
bloomin' row over her, you take it from me. She's safe to be
missed, and you'll be tracked up. D—n it all, man," says
I, "what's a ten-pound filly for a man to lose his liberty over?
If it was a big touch it might be different."
'"You're a fine cove to preach," says he, quite savage.
The grog had got into his head, I could see. "Mind your own
—— business." I heard his mate (he was a rank bad 'un) say
something to him, and they rode away steady; but the same
road that the "mob" had gone. I went off with some other
chaps as wer' inside having a last drink, and thought no more
about Jack Danvers and the brown filly till nigh a year after.
Then it come out. The filly'd been spotted, working in a
team, by the man that bred her. The carrier bought her
square and honest; had a receipt from a storekeeper. They
found the storekeeper in Queensland; he'd bought her from
another man. "What sort of a man?"—"Why, a tall, good-looking
chap, like a flash shearer." Word went to the
218police at Warwillah. It was Jack Danvers of course; they'd
suspected him and his mate all the time.
'Well, Jack was nabbed, tho' he was out on a Queensland
diggin' far enough away. But they sent up his description
from the shed we'd left together, and he was brought down in
irons, as he'd made a fight of it. The storekeeper swore to
him positive as the man that had sold him the brown J.D.
filly—old Jerry Dawson's she was. The jury found him guilty
and he got three years.
'Now I'm on to the part of the play when the "ante-up"
comes in. You mind me, you young fellers, it always does
sooner or later. He'd no call to shake that filly. I said
so then, and I say so now. And what come'd of it? Listen
and I'll tell you—Death in five chapters—and so simple, all
along of an unbroke filly!
'Now Jack wa'n't the man to stop inside of prison walls
if he could help it. He and another chap make a rush one
day, knock over the warder and collar his revolver. Another
warder comes out to help; Jack shoots him dead, and they
clear. Man's life number one. Big reward offered. They
stick up a roadside inn next. Somebody gave 'em away.
Police waitin' on 'em as they walk in—dead of night. Soon's
they see the police, Jack shoots the innkeeper, poor devil!
thought he'd sold 'em. Man's life number two. Jack and his
mate and the police bang away at each other at close quarters—trooper
wounded—Jack shot dead—mate wounded, dies
next day. Men's lives number four.
'Who gave the office to the police and collared the blood-money?
Friend of Jack's, a pal. Five hundred quid was too
much for him. What became of him? Job leaked out
somehow—friends and family dropped him. The money did
him no good. Took to drinking straight ahead, and died
in the horrors within the year. Men's lives number five.
'Yes; he was the fifth man to go down. Two pound
apiece their lives fetched! They're in their graves because
Jack Danvers was a d—d fool, and when he was young,
strong, good-looking and well-liked, must go and duff a man's
mare out of sheer foolishness. He didn't see what was to
come of it, or he'd 'a cut off his right hand first. But that's
the way of it. We don't see them things till it's too late.
But mark my words, you young chaps as has got all the
219world before you—take a fool's advice. It don't pay to "go
on the cross"—never did; and there's no one has cause to
know it better than old Bill James.'
'By George!' said the overseer, 'that's the best yarn I
have heard for a year. And if the parson preaches a better
sermon when he holds service in the woolshed next Sunday,
I'll be surprised.'
REEDY LAKE STATION
220
The Post-office clock in Bourke Street, Melbourne, is about
to strike six, in the month of June 1858. At this 'everlastingly
early hour A.M. in the morning' (as remarked by Mr.
Chuckster), I am the box-passenger of Cobb's coach, en route
for Bendigo. The team of greys stand motionless, save for a
faint attempt to paw on the part of the near-side leader.
The first stroke vibrates on high. Mr. Jackson, with an
exclamation, tightens his 'lines.' The six greys plunge at
their collars, and we are off.
There was no Spencer Street terminus in those days. We
were truly thankful to King Cobb. I, for one, was glad to
get over a hundred miles of indifferent road in a day—winter
weather, too. We did not grumble so comprehensively as
latter-day travellers.
Remembered yet, how, when we came to the long hill at
Keilorbridge, the driver let his horses out when half-way
down. The pace that we went 'was a caution to see.' The
wheel-spokes flew round, invisible to the naked eye. The
coach rocked in a manner to appal the nervous. The horses
lay down to it as if they were starting for a Scurry Stakes.
But it was a good piece of macadam, and we were half-way
up to the next hill before any one had time to think seriously
of the danger.
Nobody, of course, would have dared to have addressed
the driver upon the subject. In those flush days, when both
day and night coaches loaded well, when fares were high and
profits phenomenal, he was an autocrat not to be lightly approached.
It almost took two people to manage a communication—one
to bear the message from the other. Silent
221or laconic, master of his work in a marvellous degree, he
usually resented light converse, advice infuriated him, and
sympathy was outrage.
The roads were bad, even dangerous in places. Muddy
creeks, bush-tracks, sidelings, washed-out crossings, increased
the responsibilities and tried the tempers of these pioneer sons
of Nimshi. Men of mark they mostly were. Americans to a
man in that day, though subsequently native-born Australians,
acclimatised Irishmen, and other recruits of merit, began to
show up in the ranks.
I remember the astonishment of a newly-arrived traveller
at seeing Carter, a gigantic, fair-bearded Canadian, coming
along a baddish road one wet day, with seven horses and a
huge coach, containing about fifty Chinamen. How he
swayed the heavy reins with practised ease, his three leaders
at a hand-gallop; how he piloted his immense vehicle through
stumps and ruts, by creek and hillside, with accuracy almost
miraculous to the uninitiated.
Mr. Carter was not a 'man of much blandishment.' I recall
the occasion, when a spring having gone wrong, he was, with
the assistance of a stalwart passenger, silently repairing
damage. A frivolous insider commenced to condole and
offer suggestions in a weakly voluble way. 'Go to h—l,' was
the abrupt rejoinder, which so astonished the well-meaning
person, that he retreated into the coach like a rabbit into a
burrow, and was silent for hours afterwards.
One always had the consciousness, however, that whatever
could be done by mortal man, would be accomplished by
them. Accidents might happen, but they belonged to the
category of the inevitable.
One dark night, near Sawpit Gully, a tire came off. Al.
Hamilton (poor fellow! he was killed by an upset in New
South Wales afterwards) was off in a minute; found his way
to the smith's house; had him back in an inconceivably short
time; left word for us to get the fire lighted and blown up—it
was cold, and we thought that great fun; and before another
man would have finished swearing at the road, the darkness,
and things in general, the hammer was clinking on the red-hot
tire, the welding was progressing, and in three-quarters of an
hour we were bowling along much as before. We had time
to make up, and did it too. But suppose the blacksmith
222would not work? Not work! He was Cobb and Co.'s man—that
is, he did all their 'stage' repairs. Well he knew that
the night must be to him even as the day when their humblest
vehicle on the road needed his aid. As a firm they went
strictly by results and took no excuses. If a man upset his
coach and did damage once, he was shifted to another part of
the line. If he repeated the accident, he was dismissed.
There was no appeal, and the managing body did not trouble
about evidence after the first time. If he was negligent, it
served him right. If he was unlucky, that was worse.
The journey to Bendigo was accomplished at the rate of
nine miles an hour, stoppages included. It was midwinter.
The roads were deep in places. It was therefore good-going,
punctual relays, and carefully economised time, which
combined to land us at Hefferman's Hotel before darkness
had set in. As usual a crowd had collected to enjoy the
great event of the day.
Bendigo was in that year a very lively town, with a
population roused to daily excitement by fortunes made or
lost. Gold was shovelled up like sugar in bankers' scoops,
and good money sent after bad in reckless enterprise, or
restored a hundredfold in lucky ventures.
Here I was to undergo a new experience in company with
Her Majesty's Mails.
As I rather impatiently lingered outside of Hefferman's
after breakfast next morning, an unpretending tax-cart, to
which were harnessed a pair of queer, unmatched screws,
drove up to the door. 'German Charlie'—his other name I
never knew—driver and contractor, informed me that I was
the only passenger, lifted my valise, and the talismanic words
'Reedy Creek' being pronounced, vowed to drop me at the
door. He had always parcels for Mr. Keene. This gentleman's
name he pronounced with bated breath, in a tone of
deepest veneration.
Beyond all doubt would I be landed there early on the
morrow.
I mounted the Whitechapel, saw my overcoat and valise in
safely, and, not without involuntary distrust, committed myself
to Charlie's tender mercies. He gave a shout, he raised his
whip—the off-side horse made a wild plunge; the near-side one,
blind of one eye, refused to budge. Our fate hung on the
223balance apparently, when a man from the crowd quietly led
off the unwilling near-side, and we dashed away gloriously.
The pace was exceptional, but it was evidently inexpedient to
slacken speed. We flew down the main street, and turned
northward, along a narrow track, perilously near to yawning
shafts, across unsafe bridges, over race channels; along
corduroy roads, or none at all, our headlong course was
pursued. The sludge-invaded level of Meyer's Flat is passed.
Bullock Creek is reached, all ignorant of reservoirs and weirs,
and a relay of horses driven in from the bush is demanded.
A smart boy of fourteen had the fresh team, three in
number, ready for us in the yard. He felt it necessary to
warn us. They 'were not good starters, that was a fact.' The
statement was strictly correct. One horse was badly collar-galled,
one a rank jib. The leader certainly had a notion of
bolting; his efforts in that direction were, however, neutralised
by the masterly inactivity of his companions. After much
pushing, persuasion, and profane language, we effected a
departure.
That the pace was kept up afterwards may be believed.
Sometimes the harness gave way, but as the shaft and outrigger
horses were by this time well warmed, they did not
object to again urge on their wild career.
We stopped at the 'Durham Ox Inn' that night, then a
solitary lodge in the wilderness, a single building of brick,
visible afar off on the sea-like plain, which stretched to the
verge of the horizon. Woods Brothers and Kirk had at that
time, if I mistake not, just concluded to purchase Pental
Island from Ebden and Keene, but were debating as to price.
The pasture seemed short and sparse, after the deep, rich
western sward, but overtaking a 'mob' of Messrs. Booth and
Argyle's cattle farther on, I felt satisfied as to its fattening
qualities. Each cow, calf, steer, and yearling in the lot was
positively heaped and cushioned with fat. They looked like
stall-fed oxen. And this in June! I thought I saw then
what the country could do. I was correct in my deduction,
always supposing the important factor of rain not to be absent.
Of this, in my inexperience, I took no heed. In my favoured
district there was always a plentiful supply; sometimes, indeed,
more than was agreeable or necessary.
Kerang was passed; Tragowel skirted; Mount Hope, then
224in the occupation of Messrs. Griffith and Greene, reared its
granite mass a few miles to the south. As Sir Thomas
Mitchell stood there, gazing over the illimitable prairie, rich
with giant herbage and interspersed but with belts and copses
of timber, planted by Nature's hand, the veteran explorer exclaimed
with a burst of enthusiasm, 'Australia Felix! This is
indeed Australia Felix!'
Steady stocking and an occasional dry season had somewhat
modified the standard of the nutritive grasses and
salsolaceous plants, at this point advantageously mingled.
But that the country was superlative in a pastoral point of
view may be gathered from the fact that, upon my first visit
to the homestead a few weeks afterwards, I saw five thousand
weaners—the whole crop of lambs for the previous year—shepherded
in one flock. Very fine young sheep they were, and
in excellent condition. Of course it was on a plain, but,
unless the pasturage had been exceptional, no shepherd could
have kept such a number together.
Later in the afternoon my Teutonic conductor, who had
been going for the last twenty miles like the dark horseman in
Burger's ballad, pulled up at Reedy Lake Head Station.
There dwelt the resident partner and autocrat of his district,
Mr. Theophilus Keene.
I saw a slight, fair man with an aquiline nose, a steady grey
eye, and an abundant beard, who came out of a neat two-roomed
slab hut and greeted me with polished courtesy. 'He
was extremely glad to see me. He had looked forward to my
coming this week in terms of a letter he had received from
Messrs. Ryan and Hammond, but, indeed, had hardly expected
that I would trust myself to their mail.'
Mr. Keene, whom I saw then for the first time, was probably
verging on middle age, though active and youthful in appearance,
above the middle height, yet not tall—of a figure inclined
indeed to spareness. He impressed me with the idea that he
was no commonplace individual.
He carried nothing of the bushman about his appearance,
at home or in town, being careful and soigné as to his
apparel, formal and somewhat courtly in his address. He
scarcely gave one the idea of a dweller in the waste; yet the
roughest experiences of overlanding squatter-life, of a leader of
the rude station and road hands, had been his. He looked
225more like a dandy Civil Servant of the upper grades. Yet he
was more than a pioneer and manager—an astute diplomatist,
a clever correspondent, an accurate accountant. The books
of the Reedy Lake Station were kept as neatly as those of a
counting-house. The overseer's sheep-books, ration accounts,
and road expenses were audited as correctly as if in an office.
The great station-machine revolved easily, and, though unaided
by inventions which have smoothed the path of latter-day
pastoralists, was a striking illustration of successful administration.
This large and important sheep property, as it was held to
be in those primeval times, had considerably over 150,000
sheep on its books. Reedy Lake stood for the whole, but
Quambatook, Murrabit, Lake Boga, Liegar, Pental Island and
other runs were also comprised within its boundaries. These
were separate communities, and were, upon the subdivision of
the property, sold as such. These were worked under the
supervision of overseers and sub-managers, each of whom had
to render account to Mr. Keene—a strict one, too—of every
sheep counted out to the shepherds of the division in his
charge.
Mr. Ebden, erstwhile Treasurer of Victoria and for some
years a member of Parliament, was the senior partner. He
had sagaciously secured Mr. Keene, then wasting his powers
on the Lower Murray, by offering him a third share of the
property, with the position of resident partner and General
Manager. Mr. Ebden, residing in Melbourne, arranged the
financial portion of the affairs, while Mr. Keene was the
executive chief, with almost irresponsible powers, which he used
unreservedly—no doubt about that.
This was the day, let it be premised, of 'shepherding,' pure
and simple. There were, in that district at least, no wire
fences, no great enclosures, no gates, no tanks. Improvements,
both great and small, were looked upon as superfluous forms of
expensiveness. To keep the shepherds in order, to provide
them with rations and other necessaries, to see that they neither
lost the sheep nor denied them reasonable range,—these were
the chief duties of those in authority. And tolerably anxious
and engrossing occupation they afforded.
Thus the great Reedy Lake Head Station, always mentioned
with awe, north of the Loddon, was not calculated to strike the
226stranger with amazement on account of its buildings and
constructions, formed on the edge of the fresh-water lake from
which it took its name. The station comprised Mr. Keene's
two-roomed hut aforesaid; also a larger one, where the overseers,
young gentlemen, and strangers abode—known as The
Barracks; the kitchen, a detached building; the men's huts,
on the shore of the lake, at some considerable distance; an
inexpensive, old-fashioned woolshed might be discerned among
the 'old-man salt-bush' nearly a mile away; a hundred acre
horse-paddock, surrounded by a two-railed sapling fence; a
stock-yard—voilà tout; there was, of course, a store. These
were all the buildings thought necessary for the management
of £150,000 worth of sheep in that day. How different
would be the appearance of such a property now!
The special errand upon which I had journeyed thus far
was to inspect and, upon approval, to accept an offer in writing,
which I carried with me, of the Murrabit Station, one of the
subdivisions of the Reedy Lake property, having upon it
sixteen thousand sheep and no improvements whatever, except
the shepherds' huts and a hundred hurdles. The price was
£24,000—one-third equal to cash, the remainder by bills
extending over three years.
The tide of investment had set in strongly in the direction
of sheep properties, near or across the Murray. I had followed
the fashion for the purpose, presumably, of making the usual
fortune more rapidly than through the old-fashioned medium
of cattle. To this end it was arranged that Mr. Keene and I,
with one of the overseers whom I had known previously,
should on the morrow ride over and inspect the Murrabit
country and stock, lying some twenty miles distant from
Reedy Lake.
It is held to be bad form in Bushland to mount an
intending purchaser badly. It is unnecessary to say that it
was not done in this case. No detail was omitted to produce
a state of cheerful self-complacency, suited to the distinguished
rôle of guest and buyer. When Mr. Keene's famous pony
Billy, an animal whose fame was heralded in two colonies,
and from the Loddon to the Murrumbidgee, was led forth, I
felt I was indeed the favoured guest. He certainly was 'the
horse you don't see now,' or, if so, very very rarely. Neat as
to forehand, with a round rib and powerful quarter, fast, easy,
227and up to weight, he was difficult to match. The area from
Kerang northwards was known as 'salt-bush' country. But
little grass showed except on the edges of watercourses. Bare
patches of red sandy loam between the salsolaceous plants did
not lead the early explorers to consider it first-rate pasturage.
Varieties, however, were plentiful, from the 'old-man salt-bush,'
seven to ten feet high, to the dwarf-growing but fattening plants
on the plain. The cotton-bush, too, known to indicate first-class
fattening country, was plentiful. Perhaps the best testimony
to the quality of the herbage, however, and which I was
sufficiently experienced to appreciate, was the uniform high
health and condition of every flock of sheep that we saw.
Nothing could be finer than their general appearance, as indeed
is always the case in reasonably-stocked salt-bush country;
no foot-rot, no fluke, and, absit omen, no sheep-scab. This dire
disease was then, unhappily, common in Western Victoria.
It had been a fair season. Everything was fit to bear
inspection. The wether flock looked like donkeys for size,
the breeding ewes were fit for market, the weaners precociously
fat and well-grown. Nothing could look better than
the whole array.
Besides the salt-bush country, plains chiefly, and a large dry
lake, there was an important section of the run known as 'The
Reed-beds,' which I was anxious to visit. This tract lay between
Lake Boga, a large fresh-water lake on one side, the Murrabit,
an anabranch, and the south bank of the Murray. In order to
ride over this it was arranged that we should camp at the hut
of a shepherd, known as 'Towney,' on Pental Island, thence
explore the reed-beds and see the remaining sheep on the
morrow.
Pental Island, formed by the Murrabit, a deep wide stream,
which leaves the main river channel and re-enters lower down,
we found to be a long, narrow strip of land, having sound salt-bush
ridges in the centre, with reed-beds on either side.
Crossing by a rude but sufficient bridge, we discovered Mr.
'Towney' living an Alexander Selkirk sort of life, monarch of
all he surveyed, and with full charge of some ten or twelve
thousand sheep turned loose. The bridge being closed with
hurdles, they could not get away. His only duty was to see
that no enterprising dingo swam over from Murray Downs on
the opposite side and ravaged the flock.
228The night was cloudless and starlit, lovely in all aspects, as
are chiefly those of the Riverina—an absolutely perfect winter
climate. The strange surroundings, the calm river, the untroubled
hush of the scene, the chops, damper, and tea, all
freshly prepared by Towney, were enjoyable enough. After a
talk by the fire, for the night air was cool, and a smoke, we
lay down on rugs and blankets and slept till dawn. Our entertainer
was dejected because he had not a Murray cod to offer
us. 'If we had only come last week.' 'Tis ever thus.
That day's ride showed me the reed-beds in the light of
sound, green, quickly-fattening pastures. At one angle of the
Murrabit, on my run—for my run, indeed, it was destined to
be—there were two flocks of sheep, five thousand in all, of
which the shepherds and hut-keeper inhabited the same hut.
It was managed thus. One flock was camped on the northern
side of the bridge, one on the other. The hut-keeper, long
disestablished, but then considered an indispensable functionary,
cooked for both shepherds. £30 a year with rations was the
wage for the shepherds; £25 for the hut-keeper.
Then there was a frontage of, perhaps, a mile and a half to
the southern end of Lake Boga. This noble fresh-water lake,
having shelving, sandy shores, is filled by the rising of the
Murray. On the bluff, to the right of the road to Swan Hill,
was a curious non-Australian cottage, built by Moravian
missionaries, and situated upon a reserve granted to them
by the Government of Victoria. These worthy personages,
becoming discouraged at the slow conversion of the heathen,
or deeming the locale unsuitable, sold their right and
interest to Messrs. Ebden and Keene. I decided to place the
head station close by, and there, I suppose, it is at the present
day.
A picturesque spot enough. Northward the eye ranged
over the broad, clear waters of the lake, now calm in the bright
sunshine, now lashed into quite respectable waves by a gale.
Eastward, over a wide expanse of reed-bed, dead level and
brightly green, you traced the winding course of the great river
by the huge eucalypti which lined its banks. Around was the
unending plain, on which the salt-bushes grew to an unusual
size, while across the main road to Melbourne, fenced off by
the horse-paddock of the future, was a cape of pine-scrub,
affording pleasing contrast to the wide, bare landscape.
229We returned to Reedy Lake that evening, and before I
slept was the contract signed, accepting price and terms;
signed in high hope, and apparently with a fair prospect of
doubling the capital invested, as had done many another.
Had I but known that this particular indenture, freely translated,
should have run thus:—
'I hereby bind myself to take the Murrabit Run and stock
at the price agreed, and to lose in consequence every farthing I
have ever made, within five years from this date.
'(Signed) R. Boldrewood.'
Why can't one perceive such results and consequences now
and then? Why are so many of the important contracts and
irrevocable promises of life entered into during one's most
sanguine, least reflective period? Will these questions ever be
answered, and where? Still, were the veil lifted, what dread
apparitions might we not behold! 'Tis more mercifully
arranged, be sure.
Thus we entered with a light heart into this Sedan business,
much undervaluing our Prussians. After visiting Melbourne,
it was arranged that delivery of stock and station should be
taken within a specified time.
I didn't know much about sheep then; what a grim jest it
reads like now! I had leisure for reflection on the subject in
the aftertime. I judged it well to leave the apportioning of
the flocks to my host and entertainer. He did far better for
me than I could have done myself. I had every reason to be
satisfied with the quality of the sixteen thousand instruments
of my ruin. There was a noble flock of fat wethers, three
thousand strong; for the rest, 'dry' ewes, breeders, weaners,
two-tooths, were all good of their sort. After engaging one of
the overseers, a shrewd, practical personage, I considered the
establishment of my reputation as a successful wool-grower to
be merely a question of time.
The Fiend is believed to back gamblers at an early stage
of their career. It looked as if His Eminence gave my dice
a good shake pour commencer. The first sale was brilliant:
the whole cast of fat sheep to one buyer (at the rate of £1
each for wethers, and 15s. for ewes)—over six thousand in all.
They were drafted, paid for, and on their way to Melbourne
in the afternoon of the day on which the buyer arrived.
230The lambing was good; the wool sold at a paying price,
considering the primitive style of washing. Next year, of
course, all this would be altered. Meanwhile I surveyed the
imprint 'R.B.' over Murrabit on the wool-bales with great
satisfaction.
'But surely,' says the practical reader, 'things were going
well; season, prices, increase satisfactory. How did the fellow
manage to make a mull of it?' There were reasons. The
cost of a run bought 'bare' is unavoidably great. Huts, yards,
woolshed, homestead, paddock, brushyards, lambers, washers,
shearers, all cost money—are necessary, but expensive. The
cheque stream was always flowing with a steady current, it
seemed to me. Fat stock, too, the great source of profit in
that district, gradually declined in price. Interest and commission,
which amounted to 12½ per cent or more, in one way
and another, gradually told up. In 1861 an unprecedented
fall took place in cattle, such as had not been felt 'since the
gold.' Beeves fell to the price of stores. Buyers could not
meet their engagements. The purchaser of my cattle-station
in Western Victoria was among these. He was compelled
to return it upon my hands after losing his cash deposit.
Thus seriously hampered, the finale was that I 'came out'
without either station or a shilling in the world. What
was worse, having caused others to suffer through my
indebtedness.
The Murrabit was then sold, well improved, though not
fenced, with twenty thousand good sheep on it, at £1: 5s.
per head—£25,000—nearly the same price at which I had
purchased; but with four thousand more sheep, and costly
improvements added, including a woolshed which had cost
£500. The new purchaser paid £10,000 down, and I was
sorry to hear afterwards lost everything in about the time it
had taken me to perform the same feat. But he had, I believe,
the expense of fencing—an economical luxury then so impossible
for a squatter to deny himself. In addition to this,
that terrible synonym of ruin, sheep-scab, broke out in the
district, and in time among the Murrabit sheep. This, of
course, necessitated endless expenditure in labour, dressing-yards,
dips, and what not. No further explanation is needed
by the experienced as to why my equally unlucky successor
went under.
231Talking of scab—now a tradition in Australia—it was then
plentiful in Victoria, with the exception of certain favoured
districts, among which the trans-Loddon country was numbered.
Now in the days when Theophilus was king, foreseeing the
ruin of the district (or chiefly, perhaps, to Ebden and Keene)
which would ensue should the disease get a footing, he fought
against its introduction, either by carelessness or greed, with
all the vigilant energy of his nature.
There are men of contemplation, of science, of culture, of
action. My experience has been that these qualities are but
rarely united in the same individual. This may be the reason
why 'Government by Talk' often breaks down disastrously—the
man who can talk best being helpless and distracted when
responsible action is imminent. This by the way, however.
Mr. Keene did not dissipate his intelligence in the consideration
of abstract theories. He never, probably, in his life saw
three courses open to him. But in war time he struck hard and
promptly. In most cases there was no need to strike twice.
Touching the scab pestilence, this is how he 'saved his
country.' Primarily he put pressure upon his neighbours, until
they formed themselves into a league, offensive and defensive.
They did not trust to the Government official, presumably at
times overworked, but they paid a private Inspector £200
a year, furnishing him also with serviceable horses and free
quarters.
This gentleman—Mr. Smith, let us call him—an active
young Australian, kept the sharpest look-out on all sheep
approaching the borders of the 'Keene country.' He summoned
the persons in charge if they made the least infraction
of the Act, examined the flock most carefully for appearances
of disease, and generally made life so unpleasant, not to say
dangerous, for the persons in charge, that they took the first
chance of altering their route. If there was the faintest room
for doubt, down came Keene, breathing threats and slaughter.
And only after the most rigid, prolonged inspection were they
allowed to pass muster. Why persons selfishly desired to carry
disease into a clean district may be thus explained. Store
sheep—especially if doubtful as to perfect cleanliness—were
low in price in Western Victoria. Near to or across the New
South Wales border they were always high. If, therefore, they
could be driven to the Murray, the profits were considerable.
232No doubt such were made, at the risk of those proprietors
through whose stations they passed. A single sheep left behind
from such a flock, after weeks likely to 'break out' with the
dire disease, might infect a district. Mr. Keene had fully
determined that 'these accursed gains' should not be made at
his expense.
One day he received notice from Mr. Smith that a lot of
five thousand sheep of suspicious antecedents was approaching
his kingdom. They were owned by a dealing squatter, who,
having country both clean and doubtful, made it a pretext for
travelling sheep, picked up in small numbers. 'From information
received' just ere they had entered the clean country,
Mr. Keene appeared with a strong force, with which he took
possession of them under a warrant, obtained on oath that
they were presumably scabby, had them examined by the
Government official, who found the fatal acarus, obtained the
necessary authority, cut their throats, and burned the five
thousand to the last sheep.
After this holocaust, remembered to this day, it became
unfashionable to travel sheep near the Reedy Lake country.
He 'who bare rule over all that land' rested temporarily from
his labours. They were not light either, as may be inferred
from a statement of one of his overseers to me that about
that time, from ceaseless work in the saddle, anxiety, and
worry, he had reduced himself to an absolute skeleton, and
from emaciation could hardly sit on his horse. Nothing,
perhaps, but such unrelenting watch and ward could have
saved the district from infection. But he won the fight, and
for years after, not, indeed, until Theophilus I. was safe in
another hemisphere, did marauders of the class he so harried
and vexed dare to cross the Loddon northwards. As soon as
the normal state of carelessness and 'nobody's business' set
in (Mr. Smith having been discontinued), the event foreseen
by him took place. The district became infected, and Reedy
Lake itself, Murrabit, and other runs, all suffered untold loss
and injury. Rabbits came in to complete the desolation.
What with Pental Island being advertised to be let by tender
in farms, dingoes abounding in the mallee, free selectors
swarming from Lake Charm to the Murray, irrigation even
being practised near Kerang, if Mr. Keene could return to
the country where once he could ride for forty miles on end
233requiring any man he met to state what he was doing there,
he would find himself a stranger in a strange land. Without
doubt he would take the first steamer back to England,
hastening to lose sight and memory of a land so altered and
be-devilled since the reign of the shepherd kings. Of this
dynasty I hold 'Theophilus the First' to have been a more
puissant potentate during his illustrious reign than many of
the occupants of old-world thrones.
A FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY
234
It is difficult for the inhabitants of settled districts in Australia,
where the villages, surrounded by farms or grazing estates, are
now as well ordered as in rural England, to realise the nature
of outrages which, in earlier colonial days, not infrequently
affrighted these sylvan shades. It is well, however, occasionally
to recall the sterner conditions under which our pioneers
lived. The half-explored wilds saw strange things, when
émeutes with murder and robbery thrown in compelled
decisive action. In the year 1836 immense areas in the
interior, described officially as 'Waste Lands of the Crown,'
were occupied by graziers under pastoral licenses. Caution
was exercised in the granting of these desirable privileges.
It was required by the Government of the day that only
persons of approved good character should receive them.
Being merely permissive, they were liable to be withdrawn
from the holders for immoral or dishonest conduct. When
it is considered that the men employed in guarding the flocks
and herds in these limitless solitudes were, in the great
majority of cases, prisoners of the Crown, or 'ticket-of-leave'
men, whose partially-expired sentences entitled them to quasi-freedom,
it is not surprising that horse-and cattle-stealing,
highway robbery, ill-treatment of aboriginals, and even darker
crimes were rife.
The labourers of the day were composed of three classes,
officially described as free, bond, and 'free by servitude.'
This last designation, obscure only to the newly-arrived
colonist, meant that the individual thus privileged had served
his full term of imprisonment, or such proportion of it as
entitled him to freedom under certain restrictions. He was
235permitted to come and go, to work for any master who chose
to employ him (and most valuable servants many of them
were), to accept the wages of the period, and generally to
comport himself as a 'free man.' But he was restricted to a
specified district, compelled at fixed periods to report himself
to the police authorities, and he went in fear lest at any time
through misconduct or evil report his 'ticket-of-leave' might
be withdrawn, in which case he was sent back to penal
servitude. The alternative was terrible. The man who the
week before had been riding a mettled stock-horse amid the
plains and forests of the interior, or peacefully following his
flocks, with food, lodging, and social privileges, found himself
virtually a slave in a chain-gang, dragging his heavy fetters
to and fro in hard, distasteful labour. This deposition from
partial comfort and social equality, though possibly caused by
his own misconduct, occasionally resulted from the report of
a vindictive overseer, or betrayal by a comrade. It may be
imagined, therefore, what vows of vengeance were registered
by the sullen convict, what bloody expiation was often
exacted.
Taking into consideration the ludicrous disproportion of
the police furnished by the Government of the day to the
area 'protected'—say a couple of troopers for a thinly-populated
district about the size of Scotland—it seems truly
astonishing that malefactors should have been brought to
justice at all. Even more so that armed and desperate felons
should have been followed up and arrested within comparatively
short distances of the scene of their misdeeds.
It says much for the alertness and discipline of the
mounted police force of the day that in by far the greater
number of these outrages the criminals were tracked and
secured; more, indeed, for the active co-operation and public
spirit of the country gentlemen of the land, who were invariably
ready to render aid in carrying out the law at the risk of
their lives, and, occasionally, to the manifest injury of their
property.
Circumstances have placed in my hands the record of a
murder which, in careful premeditation, as well as in the
satanic malignity with which the details were carried out,
seems pre-eminent amid the dark chronicles of guilt.
More than sixty years ago Mr. Thursby, a well-known
236magistrate and proprietor, residing upon his station, which was
distant two hundred and fifty miles from Sydney, was awakened
before daylight, when a note to this effect from the constable
in charge at the nearest police-station was delivered to him:—
'Last night the lock-up was entered by armed men, and
two prisoners removed. One man knocked at the door,
stating that he was a constable with a prisoner in charge. I
opened it; when two men rushed in, one of whom, presenting
a pistol at me, ordered me into a corner, and covered my head
with a blanket. I heard the door unlocked. When I freed
myself the cell was empty.'
Upon receipt of this information, Mr. Thursby despatched
a report to the Officer in charge of Police at Murphy's Plains,
distant eighty-five miles. Taking with him the manager of a
neighbouring station, and the special constable quartered there
(a custom of the day), Mr. Thursby started in pursuit of the
outlaws. Their tracks were not hard to follow in the dew of
early morn, but near Major Hewitt's station, seven miles distant,
they became indistinct. After losing much time the station
was reached, and here a black boy was fortunately procured.
With his aid the trail was regained, and followed over rough,
mountainous country. Mr. Jones, the manager who had
accompanied the party, informed Mr. Thursby that five of
the convict servants assigned to the owner had run away
previously—'taken to the bush.' They had committed
depredations, and had been unsuccessfully followed by the
mounted police, whose horses, after coming more than eighty
miles, were fagged. However, two of them surrendered
themselves next day. One man (Driscoll) was suspected of
having spoken incautiously of the leader's doings (a man
named Gore), who had vowed vengeance accordingly. Driscoll
had been placed in the lock-up, along with Woods, a
suspicious character, who said he was a native of Windsor,
New South Wales. Gore and the other men were still at
large.
After leading the party for some distance through the
ranges, the black boy halted, and pointing to a thin thread
of smoke, barely perceptible, said, 'There 'moke!' When
they came to the fire from which it proceeded, what a spectacle
presented itself! On the smouldering embers was a human
body, bound and partially roasted. It lay on its back, with
237legs and arms drawn up. The middle portion of the body
was burned to a cinder, leaving the upper and lower extremities
perfect. Mr. Thursby recognised the features of the man
called Woods, who had been imprisoned the day before.
The black boy was so horrified that he became useless as
a tracker, and as the day was far advanced, Mr. Thursby had
the body removed to Engleroi, a station not more than a mile
distant.
Here fresh information was furnished. The tragedy
deepened. Before daylight on the previous morning, Driscoll
had knocked at the door of the shepherd's hut, breathless and
half insane with terror, imploring them for the love of God to
admit him as 'he was a murdered man.' Nothing more could
be elicited from the shepherds, though it since appeared that
they could have named one of the murderers. Fear of the
'Vehmgericht' of the day doubtless restrained them—fear of
that terrible secret tribunal, administered by the convicts as
a body, which in defiance of the law's severest penalties tried,
sentenced, and in many cases executed, the objects of their
resentment. The party decided later on to proceed to Mr.
FitzGorman's head station, and on the way arrested and took
with them the hut-keeper of the out-station. They did not
know at the time (as was since proved) that he was one of the
murderers.
On leaving the lock-up, the men had stolen the constable's
blue cloth suit, and being informed at Tongah that a man in
blue clothes had been met with, a few miles down the Taramba
River, Mr. Thursby rode forward with the black boy, leaving
the hut-keeper secured, to await his return. Some time was
lost, as the tracks were not picked up at once, but on reaching
Mr. FitzGorman's station, forty miles distant, at midnight, the
man in blue clothes was discovered, housed for the night.
He was at once secured. On being questioned, he said his
name was Burns, and that he was looking for work. He
produced a certificate, which did not impose upon his captor,
who knew it to belong to the constable, who, being a ticket-of-leave
man, required to hold such a document. In his
bundle, when searched, several articles taken from the lock-up
were found. Gore the bushranger and murderer stood confessed.
Mr. Thursby was at that time ignorant that the second
238murderer was already in his hands, but determined to follow up
the pursuit, caused Gore to be mounted on one of the station
horses, and rode back with as much speed as might be to
Tongah. Suspecting the hut-keeper (whose name was Walker)
of being in some way an accomplice of Gore, Mr. Thursby
had both men lodged in the lock-up. Still unrelaxing in
pursuit, and believing that the second murderer might be one
of the three runaways from Major Hewitt's station, Mr.
Thursby raised the country-side, and took such energetic
measures that on the following day they were apprehended.
By this time the shepherds, gaining confidence from the
capture of the outlaws, of whose vengeance they went in fear,
commenced to make disclosures. The constable identified
the hut-keeper (Walker) as the man who, at the point of the
pistol, ordered him to stand in the lock-up. Driscoll knew
him and Gore as the two men who removed him and Woods
from the lock-up. He then went on to state that, after being
hurried along for several miles after leaving the lock-up, they
halted in a lonely place, where Gore ordered them to make
a fire. When it was kindled to a blaze, Gore tied them back
to back and blindfolded them. At this time Walker held the
pistol. Driscoll heard a shot, when Woods dropped on the
fire, dragging him with him. The bandage falling from his
eyes, Walker struck him twice on the head with his pistol.
In his agony, getting his hands free he ran for his life. He
was followed for a considerable distance, but eventually
escaped to Engleroi. Half an hour afterwards, Gore came
up in search of him. What must have been the feelings of
the hunted wretch, so lately a bound victim on his self-made
funeral pile, when the armed desperado, who made so little
of human life, reappeared? However, he contented himself
with compelling Driscoll and the shepherds, among whom he
was, to swear under tremendous penalties not to disclose the
fact of his presence there.
Gore and Walker were brought before the nearest Bench
of Magistrates and committed for trial at the next ensuing
Assize Court.
There was not sufficient evidence, though a strong presumption,
that the other runaways were implicated in the cold-blooded
murder. It appeared to have been chiefly arranged
by Gore and Walker—the former in order to be revenged
239on Driscoll, and the latter to get rid of Woods, who had
threatened to give evidence against him for robbery and other
misdeeds. No doubt their intention was to murder both men,
destroying all evidence by burning their bodies. Driscoll had
the good fortune to escape, and was thus enabled to give the
necessary evidence at their trial. But though not directly
implicated in the graver crime, the remaining three bushrangers—for
such they were—lay under the charge of being
associated with Gore in committing depredations which had
alarmed the neighbourhood for the last six or seven weeks.
They had not wandered far from the scene of their freebooting,
and after eluding the police on several occasions, remained to
be delivered up to justice by a party of civilians—headed, it
is true, by an experienced and determined personage, exceptionally
well mounted from one of the most famous studs
in New South Wales. In that day the bushranger, desperate
and ruthless though he may have been, was at a disadvantage
compared to his modern imitator. He was mostly on foot.
Horses were scarce and valuable. There were few stopping-places,
except the stations of the squatters, where an armed,
suspicious-looking stranger was either questioned or arrested.
'Shanties' had hardly commenced to plant centres of
contagion in the 'lone Chorasmian waste.' The 'Shadow
of Death Hotel' was in the future—fortunately for all sorts
and conditions of men.
It is a curious coincidence, showing at once the just view
taken of the circumstances of the locality and the means
proper to lead to the extinction of 'gang robbery' (as the East
India Company's servants termed the industry), that Mr.
Thursby had just forwarded to the Legislative Council an
estimate of the cost of a proposed Court of Petty Sessions at
Wassalis. He also 'most respectfully begged to submit for
the consideration of His Excellency the Governor a suggestion
that a mounted police force would be advantageously
stationed there, as well for the protection of the district as for
the purpose of connecting the detachments of police at
Murphy's Plains and Curban.'
'Many a year is in its grave' since the incidents here
recorded affrighted the dwellers in the lonely bush.
It is satisfactory to note that Wassalis was promoted to be
a place where a Court of Petty Sessions is holden.
240Walker and Gore, being found guilty, were sentenced to
death, doubtless by Sir Francis Forbes, the Chief Justice of
the day—indeed the first Chief Justice of Australia. They
confessed their guilt in gaol, and were duly hanged—let us
hope repenting of their crimes. The brother of the magistrate
whose courage and energy led to their arrest, frequently
visited them in gaol, where they confessed everything. The
constable, on recommendation, was promoted. The police
station at Wassalis is now organised and equipped with good
horses, smart men, revolver at belt and carbine on thigh.
Telegraphs in every direction are available for giving or
receiving information; but it is doubtful whether armed and
desperate felons, red-handed with the blood of their fellow-men,
were ever more closely followed up, more quickly
brought to justice, than the murderers of Woods.
THE HORSE YOU DON'T SEE NOW
241
Many years ago I was summoned to attend the couch of a
dear relative believed to be in extremis. The messenger
arrived at my club with a buggy, drawn by a dark bay horse.
The distance to be driven to Toorak was under four miles—the
road good. I have a dislike to being driven. Those who have
handled the reins much in their time will understand the
feeling. Taking them mechanically from the man, I drew
the whip across the bay horse. The light touch sent him down
Collins Street East, over Prince's Bridge, and through the
toll-bar gate at an exceptionally rapid pace. This I did not
remark at the time, being absorbed in sorrowful anticipation.
During the anxious week which followed I drove about
the turn-out—a hired one—daily; now for this or that
doctor, anon for nurse or attendant. Then the beloved
sufferer commenced to amend, to recover; so that, without
impropriety, my thoughts became imperceptibly disengaged
from her, to concentrate themselves upon the dark bay horse.
For that he was no ordinary livery-stable hack was
evident to a judge. Imprimis, very fast. Had I not passed
everything on the road, except a professional trotter, that had
not, indeed, so much the best of it? Quiet, too. He would
stand unwatched, though naturally impatient. He never
tripped, never seemed to 'give' on the hard, blue metal; was
staunch up-hill and steady down. Needed no whip, yet took
it kindly, neither switching his tail angrily nor making as if
ready to smash all and sundry, like ill-mannered horses.
Utterly faultless did he seem. But experience in matters
equine leads to distrust. Hired out per day from a livery-stable
keeper, I could hardly believe that to be the case.
242All the same I felt strongly moved to buy him on the
chance of his belonging to the select tribe of exceptional
performers, not to be passed over by so dear a lover of horseflesh
as myself. Moreover, I possessed, curious to relate,
a 'dead match' for him—another bay horse of equally
lavish action, high courage, and recent accidental introduction.
The temptation was great.
'I will buy him,' said I to myself, 'if he is for sale, and
also if——' here I pulled up, got down in the road, and carefully
looked him over from head to tail. He stepped quietly.
I can see him now, moving his impatient head gently back and
forward like a horse 'weaving'—a trick he had under all
circumstances. Years afterwards he performed similarly to
the astonishment of a bushranger in Riverina, whose revolver
was pointed at the writer's head the while, less anxious indeed
for his personal safety than that old Steamer—such was his
appropriate name—should march on, and, having a nervous
running mate, smash the buggy.
To return, however. This was the result of my inspection.
Item, one broken knee; item, seven years old—within mark
decidedly; legs sound and clean, but just beginning to
'knuckle' above the pasterns.
There was a conflict of opinions. Says Prudence, 'What!
buy a screw? Brilliant, of course, but sure to crack soon.
Been had that way before. I'm ashamed of you.'
Said Hope, 'I don't know so much about that. Knee
probably an accident: dark night—heap of stones—anything.
Goes like a bird. Grand shoulder. Can't fall.
Legs come right with rest. Barely seven—quite a babe.
Cheap at anything under fifty. Chance him.'
'I'll buy him—d—dashed if I don't.' I got in again, and
drove thoughtfully to the stables of Mr. Washington, a large-sized
gentleman of colour, hailing from the States.
'He's de favouritest animile in my stable, boss,' he made
answer to me as I guardedly introduced the subject of
purchase. 'All de young women's dead sot on him—donow's
I cud do athout him, noways.'
Every word of this was true, as it turned out; but how
was I to know? The world of currycombs and dandy-brushes
is full of insincerities. Caveat emptor! I continued
airily, 'You won't charge extra for this broken knee? What's
243the figure?' Here I touched the too yielding ankle-joint
with my boot.
That may have decided him—much hung in the balance.
Many a year of splendid service—a child's life saved—a grand
night-exploit in a flooded river, with distressed damsels nearly
overborne by a raging torrent,—all these lay in the future.
'You gimme thirty pound, boss,' he gulped out. 'You'll
never be sorry for it.'
'Lend me a saddle,' quoth I. 'I'll write the cheque now.
Take him out; I can ride him away.'
I did so. Never did I—never did another man—make a
better bargain.
I had partly purchased and wholly christened him to
match another bay celebrity named Railway, of whom I
had become possessed after this fashion. Wanting a harness
horse at short notice a few months before, I betook myself to
the coach depôt of Cobb and Co. situated in Lonsdale Street.
Mr. Beck was then the manager, and to him I addressed
myself. He ordered out several likely animals—from his
point of view—for my inspection. But I was not satisfied
with any of them. At length, 'Bring out the Railway horse,'
said the man in authority. And out came, as I thought,
rather a 'peacocky' bay, with head and tail up. A great
shoulder certainly, but rather light-waisted—hem—possessed of
four capital legs. Very fine in the skin—yes; still I mistrusted
him as a 'Sunday horse.' Never was there a greater mistake.
'Like to see him go?' I nodded assent. In a minute and
a half we were spinning up Lonsdale Street in an Abbot
buggy, across William and down Collins Street, then pretty
crowded, at the rate of fourteen miles an hour; Mr. Beck
holding a broad red rein in either hand, and threading the
ranks of vehicles with graceful ease.
'He can go,' I observed.
'He's a tarnation fine traveller, I tell you,' was the answer—a
statement which I found, by after-experience, to be strictly
in accordance with fact.
The price required was forty pounds. The which promptly
paying (this was in 1860), I drove my new purchase out to
Heidelberg that night. One of those horses that required of
one nothing but to sit still and hold him; fast, game, wiry
and enduring.
244When I became possessed of Steamer, I had such a pair as
few people were privileged to sit behind. For four years I
enjoyed as much happiness as can be absorbed by mortal
horse-owner in connection with an unsurpassable pair of
harness horses. They were simply perfect as to style, speed,
and action. I never was passed, never even challenged, on
the road by any other pair. Railway, the slower horse of the
two, had done, by measurement, eight miles in half an hour.
So at their best, both horses at speed, it may be guessed how
they made a buggy spin behind them. Then they were a
true match; one a little darker than the other, but so much
alike in form, colour, and courage, that strangers never knew
them apart. They became attached readily, and would leave
other horses and feed about together, when turned into a
paddock or the bush.
A check, however, was given to exultation during the first
days of my proprietorship. Both horses when bought were
low in flesh—in hard condition, certainly, but showing a good
deal of bone. A month's stabling and gentle exercise caused
them to look very different. The new buggy came home—the
new harness. They were put together for the first time.
Full of joyful anticipation I mounted the driving seat, and
told the groom to let go their heads. Horror of horrors!
'The divil a stir,' as he remarked, could be got out of them.
Collar-proud from ease and good living, they declined to
tighten the traces. An indiscreet touch or two with the whip
caused one horse to plunge, the other to hold back. In half-and-half
condition I had seen both draw like working bullocks.
Now 'they wouldn't pull the hat off your head,' my Australian
Mickey Free affirmed.
By patience and persuasion I prevailed upon them at
length to move off. Then it was a luxury of a very high
order to sit behind them. How they caused the strong but
light-running trap to whirl and spin!—an express train with
the steam omitted. Mile after mile might one sit when roads
were good, careful only to keep the pace at twelve miles an
hour; by no means to alter the pull on the reins lest they
should translate it into an order for full speed. With heads
held high at the same angle, with legs rising from the ground
at the same second of time, alike their extravagant action,
their eager courage. As mile after mile was cast behind, the
245exclamation of 'Perfection, absolute perfection!' rose involuntarily
to one's lips.
In this 'Wale,' where deceitful dealers and plausible horses
abound, how rare to experience so full-flavoured a satisfaction!
None of us, however, are perfect all round. Flawless might
be their action, but both Steamer and his friend Railway had
'a little temper,' the differing expressions of which took me
years to circumvent. Curiously, neither exhibited the least
forwardness in single harness.
Railway was by temperament dignified, undemonstrative,
proud. If touched sharply with the whip he turned his head
and gazed at you. He did not offer to kick or stop; such
vulgar tricks were beneath him. But he calmly gave you to
understand that he would not accelerate his movements, or start
when unwilling, if you flogged him to death. No whip did he
need, I trow. The most constant horse in the world, he kept
going through the longest day with the tireless regularity of an
engine.
They never became quite free from certain peculiarities at
starting, after a spell or when in high condition. Years passed
in experiments before I wrote myself conqueror. I tried the
whip more than once—I record it contritely—with signal ill-success.
It was truly wonderful why they declined to start on
the first day of a journey. Once off they would pull staunchly
wherever horses could stand. Never was the day too long,
the pace too fast, the road too deep. What, then, was the
hidden cause, the premier pas, which cost so much trouble
to achieve?
Nervous excitability seemed to be the drawback. The fact
of being attached to a trap in double harness appeared to overexcite
their sensitive, highly-strung organisations. Was it not
worth while, then, to take thought and care for a pair which
could travel fifty or sixty miles a day—in front of a family
vehicle filled with children and luggage—for a week together,
that didn't cost a shilling a year for whip-cord, and that had
never been passed by a pair on the road since I had possessed
them? Were they not worth a little extra trouble?
Many trials and experiments demonstrated that there was
but one solution. Success meant patience, with a dash of
forethought. A little saddle-exercise for a day or two before
the start. Then to begin early on the morning of the eventful
246day; to have everything packed—passengers and all—in the
buggy—coach fashion—before any hint of putting to. Both
horses to be fed and watered at least an hour before. Then
at the last moment to bring them out of the stable,
heedfully and respectfully, avoiding 'rude speech or jesting
rough.' Railway especially resented being 'lugged' awkwardly
by the rein. If all things were done decently and in order,
this would be the usual programme.
Steamer, more excitable but more amiable, would be
entrusted to a groom. Silently and quickly they would be
poled up, the reins buckled, and Railway's traces attached.
All concerned had been drilled, down to the youngest child,
to be discreetly silent. It was forbidden, on pain of death, to
offer suggestion, much less to 't-c-h-i-c-k.' The reins were
taken in one hand by paterfamilias, who with the other drew
back Steamer's traces, oppressed with an awful sense of
responsibility, as of one igniting a fuse or connecting a torpedo
wire, and as the outer trace was attached, stepped lightly on
to the front seat. The groom and helper stole backward like
shadows. Steamer made a plunging snatch at his collar;
Railway followed up with a steady rush; and we were off—off
for good and all—for one hundred, two hundred, five hundred
miles. Distance made no difference to them. The last stage
was even as the first. They only wanted holding. Not that
they pulled disagreeably, or unreasonably either. I lost my
whip once, and drove without one for six months. It was
only on the first day of a journey that the theatrical performance
was produced.
But this chronicle would be incomplete without reference
to the sad alternative when the start did not come off at first
intention. On these inauspicious occasions, possibly from an
east wind or oats below sample, everything went wrong.
Steamer sidled and pulled prematurely before the traces were
'hitched,' while Railway's reserved expression deepened—a
sure sign that he wasn't going to pull at all. The other
varied his vexatious plungings by backing on to the whippletree,
or bending outwards, by way of testing the elasticity of
the pole.
Nothing could now be done. Persuasion, intimidation,
deception, had all been tried previously in vain. The recipe
of paterfamilias, as to horse management, was to sit perfectly
247still with the reins firmly held but moveless, buttoning
his gloves with an elaborate pretence of never minding. All
known expedients have come to nought long ago. Pushing
the wheels, even down hill, is regarded with contempt;
leading (except by a lady) scornfully refused. The whip is
out of the question. 'Patience is a virtue'—indeed the virtue,
the only one which will serve our turn. Meanwhile, when
people are fairly on the warpath, this dead refusal to budge an
inch is a little, just a little, exasperating. Paterfamilias
computes, however, that ten minutes' delay can be made up
with such steppers. He smiles benignantly as he pulls out a
newspaper and asks his wife if she has brought her book.
Two minutes, four, five, or is it half an hour? The time
seems long. 'Trois cent milles diables!' the natural man
feels inclined to ejaculate. He knows that he is sinking fast
in the estimation of newly-arrived station hands and chance
spectators. Eight minutes—Railway makes no sign; years
might roll on before he would start with an unwilling mate.
Nine minutes—Steamer, whose impatient soul abhors inaction,
begins to paw. The student is absorbed in his leading article.
Ten minutes!—Steamer opens his mouth and carries the
whole equipage off with one rush. Railway is up and away;
half a second later the proprietor folds up his journal and
takes them firmly in hand. The children begin to laugh and
chatter; the lady to converse; and the journey, long or short,
wet or dry, may be considered, as far as horseflesh is concerned,
to be un fait accompli.
At the end of four years of unclouded happiness (as
novelists write of wedded life), this state of literal conjugal
bliss was doomed to end. An epidemic of lung disease, such
as at intervals sweeps over the land, occurred in Victoria.
Railway fell a victim, being found dead in his paddock. Up
to this time he had never been 'sick or sorry,' lame, tired, or
unfit to go. His iron legs, with feet to match, showed no
sign of work. In single harness he was miraculous, going
mile after mile with the regularity of a steam-engine, apparently
incapable of fatigue. I was lucky enough to have a fast, clever
grandson of Cornborough to put in his place. He lasted ten
years. A half-brother three years more. The old horse was
using up his fourth running mate, and entering upon his
twentieth year in my service, when King Death put on the brake.
248Not the least noticeable among Steamer's many good qualities
was his kindly, generous temper. His was the Arab's docile
gentleness with children. The large mild eye, 'on which you
could hang your hat,' as the stable idiom goes, was a true
indication of character. I was a bachelor when I first became
his master. As time passed on, Mrs. Boldrewood and the
elder girls used to drive him to the country town in New
South Wales, near which we afterwards dwelt. The boys
rode him as soon as they could straddle a horse. They hung
by his tail, walked between his legs, and did all kinds of confidential
circus performances for the benefit of their young
friends. He was never known to bite, kick, or in any way offer
harm; and, speedy to the last, with age he never lost pace or
courage. 'All spirit and no vice' was a compendium of his
character. By flood and field, in summer's heat or winter's
cold, he failed us never; was credited, besides, with having
saved the lives of two of the children by his docility and
intelligence. He was twice loose with the buggy at his heels
at night—once without winkers, which he had rubbed off. On
the last occasion, after walking down to the gate of the
paddock, and finding it shut—nearly a mile—he turned round
without locking the wheels, and came galloping up to the
door of the house (it was a ball night, and he had got tired
of waiting). When I ran out, pale with apprehension, I
discovered the headstall hanging below his chest. His extreme
docility with children I attribute to his being for many
years strictly a family horse, exclusively fed, harnessed, and
driven by ourselves. It is needless to say he was petted a
good deal: indeed he thought nothing of walking through
the kitchen, a brick-floored edifice, when he thought corn
should be forthcoming. Horses are generally peaceable with
children but not invariably, as I have known of limbs broken
and more than one lamentable death occasioned by kicks,
when the poor things went too near unwittingly. But the
old horse couldn't kick. 'I reckon he didn't know how.' And
when he died, gloom and grief fell upon the whole family, who
mourned as for the death of a dear friend.
HOW I BEGAN TO WRITE
249
For publication I mean. Having the pen of a ready writer
by inheritance, I had dashed off occasional onslaughts in the
journals of the day, chiefly in defence of the divine rights of
kings (pastoral ones). I had assailed incoherent democrats,
who perversely denied that Australia was created chiefly for
the sustenance of sheep and cattle and the aggrandisement of
those heroic individuals who first explored and then exploited
the 'Waste Lands of the Crown.' The school of political
belief to which I then belonged derided agriculture, and was
subsequently committed to a scheme for the formation of the
Riverina into a separate pastoral kingdom or colony. A
petition embodying a statement to this effect, wholly unfitted
as it was for the sustenance of a population dependent upon
agriculture, was forwarded to the Secretary for the Colonies,
who very properly disregarded it. The petitioners could not
then foresee the stacking of 20,000 bags of wheat, holding
four bushels each, awaiting railway transport at one of the
farming centres of this barren region in the year 1897. Allied
facts caused me to reconsider my very pronounced opinions,
and, perhaps, led others to question the accuracy of theirs.
My deliverances in the journals of the period occurred in the
forties and fifties of the century, and gradually subsided.
I was battling with the season of 1865 on a station on the
Murrumbidgee River, at no great distance from the flourishing
town of Narandera, then consisting of two hotels, a small
store, and a large graveyard, when an uncertain-tempered
young horse kicked me just above the ankle with such force
and accuracy that I thought the bone was broken. I was to
have ridden at daylight to count a flock of sheep, and could
250scarcely crawl back to the huts from the stock-yard without
assistance, so great was the agony. I sat down on the frosted
ground and pulled off my boot, knowing that the leg would
swell. Cold as it was, the thirst of the wounded soldier
immediately attacked me. My room in the slab hut, preceding
the brick cottage, then in course of erection, was, to use
Mr. Swiveller's description, 'an airy and well-ventilated apartment.'
It contained, in addition to joint stools, a solid table,
upon which my simple meals of chops, damper, and tea were
displayed three times a day by a shepherd's wife, an elderly
personage of varied and sensational experiences.
I may mention that the great Riverina region was as yet in
its unfenced, more or less Arcadian stage, the flocks being
'shepherded' (expressive Australian verb, since enlarged as to
meaning) and duly folded or camped at night. Something of
Mrs. Regan's advanced tone of thought may be gathered from
the following dialogue, which I overheard:—
Shady township individual—'Your man shot my dorg
t'other night. What d'yer do that fer?'
Mrs. Regan—''Cause we caught him among the sheep;
and we'd 'a shot you, if you'd bin in the same place.'
Township individual—'You seem rather hot coffee, missus!
I've 'arf a mind to pull your boss next Court day for the
valley of the dorg.'
Mrs. Regan—'You'd better clear out and do it, then. The
P.M.'s a-comin' from Wagga on Friday, and he'll give yer
three months' "hard," like as not. Ask the pleece for yer
character.'
Township individual—'D—n you and the pleece too!
A pore man gets no show between the traps and squatters in
this bloomin' country. Wish I'd never seen it!'
This was by the way of interlude, serving to relieve the
monotony of the situation. I could eat, drink, smoke, and
sleep, but the injured leg—worse than broken—I could not
put to the ground. Nor had I company of any kind, save
that of old Jack and Mrs. Regan, for a whole month. So,
casting about for occupation, I bethought myself that I might
write something for an English magazine. The subject pitched
upon was a kangaroo drive or battue, then common in Western
Victoria, which I had lately quitted. The kangaroo had
become so numerous that they were eating the squatters out
251of house and home. Something had to be done; so they
were driven into yards in great numbers and killed. This
severe mode of dealing with the too prolific marsupial, in
whole battalions, I judged correctly, would be among the
'things not generally known' to the British public.
I sat down and wrote a twelve-page article, describing a
grand muster for the purpose at a station about twenty miles
from Port Fairy, and seven miles from my own place, Squattlesea
Mere.
The first time I went to Melbourne I posted it, with the
aid of my good friend, the late Mr. Mullen, to the editor of
the Cornhill Magazine, and thought no more about the matter.
A few days after the adventure, my neighbour, Adam M'Neill,
of North Yanko, hearing of my invalid state, rode over and
carried me off to his hospitable home. I had to be lifted on
my horse, but after a month's rest and recreation was well
enough to return to pastoral duties. I was lame, however,
for quite a year afterwards, and narrowly escaped injuring the
other ankle, which began to show signs of over-work. About
the time of my full recovery, I received a new Cornhill
Magazine, and a note from Messrs. Smith and Elder, forwarding
a draft, which, added to the honour and glory of seeing
my article flourishing in a first-class London magazine, afforded
me much joy and satisfaction. The English review notices
were also cheering. I thereupon dashed off a second sketch,
entitled 'Shearing in Riverina,' which I despatched to the
same address. The striking presentment of seventy shearers,
all going their hardest, was a novelty also to the British public.
The constant clash that the shear-blades make
When the fastest shearers are making play
(as Mr. 'Banjo' Paterson has it, in 'The Two Devines,' more
than twenty years later), could not but challenge attention.
This also was accepted. I received a cheque in due course,
which came at a time when such remittances commenced to
have more interest for me than had been the case for some
years past.
The station was sold in the adverse pastoral period of '68-'69,
through drought, debt, financial 'dismalness of sorts';
but 'that is another story.' Christmas time found me in
Sydney, where it straightway began to rain with unreasonable
252persistency (as I thought), now it could do me no good;
never left off (more or less) for five years. The which, in
plenteousness of pasture and high prices for wool and stock,
were the most fortunate seasons for squatters since the 'fifties,'
with their accompanying goldfields prosperity.
The last station having been sold, there was no chance of
repairing hard fortune by pastoral investment. 'Finis Poloniæ.'
During my temporary sojourn in Sydney I fell across a friend
to whom in other days I had rendered a service. He suggested
that I might turn to profitable use a facile pen and some gift
of observation. My friend, who had filled various parts in the
drama of life, some of them not undistinguished, was now a
professional journalist. He introduced me to his chief, the
late Mr. Samuel Bennett, proprietor of the Sydney Town and
Country Journal. That gentleman, whom I remember gratefully
for his kind and sensible advice, gave me a commission
for certain sketches of bush life—a series of which appeared
from time to time. For him I wrote my first tale, The Fencing
of Wanderoona, succeeding which, The Squatter's Dream, and
others, since published in England, appeared in the weekly
paper referred to.
Thus launched upon the 'wide, the fresh, the ever free'
ocean of fiction, I continued to make voyages and excursions
thereon—mostly profitable, as it turned out. A varied colonial
experience, the area of which became enlarged when I was
appointed a police magistrate and goldfields commissioner in
1871, supplied types and incidents. This position I held for
nearly twenty-five years.
Although I had, particularly in the early days of my goldfields
duties, a sufficiency of hard and anxious work, entailing
serious responsibility, I never relinquished the habit of daily
writing and story-weaving. That I did not on that account
neglect my duties I can fearlessly aver. The constant official
journeying, riding and driving, over a wide district, agreed
with my open-air habitudes. The method of composition
which I employed, though regular, was not fatiguing, and
suited a somewhat desultory turn of mind. I arranged for a
serial tale by sending the first two or three chapters to the
editor, and mentioning that it would last a twelvemonth, more
or less. If accepted, the matter was settled. I had but to
post the weekly packet, and my mind was at ease. I was
253rarely more than one or two chapters ahead of the printer;
yet in twenty years I was only once late with my instalment,
which had to go by sea from another colony. Every author
has his own way of writing; this was mine. I never but once
completed a story before it was published; and on that occasion
it was—sad to say—declined by the editor. Not in New South
Wales, however; and as it has since appeared in England, it
did not greatly signify.
In this fashion Robbery Under Arms was written for the
Sydney Mail after having been refused by other editors. It
has been successful beyond expectation; and, though I say it,
there is no country where the English language is spoken in
which it has not been read.
I was satisfied with the honorarium which my stories yielded.
It made a distinct addition to my income, every shilling of
which, as a paterfamilias, was needed. I looked forward,
however, to making a hit some day, and with the publication
of Robbery Under Arms, in England, that day arrived. Other
books followed, which have had a gratifying measure of acceptance
by the English-speaking public, at home and abroad.
As a prophet I have not been 'without honour in mine
own country.' My Australian countrymen have supported me
nobly, which I take as an especial compliment, and an expression
of confidence, to the effect that, as to colonial
matters, I knew what I was writing about.
In my relations with editors, I am free to confess that I
have always been treated honourably. I have had few discouragements
to complain of, or disappointments, though not
without occasional rubs and remonstrances from reviewers for
carelessness, to which, to a certain extent, I plead guilty. In
extenuation, I may state that I have rarely had the opportunity
of correcting proofs. As to the attainment of literary success,
as to which I often receive inquiries, as also how to secure a
publisher, I have always given one answer: Try the Australian
weekly papers, if you have any gift of expression, till one of
them takes you up. After that the path is more easy. Perseverance
and practice will ordinarily discover the method
which leads to success.
A natural turn for writing is necessary, perhaps indispensable.
Practice does much, but the novelist, like the poet, is
chiefly 'born, not made.' Even in the case of hunters and
254steeplechasers, the expression 'a natural jumper' is common
among trainers. A habit of noting, almost unconsciously,
manner, bearing, dialect, tricks of expression, among all sorts
and conditions of men, provides 'situations.' Experience,
too, of varied scenes and societies is a great aid. Imagination
does much to enlarge and embellish the lay figure, to deepen
the shades and heighten the colours of the picture; but it
will not do everything. There should be some experience
of that most ancient conflict between the powers of Good
and Evil, before the battle of life can be pictorially described.
I am proud to note among my Australian brothers and sisters,
of a newer generation, many promising, even brilliant, performances
in prose and verse. They have my sincerest
sympathy, and I feel no doubt as to their gaining in the future
a large measure of acknowledged success.
As to my time method, it was tolerably regular. As early
as five or six o'clock in the morning in the summer, and as
soon as I could see in winter, I was at my desk, proper or
provisional, until the hour arrived for bath and breakfast. If
at a friend's house, I wrote in my bedroom and corrected in
the afternoon, when my official duties were over. At home
or on the road, as I had much travelling to do, I wrote after
dinner till bedtime, making up generally five or six hours a
day. Many a good evening's work have I done in the clean,
quiet, if unpretending roadside inns, common enough in New
South Wales. In winter, with a log fire and the inn parlour
all to myself, or with a sensible companion, I could write
until bedtime with ease and comfort. My day's ride or
drive might be long, cold enough in winter or hot in summer,
but carrying paper, pens, and ink I rarely missed the night's
work. I never felt too tired to set to after a wholesome if
simple meal. Fatigue has rarely assailed me, I am thankful
to say, and in my twenty-five years of official service I was
never a day absent from duty on account of illness, with one
notable exception, when I was knocked over by fever, which
necessitated sick-leave. It has been my experience that in
early morning the brain is clearer, the hand steadier, the
general mental tone more satisfactory, than at any other time
of day.
A MOUNTAIN FOREST
255
Excepting perhaps the ocean, nothing in Nature is more
deceitful than a mountain forest. Last time we crossed
through snow, enveloped in mist and drenched with pitiless
rain. Now, no one could think evil hap could chance to the
wayfarer here—so dry the forest paths, so blue the sky, so
bright the scene, so soft the whispering breeze. The shadows
of the great trees fall on the emerald sward, tempering the
ardent sun-rays. Flickers of light dance in the thickets, and
laugh at the stern solemnity of the endless groves. Bird-calls
are frequent and joyous. We might be roaming in the Forest
of Arden, and meet a 'stag of ten' in the glade, for any hint
to the contrary. Forest memories come into our heads as
we stride merrily along the winding track. Robin Hood and
his merry men, Friar Tuck and Little John! Oh, fountain
of chivalry! How indissolubly a forest life in the glad
summer days seems bound up with deeds of high emprise;
how linked with the season of love and joy, hope and pride,
with a sparkle of the cup of that divinest life-essence, youthful
pleasure.
'Here shall he fear no enemy,
But winter and rough weather.'
As we thus carol somewhat loudly, we are aware of a man
standing motionless, regarding us, not far from a gate, humorously
supposed to restrain the stock in these somewhat careless-ordered
enclosures. Ha! what if he be a robber? We
have been 'stuck up' ere now, and mislike the operation.
He has something in his hand too. May it be a 'shooting-iron,'
as the American idiom runs?
We continue to sing, however,
'Viator vacuus coram latronem.'
256Our treasury consists of half-a-sovereign and an old watch, a
new hat and a clean shirt—what matter if he levy on these?
He has a dog, however,—that is a good sign. Bushrangers
rarely travel with dogs. And the weapon is a stick. Ha!
it is well. Only an official connected with the railway line,
awaiting the mailman. We interchange courtesies, and are
invited to the camp with proffer of hospitality. We feel
compelled to decline. We may not halt by any wayside
arbour.
We reach St. Bago Hospice at Laurel Hill before lunch
time. Sixteen miles over a road not too smooth. Really,
we have performed the stage with ridiculous ease. We are
half tempted to go on to Tumut; but twenty-eight miles
seems a longish step. Let us not be imprudently enthusiastic.
We decide to remain. The hospice has put on a summer
garb, and is wholly devoid of snowballs or other wintry
emblems. The great laurel, the noble elm, the hawthorn,
are in full leaf and flower. The orchard trees are greenly
budding. At the spring well in the creek five crimson
lories are drinking. They stand on a tray, so to speak, of
softest emerald moss, walking delicately; all things tell of
summer.
During the afternoon, so fresh did we feel that we took
a stroll of five miles, and visited the nearest farmer. As we
stepped along the red-soiled path, amid the immense timber,
we realised the surroundings of the earlier American settlers.
Hawk-eye might have issued from the ti-tree thicket by the
creek and chuckled in his noiseless manner, while he rested
la longue carabine on a fallen log. Uncas and Chingachgook
would, of course, have turned up shortly afterwards.
The tiny creek speeds swiftly onward over ancient gold-washings
and abandoned sluice channels. Tracks of that
queer animal the wombat (Phascolomys) near his burrows and
galleries are frequent. His habitat is often near the sea, but
here is proof that he can accommodate himself to circumstances.
Easily-excavated soil like this red loam is necessary
for his comfort apparently. Ferns are not objected to. Our
host at Bago informed us that one dull winter's evening he
observed two animals coming towards him through the bush.
He took them to be pigs, until, shooting with both right and
257left barrels, they turned out to be wombats. He had happened
to be near their burrow, to which they always make if disturbed.
In confirmation of this statement he presented me with a skin—dark
brown in colour—with long coarse hair, something
between that of a dog and a kangaroo. The thick hide covers
the body in loose folds. The dogs become aware by experience
that, on account of its thickness and slippery looseness,
it is vain to attempt capture of a wombat. Retreating to his
burrow, he scratches earth briskly into his opponent's mouth
and eyes until he desists. One peculiarity of this underground
animal is, that the eyes are apparently protected by a
movable eyebrow, which, in the form of a small flap of skin,
shuts over the indispensable organ.
We are politely received at the selector's house. A few
cattle are kept; pigs and poultry abound. The father and
son 'work in the creek' for gold, when the water is low, and
thus supplement the family earnings. Clearing is too expensive
as yet to be entered into on a large scale. Want of
roads must militate for a while against farming profits in
rough and elevated country. A flower-garden and orchard
bear testimony to the richness of the soil. But looking
forward to the value of the timber, the certainty of annual
crops, the gradual covering of the pasture with clover and
exotic grasses, the day is not distant in our opinion when the
agriculture of this region will stand upon a safe and solvent
basis. It is hard to overestimate the value of a moist,
temperate climate, and this the inhabitants of the vicinity
possess beyond all dispute.
The sun is showing above the tall tree-tops as we sit at
breakfast next morning. The air is keen. We need the fire
which glows in the cavernous chimney. In ten minutes we
are off—ready to do or die—to accomplish the voluntary
march or perish by the wayside.
How pleasant is it as we swing along in the fresh morning
air. If we had had a mate—one who read the same books,
thought the same thoughts, had the same tastes, and in a
general way was congenial and sympathetic—our happiness
would be complete. But in this desperately busy, workaday
land, properly-graduated companionship is difficult to procure.
Still, to those who do not let their minds remain entirely
fallow, there is choice companionship in these wooded
258highlands—that of the nobles and monarchs of literature is
always at hand; ceases not the murmuring talk of half-forgotten
friends, acquaintances, lovers, what not, of the spirit-world
of letters; 'songs without words,' wit and laughter,
tears and sighs, pæans of praise, sadly humorous subtleties,
recall and repeat themselves. So we are not entirely
alone, even were there not the whispering leaves, the frowning
tree-trunks, the tremulous ferns and delicate grasses, the
smiling flowerets, each with its own legend to keep us
company. The sun mounts higher in the heavens; still it is
not too hot. The green gloom of the great woodland lies
between us, a shade against the fiercest sun-rays. So we fare
on joyously. Three hours' fair walking brings us to the end
of the forest proper. We take one look, as we stand on a
clear hill-top—while on either side great glens are hollowed
out like demoniac punch-bowls (the Australian native idiom)—at
the mountains, at the oceans of frondage.
We are on the 'down grade.' At our feet lies the Middle
Adelong, with deserted gold-workings, sluices, and all the
debris of water-mining; a roomy homestead, with orchard
pertaining, once an inn doubtless; now no longer, as I can
testify.
It is high noon and hot withal. The sun, no longer
fended off by o'erarching boughs, becomes aggressive. We
have gained the valley and lost the cooling breeze. We
request a glass of water, which is handed to us by the good-wife.
We drink, and, seating ourselves upon a log on the
hillside, commence upon a crust of bread—unwonted
foresight this—with considerable relish. As we happen
to have Carl Vosmaer's Amazon in our hand (every step
of the way did we carry her), we tackle an æsthetic chapter
with enthusiasm.
In twenty minutes we breast the hill, a trifle stiffer for the
rest, and, it may be fancy, our left boot-sole has developed an
inequality not previously sensitive. We swing along, however,
in all the pride of 'second wind,' and fix our thoughts upon
the next stage, eight miles farther on. We have come about
sixteen.
We pass another hill, a plateau, and then a long declivitous
grade. By and by we enter upon the fertile valley which
leads to Tumut. The green valley of river-encircled sward on
259either side is one mat of clover and rye-grass. We display
an increasing preference for the turf as distinguished from
the roadway. The sun is becoming hotter. The clouds
have retired. There is a hint of storm. The heavy air
is charged with electricity. We put on the pace a little.
One may as well have this sort of thing over in a condensed
form.
Here we stop to look at a man ploughing for maize. Our
brow is wet with 'honest——,' whatsy name? We must
weigh pounds less than this morning. How far to the
Gilmore Inn? 'Four miles!' Thermometer over a hundred
in the shade. We set our teeth and march on. We are
acquiring the regular slouching swing of the 'sundowner,' it
appears to us. There is nothing like similar experience for
producing sympathy. We can almost fancy ourselves accosting
the overseer with the customary, 'Got any work, sir, for a
man to do?' and subsiding to the traveller's hut, with the
regulation junk of meat and pannikin of flour. Can partly
gauge the feelings of the honest son of toil, weary, athirst,
somewhat sore-footed (surely there must be a nail?), when
said overseer, being in bad temper, tells him to go to the
deuce, that he knows he won't take work if it's offered, and
that he has no rations to spare for useless loafers.
It is more than an hour later—we think it more than an
hour hotter—as we sight the Gilmore Inn, near rushing
stream, hidden by enormous willows. We have abstained from
drinking of the trickling rill, hot and dusty as we are.
Thoughts of 'that poor creature, small beer,' obtrude, if the
local optionists have not abolished him.
In the parlour of this snug roadside inn we put down
our 'swag,' and order a large glass of home-brewed and a
crust of bread. We certainly agree with Mr. Swiveller, 'Beer
can't be tasted in a sip,' especially after a twenty-mile trudge.
When we put down the 'long-sleever' there is but a modicum
left.
We give ourselves about half an hour here, by which time
we are cooled and refreshed, as is apparently the day. Sol is
lower and more reasonable. We sling on, by no means done—rather
improving pace than otherwise—till overtaken by a
friend and his family in a buggy. He kindly proffers to drive
us in; but we have made it a point of honour to walk every
260yard, so we decline. He will leave the valise at our hotel—which
kindness we accept. The rest is easy going. We
lounge into the 'Commercial' as if we had just dismounted,
and order a warm bath and dinner, with the mens conscia
recti in a high state of preservation.
THE FREE SELECTOR A Comedietta — ACT I — ACT II — ACT III — ACT IV
261
Enter The Honourable Rufus Polyblock, Member of Upper
House, and immensely rich squatter—his Overseer, Mr.
Gayters (imperfectly educated).
The Hon. Rufus. Well, Gayters, how's everything gettin'
on? I mean the sheep, of course. Splendid season, ain't it?
Grand lambing, tremendous heavy clip, eh? Why, you look
dubersome?
Gayters. Marked 92 per cent of lambs all round. The
clip'll be heavier than it was last year—that means money
off a hundred and fifty thousand sheep, but——
Hon. Rufus. Sheep right; lambs too; shearing all to
the good; why, what can be wrong? (Walks up and down.)
Must be them infernal, underminding free selectors. Rot
'em! if they ain't worse than blackfellows or dingoes—and you
can't shoot 'em or poison 'em legally; not yet, that is—not yet!
Gayters. You've about hit it, sir. I'd hardly the face
to tell you, one of 'em's taken up the main camp, opposite
the big water-hole—a half-section, too! [320 acres.]
Hon. Rufus. What! Our main camp! Good Gad! Why,
the country's goin' to destruction! The best water-hole on the
creek, too. Why, I thought that had been secured. Wasn't
Sam Appinson to take it up last Thursday?
Gayters. Yes, sir; cert'nly, sir; but his mother went
and died the day afore, and he had to go down the country.
262Didn't think it would matter for a week; when this young
chap pops in, all on a sudden like, and collars it. It's turned
out quite contrairy, ain't it, sir?
Hon. Rufus. Contrairy! It's ruination, that's what it
is! It'll play h—l and Tommy with the sheep in the Ban
Ban Paddock. What's to keep 'em off his pre-lease? And he
can pound 'em any day he likes. He'll do me thousands
of pounds' worth of harm with his beggarly half-section. Have
to buy him out and give him two prices—the old story.
Gayters. I hardly think he'll agree to that, sir! I heard
him yesterday say, says he, 'I'm a-going to settle down for
good, and make a home in this wilderness; this here land is
so fertile,' says he——
Hon. Rufus. Wilderness indeed! On a flat like that!
Fert'le, fert'le—what's that? Good corn land? D—n his
impudence; what's it to him, I'd like to know? Is he going
to cultivate for a living in a dry country? Bah! I've seen
them kind of coves afore. I give him two years to lose everything,
to his shirt! What sort of a chap is he, Gayters?
Gayters. Well, a civil-spoken young man enough, sir.
Talks very nice, and seems to know himself. I should take
him to be a gentleman.
Hon. Rufus. A gentleman! Bosh! How the devil can he
be a gentleman and a free selector, eh? A feller that robs
people of their land. He's next door to a cattle duffer. He'd
turn bushranger, only he ain't got pluck enough.
Gayters. Very true, sir; cert'nly, sir; but he says it's
not agin the law.
Hon. Rufus. The law! Hang the law! What's that
got to do with it? A parcel of fellers that never owned a
run or a foot of ground get into this Lower 'Ouse and makes
laws to bind people that could buy 'em out over and over
again. D'ye call that honest? I call it daylight robbery;
and I'm not a-goin' to keep laws made that way if I can find
a way to drive through 'em; yes, through 'em, with a coach
and four!
Gayters. Yes, sir; but what are we to do? He'll have
his nine hundred and sixty acres of pre-lease, and our sheep
can't be kept off it nohow.
Hon. Rufus. Put a man on to free select right agin his
frontage, take up two flocks, and shepherd all round him.
263I'll feed him out; I'll make him keep to his blasted
half-section. Curse him! I'll ruin him! Damme! I'll have
him in gaol afore I've done with him. I'll——
Enter Miss Dulcie Polyblock in her riding-habit, also
Miss Alice Merton (a friend).
Miss Dulcie. Why, dad, what's all this about? Who's
to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, whatever that means?
We used to have it in our history lesson. Oh, I want to tell
you something! Whom do you think we met?
Hon. Rufus. Don't know, I'm sure. Was it Lord Arthur
Howard or young Goldsmith? I know they came up to
Deem Deem the other day.
Miss Dulcie. Well, he was such a handsome young man,
father; and so polite and gentlemanlike. Alice's horse shied at
a hawker's cart, and Sultan, like an old goose, began to rear.
Alice dropped her whip, so he picked it up and gave it
to her with such a bow! He said he was coming to be a
neighbour of ours, so perhaps it was Lord Arthur. Oh, I
nearly forgot! He gave me a card, and said he hoped he
might be permitted to call. Here it is.
Hon. Rufus. H'm, ha! Likely it was his lordship, or
one of them swells that I heard were coming up to learn
experience at Deem Deem. Old Maclaren's a regular brick
for hospitality! Well, I'll ask him over, Dulcie. He won't
see a prettier girl anywheres, nor a better one, tho' I say it.
We must have him over to dinner on Sunday. What did you
say his name was?
Miss Dulcie (reads from card). Mr. Cecil Egremont.
Isn't it a pretty one?
Hon. Rufus. Eggermont, Eggermont, eh? Hand me
over that paper there; it's a copy of a Application. Why,
confound and smother all land-stealin' villains, if that ain't
the very man that's took up my main camp! He a gentleman!
He's an impostor, a swindler. He's tryin' to rob your poor
old father. He's a free selector!
Both Girls (horrified). A free selector! Oh!! (Scream
loudly and run out of room.)
END OF FIRST ACT
264
Enter Mr. Cecil Egremont, dressed in blue Crimean shirt,
moleskin trousers, knee-boots, straw hat.
Egremont. And so I'm farming in Australia. A thing
I've longed for all my days. Such a free, independent,
pleasant life. No one to bother you; no one to interfere with
you. Such a splendid large piece of land I've secured too—three
hundred and twenty acres, with three times as much for
grazing. Grazing right, that's the expression—a pre-lease, ha!
(Looks in book.) I believe my fortune's made. Who's this?
Some neighbour probably. Good-day, sir; very glad to see you.
Gayters. It's more'n I am to see you here. D'ye know
where you are?
Egremont. On the Crown Lands of Her Majesty the
Queen of England in the first place, and on the farm conditionally
purchased (refers to Land Regulations) by Cecil
Egremont, gentleman farmer, late of Bideford, Devon.
Gayters. What's the good of all this rubbish? You're
on our main camp.
Egremont. Camp? camp?—I see no traces of an
encampment. In what historical period, may I ask?
Gayters. Can't yer see this? (Kicks bone aside.) It's
our cattle camp. I don't mean a soldier's camp or any of
that rot. It's been our—the Hon'ble Rufus Polyblock's—Bundabah
Run, this twenty year and more.
Egremont. Has this land been sold before? Then that
land agent has deceived me! And yet he looked respectable.
I paid him eighty pounds deposit. Have his receipt.
Gayters. I don't mean sold exactly—not but that Mr.
Polyblock would have bought it fast enough if Government
had let him. But we had a lease of it and always had stock
running on it.
Egremont. Oh, a lease!—for a special object I presume,
or perhaps a pastoral lease? (Consults book.) Perhaps it was a
Run—Run—oh, I have it here!—page 38. But surely that
gives you no legal right to hold it against the bona-fide
conditional purchaser?
Gayters. Well, I expect we've no legal claim if it comes
265to that. But no gentleman in this country goes to select on
another gentleman's run. It ain't the thing, you know.
Egremont. Oh, 'it ain't the thing'? Something like
poaching or shooting without a license; but how was I to
know? The law says, 25 Vict. No. 1, Section 13 (opens
copy of Crown Lands Alienation Act), 'On and from the
first day of January 1862——'
Gayters. Oh, hang the law! The Act's all very well for
them as knows no better, or as wants to take advantage-like
of a squatter, but it ain't the square deal if you mean to act
honest—what I call between man and man. Good-morning,
sir.
[Exit Gayters.
Egremont (soliloquising). What an extraordinary country!
When I quarrelled with my uncle, who wanted me to go into
the Church, and came out to Australia to carve out a fortune
in a new world where land was plentiful and caste unknown,
I never expected to meet with class distinctions. Instead
of being able to live my own life in peace, I am met with
obstacles at every turn. I might as well have remained in
North Devon, for all I can see. Well! courage—I'll go and
finish my work, and cut this splendid log into lengths for
fencing slabs. (Begins to chop log.) Why, here comes the young
lady whose horse was frightened yesterday. How handsome
she is, and such a figure too! What a soft voice she had.
I had no idea the girls out here were anything like this!
(Goes on chopping; his dogs rush out.) Down, Ponto!
Down, Clumber! Come to heel! (Throws down axe and
calls off dogs.) Pray don't be frightened—a—I haven't the
pleasure of knowing your name—I hope you have quite
recovered yesterday's accident.
Miss Dulcie P. I am not in the least frightened, thank
you. What beautiful dogs! I am sure they are too well-bred
to hurt a lady. Oh, my name! (slight confusion)—my name is
Dulcie Polyblock. I feel much obliged by your kindness last
evening.
Egremont. (Aside—Polyblock! Polyblock! Why, that's
the name of the owner of the station, the overseer told me.
Probably a nice person. I'll go and explain matters to him.)
(Speaks.) Really I'm delighted to have been of the slightest
service. I hope, as I am settled in this part of the world,
that I may have the privilege of meeting you occasionally.
266Miss Dulcie (confused). I don't know—I can't say—just
at present, but—— (Aside—How distinguished-looking he is,
but what queer clothes!)
Egremont. Does your father, Mr. Polyblock (aside—Droll
name, but that doesn't matter), live in this neighbourhood?
Miss Dulcie.Live here! Why, he owns the Run
you're on. Our home-station, Bundabah, is about five miles
off.
Egremont. Oh, indeed, what a long way! I had thought
we might be near neighbours. I had intended to call and
inquire if you had quite recovered from your fright.
Miss Dulcie P. I wasn't frightened, pray don't suppose
that, but I might have been hurt if you had not come up.
Are you going to stay here long?
Egremont (proudly). Till I make a fortune. [Dulcie
(aside)—Oh!] I have resolved to turn this waste into a
productive farm—a—it will be the work of years.
Miss Dulcie. I should think it would. (Aside—Waste,
indeed!) It's the best part of Bundabah Run.
Egremont. So I was quite right to purchase it from the
Crown.
Miss Dulcie. Oh no. Quite wrong. It's never done,
except by—by low sort of people.
Egremont. Indeed! Then perhaps I'm mistaken about
the law. Just oblige me by looking at this section of the
Land Act. (Hands book to her—she stoops from her horse—their
heads come close together—she reads—'Section 13, Crown
lands other than town lands,' etc.) Well, it really seems as if
you had the right to do it, or anybody else, but father's in the
Upper House, and all that. He says it's a perfect robbery to
free-select on his Run. It's very confusing, don't you think?
But I must say good-bye.
Egremont. Good-bye, Miss Polyblock. (Shakes hands
warmly.) You have really comforted me very much. If you
had time to explain this Act to me I really think I should get
over all my difficulties; as it is, I despair.
Miss Dulcie P. (Aside—Poor fellow! It's very hard for
him; and how white his hands are—such expressive eyes
too. I oughtn't to have come, I know, but still—I might
bring about an understanding between him and father.)
Well, perhaps I might be riding this way on Saturday, near that
267water-hole where the willows are. Good-bye. Now then you
naughty Sultan (canters off).
Egremont (sitting down on log). She has gone! disappeared
like a beautiful dream. What a kind face it is too—anxious
to be friendly, and yet, with maidenly diffidence,
doubting the propriety. Polyblock! Dulcie! a sweet name.
Dulce Domum—ha! shall I ever have a home in this
wilderness? So she's the daughter of this old party who owns
the Run—the Run—ha! ha! What an idea! This elderly
fossil in aboriginal times fed his flocks and herds here. He
doesn't know the difference between lease and freehold
evidently. What ignorant people these Australians are!
But the daughter—how could she have acquired that air of
fierté, that aplomb, that intonation? I must consider my
course. (Puts his head between his hands and seems lost in
thought for some minutes.) I have resolved (rises and walks
proudly erect) I will visit the old gentleman in his own house.
I will convince him of his error. I will argue the point with
him. I will show him this Act of Parliament—these Regulations
(slaps book). I will appeal to him as an Englishman
bound to respect the law. We shall then be on good terms.
Perhaps I may even catch a sight of her. But I must finish.
(Recommences chopping—sees a horseman approaching, and sits
down on log. Mr. Gayters rides up.)
Gayters. Good day—good day, Mr. Whatsisname! So
you've sat down here permanent, it seems?
Egremont. My name is Egremont, if you will please to
remember; yours I believe to be Gayters. I don't quite
follow you about sitting down (rises); I get up occasionally, I
assure you. But I have settled here permanently, as far as
that goes.
Gayters. Oh yes, cert'nly, cert'nly, of course! We know
all that. Heard it afore. But perhaps you'll hear reason
(they mostly does). I'm here to make you an offer—so much
on your bargain.
Egremont. I don't quite understand?
Gayters. Well (sits down), let's argue it out between
man and man.
Egremont. I'm ready; which section do you refer to?
(Takes up copy of Act.)
Gayters. Oh, blow the Act! What's it got to do with
268it? (Egremont makes gesture of surprise.) See here; of
course you're here to make money?
Egremont. Honestly—legally—certainly I am.
Gayters. Dash the honesty! the legal part's all right of
course—else it wouldn't wash, you know. Now you know,
this being our main camp, it ain't the good you can do yourself,
but the harm you can do him—the boss—the Hon'ble
Rufus—that's what you're looking at, naturally.
Egremont (appears puzzled). Can't understand you.
Gayters. Perhaps you'll understand this (takes out
cheque). Mr. Polyblock says, 'Gayters,' says he, 'we've not
been half sharp this time; this here land ought to have been
secured. But the young chap's been and got the pull, and we
can't afford to lose our main camp. Of course he'll go
pounding our stock night and day; so you take him this five
'undred pound—five 'undred! and give it him on conditions
as he does the residence for twelve months and then
conveys the s'lection over to me, all legal and ship-shape,'
says he—and here it is. (Hands out cheque.) Ha! ha! I
expect you understand me now.
Egremont (rising slowly). I believe I do.
Gayters (rising quickly). Just you sign this, then.
Egremont (with lofty anger). Confound your cheque, sir!
Take it back, and with it my scorn and contempt, which you
can present to your master, telling him from me, at the same
time, that you are a pair of scoundrels!
Gayters. Scoundrels! What d'ye mean? Are yer off
yer chump? A free selector to call the Hon'ble Mr. Polyblock
of Bundabah and his super a pair of scoundrels! Take
care what you're about, young man. A camp's a public
place, or close up. 'Words calculated to cause a breach of the
peace——'
Egremont (deliberately). Yes, scoundrels! First of all to
insult a gentleman by treating him as a rascally blackmailer;
secondly, by offering an honest man money to break the law
of the land—to violate every principle of honour and integrity.
And now, if you don't quit my land at once, I'll kick you
from here into the brook!
Gayters (hastily mounting). You take care what you're
about, young man—two can play at that game. (Aside—Most
extraordinary chap! Rummest free selector I ever seen.)
269Later—Bundabah House—The Hon'ble Mr. Polyblock in
his morning room, pacing up and down, disturbed in
mind. Enter Gayters.
Mr. Polyblock. Well, what is it? He's got the money
of course—I'm always had, seems to me. D'ye want any
more cheques? If you'd been half sharp enough he'd never
have been there.
Gayters. You won't want no more cheques, unless you're
drove to dummying all round him.
Mr. Polyblock.Dummy, sir! Damme! What d'ye
mean by that expression? Are you aware that I'm a member
of the Hupper 'Ouse, Mr. Gayters?
Gayters. Beg pardon, sir. I meant perhaps other
parties might desire to select on his pre-lease and might want
a bit of assistance, like.
Mr. Polyblock. That's another matter! I always make
a point of advancing money to the struggling free selector—as
long as I get a proper mortgage on the land—Bonus
Allround sees to that. But about this young chap?
Gayters. He won't take the cheque; all but threw it at
me.
Mr. Polyblock (much astonished). Won't take the
cheque! and won't go out?
Gayters. Not he; won't hear of it. Called you and—well
his language was horful!
Mr. Polyblock. What did he call me—me?
Gayters. Said we was a pair of damned scoundrels! and
he'd kick me off his ground.
Mr. Polyblock (solemnly). This is what the country's
a-comin' to! What with universal sufferage, bushranging, and
free selection—as is land robbery by Act of Parliament—pore
old Australia ain't a country for a gentleman to live in. Are
you sure he called me, the Hon'ble Rufus Polyblock, a
scoundrel, or was it only you?
Gayters. Both of us, sure as I'm alive. 'Take this to
your master,' says he, 'with my scorn and contempt.' He
talked like a chap I see at that circus last shearin'. He
looked grand, I tell you, sir.
Hon'ble Rufus (gloomily). He won't look so grand when
I've done with him. He's got no stock yet?
270Gayters. Not so much as a horse. He's building his
cottage at present, he says—ha! ha!
Hon'ble Rufus (grimly). Wait till he gets his stock on,
that's all. And you watch him—watch him night and day.
If he puts a foot on my ground, pull him for trespass; if he
touches a head of stock, have him up for stealin' 'em. It's
what he's layin' himself out for, of course, and we may as well
fit him first as last.
[Exit Gayters.
END OF SECOND ACT
Mr. Egremont (discovered nailing up slabs, in order to
complete dwelling). Well, this is a most enjoyable life; that
is, it will be enjoyable when I have completed my cottage (hits
finger with hammer, and examines same), but at present I seem
rather hurried. I have had to help the ploughman in order
to get the crop in. I have quite ten acres of wheat nicely
sown and harrowed. I intend to plant potatoes after the
cottage is up, and I must manage to have some turnips;
they're always useful for the stock. A good deal of money
seems to be going out; it is equally certain that none is
coming in. No man can have worked harder either in an old
or new country. But the worst of it is (sits down on round
post and considers), I am not fully convinced that I am working
to the best purpose. I may be doing all this for nothing!
Miss Polyblock—somehow I'm always thinking of that girl!—implied
as much the last time I saw her. By all the saints
and angels, here she comes! How gloriously handsome she
always looks, and how well her habit becomes her! Strange,
what a gulf there seems to be between us!
Dulcie. So you're working away as usual, Mr. Egremont?
You certainly are a pattern young man. How hot it must
make you this terrible weather?
Egremont. I thought everybody worked hard in this
country.
Dulcie. That's a popular error, as you'll find out by and
by. They work in some ways, but not usually with their
hands, except when pioneering or exploring.
Egremont. Well, am I not pioneering?
271Dulcie (bursting out laughing). What! upon three hundred
and twenty acres of land! Excuse my rudeness in laughing.
Egremont (rather nettled). We think it a decent-sized
piece of land in England.
Dulcie. Oh, do you, really? I beg your pardon, but
father did all the pioneering work here years and years ago.
Fought the blacks when he took up the country, and was
speared by them when I was a little girl. So there isn't much
pioneering left for you to do, is there?
Egremont. I wish there was.
Dulcie. Oh, do you? Then why don't you go outside?
Egremont. Outside—outside—where's that? I thought
I was pretty well outside here; I haven't slept under a roof
these two months.
Dulcie (laughing again). Oh, indeed, I didn't mean that.
Of course you're outside now; I wish you were not. I'm
afraid you'll get a dreadful cold, the weather is so changeable;
but I mean real outside country, beyond the settled districts, in
Queensland, Western Australia, Kimberley—anywhere.
Egremont. But how far off is that?
Dulcie. Oh, a couple of thousand miles; but it doesn't
matter how far it is; it's the way to make money, and position,
and a name. Here no one can do anything but potter about,
live miserably, and—and vegetate.
Egremont. But I thought everybody farmed in Australia?
Dulcie. Farmed! farmed! (with amazement). Why,
nobody does; no gentleman farms, I assure you. But English
people never seem to understand things for the first year or
two.
Egremont (with air of astonishment). Oh, then I shall
only begin to understand the country in another year? At
present I am supposed to be blissfully ignorant of the real
meaning of matters Colonial. I may have all my work to
undo; is that what you think?
Dulcie. Well, very nearly. It's rude, of course, to say
so, but you'd rather be told the truth, wouldn't you? (He
bows.) I've heard young Englishmen say over and over again
that if they'd done nothing for the first two years they would
have learned a great deal and saved all their money.
Egremont. But surely there is nothing so hard to understand
about the country after all? Any one can see the sense
272of these regulations, for instance. (Produces book, Land Act
Amendment.)
Dulcie. Oh, don't show me that horrid book! It's about
free selection and all that, and dad says it's done no end of
harm. Oh, I wish I could advise you properly!
Egremont. If you only would undertake the task! (Takes
her hand and looks at her tenderly.)
Dulcie (hastily). Oh, really, I have no time now; I shall
be late for lunch as it is. Good-morning.
Mr. Polyblock's Drawing-Room.
Mr. Polyblock (looks at wrong card). Mr. Stanley—Hubert
Stanley—oh, one of the swells that came up with the
governor! Show him in.
Enter Mr. Egremont, neatly and cleanly attired in
bush-fashion—Crimean shirt, moleskin trousers, no coat.
Mr. P. (surprised and irritated). Hulloa! who the devil
are you? Oh, I see, swell out of luck! Want employment
or else, perhaps, I wouldn't mind advancing twenty pound till
your remittance came out. Is that the game?
Egremont (haughtily). No, sir; I am perfectly able to pay
my way, and trust to be so for the future. We have not met
before, but no doubt you will know who I am when I tell you
that my name is Cecil Egremont.
Mr. P. Eggermont? Eggermont? We've not met afore, as
you say; but, by George, I'll meet you some day! You're the
chap as took up my main camp. Then what the devil do you
want at my private house, eh? Mind, I won't sell you a
pound of beef or mutton either, if you want it ever so bad. I
ain't to be had that way.
Egremont (proudly). You're over-hasty in your conclusions,
sir. I have no pressing need for butcher's meat. But
you are right in surmising that I do want something from you—something
of value also.
Mr. P. (much surprised). Good Gad! (Aside—What can
he want? Don't want money nor beef; perhaps it's wheat or
'taters. Never knew a free selector yet that didn't want one
of 'em.) What is it, man, speak out?
Egremont. The fact is, Mr. Polyblock, your daughter;
that is, I have long cherished an admiration——
273Mr. P. (wrathfully). Admiration be hanged! You said
my daughter—my daughter! God bless my soul and body!
You don't mean to say she'd ever say a word to the likes of you?
Egremont. I fear, sir, that without the least intention of
gaining her affections clandestinely, I have been so imprudent
as to receive counsel respecting my course of action in a strange
land, which Miss Polyblock was too generous to refuse. This
harmless intercourse has ripened into intimacy—into, I may
boldly say, mutual affection. As a man of honour I feel it
my duty to acquaint you with the fact, and to respectfully
demand her hand. I——
Mr. P. (deeply shocked and violently affected). Stop! not
another word! Man of honour! Ha! ha! how the devil
can a free selector be a man of honour? So you think my
daughter, as has been eddicated equal to the first lady in the
land, is to go into a hut, and—and—— (Breaks into uncontrollable
rage.) You—you—robber—murderer—free selector!
Leave this room—get off my place, or by —— I'll set the dogs
on ye! (Advances threateningly.)
Egremont (slowly receding). I can afford to smile at your
vehemence, to laugh at your threats. There are reasons which
prevent me from resenting your ignorant, ungentlemanly
conduct.
Mr. P. (in boxing attitude). Come on, if that's what you
want. Put up your 'ands. I may be a member of the Hupper
'Ouse, and not so young as I was, but I can take the conceit
out of a chap like you yet. (Advances with hands up.)
Dulcie (coming from behind, pulls him by the coat-tail).
Oh, father, father! don't touch him.
Mr. P. Let me go, girl!
Dulcie. Oh, Cecil, Cecil! why don't you go away?
(Throws her arms round Mr. P. and drags him back; Egremont
slowly retreating, Mr.Polyblock struggling and menacing him.)
[Curtain falls.
END OF THIRD ACT
274
About a year afterwards—Mr. Polyblock in library,
also Mr. Gayters.
Mr. P. (walks up and down). Well, I feel regularly stumped
and dried out. Haven't felt so bad since the '68 drought.
I don't know what's comin' over the country. This young
Colonial experiencer stands up agin' me like a bulldog ant in
front of a team of bullocks! My gal, Dulcie, as I've spent
thousands on—and where's there a gal like her, high or low?—is
turned that stupid and ungrateful that she's crying her
eyes out; and who for? Why, a low feller with only a half-section
of land to his name—worse than a boundary-rider, I
call him! Damme! I'll dummy all round him—eat him up
that close that he won't have grass for a bandicoot. I'm that
miserable as I could go and drownd myself in that creek
afore the door. Blast that infernal Land Act and them as
made it! It'll ruin the country and every man of property in
it. Well (turns angrily to Gayters), what do you want?
Gayters (hesitatingly). Mr. Overdew has just sent his
reporter for ten thousand sheep, sir; wants to know if you'll
let him take them through the Run, along the back track.
Mr. P. (with concentrated wrath). Tell him if he dares to
go one yard off his half-mile from the main-frontage road I'll
pound every hoof of his grass-stealin', hungry, loafin' sheep, as
is the dead image of their owner—if he does own 'em, and not
the bank. Tell him that, and mind you shepherd him slap
through the boundary gate.
Gayters. Of course, sir; cert'nly, sir. Anything else, sir?
Mr. P. (with sudden fury). Only, you stand gapin' there
another minute and I'll knock yer through my study winder!
Gayters. Cert'nly, sir; of course, sir.
[Exit hastily.
Mr. Cecil Egremont on his selection, discovered chopping
down a tree.
(Speaks.) I am more than ever confirmed in my opinion
that this is the most extraordinary, puzzling, topsy-turvy country
in the whole world. I might just as well have remained
275in North Devon for all the good I am likely to do. I could
have taken a farm there, and—well—probably have managed
to pay the rent. I have bought a farm here, become a free-holder—that
most enviable position, at least in England—and
now when I've got it I don't know what to do with it. Old
Polyblock's sheep eat right up to my boundary, and beyond it
too. I gather there's not much to be done with three hundred
and twenty acres in a dry season. My wheat is prematurely
yellow; my potatoes won't come up! I must fence my farm
in; that will cost—at six shillings a rod—let me see—how
much? (Sits down on log and begins to cipher in pocket-book.)
Dulcie (who has ridden closely up in the meantime, and
is watching him, coughs slightly). Don't let me interrupt you,
but you seem absorbed in thought. Is it about the value of
the tree, or some other abstruse calculation?
Egremont (jumps up hastily). Oh, my dearest Dulcie!
neither, that is, both—really I hardly know what I am about
at present. I was working to distract my mind. I suppose
it's always right to cut down a tree?
Dulcie. Nonsense! About the worst thing you could
do. Sinful waste of time. Do you suppose father made his
money in that way? The pencil and pocket-book look more
like it. We say in Australia that a man's head ought to be
good enough to save his hands. Are your birth, breeding, and
education only equal to a pound a week? Because you can
buy a man's work for that—all the year round.
Egremont. But I thought all the early colonists worked
with their hands, tended their sheep, drove bullocks and all
that—the books say so.
Dulcie. Nonsense! The people who know, don't write
books—very seldom at least. The people who write books,
don't know. That's the English of it. But I came through
the township and I've brought your post. Here's a letter and
a newspaper.
Egremont. Heaven be thanked and my Guardian Angel!
That's you, my dearest Dulcie. Oh, that I had you always
to be near me—to protect me from the ways of this wicked
Australian world!
Dulcie. H—m! You want some one, I do believe. I
might consider over the contract, but my tender—ahem!—wouldn't
be accepted at present. Father's going on like an
276old 'rager' bullock, all by himself in the strangers' yard.
But hadn't you better open your letter?
Egremont. Then you do take an interest in me? After
this I fear nothing. Why will you not consent to trust your
future welfare to my guidance?
Dulcie (scornfully). A likely thing! Trust a free
selector! Not if I know it!!! Why, what would become of
us? Perhaps you'd like to see me lifting the top off a camp-oven—on
a fire, under that black stump there—whilst you
were—chopping—down—a—tree! ha! ha! No! (surveying
her well-fitting riding-habit—her thoroughbred horse, and
stroking her gloves) I seem to like this sort of thing better. I
must drag on for a while with my allowance from poor old dad.
Egremont (with lofty resolve). You are heartless, Dulcie—devoid
of natural affection. You laugh at my inexperience,
you sneer at my poverty—let us part for ever. Go back to
your father's mansion and leave me to my fate. I feel that
I shall succeed, perhaps make a fortune, in the end.
Dulcie (Aside—It will be a precious long time first!
What a dear, noble fellow he is—I hate to bully him!) Aloud—Come,
Cecil (winningly), you mustn't be cross. I am only
a poor simple girl brought up in the bush (I wonder what he
is then?), but of course I know more about stock and land
than you do. If we are not to be married (you see I love
you a little) till you make enough to buy the ring out of this
calf-paddock of yours, we may wait till we're grey! But
why don't you open the letter? It might contain something
of importance.
Egremont (partly mollified). I'm afraid not; merely an
entreaty to return from this wild country, where there are no
people fit for me to associate with, where I may starve, or be
killed by blacks or wild beasts—that's the general tone of my
letters of late. Ha! What is this? (Reads—Your poor
Uncle Humphrey died last week; he was on bad terms with
our side of the house, and has not spoken to your father for
forty years; but he has left you £20,000, for which you will
receive a bank-draft by this mail. Of course you will come
home at once!) Of course, of course! Oh! eh! Dulcie
dear? Now I shall build a house here, plant a garden, make
a lakelet, sow artificial grasses, fence and subdivide,—in
fact, make a paradise of these desolate, bare acres. Eventually
277it will be highly remunerative. But when my house is completed
and furnished in accordance with modern art, you
will come there to be my queen and its most brilliant ornament?
(looks entreatingly at her).
Dulcie (with expression of horror). What! improve a
selection? Spend thousands of pounds on it? Build a
really good house and ask me to live there! Did you ever
hear of Tarban Creek?
Egremont. Not that I can recall—an aboriginal name, I
presume. I have caught the name of Curbin, I think. Is
that a similar watercourse?
Dulcie (restraining herself). It's hardly worth explaining—a
little joke of mine. But to come to business. Suppose
I show you a way to invest your money—to get twenty per
cent for it in a few years, at the same time to make father
think you a clever, rising man—an opinion which, ahem!
he does not hold at present—and lastly, to cause him to give
his consent to our marriage, (coaxingly) what should you say
then? Would you be willing to do what I told you?
Egremont. I always thought you as clever as you were
beautiful, my own dearest Dulcie! Take me with all that is
mine and do what you will.
Dulcie. Very nice—indeed flattering! How long will
it last, I wonder? 'Now you lisdens do me' (as our German
gardener used to say) and you will hear something to your
advantage. But first promise to do what I ask—you will
promise? (looking entreatingly and archly at him).
Egremont. On my honour; on the cross of my ancestor's
sword—he was a Crusader.
Dulcie. The first is enough; I am afraid you are
inclined to be a Crusader too, as far as romantic enthusiasm
goes—still it's a fault on the right side, and will be cured by
colonial and other experience. Firstly, you must sell this
selection.
Egremont.What! sell my farm—my home—my first
venture in this new world?
Dulcie. Stuff and nonsense! It's poor dad's Run, to
begin with, and you ought never to have touched it! You
wouldn't, either, if you'd known how hard he worked for it
before I was born.
Egremont (meditatively). How could it be his; or, if
278so, how did the Government sell it to me? (Placing his hand
to his forehead) I never shall understand the Land Act of this
country. But don't ask me to sell my—my—birthright!
Dulcie (decisively). You've promised me, and you must
sell it. Of course if you prefer living here by yourself as a
'hatter'—for I'll never come into it—you may keep it.
Egremont. (Aside—A hatter!—is that a legal term in
this most perplexing Act? What can she mean? However,
I surrender unconditionally.) To whom shall I sell it?
Dulcie. That's a good boy and he shall be rewarded.
Go into the township and ask for the office of Mr. Bonus
Allround, the lawyer; offer it to him, and he'll give you a
cheque for it. How much has it cost you? Thousands by
this time, I suppose.
Egremont. Really more than any one would suppose.
Firstly, the deposit, five shillings per acre—and seed wheat—and
other things.
Dulcie. Oh, of course, I forgot! Well, value all your
improvements, loss of time, etc. You have lost plenty of
time, you know, talking to me. We won't say yet whether
you mightn't have done worse. But put it all down, every
shilling; add your own time at a pound a week—you're not
quite worth that, but he'll pass it to get the land. He'll pay you
the money sharp, and all you have to do is to sign a transfer.
Egremont. Seems simple enough—only turn myself out
of house and home. Well, after that little step?
Dulcie. Go to Sydney as soon as you can. I see
Banda Plains Run is in the market, with only a few head of
cattle—two thousand, I think. I've heard father talk about
the place by the hour; he thinks no end of it—says he never
saw better fattening country.
Egremont (doubtingly). Am I to go to him?
Dulcie. Not yet, goose! When you're in Sydney, call
on Messrs. Drawwell and Backer—get Banda Plains as cheap
as you can, but buy at all risks. Give them their price at last;
then come back and tell dad what you've done. He can't
eat you.
Egremont. He looked as if he would last time, without
salt! But I will go straight to Sydney and do your bidding.
Drawwell and Backer, Stock Agents, Pitt Street, Sydney,
that's the address (notes in pocket-book).
279Dulcie. You're getting quite a man of business. If
you're so much improved in an hour, what will you be in a
year? Really, I'm quite proud of my handiwork. And oh,
one thing, dearest! don't forget—it's most important (impressively)—have
your hair cut by Adger! You see it is a
little long (touches his hair)—thinking of your woes, I
suppose? But we respect the fashions in Australia, though
you mightn't think it. You'd better not be eccentric.
Egremont (laughs). Anything else, Miss Polyblock? I
see the foreshadowing of an oligarchy. But it will be a
benevolent despotism, I trust?
Dulcie. Bless me! how late it is! The sun is quite
low. I shall have to ride fast. Don't you lose a moment
either.
Egremont. Trust me; but—one minute—as a reward
for my unquestioning obedience, don't you think——
[Comes close as if to whisper—kisses her, and exit.
ACT V
Mr. Polyblock (discovered walking up and down the
library). Well, I don't know as ever I spent a more miserable
month. Dulcie don't take no interest in the things as used
to amuse her. I don't know what's come to the gal. If I
could see my way at all, and thought this young chap was
steady and sensible—likely to get on—I might push him;
but—a free selector—a half-section, crawling duffer as won't
have grass for a milker nor credit for a bag of flour in
another year—No! I couldn't think of it. It's enough to
make a man turn agin his own flesh and blood. (Knocking
heard.) Who's that?
Maid. A gentleman wants to see you, sir.
Mr. Polyblock. Who is it? That chap as was going to
buy the Weejoglag store-cattle, p'raps?
Enter Cecil Egremont, dressed in tweeds.
Mr. Polyblock. Oh, it's you, Mr. Eggermont! (Aside—How
well the feller looks! Holds up his head too! Dashed
if he ain't a fine, upstanding, good-looking chap when he's
turned out decent! He looked more like a shearer when I
280seen him last.) Well, sir! what can I do for you? Sheep
been trespassing, I suppose?
Egremont. No, Mr. Polyblock, such is not the case.
Nor will it matter to me in future. I have sold my land.
Mr. Polyblock. Sold the s'lection! You don't say so!
Who to? who to? Mr. Eggermont, why didn't you come to
me, if you wanted to part with it? I'd have given you
anything in reason.
Egremont. You must pardon me for reminding you, Mr.
Polyblock, that your manner was not reassuring at our last
interview.
Mr. Polyblock. Perhaps not—rather hasty, I know.
Mustn't mind an old man; but who's got the s'lection?
Egremont. I disposed of it to Mr. Allround in the
township, from whom I received a cheque, paying me in
full for all improvements and loss of time.
Mr. Polyblock. Bonus Allround! Good shot! It's
all right—you've sold to me through him—he's my agent. I
should have been sold, my word! if any other buyer had
come in there. And now what are you a-goin' to do?
You're a man of capital now, you know!
Egremont. I was fortunate enough to have a moderate
legacy left me by an uncle just before I went to Sydney.
While there, under advice, I invested eight thousand pounds
in a run called Banda Plains, on the Queensland border.
They tell me it's a good purchase. There are two thousand
cattle, besides horses.
Mr. Polyblock. Good purchase, sir! It's the best
thing in the market. Banda Plains, with only two thousand
head of cattle—it's a gift—a reg'lar gift! Your fortune's made.
Egremont. It gratifies me to hear you say so, Mr.
Polyblock—most deeply, I assure you. And now, sir,
perhaps you will reconsider your rather strongly-expressed
refusal to me of your daughter's hand?
Dulcie (who has opened the door softly and stolen into the
room). Oh, dad, you don't want to break your poor Dulcie's
heart! I do love him so!
Mr. Polyblock (clearing his throat and speaking in a
parliamentary tone of voice). Ahem! I am not aware, Mr.
President, that there's anything in the Land Act or Regulations
against the daughter of a M.L.C. marryin' a squatter—a
281squatter, you observe, Mr. Eggermont. Had the party been
a selector; but I won't dwell on a subject too painful to a
parent's feelin's. Take her, my boy! And a better gal, tho' I
say it—good, game, and good-lookin'—she's all that and more—never——'
Dulcie (moving up to Egremont and placing her hand on
his shoulder). Never gave advice to a struggling free selector.
Is that what you were going to say, daddy? Never mind—he
had sense enough to take it. Hadn't you, Cecil dear?
Mr. Polyblock. Seems to me he's free selected on a
pastoral holding to some purpose, you monkey. Is there any
clause about that in the new Land Act, I wonder, as they're
makin' such a bother about? Anyway, I'm the happiest
lessee in the unsettled districts, now this little matter's settled
satisfactory. And tell you what, Dulcie (Gayters comes in
here—looks rather blank), I'll send Gayters out to Banda
Plains to take delivery and wire into the bullockin' for a bit.
It'll do him good—he's been takin' it too easy lately; and as
it happens to be Christmas time, we'll get the transfer business
put through by the Rev. Mr. Robinson at the township, and,
Cecil, my boy! give us your hand (puts Dulcie's into it).
There now, you can take up this additional conditional
selection. It won't want improvin', that's one thing. Ha!
ha! I'm that full of happiness that I can get a joke out of the
Land Act—Rum-ty-idity—fol-de-rol (dances round the room).
Cecil puts his arm round Dulcie; they look tenderly into
each other's faces.
CURTAIN FALLS
BUSH HOSPITALITY
282
In the pioneer period of the pastoral industry, which has since
known such phenomenal development and, alas! no less
phenomenal declension, the hospitality of the dwellers in the
wilderness was proverbially free and unchallenged. But even
then there were 'metes and bounds.' Like Colonial society—though
apparently 'a free and a fetterless thing'—there were
lines of demarcation. These, though unsubstantial and
shadowy to superficial observers, were nevertheless discovered
by experiment to be strangely hard and fast.
In those Arcadian days the stranger, on arriving at the
homestead of a man whom he had never seen, and whose
name possibly he had scarcely heard, was warranted by custom,
on riding up to the door, in proposing to stay all night. It
was the rule of the period. If there was no inn within a dozen
miles, it became an unquestioned right.
The owner or manager of the station, if at home, welcomed
the stranger with more or less courtesy, according to his disposition,
assisting the guest, whom Allah had sent him, to take
off his saddle and place it in the verandah of the cottage, to
turn out his horse in the paddock, or, in default of that "improvement,"
to hobble or tether the trusty steed on good
pasture.
If the personages referred to were absent, the traveller,
unless he happened to be abnormally diffident, informed the
cook, hut-keeper, or any station hand whom he might chance to
encounter, that he had come to stay all night, turned his horse
out, and entering the plainly-furnished abode, made himself as
comfortable as circumstances would admit of.
If his host delayed his coming, supper was served. The
283stranger foraged about among the books and newspapers, and
with the aid of tobacco, managed to spend the evening, retiring
to rest in the apartment indicated, with perfect cheerfulness and
self-possession.
If, as chiefly happened, the hard-worked colonist returned
from the quest of lost sheep or strayed cattle before bedtime,
he usually expressed himself much gratified by the unexpected
companionship, and after a cheery confab about the latest
news, politics, prospects (pastoral), and a parting smoke, both
retired to the couches where unbroken slumbers were the rule.
It was a mutual benefit. The monotonous life of the squatter
was cheered by the advent of a fresh face, fresh news and ideas.
The weary traveller found frank entertainment for man and
beast, company and a guide, possibly, for the morrow's journey.
In these strictly equestrian days (for gentlefolk) no man
could carry more than a limited change of apparel in the
leather valise strapped to the fore-part of the saddle. Saddlebags
were occasionally used, but they were held to be cumbrous.
The journeys were rough and protracted. Clean linen has ever
been unwillingly dispensed with by the Briton. In that
barbaric epoch, Crimean shirts could not be, the quarrel with
the Sultan about the mythical keys not having arisen. Paper
collars, much more celluloids, were in the future. The only
recognised departure from the full-dress white raiment, the
'biled shirt' of the American humorist to come, was the
check or 'regatta' shirt.
Now this was a garment of compromise, not disreputably
soiled after a couple of days' use. Still its existence as a
respectable article of apparel had a limit. When that was
reached, the stranger was permitted to levy on the host's wardrobe,
if a bachelor, to the extent of one coloured shirt, leaving
his own in lieu. This was held to be fair exchange—the alien
vestment, when washed, being, if of ordinary texture and age,
of equal average value to the one taken; the host doing likewise
when on his travels. The chief and perhaps only
undesirable result was, that every proprietor on a frequented line
of road had a collection of the most varied and cosmopolitan
autographs in marking ink, on his shirts, probably ever noticed
in one gentleman's wardrobe.
Now this was all very well in the days when Mr. Jones
and Mr. Smith were in the free and independent condition of
284bachelors. They could smoke their pipe unconcernedly with
Jackson the cattle-dealer, or Tomkins the working overseer
from an out-station, or Binks, who was nobody in particular,
or Jinks, who was a cheeky sort of a fellow, but with no harm
in him. But all this was changed when Jones or Smith took
unto himself a wife. He then desired to have his evenings to
himself; and though a gentleman or an agreeable stranger was
always welcome, he by no means cared about entertaining half-and-half
people, or being bothered with making talk for
uncongenial persons all the evening. Yet he did not quite
like to send all wayfarers whom he did not know or care
about to the 'men's hut.' Some of them doubtless were
more at home there, or managed to pass the evening without
complaint; still, mistakes were occasionally made. Therefore
some kind of intermediate arrangement came to be needed.
When an inn was within a mile or two, the difficulty was
removed. No stranger could desire to be entertained at the
house of a man he did not know, merely because it was
cheaper. If he were mean enough to make the attempt, he
received a rebuff—possibly no more than his due. Still, in
some instances, the squatter, even if unmarried, dreaded the
hotel as the nucleus of a township, and bore the enforced
intrusion rather than risk the invasion of his Run.
It became thus one of the unwritten laws of Bushland that,
though a bachelor station was fair game, and introductions
might be dispensed with, more circumspection must be
exercised in the case of the homestead which contained a lady.
Even if the hospitality was unrestricted as of yore, the restraint
was felt by the more homely of the wayfarers, and a sensible
lowering of the average of visitors took place.
And even when there was no such adequate reason, the
resident proprietor was occasionally, by nature or on principle,
opposed to the indiscriminate entertainment of chance-comers,
and cast about for some method of ensuring privacy. The
late Mr. Charles Ebden discovered that 'Carlsruhe,' named
after a continental reminiscence of travel, was by no means
likely to be the 'Charles' Rest' which the name promised.
So he made a bold innovation, the fame of which went
through the length and breadth of the land: he established
a 'visitors' hut.'
There appeared to be no great harm in this—merely a
285comfortable cottage, wherein the visitor was supplied with an
evening meal, bed, and breakfast, all comfortably arranged.
His horse would of course be cared for, paddocked, and
brought up in the morning. One would fancy this gratuitous
entertainment would have been voted sufficient. But the
roving pastoralists were dissatisfied. They did not want
merely meat and drink—they wanted a welcome: to have
speech also with the master of the house. He was suspected
of considering himself too good for his surroundings. And so
'Carlsruhe' was gradually avoided—not that the perhaps too
fastidious 'Count' Ebden cared a jot.
An amusing contretemps with respect to this novel disposal
of guests was that related of the late Sir James
Hawthorn. The good old gentleman arrived late one evening
at 'Carlsruhe,' naturally concluding that he would receive
special consideration. It did not so chance, however, whether
from non-recognition—he was not a knight then, but a
doctor—or some other cause. Before leaving the visitors' hut
in the morning, he left a formal note of thanks for his night's
lodging, and enclosed a cheque for a guinea as payment.
But the Colonial Treasurer of the future was equal to the
occasion. He made answer by post, in a carefully-worded
epistle, acknowledging 'a most extraordinary communication,
containing a cheque, for which he was totally unable to
conceive any reasonable explanation, and had forwarded to
Secretary of the Lunatic Asylum.'
After the changes which turned the homesteads of the
larger stations into small villages, the 'big house,' as it came
to be called, was no longer expected to accommodate the
proprietor, the overseer, and the young gentleman learning
Colonial experience, in addition to every wanderer that turned
up. The overseer generally had a commodious if, perhaps,
plainly-furnished cottage allotted to him. This came to be
known as the 'barracks,' and to be used as a convenient abode
for strangers and pilgrims, as well as for the storekeeper, the
working overseers, and the young gentlemen. Here, in
summer, they could sleep on the verandah, smoke and yarn on
the same, or, in winter, around the cheerful fire, without
danger of disturbing the squatter's domestic arrangements.
This of course without prejudice to personal friends or strangers
of distinction.
286As to the pilgrims, they might be described as 'human
warious.' There was first the squatter proper, young, middle-aged,
or elderly, on his way from one station to the other,
returning from new country or from a journey with fat cattle or
sheep. He was of course welcome, being, presumably, ready
and willing to repay the accommodation in kind. Then there
were overseers and managers, cattle and sheep buyers, agents
and drovers. These were pastoral personages, and, of course,
to be considered. The dealers, even when roughish in manner,
were a power in the land, capable too of drawing cheques to
an amount which secured respect. They could not in any
case be sent to the men's hut. Tourists, bona-fide travellers,
and globe-trotters, having business of some sort, others without
any particular aim or destination,—these gentry in the
'barracks' were evidently the 'right men in the right place.'
It must be surmised also that adventurers travelled about
among the stations as a pleasant way of seeing the country
and spending a few months at free quarters. A man of prepossessing
appearance and agreeable manners, 'who wanted to
buy a station—a real first-class property, you know,' made his
appearance in a certain district just 'after the gold.' He was
courteously treated, and shown a variety of stations. He
passed a whole summer in the leisurely inspection of sheep
and cattle properties, none of which quite suited his taste.
He became quite a well-known inhabitant. Many people
believed at last that he had so invested, and accepted him as
a recognised identity. But he never did buy a station or any
stock—eventually contenting himself with a Government billet
of a moderate description, under circumstances which proved the
presumption of his being a capitalist to have been erroneous.
As a general rule it may be stated that the farther back,
the more distant the station, the more liberal and invariable
the hospitality. When men went seldom to town, when books
and newspapers were scarce, the lonely squatter was well
disposed towards any kind of stranger guest above the level of
shepherd or stock-rider. He was a change, an animated
evening newspaper, and as such intrinsically valuable. His
visit, besides, was of a transitory or fleeting nature, so that only
his good qualities were apparent.
Even this form of enjoyment was subject to abatement.
There was the pilgrim now and then who declined to proceed
287on his pilgrimage, especially when he fell upon a comfortable
bachelor abode, with cuisine, library, and liquor reasonably
up to date. Not infrequently the pilgrim's steed would stray,
which the owner would search for in such a perfunctory
manner that it seemed as if years might roll on before he was
run in. One really most agreeable and gifted person——he
afterwards became Premier in a neighbouring colony—was
celebrated as protracting his visits by this device. One
morning there appeared in a provincial paper the startling
announcement, 'Mr. Blank's horse is found.' It was the
making of him. The laughter was so general that he left that
colony, and attained in another to political eminence and
material prosperity.
Not always, however, was even the bona-fide squatter on
his travels made welcome. A friend of mine arrived at a
station late in the evening. 'I am Mr. Blake,' he said, 'of
Kilrush'—a name well known throughout his own and other
districts for generous, unstinted hospitality. The proprietor
stood at his door, but offered no welcome.
'How far is it to the next place?' inquired the traveller.
'Sixteen miles; you can't miss the road.'
'Thanks; much obliged.' So he put spurs to his weary
steed—he had come far since sunrise—and departed, reaching
the station, so obligingly referred to, long after dark on a
cold night.
In the following year the same squatter arrived at Kilrush.
He was cordially received—invited to stay a day and rest his
horse. 'I killed him with kindness,' were my friend's words—relating
the affair to me years afterwards—'and when he
rode away, did everything possible, short of holding his stirrup
for him.
'"Mr. Blake," said he, "you've behaved to me like a
gentleman! I am afraid I didn't give you that idea when
you called at Bareacres. I feel ashamed of myself, I assure
you."
'"So you ought to be," I said, looking him straight in the
face. He muttered something and rode away.'
LAPSED GENTLEFOLK
288
Ah me! who has not known and pitied them in this Australian
land of ours? The workman's Paradise! yet all too well
adapted for converting the gently-nurtured waif into the
resigned labourer, the homeless vagrant. The gradations
through which slowly, invisibly, but none the less surely,
drifts to lower levels the luckless gentleman adventurer, are
fraught with a melancholy interest. How sad it seems to
realise that of the hundreds of well-dressed, well-educated,
high-hearted youngsters, fresh from pleasant British homes,
who every season land on our shores, a certain proportion
will, in a few years of Colonial Experience (save the mark!),
be transformed into misanthropic shepherds, ragged tramps,
or reckless rouseabouts.
One always sees a few in the men's hut at shearing time,
owning no higher aspirations than the ordinary station hand,
living the rough life of the bush-labourer, relishing coarse
tobacco and the coarser jests when the day's work is done,
hardly distinguishable in dress, tone, and manner from their
ruder comrades. Like them, alas! too prone to end each
term's unrelieved labour by an aimless, ruinous drinking-bout.
It is not that the daily toil, the plain fare, and rude
companionship would be in any sense degrading, were they
used as means to an end. Did the cadet resolve to save all
but the cash absolutely required for clothing and other needs,
a small capital might easily be acquired, with reasonable
credit in proportion, for which a profitable outlet is always
to be found. And a knowledge of the rougher side of
Australian life is always valuable wherever his lot might be
cast.
289The real social deterioration accrues when the well-born
or well-educated man becomes fatally contented with his
humble surroundings; when hope has faded out, when
ambition is dead, when repeated trials have landed him in
deeper failure; when the conviction is only too well founded
that for him no higher position is attainable in this world.
Nay, that even if attained, he is no longer fitted to occupy it.
Persons imperfectly acquainted with our social system
may say, 'Oh, once a gentleman, always a gentleman!' and
so on. From whatever rude environment, he will come forth
true to his training, and assume his earlier habitudes as easily
as the well-fitting garments which his altered circumstances
render necessary.
It is not so, unfortunately. Granted that the exceptional
individual emerges from the wreck of his youthful aspirations
safe and uninjured, more numerous are they tenfold who
reach the shore bleeding and disabled, never to be again
but the simulacra of their former selves—hopeless of ever
attaining the fair heaven-crowned heights, so near, so tempting
of ascent in boyhood; heedless but of the lower pains and
pleasures to which they have all unresistingly yielded their
future lives.
Much of course depends on the mental fibre of the
youngster. If happily constituted, he may defy the most
inauspicious surroundings to alter his habits of thought or
change his settled purpose in life. One boy, at the roughest
station in the 'back blocks,' will save his money and do his
work in a cheerfully observant spirit; he will utilise the spare
time, of which he has so large a supply, in reading and
improving his mind; he will find out all he can about the
working of the station, with a view to future operations when
he is promoted to partnership or management. To this he
resolutely looks forward. He preserves the manners and
the principles which he brought from home untarnished; an
easy enough matter, since even in the farthest wilds, among
the roughest working men in Australia, a true gentleman's
mien and tone are always held in respect, which no man
loses save by his own act.
Say that he has a few years of hard work and privation,
he is sure to rise in life, and eventually, by dint of perseverance
and attention to detail, to become the owner of or
290partner in a station. His character for steadiness, efficiency,
and industry becomes known from one end of the district
to the other. And if those with whom he is temporarily
connected do not advance him, be sure that some neighbouring
proprietor in need of an active lieutenant will not lose the
opportunity.
The young man of less robust self-denial takes station life
after a very different fashion. His fixed idea has been from
the first that galloping about on horseback, smoking, shooting,
and drinking are the recognised pastoral industries by which
fortunes in Australia are made. He does not bother his head
about the science of sheep-breeding, or the management of
that capricious but profitable animal the merino. He forgets
messages. He overrides the station horses. He smokes
diligently, talks familiarly and plays cards with the men, from
whom he learns to swear profanely and acquires no useful
knowledge—on the contrary, much that is evil. On his
visits to the village or post-town he learns to drink spirits,
and thus lays the foundation of a dangerous habit, which, if
not checked, may destroy his after-life. At the end of his
two years' experience he is regarded as about on a level with
the ordinary rouseabout—hardly as good, certainly no better.
On making up his mind to leave for other employment, he is
told that he is heartily welcome to please himself.
Occasionally the unsuccessful gentleman, emigrant or
colonial, is not distinctly to blame for his fall in social
position. He has adopted a bush life, trusting vaguely to
be able to get on in one of the numerous ways of which he
has heard tell. He tries hard at first for situations suited to
his former position in life, finding, however, that no one is
in pressing need of an inexperienced youth not brought up
to work. Still, if strong and willing, he can earn ordinary
wages as a station hand. He learns how to manage the
routine work nearly as well as his comrades in the men's hut,
and by degrees, not being mentally persistent, he adopts the
tone and manner of the men who are his companions—not
at once, and not altogether, but after a year or two—to a
much greater extent than any one would think possible. In
a work of fiction some kindly squatter would free the poor
fellow from his rough, or let us say uneducated comrades,
but in real life no one would risk the experiment. He may
291have been deceived before. He would argue that though
the waif might be a gentleman by birth, it must have been
his own fault in some way that he was in his present position—most
likely drank, gambled, or had done something shady;
and this would be true in nine cases out of ten. If he
introduced Mr. Waif to his family, or took him into his
house if a bachelor, he might, of course, behave well for a
time, but one fine day, unable to withstand the temptation
of an open sideboard, would be found dead drunk or madly
intoxicated on his employer's return.
Gradually the unsuccessful one, after a year or two of
nomadic life, tramping it from one end of a colony to
another, begins to abandon the punctilious habits of his
early life. His speech shows signs of degeneration. He
talks of people indifferently as 'coves' or 'cards'; causerie
with him is 'pitching'; he refrains with difficulty from
expletives, and so on. His reading has not been kept up,
though, had he cared, it might have been. He is scented
unpleasantly with coarse tobacco, occasionally, alas! with the
too frequent 'nip' of alcohol. If he by any chance re-enters
civilised life, he shows in a dozen ways that he is no longer
in touch with it. He makes things uncomfortable for his
friends or companions, and is thoroughly convinced that he
is out of place himself.
A youngster of this type came to a squatter's station one
evening, carrying his 'swag' like any other tramp. The
owner knew that he was or had been a gentleman, but
apologised, as he had guests, for not asking him into the
house. He was too dirty to be quite exact, and neither in
raiment nor in other matters was he then fitted for the society
of ladies. So he had his supper and bed in the men's hut,
smoked his pipe over the fire with the man-cook, and turned
in, quite contented with his accommodation.
Sometimes, if fairly industrious and steady, the ex-tramp
makes his way to a managership, or even a share in a station,
where he recovers a portion of his earlier form. But he is
apt to be rough and careless to the end, which his English
friends attribute to the necessarily deteriorating influences of
colonial life.
Perhaps the saddest sight of all is the broken-down 'swell'
of maturer years, carrying his 'swag' along the road, sometimes
292a solitary 'traveller'—a name that has its own significance
in Australia—sometimes in company with other 'sundowners.'
He is free of the guild now, unluckily. They
neither resent his companionship, nor feel flattered by it;
in no way do they alter their mode of speech or action in
consequence. It is known that he has 'seen better days,' as
the phrase runs. If so, it is nobody's business but his own.
A certain amount of reticence characterises Australian bushmen,
which is not noticeable among their British comrades.
The nomadic habit, and the goldfields' experience—for nearly
every able-bodied man in Australia has graduated there—may
be held accountable for this trait. Travel is the true
civiliser, and in many respects supplies the place of the higher
education, teaching reserve, undemonstrativeness, and the
patient endurance of privations and dangers which cannot be
evaded.
So, though it is generally believed that Jack Somers or
Bill Brown was a gentleman (nothing, alas! will ever make or
keep him one again), he is treated by the master who employs
him, and the station hands or farm labourers who work with
him, exactly as the others—neither better nor worse. Generally
a smart, intelligent worker, whether a shearer, rouseabout,
boundary rider, road hand, what not, during the often protracted
periods when he is compulsorily sober. This is
secured by giving him no money (the more obvious necessaries
can be procured from the station store), until his term of
work be completed or his contract finished. Then he gets
his cheque, and short work he makes of it. For the nearest
bush public-house is to him a barrier fixed and impassable,
while there is a pound in his purse.
After all, Australia is perhaps the best country for the
fallen swell. A reasonable share of honest work is always open
to him, which, from the custom of the country, is not held to
be degrading, as it would be in Europe. He could not work in
the field in Britain, tend sheep, drive a team, break stones.
All these things he can do in Australia with but temporary
loss of prestige or social rank. He would find it next to
impossible to gain a living in the old country in any form of
day labour. Were he even to succeed in doing so, he would
be gazed and wondered at by the whole country-side. A man
of good family requested me to officially certify his identity
293for the security of his people at home, who were remitting
money to his credit. Roughly dressed was he—had evidently
been 'on the wallaby' recently. After telling me his name
and birth, he must have thought I looked doubtful, for he
said, 'I am the man I say; I'm not the Claimant.' That
great personage was then supplying England and Australia
with food for conversation. A book lay near me with a Latin
quotation on the frontispiece. This I slightly indicated; he
at once took the hint and translated it correctly.
'What have you been doing lately?' I inquired. His
hands, roughened and gnarled, with no make-believe manual
labour, assured me that he had been pretty continuously at
work of some sort.
'Well, station work mostly,' he returned answer. 'My last
job was cooking for a survey camp.'
'Was it for this that you graduated at Trinity College,
Dublin?' was my unspoken thought. That he drank hard
between times, poor fellow, was apparent to my experienced
eye. He received his money duly, which was, of course, 'blued'
like all previous remittances. I exchanged letters with the
friends who had written after him. I advised, if they were really
anxious for his return, that he should be placed on board ship,
but no money given to him till safe on blue water. What
historiettes of lapsed gentlefolk in the colonies might be
written! The Honourable Blank Blank, long past even the
middle passage of station work, who loafs about country
towns, taking work as ostler, or even 'boots' at the hotels,
ready to drink with any rough, and feebly subsisting upon
the reflection of former greatness, until he becomes too
useless for even such a position, is locked up for repeated
drunkenness, and finally dies in a gutter.
The 'cranky' long-bearded shepherd vegetates on a back-block
station, amid desert regions now becoming traditionary,
where wire fences are all unknown, or by dingoes rendered
ineffectual.
A row of books adorns his solitary hut, a weekly paper,
perhaps his sponge and ivory-backed brushes, curious-appearing
souvenirs of old days. He talks pleasantly enough to the
rare-appearing stranger, who is also a gentleman. The
British tourist, if a new arrival, rides off with pity in his heart,
possibly with some idea of aiding the hermit to return to his
294friends in England. If a colonist, he knows better; knows
that the old man has his half-yearly or annual 'break-out';
that he can no more inhabit the same dwelling as ardent
spirits without utter debasement than fly; that such will be
his life, without change or amendment, until he ends it in a
Benevolent Asylum, or, more probably, is found dead in his
hut. Then from his papers it will be discovered that 'Old
Jack' or 'Jindabyne Joe' was, once upon a time, Lieutenant
Harry Willoughby Howard of the—th Fusiliers, one of the
smartest subalterns in that distinguished and tolerably fast
regiment. What brought him here? How fared he so ill in
Australia, where blue blood always counts for something, the
Radical press notwithstanding? Heigho! These and other
questions may be answered some day, or they may never be.
The nearest magistrate holds an inquiry, sitting on a bench
outside of the lonely hut on the sandhill. The overseer counts
out his flock to a fresh hand, and the ex-Fusilier, younger
brother of one of the magnates of Blankshire, is carted into
the head station and decently buried, with the collie dog
as chief mourner, his grief being real and unaffected,
and his lamentations for the next few days touchingly
audible.
Having a favourite horse to put in harness in the early
goldfield days, I betook me to an establishment in Melbourne
where a brake was kept. Of course I mounted the box to
watch and perhaps assist in the interesting performance. When
the brakesman got up—a good-looking middle-aged man with
grey whiskers—if he was not a gentleman, and an ex-swell at
that, I had never seen one. From his cravat to his well-polished
boots—a neat foot, too—from his hat to his accurate
dogskin gloves, he was 'good form.' He might have walked
straight out of one of Whyte Melville's novels.
His 'hands,' in stable language, were perfection, and as he
and the brake-horse between them, with practised adroitness,
conducted the drag and my Zohrab, a slashing grey son of
Donald Caird, out of the yard and up Lonsdale Street, I
felt a measureless pity for the dear old man, who, doubtless
failing to score at Bendigo or Sandhurst, had come down to
this for a livelihood. Charmed with his conversation and
manners, I am afraid I prolonged the lesson unduly, for when
we returned my aristocratic friend was urgently required to
295school other young ones at a guinea per lesson. The
proprietor, a vulgar person, expressed his disapproval in
language unfit for publication. I remonstrated hotly, but the
dependent emigré said no word. I departed sadly, and never
saw him more. Melbourne was full of such derelicts in 'the
fifties.'
SHEARING IN RIVERINA, NEW SOUTH WALES
296
'Shearing begins to-morrow!' These apparently simple words
were spoken by Hugh Gordon, the manager of Anabanco
Station, in the district of Riverina, in the colony of New South
Wales, one Monday morning in the month of August. The
utterance had its significance to every member of a rather
extensive corps dramatique, awaiting the industrial drama
about to be performed.
A low sandhill, a few years since, had looked out over a
sea of grey plains, covered partly with grass, partly with
salsiferous bushes and herbs. Three huts built of the trunks
of the pine and roofed with the bark of the box-tree, and a
skeleton-looking cattle-yard with its high 'gallows' (a rude
timber arrangement whereon to hang slaughtered cattle), alone
broke the monotony of the plain-ocean. A comparatively
small herd of cattle, numbering two or three thousand, found
more than sufficient pasturage during the short winter and
spring, but were often compelled to migrate to mountain
pastures when the precarious water-stores of the 'Run' were
dried up. But, at most, half-a-dozen stock-riders and station
hands were ever needed for the purpose of managing the
herd, so inadequate in number and profitable occupation to
this vast area of grazing country.
But a little later, one of the chiefs of the pastoral interest—a
shepherd king, so to speak—of shrewdness, energy, and
capital—had seen, approved of, and purchased the Crown lease
of this waste kingdom. As if by magic, the scene changed.
Gangs of navvies appeared, wending their way across the silent
plain. Dams were made, wells were dug. Tons of fencing-wire
297were dropped on the sand by long lines of teams which
never ceased arriving. Sheep by thousands and tens of
thousands came grazing and cropping up to the erstwhile
lonely sandhill—now swarming with blacksmiths, carpenters,
engineers, fencers, shepherds, bullock-drivers—till the place
looked like a fair on the borders of Tartary.
Meanwhile everything was moving with calculated force and
cost, under the 'reign of law.' The seeming expense illustrated
the economic truth of doing all necessary work at once, rather
than by instalments. One hundred men for one day, rather
than one man for a hundred days. Results began to demonstrate
themselves. Within twelve months the dams were full,
the wells sending up their far-fetched, priceless water, the wire-fences
completed, the shepherds gone, and a hundred and
seventy thousand sheep were cropping the herbage of Anabanco.
Tuesday was the day fixed for the actual commencement of
the momentous, almost solemn transaction—the pastoral Hegira,
so to speak, as the time of most station events is calculated
with reference to it, as happening before or after shearing.
But before the first shot is fired which tells of the battle begun,
what raids and skirmishes, what reconnoitring and vedette duty
must take place!
First arrives the cook-in-chief to the shearers, with two
assistants, to lay in a few provisions for the week's consumption
of seventy able-bodied men. Now the cook of a large shearing
shed is a highly paid and irresponsible official. He is chosen
and provided by the shearers themselves. Payment is generally
arranged on the scale of half-a-crown a head weekly from each
shearer. For this sum he contracts to provide punctual and
effective cooking, paying out of his own pocket as many
marmitons as may be needful for that end, and must satisfy
the taste of his exacting and fastidious employers.
In the present case he confers with the storekeeper, Mr.
de Vere, a young gentleman of aristocratic connections, who is
thus gaining an excellent practical knowledge of the working
of a large station; and to this end has the store-keeping
department entrusted to him during shearing.
He is not, perhaps, quite fit for a croquet party as he stands
now, with a flour-scoop in one hand and a pound of tobacco
in the other. But he looks like a man at work, also like a
gentleman, as he is. 'Jack the Cook' thus addresses him:
298'Now, Mr. de Vere, I hope there's not going to be any
humbugging about my rations and things. The men are all
up in their quarters, and as hungry as free selectors. They've
been a-payin' for their rations for ever so long, and of course,
now shearin's on, they're good for a little extra.'
'All right, Jack,' returns De Vere good-humouredly; 'your
order was weighed out and sent away before breakfast. You
must have missed the cart. Here's the list. I'll read it out to
you—three bags flour, half a bullock, two bags sugar, a chest
of tea, four dozen of pickles, four dozen of jam, two gallons of
vinegar, five lbs. pepper, a bag of salt, plates, knives, forks,
ovens, frying-pans, saucepans, iron pots, and about a hundred
other things. You're to return all the cooking things safe, or
pay for them, mind that! You don't want anything more, do
you? Got enough for a regiment of cavalry, I should think.'
'Well, I don't know, sir. There won't be much left in a
week if the weather holds good,' makes answer the chief, as
one who thought nothing too stupendous to be accomplished
by shearers; 'but I knew I'd forgot something. As I'm here,
I'll take a few dozen boxes of sardines, and a case of pickled
salmon. The boys likes 'em, and, murder alive! haven't we
forgot the plums and currants; a hundredweight of each, Mr.
de Vere. They'll be crying out for plum-duff and currant-buns
for the afternoon, and bullying the life out of me if I
haven't a few trifles like. It's a hard life, surely, a shearers'
cook. Well, good-day, sir, you have 'em all down in the
book.'
Lest the reader should imagine that the rule of Mr. Gordon
at Anabanco was a reign of luxury and that waste which
tendeth to penury, let him be aware that shearers in Riverina
are paid at a certain rate, usually that of one pound per
hundred sheep shorn. They agree, on the other hand, to pay
for all supplies consumed by them, at certain prices fixed
before the shearing agreement is signed. Hence it is entirely
their own affair whether their mess bills are extravagant or
economical. They can have everything within the rather wide
range of the station store—pâtés de foie gras, ortolans, roast
ostrich, novels, top-boots, double-barrelled guns, if they like to
pay for them; with one exception—no wine, no spirits!
Neither are they permitted to bring these stimulants 'on
to the ground' for their private use. Grog at shearing?
299Matches in a powder-mill! It's very sad and bad; but our
Anglo-Saxon industrial champion cannot be trusted with the
fire-water. Navvies, men-of-war's men, soldiers, and shearers—fine
fellows all. But though the younger men might only
drink in moderation, the majority of the elders are utterly
without self-control, once in the front of temptation. And
wars, 'wounds without cause,' hot heads, shaking hands, delay,
and bad shearing, would be the inevitable result of spirits, à
la discrétion. So much is this a matter of certainty from
experience, that a clause is inserted and cheerfully signed in
most shearing agreements, 'that any man getting drunk or
bringing spirits on to the station during shearing, loses the
whole of the money earned by him.' The men know that the
restriction is for their benefit, as well as for the interest of
the master, and join in the prohibition heartily.
Let us give a glance at the small army of working-men
assembled at Anabanco—one out of hundreds of stations in
the colony of New South Wales, ranging from 100,000 sheep
downwards. There are seventy shearers; about fifty washers,
including the men connected with the steam-engine, boilers,
bricklayers, etc.; ten or twelve boundary riders, whose duty it
is to ride round the large paddocks, seeing that the fences are
intact, and keeping a general look-out over the condition of
the sheep; three or four overseers; half-a-dozen young gentlemen
acquiring a practical knowledge of sheep-farming, or, as it
is generally phrased, 'colonial experience,' a comprehensive
expression enough; a score or so of teamsters, with a couple
of hundred horses or bullocks waiting for the high-piled wool-bales,
which are loaded up and sent away almost as soon
as shorn; wool-sorters, pickers-up, pressers, yardsmen, extra
shepherds. It may easily be gathered from this outline what
an 'army with banners' is arrayed at Anabanco. While statistically
inclined, it may be added that the cash due for the
shearing alone (less the mess-bill) amounts to £17,000; for the
washing (roughly), £400, exclusive of provisions consumed,
hutting, wood, water, cooking, etc. Carriage of wool, £1500.
Other hands from £30 to £40 per week. All of which
disbursements take place within eight to twelve weeks after
the shears are in the first sheep.
Tuesday arrives, 'big with fate.' As the sun tinges the
far sky-line the shearers are taking a slight refection of coffee
300and currant-buns, to enable them to withstand the exhausting
interval between six A.M. and eight o'clock, when serious
breakfast occurs. Shearers diet themselves on the principle
that the more they eat the stronger they must be. Digestion,
as preliminary to muscular development, is left to take its
chance. They certainly do get through a tremendous amount
of work. The whole frame is at its utmost tension, early and
late. But the preservation of health is due to natural strength
of constitution rather than to their profuse and unscientific
diet. Half an hour after sunrise Mr. Gordon walks quietly
into the vast building which contains the sheep and their
shearers—called 'the shed,' par excellence. Everything is in
perfect cleanliness and order. The floor swept and smooth,
with its carefully planed boards of pale yellow aromatic pine.
Small tramways, with baskets for the fleeces, run the wool up
to the wool-tables, superseding the more general plan of handpicking.
At each side of the shed-floor are certain small
areas, four or five feet square, such space being found by
experience to be sufficient for the postures and gymnastics
practised during the shearing of a sheep. Opposite each
square is an aperture, communicating with a long, narrow,
paled yard, outside of the shed. Through this each man
pops his sheep when shorn, where he remains in company
with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted out.
This being done by the overseer or manager, supplies a check
upon hasty, unskilful work. The body of the woolshed,
floored with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with
the woolly victims. This enclosure is subdivided into minor
pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who
catch from it till the pen is empty. When this takes place,
a man detailed for the purpose refills it. As there are local
advantages, an equal distribution of places is made by lot.
On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr. Gordon
walks, with an air of calm authority, down the long aisle.
Seventy men, chiefly in their prime, the flower of the working-men
of the colony, they are variously gathered. England,
Ireland, and Scotland are represented in the proportion of
one-third of the number; the balance is composed of native-born
Australians.
Among these last—of pure Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic
descent—are to be seen some of the finest men, physically
301considered, the race is capable of producing. Taller than
their British-born brethren, with softer voices and more
regular features, they inherit the powerful frames and unequalled
muscular development of the breed. Leading lives
chiefly devoted to agriculture, they enjoy larger intervals of
leisure than are permissible to the labouring classes of
Europe. The climate is mild and favourable to health.
They have been accustomed from childhood to abundance
of the best food; opportunities of intercolonial travel are
common. Hence the Anglo-Australian labourer, without,
on the one hand, the sharpened eagerness which marks
his Transatlantic cousin, has yet an air of independence
and intelligence, combined with a natural grace of movement,
unknown to the peasantry of Britain.
An idea is prevalent that the Australians are, as a race,
physically inferior to the British. It is asserted that they
grow too fast, tend to height and slenderness, and do
not possess adequate stamina and muscle. This idea is
erroneous. The men reared in the cities on the sea-boards,
living sedentary lives in shops or counting-houses, are often
pallid and slight of form. Such are they who live under
similar conditions all over the world. But those youngsters
who have followed the plough on the upland farms, or lived
a wilder life on the stations of the far interior; who have had
their fill of wheaten bread, chops, and steaks since they could
walk, and sniffed up the free bush breezes from infancy, they
are men—
Stout of heart and ready of hand,
As e'er drove prey from Cumberland
—a business, I may remark, at which many of them would
have distinguished themselves.
Take Abraham Lawson, as he stands there in a natural
and unstudied attitude, six feet four in his stockings, wide-chested,
stalwart, with a face like that of a Greek statue.
Take Billy May, fair-haired, mild, insouciant, almost languid,
till you see him at work. Then, again, Jack Windsor, handsome,
saucy, and wiry as a bull-terrier; like him, with a
strong natural inclination for the combat; good for any man
of his weight or a trifle over, with the gloves or without.
It is curious to note how the old English practice of
302settling disputes with nature's weapons has taken root in
Australia. It would 'gladden the sullen souls of defunct
gladiators' to watch two lads, whose fathers had never
trodden Britain's soil, pull off their jackets, and go to work
'hammer and tongs' with the savage silence of the true island
type.
It is now seven o'clock. Mr. Gordon moves forward. As
he does so, every man leans towards the open door of the
pen, in front of which he stands. The bell sounds. With
the first stroke each one of the seventy men has sprung upon
a sheep; has drawn it out, placed its head across his knee,
and is working his shears, as if the 'last man out' was to be
flogged. Four minutes—James Steadman, who learned last
year, has shorn down one side of his sheep; Jack Holmes
and Gundagai Bill are well down the other side of theirs;
when Billy May raises himself with a jerking sigh, and
releases his sheep, perfectly clean—shorn from the nose to the
heels, through the aperture of his separate enclosure. With
the same effort apparently he calls out 'Wool!' and darts
upon another sheep. Drawing this second victim across his
knee, he buries his shear-point in the long wool of its neck.
A moment later (a lithe, eager boy having gathered up fleece
number one and tossed it into the tram-basket) he is half-way
down its side, the wool hanging in one fleece like a great
glossy mat, before you have done wondering whether he did
really shear the first sheep, or whether he had not a ready-shorn
one in his coat sleeve, like a conjurer. By this time
Lawson and Windsor, Jack Holmes and Gundagai Bill are
'out,' or finished, and the cry of 'Wool! wool!' seems to
run continuously up and down the long aisles of the shed,
like a single note upon some rude instrument. Now and
then the refrain is varied by 'Tar!' being shouted instead,
when a piece of skin is snipped off as well as the wool.
Great healing properties are attributed to this extract in the
shed. And if a shearer slice off a piece of flesh from his own
person, as occasionally happens, he gravely anoints it with the
universal remedy, and considers that the onus then lies with
Providence, there being no more that man can do. Though
little time is lost, the men are by no means up to the speed
which they will attain in a few days, when in full practice and
training. Their nerve and muscle will be then, so to speak,
303at concert-pitch, while sheep after sheep will be shorn with a
precision and celerity almost magical to the unprofessional
observer.
The reader may here be informed that speed and completeness
of denudation are the grand desiderata in shearing. The
employer thinks principally of the latter, the shearer of
the former. To adjust the proportion equitably is one of the
incomplete aspirations which torment humanity. Hence
the contest—old as human society—between labour and
capital.
This is the first day. According to old-established custom,
a kind of truce obtains. It is before the battle—the salut,
when no hasty word or too demonstrative action can be
suffered by the canons of good taste. Red Bill, Flash Jack,
Jem the Scooper, and other roaring blades, more famous for
expedition than faithful manipulation, are shearing to-day with
a painstaking precision, as of men to whom character is everything.
Mr. Gordon marches softly up and down, regarding
the shearers with a paternal and gratified expression, occasionally
hinting at slight improvements of style, or expressing
unqualified approval, as a sheep is turned out shaven rather
than shorn. All goes on well. Nothing is heard but expressions
of goodwill and enthusiasm for the general welfare. It
is a triumph of the dignity of labour.
One o'clock. Mr. Gordon moved to the bell and sounded
it. At the first stroke several men on their way to the pens
stopped abruptly, and began to put on their coats. One fellow
of an alert nature had just finished his sheep and was sharpening
his shears, when his eye caught Mr. Gordon's form in close
proximity to the final bell. With a bound like a wild-cat, he
reached the pen and drew out his sheep a bare second before
the first stroke, amidst the laughter and congratulations of his
comrades. Another man had his hand on the pen-gate at the
same instant, but by the Median law was compelled to return
sheepless. He was cheered, but ironically. Those whose
sheep were in an unfinished stage quietly completed them,
the others moving off to the dinner, where the board literally
smoked with abundance. An hour passed. The meal was
concluded; the smoke was over; and the more careful men
were back in the shed sharpening their shears by two o'clock.
Punctually at that hour the bell repeated its summons da
304capo. The warm afternoon gradually lengthened its shadows;
the shears clicked in tireless monotone; the pens filled and
became empty. The wool-presses yawned for the mountain
of fleeces which filled the bins in front of them, divided into
various grades of excellence, and continuously disgorged them,
neatly, cubically packed and branded.
At six o'clock the bell brought the day's work to a close.
The sheep of each man were counted in his presence, and
noted down with scrupulous care, the record being written in
full and hung up for public inspection in the shed next day.
This important ceremony over, master and men, manager,
labourers, and supernumeraries betook themselves to their
separate abodes, with such avoidance of delay that in five
minutes not a soul was left in or near the great building
lately so busy and populous, except the boys who were sweeping
up the floor. The silence of ages seems to fall and settle
upon it.
Next morning at a rather earlier hour every man is at his
post. Business is meant decidedly. Now commences the
delicate and difficult part of the superintendence which keeps
Mr. Gordon at his post in the shed nearly from daylight to
dark for from eight to ten weeks. During the first day he
has formed a sort of gauge of each man's temper and workmanship.
For now and henceforth the natural bias of each shearer
will appear. Some try to shear too fast, and in their haste
shear badly. Some are rough and savage with the sheep,
which do occasionally kick and become unquiet at critical
times, and, it must be confessed, are provoking enough.
Some shear fairly and handsomely to a superficial eye, but
commit the unpardonable offence of 'leaving wool on.' Some
are deceitful, shearing carefully when overlooked, but 'racing'
and otherwise misbehaving directly the eye of authority is
diverted. These and many other tricks and defects require
to be noted and abated, quietly but firmly, by the manager of
the shed—firmly, because evil would develop and spread
ruinously if not checked; quietly, because immense loss
might be incurred by a strike. Shearing differs from other
work in this wise—it is work against time, more especially in
Riverina. If the wool be not off the backs of the sheep before
November, all sorts of drawbacks and destructions supervene.
The spear-shaped grass seeds, specially formed as if in special
305collusion with the evil one, hasten to bury themselves in the
wool and even in the flesh of the tender victims. Dust rises
in red clouds from the unmoistened, betrampled meadows,
so lately verdurous and flower-spangled. From snowy white
to an unlovely bistre turn the carefully-washed fleeces,
causing anathemas from overseers and depreciation from
brokers. All these losses of temper, trouble, and money
become inevitable if shearing be protracted, it may be, beyond
a given week.
Hence, as in harvest with a short allowance of fair weather,
discipline must be tempered with diplomacy. Lose your
temper, and be over particular; off go Billy May, Abraham
Lawson, and half-a-dozen of your best men, making a weekly
difference of two or three thousand sheep for the remainder
of the shearing. Can you not replace them? Not so!
Every shed in Riverina will be hard at work during this
present month of September and for every hour of October.
Till that time not a shearer will come to your gate, except,
perhaps, one or two useless, characterless men. Are you to
tolerate bad workmanship? Not that either. But try all
other means with your men before you resort to harshness;
and be quite certain that your sentence is just, and that you
can afford the defection.
So our friend Mr. Gordon, wise from tens of thousands of
shorn sheep that have been counted out past his steady eye,
criticises temperately but watchfully. He reproves sufficiently,
but no more, any glaring fault; makes his calculation as to
who are really bad shearers, and can be discharged without
loss to the commonwealth; or who shear fairly and can be
coached up to a decent average. One division, slow, and
good only when slow, have to be watched lest they emulate
'the talent,' and so come to grief. Then 'the talent' has to
be mildly admonished from time to time lest they force the
pace, set a bad example, and lure the other men on to
'racing.' This last leads to slovenly shearing, ill-usage of the
sheep, and general dissatisfaction.
Tact, temper, patience, and firmness are each and all
necessary attributes in that captain of industry who has the
delicate and responsible task of superintending a large woolshed.
Hugh Gordon had shown all in such proportion as
would have made him a distinguished person anywhere, had
306fortune not adjusted for him this particular profession. Calm
with the consciousness of strength, he was considerate in
manner as in nature, until provoked by glaring dishonesty or
incivility. Then the lion part of his nature awoke, so that
it commonly went ill with the aggressor. As this was matter
of public report, he had little occasion to spoil the repose of
his bearing. Day succeeds day, and for a fortnight the
machinery goes on smoothly and successfully. The sheep
arrive at an appointed hour by detachments and regiments at
the wash-pen. They depart thence, like good boys on
Saturday night, redolent of soap and water, and clean to a
fault—entering the shed white and flossy as newly-combed
poodles, to emerge on the way back to their pasturage, slim,
delicate, agile, with a bright black A legibly branded with tar
on their paper-white skins.
The Anabanco world—stiffish but undaunted—is turning
out of bed one morning. Ha! what sounds are these? and
why does the room look so dark? Rain, as I'm alive!
'Hurrah!' says Master Jack Bowles, one of the young
gentlemen. He is learning (more or less) practical sheep-farming,
preparatory to having (one of these days) an
Anabanco of his own. 'Well, this is a change, and I'm not
sorry, for one,' quoth Mr. Jack. 'I'm stiff all over. No one
can stand such work long. Won't the shearers growl? No
shearing to-day, and perhaps none to-morrow either.' Truth
to tell, Mr. Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his
ingenuous bosom. Some of the shearers grumble at being
stopped, 'just as a man was earning a few shillings.' Those
who are in top pace and condition don't like it. But to many
of the rank and file—working up to and a little beyond their
strength—with whom swelled wrists and other protests of
nature are becoming apparent, it is a relief. They are glad
of the respite. At dinner-time all the sheep in the sheds, put
in overnight in anticipation of such a contingency, are reported
shorn. All hands then are idle for the rest of the day. The
shearers dress and avail themselves of various resources.
Some go to look at their horses, now in clover or its
equivalent, in the Riverina graminetum. Some play cards,
others wash or mend their clothes. A large proportion of the
Australians, having armed themselves with paper, envelopes,
and a shilling's worth of stamps from the store, bethink
307themselves of neglected or desirable correspondents. Many
a letter for Mrs. Leftalone, Wallaroo Creek, or Miss Jane Sweetapple,
Honeysuckle Flat, as the case may be, will find its way
into the post-bag to-morrow. A pair of the youngsters are having
a round or two with the gloves; while to complete the variety
of recreations compatible with life at a woolshed, a selected
troupe are busy in the comparative solitude of that building, at
a rehearsal of a tragedy and a farce, with which they intend, the
very next rainy day, to astonish the population of Anabanco.
At the home station a truce to labour's 'alarms' is proclaimed,
except in the case and person of Mr. De Vere. So
far is he from participation in the general holiday, that he
finds the store thronged with shearers, washers, and 'knockabout
men,' who, being let loose, think it would be nice to
go and buy something. He therefore grumbles slightly at
having no rest like other people.
'That's all very fine,' says Mr. Jack Bowles, who, seated
on a case, is smoking a large meerschaum and mildly regarding
all things; 'but what have you got to do when we're all
hard at work at the shed?' with an air of great importance
and responsibility.
'That's right, Mr. Bowles,' chimes in one of the shearers;
'stand up for the shed. I never see a young gentleman work
as hard as you do.'
'Bosh!' growls De Vere; 'as if anybody couldn't gallop
about from the shed to the wash-pen, and carry messages,
and give half of them wrong! Why, Mr. Gordon said the
other day he should have to take you off and put on a
Chinaman—that he couldn't make more mistakes.'
'All envy and malice and t'other thing, De Vere, because
you think I'm rising in the profession,' returns the good-natured
Bowles. 'Mr. Gordon's going to send 20,000 sheep,
after shearing, to the Lik Lak paddock, and he said I should
go in charge.'
'Charge be hanged!' laughs De Vere (with two very bright-patterned
Crimean shirts, one in each hand, which he offers to
a tall young shearer for inspection). 'There's a well there,
and whenever either of the two men, of whom you'll have
charge, gets sick or runs away, you'll have to work the whim
in his place, till another man's sent out, if it's a month.'
This appalling view of station promotion rather startles Mr.
308Bowles, who applies himself to his meerschaum, amid the
ironical comments of the shearers. However, not easily
daunted, or 'shut up,' according to the more familiar station
phrase, he rejoins, after a brief interval of contemplation,
that 'accidents will happen, you know, De Vere, my boy—apropos
of which moral sentiment, I'll come and help you in
your dry-goods business; and then, look here, if you get ill or
run away, I'll have a profession to fall back upon.' This is
held to be a Roland of sufficient pungency for De Vere's
Oliver. Every one laughed. And the two youngsters betook
themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous
contents of the store: tulip beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts,
boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom
salts, pipes, pickles, pain-killer, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pills,
sardines, saddles, shears, and sauces; in fact, everything which
every kind of man might want, and which apparently every
man did want, for large and various were the purchases, and
great the flow of conversation. Finally, after everything had
been severely and accurately debited to the purchasers, the
store was cleared and locked up. A store is a necessity of a
large station; not by any means because of the profit upon
goods sold, but it obviously would be bad economy for old
Bill the shepherd, or Barney the bullock-driver, to visit the
next township, from ten to twenty miles distant, as the case
may be, every time the former wanted a pound of tobacco, or
the latter a pair of boots. They might possibly obtain these
necessary articles as good in quality, as cheap in price. But
there are wolves in that wood, oh, my weak brothers! In
every town dwells one of the 'sons of the giant'—the Giant
Grog—red-eyed, with steel muscles and iron claws; once in
these, which have held many and better men to the death,
Barney nor Bill emerges not, save pale, fevered, nerveless, and
impecunious. So arose the station store. Barney befits himself
with boots without losing his feet; Bill fills his pockets
with match-boxes and smokes the pipe of sobriety, virtuous
perforce till his carnival, after shearing.
The next day was wet, and threatened broken weather.
Matters were not too placid with the shearers. A day or two
for rest is all very well, but continuous wet weather means
compulsory idleness, and gloom succeeds repose; for not
only are all hands losing time and earning no money, but
309they are, to use the language of the stable, 'eating their heads
off' the while. The rather profuse mess and general expenditure,
which caused little reflection when they were
earning at the rate of two or three hundred a year, became
unpleasantly suggestive now that all was going out and
nothing coming in. Hence loud and deep rose the anathemas,
as the discontented men gazed sadly or wrathfully at the
misty sky.
A few days' showery weather having well-nigh driven our
shearers to desperation, out comes the sun in all his glory.
He is never far away or very faint in Riverina.
All the pens are filled for the morrow; very soon after the
earliest sunbeams, the bell sounds its welcome summons, and
the whole force tackles to the work with an ardour proportioned
to the delay, every man working as if for the ransom of
his family from slavery. These men work, spurred on by the
double excitement of acquiring social reputation and making
money rapidly. Not an instant is lost; not a nerve, limb, or
muscle doing less than the hardest taskmaster could flog out
of a slave. Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his
sheep, walk quietly out, and not appearing for a couple of
hours, or perhaps not again during the day. Do not put him
down as a sluggard; be assured that he has tasked Nature
dangerously hard, and has only just given in before she does.
Look at that silent, slight youngster, with a bandage round
his swollen wrist. Every 'blow' of the shears is agony to
him, yet he disdains to give in, and has been working 'in
distress' for hours. The pain is great, as you can see by the
flush which surges across his brown face, yet he goes on
manfully to the last sheep, and endures to the very verge of
fainting.
A change in the manner and tone of the shed is apparent
towards the end of the day. It is now the ding-dong of the
desperate fray, when the blood of the fierce animal man is up,
when mortal blows are exchanged, and curses float upwards
with the smoke and dust. The ceaseless clicking of the
shears—the stern earnestness of the men, toiling with feverish,
tireless energy—the constant succession of sheep shorn and
let go, caught and commenced—the occasional savage oath or
passionate gesture, as a sheep kicked and struggled with
perverse, delaying obstinacy—the cuts and stabs, with
310attendant effusion of blood, both of sheep and shearers—the
brief decided tones of Mr. Gordon, in repression or command—all
told the spectator that tragic action was introduced into
the performance; indeed, one of the minor excitements of
shearing was then and there transacted. Mr. Gordon had
more than once warned a dark, sullen-looking man that he
did not approve of his style of shearing. He was temporarily
absent, and on his return found the same man about to let
go a sheep, whose appearance, as a shorn wool-bearing
quadruped, was painful and discreditable in the extreme.
'Let your sheep go, my man,' said he, in a tone which
arrested the attention of the shearers; 'but don't trouble
yourself to catch another.'
'Why not?' said the delinquent sulkily.
'You know very well why not!' said Gordon, walking
closely up to him, and looking straight at him with eyes that
began to glitter. 'You've had fair warning; you've not
chosen to take it. Now you can go!'
'I suppose you'll pay a man for the sheep he's shorn?'
growled out the ruffian.
'Not one shilling until after shearing. You can come
then, if you like,' answered Mr. Gordon with perfect
distinctness.
The bully looks savage; but the tall, powerful frame and
steady eye were not inviting for personal arbitration of the
matter in hand. He puts up his two pairs of shears, takes up
his coat, and walks out of the shed. The time was past
when Red Bill or Terrible Dick (ruffians whom a sparse
labour market rendered necessary evils) would have flung
down his shears on the floor and told the manager that if he
didn't like that shearing he could shear his —— sheep
himself and be hanged to him; or, on refusal of instant
payment, would have proposed to bury his shears in the
intestines of his employer, by way of adjusting the balance
between Capital and Labour. Wild tales are told of woolshed
rows. One squatter at least was stabbed mortally with
that fatal and too convenient weapon, a shear-blade.
The man thus summarily dealt with could, like most of his
companions, shear very well if he took pains. Keeping to a
moderate number of sheep, his workmanship could be good;
but he must needs try and keep up with Billy May or
311Abraham Lawson, who can shear from a hundred to a
hundred and thirty sheep per day, and do them beautifully.
So in 'racing' he works hastily and badly, cuts the skin of his
luckless sheep, and leaves wool here and there on them,
grievous and exasperating to behold. So sentence of expulsion
goes forth fully against him. Having arrayed himself for the
road, he makes one more effort for a settlement and some
money wherewith to pay for board and lodgings on the road.
Only to have a mad carouse at the nearest township, however;
after which he will tell a plausible story of his leaving
the shed on account of Mr. Gordon's temper, and avail
himself of the usual free hospitality of the bush to reach
another shed. He addresses Mr. Gordon with an attempt
at conciliation and deference:
'It seems very 'ard, sir, as a man can't get the trifle of
money coming to him, which I've worked 'ard for.'
'It's very hard you won't try and shear decently,' retorts
Mr. Gordon, by no means conciliated. 'Leave the shed!'
Ill-conditioned rascal as he is, he has a mate or travelling-companion
in whose breast exists some rough ideas of fidelity.
He now takes up the dialogue.
'I suppose if Jim's shearing don't suit, mine won't either.'
'I did not speak to you,' answered Mr. Gordon, as calmly
as if he had expected the speech; 'but of course you can
go too.' He said this with an air of studied unconcern, as if
he would rather like a dozen more men to knock off work.
The two men walk out; but the epidemic does not spread;
and several take the lesson home and mend their ways
accordingly.
The weather is now splendid. Not a cloud specks the
bright blue sky. The shearers continue to work at the same
express-train pace; fifty bales of wool roll every day from the
wool-presses; as fast as they reach that number they are
loaded upon one of the numerous drays and waggons which
have been waiting for weeks. Tall brown men have been
recklessly cutting up hides for the last fortnight, wherewith
to lash the bales securely. It is considered safer practice to
load wool as soon as may be; fifty bales represent about a
thousand pounds sterling. In a building, however secure,
should a fire break out, a few hundred bales are easily burned;
but once on the dray, this much-dreaded edax rerum in a
312dry country has little chance. The driver, responsible to the
extent of his freight, generally sleeps under his dray; hence
both watchman and insulation are provided.
The unrelaxing energy with which work is pushed at this
stage is exciting and contagious. At or before daylight every
soul in the great establishment is up. The boundary riders
are always starting off for a twenty or thirty mile ride, and
bringing tens of thousands of sheep to the wash-pen; at that
huge lavatory, there is splashing and soaking all day with an
army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight till dark, or
used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and needful
food. At nine o'clock P.M. luxurious dreamless sleep obtains,
given only to those whose physical powers have been taxed to
the utmost, and who can bear without injury the daily tension.
Everything and everybody is in splendid working order,
nothing is out of gear. Rapid and regular as a steam-engine
the great host of toilers moves onward daily, with a march
promising an early completion. Mr. Gordon is not in high
spirits, for so cautious and far-seeing a captain rarely feels
himself so independent of circumstances as to indulge in that
reckless mood, but much satisfied with the prospect. Whew!
the afternoon darkens, and the night is given over to waterspouts
and hurricanes, as it appears. Next day is raw, gusty,
with chill heavy showers, drains to be cut, roofs to be seen to,
shorn sheep shivering, washers all playing pitch-and-toss,
shearers sulky; everybody but the young gentlemen wearing an
injured expression of countenance. 'Looks as if it would
rain for a month,' says Long Jack. 'If we hadn't been delayed,
might have had the shearing over by this.' Reminded that
there are 50,000 sheep yet remaining to be shorn, and that
by no possibility could they have been finished; answers, 'He
supposes so, always the same, everything sure to go agin the
pore man.' The weather does not clear up. Winter seems
to have taken thought, and determined to assert his rights
even in this land of eternal summer. The shed is filled, and
before the sheep so kept dry are shorn, down comes the rain
again. Not a full day's shearing for ten days. Then the
clouds disappear as if the curtain of a stage had been rolled
up, and lo! the golden sun, fervid and impatient to obliterate
the track of winter.
On the first day after the recommencement, matters go
313much as usual. Steady work and little talk; every one is
apparently anxious to make up for lost time. But on the
second morning after breakfast, when the bell sounds, instead
of the usual cheerful dash at the sheep, every man stands
silent and motionless in his place. Some one uttered the
words 'Roll up!' Then the seventy men converge, and
slowly, but with one impulse, walk to the end of the shed,
where stands Mr. Gordon.
The concerted action of any large body of men bears with
it an element of power which commands respect. The
weapons of force and number are theirs; at their option to
wield with or without mercy. At one period of Australian
colonisation a superintendent in Mr. Gordon's position might
have had good ground for uneasiness. Mr. Jack Bowles sees
in it an émeute of a democratic and sanguinary nature;
regrets deeply his absent revolver, but draws up to his leader,
prepared to die by his side. That calm centurion feels no
such serious misgivings. He knows there had been dire
grumbling among the shearers, in consequence of the weather.
He knows of malcontents among them. He is prepared for
some sort of demand on their part, and has concluded to
make moderate concessions. So, looking cheerfully at the
men, he quietly awaits the deputation. As they near him
there is some hesitation; then three delegates come to the
front. These are old Ben, Abraham Lawson, and Billy May.
Ben Thornton had been selected from his age and long experience
of the rights and laws of the craft. A weather-beaten,
wiry old Englishman, his face and accent, darkened as the
former is by the Australian summers of half a century, still
retain the trace of his native Devonshire. It is his boast
that he had shorn for forty years, and as regularly 'knocked
down' (or spent in a single debauch) his shearing money.
Lawson represents the small free-holders, being a steady,
shrewd fellow, and one of the fastest shearers. Billy May
stands for the fashion and 'talent,' being the 'Ringer,' or
fastest shearer of the whole assembly, and as such truly admirable
and distinguished.
'Well now, men,' quoth Mr. Gordon, cheerily meeting
matters half-way, 'what's it all about?' The younger delegates
look at old Ben, who, now that it was 'demanded of him
to speak the truth,' or such dilution thereof as might seem
314most favourable to the interests of the shed, found a difficulty,
like many wiser men, about his exordium.
'Well, Muster Gordon, look'ee here, sir. The weather's
been summat awful, and clean agin' shearin'. We've not
been earning our grub, and——'
'So it has,' answered the manager, 'so it has; but can I
help the weather? I'm as anxious as you are to have the
shearing over quickly. We're both of us of one mind about
that, eh?'
'That's right enough, sir,' strikes in Abraham Lawson,
feeling that Ben was getting the worst of the argument, and
was moreover far less fluent than usual, probably from being
deprived of the aid of the customary expletives; 'but we're
come to say this, sir, that the season's turned out very wet
indeed; we've had a deal of broken time, and the men feel it
hard to be paying for a lot of rations, and hardly earning
anything. We're shearing the sheep very close and clean.
You won't have 'em done no otherways. Not like some sheds
where a man can "run" a bit and make up for lost time.
Now, we've all come to think this, sir, that if we're to go on
shearing the sheep well, and stick to them, so as to get them
done before the dust and grass-seed come in, you ought to
make us some allowance. We know we've agreed for so
much a hundred, and all that. Still, the season's turned out
so out-and-out bad, and we hope you'll consider it and make
it up to us somehow.'
'Never knew a worse year,' corroborated Billy May, who
thought it indispensable to say something; 'haven't made
enough, myself, to pay the cook.'
This was not strictly true, at any rate, as to Master Billy's
own earnings; he being such a remarkably fast shearer (and
good withal), that he had always a respectable sum credited
to him for his day's work, even when many of the slower men
came off short enough. However, enough had been said to
make Mr. Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were
dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the
conclusion that some concession, not mentioned in their
bond, should come from the side of Capital to that of Labour.
Whether wages, interest of capital, share of profits or reserved
fund, they knew not, nor cared. This was their stand. And
being Englishmen they intended to abide by it.
315The manager had considered the situation before it actually
arose. He now rapidly took in the remaining points of debate.
The shearers had signed a specific agreement for a stipulated
rate of payment, irrespective of the weather. By the letter of
the law they had no case. Whether they made little or much
profit was not his affair. But he was a just and kindly man,
as well as reasonably politic. They had shorn well, and the
weather had been discouraging. He knew, too, that an abrupt
denial might cause a passive mutiny, if not a strike. If they
set themselves to thwart him, it was in their power to shear
badly, to shear slowly, and to force him to discharge many of
them. He might have them fined, perhaps imprisoned by the
police court. Meanwhile how could shearing go on? Dust
and grass-seeds would soon be upon them. He resolved on a
compromise, and spoke out at once in a decided tone, as the
men gathered yet more closely around him.
'Look here, all of you! You know well that I'm not bound
to find you in good shearing weather. Still, I'm aware that the
season has been against you; you have shorn pretty well, so
far, though I've had to make examples, and am quite ready to
make more. What I am willing to do is this: to every man
who works on till the finish, and shears to my satisfaction, I
will make a fair allowance in the ration account. That is, I
will make no charge for the beef. Does that suit you? There
was a chorus of 'All right, sir, we're satisfied.' 'Mr. Gordon
always does the fair thing,' etc. And work was immediately
resumed with alacrity.
The clerk of the weather, too gracious even in these regions,
as far as the absence of rain is concerned, became steadily
propitious.
Cloudless skies and a gradually ascending thermometer
were the signs that spring was changing into summer. The
splendid herbage ripened and dried; patches of bare earth
began to be discernible amid the late thick-swarded pastures,
dust to rise, and cloud-pillars of sand to float and eddy—the
desert genii of the Arab. But the work went on at a high rate
of speed, outpacing the fast-coming summer; and before any
serious disaster arose, the last flock was 'on the battens,' and
amid ironical congratulations the 'cobbler' (or last sheep) was
seized, and stripped of his dense and difficult fleece. In ten
minutes the vast woolshed, lately echoing with the ceaseless
316click of the shears, the jests, the songs, the oaths of the rude
congregation, was silent and deserted. The floors were swept,
the pens closed, the sheep on their way to a distant paddock.
Not a soul remains about the building but the pressers, who
stay to work at the rapidly lessening piles of fleece in the bins,
or a meditative teamster who sits musing on a wool-bale,
absorbed in a calculation as to when his load will be
made up.
It is sundown, a rather later time of closing than usual, but
rendered necessary by the possibility of the grand finale. The
younger men troop over to the hut, larking like schoolboys.
Abraham Lawson throws a poncho over his broad shoulders,
lights his pipe, and strides along, towering above the rest, erect
and stately as a guardsman. Considerably more than you or
I, reader, would have been, had we shorn a hundred and thirty-four
sheep, as he has done to-day. Billy May has shorn a
hundred and forty-two, and he puts his hand on the four-foot
paling fence of the yard and vaults over it like a deer, preparatory
to a swim in the creek. At dinner you will see
them all, with fresh Crimeans and jerseys, clean, comfortable,
and in grand spirits. Next morning is settling day. The
book-keeping department at Anabanco being severely correct,
all is in readiness. Each man's tally, or number of sheep
shorn, has been entered daily to his credit. His private and
personal investments at the store have been as duly debited.
The shearers, as a corporation, have been charged with the
multifarious items of their rather copious mess-bill. This sum-total
is divided by the number of the shearers, the extract
being the amount for which each man is liable. This sum
varies in its weekly proportion, at different sheds. With an
extravagant cook, or cooks, the weekly bill is often alarming.
When the men and their functionary study economy, it may
be kept reasonably low.
The men have been sitting or standing about the office for
half an hour, when Mr. Jack Bowles rushes out and shouts,
'William May.' That young person, excessively clean, attired
in a quiet tweed suit, with his hair cut correctly short, advances
with an air of calm intrepidity, and faces Mr. Gordon, now
seated at a long table, wearing a judicial expression of
countenance.
317'Well, May! here's your account:—
So many sheep at £1 per 100
£
Cook, so many weeks
£
Shearing store account
Private store account
———
———
Total
£
======
Is the tally of your sheep right?'
'Oh, I daresay it's all right, Mr. Gordon. I made it so and
so; about ten less.'
'Well, well; ours is correct, no doubt. Now, I want to
make up a good subscription for the hospital this year. How
much will you give? You've done pretty well, I think.'
'Put me down a pound, sir.'
'Very well, that's fair enough. If every one gives what they
can afford, you men will always have a place to go to when
you're hurt or laid up. See, I put your name down, and you'll
see it in the published list. Now, about the shearing, May.
I consider that you have done your work excellently well, and
behaved well all through. You're a fast shearer, but you shear
closely, and don't knock your sheep about. I therefore do
not charge you for any part of your meat bill, and I pay you
at the rate of half-a-crown a hundred for all your sheep, over
and above your agreement. Will that do?'
'Very well indeed, and I'm much obliged to you, Mr.
Gordon.'
'Well, good-bye, May. Always call when you're passing,
and if any work is going on you'll get your share. Here's
your cheque. Send in Lawson.' Exit May in high spirits,
having cleared about three pounds per week during the whole
time of shearing, and having lived a far from unpleasant life,
indeed akin to that of a fighting cock, from the commencement
to the end of that period.
Lawson's interview may be described as having similar
results. He also was a first-class shearer, though not so
artistic as the gifted Billy. Jack Windsor's saucy blue eyes
twinkled merrily as he returned to his companions, and
incontinently leaped into the saddle on his wild-eyed colt.
After these worthies came a shearer named Jackson. He
belonged to quite a different class; he could shear well if
318he pleased, but had a rooted disbelief that honesty was the
best policy, and a fixed determination to shear as many sheep
as he could get the manager to pass. By dint of close
watching, constant reprimand, and occasional 'raddling'
(marking badly shorn sheep and refusing to count them),
Mr. Gordon had managed to tone him down to average
respectability of execution; still he was always uneasily
aware that whenever his eye was not upon him, Jackson
was doing what he ought not to do, with might and main.
He had indeed kept him on from sheer necessity, but he
intended none the less to mark his opinion of him.
'Come in, Jackson. Your tally is so and so. Is that
right?'
Jackson.—'I suppose so.'
'Cook and store account, so much; shearing account so
much.'
Jackson.—'And a good deal too.'
'That is your affair,' said Mr. Gordon, sternly enough.
'Now, look here, you're in my opinion a bad shearer and a
bad man. You have given me a great deal of trouble, and
I should have kicked you out of the shed weeks ago, if I had
not been short of men. I shall make a difference between
you and those who have tried to do their best; I make you
no allowance of any sort; I pay you by the strict agreement;
there's your cheque. Now, go!'
Jackson goes out with a very black countenance. He
mutters, with an oath, that, if he'd known how he was going
to be served 'he'd 'a "blocked" 'em a little more.' He is
believed to have been served right, and he secures no
sympathy whatever. Working-men of all classes in Australia
are shrewd and fair judges generally. If an employer does
his best to mete out justice, he is always appreciated and
supported by the majority. These few instances will serve as
a description of the whole process of settling with the shearers.
The horses have been got in. Great catching and saddling-up
has taken place all the morning. By the afternoon the whole
party are dispersed to the four winds: some, like Abraham
Lawson and his friends, to sheds 'higher up,' in a colder
climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From
these they will pass to others, until the last flocks in the
'mountain runs' are shorn. Those who have not farms of
319their own then betake themselves to reaping. Billy May and
Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back themselves against
time in the wheat-field as on the shearing-floor. Harvest over,
they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they commence
to visit their friends and repay themselves for their toils by a
liberal allowance of rest and recreation.
Old Ben and a few other specimens of the olden time get
no further than the nearest public-house. Their cheques are
handed to the landlord, and a 'sdubendous and derrible spree'
sets in. At the end of a week or ten days, that worthy informs
them that they have received liquor to the amount of their
cheques—something over a hundred pounds—save the mark!
They meekly acquiesce, as is their custom. The landlord
generously presents them with a glass of grog each, and they
take the road for the next shed.
The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a
smaller and less regarded force, file up. They number some
forty men. Nothing more than fair bodily strength, willingness,
and obedience being required in their case, they are more
easy to get and replace than shearers. They are a varied and
motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a
New Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight,
neat, quiet individual. He had been a lieutenant in a line
regiment. The lad in the rear was a Sandhurst cadet. Then
came two navvies and a New Zealander, five Chinamen, a
Frenchman, two Germans, Tin Pot, Jerry, and Wallaby—three
aboriginal blacks. There are no invidious distinctions
as to caste, colour, or nationality. Every one is a man and
a brother at sheep-washing. Wage, one pound per week;
wood, water, tents, and food provided. Their accounts are
simple: so many weeks, so many pounds; store accounts, so
much. Hospital? Well, five shillings. Cheque; good-morning.
The wool-pressers, the fleece-rollers, the fleece-pickers,
the yardsmen, the washers' cooks, the hut cooks, the spare
shepherds—all these and other supernumeraries, inevitable at
shearing-time, having been paid off, the snowstorm of cheques
which has been fluttering all day comes to an end. Mr.
Gordon and the remaining sous-officiers go to rest that night
with much of the mental strain removed, which has been
telling on every waking moment for the last two months.
The long train of drays and waggons, with loads varying
320from twenty to forty-five bales, has been moving off in
detachments since the commencement. In a day or two
the last of them will have rolled heavily away. The 1400
bales, averaging three and a half hundredweight, are distributed,
slow journeying, along the road, which they mark from afar,
or standing huge and columnar, like guide tumuli, from
Anabanco to the waters of the Murray. Between the two
points, a hundred and fifty miles, there is neither a hill nor
a stone. All is one vast monotonous sea of plain—at this
season a prairie-meadow exuberant of vegetation; in the late
summer, or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a
dry winter, dusty and herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of
miles.
Silence falls on the plains and waters of Anabanco for the
next six months. The woolshed, the wash-pen, and all the
huts connected with them are lone and voiceless as caravanserais
in a city of the plague.
ANCIENT SYDNEY
321
Our good barque anchored in Launceston harbour in 1831—about
the same year, by the way, in which Marcus Clarke's
dream-ship, the Malabar, ended her eventful voyage to the
same port. The writer's father owned and commanded the
vessel. Our steerage passengers were of the same class as
those of the Malabar, being a draft of convicts, in process of
deportation to the strange South land, there to undergo
experimental discipline, which to some meant probationary
industry—the path to a prospective fortune; to others, a
slave's dread life, a felon's shameful death.
Ruffians doubtless cursed and caballed among the two
hundred prisoners which crowded the lower deck, but they
were in a minority. A herd of luckless peasants constituted
the main body; found guilty of rick-burning and machine-breaking
only—crimes common enough in England, before
the repeal of the corn-laws.
Their offences had been but the ignorant, instinctive protest
of Labour against Capital; less dangerous far than the organised
communism of the present day. Poachers and petty larcenists,
with other humble criminals, completed the list. For the most
part they were a timid and obedient company, cowed and
unresisting, incapable of planning mutiny or revenge. Our
family party consisted of two tiny sisters and myself, my mother,
and our nursemaid—a resolute, sterling Englishwoman, destined
in days to come to be the best friend our childhood could have
found in the new world or the old. The ordinary military
guard, so many rank and file, with their officers, together
with the Surgeon-Superintendent, had been detailed for the
duty of ensuring discipline and the safety of the ship.
322It may well have been that among the band of exiles were
some unjustly sentenced, mixed up accidentally with a crowd
of excited rustics engaged in unlawful deeds—wondering
spectators rather than actors. Such a victim was probably the
unhappy Annetts, a vacant-faced farm labourer, from Essex or
Dorset, whose wife, accompanied by their two children, came
daily to see him before the ship sailed.
I seem to remember the wretched group, though most
probably it was my good nurse's description that imprinted it
indelibly on my memory.
There would they sit, hour after hour, bathed in tears—he,
with the irons on his limbs and the ugly prison garb; she
almost a girl, with traces of rustic beauty, as he was hardly
more than a boy—holding each other's hands and weeping
silently for hours; then, sobbing in paroxysms of lamentation,
both repeatedly declaring his innocence, the children wondering
gravely at the strange surroundings, at times mingling their
tears with those of their parents. It was a sight to touch the
heart of the sternest. Then the last agonised parting, when
the fainting woman was carried on shore, when the hopeless
outcast watched his native land recede, instinctively aware that
he gazed on it for the last time.
Is there such a physiological process as a broken heart?
It would seem so, even in this world of lightly-borne sorrows
and forgotten joys. He, at least, was not thus fashioned,
stolid peasant as he seemed to outward view, untaught,
uncared-for, born to the plough and the monotonous labour of
the farm animals, which in his undeveloped intelligence he so
closely resembled. But their fidelity to the heart's deepest
feelings was rooted in his being. He never raised his head
afterwards, as the phrase goes. He moved and spoke, went
through the ordinary motions of humanity, as in a dream.
Day by day he pined and wasted; in little more than a month,
from no particular ailment, he died and found burial in that
mysterious main which before his sentence he had never seen.
The only other death on board was that of the second mate,
a fine young seaman named Keeling. Strange to say, he had
a presentiment that drowning would be the manner of his end.
He would say as much, on one occasion telling us that he
was one of three brothers. Two had been lost at sea. He
knew the same fate was in store for him. He even put his
323head in a bucket of water once, and held it there, 'to see how
it felt.' He was strong, active, temperate, and a smart officer.
One day, in calm weather, when spearing fish from the dolphin-striker,
he lost his balance and fell overboard. The ship had
way on, though the breeze was light. He was a good swimmer;
a boat was instantly lowered. I believe that my recollection of
seeing him rise and fall upon the waves, far astern of the vessel,
is accurate. The boat rapidly nears him—swimming strongly
and easily supporting himself. It turns for a moment, shutting
him out from sight. A man leans over to grasp him. Why
do they commence to pull round in circles? Why can we not
see the rescued man taken into the boat? After an interval
which appears terribly long, the boat comes back to the ship
without him. At the very moment of rescue a wave drove the
boat stem on. The keel struck him on the head. He sank
like a stone, never being visible to the boat's crew afterwards.
Thus was his doom accomplished.
Though our passengers did not resemble those of the
Malabar, we boasted a similar military force. The Surgeon-Superintendent
was a much-travelled, cultured man. The
Major and Subalterns in charge of the detachment were
agreeable personages; fortunately they were not required to
act in any military capacity beyond causing guards to be
strictly kept. Had the prisoners even been other than they
were, their chance in rising would have been small, having to
deal with one of the most watchful, prompt, and determined
men, in the captain of the vessel, that ever trod a plank. It
was happily ordered otherwise. The voyage was successful
and devoid of adventure. There were neither storms, mutinies,
fevers, nor other disasters. And somewhere about the month
of August (as we left England in April 1831) we delivered our
passengers to the authorities in Launceston, in good order and
condition. Our military friends quitted us after our arrival in
Sydney, our final destination. My father had visited the port
when an officer in the East India Company's service as far
back as the year 1820, had been struck with the land's
capabilities, and augured well of its future. He resolved to
settle therein in the aftertime, did events shape themselves
that way. By that voyage our destinies as a family were
decided.
The Paris of the South was then a seaside town, numbering
324not more than thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. Described
in station parlance, it was well grassed and lightly stocked.
As a matter of fact there was a good deal of grass in the
streets, and between Macquarie Place, which was our first
location, and the Domain, the little Alderney cow, which had
accompanied us on the ship, was able to pick up a good living.
She and other vagrom milch kine often eluded the vigilance of
the sentry, at the entrance to the Domain, where they revelled
in the thick couch-grass; to be turned out at the point of the
bayonet when discovered. Much of the city is changed;
but much remains unchanged. Our first abode was a
moderate-sized house in Macquarie Place. It possessed a
second story and a garden, standing next to a tall, narrow
building, occupied by Mr. Harrington, an eminent civil servant
of the pre-parliamentary régime, later on Griffiths Fanning's
office. Messrs. Montefiore, Breillat, and Co. possessed the
corner house with its walled enclosure, taking in the angle of
Bent Street, with a frontage also to O'Connell Street. The
wall, the house, and the store still stand, unaltered in half a
century. Mr. Dalgety, then himself a junior clerk, might
be seen walking to and fro from the wharves, inspecting cargo,
note-book in hand. Think of that, young gentlemen in like
positions, and ponder upon the mercantile monarchies which
have been (and may still be) reached by perseverance, financial
talent, and prudent ambition!
Chief-Justice and Mrs. Forbes, with their family, inhabited
a large stone house on the opposite side of the street, also
surrounded by a wall. It now forms a portion of the Lands
Office buildings. Archdeacon Cowper lived on the other side,
now New Pitt Street, a grass plot with two large cedars being
in front of the house.
Sydney must have been then not unlike in appearance to one
of the larger country towns, Bathurst or Goulburn, save and
excepting always its possession of the unrivalled harbour and
that fragment of Eden the Botanic Garden. There we children
walked in the mornings of our first summer in Sydney. The grateful
freshness of the air, the beauty of the overhanging trees, the
vision of blue water and white-winged skiffs seen through flower
thickets, still remains among my childhood's fairest memories.
At the back of our garden rose a stone wall, which
supported the higher level of the allotments fronting O'Connell
325Street. In a balconied mansion opposite lived Mr. Raymond,
the Postmaster-General, with his numerous family of sons and
daughters.
How few survive of that merry band of youths and
maidens, whom I remember so well! After our debarkation
no time was lost in sending me to school. A lady who lived
conveniently close, in O'Connell Street, first directed the pothooks
and hangers, which, further developed, have since
covered so many a printed page. Mr. Walter Lamb and the
late Colonel Peel Raymond were among my schoolfellows.
At the ripe age of seven, being according to the maternal
partiality too far advanced for a dame school, I was promoted
to Mr. Cape's Sydney Academy, in King Street, opposite to
St. James's Church. Seventy boys more or less were there,
not a few of whom have since distinguished themselves 'in
arms, in arts, in song.' William Forster, Walter Lamb,
Whistler Smith, and Allan Macpherson were among my older
comrades. I well remember on the day of my arrival how
Forster, actuated by the hatred of injustice which characterised
his after-life, fought a sanguinary battle with another oldster
who had been oppressing a smaller boy. Sir James Martin
was there then, or came soon afterwards. At any rate he was
one of the scholars when Mr. Cape, then newly appointed
Headmaster of the Sydney College, moved over and took
possession of that institution upon its opening day. The
Nortons, James and John, were among the pupils, with many
others whom I could perhaps recall, but whose names are at
present fading in the mists of the past. The Dowlings,
Mitchells, David Forbes, Sir John Robertson, Mr. Dalley, with
many another, were among the pupils of that most conscientious
and earnest teacher. They will always acknowledge,
doubtless, their indebtedness to him for a sound classical
training, the groundwork of their higher education.
The late Mr. James Laidley was one of the smaller boys at
that time. Our fathers had been friends in other lands. I
saw Commissary-General Laidley's funeral—a military one—and
Dick Webb, the family coachman, leading the dead
officer's favourite chestnut mare in the procession.
On the day of my introduction came also a new boy, about
the same age. His name was Hugh Ranclaud. We were
placed in a class in order to test our reading, and, as the last
326comers, at the bottom of the class. The lesson commenced;
the others went through their allotted portion haltingly, after
the fashion of the small boy of the period. When it came to
Ranclaud's turn, he commenced in a clear, distinct, properly-punctuated
manner, much as if he had been in the habit of
performing at penny readings, or acting as curate on occasion.
I see (as if it were yesterday) Mr. Cape, who paused to listen,
take him by the arm and march him to the head of the class.
I was promoted, too, and we soon quitted that class for a
higher place in the Division, from that day to be close friends
and confidants in literary matters. Eager, voracious readers
we both were. He was a poet as well. We used to walk about
arm in arm and recite bits out of Walter Scott and Byron.
Until we left school and settled in different colonies our
friendship remained unbroken.
The first thing I remember after the ceremony of installation
was the adjournment to the new cricket-ground granted
for our use in that part of Hyde Park then known as the
Racecourse, which was opposite to the College, now the
Grammar School. Percy and Hamilton Stephen were at the
wickets. They, with their cousins James and Frank, Alfred,
Consett, and Matthew Henry were among the schoolboys of
that period; Prosper and André de Mestre, with, later on,
Etty (Etienne), then a little chap, like myself.
We of the old school were much gratified at the superior
advantages we now enjoyed in the way of playgrounds. The
free use of Hyde Park, then merely fenced and not planted,
was granted to us. Below the school building was a large
area, divided by a wall from the present labyrinth of terraces
built on the Riley Estate, then a furze-covered paddock of
pathless wilds, in which we were free to wander.
A chain-gang was at that time employed, under armed
warders, in levelling the line of road which leads towards
Waverley. One of the prisoners tried to escape and was shot
by a warder. We boys went over. There he lay dead in his
prison garb, with a red stain across his chest, 'well out of the
scrape of being alive and poor,'—only paupers were unknown
then, and prisoners, of course, plentiful.
We were near enough to the Domain for the boarders to
walk to 'The Fig-tree,' that well-known spot in Wooloomooloo
Bay, where so many generations of Sydney boys have learned
327to swim. The old tree (a wild one) was there long years
after, and from the stone wharf, with steps considerately made
in Governor Macquarie's time, how many a 'header' has been
taken, how many a trembling youngster pitched in by ruthless
schoolmates! There was no danger, of course, and among
rough-and-ready methods of teaching a useful accomplishment,
it is perhaps one of the best. Mr. Cape was a good swimmer,
and on the mornings when he accompanied us, these little
diversions were not indulged in.
My recollections of him as a headmaster, and, indeed, in
every other capacity, is uniformly favourable. He was a
strict, occasionally severe, but invariably just ruler. Discriminating
too, always ready to assist real workers such as
Forster, Martin, George Rowley, and other exceptional performers.
But for us of the rank and file, whose scholastic
ambition lagged consistently behind our powers, he had
neither mercy nor toleration. A thorough disciplinarian,
prompt, punctual, unsparing, we knew what we had to expect.
The consequence was that a standard of acquirement was
reached at a comparatively early age by his scholars which
with a less resolute instructor would never have been gained.
The constitution of the school was professedly in accordance
with the Church of England denomination, but it was
wisely ordered by the founders that no religious disability
should exist. The fees were low, particularly for the day
scholars. All ranks and denominations were equally
represented, equally welcome. Mr. Cape himself, though
inflexibly orthodox as an Anglican Churchman, was liberal
and comprehensive in his views. The school was commenced
(I think)—certainly ended—with a prayer from the Liturgy.
The boys who belonged to Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Nonconformist
denominations were permitted at pleasure to
absent themselves from this observance. Very few troubled
themselves to do so. Among the boys themselves I never
remember the religious question being raised. We remained
united and peaceable as a family (resorting, of course, to the
British ordeal of single combat on occasions), but all took
rank in the school chiefly in accordance with their prowess in
the classes or the cricket-field. We had no other standards
of merit.
Talking of cricket, the 'stars' of my day were Mr. William
328Roberts, senior, who with his brothers Dan and Jack were
my contemporaries, and Mr. William Still. Roberts was a
distinguished bat, renowned for the finer strokes and artistic
'cuts.' Still was a deadly bowler, a first-class field, and
unerring catch.
In those days the old barrack-square was in existence,
taking up many thousand feet of priceless frontage, at present
value, in George Street. The military reviews and evolutions
performed therein afforded unfailing interest to the schoolboy
and nursery-maid of the period. Colonel Despard was
the military commander of the day. His carriage and pair
of chestnut horses, George and Charger, both nearly
thoroughbreds, passed into our hands at the sale of his effects
previous to his departure from the colony for New Zealand.
Racing matters, which have received of late years such
astonishing development, were then in an infantile condition,
it may be believed. Hyde Park was probably the first race-course.
The next arena (literally) was the Old Sandy Course
near Botany. To this unimproved tract I remember trudging
with school comrades in 1836, when we witnessed a closely
contested race, in heats too, between Traveller and Chester,
the former winning. Frank Stephen rode a mule that day,
who kicked all the way there and back. Lady Godiva and
Lady Cordelia were the heroines of that meeting. Charles
Smith and Charles Roberts were the principal supporters of
the turf. This was near the proclamation of Her Gracious
Majesty's accession to the throne at the age of eighteen years.
Hugh Ranclaud and I attended the ceremony, and heard the
proclamation read among the oak trees not far from the Lands
Office.
The late Colonel Gibbes was a friend of the family.
Edmund Gibbes was a schoolfellow, and many holiday visits
were paid to Point Piper, their lovely residence. It was my
ideal of perfection as a haven of bliss for boys, far removed
from lessons and other drawbacks of youth. Many a happy day
I spent there, though nearly coming to premature grief in the fair
(and false) harbour. A large, well-ordered mansion, sufficiently
removed from town to have country privileges, Point Piper
contained all the requirements for youthful enjoyment. The
kindest hostess, the nicest girls, a picturesque old-fashioned
garden with fruit and flowers in profusion, fishing, bathing,
329boating to any extent, books, and music,—all the refinements
and elegancies then procurable in Australia. As to the course
of everyday life, it did not differ noticeably, as I can aver
from after-experience, from that of country-house life in
England. The stables were well ordered, grooms and coachman
being assigned servants of course. Perhaps a stricter
supervision was necessary for some reasons. At a stated hour
one of the sons of the house was expected to walk down to
the stables, which were half a mile distant, to perform the
regulation inspection, to see the evening corn given, the horses
bedded down for the night.
We boys (Edmund, his younger brother Gussie, and
myself) used to fish and bathe nearly all day long, continuing
indeed the latter recreation in the summer afternoons till the
sun scorched our backs. Then, after a joyous evening, how
sweet to fall asleep, lulled by the surges, which ever, even in
calmest weather, made mournful music on rock or silver-sanded
shore the long night through!
About this time a certain adventure befell our party, which
might have ended tragically. One fine morning Gussie and I,
with a kinsman about the same age, went fishing in the bay.
Our 'kellick' was down, and the sport had been good. The
provisional anchor was lifted at length, as the wind, having
shifted, began to blow off the land. We had delayed too
long, and found it hard work to make headway against it.
Pulling with unusual determination, one oar snapped. The
blade floated away. The gale was rising fast. Moving
broadside on meant being blown out to sea. An interval of
uncertainty ensued. Gussie, who was a little fellow, began to
cry as we rapidly receded from the Point and the waves rose
higher.
I took the command—my first salt-water commission. It
was no use letting matters (and the boat) drift. To this day
I wonder at the inventiveness which the emergency developed.
Taking off Gussie's pinafore, a brown holland garment of
sufficient length, I caused him to stand up and hold it like a
sail. Wallace, the other boy, was to act as look-out man. I
took the tiller and steered towards Shark Island, which lay
between Point Piper and the Heads. Our spread of canvas
was just sufficient to keep steerage way on. The wind was
right aft. And in a comparatively short time we jammed the
330boat's bow between two rocks, where there was just beach
enough to haul her up safe on our desert island.
We knew, of course, that they would see us from the
house, and judging that we were cast away, send for us. Soon
we discerned a boat coming to our rescue manned by the
groom and the gardener—both fair oarsmen. The wind was
a good capful by this time, and it took two hours' hard pulling
to land us at the Point Piper jetty. 'Oh, you naughty boys!'
I can hear the mild châtelaine saying in simulated wrath as
we marched up, extremely glad to be so well out of it; and as
they were very glad too, no serious consequences tending to
moral improvement ensued.
At the Sydney College half-yearly examination Archbishop
Polding was always among the examiners—a gentle, if dignified,
old man, whom all of us revered. Our own Bishop
and clergy attended on these occasions, but I have a more
distinct impression of the Prelate first mentioned than of any
other clergyman of the day. St. Mary's Cathedral was
building then—it is building now—a monument of the
persistent progress of the Church of Rome. What she begins
she always ends, rarely relinquishing an undertaking or a
stronghold. My reason for mentioning the religious aspect of
the question is that, save for the morning and evening prayer
and Mr. Cape's regular church-going, our school, though
strictly denominational in theory, was virtually national and
secular; chiefly, as I said before, because we of the different
sects and persuasions agreed to respect each other's religious
opinions and beliefs.
Whether this practical Christianity made us the worse
churchmen in after-life I leave others to judge. When my
father deserted salt water for the land permanently, he
did not fix on one of the charming nooks embosomed in sea-woods
which lay so temptingly between Hyde Park and the
South Head road. Like most sailors, he had had enough of
'the sad sea waves,' whether in play or in earnest, and was
relieved to be out of sound of them. Glenrock was, I
believe, offered to him at a temptingly low rate, but he
preferred to buy a tract of wild land at Newtown, as the
suburban hamlet was then called, there to build and improve.
Beginning in good earnest, the walls of a large two-storeyed
house soon arose—something between a bungalow and a
331section of a terrace. One Indian feature of the place was a
verandah fully a hundred feet in length, and twelve feet in
breadth, running across the façade and turning the ends of
the house. This was flagged with the cream-coloured Sydney
sandstone. Well do I remember its refreshing coolness of
touch and appearance in our first summer. The house being
built, the garden planted, and the whole purchase substantially
fenced, the property was christened 'Enmore,' the name
borne by the suburb into which it has grown to this day.
East Saxon originally, it may be quoted as an instance of the
evolution even of names. From one of the eastern counties
of England it emigrated to Barbadoes, where it served to
distinguish the plantation of an intimate friend of my father,
the late James Cavan, a wealthy mercantile celebrity of
Barbadoes in the good old days—the days of slavery and
splendour, of princely magnificence and gorgeous profits,
whereof the author of Tom Cringle's Log has left such
picturesque descriptions. Hence to an Australian suburb,
and going further afield, still following the course of colonisation,
the homely name has travelled into the far interior.
There are now the Enmore Blocks, an Enmore sheep station,
and possibly in the future there will arise an Enmore inland
town, with railway terminus, town hall, and municipality
complete.
In the years between 1836 and 1840, when we lived at
Enmore, we had, like all other householders of the day,
assigned servants. The only exceptions at that time were our
confidential nurse, and Copeland the coachman, an ex-50th
man. Most fortunate was it for us young people that such a
woman had attached herself to the family; of exceptional
energy and intelligence, deeply religious, with an earnest and
unswerving faith—'a slave of the ought,' like Miss Feely. As
she abode with us from 1828 to 1858, it may be imagined
what an influence for good she exerted upon us children when
almost wholly under her control.
As for the poor convicts, they were really much the same
as other people. Some were good, none of them particularly
bad. Their master, though with a natural leaning to quarterdeck
discipline, was not severe. When they got 'into trouble,'
as they expressed it, it was through their own irregularities.
A man would apply for a 'pass' (a permit in writing), granting
332leave to go to town and return by, say, eight o'clock P.M.;
instead of which (like the ingrate who stole geese off a
common) he would get drunk, be locked up by the police, and
be brought up before Captain Wilson or other Police Magistrate
of the day, charged with intoxication and being out after
hours, whereupon he received twenty-five or fifty lashes, and
was carefully returned to our service. The first intimation we
received was the sight of Jack or Bill, as the case might be,
coming up the carriage-drive in charge of a constable; his
blood-stained shirt tied over his shoulders by the sleeves,
instead of being worn as usual.
The flogging wasn't child's play, as may be believed. I
have seen the weals and torn flesh; but the men did not seem
to care so much about it, nor did it tend to brutalise them, as
asserted. They admitted that it was their own fault, for
running against that stone wall, the law. We had nothing to
do with it, but indeed suffered loss of work thereby. In a
day or two they were all right and cheerful again, well behaved
of course, until that fatal 'next time.' Whether the men
were of tougher fibre in those days, I can't say; but fancy a
latter-day larrikin getting fifty or a hundred lashes, as these
men did occasionally, without wincing, too! Compared to
the modern product, the 'larrikin,' with his higher wages,
better food, and more of the comforts of life than are good
for him, they were angels of light.
The groom was a prisoner; so also the gardener, the
butler, the housemaid, the laundress, the cook. The women
were, no doubt, more difficult to manage. If they got to the
sideboard when there was a bottle of wine open, trouble
ensued. Hard working and well behaved generally, none of
them could withstand the temptation of drink. This may
have occurred more than once, but the ultimatum of which
they stood in dread was, after repeated misbehaviour, to be
sent to the Factory at Parramatta—the Bridewell of the
colony. Their hair was cut short in that house of correction.
They were supposed to work at hard and monotonous tasks.
The work the unfortunates did not mind so much, but the
short-cropped hair—all ignorant of the turn fashion was to
take in after-years—they detested unutterably.
Two of these engagés (as French colonial officials called
them) played us a pretty trick, for which, though it caused
333temporary inconvenience to the household, I have always felt
inclined to pardon them.
The butler was a smartish young Dublin man, not more
than a year out. He behaved well—was steady and willing.
The laundress—Catherine Maloney, let us say—a quiet, hard-working
young woman, was a valuable servant, worth about
fifteen shillings a week, as wages go now. Fancy the privilege
of keeping a capable servant, say, for four or five years certain!
'Please to suit yourself, ma'am,' and the later domestic
tyrannies were then unknown. However, Patrick and Kate
nourished deep designs—made it up to get married; wicked,
ungrateful creatures! One fine morning they were missing,
and, what was really exceptional in those man-hunting days,
were never discovered—never indeed found from that day to
this! 'These lovers fled away into the storm.' It would be
in 1839, just about the 'breaking out' of Port Phillip. They
probably got there undetected. Who knows? One wonders
what became of them. Did Patrick grow rich, prosperous—even
politically eminent? It was on the cards. They had
my good wishes, in any case.
When we migrated to Port Phillip in 1840, a special permit
was obtained from the Governor in Council to take down our
servants—eight men and two women. The men went overland
with the stock, and of course remained till their tickets-of-leave
were due. But the women, our fellow-passengers by
sea, married soon after they got to Melbourne. It was a
'rush,' in the latter-day goldfields' idiom, and women were at
a premium. We might have refused our royal permission to
this, but were not hard-hearted enough to do so. We were
thus left desolate and servantless, a condition in life much less
common in those days than it is now, I grieve to say, speaking
as a householder. The men on the whole behaved well.
George Stevenson, a clever mechanic and gardener from the
north of Ireland, was drowned while crossing the Yarra at
Heidelberg by night—a shanty being the fatal temptation.
The groom died in the Benevolent Asylum at Melbourne,
after many a year of faithful service to us and others. All our
men but one got their tickets-of-leave, and drifted away out of
ken. But while on the question, I may here record my
opinion, that these men and their class generally did an
immense deal of indispensable work in the earlier decades of
334the colony. They were, on the whole, when fairly treated,
well behaved. They rarely shirked their work, were often
touchingly attached to the families wherein they had done
their enforced servitude, and after their virtual freedom was
gained, mostly led industrious and reputable lives.
AFTER LONG YEARS
335
'This is the place; stand still, my steed, let me review the
scene!' Quite correct, this is the place, though so changed
that I hardly recognise the homestead which I built when I
'took up the Run' still known as 'Squattlesea Mere,' so many
a year ago. Can it be possible that half a century should
have passed—fleeted by like a dream—as a tale that is told—and
that I should again stand here, looking at the work of my
hands in that old time, whereof the memory is so fresh? The
huts, the stock-yards, the cottage wherein we dwelt in peaceful
contentment, nearly all are there, though much decayed and
showing manifest signs of old Time—edax rerum—with his
slow but sure attrition. The fruit trees in the garden, planted
with my own hands, are of great age and size, and still bearing
abundantly in a soil and climate so favourable to their growth.
I find it almost impossible to realise that in June 1844, being
then a stripling of eighteen, I should have established this
'lodge in the wilderness,' now developed into a fair-sized freehold,
besides supporting a number of families in comfort and
respectability on the selected portions.
Well do I remember the dark night when I reached this
very spot, on a tired horse, having ridden from Grasmere on
the Merrai that day, nearly fifty miles, without food for man
or beast. The black marauders of the period held revel on a
cape of the lava-bestrewn land which jutted out upon the
marsh, near the Native Dog's Well. I had stumbled on to
their camp, not seeing it until I was amid their dimly-burning
fires. Relations were strained between us, and as they were
then engaged in banqueting upon one of my milch cows
(name Matilda), there is no saying what might have happened
336to the chronicler if my colt, a great-grandson of Skeleton
(own brother to Drone), had not responded to the spur.
The overseer and I, arming ourselves, rode to the scene of
the entertainment next morning, which presented an appearance
much resembling the locality in Robinson Crusoe's
island after the savages had finished their repast. Portions
of the murdered milker were visible, also her orphaned calf,
lowing in lament after his kind. But our sable neighbours
had vanished.
I drove over the identical spot last week. How different
its aspect! Drained and fenced—the black soil of the fen
showing by depth and colour what crops it is destined to
grow—a wire fence, a dog-leg ditto, all sorts of queer enclosures.
Only the volcanic trap ridges remain unchanged,
and the 'Blue Alsatian Mountains,' as typified by Mount
Eeles and Mount Napier, which seem to 'watch and wait
alway.'
Yes. The landscape has an altered appearance. What
we used to call 'the smooth side' of the Eumeralla—as
differentiated from the 'stones' of Mount Eeles, then, as
now, rough enough in all conscience—has since our day
been almost wholly denuded of timber. The handsome,
umbrageous, blackwood trees (Acacia melanoxylon), which
marked and shaded the 'islands' in the great mere, are dead
and gone.
The marsh lands, then divided into islands, flats, and reed-beds,
now present one apparently dead level, less picturesque,
but more profitable, as fields of oats and barley are now to be
seen where the 'wild drake quacked and the bittern boomed.'
Yon broad arterial drain is responsible for this transformation.
More complete reticulation will in time turn the ancient
fen, I doubt not, into one of the most productive agricultural
areas in the Port Fairy district.
Still, with the increase of population and the onward
march of civilisation, one natural enemy of the grazier comes
forward as another is displaced. The dingo and kangaroo,
with our poor relations, the aborigines, have mostly disappeared.
But the rabbit in countless multitudes has
arrived and come to stay; while the hero of our nursery tales
and I wot not of what mediæval legends, Master Reynard,
337the fox, has found the climate suit his constitution. He raids
the good-wife's turkeys, not wholly neglecting lambs, much as
he might have done in the midland counties of England.
Charles Kingsley's father (he tells us) took him into the
garden one night to hear a fox bark, believing that the breed
would soon be extinct in England; but he has held his own
so far in the old country, and as I was told of a vixen with
six cubs discovered in a log at Snaky Creek last week, I
doubt whether we should not be able to re-export him, like
the hares and rabbits, if a demand sprang up for the
Australian Reynard.
Squattlesea Mere was certainly a good place for game.
Snipe were plentiful, and might be shot, so to speak, from
the parlour window. Wild ducks, geese, turkeys, quail, and
the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon also. The kangaroo was
then in the land, and helped our larder (notably with his tail,
which made excellent soup), and an occasional dish of steak
or hashed wallaby. The flesh tasted something between lean
beef and veal, not at all a bad substitute for salt junk, when
well cooked. A couple of hundred rabbits at least must
have crossed the road, running eastward, in two or three
miles, as we drove along this morning.
How such a sight would have astonished us formerly!
Hares, too, from time to time. Our kangaroo dogs were
then nearly as fast as the pure greyhounds now so plentiful on
every estate, and what good sport we should have had!
Driving by coach between the towns of Hamilton and Macarthur,
I observed with satisfaction that the old stations
survived in the form of respectable, though not overgrown,
freehold estates. And although the owners are no longer the
same, they still bear their old names, and are thus distinguished
from the smaller-sized arable and grazing farms which have
occupied the remaining areas.
'Monivae' (the first in order along the Macarthur road),
from which I have more than once seen Acheson Ffrench
driving his four-in-hand, now boasts a mansion and excellent
fencing. The old cottage, however, yet stands, surrounded
by the station buildings, where the merry girls and boys grew
up, and where we used to be glad to be asked to stop for a
night in the 'dear dead days beyond recall.' Werongurt too,
where John Cox held sway, where the first orchard was
338planted, where the choice Herefords roamed at will, where
The Caliph and The Don were located, may still be recognised.
There the rye-grass and clover—in after-years destined to
overspread the land—were introduced; and more wonderful
still, where the first swing-gate for drafting cattle was put up
in 1842 or 1843 (pace Mr. Lockhart Morton). At the
thriving township of Macarthur I had the pleasure of
renewing my acquaintance with my old friend Mr. Joe
Twist, formerly the crack stock-rider of the Port Fairy
district.
At a little distance on the old Port Fairy road to Hamilton,
now left untouched by the present railway, is Lyne, once the
station of Messrs. Lang and Elms. At Macarthur, where I
again beheld the deep, unruffled waters of the Eumeralla, still
exists a compact freehold, running back to Mount Eeles and
the volcanic country, which is now, I am afraid, an extensive
rabbit preserve. This is known as Eumeralla West, at present
in the occupation of Mr. John Learmonth, in whose hands it
presents a thriving well-managed appearance. On the other
side of the river is Eumeralla East, cut off from the original
run by an authoritative decision of Mr. Commissioner Fyans,
and now in the possession of Mr. Staughton.
Dunmore alone—once a show station for the quality of its
sheep, cattle, and horses—has suffered a melancholy change.
The last of the three partners, Messrs. Campbell, Macknight,
and Irvine, strong in youthful hope and sanguine trust in
fortune when I first knew the district, died but a few months
since.
'Tis a saddening task to run over the list of the companions
of one's youth and to note how the summons of
death, the warning, the unsparing hand of time, has thinned
or menaced their ranks.
Poor dear old Dunmore! How many a jolly muster have
we shared in there! How many a loving 'look through' the
stud—how many a race had we talked over with the first
owners! It was taken up only a year or two before Squattlesea
Mere. What dances and picnics, rides and drives, had we there
joined in! What musters of well-bred bullocks, fat and high-priced,
had we escorted from Paradise Camp when 'Long
John Mooney' reigned as king of the cattle-dealers! And
now, to think of all this greatness departed! The pity of
339it! No herd of cattle, no stud—Traveller and Clifton,
The Premier, Tramp, Triton and Trackdeer, St. George,
The Margravine, Lord of Clyde, Mormon—all dead and
gone! Equine shadows and phantoms of the 'brave days
of old.'
Hospitably received by the present proprietor of Squattlesea
Mere, with whom I had much in common, as we had shared
the changing seasons and varying profits of the Riverina in
the sixties, I stayed a day at the old place. Once more I
slept in the old chamber, sat at the table in the parlour where
so many a cheerful evening had been passed by the young
people who then formed our family circle, and for whom for
a decade it was so safe and healthy a shelter. Again I heard
the roll of the surges, as they beat in days of old on the
shore. Again I felt as I rose at sunrise the fresh, pure
air of early morn, and wondered if I should have the
horses run into the stock-yard to pick out those wanted for
the day's work.
Tempora mutantur, indeed. Where are now the overseer,
the groom, the stock-rider, who, well mounted, and high-mettled
as their steeds, were wont to fare forth with me for
a long day's muster of 'the lower end of the run'? Where,
indeed? Frank, the groom, most patient and cool-couraged
of rough-riders—good alike on camp or road—is
dead. The trusty overseer, who could ride all day and night
at a pinch, or stride through the Mount Eeles rocks for hours
at a time, now walks with a stick and is restricted to a buggy
with a quiet horse for locomotion. And the gay Irish stock-rider,
who took so kindly to the trade, though not to 'the
manner born,' would, I fear me, distinctly decline to sit in
the saddle for ten hours of a winter's day, wet to the waist
and splashed to the eyes, as many a time and oft was our
custom.
There is no doubt we are Rip Van Winkle. All the
intervening life which has passed like a dream and left so few
traces, must be in the nature of a magic slumber.
We could think so, were it not for certain changes we
wot of.
The knight has been to the wars, and though shrewdly
wounded, has escaped with life, and once more beholds the
walls of the old keep. It sadly recalls the ballad—
340Hawk, hound and steed roam masterless,
His serving-men grow grey,
His roofs are mossed—'tis thirty years
Since the warrior went away.
My next stage was past Orford, on the Shaw River, locally
known in that olden time 'before the gold' as the 'Crossing
Place,' now a township with inhabitants. The brothers
Horan, my faithful servitors, were the principal business men
there, after the Free Selector's Act of Sir Gavan Duffy altered
the pastoral proprietary so materially.
One kept the hotel, The Horse and Jockey, built and first
opened by the Dunmore stud-groom, Baker. He trained
Triton, Tramp, Trackdeer, and other Tr-named descendants
of Traveller. A good jock and finished horseman in his day,
but grown too heavy for the trade, he took to the general stud
business, and subsided into hotel-keeping. Death, the inexorable,
had claimed Mr. Michael Horan, but his widow still
holds the license, with a goodly number of young people,
mostly settled in life, to uphold the family name and fame.
Mr. Patrick Horan owns the general store which supplies
the wants of the township, but the hardships of bush life have
told on the once active and athletic frame, and though the
dark blue eyes are still bright and clear, the white beard and
faded lineaments might well accompany an older man. However,
men can't live for ever, even in the cool and temperate
clime of Port Fairy.
Pat and I are still in the land of the living. For that, and
the moderate enjoyment of life, let us be duly thankful; and
though neither of us, I venture to say, will ride buck-jumpers
any more, or follow the fast-receding herd through the forest
thickets, some reasonable recreation may yet be meted out to
us in our 'declining days.'
Melancholy-sounding phrase! But triste or otherwise the
reality has arrived. And we must make the best of it.
IN THE DROVING DAYS
341
It is midwinter. The season has been severe, the rainfall heavy
and continuous, almost without parallel. The floods are out
and the whole country is generally spoken of as being 'under
water.' We are on the road from Goulburn, New South
Wales, to Gippsland with a thousand head of store cattle. We
have crossed the high bare downs of the historical district of
Monaro, rich in tales of wonderful feats of stock-riding, performed
by 'the old hands,' and repeated by one generation
of stock-riders after another. The Snowy River, rushing
savagely over granite boulders, is in sight, and we hail that
turbulent stream as a midway stage in our long, tedious, and
adventurous journey.
Now there is cattle-droving and cattle-droving. When
loitering in early summer-time over rich or level country the
expedition is an idyll. The cattle follow one another without
pressing, feeding as they go. The horses lounge along or
are driven among the cattle, some of the men always preferring
to be on foot. The dogs are easy in their minds, the whips
are at rest. Around the camp-fires at night are heard sounds
of careless merriment; the air seems charged with exhilaration,
and all is couleur de rose. This sort of business is occasionally
the rule for weeks, causing the unreflecting newcomer
to exclaim, 'Is this the overlanding of which we have heard so
much? Why, any fellow could do this.'
Quite another style of travelling was that which we had
experienced for weeks and which was even now becoming
intensified. When the country travelled through is rough,
thickly timbered, or mountainous; when ceaseless rain floods the
rivers and soaks the baggage; when the horses and cattle are
342enfeebled and therefore prone to straggle, ordinary difficulties
are increased fourfold. Everybody is required to be at the
fullest stretch of exertion, with both head and hand, from
daylight till dark—occasionally for all night as well. Horses
become lame or die; losses occur among the cattle; the
person in charge has a tendency to become gruff, even
abusive; hard work, anxiety, and perhaps short commons
are frequently inscribed on this, the reverse side of the shield.
Such is the prospect which we shrewdly suspect lies before
us as we halt the drove nearly a mile from the formidable
ice-fed stream, 'rolling red from brae to brae,' and prepare for
a swim over.
Our party consists of eight mounted men, exclusive of a
cook or tent-keeper, and a boy, hardy, knowing, and, it might
be added, impudent beyond his years. The leader is Mr.
Harold Lodbroke, an Australian of English descent; he has
managed cattle from his youth up, and these are not the first
thousand head that he has personally conducted from one side
of the country to the other.
Mr. Elms, the second in command, is an Englishman who
has plainly, by some peculiar arrangement of circumstances,
been 'born out of his native country.' In speech, in manner,
in the fifteen stone which he walks, in the square-built, clever
cob which he rides, he is as conspicuously English as his name
'John Meadows Elms' would lead you to suppose. Nevertheless
he is a 'Campbelltown native'—(why were so many of
the early Australians born in that curious old-fashioned village
in New South Wales?)—and he knows, I feel persuaded, not
only what any cow or bullock would do under given circumstances,
but what they would think.
James Dickson (otherwise Monaro Jim) and his mate, whom
he introduced at their hiring as 'a young man from the big Tindaree,'
are stock-riders of the ordinary run of Australian bush
natives. They are given to long hair, tight breeches, tobacco,
and profane swearing; it is possible they may be 'everything
that is bad,' but bad riders—their worst enemy could find no
fault in that respect. They require to be kept well in hand,
but as they will receive no payment until the completion of
the journey, it is probable they will do their work well.
Mr. Jones (of England) is a young gentleman recently
arrived, who has joined the partly mainly for the sport and to
343add to his colonial experience—of this last commodity he is
likely to gain on this expedition perhaps a little more than
accords with amusement; but he is plucky and energetic, so
he will most likely come well through, with a fair allowance
of grumbling, as befits his nation.
Some preparation for the wilderness is now progressing,
this being the last outpost of civilisation. Whips are looked
to, and 'crackers' are at a premium; every horse has his shoes
examined in anticipation of rocky passes and absence of
blacksmiths. 'You won't find no shoes on the Black
Mountain,' says Monaro Jim to Mr. Jones, 'and you'd look
well leading that chestnut mare fifty mile.' At this cheerful
way of putting things, Mr. Jones has a close overhaul of his
charger's feet and makes at once for the smithy. Flour and
beef are laid in, spare boots, and, above all, full supplies of
tobacco are secured by the men, and lastly the pack-saddles,
provisions, tent, and general property are ferried across the
river in a rough sort of punt. It is now mid-day, dinner is
ready, and after due observance of that ceremony, every one
mounts and real work begins.
Harold Lodbroke on The Dromedary, a long brown
horse, not far from thoroughbred, plain enough, but with legs
of iron and a constitution to match, slides in among the
cattle, followed by Monaro Jim and his mate. They bring
on separately, or as they would say 'cut off,' three or four
hundred of the vanguard; the rest of the party close up
behind these and they are brought briskly towards the river.
There is a steep but sandy bank, below which is the river
shore. The cattle see this and hesitate; at a shout from the
leader, every whip and every voice is raised simultaneously;
the half-wild, half-fierce bullocks dash forward like a herd of
deer. Down the bank they go, dropping over and breaking
down the overhanging bank as they are forced on by the
maddened animals in the rear. Harold jumps The Dromedary
over the crumbling ledge, and, making a drop leap of three
or four feet, lands right among their undecided lead. Swinging
his twelve-foot stockwhip and yelling like a Sioux Indian, he
forces half-a-dozen bullocks into the foaming water. The
next moment they are struggling with the deep, violent stream,
heading straight for the further shore and followed by all the
rest. Other detachments are brought down, which readily
344follow their comrades, and in little more than an hour the
whole expedition is safe on the right side of the treacherous
Snowy River. We do not purpose to camp after the usual
fashion to-night; no watching is thought necessary, we can
see for some ten miles in every direction, the cattle are not
likely to re-swim that pleasant rivulet, so the order goes forth,
'Let 'em rip.' They graze peacefully in the gathering darkness,
a fire is made of drift-wood, the tent is pitched, and that day
at least is successfully over. I have often thought that a
nearer approach to perfect contentment, and therefore to
happiness, is more frequently realised 'on the road' than
under any other circumstances of life's travel. Everything
conduces to those 'short views' which Sydney Smith recommended.
The hours spent in the saddle or at the watch-fire
tend to a pleasant weariness of mind and body. Health and
spirits are at a high register, owing to a freshness of the
atmosphere and the regularity of muscular action. A certain
amount of anxiety is felt for the success of the daily enterprise,
and when that is reached in the crossing of a dangerous river,
or by the attainment of a favourable camp, the needs of our
nature seem fully if temporarily gratified. Let the morrow
provide for itself. The abstract incompleteness appears to
diminish, almost to disappear in the illimitable distance, and
we smoke our meerschaum by the watch-fire, or sink into well-earned
repose, in the luxurious enjoyment of that unbroken
slumber which is born of toil and toil alone.
So, one by one, we lie down to rest with the lulling sound
in our ears of the turbulent, rock-strewn river. The réveillé
is sounded at 5.30; there is no possibility of daylight for more
than an hour, but breakfast can be cooked and eaten before
dawn, whereas horses cannot be profitably searched for without
some manner of daylight. The day breaks, cold and discouraging.
The rain, which had poured steadily during the
latter part of the night, causes us to congratulate ourselves
that we are on the right bank of old Snowy, now rising fast.
The faintly chiming bells, which every other horse of the
twenty-three composing our 'caballada' wore, warn us of
their whereabouts. We see, as the mist lifts, long lines of the
cattle at various distances, but within easy reach of the camp.
The horses, now driven in by the boy, Sydney Ben, and the
'young man from the Tindaree,' arrive. The cattle are soon
345put together. It seems improbable that any stragglers had
left the main body. Mr. Elms, after looking through them,
gives it as his deliberate opinion that he didn't miss any of
the 'walk-about mob.' We take the trail that faces the dark
woods and frowning ranges of the south, and the grand array
moves on. It would be hard to find a more bitter day, except
on a Russian steppe in a snowstorm. The unsheltered, stony
downs over which we pass seem to invite the whirlwinds of
sleet which ever and anon sweep over them. The cattle
refuse to face their course from time to time, only to be forced
on as regularly in the very teeth of the blast. The stage is
comparatively long, so we toil on, drenched to the skin and
cold to the very marrow, in spite of oilskins and wraps. Still
'the day drags on, though storms keep out the sun,' and
nightfall find us at the appointed halting-place. We do not
propose to 'chance' the cattle to-night, so a camp is made.
First of all the drove is permitted to graze peaceably to the
particular spot selected. This is either a dry knoll or the
angle of a creek, fence, or whatever boundary may help to
confine the cattle at night and lessen the labour of watching.
This being accomplished, they are gradually driven up into
such a compass as gives room for comfort without undue
extension of line. Fires are as quickly as possible lighted
around them. The horses are unsaddled, hobbled, 'belled,'
and turned loose. For all night purposes cattle can be
managed on foot, always excepting when they have been
recently brought from their native pastures, in which case a
relay of fresh 'night horses' is always kept ready for a rush
or other emergency. Regular watches now are allotted to the
different members of the party, changing, of course, every
night. On this occasion Mr. Jones, who is on the first watch,
is informed by the cook that his tea is ready, a piece of
information which he receives with the keenest gratification.
He seats himself between the tent and the camp-fire upon his
rolled up gutta-percha ground-sheet and bedding, and thinks
he never enjoyed anything so much in his life as the boiled
corned beef, fresh damper, and quart-pot tea. Monaro Jim,
who is his companion on watch, is also partaking after a
deliberate and satisfying fashion, volunteering from time to time
his impressions about the weather, the road, and the state of
the cattle.
346Mr. Lodbroke and the rest of the party are at this time
fully engaged in lighting fires, and 'steadying the cattle.'
Their turn for luxury, tea, and improving conversation will
come at a later period.
'Terrible hard they seem to camp to-night,' quoth Jim,
taking off a wedge of beef with his clasp-knife, and looking
approvingly at Mr. Elms, who is rushing frantically after an
old cow with a fire-stick in his hand. 'One comfort is, some
of it'll be out of 'em by the time we're on watch.'
'Surely we two won't be able to keep them on the camp?'
queries Mr. Jones, alarmed at the responsibility about to
devolve upon him and his companion, and picturing cattle
escaping into the darkness in all directions.
'Dessay we'll do well enough, after a bit,' said that experienced
person reassuringly. 'Just you keep walking round
'em till you come to me. I'll be t'other side. If two or
three sneaks out, rush at 'em and keep a fire-stick handy to
throw. If a string makes for goin', holler for me. But they
ain't fond of leavin' one another, nor yet travellin' in the dark.
We'd as well go on now.'
Supper having been concluded without unnecessary hurry
on his part, Monaro Jim walks forth, filling his pipe as he
goes. He explains to Mr. Jones the position of the fires he
is to guard, and departs to his post. As they advance, the
rest of the party make for the main camp-fire with considerable
alacrity, leaving Mr. Jones nervous but sternly determined.
For the first half-hour he paces rapidly from fire to
fire, anxiously peering into the darkness and driving back
straggling animals. Rather to his surprise they rush back to
their companions in the herd directly they see him or hear
his voice, in preference to what he supposed to be their
obvious course, viz. to disappear in the darkness and elude
pursuit.
Finding that Jim did not think the same activity necessary,
and observing that the cattle, with few exceptions, remained
stationary, even commenced to lie down, Mr. Jones moderates
his energy and lights his pipe. He finds time to smoke in
peace by the middle fire. As the night wears on he employs
himself in replenishing the fires on his side, and occasionally
carrying or dragging heavy logs of wood. Happening to look
at his watch after doing all this, he finds to his astonishment
347that half his vigil is over. He feels refreshed by his late
heartily-eaten meal. He warms himself from time to time by
the blazing fires which he has piled up. Once every half-hour
he walks round his watch and ward. The night is
calm and starlit. The cattle have mostly lain down, and are
apparently not disposed to stir. When another hour has
passed, Mr. Jones begins to realise a treacherous inclination
for slumber.
He has been up early, has worked hard all day, and after
the third hour of watching begins to feel as if he would give
all the world for a good, careless sleep. However, he combats
the feeling, and it passes off. Great comfort comes
from the thought that when his watch is over at ten o'clock,
he can have unbroken rest till breakfast-time.
The last hour dies hard, but comes to its end in due time,
and then Mr. Jones, with secret joy, veiled under a careless
manner, shakes the feet of the pair who are to relieve him and
his mate, telling them to keep moving as the cattle are troublesome
on the far side. Having seen them drowsily dressing
and finally on their way to his outside fire, Mr. Jones betakes
himself to his cork mattress, ground-sheet, and blankets, where
under five minutes he is sleeping that sleep which comes to
the just and the unjust alike if only they be sufficiently tired.
At half-past five A.M. Dan, the cook, is roaring out unfeelingly,
'All aboard!' It seems but a few minutes to our tired
hero, but on reference to his watch the fact is fully borne out.
So ends his first night's watching.
Another day, with its difficulties to be surmounted and its
dangers to be risked. We have said farewell to the cold
uplands of Monaro proper, and are entering a mountain land,
amid deep ravines and narrow gorges, sunless glens, dense
forests, and precipitous ranges. We become aware that our
droving difficulties are commencing. The subsoil, saturated
with the rains of the most severe season known for thirty
years, gives under the heavy trampling of the leading bullocks.
In the vain struggle to pass quickly many of the stronger cattle
only succeed in getting deeper and deeper into the treacherous
hillsides.
It is even difficult to ride, and Mr. Jones more than once
finds himself confronted by a bullock of forbidding aspect,
who, unable to advance or retire, glares as if too happy to
348have the chance of 'skewering' him, and keeps, with the
defiance of despair, turning his horns instead of his heels
towards Mr. Jones' person.
However, by patience and strategy, these difficulties are
disposed of and the camp is reached, in the darkest and most
gloomy of forests. No more easy days, no more 'lazy-ally'
for us. We have entered the 'big timber,' crede Monaro Jim,
and it will be all hard work and 'slogging' till we sight the
parks and meadows of Gippsland. So we fare on, gradually
ascending the forest hills which are to bring us to the
celebrated pass by which we shall surmount the grand alpine
chain. Sometimes we pass through darksome forests, where
the scanty vegetation tantalises the hungry drove; now we
stand upon the brow of rocky pinnacles and see stretching
before us a cloud-world of mountain peaks and glaciers, rosy
in the flush of dawn. We dine by the side of clear, cold,
alpine streams, which ripple and gurgle through long summer
days, full-fed as now. By such a brook, it chances one day,
as we round a rugged promontory, that the unwonted appearance
of a settler's hut startles us; an inhabited dwelling too,
with smoke issuing from the chimney, a real woman, and
(ever so many) children. Shy and wondering, they stand
gazing at us as if we were Red Indians, while their mother
civilly offers milk and potatoes—luxuries both.
'Her husband was away,' she explained in answer to our
inquiries. 'He was nearly always out on the run, and sometimes
away for weeks at a time, mustering.'
'Was she not afraid?'
'Oh no; who would harm her? And there was not much
to steal.'
'Wasn't she awfully dull?' (This from Mr. Jones.)
'Well, it was rather quiet, but there—the children, and the
cows, and the garden,—she always had something to do.'
'Her husband was handy if he made that water-wheel,
eh?'
'Oh no. Yankee Jack, the digger, made that one
summer he was prospecting about here.'
'However did they manage to get the dray here?'
'Well' (rather proudly), 'it was the only dray for many a
mile round; her father gave it to them—and Joe, he packed
it on the old horse, up the range, bit by bit.'
349'Did she think the mountains fine?'
'Oh yes. They were very well, but she wished they
wouldn't rise just out of their back-door like.'
We said farewell to the kindly, simple dame and her sturdy
brood of Anglo-Saxons—blue-eyed and rosy-faced as if they
had come out of Kent or Devonshire—true types of a race
which claims the waste places of the earth for a heritage and
which creates thereof New Englands and Greater Britains.
We wander slowly on with our sauntering, grazing herd,
this rarely mild, calm winter day. We look back as the
cottage grows dim in the distance—the little garden, the
water-wheel, the patient wife listening ever for the hoof-tramps
of her husband's horse, fade in the darkening eve.
But we do not forget the little home picture, this floweret of
tender bloom beneath the melancholy alp.
'We'll have to look out pretty sharp to-morrow, Mr. Jones,'
says Monaro Jim. 'We've got rather bad country before us.'
'Bad country? Why, what do you call this?' hastily
returns that gentleman.
'We're only just a-comin' to it,' calmly explains the
saturnine stock-rider. 'You'll see what the sidelings is like;
why, this here's a plain to it—cattle slipping and perhaps
killing theirselves, big rocks falling fit to knock yer brains
out; there ain't hardly a yard fit for a horse to carry you.
Them boots of your'n won't look very fresh to-morrow night.'
Here Jim took a soothing draw at his pipe, and glanced
pityingly at Mr. Jones' neat elastic-sided boots, apparently
absorbed in pleasing thoughts of evil which the morrow night
will bring forth.
'Is there much more "sideling," as you call it?' inquired
Mr. Jones, rather overcome by this terrific description, and
almost prepared to arrive in Gippsland like a barefooted friar,
if indeed he ever reached that far and, as he is beginning to
believe, fabulous country.
'Not more'n a week of the wust of it,' answered the hard-hearted
Jim. 'I wish we was well over it. I've known
a-many accidents in the sidelings in my time.'
The dawn is still grey as we ascend a green peak, at the
summit of which commences the first of the dreaded sidelings.
The peculiarity of the track here is, that while on the upper
side the mountains through which the Snowy River cleaves
350its rugged path rear themselves heavenwards with a gradient
of about one foot in three, on the lower side there is not an
inch of level ground between the track and the foaming waters
of the river. Where the river shore should have been is a
mass of granite crags and boulders. The trails of the many
herds which have preceded us are deeply-worn ruts, along
which it is just possible for men to walk in single file; if
slippery with recent rains, or if any confusion occurs, they
are all but impassable. If the cattle, as was their constant
endeavour, manage to climb upwards, it is difficult and
dangerous to force them down. If they slip or fall downwards
towards the river, it is a forlorn hope to get them up.
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVE-BORN TYPE
351
Numberless speculations, dogmatisms, and prophecies have
found utterance, in and out of Australia, touching the characteristics
and destiny of the Children of the Soil. Colonial
critics sitting in judgment upon their own and other people's
offspring have chiefly felt moved to deliver a verdict of
inferiority to the sacred British type. Not noticeably diverse
has been that of the untravelled European philosopher or
social student. In nearly all cases, the mildest judgment indicated
some degree of physical or mental differentiation;
another term, for degeneration. If in the former greater
height and length of limb were conceded, to be neutralised by
lack of muscle and vitality. Worse again, if in the latter
category a savage precocity and perceptive intelligence were
admitted, it was rarely if ever supported by persistency, application,
or broad mental grasp.
In the very early days of New South Wales, which I am
old enough, alas! to remember, my boyish experience
familiarised me with various products, animate and inanimate,
of the Cape of Good Hope, then a handy storehouse of
necessaries, for this far and oft-forgotten continent. The
mention of 'Cape' geese, 'Cape' wine, 'Cape' horses, 'Cape'
gooseberries, was unceasing. Indeed I once heard the pied
peewit—a bird familiar to all observing youth—referred to as
a Cape 'magpie.' This was, of course, natural enough. But
the logical outcome of this simple nomenclature, which
puzzled me at the time, was that 'Cape,' used in that sense,
was another name for almost any article resembling but
inferior to a prized original. Thus the Cape wine was what
we still, perhaps erroneously, consider that inspiriting but less
352delicate beverage to be; the Cape geese were smaller and
marketably less valuable than their thick-necked solemn
English cousins; the Cape gooseberries were sweet with a
mawkish sweetness, how far below the rough richness of the
English fruit! The Cape horses, not devoid of pace, were
weedy and low-caste; while the Cape pigeon was not a pigeon
at all, but a gull; and even the Cape magpie was held to be
a species of lark, dressed up in the parti-coloured plumes of
his august relative, the herald of the dawn.
Can my readers recall a period in which the adjectives
'colonial' or 'native' were not held to express very similar
ideas as contrasted with 'European' or 'imported'? Along
with the 'Cape' associations, I acquired, from many sources,
a fixed idea that an indefinable, climatic process was somehow
at work in Australia, preventing like from producing like.
It applied equally to men and women, horses and cattle,
sheep and goats, plants and flowers, qualities and manners.
Over this anomaly, dooming the unconscious 'currency lads
and lasses' to perpetual 'Cape' creolism, I marvelled greatly.
My sympathies, meantime, were loyally enlisted with the
'native' party.
Years rolled on. I visited other colonies and roamed
over tracts of broad Australia, far from my boyhood's home.
Yet I never lost sight of the question which so troubled my
youth. I neglected no opportunity of making observations,
recording facts, or instituting comparisons connected with
this mysterious subtle Australian degeneration theory.
I even enjoyed the privilege—of which I desire to speak
reverently and gratefully—of visiting the dear old land,
whence came the ancestors of all Australians, the land of the
real, veritable 'old masters,' before any like-seeming but
disappointing 'Cape' copies of the glorious originals were
thought of. I enjoyed thus certain opportunities, of which
I did not fail to make reasonable use.
I mention personal facts merely to show that, having
early in life apprehended the magnitude of the question, I
set myself, not without certain facilities for generalisation, or
reasonable time devoted to the inquiry (about fifty years—ah
me!), to do battle with the error, now as then, possessing
vitality and power of propagation.
The first primary fact which appealed to my reasoning
353powers as subversive of the 'Cape' or degeneration doctrine
was that of the high and increasing value of the fleece of the
Australian merino sheep. This astonishing animal, bred
from individuals of selected cabanas of the highest Spanish
lineage, was landed in New South Wales in the early years
of settlement, and tenderly cherished by the Macarthurs,
Rileys, Coxes, and other leading colonists, more enthusiastic
for the welfare of the land than their own aggrandisement.
Kept free from 'improvement'(?) by heterogeneous imported
blood, it was actually declared by Shaw of Victoria and other
clear-visioned pastoral prophets to be equal, nay superior, to
the best imported sheep. It was contended for him that the
calumniated climate and pastures of Australia had in the
acclimatised merino produced a fleece delicately soft, free,
lustrous; withal, so highly adapted for the finer fabrics that
nothing European could compare with it. That from the
type, now securely fixed, and capable of reproducing itself
illimitably, had been evolved the most valuable fleece-producing
animal, reared in the open air and under natural conditions,
in the whole world. That so far from the infusion of the
best Spanish and Gascon blood improving the Camden
merino, as it commenced to be called, marked deterioration
followed. Horror of horrors! imported blood injurious—what
heresy was this? Yet, incontestably, the prices of the Havilah,
Mount Hope, Larra, and Ercildoune clips would seem to
have triumphantly established Mr. Shaw's daring proposition.
As to horses, slowly and yet surely it began to be asserted,
if not believed, that any stud-master in possession of a family
of Australian thoroughbreds, originally imported and bred
uncrossed for generations beneath the bright Australian sky,
reared on the crisp Australian pastures, had probably better
pause before he introduced English blood, unless he knew it
to be absolutely superior and likely to assimilate successfully.
Later on men were found to say that, given pure pedigree,
speed, and soundness on the part of sire and dam, Australian
blood-horses, though reared for generations under
the fibre-relaxing climatic influences of the Great South Land,
were as grandly grown, as speedy, as sound in wind and limb,
as full of vigour and vitality, as any of the 'terribly high-bred
cattle' which at Newmarket represent the ne plus ultra of
equine perfection.
354To this latter-day heresy, speculations as to what might
have come to the reputation of the race-courses of the land
if evil hap had chanced to the son of Cap-à-pie and Paraguay,
lent considerable force.
Gradually, also, uprose a bucolic, protesting party, who
denied that the unqualified supremacy of the British-bred
shorthorn was to last for all time. Second Hubback cows
and bulls of the blood of Belvidere and Mussulman, Favourite
and Comet, had landed here before the rival names of Bates
and Booth were household words, from the Hawkesbury to
the Sylvester. Careful breeders, enthusiasts for pedigree, had
jealously kept the blood pure. Size and beauty, hair, colour
and handling, constitution and flesh-amassing power were
equalled or even exceeded in their descendants. Though
sorely trammelled by the 'Cape' orthodoxy, these even at
length ventured to raise their flag and proclaim a revolutionary
epic of fullest colonial brotherhood, other things being equal.
Following them came the champions of Devon and Hereford
cattle. Lastly, the Suez mail brought news that certain
Bates' Duchesses, born and bred in America, in the United
States, where the 'Cape' theory as regarding man and
beast to this day doth flourish luxuriantly, were re-exported
and sold in England for dream-prices before an idolatrous
audience. 'So mote it be,' argued the bolder reasoner—'even
yet in Australia preserve we but our pure tribes
inviolate!'
It irks one to recall how rigidly comprehensive was the
elastic network of the 'Cape' theory. By no means would
the bulldog fight, nor die in battle the close-trimmed cock,
nor sing the bird, nor flower perfume the breeze in Australia,
as did their prototypes in 'Merrie England.' Long years
since this prejudicial indictment has been laid to rest amid
the limbo of forgotten absurdities. Man, the most highly-organised
animal, suffered of course the most injurious
disparagement; he has but slowly been able to clear himself
from these damaging aspersions.
Yet, methinks, old Time, his 'whirligigs and revenges,' is
even now uplifting the personal character of the Southern
Briton, no longer forced to resent the damaging accusation.
In the lower forms of the great School of Effort our champions
have arisen and done battle with many a dux of the Old World.
355They have abundantly demonstrated that they could 'make
the pace' and yet exhibit the 'staying power,' which is the
great heritage of the breed. Lofty of stature and lithe of limb
as they may be—though all are not so—they have shown that
they inherited the stark sinews, the unyielding muscles, the
indomitable, dogged energy of those 'terrible beef-fed islanders'
from whom we are all descended. In the boat, on the cricket-field,
at the rifle-targets, and in the saddle, the Australian
has shown that he can hold his own with his European
relatives.
It remains to be seen whether in the more æsthetic
departments he has exhibited the same power of competing
on equal terms with his Northern kinsmen. I now venture to
assert, considering the limited number of families relatively
from which choice could be made, that a very large proportion
of Australian-born persons, of both sexes, have exhibited a high
degree of talent, and, in some cases, unquestioned genius in
the literary, forensic, or scientific arena. That small and distant
English-speaking population, which in a single generation
produced such men as Wentworth, Robertson, Martin, Dalley,
Stephen, Forster, Halloran, Deniehy, Kendall, and Harper—Australians
by birth or rearing—may fairly lay claim to the
highest intellectual proclivities, to a moral atmosphere favourable
to mental development. It is inexpedient to mention
names in a limited community, but I may assert, without
laying myself open to that accusation of boasting for which
a colonial synonym has been adopted, that in the learned
professions Australians may be found, if not at the acknowledged
pinnacle, so near as to be worthily striving for pre-eminence.
Among the fair daughters of the land we know
that there are numbered singers, painters, musicians, histrionic
artists, and writers, of an eminence which fits them worthily
to compete with European celebrities.
Pledged to observing, with deep interest, the native
Australian type, so far as it has been presented to me, I have
rarely missed an opportunity of testing not only the general
characteristics of the individuals examined,—I have even pushed
my inquiries almost to the verge of rudeness as to the nationality
of parents and grandparents; from the Parramatta River to the
Clarence, from the Moyne to the Murrumbidgee, from the Yarra
to the Mataura, I have noticed 'natives' of all ranks, ages, and
356sexes. The eager ethnological reader will naturally require my
conclusive opinion—a prosaic, possibly a disappointing one.
Australian-born persons, with trifling exceptions, are very like
everybody else, born of British blood, anywhere. So far from
all being run into one mould, as it pleases strangers to believe,
they present as many instances of individual divergence from
the ordinary Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic types—mentally and
physically—as are to be found in Europe or elsewhere. Then
the heat, the constant eating of meat, the locomotive, speculative
habit of the land—do these not produce a variation of type?
How can they be like people born in the green Motherland?
is eagerly asked. My answer is—that 'race is everything.'
A little heat more or less, a little extra wayfaring, the prevalence
of the orange and banana, of abundant food—these things
do not suffice to relax the fibre and lower the stamina of the
bold sea-roving breed which has never counted the cost of the
deadliest climate or the wildest sea where honour was to be
satisfied, thirst for adventure to be slaked, or even that lower
but essential desideratum, a full purse to be secured. If the
air be hot, there sighs the ocean breeze to temper it withal.
On the great interior plateaux, the pure, dry atmosphere, which
invigorates the invalid, rears up uninjured the hardy broods of
the farmer, the stock-rider, and the shepherd. Stalwart men
and wholesome, stirring lasses do they make. The profusely-used
beef and mutton diet, due to our countless flocks and
herds, though it does not tend to produce grossness of habit,
is a muscle-producing food, best fitted for those who are
compelled to travel far and fast. The ordinary bush-labourer,
reared on a farm or a station, is generally a tall, rather graceful
personage. He may be comparatively slight-looking, but if
you test or measure him, you will find that the spareness is
more apparent than real. His limbs are muscular and sinewy;
his chest is broad; his shoulders well spread; he is extremely
active, and, either on foot or horseback, can hold his own with
any nationality. Wiry and athletic, he is much stronger than
he looks. He will generally do manual labour after a fashion
and at a pace that would astonish a Kent or Sussex yokel. If
he have not the abnormally broad frame of the English navvy
or farm-labourer, neither has he the bowed frame, the bent
back, the shorter limbs of the European hind. With all his
faults he is much more as Nature made him, unwarped by
357ceaseless compulsory labour, and more capable of the rational
enjoyment of life.
With regard to mental characteristics. It has been the
fashion to assert that a certain want of thoroughness is
observable in the native Australian youths. 'They will not
fag at their books to the same extent as a Britisher. They
are superficial, light-minded, unstable, what not.'
I well believe this to be an unfounded charge. When will
people cease to talk of 'Australians' doing this and that, or
permit colonists to differ among themselves from birth, as
elsewhere? Here, under the Southern Cross as under Ursa
Major, are born the imaginative and the practical, the energetic,
the dreamy, the slow and the brilliant, the cautious and the
rash, the persevering and the fickle. As the inscrutable human
unit enters the world, so must he or she remain, I hold, but
partially modified by human agency, until the day of death.
Change of abode or circumstance will not perceptibly alter
the mysteriously-persistent entity. The eager British or other
critic sums up the inhabitants living in five hundred different
ways as typical colonists. 'The Australian' (saith he) 'does
this, or looks like that, dislikes formality, or abhors uniformity.
He is quick, but not persevering; he is not so profound, so
long enduring, so "thorough" as the Englishman.' Such
reasoners surely assume that all Australians 'to the manner
born' were hewn out of one primeval eucalyptus log, instead
of, as I had the honour to remark before, possessing in full
abundance the endless differentiations and divergences from
the parent type, and from each other, so noticeable in Great
Britain.
Know, O friendly generaliser, that there be tall Australians
and short Australians, lean Australians, and those to whom
the increase of adipose tissue is a sore trial. There be fair-haired
and dark-haired, brown-and auburn-haired youths and
maidens, and ever, as the outward man or woman ripens
diverse under the same sun, do the invisible forces of the
mind wax faint or fierce, feeble-clinging or deathless-strong.
There are speculative, rash Australians; also cautious, very
wary Australians. Some to whom gold is but dross, peculiarly
difficult to 'pocket' in life's billiard-table, and woefully given
to the losing hazard; others to whom pence and half-pence
are dear as the rarest coins of the collector, prone to fight for
358or hoard them with desperate tenacity. 'Natives' who are ready
to accept the gravest charge without a grain of self-distrust;
'natives' to whom responsibility is a misery and a burden.
Some there are who from childhood to old age scarcely
glance at any literary product except a newspaper. Born
on the same stream, or tending the same herds, shall be
those whose every waking thought is more or less connected
with books; to whom the unvisited regions of the Old World,
through such glorious guides, are rendered common and
familiar. There is no generic native Australian definition,
such as we carelessly apply to Englishmen, Americans,
Frenchmen, or Germans, when we call the first practical,
the second 'go-ahead,' the third gay, the fourth solid. The
Australian, perhaps, more nearly resembles the Briton, from
whom he has chiefly sprung, than any other sub-variety of
mankind.
There may be a slight but noticeable tendency to variation,
but it smacks of progressive development rather than of retrogression.
Let it be remembered that the inhabitants of the
principal subdivisions of Britain have mingled and intermarried
in Australia to a greater degree than is possible in
the mother-country. Doubtless English and Scotch, Scotch
and Irish, and so on, continuously form alliances in Britain;
but there scarcely can have been such a thorough sifting
up together, such intermixture of blood there, as where the
three divisions, having been imported in rateably even quantities,
have intermarried, for nearly a century. The thorough welding
of Celt and Saxon, Dane and Norseman, Ancient Briton,
Scoto-Celt, and Hiberno-Saxon strains, is hardly possible
except in a colony. Hence Australia may eventually produce
a type of the highest physical and mental vigour possible to
the race. It has been conceded that borderers—presumably
mixed—have always excelled in stature and mental calibre
the pure races. As much may be asserted in days to come
of Australians. As it is, instances are not wanting of a type
of manhood combining harmoniously those qualities of which
English, Irish, and Scotch have from time immemorial been
accustomed to boast.
I conclude this outline of a deeply-important question by
recording my deliberate conviction, that in the essentials of
character, the Southern British race truly resembles and in
359none falls short of the parent stock. Apparent physical
peculiarities may be explained, as the results of a higher
average standard of living, a less stationary habit, and the
unshared freshness of a glorious atmosphere.
The Great South Land, in extent and variety of climate
and soil, offers a more fruitful field for the development of
the root-qualities of the race than did any former abiding-place
of the great Aryan stock. And though the average
stature be exceeded, and the rugged lineaments, no longer
ocean-striving, but fanned by softer airs, approximate more
closely to the chiselled features of the Greek, ever and for
ever more will Australia 'keep unchanged the strong heart
of her sons'; for ages yet to come jealously claiming the
proud title of 'Britons of the South,' and as such, when the
world's war-dogs bay around the sacred standard of the
Empire, eagerly emulous to be enrolled among the 'Soldiers
of the Queen.'
MY SCHOOL DAYS
360
It savours of the improbable to assert that the life-careers of
my school-comrades have proved to be mainly in development
of their boyish traits of character; yet in the majority of
instances such has been the case.
Sir James Martin, late Chief Justice of New South Wales,
was always facile princeps among us—in every class, in
every subject. He may not have posed as a too industrious
worker, but, whatever his method, he mastered every department
of knowledge which he essayed with unvarying success.
That he, in common with most of the 'old boys,' wrote with
ease and effectiveness was due, perhaps, to the care bestowed
upon the study of English composition. It was a speciality
of the school. Hugh Ranclaud once produced an essay so
polished and scholarly that suspicion of plagiarism was aroused.
A subject was given to him, 'Marauders by land or sea,' to
work out under supervision. He emerged triumphantly from
the ordeal. The first numbers of Pickwick appearing about
that time, in green covers, if I mistake not, Martin commenced
a tale, embodying a similar style of incident. I forget the
title now, but some numbers were printed. It was a boy's
audacious imitation, but even at this distance of time I recall
the undoubted ability of his performance. Part of the action
was laid in London, a city, strangely enough (though he knew
more of its history and topography than many a dweller
within sound of Bow Bells), that he was never destined to
behold.
William Forster was much the same kind of boy as he
was a man: obstinately honest, uncompromising, detesting
the expedient; clever at classics and mathematics, yet with a
361strong leaning to poetry. He left us to go to the King's
School at Parramatta, then in charge of the Rev. Mr. Forrest,
Hovenden. Hely, Whistler and Eustace Smith, Moule, the
Rossi Brothers, Walter Lamb, and a large contingent of
Stephens were contemporaries. Alfred of that ilk and I
were great chums. He was a steady worker, as were most
of that branch of his family. Consett (Connie) was then a
handsome, clever boy, who could learn anything when he
liked, but was not over-fond of work. Matthew Henry (now
a Supreme Court judge), on the other hand, was an insatiable
acquirer of knowledge, and bore off a bagful of prizes, so to
speak, at every examination. Frank, his cousin, was not over-eager
about draughts from the Pierian spring, which led to
misunderstandings between him and our worthy master; but
he was famous for tenacity of purpose and indomitable resolution,
qualities which served him well in after-life. Among
the boys who came comparatively late was George Rowley.
He must have been fourteen, at least, and by no means
forward. In two years he was not far from the head of the
school. The Brennans—John, the late sheriff, and his brother
Joseph—David Moore, a Minister of the Crown in Victoria
in days to come, David Forbes, the present judge, and George
Lord were the Spofforths, Bannermans, and Massies of that
long-past day—old fashioned, perhaps, in a cricketing sense,
but prophetic of triumphs to come.
There were fights now and then, and 'what for no?'
But these necessary conflicts were conducted with all proper
decorum at the bottom of the playground. Mr. Cape, very
properly, did not discourage them as long as there was no
unfairness. I reminded Mr. William Crane, stipendiary
magistrate, years since, of an obstinate engagement between
us, in which his superior science gained the victory. I
'knocked back' or put out a knuckle of my right hand (as our
schoolboy phrase was) in that or some other desperate fray.
Dr. Parsons, a medical friend whom I met in the street,
reduced the swelling for me. The worthy stipendiary showed
a similar displacement, attributable to the same cause, as we
compared notes.
Ronald Cameron was one of our leading champions, being
ready to fight anything or anybody at short notice. He
challenged to the combat Cyrus Doyle, a long-limbed native,
362big enough to eat him, with the assurance of a gamecock
defying an emu. He lost the fight, of course; but no other
boy of his size in the school would have thought of commencing
it. He had been at sea for a year, and was thereby
enabled to tell us wonderful tales of his adventures among
the South Sea Islands—much after the fashion of 'Jack
Harkaway,' who, however, like gas in the time of Guy
Fawkes, 'wasn't then inwented.' In after-years a report was
current among us that he was lost at sea. Whether true or not
I am unable to say. He certainly was, with the exception of
Carden Collins, the most utterly fearless boy I ever saw.
Of course, with so large a school, under masters were required.
These gentlemen were excellent teachers and conscientious
disciplinarians. First came Mr. Murray, the English and
arithmetical master; then Mr. O'Brien, writing master and
teacher of mathematics. He had a way of saying, when arrived
at the Q.E.D. of a problem in Euclid, 'And the thing is done.'
How well I remember his desk and the pen he was always
mending! No steel pens in those days. We had to learn to
mend our own quill pens and keep them in good order.
If the pens were bad and the writing suffered thereby, we
suffered in person. This led to the careful preparation of
the obsolete goose-quill—now a figure of speech, a thing of
the past.
The Rev. Mr. Woolls was for a year or more classical
master. He afterwards went to Parramatta and established
himself independently. A fair-haired, ruddy-faced, Kingsley-looking
young Englishman was he when he first came to
Sydney College. He was the ideal tutor, and most popular
with us all: strict in school, but full of life and gaiety when
lessons were over.
The late Reverend David Boyd, afterwards of East
Maitland, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, succeeded
him. He was an accomplished person if you like: a first-rate
classical scholar, with a fair knowledge of French,
German, and Italian—possibly Hebrew, for he knew pretty
well everything, from astronomy to single-stick, fencing to
comparative philology. He rode, drove, shot, fished, painted,
was musical, mathematical—a mesmerist doubtless. 'Omnibus
rebus et quibusdem aliis' ought to have been his motto.
We boys looked upon him as a successor of the Admirable
363Crichton, and revered him accordingly. I was very glad when
he 'followed the rush' to Port Phillip in 1842, and gave the
Hammonds, Howards, myself, and a few other ex-Sydney
College boys our last year's teaching. We ought to have
made the most of it, for, as none of us got any more, we had
to rely upon those early years of conscientious grounding for
the foundation of any edifice of learning we should elect to
place thereon. It has proved extremely useful to all of us,
and it was no one's fault but our own if we did not imbibe
every form of useful knowledge short of what university
training alone could have supplied.
Besides these gentlemen we had drawing and French
masters. Mr. Rodius was a German artist, a painter in watercolours
and a limner of likenesses in crayon. Many of the
early celebrities will owe whatever immortality they may secure,
to his industrious pencil. Still linger in old colonial mansions
a few portraits, not obtruded perhaps, but too life-like to
be lost sight of, bearing the signature 'C. Rodius.' In our
family scrap-album several water-colour sketches are to be seen,
showing perhaps more than the portraits—which were necessary
'pot-boilers' in that material age—the true artistic touch.
He used to scold us, his pupils, for our indifference and
inattention: 'Ven I was yong I did rone a whole mile every
day so as to be in dime vor my bainding lezzon; I belief you
would all rone a mile do esgabe it.' I don't know that he
succeeded in forming artists of that generation, but possibly
we may have been rendered more appreciative of the paintings
which most of us were to behold in the Galleries of Europe.
Mr. Stanley, our French master, knew his Paris intimately, I
doubt not. He had the Parisian accent, too, very different in
quality from the provincial French which, when spoken
fluently, enables so many professors of the language to pass
muster. He was a man of distinguished bearing and 'club'
form, resembling curiously in appearance, and in some other
ways, a late fashionable celebrity. Why he had come to live in
a colony and teach French at a boarding-school we might
wonder, but had no means of ascertaining. His life, doubtless,
contained one of the romances of which Australia was at that
time full. He was generous to all his pupils. No unkind
word was ever said regarding him. He imparted to us a
thorough comprehension of the genius of the language; and
364if we never fully probed the subtle distinctions of irregular
verbs, it was no fault of his. Long afterwards, when at the
Grand Hôtel de Louvre, or the 'Trois Frères Provencaux,' I was
able to make my wants known, surrounded by British and
American capitalists, sitting mute as fishes, I recalled with
gratitude Mr. Stanley's faithful monitions.
One of our school games was, of course, that of 'fives.'
We played against one of the high gables of the college building,
where the ground had been partially levelled; but it was
rather rough still. A road-party was doing something to the
present College Street when a master suggested that I should
ask my friend Mr. Felton Mathew, then Surveyor-General and
Chief Road-superintendent, to allow the men to complete our
'fives' court. Mr. Mathew was our neighbour at Enmore;
he bought the ground from my father on which he built
Penselwood. My request was granted, and a party of men
under an overseer soon made another place of it.
A tragical incident connected with the game occurred
about this time. Some of the boys were playing in Sydney
against a high wall in a court built for the purpose. It was
not properly supported, for it fell suddenly, killing poor Billy
Jones, who was one of the players. I don't think I remember
any other accident. There was an epidemic of influenza,
precisely like the 'fog fever' of recent years in symptom, cause,
and effect. It was universal, severe, and troublesome, but we
all recovered in due time. Even 'fog fever,' therefore, is no
new thing. A certain school of weather prophets is convinced
that, as they state their proposition, 'the seasons have
changed; since the old colonial days they have become drier
or cooler, even hotter, sometimes.' After a pretty clear recollection
of most of the seasons since the 'three years' drought' of
1836-7-8, I am opposed to that belief. What has been will
be again. People were justified in surmising about the time
of last autumn that it had forgotten how to rain in New
South Wales and part of Queensland. In this year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven that
theory may be said to have exploded.
What was a really exceptional, even phenomenal, form of
weather, however, did take place in and near Sydney in one
of the dry years mentioned, which was a fall of snow. We
made snowballs at Enmore and enjoyed the usual schoolboy
365amusements connected therewith. It must have been nearly
as cold a day as last Monday week. There was snow on all
the hills around Albury, but I did not hear of any snowballing
quite so near Sydney as I refer to. If the Messrs. Chaffey
Brothers succeed in their irrigation scheme, and make the
Mildura salt-bush wilderness to bloom as the rose, we may
attain partial security from droughts at least. Nevertheless
let us pray to be delivered from the legendary visitations
which grey-headed aboriginals have described to pioneer
settlers. Such an one, unbroken for seven years, is now laying
waste Queensland.
The sons of Sir Thomas Mitchell—Livingstone, Roderick,
and Murray—were among the denizens of that old enclosure
of learning, where, as Hood so truly sings—
Ay! there's the playground—there's the lime,
Beneath whose shade in summer's prime
So wildly I have read!
Who sits there now and skims the cream
Of young romance and weaves a dream
Of love and cottage bread?
Who, indeed! and how few are left of all that joyous crew
that ran and leaped, shouted and whooped with the delight of
abounding animal spirits? Besides the Mitchells were the
sons of Colonel Snodgrass; the Dowlings, the present worthy
judge and his brother Vincent; the Ritchies; the Nortons,
James and John; George Wigram Allen; the Mannings,
Arthur and Henry. These with others might be considered
the aristocratic section, but there were no divisions founded
upon social inequalities. We learned and fed, played and
lived generally, in generous and hearty fellowship.
William Wentworth the younger, who afterwards distinguished
himself at Cambridge, but died early, was intellectually
a loss to his native land of no trifling extent.
John Lang, whose name to this day is well remembered in
the Madras Presidency, was a Sydney College boy. Known
to be clever, no one was surprised to hear that he distinguished
himself at Cambridge, and passed as a barrister with credit.
He made a short visit to Sydney afterwards, where, politically,
he followed the banner of Mr. Wentworth. But he preferred
to quit Australia for the exciting life and larger fees with which
Indian barristers are credited. There, thanks to an unusual
366facility for acquiring languages, he acquired legal celebrity and
a brilliant forensic reputation. He gained the historic case
of Jootie Persaud, a native contractor, against the Government,
which involved half a million of money. His fee, it
was said, paid by the grateful plaintiff, was the royal one of
a lakh of rupees (£10,000). A brilliant companion, a
more than popular society man, whose promising career was
cut short by an early death, he found time to write several
Anglo-Indian and an Australian novelette or two. Will He
Marry Her?, The Forger's Wife, York; you're wanted, are
still in constant demand, judging from the number of cheap
editions issued. But to my mind Wanderings in India is
one of the best of the lighter descriptions of Eastern life
ever published. The mingled realism and pathos of the style
have been rarely excelled.
Our worthy master was fully aware that moral suasion was
by no means wholly to be relied upon for the steady stimulation
of his troop along the high-road of knowledge. Yet did he
make from time to time appeals to the higher nature, attributed
to boys in improving works of fiction.
'Bear in mind,' he would say on these occasions, 'that
you are to be the future leaders and guides of society in this
new country, which is destined to develop into such a great
and important one. Out of your ranks, from among those
who stand before me in this hall this day, will be chosen the
judges, the magistrates of the land, the clergymen, the lawyers,
the legislators and civil servants. These high positions and
responsible offices must be filled by you, or boys of like age
and training, when grown to be men. Should you not, therefore,
strive earnestly, resolutely, to fit yourselves to discharge the
duties to which in the course of nature you are to be called,
intelligently, efficiently, honourably? And is there any
probability that such will be the case unless you apply yourselves
lovingly, perseveringly, to the tasks set you by me, your
teacher and your friend, for which purpose and no other you
are placed here by your worthy parents? Master Jones will now
commence the Latin lesson of the day—the second ode of
Horace, if I mistake not, etc.'
Portions of this wise, thoughtful advice were probably retained
mechanically, as an exercise of memory, though not
seriously reflected upon. Much passed 'in at one ear and
367out of the other,' unheeded and soon forgotten, with the
incredible heedlessness of early youth. Yet how strangely
accurate has been the fulfilment of these long-past warnings.
Among us then stood in embryo a Chief Justice, since eminent
among high legal authorities, dying in proved possession of a
massive intellect, a wide-reaching grasp of principles, a rapid
faculty of generalisation which will ever cause his memory to
be revered and his decisions to be quoted; three puisne
judges, all of whom have earned the respect of men for legal
attainment and unswerving impartiality; a Right Honourable
Privy Councillor of our Gracious Sovereign, whose Jubilee
(now that half a century has rolled by since Hugh Ranclaud
and I, arms crony-like about each other's necks, heard the
Proclamation of her majority read under the oaks of Macquarie
Place) received a world-wide celebration. A Privy Councillor,
moreover, whose privilege it was, by one act of statesmanlike inspiration,
to nationalise Australia and to immortalise himself.
Alfred Stephen became a clergyman, always a hard-working,
conscientious parish priest, beloved by his parishioners.
He died in harness. Poor Connie, when I saw him many a
year after his schoolboy days, was no longer handsome and
careless, but as an eminent solicitor, and thus chained to the
Bench, a galley-slave of the law, comparatively war-worn of
visage. And pray what are we all in middle life but the bond-slaves,
scarcely disguised, of some form of ownership which
we dignify with the name of Circumstance? He and his
brother Matthew Henry were in the House of Assembly at
one time, thus justifying the prophecy as to the school being
the nursery of future legislators.
Sir James Martin was Her Majesty's Attorney-General, and
afterwards Chief-Justice William Forster was in more than one
Ministry. Allan Macpherson was for many years regularly
returned to Parliament. Sir George Wigram Allen, the
steadiest of workers at school, again kept close to Hood's
humorous declaration—
Each little boy at Enfield School
Became an 'Enfield's Speaker.
He, with the Honourable James Norton, his neighbour and
class-fellow, but continued unchanged the steadfastness and
success of his school record. With one's schoolfellows the
368physical proportion seems to alter strangely and, in a sense, unnaturally
in the aftertime. The big boys, the eldsters of one's
early days, when met with in other years, appear unaccountably
shrunken; while the 'little boys' of the same period
seem to have developed abnormally and assumed the gigantic.
For instance, a small orphan creature was brought to the
school very young. He seemed unable to face the strangeness
of his surroundings. When, years afterwards, I met at
the race-ground of another colony an athletic six-foot manager
of a cattle-station, mounted on a fiery steed, and by repute
the show stock-rider of the district, I could not reconcile it to
credibility that he should be the 'Bluey' (such was his
sobriquet) of our school days. He was, nevertheless.
The Broughtons of Tumut, Archer and Robert—now no
more—were among the elders of the Sydney College. During
the last two years I have visited their homes in that romantic
corner of New South Wales. All this time I had a curiosity
to explore their ancient town of Tumut under the shadow of
the Australian Alps, with its rushing river, green valleys, and
romantic scenery. I shall always feel thankful that my desire
has been gratified.
We were not permitted to go boating in the harbour
unless in charge of relatives. And very properly. But we
were allowed to bathe in the summer afternoons, after applying
for formal leave.
Our greatest treat was, on the Saturday half-holiday, the
picnic to Double Bay. We chose this as being a quasi-romantic
spot. Some one had commenced a mansion there
and had not completed it. There was a deserted vineyard,
which looked like an amphitheatre; an artificial fish-pond
too—an object of deep interest. In those golden summer
eves we gathered bagfuls of the native currant—a small
fruit capable of being converted into jam in spite of a
startling acidity of flavour—and having eaten our lunch, 'sub
Jove,' used to fish, bathe, and scamper about the beach till it
was time to return. Still runs the tiny creek into which we
used to dash 'like troutlets in a pool'; still ebb and flow the
tides of the little bay; but the neighbourhood is crowded
with buildings, incongruous to the scene, and the glory of
youthful adventure, which then pervaded all things, like the
genius loci, has, with the long-past years, fled for ever.
SYDNEY FIFTY YEARS AGO
369
Soon after we went to live at Enmore, I being then nine or ten
years old, my first pony was presented to me by my father.
A tiny Timor mare was little Bet; Dick Webb, the well-known
horse-dealer and livery-stable keeper, being the
intermediary. Cargoes of these small Eastern horses,
degenerate in size only, from scant feeding and crowded
pastures, were then imported from the islands of Timor and
Lombok. Disrespectful remarks have been written touching
the quality of these early Australian hackneys. They were
accused of spoiling the breed of our horses. Spoiling, forsooth!
Nothing better ever trod on turf than these
miniature Barbs, for such they undoubtedly were. Clean-legged,
long-pasterned, bright-eyed, lean-headed, mostly with
well-placed shoulders and well-bent hocks, each with pluck
enough for a troop of horse—where could one get a better cross
than these wonderful little 'tats,' with legs and feet of iron,
and though only ranging from ten to twelve hands high, able
to carry a heavy man a long day's journey?
The Shetland pony, grand little chap as he may be, is a
degenerate cart-horse, nothing more; he can trot, walk, and
carry a burly gamekeeper up a steep hillside, but he has no
pace. The Timor ponies, on the contrary, with light-weights,
could make very fair racing time, were high-couraged and
untiring, in or out of condition, bequeathing to their offspring
the fire and speed of the Eastern horse, with a quality of legs
and feet difficult to find nowadays. My little mare was a
trotter, a jumper, a clever all-round hack. A colt of my
next Timor mare I used to ride when I was a man grown,
370nearly twelve stone in weight, the which impost he could carry
like a bird, and even bolt with occasionally.
More than one fashionably bred racehorse of the present
day has the blood of a Timor ancestress in his veins, and
though the fact is not obtruded, doubtless owes the staying
power and undeniable legs and feet to that infusion. In
those early days whole cargoes of them were brought through
the streets of Sydney by the sailors, the manner being thus—half-a-dozen
were tied neck to neck with strong short ropes, a
halter attached to the one on the near side of the string, the
which a couple of stalwart sailors tugged manfully, another
encouraging the line from the rear. They were half-covered
with hieroglyphs in the shape of brands. Prices ranged from
five pounds to ten, according to quality. The sons of well-to-do
people were to be seen mounted upon them. When fed
and groomed they were as showy and fast hackneys as a light-weight
would desire.
While dwelling upon these incidents of an earlier day, the
hours and limits of school deserve notice. At the Sydney
College we were expected to attend at nine o'clock in the
morning. At mid-day an hour's recess was granted. In that
interval the boarders dined; the day-scholars having disposed
of their lunches hurriedly, went in for as much play as the
time would admit. From 1 o'clock till 3 P.M. was occupied by
afternoon school; the day-scholars departing then whithersoever
they listed. The boarders dispersed to play cricket,
went for a walk or into town—after applying for leave in the
latter cases. On Saturday we worked from nine till twelve,
when the half-holiday set in. There was no whole holiday in
my day. And three morning hours, multiplied by the weeks
in a year, should account for a fair measure of work.
After the country had become fairly prosperous and it was
seen that tens of thousands of men could find work and room
for their energy in the virgin waste of the interior, immigration
was encouraged by the Government of the day. A bounty
was paid to each emigrant or to the agent who recommended
or persuaded him to come to the far, unknown land.
It was curious, even then, to find a class which held that
they had a vested labour interest in the colony—which disapproved
strongly of assisted, unrestricted immigration. They
complained that other persons should come out at the expense
371of the State to compete, as they alleged, with them and
lower the price of labour.
'It was the prisoners' colony,' asserted the demagogues
who formulated this view. 'Free men had no right to come
here, subsisted and helped by the Government.'
Enmore, being about three miles from the Sydney College,
was rather far for a daily walk before the advent of little Bet,
but with the aid of a drive now and then (of course there were
no omnibuses) I managed it pretty well at first. The only
house at all near us was tenanted by Mrs. Erskine, with
whose sons I used to beguile the tedium of the road. Once
we asked a wood-carter for a lift, whom not acceding to our
request, we pelted with stones. He complained to the
authorities, and we suffered in person accordingly. Then an
adventure befell which led to grief and anxiety. It might
well have been serious. I had started on the home-track in
the afternoon, when one of the tropical storms not unknown
in Sydney to this day commenced. The rain came down as
if to repeat the deluge, an inch apparently falling every ten
minutes. The low lands near the Haymarket were flooded.
I was drenched. Streams and torrents coursed down every
channel. The drains burst up. Things looked bad for a long
walk with creeks to cross. At this juncture a tidy-looking old
woman (she sold milk) invited me to enter her dwelling. I
did so, and found myself in a neat and cleanly cottage. The
rain not abating, she invited me to stay for tea, exhibiting
most excellent bread and butter. Finally, discovering that I
had so far to go and the waters being still 'out,' she prevailed
upon me, nothing loth, to remain all night.
Unluckily, as it turned out, my father was in town, and had
called at the school to take me home. He was told that I
had left shortly before. Driving rapidly, being eager to overtake
me, he reached home to find that I had not turned up.
After an anxious interval, during which fears obtruded themselves
that I had fallen into a creek or water-hole and so got
drowned, he rode back into town, searching vainly of course
for my extremely naughty self, then calmly reading by the
light of a tallow candle, my aged hostess meanwhile knitting.
When he again visited the College on the off-chance of my
having concluded to return, and was told to the contrary, he
gave me up for lost. Mr. Cape, however, stated his belief that
372R. B., though of tender years, was a boy exceptionally capable
of taking care of himself, and probably would be found even
now in a place of safety.
This, however, was accepted by my anxious parent merely
as an amiable attempt at consolation, whereupon he rode home
again through mud and mire in despairing mood. A restless
early riser by habit, he was in the saddle before dawn, with a
view to having the creeks and hollows searched, when happening
to pass my old woman's cottage, I recognised the horses first
(Australian fashion), my stern Governor and the groom next.
I called out. He turned and saw me. Anger would have
been natural and deserved. But he was too overjoyed at my
return from the dead, as he doubtless considered it. 'God
forgive you, my boy, for what you have caused us to suffer,'
was all that he said. I rode home behind the groom, and
was received, I need not say, with what transports of delight.
Ah me, how ungrateful are we all for the care and tenderness
lavished upon us in childhood!
'All's well that ends well' is a comforting and satisfactory
proverb. The good old dame was duly thanked and
rewarded. Matters soon returned to their former footing.
But one mischance, directly proceeding from the demoralisation
of the household on that night, was of a serious and melancholy
nature. Our inestimable Alderney cow took advantage
of the open door of the feed-room to assimilate part of a truss
of Lucerne hay; then, 'acting with no more judgment than to
take a drink,' died from excessive inflation. An irreparable
loss, and one remembered against me at intervals long
afterwards.
Promoted to the Timor mare, I used to make pretty good
time down Brickfield Hill and so round Black Wattle Swamp
and Mr. Shepherd's garden. She was a good trotter, and I
have owned a performer in that line—fast, extra, or only
moderate, but always a trotter—from that time to this. A
trotter is generally a good animal otherwise. I have seen few
exceptions.
Mr. A. B. Spark, a mercantile magnate of the day, was
our neighbour at Cook's River. I was sent with a letter early
one spring morning to Tempé. There I found the good old
gentleman in his garden. 'Can you eat strawberries, my
boy?' was his prompt inquiry. It is unnecessary to repeat
373my answer. 'Then set to, and we'll have breakfast afterwards.'
That is the way to talk to a boy! I could have died
for him; I respect his memory now. At breakfast he told me
that the pretty freestone, white-columned house had been built
on the model of a Greek temple in the Vale of Tempé.
Hence its classical name, which it still retains. The fresh
eggs, laid by pure Spanish hens, were the largest I had ever
seen. When he showed me some lop-eared rabbits after
breakfast and promised me a pair, my heart was almost too
full. I rode back the happiest boy in the land, and never
forgot the old gentleman's amazing kindness.
It may be that kindly memory, eliding the darker shadows
of the past, presents the colonial period which I am recalling,
from 1831 to 1840, as almost Arcadian in peaceful simplicity,
in steadfast industry, in freedom from atrocious crime, compared
with later developments. And yet New South Wales
was then to all intents and purposes a convict colony. Shiploads
of prisoners arrived from time to time. Expirees from
Tasmania no doubt made their way to a land where wages
were comparatively high, and where new country offered a
refuge from close official inspection. Whether the old-fashioned
rule—strict, vigilant, unrelaxing—was better suited
to the natural man, free or bond, than the present mercy-mongering
management, may partly be judged by results.
'The bush'—a vast and trackless wilderness—was
gradually being occupied and reclaimed by that strange
lover of the waste places of the earth, the wilful, wicked,
wandering Anglo-Saxon. Tragedies from time to time
doubtless occurred. Bushrangers were not unknown, but
what were they to the Kellys, the Halls and Gilbert, the
Clarks and Morgans? Aboriginal blacks were shot occasionally;
more than one cruel murder was brought home to the perpetrators,
for which they justly atoned. At the same time a
lonely hut-keeper or shepherd was often found prone and
motionless, speared or clubbed as the case might be; many
a stock-rider's horse came home without him. Yet, in a
general way, life and property were far more secure under the
modified martial law of the period than they have been
known to be under a constitutional Government and quasi-democratic
rule. When it is considered that for half a
century the worst criminals of the old country, as well as the
374more ordinary rogues, had been sent to Australia, it says much
for the management or for the material that so orderly and
improvable a society was evolved.
If there were occasional crimes of deepest dye, who could
feel surprise? The wonder was that they were so few in
comparison to the population. Captain Knatchbull, ex-post-captain
R.N., knocks out the brains of a poor washerwoman
for the sake of eight pounds sterling, ending on the gallows a
life of curiously varied villainy, which had included attempted
poisoning, mutiny, and betrayal of comrades. There was the
memorable 'Fisher's Ghost' tragedy, in which a supernatural
agent was alleged to have led to the discovery of a deed of
blood. There were crimes, doubtless, that cried aloud to
heaven for vengeance, but which never will be fully known
till the Great Day. But discovery, arraignment, and trial
followed close on the heels of wrongdoers. In a general way—I
assert it unhesitatingly—Sydney was as quiet, as peaceful
and orderly in appearance as any town in Britain, save in the
purlieus of that half-recognised Alsatia, 'The Rocks'; more
decent, sober, and outwardly well-behaved than George Street
and Pitt Street in 1887.
It may truly be suggested that one of the great dangers of
modern civilisation—certainly of Australian national life—would
appear to be the crowding of an unreasonable proportion
of the inhabitants into the cities and larger towns.
An increasingly dangerous class is there encouraged to
grow and multiply, averse to the honest and well-paid toil
of the country, preferring to it a precarious employment in
a city, with the accompaniment of the baser pleasures;
clamouring at every interval of employment for relief works,
subsisting but for panem et circenses, like the profligate populace
of old Rome, the pandering to which eventually sapped the
grandeur and glory of the Mistress of the World. Absit
omen!
At the corner of Elizabeth and King Streets might have
been seen a provisional lock-up, used for the temporary
detention of criminals about to be tried at the adjoining
courts. A rudely-hewn pillar of sandstone had been deposited
there, and served as a seat for wayfarers or persons more
immediately concerned. We schoolboys were chiefly interested
in the stocks, that old-fashioned detainer in which drunken
375and disorderly persons were securely placed for such periods—a
portion of a day—as the magistrates might consider
expedient. In such fashion was Hudibras fast imprisoned
when the lady and her steward coming by gazed on him
bowed to the earth with shame. In this ancient engine of
distraint upon the human property, in default of other, did the
malcontents of the day sit, stolid and defiant, upon a more or
less uncomfortable seat, 'fast bound in misery and iron.'
One doubts whether it would not be more effectual now than
the short sentence served in a comfortable, secluded
establishment, which the modern offender boasts that 'he
can do on his head.'
During the whole period of the time embraced in my
reminiscence, I cannot recall a week while we lived in Sydney
or near to it, that the Domain and Botanical Gardens were not
a joy, a solace, a luxury to us and to the society with which
we were acquainted. What a priceless boon was thus bestowed
upon the inhabitants of Sydney then and for all time by the
dedication of this lovely natural park to the public! What
walks—what drives—what merry bathing parties—what
lingering in summer eves—what early morning saunters has
not this precious primeval fragment, this art-adorned yet
beauteous wilderness, witnessed? The pleasure then enjoyed
by the toil-worn citizen, the stranger, or the invalid was more
exquisite and intense, from an assured freedom from that
modern pest, the larrikin. All who were met with in the
gardens were courteous and well-mannered persons for the
most part; for whomsoever conducted themselves otherwise
there was a short shrift, and if not a ready gallows, an
effectively deterrent punishment.
The early formation of William Street, now the great
arterial highway to Darlinghurst and the aristocratic suburbs,
was then progressing. In its straight course it carved away a
few acres of the Rosebank suburban property then owned by
Mr. Laidley. On the triangular portion so excised were
three white cedars, the most graceful of our shade trees. No
doubt the proprietor was compensated for the severance and
resumption, though not at the prices ruling in favour of latter-day
claimants.
What fortunes might have been made by judicious, or even
injudicious, purchasers of suburban land in those days! No
376one foresaw that any notable rise in value would take place in
less than a century or two. That land purchased by the acre
would sell for such prices in the life of the buyer, by the foot,
entered not into the mind of man. Wharves, street frontages,
building sites, allotments all passed under the hammer of the
Government auctioneer of the day at curiously low prices.
Who was to foresee that gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and
tin were all to make their appearance in peaceful, pastoral
New South Wales and her erstwhile appanage the Port Phillip
District, afterwards the Colony of Victoria?
The great public schools of that day were our College, the
King's School at Parramatta, and the Normal Institution, this
last organised by Dr. Lang—that eminent colonising clergyman.
The Reverend Robert Forrest was the Principal of the
King's School. He was understood to have been a strict
disciplinarian, as indeed he needed to be. We of the Sydney
College thought ourselves superior in scholarship; but doubtless
good work was done then as now at the Parramatta
school.
Mr. Carmichael—Scottish, of course—presided at the
Normal Institution, which was situated on the northern side of
the Racecourse, or Hyde Park as at present named. We were
near enough to play cricket together sometimes; also to fight,
indeed, as occasions of strife will arise among schoolboys.
Roland Cameron, a boy by nature warlike in the earlier stages
of life, had then his celebrated combat, having challenged an
oldster of the Normal, a head taller than himself. He didn't
come off victorious, but he walked forth with an apparently
calm consciousness that he couldn't be really conquered, which
I have rarely seen paralleled among later and more tragic
experiences.
OLD TIME THOROUGHBREDS
377
When the sons of Woden are admitted into Valhalla, it will
be an incomplete Elysium for some of us, maugre the perennial
flow of ale and the æsthetic fancy of the goblets, unless the
good steed Hengst, whom we have so loved on earth, be
permitted resurrection. Alick and Jimmy Hunter would miss
Romeo. Could Cornborough be excluded from any realm
of bliss which contained 'Dolly' Goldsmith? How superior
were those grand horses, not to mention The Premier and
Rory O'More, in all their attributes to the average human
individual, about whose title to such noble immortality there
is no question. I cannot believe that they are doomed to
extinction, to eternal oblivion. They are dead and gone,
doubtless. But lest any reader of these memories should lack
future opportunity of feasting his eyes upon those wondrous
equine shapes, I essay faintly to recall their leading
characteristics.
Romeo, son of Sir Hercules and Pasta, was a golden
chestnut, with a narrow blaze and white hind legs. Originally
imported to Tasmania from England, he was in 1842 located
at Miamamaluke Station on the 'Devil's River' in Victoria,
then the property of the Messrs. Hunter. He died in my
possession some years later, and, as I used to look at him for
at least half an hour every day for the first few months of
ownership, I may, without presumption, attempt a pen-and-ink
portrait.
Not a large horse—he might almost be classified as small,
indeed, compared with modern fashionable families, but of
superb symmetry and superfine quality. 'A head light and
lean,' though scarcely equal to The Premier's, his neck was of
378moderate length, with a delicately-marked crest. But his
shoulder! Never have I seen mortal horse with such
another. It was a study. So oblique was it; so graceful and
elastic was the fore-action in consequence, that you wondered
how horses of less perfect mechanism got on at all. His back
was short, his croup high. The finely formed, silken-haired
tail, which after his death hung in my room, was set on like
that of an Arab. He might easily have been ridden without
a girth to the saddle. Though his back appeared to be hardly
the length of one, he stood over more ground than horses that
looked bigger in every way. His barrel was rounded and well
ribbed up. Below the knee and hock the legs were admirably
clean and flat-boned, with pasterns just long enough to give
the elastic motion which so peculiarly distinguishes the
thoroughbred.
In those days (I was young, to be sure) I occasionally
relieved my pent-up feelings by the perpetration of verse. In
an old scrap-book are traced certain 'Lines to a Thoroughbred'
which must have been inspired by Romeo. They
commence—
Is he not glorious, in the high beauty proud,
Which from his desert-spurning Arab sires
To him was given? Mark the frontlet broad!
The delicate, pointed ear, and silken mane,
Scarce coarser than the locks which Delia boasts,
Attest his stainless race, etc.
Allusion was also made, if I mistake not, to a problematic
ancestor, the well-ridden steed of the poets, who after
Children's voices greet the rescued sire,
became 'a cherished playmate, loving and beloved.' Though
high-tempered enough, Romeo was a good-humoured horse in
the main, but the companionship of grooms and stable-boys
had partly rubbed off the inherited gentillesse of the desert.
Notably in one particular.
Whether he had been in some way teased or troubled, or
that some mischievous groom had been at the pains to teach
him the specific trick, I cannot say; but the fact was
notorious that if any one—in or near the stable—made a
noise with the mouth, like the drawing of a cork, the old
379horse fell into a paroxysm of rage and went open-mouthed at
all and sundry being within reach at the time.
The knowledge of this peculiarity was turned to account
more than once as a practical joke, sometimes with results
more or less unpleasant to the unsuspecting bystander. But
the joke occasionally recoiled. I happen to know of one
instance. A well-known veterinary surgeon of those days,
one Mr. Robertson—afterwards drowned in the Goulburn,
poor fellow!—happened to be paying a visit of inspection, when
a thoughtless friend made the cork-drawing signal. It was
Romeo versus Robertson, with a vengeance. Like a wild
horse of the prairies, he charged the astonished vet, a resolute
active man, who had all he could do to protect himself with a
heavy, cutting whip which he fortunately carried at the time.
He got out of the box unharmed, but seriously ruffled and
demoralised.
The first thing which occurred to him, however, on banging
the door of the loose-box behind him, was to lay his whip with
hearty goodwill and emphasis across the shoulders of the
humourist. Robertson was a burly Scot of more than average
physique. His blood was up, and I do not recall the fact of
the author of this unusually keen jest making effective resistance.
He probably was cured of that particular form of
joking, and learned practically that horseplay is one of the
games in which two can engage. I never knew the old horse
to commit unprovoked assaults, and think that some unusual
experience must have led to the tendency described.
Though ordinarily well-behaved, it will be noted that there
was a savour of dangerous dealing when aroused, and, as
might be expected, a few of his progeny were not famous for
the mildness of their tempers. They were, however, handsome
and distinguished-looking, good in every relation of equine
life. They supplied for many years a regular contingent to all
the races in Victoria, and, indeed, within a widely extended
radius round Kalangadoo and beyond the South Australian
border. Few indeed were the meets, metropolitan or
provincial, in which a Romeo colt or filly did not figure in the
first flight. Latterly he became the property of Mr. Hector
Norman Simson, from whose stud the celebrated Flying Doe
and other cracks were evolved.
Young Romeo, Baroness, Countess, and Clinker had all won
380reputations on the Flemington race-course—which then presented
a somewhat different appearance—before 1842. Young
Romeo, a handsome, upstanding, dark chestnut horse, then
the property of Captain Brunswick Smyth of the 50th Regiment,
was raffled, in 1843, I think for a hundred and fifty guineas.
We took a five-guinea ticket, but my drawing, innocently
young as I then was, did not carry the proverbial gambler's
luck. Oberon, a sweet little white-faced chestnut that Dr.
David Thomas used to drive somewhat unprofessionally as
tandem leader about Melbourne in 1851, was one of the later
offspring. The worthy doctor, ever ready for a lark, delighted
in getting Oberon's head over the shoulders of stout old
gentlemen in the street before they were aware of him or his
chariot.
It was somewhere near the end of the 'forties,' those
pioneering years paving the way to the golden era which set
in for Australia shortly after their decease. I happened to be
in Melbourne upon a cattle speculation. At Kirk's Bazaar
after breakfast I saw my ideal steed in a loose-box, apparently
for sale. After feasting my eyes upon him for a reasonable
period, I interviewed Mr. Dalmahoy Campbell, and sought
particulars.
The old horse by this time had grown hollow-backed, and
was evidently on his last legs. Still at a moderate price he
would not be unprofitable, and the value of his blood distributed
amid my stud could hardly, I thought, be over-estimated.
The main thing to be considered by a prudent young pastoralist
(I really was one in those days) was the price. This
turned out to be under £50. Money was not abundant in
that particular year. Stock were ludicrously cheap. For some
reason his owners had decided to sell the dear old horse. His
age and growing infirmities were against him. Still here was
a chance I might never get again. I had just made a largish
offer for the store cattle referred to. There was no use talking,
however. I felt like a man who had been offered the Godolphin
Arabian by a sheik hard-pushed for a ransom. I must
have the horse; that was all about it.
There was another slight difficulty. I had not ten £5
notes in my pocket. Far otherwise. I stated facts in the
office. I can see old 'Dal's' kind face as he said, 'We'll take
your bill at three months, my boy; that will give you time to
381turn round.' I gratefully assented, and Romeo—intoxicating
thought—was mine. That was my first bill. Never before
did I write 'Rolf Boldrewood' across the face or back or
below any of those insidious substitutes for ready money.
Would that the negotiable instrument had been my last. Well
impressed on my mind was the look of the worthy gentleman
who managed the financial department of the firm which had
the privilege of 'keeping my account' when I exultingly
informed him of my transaction. He had grown grey in commerce,
not altogether successfully. Doubtless memory carried
him back for a moment over years of high hope, guarded
enterprise, succeeded by wearing anxiety and dull despair.
Looking into my youthful, sanguine countenance, he said,
'Take my advice, and never sign another. I wish I had never
seen one.'
I did not take his advice, it is hardly necessary to say. It
was many a year before the application came in. Such is the
general course of events. But if every future acceptance had
been as anxiously considered, as punctually paid, and as profitably
contracted as Number One aforesaid, no great harm would
have been done.
I rode proudly out of Melbourne next day, leading my
valued purchase, duly muzzled and sheeted, along the western
road. Travelling by easy stages, only varied by a swim across
the Leigh River, 'where ford there was none,' I got on well.
It was an anxious moment for me, though, when the strong
current swept my precious steed round in midstream; but he
fought gallantly for a landing, which we finally gained. A
slip, a stagger, and we were safely over. At Dunmore he
received the admiration which was his due, while I was
congratulated on my enterprise and good fortune.
When I reached home the illustrious stranger was treated
with deserved attention. A roomy loose-box was specially
dedicated to his use. Boiled food, ground corn, every delicacy
of the season was lavished upon him. A revival of constitution
apparently took place. But he only lived a year, leaving
behind him, however, at Dunmore the beautiful, graceful
Pasta, half-sister to St. George, and also to The Margravine
and Track-Deer; and at Squattlesea Mere, Bonnie Dundee,
Ben Bolt, Fairy, and a few other notable nags. 'He owed
me nothing,' as his groom said when I sorrowfully attended
382his burial in the capacity of chief mourner. He lies under
a blackwood tree on an 'island' in the mere, where
the close-spreading clover blossoms climb and struggle
amid the tussock grass of the marshes. He was accorded
respectful interment, and my grief was more sincere
than that which accompanies more ostentatious funerals.
He had not perhaps the opportunity which another year
would have furnished of leaving an illustrious progeny in
the Port Fairy district, but some of his offspring made their
mark.
Dundee, being my principal hackney and stock horse, was a
wonderful performer. An admixture of Clifton blood gave
him height and 'scope.' He had the sloped Romeo shoulder,
with propelling machinery of unusual power. He was fortunately
just short of racing speed. But he was a grand
'camp horse'; could be ridden without flinching right into
the shoulder of the worst outlaw of the herd, carrying a fourteen-stone
weight over any three-railed fence, and stay for a week.
He lived to make a trans-Murray reputation, and still the wild
riders of the mallee remember the powerful chestnut that was
so well to the front with Sylvester Browne and the brothers
Beveridge in more than one 'moonlighting' foray.
Ben Bolt, his half-brother, was a bright chestnut, with four
white legs, a broad blaze, and a considerable quantity of white
in the corners of his eyes, with which he had an uncanny way
of regarding his rider. He was truly illustrious in more ways
than one. There is no record of any white man (or black one
either) having seen him tired. At the end of the longest day,
or the most terrific 'cutting-out' work, Ben's head was up, his
clear eyes watchful, his uneasy tail, switching slowly from side
to side, like a leopard not fully agitated. He had been known
to leave Melbourne after a trip with fat cattle (his rider had a
young wife on the station certainly), and late on the second
day the marshes of the Eumeralla were in sight. A hundred
and eighty miles—winter weather too! I can state from
personal experience that as a hackney he was deliciously easy,
fast, and free. But the luxurious sensation of being so charmingly
carried was modified by the ever-present thought that he
could 'buck you into a tree-top' whenever it so pleased him;
and at what minute the fit might take him no one had ever
been able to foretell.
383Sprung from a daughter of the Traveller line, Ben inherited
the dire resolution of that potent blood, with a fervent intensity
peculiar to the descendants of Romeo. The 'nick' was
therefore only a partial success. If one had required, as do
certain Indian rajahs, a horse warranted to distinguish himself
in combat with a tiger, Ben Bolt was the very animal. Once
let him get his heels into position and no living tiger would
have had a show. He might as well spring at a mitrailleuse.
But under saddle he was distinctly unreliable.
I used to break my own colts in those days, and in the
course of events Ben was duly haltered and enticed into the
stable. Though sensitive certainly, he was not overtly rebellious
until the third day, when he kicked at me in
what I held to be an unfair and treacherous manner. I
gave him a tap in requital with the butt-end of a hay-fork,
upon which he deliberately kicked down the partition
between his and the next loose-box. He hardly left a slab
standing, and generally conducted himself as if he was not
sure whether he would not smash the whole building while he
was about it.
I avoided contention after this, and in every way applied
myself to calm his fears and inspire confidence. It was all in
vain. When approached he would contract every muscle till
his flesh felt like a board, glaring the while at you with his
strangely bright, white-rimmed eyes, in a blood-curdling
homicidal way. However, at the end of a week I backed
him, looking to every strap and girth, and picking a good
soft spot to fall on. He was led, as was the fashion then,
along by the side of another horse, and, to every one's
surprise, walked away like an old stager. No irregularity
took place the next day or the one following. His mouth
was good; he held his head up. I was charmed, and
rode him proudly about by myself. Next morning he
was queer and sullen, and in the middle of the day, for
no earthly reason apparently, reared, plunged, bolted, and
commenced to buck like a demon. I 'stuck to him' until
he gradually got way on, and being apparently temporarily
insane, ran into a paling fence, against which he fell down.
I came off, of course, but remounted, when he did nothing
further.
I rode him daily afterwards, until he passed into the second
384stage of breaking, being comparatively handy and pleasanter
than many older horses, but we never seemed to get nearer
to confidential relations. He took me unawares again ('underhand,'
as Mr. Paterson's native young man hath it) while out
on the run, and kicked savagely at me while falling. I began
to think—having certain responsibilities—that it was hardly
worth while to run such risk of life and limb only for the sake,
too, of twenty or thirty pounds, and the strictly local reputation
of 'being able to ride anything.'
So I relinquished the task of Ben's education to Frank
Lawrence, my stud groom, than whom no better rough-rider
ever sat in saddle. Plucky, patient, and a fine horseman
generally, he gradually brought the rebel round. The reformation
was apparently complete. Kept in regular work, he
ceased to be fractious, and acquired a decent character in the
neighbourhood. He even carried the black boy without
protest.
Months passed. The stock-riders were mustering up for
the morning's work—neighbours and station hands. Frank
was sitting carelessly on Ben Bolt, now regularly 'made' and
recognised as a stock-horse. Suddenly, without a moment's
warning he 'exploded'—there is no other word for it. Before
any one could offer a remark, Frank was catapulted on to the
crown of his head, and Ben was tearing down the paddock,
kicking at his bridle-reins and trying to send the saddle after
the man. Frank arose slowly, and after a careful examination
of his neck had convinced him that it was not really
broken, as might have been surmised, said, 'I believe Ben
means to finish me yet.'
'I would shoot him now if I thought that, Frank,' I
answered; 'the treacherous brute. Better take another horse
to-day.'
Frank, of course, would not hear of this, and remounted
the ungrateful one, led up as he was in a few minutes, with
eyes like burning coals and nostrils quivering in anything but
a reassuring manner. He made no sign, however, and came
in, after about fourteen hours' galloping and camp work, as
fresh as a daisy.
When the station changed hands I passed our mutual
friend over to Frank, who sold him at a profit. Our paths
lay thenceforward apart. Years afterwards, my brother and
385I walked into the stables of Cobb and Co. at Hamilton, by
candlelight, while awaiting a start in the mail. The team
which interested us stood harnessed and ready.
'Did you ever see that chestnut leader before?' I queried.
'Great Jove! there he stands—white legs and all—the
dear old tiger. To think that we should ever come to sit
behind Ben Bolt!'
'Looks like it.'
'Nice horse that chestnut with the white hind legs, ostler.'
'Pretty fair, sir. Depends on 'ow 'e's 'andled, in a manner
of speakin'.'
'So I should think. How did you get him?'
'Well, he chucked Mr. Jones sky-high; broke his back-ribs,
like; so he took and swapped him to the Company.'
'How does he go?'
'Well, he goes right enough when you get him in, but we
drives him a double stage every day, just to stiddy him.
He's been a year on this piece, and we don't care how soon
we get shut on 'im.'
As the day broke, the cry of 'all aboard' was sounded;
the passengers took their seats in the coach as the horses were
led out. The leaders were not 'hitched' till the last
moment; Ben Bolt having a second helper told off to him as
he came out with head up and waving tail, the old fashion.
Very quickly and noiselessly was he attached, and as the
driver drew his reins tight the coach moved on, without a
word or whip-touch, Ben demonstrating by the way in which
he went into his collar that he was ready and willing to undertake
the whole contract. At the end of our stage of twenty-two
miles, done in quick time, three horses only were taken out.
Ben Bolt, after having run true and level for every yard of the
distance, and never once having slackened his pace, was
treated to another twenty miles in the company of the fresh
team.
'Good horse, that near-side leader,' I remarked to the
driver tentatively.
'He's the devil on four legs, if you want to know,' gruffly
answered that official; 'takes me all my time to watch him.
He'll smash some of us yet, if he don't kill himself first.'
I returned a year after to find the prediction verified.
Ben Bolt was no more. True to his name and reputation,
386he had broken away from the helper while being put to, and
after a headlong gallop was discovered to have injured himself
beyond hope of recovery. He died a soldier's death. But
for the 'accidents and offences' resulting from his demoniac
temper, I shall always hold his maternal ancestor, Traveller,
mainly responsible.
THE FIRST PORT FAIRY HUNT
387
The cattle were pretty well broken to their new run at
Squattlesea Mere. Little more was necessary than to go
round them daily and discourage explorers. The heathen
were temporarily at rest, brooding (like the Boers) over fresh
ambuscades. A suspicion of monotone pervaded the
'eucalyptine cloisterdom,' when, neither by telegram nor
newspaper—our Arcadia knew neither brain-disturber in
1844—word came orally, personally transmitted, that the
Mount Rouse Hounds were to throw off at Port Fairy, with
races to follow, the whole to wind up with a ball.
These astonishing tidings so affected me that I became
unable to settle down to daily details. A meet with real
fox-hounds, races, and—temptation overwhelming—a ball!
I have resisted things in my day, have exhibited Spartan
virtue in sorrowful altruism, economies, mortifications of the
flesh, what not. But this special attraction was complicated,
ingenious, subtly alluring 'in the brave days when we were
twenty-one.' I lacked a year or so of that romantic period,
and consequently was more prudent, more intolerant, and
more abstemious than in the aftertime. People may talk as
they like, but youth is the time for wisdom. That riper years
bring prudence, steadfastness, circumspection, indeed any
improvement of mind or body, is a widespread error. It is
a fable of the wary ancient. The real sage, the true
philosopher, the consistent disciple, is the ingenuous youth.
The Greeks knew this. Contrast Telemachus with that old
humbug Ulysses, far-travelled, much experienced in war;
council, battle, and peace alike familiar to him. How reprehensible
was his conduct, flirting with Calypso and other
388beguilers, poor lonely 'Griselda Penelope' doing her worsted
work and tatting from year to year, the excellent Telemachus
meanwhile looking after the 'selection' at Ithaca. However,
this is miles away from the scent. 'Get in there, Fancy.'
In the solitude of my slab-hut this announcement stirred
my blood. I considered the pecuniary aspect of the question,
and was nearly not going at all. Coin was scarce in the
forties, credit shy and difficult. More prudent by far it
seemed to remain quietly at home. And yet it was hard.
A glimpse of Paradise to be had scarce thirty miles away.
A brilliant idea flashed, meteor-like, through my brain. The
expense would not amount to more than a bullock. One
bullock! The herd was increasing. And I could work so
much harder afterwards. My conscience was salved. I made
the modest preparations befitting that pioneer period. The
valise was packed, the black mare was run in, and proudly
mounting that fast, clever hackney, I took the track to the
crossing-place of the Shaw River, singing aloud for pure
joyousness of heart, like a mavis in springtime.
When I arrived in Port Fairy, and took up my quarters at
the Merrijig Hotel (the southern aboriginal predicate signifying
'good,' and thus equivalent to the 'Budgeree' of the
Kamilaroi), what news and marvels were afloat! The town
was full. Everybody was there or coming; also everybody's
favourite horse. All the world and his wife were 'on the
march for Rome.' Mr. James Lord had arrived from
Tasmania with a draft of hounds for John Cox of Werongurt;
had also brought with him The Caliph as a present to the
same gentleman from his old friend Sir Richard Dry. The
Caliph was a hunting celebrity; I was naturally anxious to
see him. The Dunmore people were not down, but were
coming of course, with Neil Kennedy and Bob Craufurd,
Fred Burchett, the Aplins, Captain and Mrs. Baxter, the
Hunters (Alick and Jimmy), George Youl, and the Kemps,
Claud Farie, and his partner Rodger—in fact, everybody, as
I said before. Old Tom, the stock-rider, had managed to
trap a fine dingo. To-morrow the hounds would throw off
near Archie M'Neill's farm, across the Moyne. There were
to be races the day after, including a steeplechase, for which
Richard Rutledge was going to ride Freedom, a well-known
blood hackney. Mr. Rodger had bought the grey racing pony
389Skipjack, a winner on the Melbourne turf. The ball was to
be in the big room of the Merrijig Hotel. Could imagination
have devised anything more ecstatically delightful?
The table d'hôte dinner that night was a thing to remember—a
score or two of men, none of whom had passed 'the golden
prime,' while the greater proportion had but lately entered
manhood. One or two might have been described by a cynic
as beardless boys. I was the youngest squatter in the district.
I then exhibited more discretion than has always characterised
the mature individual. However, nemo omnibus. We had
few misgivings about the future in those days. We said to
the present 'Stay, for thou art fair,' disturbing not ourselves
about autumnal tints.
Such laughter, such jests—keen and incisive enough in all
conscience! Such horse-talk—when every man was an owner,
a breeder, a connoisseur more or less, of the noble animal;
moreover, always possessed a favourite hackney, which he
held to be a combination of all the equine virtues. The
flowing bowl of the period was not disregarded—claret and
champagne were the weaknesses of the day; Dalwood and
Cawarra, Yering and Tahbilk, were all to come; even whisky
had not made good its footing in society. But for the preponderance
of the 'kindly Scot' in Victoria, the 'real Donald'
would have been traditionary. However, then as now, the
clans mustered strong in the rich pastures west of Geelong.
Our host, Archie M'Neill, a stalwart, sinewy Highlander, was
a horse-breeder too, Archie's colt being a promising sapling
Traveller. The old hereditary feelings had by no means
died out. A neighbour of his was wont, when 'the maut gat
abune the meal,' to formulate thus his tribal antipathies:
'I'm Macdonald frae Glencoe! D—n the bloody Campbells
of Glenlyon!'
Although there were necessarily differences of opinion—as
will arise even among friends on such topics at such times—we
enjoyed ourselves in all proper moderation. There was
far more talking, laughing, and indeed singing, than steady
drinking. In those days it was wonderful how musically
inclined were all honest revellers. Just before the finale a
messenger came to say that 'Old Tom' had made the usual
miscalculation, and was then lodged in the Port Fairy lock-up.
It was not to be endured that the purveyor of the quarry
390which was to furnish our entertainment for the morrow, should
languish in a dungeon. We arose and in a body marched to
the watch-house, where any amount of bail was proffered to
the astonished constable. The cell-door being opened, the
veteran came forth, bent and humbled, looking not unlike
an old dog-fox himself, as he sought his couch unobtrusively,
vowing supernatural sobriety for the morrow.
The morning broke—a lovely sight;
The sun flashed down on armour bright,
wrote Hugh Ranclaud in his Marmion period. Slightly
altered, this description might have suited our array, which,
owing to circumstances, exhibited more variety and good
intention than uniformity. A pink or two, a good many
black cut-aways, with a green riding-coat worn by John Cox,
the uniform of a Tasmanian hunt club. His tall figure as
he reined The Caliph, a grand half-Arab grey sixteen-hander,
up to any weight over any country, looked workman-like.
Cords and tops were tolerably plentiful, though 'butcher
boots,' such as most of us affected for ordinary stock-riding,
were in the ascendant.
One frolicsome youngster, indeed, in default of a pink,
resolved to conform as nearly as possible to the fashion of
his forefathers. To this end he possessed himself of a bright
red serge shirt, such as was occasionally donned by all sorts
and conditions of men in those days of sincere effort. This
he persuaded the village tailor to fashion into the form of a
coatee, and thus arrayed, he rode proudly amid the front-rankers,
congratulating himself, with perfect correctness, upon
having added a fresh sensation to the entertainment. Fred
Burchett had two chestnut hackneys, one a neat cob named
Friendship. This day he rode the other, which he had
christened Love, being, as he explained, 'very like friendship,
only nicer.' Bob Cox (Robert Clerk's brother-in-law—not
related to the Clarendon family) might have been there
on Bessborough. I am not certain whether he did not join
our band of heroes later on. But, if so, the hunt missed
that day a joyous comrade, a handsome face with bright dark
eyes, never unwelcome in hall or bower; one of the boldest
yet most artistic horsemen that ever sat in saddle. Poor old
Bob! I used often to think how I should have enjoyed
391mounting him 'regardless,' and pitting him against the best
men with the Quorn, the Pytchley, or wherever the unrivalled
English sport in the ancestral isle still holds sway. What
nice things a Monte Cristo might do—in that and a few
other ways!
The hounds were to throw off on the Warrnambool side
of the Moyne, where a broad flat was bounded by farms and
the line of sand-dunes, which ran parallel to the sea. A
variety of jumping was ensured by this choice of country,
the farm fences being of every shade of height, breadth, and
solidity. Sound and springy was the turf. If the dingo,
when turned down, took the cross country line towards Tower
Hill, he was likely to lead us a dance, unless he found refuge
in one of the wombat holes with which the ferny slopes, breast
high in bracken, abounded.
It must have been ten o'clock or thereabouts when Mr.
Lord, arrayed in the well-worn pink, cords, tops, and hunting-cap
complete, conducted the spotted beauties across the ford
of the Moyne. Within an hour all the Port Fairy world—among
which half-a-dozen riding-habits showed that the ladies
were not willing to be left out of the excitement—was gathered
around. The Australian Reynard, all-ignorant that his imported
compeer was, in after-years, to be a prize for scalp-hunters,
had been liberated previously, with a due allowance
of law, and on a line which involved a reasonable share of
fencing. After a preliminary cast or two, the leading hounds
hit off the scent, and with a burst of melody which caused
more than one of us to anticipate the sensations of Mr.
Jorrocks, away went the flower of the horsemen of the
western district, riding rather jealous, it must be admitted,
but not to be stopped by anything under a six-foot stock-yard
fence.
It was a scene to be remembered. The blue sky, the
green sward, sound and springy as a cricket-ground, the
limitless ocean plain, the long resounding surge, the eager
hounds, the medley of horsemen now slightly tailing off, as
the pack raced with a breast-high scent towards the volcanic
crest of Tower Hill.
Many were the falls, various the fortunes, of those who
followed hounds that day. Every man rode as if the honour,
firstly, of his station, of the district afterwards, were centred
392in him personally. It was before the Traveller days, so
that the Dunmore triumvirate were mounted on steeds that,
though good of their kind and well-bred (for they always
went in for blood), were not quite up to the form of St.
George and Trackdeer, Triton or Jupiter. William Campbell
rode a roan, Houndsfoot, five years old; and Macknight,
I believe, his grand old mare Die Vernon—one of those
brilliant all-round goers that you couldn't put wrong.
I rode my favourite black mare Tanny, the dam of
Hope, Clifton, Red Deer, and Comanchee—the first three
winners in the aftertime either on the flat or 'over the sticks.'
She could both jump and gallop, as I must show when I
have time.
I regret that I cannot supply details anent this almost
prehistoric run. I recall The Caliph sailing over everything
and taking all manner of fences, from 'chock and log' to
stiff three-railers, in his stride. Freedom would probably be
running away as usual, being a horse that no mortal man
could hold for the first mile. Alick Hunter and his brother,
doubtless, were there or thereabouts; and Robert Clerk of
Mummumberrich (the M.F.H. in time to come) was forward
enough with Rocket in spite of weight over the average. It
was pretty straight going. We were used to risks by flood
and field. Ordinary stock-riding was hardly safer than this
or any other run with hounds. Matters were prosperous, and
everybody was looking forward to a first-class run, when 'the
devil or some untoward saint' put it into our quarry's head
to double back as nearly as possible along the line upon
which he had come.
We had the satisfaction of taking nearly the same jumps
over again, when, lo and behold! dingo, apparently bent on
self-destruction, made across the hummocks, and charging
the Pacific Ocean as if he meant to cross over to Tasmania,
swam gaily out to sea. As he reached the surf the desperate
pack raced down to the beach, where they sniffed and circled
in unwonted doubt and desperation. Eventually Reynard
found the enterprise disproportionate to his powers, and,
swimming back, reached the beach in a state of exhaustion.
The hounds were whipped off, however, and Old Tom and
his bag being again called into requisition, the sheep-killer
was reserved for another and perhaps a straighter run.
393The day but half done. We had therefore leisure as we
rode homeward for a considerable amount of general chaff
and criticism, which resulted, as usual, in wagers and a match
or two.
Now my friend James Irvine of Dunmore had been riding
the racing pony Skipjack, a very perfectly-shaped grey with
a square tail, such being the mistaken fashion of that day and,
I grieve to say, of the later one. He was an acknowledged
flier, and having won races at Flemington (or the Melbourne
Course as it was then called) was thought too good for anything
in the provinces. I had always considered my black
mare to be fast, but as she was wholly untried it might have
been only the fond fancy which a man has for his favourite.
Still I believed in her. It ended in my challenging the
redoubtable Skipjack for a mile spin on the following day,
present riders up.
The odds were against me, inasmuch as the mare was off
grass and, excepting on this occasion, had not seen oats for
months. She was not even shod, whereas her antagonist was,
if not in training, in hard stable condition. Like many of the
best hacks of those days he had been bred in Tasmania. He
showed Arab blood, and probably owed his speed and strength
to that ancient race. Tanny, on the other hand, was a
Sydney-sider by extraction, her dam being brought over in
'Howie's mob,' one of the earliest lots of horses driven overland.
I saw them sold in a cattle-yard, then standing at the
corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets. Mr. Purves senior
afterwards occupied the cottage built there, for I remember
him showing me Banker in the stable. Dr. Campbell lived
there afterwards. A similar sale in the same spot would
excite astonishment now in any given forenoon.
So it was an intercolonial contest. More than this, it was all
Eumeralla against the Hopkins, inasmuch as Mr. Rodger abode
at Merang, while the Dunmores and I rode home towards the
setting sun from Port Fairy. Old Tom, a veteran in the pig-skin
and a judge of pace, told his friends that 'Tanny was
the divil's own mare to pull, but if the masther could hould
her the first half mile, she'd give Skipjack his work to do at
the finish.' A trifle of speculation resulted, the odds being
tempting. James Irvine was a well-known workman on the
flat and a light weight. Bets were taken accordingly, and a
394book or two made in a small way. When on the morrow the
entire population of the district turned out to see the races,
and when, ours being the first, we did the customary pipe-opener,
the leading artists at Goodwood or Ascot felt less
pride, possibly less desperate determination.
Down went the flag and off went we. With much ado
mastering the mare's wild impulse to bolt, as she had done
many a time before in company, I lay well up to my friend,
but allowed him to make the pace. He made it a cracker
accordingly, hoping to run me out—his obvious line with a
slower or untrained horse. But I bided my time. The
mare knew me well and gradually steadied down to the work,
and when a safe distance from home I made my effort and
landed the good, game animal a winner by a neck, I felt,
amid cheers, congratulations, and smiles, as if earth had no
higher glories to offer, life no brighter joys. 'Bedad, she's
a great mare intirely,' said Old Tom as he led her away.
'I wouldn't say but she'd win the Maiden Plate if we
thrained her. There's an iligant course at the Native Dog-Hole.'
This suggestion was not followed up. Though
passionately fond of horses, I was a practical person in
those days, eschewing all connection with public racing on
principle.
There were other races, a Hack Scurry among them, then a
highly-enjoyable picnic lunch, after which the principal event
of the day, the steeplechase, was to come off. A fair hunting
line had been marked, including among others a solid 'dead-wood'
fence. For this race there were a dozen starters more
or less, and great was the excitement. The black mare and
I were among them, I know—the morning's exercise not
being considered of sufficient importance to keep us out
of it.
The Caliph was thought too good for the company, and
was therefore not entered by his owner. Macknight and
Bob Craufurd, Fred Burchett and I, Neil Kennedy and
Dick Rutledge, with some others of the old set, were duly
marshalled in line and started. It was on that occasion,
during some preparatory schooling, that Neil made his famous
reply to Norman M'Leod, who, himself a fine horseman and
steeplechase jock, scandalised at Neil's loose riding, thus
expostulated—
395'Look here, Kennedy, why don't you lift your horse at his
fence?'
'Lift be d—d,' returned Neil in desperation; 'I've
quite enough to do to hold on.'
Neil was utterly fearless, a sort of Berserker horseman,
ready to ride any sort of horse at any manner of leap, of any
height, breadth, or stiffness; but he was not famous for
adherence to the pig-skin. Falls, many or few, made no
difference in his willingness to try his luck again. If he did
not break his neck, practice would make him perfect in time.
So, accordingly, Neil faced the starter on a hard puller, full of
faith in his star, and confident in future triumphs.
The first fence was wide and high, composed of brush-timber
and more or less negotiable, so we sailed over in line
in a gallant and satisfactory way. The next was reasonable.
Then came our rasper, the dead-wood fence, a kind of wooden
wall, raised to nearly five feet, and composed of logs, stumps,
and roots of trees, piled horizontally after a compact and
unyielding fashion.
Freedom, with Dick Rutledge up, leading by a dozen
lengths, flew it without altering stride. Bob Craufurd was
over next. Neil Kennedy and I racing for a place charged
it, when his horse, hitting it hard, performed a complete
somersault, balancing himself for a moment on the broad of
his back, and sending Neil flying so far ahead that there was
as little danger of his being crushed as likelihood of his being
in the race afterwards.
The majority were fairly up at the finish: three made a
creditable struggle for second place; but Freedom, a fast two-miler,
won the race from end to end, and taking all his leaps
without baulk or mistake was never challenged.
So ended the second day's sport. Sport indeed, was it
not? How little the faint copies of recreation, misnamed
pleasure, resemble it nowadays! As we went home the tide
was in, the ford deep, with a fair swim in the midstream, which
was the reason I chose to take the short cut I suppose, thus
letting off the exuberance of youthful spirits as well as directing
certain bright eyes towards myself and the mare as we breasted
the broad water.
The remainder of the day but sufficed to see all the horses
properly looked to, after their exciting day, in the loose-boxes
396or improvised stabling which 'The Merrijig,' when put on its
metal, was enabled to supply; afterwards a dinner, which, if
the cooking was not quite equal to that of the 'Trois Frères
Provencaux' or the Café Riche, was more thoroughly enjoyed.
Lastly came the needful preparation for the ball. The ladies
who had come into town specially for the affair were accommodated
at Mr. Rutledge's hospitable mansion or other
private houses. This was just as well, as the modified
communism which extended to shirt collars, ties, boots and
shoes, indeed to all wearing apparel whatever, involved so
much rushing in and out of rooms that awkward contretemps
must inevitably have occurred.
The music was that of a piano—a really good one—lent
for the occasion, and the new dining-hall of the hotel, then
constructed by way of addition, properly draped and lighted,
made a commodious and effective ballroom.
Would that I could have photographed the costumes
displayed that evening—among us men of course. Ladies
always manage to be becomingly arrayed under whatever contradictory
circumstances. It was not so easy in our stage of
civilisation—recently emerged from the pioneer epoch—to
provide irreproachable raiment. Few possessed the accredited
articles; fewer still bore them about when travelling.
I can hear the waltz now, and see the lady who played, as
with one rapt glance I took in the situation on entering the
room, for I had my toilette troubles to overcome, and was a
trifle late. What did we dance in those days, more than
fifty years agone? The trois temps and hop waltzes, the galop,
quadrilles, lancers; I think there must have been reels, Scots
being in the majority. But no polka, no deux temps or
'military' waltz, no Highland or other schottische, certainly no
Washington Post. That sounds a tame programme, doesn't
it? Still we danced and talked, nay, even flirted, very
much as people do nowadays, and enjoyed ourselves generally,
more, far more, than the comparatively languid moderns. It
must have looked something like a hunt ball, though a slightly
unconventional one, inasmuch as those who were conscious
of correct riding toggery elected to sport it. Every variety of
rig, in coats, shirts, collars and ties, boots and shoes, from tops
to feminine stuff-boots (and not bad things on a pinch),
adorned the main body. The supper was welcomed as the
397crowning glory of the evening. Healths were proposed,
speeches were made, dancing was resumed with additional
spirit, and daylight found us still unsated—ready, indeed, to
begin the programme da capo. Prudence and the counsels
of the aged, as represented by the infrequent paterfamilias,
however prevailed, and the patriotic melody having sounded,
there was an end to joy unconfined for the present. Everything
had been a triumphant success. No awkwardness
of any sort had occurred, if we may except an impromptu
tableau vivant—a pretty housemaid fleeing Ariadne-like into
the ladies' dressing-room, closely pursued by an enterprising
youngster, who did not discover, until too late, the awful
presence which he had invaded. A wrathful senior declined
to see the classic appositeness of the incident, and muttered
threats of vengeance dire; but upon Bacchus being adroitly
suggested to be in fault, as of old, he was gradually appeased.
And so with laugh and jest, and many a pleasant memory to
cherish, we fared homewards next day from the First Port
Fairy Hunt.
BENDEMEER
398
That bower and its music I never forget,
But oft when alone, in the bloom of the year,
I think—Is the nightingale singing there yet?
Do the roses still bloom by the calm Bendemeer?
The æsthetic pioneer who bestowed this romantic name
upon the New England village between Tamworth and Uralla
probably realised a hazy similarity. Yet roses must have
been few and far between, eminently suitable as are soil and
climate; and the nightingale awaits the millennium of acclimatisers.
The sparrow—wastrel of Europe that he is—doth
first appear. The clear stream of the Macdonald, winding
through the green hill-encircled valley, renders the comparison
faintly apposite. On the whole, the name of Bendemeer will
sound as well to our federal successors as Curra-wohbo-lah or
Murra-munga-myne; and if it sets young Australia to reading
Lalla Rookh, it may act as a counterpoise to overmuch
devotion to wool and horse-racing—may even tend to the cult
which emollit mores.
These slight incongruities notwithstanding, I would counsel
any Australian Beckford, in want of a site for the antipodean
Fonthill, to realise the poet's dream in the vale of Bendemeer
(Great Northern Railway line, New South Wales), and so
immortalise himself in the minds of generations of grateful
compatriots.
As I stand in front of the little hostelry in the sweet
moonrise of this summer night and gaze around, my heart
sympathises with the unknown sentimental sponsor. I feel
constrained to admit that he had the true poetic insight,
piercing the measureless spaces of the future—
Far as human eye can see.
399It is the last month of the year, in the hour for a 'midsummer
night's dream' (antipodean); the fervent noonday
glare has given place to the fresh, delicious temperature
which in this elevated region succeeds sunset; the heavens
are cloudless. As the moon's orb is slowly lifted, the
grand mountain-chain which lies beyond the head waters of
the river shows clearly defined in majestic gloom and ebon
shades.
On the hills which enclose this fair green valley, each tree-stem,
bough, and frond is traced with pre-Raphaelite distinctness.
Fronting the inn, on the river-terrace, hang the
pendent branches of an aged willow-tree, the umbrageous
spread of which has caused its utilisation as a shade for the
horses of customers and wayfarers. A round dozen of these
have just been released from durance, as their owners, warned
of the closing hour, ride off into the night. The equestrian
habit principally differentiates the tavern of the new country
from that of the old. Otherwise, in the matter of civility,
cleanliness, and quietude, this particular inn and some others
I affect in my rambles closely resemble the snug roadside
retreats of Old England.
As I pace slowly over the thick green sward which carpets
the river-meadow, the thought pursues me of what changes
the future Lord of Bendemeer would find requisite. Aided
by the Genius of Capital, they could not be wholly impracticable.
And what a delicious Palace of Summer Delights, a
charmed refuge from the world's woe and the clamorous
chatter of society, might he rear amidst these cloistered shades!
Important alterations, not in accordance with latter-day legislation,
would be first effected. The acquisition of the freehold
for leagues around, the disestablishment of stores, telegraph-and
post-offices—pernicious contrivances these last for bringing
unrest into remotest solitudes; the closing of schools and
churches; the abrogation of the utilities; the suppression of
trade; the exile of industry; I include with regret the old-fashioned,
reposeful hostelry. Happy thought! It would
probably be spared until the army of workmen required for
the erection of the palace had been disbanded; as also,
for similar reasons, the police-barrack which dominates the
district, whence issues the man-at-arms of the period, 'native
and to the manner born,' but soldierly and erect of bearing—a
400sleuth-hound in pursuit of horse-thieves and highwaymen,
mounted and accoutred proper upon the good steed which he
alone can rein.
The railway-line has been averted by good genii or through
the laissez aller tone of thought which characterises the inhabitants
of the vale. It clangs and thunders through a
gorge on the head waters of the river, thus avoiding desecration
by scrambling tourists and irreverent sons of commerce; but
a huge, white, staring wooden bridge, the financial goal and
triumph of the local tradesfolk, disfigures the rippling moonlit
water. At a wave of the magic wand it disappears. A
fairy-like structure arises in its place, delicate with marble
tracery of pillars and arches, where the elves may flit love-whispering
through the long sweet nights, may beckon to the
Lorelei as she combs her tresses and warbles the fateful song
on the rock which guards the midstream above the shimmering
whirlpool.
The passes are guarded; the river-course on either side
securely barricaded against the conditional purchaser and the
drover—sole survivors they of the raider and moss-trooper,
which a too considerate civilisation permits. Deer alone are
permitted to crop the herbage of the park-like slopes; under
the heavy shadows of the mountain, the leaping trout and
lordly salmon, the ancient carp with silver-gleaming sides,
would flash through stream and pool (this last no visionary
image) as the shadows lengthened and the twilight stole
tremulously forward. When the day was done, on such a
full-orbed night as this, 'the harp, the lute, the viol's cry'
should awaken the echoes as a most fair company (for would
not all gallant knights and gracieuses, dames and damsels—whether
summoned from afar or dwelling near at hand—with
attendant poets and troubadours, be free of right to
the enchanted vale?) flee the hours with song and dance till
bright Cynthia paled at the approaching dawn, or, wandering
through cedarn alleys and rose-thickets, listen to the nightingale's
song as it blended with the murmur of silver-plashing
fountains. The gnomes that dwell in the mountain
passes, where they pile undreamed-of heaps of ore, steal
forth to watch the enchanted revels. The river elves and
fays float through mazy measures in fairy rings, or recline,
'neath starry fragrant blossoms, on rose-leaf couches. Even
401the unseen genius of the Austral wild—no malign, amorphous
terror, but a benignant sylvan deity—might peer through the
forest leaves and smile wonderingly at the fantasies of the
'coming race.'
Hark! Is that the grey owl? With strange, unmelodious
cry he stirs the stillness. I turn to watch him, as he swims
the night air with moveless wing—dropping, like the emissary
of an evil witch, on the willow branch between me and the
moon. Bird of ill omen, thou hast shattered my dream!
The Palace has disappeared, the lutes are silent, the fair
company dispersed; the nightingale, that sang of 'love, and
love's sharp woe,' is mute for another century. Only the
faint plash of the river, rippling over its sand-bars; only the
mountain shadows beneath the waning, gibbous moon; only
the unbroken silence of the Austral woodland, brooding,
majestic, as of one watching through the eternities for the
birth of a nation. 'The light that never was on sea or land'
fades rapidly, and with the sigh that greets the evanishing of
the undersoul's fair fantasies I seek my couch.
An early réveillé comes Duty, with reason-compelling
Circumstance; a deputation demanding answers to questions,
of which due notice has been given. 'Enterprises of great
pith and moment are imminent.' We must to horse and
away, not betaking ourselves to pilgrim's staff, as is customary
with us; time permits not. What bard—was it the sweet
singer of a Brisbane Reverie, 'The Complaint of the Doves,'
the laureate of Royalty (black), the minstrel of the desert
steed, that in a lighter hour proclaimed—
For I am bound to Stanthorpe town,
And time with me is tin?
We are not journeying quite so far as the stanniferous stronghold;
yet is our errand not unconnected with the metal that
the Silures and Phœnicians delved for in Cornwall long
before Julius Cæsar, without reference to the susceptibilities
of king, kaiser, or chancellor, established his protectorate of
Britain.
The stern Roman, the world's master, has vanished from
among the tribes of men. His descendant, an ignoble fainéant,
a stolid peasant, or a hired model, sells the right to mould
402the heroic form which has survived the heroic soul. The
wide-ranging, sea-roving Anglo-Saxon, descendant of the
fiercer races, has succeeded to his heritage of universal
empire.
But can it be that the mother of nations is sinking into
senile decrepitude, with selfish querulousness evading responsibility,
only to lapse into deserved decay of power,
and well-merited insignificance in the council halls of the
world?
Oh for one hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight!
sang Scotland's bard, in the lament for the fortunes of the
field which sealed his country's fate. May not the modern
Briton make the application, and in mingled wrath and
despair regret the lost leader, who trod firmly, if warily, who
drifted not, irresolutely weak, from peril to disasters, and
delayed not the call to arms until the foe was at the gate
of the citadel?[2]
But this savours of the digressive. Where are we?
Whither is this plaguey, many-sided, chiefly unnecessary, or
wholly superfluous, mental apparatus, as some hold (being
rarely serviceable in the muck-rake or money-storing business),
leading us? To fairyland but yesternight; anon to Albion,
Germany, Rome, amid Liberal Ministers even, to their Austral
countrymen all too illiberal, stepfatherly, stern, repressive.
Prose and the present to the rescue! So we fare on, the
trooper and I, along the course of the Macdonald, in the
fresh purity of this New England summer morn. How blithe
and gladsome are all things! Hard is it to believe that
disease, death, and unforeseen disaster can exist in so fair
a world! The river ripples merrily onward, or sleeps in deep
pools under o'erhanging oaks, whence the shy wild-duck
floats out with dusky brood, or the heron rises from the
reedy marge and sweeps along the winding stream. Masses
of granite overhang the water. The everlasting hills rear
themselves, scarped and terraced, at dizzy altitudes on either
side. The late rains have lent a velvet, emerald tinge to the
thick-growing matted sward. Marguerites, dandelions, white
and yellow immortelles, the crimson bunches of hakea, fringed
403violets, with bright purple masses of swainsonia, diversify
mead and upland. Tiny rills and springheads show a well-watered
country—'a land that drinks the rain of Heaven
at will.' Ever and anon the willow, with foliage of vivid
tender green, contrasts with the sombre filaments of the river
oak.
My companion is an active, intelligent young fellow—a
native-born Australian, whose fair hair and steadfast grey-blue
eyes show that the Anglo-Saxon type is not likely to alter
materially in Southern Britain.
He and his horse are well suited—the latter a well-bred
bay, fast at a finish, and ready to stay for ever. He has done
a hundred miles on end before now, and been ridden twenty
hours out of the twenty-four. In more than one skirmish,
when revolvers were out, he has proved steady under fire, and
is the very model, in appearance, in condition, and pace, of
what a charger should be in a troop of Irregular Horse. As
he stretches along with smooth, fast, easy stride, he looks as
quiet as a lamb, and what superficial critics call 'properly
broken in.' None the less will he refuse to let a stranger
bridle, much less ride him; he would in such case snort and
plunge like an unbacked colt.
I have had no experience of the metropolitan police,
against whom it is occasionally the wont of a section of the
press to say hard things. These may be true or false, for
what I know, though I am disposed to believe the latter.
But for the last twenty years I have had much knowledge of
the mounted portion of the New South Wales force in the
towns and districts of the interior, and I willingly record
my testimony—not being in official relations with them at
present—that a more efficient, well-disciplined, well-behaved
body of men—smart, serviceable, and self-respecting—does not
exist in any part of the world. In old days they were sometimes
at a disadvantage against outlaws, who could ride and
track like Comanchee Indians, the police being chiefly of
British birth and rearing. But the mounted troopers are
now largely recruited from natives of the colony, or men who
have lived here from their youth. In one of these, as in my
guide of to-day, the cattle-thief or other criminal has a pursuer
to contend with as well mounted as himself, and fully his
match in all the arcana of bushcraft.
404But good as the white Australian may be at following a
track, his sable compatriot is a degree better. A tamed preadamite,
either borrowed for the occasion from a squatter, or
attached by pay and cast-off uniform to a police-barrack,
makes a matchless sleuth-hound. Such a one, I am told,
helped to run down a notorious party of horse-thieves in
these very mountains, following with astonishing accuracy the
marauders, who travelled only by night, using every artifice as
well to blind tracks and divert pursuers.
We cross the river once more, and note an island, upon
which in floodtime a leading pastoral proprietor was washed
down and nearly drowned. Another mile discovers a picturesquely-situated
homestead, overlooking the river, where,
winding round a granite promontory, it turns westward on its
way to the great plain beyond the 'divide.' The roses proclaim
their vicinity to the famed Bendemeer, the decomposed
granite having a special chemical affinity; while the violets,
large of leaf and profuse of bloom, seem as if prepared to
found a new variety, so widely do they differ from the ordinary
floweret.
For half a century or more has the venerable pioneer
dwelt hard by the river-brim, where now, handsomely lodged,
garden-surrounded, he dispenses hospitality, with all the concomitants
of successful pastoral life around him, save and
excepting only the wife and bairns, the stalwart sons and
bright-eyed daughters, with which so worthy and energetic a
colonist should have strengthened the State. But 'non cuivis
contingit adire Corinthum'; it is not every man's lot thus to
wind up life's tale. And it may be conceded that he who at
an advanced age, retaining every faculty unimpaired, is permitted
to view the work of his hands, conducted from the
stage of the untamed wild to smiling prosperity, who can
look forward cheerfully to end his days among a population
entirely composed of friends and well-wishers, has secured a
large proportion of the good which is permissible to mortal
man.
Onward, still onward, ride we, for many a mile must be
passed ere sunset. Onward through rugged defiles and rock-strewn
passes, over which the sure-footed steeds are constrained
to clamber like chamois. Indeed we are nearly blocked in
consequence of adopting one very tempting 'cut,'—by the
405way, in bush parlance, the old English predicate has been
eliminated, and with reason; one does not speak of a 'long
cut,'—for we find ourselves in the centre of a rock labyrinth
locally termed a 'gaol.' The path, however, amid the huge
boulders eventually conducts us to a grand granite-floored
terrace, apparently constructed by one of the Kings of Bashan.
Here we have a wide, extended view of the varied landscape,
'valley and mountain and woodland,' but it does not otherwise
serve our purpose.
Speedily recovering lost ground, we strike the creek and
the tin mines thereon located, which had been the cause of
the exploration. The sanguine, undaunted prospectors are
as usual delving and ditching, felling the forest, constructing
dams, and generally committing assault and robbery upon
patient mother Hertha.
We see the stream tin being washed out everywhere, like
dark-coloured pebbly gravel. We note where the same rivulet
has been formerly ravaged by the wandering mining hordes.
We thread the gorges which lead into a rock-walled alpine
valley, not inaptly named the 'Giant's Den,' and there meet
with tin—more tin—toujours tin. For this fastness of the
Titans has been turned into the Grand United Sluicing Company—no
liability, let us say—and for the ten thousandth
time, more or less, we admire the indomitable pluck and
sanguine confidence of the miner proper. Here steam engines,
pumping machinery, iron piping by the mile, dams, houses,
men and material, are all found, in different stages of adaptation
to an end. Evidently the shareholders, some of whom are
practical men of transcolonial experience, have faith in the
venture. The energetic Victorian captain beguiles us into a
long, hot, pedestrian tour of inspection. He, always in advance,
shovel on shoulder, prospects from time to time, and 'pans
out,' with invariable success, the stanniferous gravel. Sooth
to say, we have reached at length the mystic region where
there is no 'want of tin.' It occurs everywhere in abundance—in
new ground, in old workings, in mullock, in trenches, in
each and every conceivable place. At the end of our bit of
training, which mentally places us on a footing with Weston
and other 'peds' of fame, we express our opinion that, with a
steady supply of water for ground-sluicing, the Company should
pay handsome dividends for years to come. The energetic
406captain, 'bred and born in a briar patch,' that is, on a goldfield,
so that he is a 'legitimate miner' in every sense of the
word, smiles appreciatively. We thankfully resume the saddle,
and bid farewell to the 'Giant's Den.' 'It may be for years;
it may be for ever.'
SPORT IN AUSTRALIA
407
Very early in a land peopled by the roving Englishman did
sport of one kind or another begin to put forth those shoots
which have since so grown and burgeoned. For some years
there must have been so few horses, that racing contests were
difficult if not impossible. The first cattle were herded without
horses, some of the pedestrian stockmen acquiring thereby
extraordinary speed of foot. It was customary for early
Australians to make longish journeys on foot, and legends are
yet rife in colonial families as to the distances performed then
by the seniors—tales which strike with astonishment their
descendants, who rarely walk, much less run.
We doubt not, however, that as soon as the colts and
fillies began to grow up, their young riders, with or without
leave, commenced to ascertain their relative speed.
Parramatta has, it is said, the honour of holding the first
race meeting in 1810, the example being followed by the
officers of the 73rd Regiment, then in Sydney, who utilised
the reserve now known as Hyde Park for the purpose.
From that time annual races commenced to be held there.
The country towns, as they arose, were only too eager to
follow the example of the metropolis. Favourites of the turf
acquired fame which was trumpeted abroad through the
restricted sporting circles of the day.
Sir John Jamison's Bennelong—named after a well-known
aboriginal—was one of the early racing celebrities. He ran
against Mr. Lawson's Spring Gun in 1829 for a heavy wager
as they went then; and the old-world system of heats finishing
up Spring Gun, he won easily. He carried off the
principal turf events in Parramatta in 1832. In the same
408year Mr. H. Bayley's imported colt, Whisker, won the great
races at the Hawkesbury meeting. Trotting was not entirely
overlooked. It appears that a Mr. Potter's horse trotted twelve
miles within the hour for a bet of £30, winning by fifteen
seconds.
In May 1834 the Sydney Subscription Races were held
on the New Course, Botany Road, for the first time. This
course was new as compared with Hyde Park, but came to be
called 'the old Sandy Course,' in relation to Homebush, the
next established convincing-ground. At this meeting, Mr. C.
Smith's Chester, a son of Bay Camerton, won the Cup;
Whisker the Ladies' Purse. This grand horse won the
Town Plate of £50; also the Ladies' Purse, £25, again
beating Chester. Whisker, for whom £1400 had been
offered three days previously, died within the week. I was
present at that same old Sandy Course in the autumn of
1835, when Chester beat his half-brother Traveller—the latter
fated to belong to my old friend and neighbour, Charles
Macknight, at Dunmore, Victoria, in years to come. The
well-known Emigrant mare, Lady Godiva, ran at the same
meeting, and won her race for the Ladies' Purse, containing
the modest sum of £30. The Town Plate was £50.
The celebrated horse Jorrocks, 'clarum et venerabile nomen'
in turf annals, belonged to that period. A son of Whisker
from Lady Emily (imported), he inherited some of the best
racing-blood in the world; the dry air and nutritive pasturage
of his native land did the rest. A horse of astonishing speed,
stoutness, and courage, his record covers a longer list of
victories than that of any other Australian racehorse. In
those days of three-mile heats, he might not win the first, but
rarely lost the succeeding ones. It used to be said that when
the 'native' lads began to cheer, Jorrocks seemed to comprehend
the situation, and would win on the post or die in
the attempt. I saw him once, a retired veteran, and can
never forget his shape, almost symmetrically perfect. A long
forehand, with light, game head and full eye, grand sloping
shoulders, cask-like back-rib, muscular quarter and Arab
croupe, legs like iron, as indeed they needed to have been;
a long, low horse, scarcely exceeding fifteen hands, I should
say, in height—such was Jorrocks.
Intercolonial races began in 1849. Without railways there
409was a difficulty in transporting horses; but it was overcome.
Petrel, the property of Mr. Colin Campbell, a popular
Victorian squatter, ran a great race on the Melbourne Course
with Mr. Austin's Bessie Bedlam, a beautiful daughter of
Cornborough.
Dark brown, with tan muzzle.
Gordon's description might have been written for her. She
was, to my thinking, the handsomest mare ever stripped on an
Australian course. Petrel won, and Mr. Campbell gave a
ball at the Prince of Wales' Hotel in Melbourne on the strength
of his winnings, at which I was a guest—and a very good
ball it was. The same year saw Emerald and Tally-ho
(from New South Wales), Coronet and Hollyoake (of
Tasmania), beaten by the Victorian horse Bunyip, a big
powerful bay. He won the Town Plate, Publicans' Purse,
and Ladies' Purse at the same meeting; and starting for
fourteen principal races that season, won them all—a truly
phenomenal animal.
By this time the gold 'boom of booms' had occurred.
There were no more £50 Town Plates. In 1856 Alice
Hawthorn won £1000 for Mr. Chirnside, beating Mr.
Warby's Cardinal Wiseman; in her turn losing the three-mile
race with Veno—an intercolonial duel—for £2000. In
1859 I saw Flying Buck win the Champion Melbourne Sweepstakes
for £1000, eighteen starters, and may have heard the
late Mr. Goldsborough offer a thousand to thirty against him
after the start, and Roger Kelsall call out 'taken.'
The pageant of Flemington on Cup day was yet a visionary
forecast. Mr. Bagot had not appeared above the horizon.
First King, Briseis, Archer, and Glencoe—much less Carbine
and Trenton—were in the dimmest futurity. I was to see
Adam Lindsay Gordon win the steeplechase of '69 upon
Viking, with Babbler half a length behind. Glencoe the
same year bore the coveted Cup trophy to New South
Wales.
What a wondrous change had taken place in a few short
years between the primitive racing and rude surroundings of
the old Botany Course and the shaven lawns, the flower-beds,
the asphalt walks, the immense grand-stands, the order,
comfort, and perfect organisation of Randwick and Flemington—exceeding
410indeed, in these respects, the race-courses of
the old country! What a difference in the size and quality
of the fields of running horses, in the amount of money
wagered, in the multitude that attends, in the facilities of
rail and road by which the tens of thousands of spectators
are safely, comfortably disposed of in transit!
In these and other astounding developments of the era
we cannot but mark the transition stage from a colony to a
nation, from a collection of humble towns and hamlets to a
cluster of cities commencing to take rank with the world's
important centres. An Anglo-Saxon dominion unmatched,
for the period of its existence, in wealth and culture, population
and trade, in progress in all that constitutes true, steadfast,
abiding civilisation.
With respect to sport other than horse-racing, the men who
had left 'Merrie England' so far away across the Southern
main, conscious that in many cases they had looked their last
upon that earthly paradise of the angler, the huntsman, the
fowler, and the deer-stalker, began to cast about for substitutes
and compromises. Hares and rabbits there were none (did
we catch a cheer, or was it a groan?); but the active marsupials
which then overspread the land afforded reasonable coursing,
and led to the formation of a breed of greyhounds, stronger,
fiercer, in some instances hardly less fleet, than those of the
old country. Reynard was still absent, but Brer Dingo was
fast across the open, and a good stayer, while his insatiable
appetite for mutton and poultry rendered him beyond a doubt
the fox's natural successor. Even as a 'bagman' he was
fairly serviceable.
Thus at an early date in Tasmania, a land of farms and
small enclosures, and later on in Sydney, the old-world rural
recreation, with pinks and tops, horn and hound, huntsman
and whipper-in, 'accoutred proper,' was welcomed and
supported. In Victoria there are now home-grown foxes in
abundance, with hares, and, alas, rabbits in still greater
proportion for them to subsist upon; while as to the fields,
no straighter goers are to be found in Christendom—moi
qui parle—than our young Australians, men and maidens,
married or single—let the stiff three-railers of Petersham and
Ballarat, Geelong and Rooty-hill testify; no better horses—fast,
well-bred, clever, and up to weight. It seems hard that
411distance, expense, and long voyage should stand in the way of
members of Australian hunt clubs trying their own and their
steeds' mettle in 'the Shires.'
Now for the gun. Wild-fowling has obtained always on
the inland lakes and rivers, on marsh and lagoons, with quail
and snipe, more or less, still extant; yet it must be confessed
that it has chiefly partaken of the nature of 'pot-hunting.' In
marshy localities snipe are abundant in the season—I have
known a bag made of twenty-five couple in Squattlesea Mere
in old days; but the quail, the brown variety of which more
nearly resembles the partridge, has a way of disappearing from
haunts too much disturbed. Unlike the partridge, it will not
return to the same cornfields year after year. The native
pheasant is a shy bird, for the most part inhabiting the
thickets of the interior and the forests of the main range—localities
where sport can hardly be carried out under proper
conditions. The wild turkey is a grand bird, both as to size
and flavour, but wary and a dweller on plains. He is only to
be approached by stratagem.
In New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, the partridge
and pheasant, though often imported—my old friend Mr.
Yaldwyn brought out both to his station near Macedon early
in the 'forties'—have never thriven in the bush proper.
Edible seeds and berries are scarce, while natural enemies are
plentiful. In New Zealand, a virgin Britannia of the South,
the converse obtains. There are in that priceless possession,
obtained by pluck and luck (before we got into the habit of
advertising for the colonisation of our territory by foreigners),
no eagles, no crows, no dingoes or dasyures. Partridges or
pheasants turned loose in the woods of the North Island
multiply apace, and a tremendous bag of the former was made
to my knowledge by a Sydney proprietor on a visit there,
walking in breast-high fern, but a few years since. As to
introduced game, a herd of red deer, led by a 'stag of ten,'
may be seen on the grassy slopes of Laverton, within easy
reach of Melbourne, and near enough for an occasional hunt,
while fallow deer are plentiful, both there and in other
Australian localities. Among the farms they have grown to
be somewhat of a nuisance indeed; hence a trifle of justifiable
poaching no doubt occasionally takes place. In a general
way no great harm has been done by the introduction of
412European game. Hares have increased amazingly, while
greyhounds of stainless pedigree, with coursing matches to
suit all comers, are plentiful in every country district.
But the 'werry important and particlar' exception to this
comfortable doctrine has been the rabbit. Alack! and alack!
What evil genius, hostile to the good South Land, prompted
the importation of that fiend in a fur-jacket? 'Brer Rabbit'
has amply revenged upon us the sufferings of his kind in
bygone ages, and left a balance yet unpaid. What have we
spent on him? What tens of thousands of pounds sterling
are yet to be disbursed by suffering squatters, o'erburdened
tax-payers, even by the humble 'retrenched' civil servant,
against whom appears to be the hand of every man in the
hour of financial need!
But the subject is too painful. Far removed from any
description of sport. Sport? Ha! ha! Death, indeed, is the
closer designation. However we may have been deceived as
to certain results 'on this behalf,' let us not forget that our
enemy is, like most of his congeners, excellent eating—good
alike on the table of the poor man and the rich. In time, as
population advances and smaller enclosures become necessary,
his doom of extermination will be fulfilled, while the more
harmless ministers of sport will be protected and encouraged.
About cricket it seems unnecessary to dilate. It has
been taught sedulously to the Australian boy, by precept
and example. No denominational bias has hindered that
lesson being learned thoroughly—a fair argument, by the
way, supposing the national reputation and existence to
depend solely upon cricket, in favour of the secular system.
How all our boys love it! Did I not see a youngster, of say
seven or eight, yesterday, leading two small brothers, with one
cry of 'Cricket match!' dash up to the engraving of the
Gentlemen of England and 'Our Boys' in London, on the
cricket-ground, now on view in a bookseller's window in
George Street? How they gloated over it!
Many a good match have I seen in the old Hyde Park,
when the Sydney College boys had a right of occupation there
for a special purpose. His Honour Judge Forbes, then a
crack bowler at one wicket, with Mr. William Roberts senior
performing the part of the historic veteran of Dingley Dell
with the bat. William Still looking out for a catch, George
413Hill or Geoffrey Eager, or Moule or Hovenden Hely, alert
at cover-point or slip, mid-wicket or long-stop.
Ah me! those days have gone, and how many of those
who then ran and shouted in all the glee of youthful spirits
and health! Those who remain are growing old, if not in the
'serious and yellow' stage, and the young ones are coming
on, doubtless to fill their places, 'in arms, in arts, in song.'
When Hugh Hamon Massie made that 206 score for the
Australian team against Oxford, our British cousins were
probably of the same opinion. His triumph on that occasion
was by no means a solitary one, and successive teams have
demonstrated that in Australians our kin beyond sea will
always find foemen worthy of their steel. Long may the
friendly rivalry last; and in the deadlier contests to come—as
surely they must come—may they always stand, like
Highlanders, 'shouther to shouther.'[3]
3. Written in 1885. A prophecy fulfilled in February 1900.
Next to the outside of a horse—even, perhaps, as regards
the coast towns, before that instinctively natural position—your
true Australian is most at home in a boat. Those who
watch the appearance of Sydney Harbour on a holiday must
come to the conclusion that as a nursery for seamen it is
excelled by few sea-boards in the world. Gay is the sea-lake
with every kind of sailing craft, from the fifty-ton yacht, brand
new and not launched under a cost of £2000 or £3000, to
the canvas dingy flying along, bows under, with a big sail, and
the youthful crew perched like seagulls on the weather gunwale.
When a capsize occurs, which with these craft is a
matter 'quite frequent,' they dive like a brood of wild-ducks,
as they right their frail craft, and are soon bowling along as
reckless as ever.
With such aquatic habits, small wonder if we have bred or
trained the men who have beaten with the sculls not only old
England but the world—ay, the world!—at this particular
sport. Not only is it now demonstrated that we possess
equal skill in all the manlier exercises—the boast of the island
Briton, and at which he was long held to be unrivalled—but
that in strength, stature, and the desperate courage which
prolongs the contest to the last dangerous degree of exhaustion
and afterwards, our men, Australian-born or reared, are
equal to the best Briton that ever trod a plank, or to the best
414transatlantic colonist, himself superior in that special section
of sport to his British kinsmen.
All Sydney boys, of whatever degree, take naturally to the
boat. And when I saw a young friend but the other day, in
a Masaniello rig, expand his broad chest and glide into stroke
with one stretch of his bronzed muscular arms, I hummed
instinctively as I watched the retreating skiff, 'Rule Britannia,
Britannia rules the waves.'
The 'incomplete angler' necessarily commenced by deep-line
fishing in Botany Bay, where he discovered the highly-edible
schnapper, that moderately-boned fish of comfortable
size and toothsome flavour. To him all honour therefor.
Also the rock and other cod-fish, whiting, bream, mullet,
trumpeter, flounder, sole, and many others (not forgetting
yellow-tail for bait)—all these for sea-fish are not to be
surpassed. It was some years before the lordly Murray Cod
was handled with the help of rod and line, by reason of the
Murray, our Australian Mississippi, not being then discovered.
Since then we have made piscatorial advance, and doubtless
shall make more. If we have not finally settled the question
as to the acclimatisation of Salmo ferox in Tasmania, we
have the best of all evidences of the existence of trout of
exceptional size in Australian waters. Fly-fishing is still in its
infancy, though the thymallus of the Yarra Falls rises eagerly,
and gives good sport. Trout and herring furnish many an
hour's enjoyment to the disciple of Izaak Walton in Tasmania.
Huge lake-trout are to be found in the erstwhile eel-tenanted
deeps of New Zealand. A salmo-appearing fish, weight 27 lbs.,
was killed in Tasmania in 1893.
In time—only give us time—and rest assured, my Australian
brethren and English kinsfolk, that we shall have such
sport in the South Land generally as shall do no discredit
to our race—the best all-round sportsmen in the world. And
so, fully aware that this is a bald and incomplete sketch of
the rise and progress of sport in Australia, but promising to
do better (if spared) at the next Centennial, and wishing us
all good fun and fortune at this, one Australian hunter's horn
must cease 'blowing' and sound the recall.
OLD STOCK-RIDERS
415
So poor old 'Flash Jack' is dead, says the Port Fairy Gazette,
drowned in a creek—a stock-rider's not unfitting end. We
remember him, young, debonair, tall, sinewy and active, with
longish, curling brown locks of which he was rather proud, as
also of the cabbage-tree hat of the period. But every one
seems to be old nowadays except a crowd of juniors so painfully
young that one wonders they are permitted to take life
seriously. His sobriquet was acquired more through the
ebullitions of a harmless vanity than from any of the offensive
qualities which the well-worn colonial adjective is wont to
imply. There was a certain amount of 'blow' about Jack,
doubtless, but never in undue proportion to his attainments,
which, as a stock-rider, horse-breaker, and mailman, were
admitted to be creditable. His introduction to the Port
Fairy district was through the Messrs. Carmichael, while before
taking service with them he had reached Melbourne from
England in the Eagle, Captain Buckley—both ship and commander
favourably known in the early days.
A rumour prevailed that Jack was the scion of a good
family; had been sent to sea as a midshipman, possibly to
cure the malady of 'wildness,' for which a voyage to or
residence in Australia is (erroneously) held to be a specific.
It did not answer in Jack's case, for he quitted his ship,
'taking to the bush' (in a restricted sense), and never afterwards
abandoning it. Uncommunicative about such matters
generally, he threw out hints from time to time that he was
not in the position for which his early associations had
prepared him.
'My name's not Crickmere, Mas'r Rolf,' he said to me
once, as we were riding through the Eumeralla marshes. (He
416always adopted the fiction that he was an old retainer
of our family.) 'Far from it.' But after this dark saying he
relapsed into his usual reserve on the subject and enlightened
me no further. One trait of character which was in keeping
with his presumed social past he was well known to possess.
'You seem mighty independent, my man,' said an employer
to him on one occasion.
'Yes,' replied Jack proudly, 'and I can uphold it.'
He was in my service before and after 'the gold' as stock-rider,
horse-breaker, and road-hand, both at Port Fairy and
Lake Boga. Not the man to save his wages; unlike many of
his contemporaries, who are now men of substance, Jack
varied but little in his non-possession of the world's goods.
But there were many homesteads in his old district where he
was always sure of a welcome, a glass of grog, and a week's
lodgings, so that when out of employment he was never in
any great straits.
With one influential class of the community he was especially
acceptable, and a favourite to the last. He had a natural
'Hans the boatman' faculty for amusing children, whom he
delighted by making miniature stockwhips and other bush
requisites, while they never tired of listening to his wondrous
tales of flood and field.
In the matter of stockwhip-making he was a second
'Nangus Jack,' and, moreover, an extraordinary performer
with that weapon in the saddle. I have seen him cantering
along with a steady stock-horse, standing in the saddle and
cracking a brace of stockwhips, one in either hand—a feat
which any young gentleman is free to try if he wishes to
ascertain if it be easy or otherwise. He had been through
the rougher experiences of bush life, and mentioned casually,
once, having been speared by blacks in Gippsland. The
company being disposed to treat the statement as 'Jack's
yarn,' he gave ocular proof by exhibiting a cicatrice, far from
trifling in dimensions, where the jagged spear-point had been
cut out above his hip-bone.
He was a reliable horse-breaker, for several reasons. Being
long and loose of frame, he rode a good deal 'all over his horse'—unlike
some breakers, who are so still and noiseless in their
method that any unwonted cheerfulness of manner is apt to
startle their pupils into 'propping,' But as Jack on his excursions
417was always singing, shouting, and whistling; leaning
half out of his saddle to greet a friend, or leaving his colts
tied up at a public-house; by the time he had done with them
they were safe for anybody, and would be difficult to alarm
or astonish on account of these varied experiences.
As a road-hand Jack was quite in his element, and a
decided acquisition to any overlanding party. He would have
been invaluable in South Africa. Always in good humour, he
kept every one alive during the monotonous days of driving
and dreary nights of watching with his songs and stories, his
'quips and quiddities.' He was also of signal service to the
commissariat, making frequent reconnaissances where the
country was inhabited, and returning with new-laid eggs, butter,
and other delicacies, out of which he had wheedled the farmers'
wives or daughters.
At one time or other Jack had been in the employment of
all the principal stockholders in the Port Fairy district, including
Mr. John Cox of Werongurt, the Messrs. Rutledge, Campbell,
and Macknight, Kennedy, Carmichael, and others. His
never staying very long in one place was less due to any fault of
his own than to an inherent restlessness and love of change.
A born roamer, with strong Bohemian proclivities, Jack had
wandered over a considerable portion of the colony. With
commendable taste he latterly elected to make Western
Victoria his habitual residence; and, strangely enough, he
was fated to finish a roving life as nearly as possible at the
place where he first took service, more than forty years since,
on his first arrival in the district.
A fellow-worker and in a sense a companion of my youth,
he 'was a part of those fresh days to me.' Many a day we
rode together in the heaths and marshes, the forests and volcanic
trap-ridges which lie between the lower Eumeralla and the sea.
At many a muster have I heard Jack's cheery shout, and
enjoyed with others his drolleries at camp and drafting-yard.
Now poor Jack's whip is silent; his songs and jests are hushed
for evermore. A man with few faults and no vices. 'Born for
a protest' (as Mrs. Stowe says somewhere) 'against the excessive
industrialism of the age.' Many a dweller in the Port
Fairy district must have felt sincerely grieved at the news of
poor old Jack's ending, and deemed that 'they could have
better spared a better man.'
418Peter Kearney, who came to Port Fairy first with Mr. Frank
Cobham from Monaro (a good specimen of the old race of
stock-riders), was one of Jack's earlier contemporaries. With
Tom Glendinning, generally known in the district as 'Old
Tom,' he was employed for a time on the Eumeralla station.
Irish by birth and 'Sydney-siders' by residence, these last had
served apprenticeship to every grade of colonial experience.
The naming, indeed, of the Eumeralla station and river was
due to 'Old Tom' and his mates, who brought from New South
Wales the J.T.H. cattle (formerly the brand of John Terry
Hughes), with which the station was first 'taken up' by Mr.
Hunter. From some fancied resemblance to the Umaralla
(spelt differently, by the way), one of the streams which mingle
their waters with the Snowy River near the Bredbo, the men
christened the new watercourse after the old one. There is
no special resemblance, rather the reverse, inasmuch as the
Port Fairy river, if such it be, runs mostly underground, percolating
through marshes and trap dykes, and generally pursues
an erratic course, while the Umaralla of New South Wales is a
merry, purling, snow-fed stream, which nearly attained celebrity
by drowning Mr. Tyson, who crossed it ahead of our cattle in
1870, unobtrusively travelling, as was his wont, on horseback
to Gippsland.
While on the subject of stock-riders, it is noticeable how
many different nationalities and sub-varieties there were among
them. Peter and Old Tom were, as I said before, Irishmen,
both light weights, first-rate riders, and extremely good hands
at 'breaking-in cattle to the run'—that lost or almost unnecessary
art, except 'down the Cooper, where the Western drovers
go,' or thereabouts. I may stop here to state that 'Clancy of
the Overflow,' quoted by a writer who signs himself 'Banjo,'
which appeared lately, was, in my opinion, the best bush-ballad
since Lindsay Gordon. It has the true ring of spur and
snaffle combined with poetic treatment—a conjunction not so
easy of attainment as might be supposed. When charged
with the responsible duty of breaking-in store cattle freshly
turned out, Old Tom was ever mounted and away by daylight.
He disregarded breakfast, knowing that the early morn is the
time for getting on the tracks of wandering cattle. Carrying
his quart-pot with him, a wedge of damper and a similar
segment of cold corned-beef, after he had gone round his
419cattle and satisfied himself that none of the leaders were away,
then, and not till then, he lighted a fire, made his tea, and
settled to his breakfast with a good appetite and a clear
conscience. He came with me from Campbell's farm, in order
to point out Squattlesea Mere, then unoccupied, somewhere
about May 1843. We stayed at Dunmore for lunch. The
members of the firm were absent, but good, kind Mrs. Teviot
provided me with such a meal of corned-beef, home-baked
bread, fresh butter, short-cake and cream, that, as I told my
guide, I was provisioned for twenty-four hours if needful. As
it happened, by some mischance, we were very nearly that
precise time before we had the next meal.
'Jemmy' White, Mr. John Cox's stock-rider at Werongurt,
and Joe Twist, his assistant, a native-born Tasmanian, had
both followed Mr. Cox's fortunes from Clarendon in the lovely
island. 'Jemmy' was a solid, elderly man of considerable
experience, and under his management the Werongurt Herefords
were kept in admirable order. He, like his fellow-servant
Buckley, was assisted by Mr. Cox in the purchase of a
run adjoining his master's station, where, with a flock of sheep
to start with, he became independent and comparatively rich.
After marrying and settling down, he built himself a comfortable
brick house at Louth, and died the possessor of beeves
and pastures, horses and sheep, in patriarchal plenty.
Joe Twist—now, doubtless, 'old Mr. Twist,' and a substantial
burgess of Macarthur—was a boy when I first came to
the district, but growing up in the fulness of time, was promoted
to be head stock-rider, vice White retired. He had by that
time developed into one of the smartest hands in a yard that
ever handled drafting-stick, as well as a superb horseman in
connection with cattle-work. He would stand in a stock-yard
among the excited, angry cattle (and those that came out of
the Mount Napier lava country were playful enough) as if
horns were so many reeds, even waiting until the charging
beast was almost upon him before stepping out of the way,
with the cool precision of a Spanish toreador.
With all due respect for the ancestral Briton, whom every
good Australian should reverence, I hold that the native-born
artist, while equal in staying power, far surpasses him in
dexterity. What Britisher could ever shear as many sheep—ay,
and shear them well—as the 'big blow' men of the
420Riverina sheds? Natives they of Goulburn, Bathurst, the
Hawkesbury, Campbelltown—all the earlier Sydney settlements.
Can any imported 'homo' even now pilot twenty bullocks,
with the wool of a small sheep-station on the iron-bark waggon,
along the roads the teamster safely travels? And similarly for
'scrub-riding,' drafting, and camp-work, though many of the old
hands, grown men before they ever touched Australian shores,
became excellent, all-round bushmen, yet the talent, to my
mind, lies with their sons and grandsons, who are as superior
when it comes to pace and general efficiency as Searle and
Kemp to the Thames watermen.
Well remembered yet is the first typical Australian stock-rider
I ever set eyes on—a schoolboy then out for a holiday.
I was riding to Darlington, our Mount Macedon Run, early in
the 'forties,' with a relative. From Howie's station a young
man, detailed to show us a short cut, rode up, furnishing to my
delighted vision the romantic presentment of a real stock-rider
of the wild, such as I had longed to see. Tall, slight,
neatly dressed, with spur and stockwhip, strapped trousers and
cabbage-tree hat, 'accoutred proper,' he joined us, mounted
upon a handsome three-parts bred mare, in top condition.
She shied and plunged playfully as she came up.
'Now, Miss Bungate,' he said, with mock severity of tone,
'what are you up to?'
This was one of the mental photographs, little heeded at
the time, which were of use in days to come. Tom or Jack,
'Howie's Joe' or 'Ebden's Bill'—the rider's name cannot be
guaranteed by me, but that bay mare I never can forget.
'Wincing she went, as doth a wanton colt.' The summer
leaves may fall, and that dreary season, the winter of age, come
on apace, but Miss Bungate will be enshrined among the
latest memories which Time permits this brain to register and
recall.
The stock-riders of the past were a class of men to whom
the earlier pastoralists were much indebted. Placed in positions
of great trust and responsibility, they were, in the main,
true to their salt and loyal to their employers. If they occasionally
erred in the wild confusion of strayed cattle and
unbranded yearlings, presumably the property of the Government
(was there not a celebrity thus claiming all estrays
humorously designated 'Unbranded Kelly'?), their temptations
421were great. Without their aid, living lonely lives on the
remoter inland stations, the cattle herds, often menaced or
decimated by the blacks, and roaming over vast areas of
natural pasture, would never have enabled their owners to
amass fortunes and create estates. They were, as a rule,
fearless sons of the wilderness, having some of the vices but
many of the virtues which have always honourably distinguished
pioneers.
MOUNT MACEDON
422
In the later days of 1842 I paid my first visit to Macedon,
beyond which mountain our sheep-station, Darlington, had
been formed in 1838. The overseer, on a business visit to
Melbourne, whether in recognition of personal merit, or as
desiring to do the polite thing to his employer's son, invited
me to return with him. I jumped at the proposal. The
paternal permission being granted, the following day saw me
mounted upon a clever cob named Budgeree, a survivor of
the overland party from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1838, fully
accoutred for my first journey into Bushland—the land of
mystery, romance, and adventure, which I have well explored
since that day—that Eldorado whence the once-eager traveller
has returned war-worn and pecuniarily on a level with the
majority of pilgrims and knights-errant.
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot on ground
That looked like Eldorado.
We reached Howie's Flat, spending the night at the solitary
stock-rider's hut near Woodend. I still recall the keenness of
the frost, which came through the open slabs and interrupted
my repose. Macedon was the first mountain I had encountered
in real life, familiar as I was with his compeers in
books. I regarded his shaggy sides, his towering summit,
with wonder and admiration, as we rode along the straggling
dray-track of the period.
Walls of dark-stemmed eucalypti bounded the narrow road;
shallow runlets trickled across the rock ledges; while the
breeze, strangely chill even at mid-day, but rippled the ocean
423of leafage. Gloomy alike seemed the endless forest ways, the
twilight defiles, the rough declivities. At one such place my
companion remarked, 'This blinded gully is where Joe Burge
capsized the wool dray last shearing.' I thought it would be
a nice place for robbers. German stories of the Bandit of the
Black Forest and such-like thrilling romances, which ended in
the travellers being carried off into caverns or tied up to trees,
began to come into my head. I was glad when we sighted
the open country again.
We arrived at Darlington next day, not without adventures,
in that we lost one horse. He slipped his head out of the
tether rope, so we had to double-bank old Budgeree, who
proved himself a weight-carrier, equal to the emergency.
What a change has passed over the land since then! Mr.
Ebden was at Carlsruhe; Mr. Jeffreys close by; the Messrs.
Mollison at Pyalong; and Coliban, Riddell, and Hamilton at
Gisborne. Hardly any one else in the direct line of road.
What waving prairies of grass! what a land of promise!
what a veritable Australia Felix, was the greater portion of the
country we rode over!
A decade has almost rolled by. What motley band is this
which faces outward, from Melbourne, along the selfsame road
on which old Macedon looks grimly down, as they ramble,
straggling past under his very throne? They are gold miners,
actual or presumptive.
Both worlds, all nations, every land
Had sent their conscripts forth to stand
In the gold-seeker's ranks.
Mother Hertha has for once hidden her treasures so carelessly
that the most unscientific scratching shall suffice to win
them. A hundred deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run
parallel with the once sole roadway. Wild oaths in strange
tongues awaken the long-silent echoes. All ranks and orders
of men are mingled as in the old crusades. Different they,
alas, in purpose as in symbol! Watch-fires gleam on all sides.
Night and day seem alike toilsome, troubled, vulgarised by
noise and disorder, strangely incongruous with the solemn
mountain shadows and the old stern solitude.
424Again the years have passed. The lurid, early goldfields
are no more. Order reigns where crime and lawless violence
once were rife. Handsome towns have succeeded to the
crowded, squalid encampments where dwelt the fierce toilers
for gold, the harpies, the camp-followers, the victims. I am
seated in a commodious stage coach, which behind a well-bred
team bowls along at a creditable pace over a well-kept,
macadamised road. We are en route to Sandhurst, now a
model town, with trees overshadowing the streets, a mayor
and a corporation, gaols and hospitals, libraries and churches.
Yet, as we pass Macedon, tales are told of mysterious
disappearances of home-returning diggers, which recall my
early association of brigands with the dark woods and lonely
ravines.
'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.' Shade of
Mr. Cape, is the quotation correct, or are we doing dishonour
to that great man's memory,—'building better than
he knew,'—and the careful heed of quantities, inculcated by
personal application to our feelings, in the days of heedless
boyhood? Times have changed with a vengeance. Again in
Melbourne! It is changed, I trow. Great, famous, rich, one
of the known and quoted cities of the earth. We have helped
to produce this triumph. But at what a price? Our youth has
gone in the process. When we look at all the fine things that
fill one's vision by day, by night, within its lofty halls, amid its
crowded streets, we feel like the man in the old story, who for
power and wealth sold himself to the Fiend. 'All that's very
fine, my friend,' an unkind sprite whispers to us. 'You may
or may not enjoy a part of this splendour, but you are not so
young as you were. I won't mention the D—— in polite
society, but the demon of Old Age will leave his card on you
before long.'
Yes, we are still extant, not wholly invalided, in this year
of grace 1884. Instead of sitting on the box of Cobb's coach
in Bourke Street at 6 A.M., while the punctual Yankee driver
is waiting for the Post-office clock to strike, my old friend and
I, en route for his well-known hospitable home on the spurs
of Macedon, enter a comfortable railway carriage at mid-day.
As we are whirled luxuriously through the grassy, undulating
downs and wide-stretching plains which surround Melbourne
425on the north-east, we have ample leisure to enjoy the view.
Macedon is visible from the outset, dimly shadowed, kingly as
of old, raising his empurpled bulk athwart the summer sky.
Passing the towers of Rupertswood, the thriving towns of
Gisborne and Riddell's Creek—did I not know them in their
earliest 'slab' or 'wattle-and-daub' infancy?—in two hours of
extremely easy travelling, relieved by conversation and light
literature, we see 'Macedon' on the board of the railway
station, and find ourselves at the village so named, built on
the actual mountain slope. Piles of timber of every variety,
size, and shape, which can be reft from the Eucalyptus obliqua
or amygdalina, show that the ancient trade of the mountain
foresters has not diminished. The chief difference I suppose
to be that the splitters and sawyers are no longer compelled to
lead a lonely, half-savage life, bringing the timber laboriously
to Melbourne by bullock dray, and, one may well believe,
indulging in a 'sdupendous and derrible shpree' after so rare
a feat. They now forward their lumber by rail, live like
Christians, go to church on Sundays, and read The Argus
daily for literary solace.
We relinquish here the aid of steam, and trust to less
scientific means of locomotion. We are in the country in the
sweet, true sense of the word—component portions of a
company of wisely-judging town-dwellers, who by their choice
of this elevated habitat have secured a weekly supply of
purest mountain air, unfettered rural life, and transcendent
scenery. Various vehicles are awaiting the home-returning
contingent. Buggies and sociables, dog-carts, pony-carriages,
and phaetons with handsome, well-matched pairs—the reins of
the prize equipage in the latter division being artistically
handled by a lady. Our party and luggage are swiftly
deposited, a start is made along the rather steep incline—the
lady with the brown horses giving us all the go-by after a
while. Half an hour brings us to our destination. We leave
the winding, gravelly road; turning westwards, a lodge gate
admits us through the thick-ranked screen of forest trees.
Conversation has somehow flagged. What is this? We have
all in a moment quitted the outer world, with its still, rude
furnishing—tree stumps, road metal, wood piles, and bullock
teams—and entered into—shall I say it straight out?—an
earthly paradise!
426Prudence here nudges me. 'Come now, don't overdo it;
you're really too imaginative.' Well, there may be just the
least soupçon of idealism, Prudence dear. I never was there,
or if in a former state of existence, have forgotten details; but
if aught mundane can furnish a partial presentment of Eve's
favourite nook in that lost glory of our race, surely it is
the dream-garden which now opens before our wondering
vision.
On the lip of the forest hollow, taking studied advantage
of every point of natural conformation, has been created a
many-acred, garden landscape, absolutely perfect in growth,
harmony, and sustained beauty of composition. The natural
advantages, it must be admitted, are great, perhaps unequalled.
'The dark wall of the forest,' but partially invaded, forms a
highly effective background to the cultured loveliness and
delicate floral brilliancy which it overshadows. On either
side, the sheltering primeval groves make effectual barrier
against the withering north wind of summer, the winter's
southern sea-blasts.
Cooler air and a lowered heat-register are consequent upon
the altitude, when on the plain below, plant and animal nature
alike suffer from the unpitying sun. Here rarely frost is seen
or rude gales blow. Proudly and secure may the dwellers on
Darraweit Heights look from their mountain home, across the
unbroken stretch of plain and grassy down, relieved but by
copses, around farm-steadings and cornfields, where the
harvest sheaves are now standing in thick rows. In the dim
distance are the gleaming waters of the Bay. That cluster of
far-seen lights, when the shades of night have fallen, denotes
the position of the metropolis. Can that misty, pale-blue
apparition be a mountain-range—the austere outline of the
Australian Alps? Westward lie the broad plains which
stretch in unbroken level, well-nigh to the coast, two hundred
miles from Melbourne. Around are companion heights and
forest peaks. Still regal as of yore, though his woods have
been rifled and his solitudes invaded, Macedon rears his
majestic summit. The house—roomy, broad verandahed,
luxuriously comfortable, more commodious than many a
pretentious mansion—overlooks the 'pleasaunce,' to use the
old Norman-French nomenclature, here so curiously appropriate.
Grounds of pleasure they, in every sense of the word.
427More spacious than a garden, less extensive than a chase, the
reclaimed wild is unique in form and design as in floral
loveliness. It combines the colour-glories of the garden
proper with the freedom, the 'fine, fresh, careless rapture,' of
a mountain park.
Now for a closer description. We confess to have hung
off, involuntarily, in despair of giving even a fairly accurate
sketch of this adorable creation. What then does it
comprise? Nearly all things that man has lacked since the
primal fall. A collection of longed-for luxuries, for which the
o'ertaxed heart of world-wise, world-wearied man so often sighs
in vain. An abode of rest where, from morn till dewy eve,
the eye lights on nought but 'things of beauty,' which are 'a
joy for ever'; the ear is invaded by no sound but those of
Nature's harmonies. Here, if anywhere on earth, may the
soul be attuned to heavenly thoughts; here may this fallen
nature of ours be purged from all save ennobling ideas, so truly
Eden-like are the surroundings. Rare flowering shrubs
developed by soil and irrigation into forest trees; masses of
choice flowers, exhibiting in this our fiercest summer month a
freshness and purity of bloom as astonishing as exquisitely
beautiful.
The natural features of the locale have doubtless been
exhaustively considered. Yet few horticultural artists would
have seized so unerringly upon the difficult compromise
between Art and Nature which has here been achieved. The
winding walks through the mimic forests are lonely and
sequestered as those of an enchanted wood. The sultry heat
of the day's last lingering hour is effectually banished. The
musical trickle and splash of the tiny waterfalls is in your ear
as, book in hand, or lost in the rare luxury of an undisturbed
day-dream, you saunter on. Half-hidden recesses appear,
where great fronds of foreign ferns show strangely in the
'dim religious light'—'beautiful silence all around, save
wood bird to wood bird calling.' Out of the sad, sordid,
struggling world, far from its maddening discords and
despair-tragedies, your soul seems to recognise a purer,
more sublimated mental atmosphere, nearer in every sense to
the empyrean, and freed from the lower needs of this house of
clay. A half-sigh of regret tells of fair visions fled, even
though you emerge on the lower, wider lawns gay with ribbon-borders
428and yet brighter flower-fantasies in newer unfolding
beauty.
For lo! in this region of glamour and the long-lost kingdom
of the sorcerer, the wandering knight has fallen upon a
fresh enchantment. Proudest of all the engineering triumphs,
the prize must be accorded to the lakelet which glitters in the
lower grounds. How the calm water sleeps beneath the
heavy foliage of the farther shore! How the shadows reflect
the tracery of the willow tresses, the feathery shafts of the
bamboo clump! How freshly green the bordering turf!
There is even an island and a wooded promontory. More
than all—or do my eyes deceive me?—a shallop, light as that
in which
The maiden paused as if again
She thought to catch the distant strain;
With head upraised and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent.
By my halidome! stands she not therein—the 'Ladye of
the Lake' herself,—fair as her prototype, though modernly
arrayed, gracefully poising her light oar. With a smile that
might lure an archangel she beckons us to embark with her
on this magical mirrored water, under the charmed shadows of
the golden summer eve.
Surely all this is a dream. It cannot be but illusion. We
shall wake on the morrow, or next week at the farthest, to feel
again the hot dust-blast as we ride across the desert plain at
midnight, to mark the red moon glaring wrathfully upon the
pale-hued, ghostly myall tree, that sighs despair amid the
death-stricken waste.
Even so. Yet let us dream on and be happy, if but for a
little space. Glide smoothly, O bark; shine tenderly, O
stars, soft glimmering through the o'erhanging, rustling leafage;
fan this sun-bronzed cheek, O whispering breeze, this
careworn brow, till each fevered pulse be cooled. Short is our
mortal span at most. How weary distant the ever-lengthening
goal! But wherever Fate may guide, however stern the fray,
how faint soe'er our footsteps in the onward march, this fair
remembrance shall have power to refresh and reanimate our
soul.
Yet another joy ere the evening, bright with songs and
music, with cheerful converse and pleasant reminiscence,
429comes to an end. We sit amid the happy household group on
the broad verandah-balcony, inhaling the cool night air, and
watching the wondrous effects of light and shade produced by
the late arisen moon. Masses of shrubbery stand picturesquely
gloomed against the moonlit lawns; odours of invisible flowers
pervade the still, pure atmosphere. Opaque as to their lower
bulk, the turreted tree-tops stand in clearest illumination to
their most delicate leafage against the cloudless firmament.
There is no wind or any faintest breeze to stir the tenderest
leaflet. All nature is so still that the tinkling murmur of the
tiny rivulets, which thread the lawns and flower-beds, falls
distinctly on the ear. In faint but rhythmic cadence they
drip and ripple, gurgle and splash, the summer night through.
The flowers in the near foreground alone border on
individuality. Rose clusters and a few lily spikes are
recognisable. Unlike their human kalotypes, they await the
dawn to recommence their fascination. And then, in calmest
contemplation, or enjoyment of low-toned interchange of
thought, ends the restful, happy day. On the lower levels, in
the country towns and around the metropolis, as we were
subsequently assured, it was felt to be sultry and oppressively
heated, while on these happy heights of Darraweit—the Simla
of Victoria—the air was at once cool and fragrant, subtly
exhilarating as the magic draught which renews the joys of
youth.
WALKS ABROAD — FROM TUMUT TO TUMBERUMBA — IN THE THROES OF A DROUGHT — A SPRING SKETCH — NEW YEAR'S DAY 1886
430
Only a month to midsummer—A.D. 1883—when on this verge
of the great north-western plain-ocean we fall across a section
of the railway to Bourke in course of construction. Nature
is here hard beset by Art. What a mighty avenue has the
contractor's army cut through the primeval forest! The close-ranked
trees taper, apparently, to nothingness until the horizon
is reached. In the twelve miles that your sight reaches, there
is not the smallest curve—no departure from the mathematically
straight line. If you could see a hundred and twenty
miles, you would find none greater than is visible now; for
this avenue is something over that length, and is said by railway
men to be one of the longest 'pieces of straight' in the
world.
The still incompleted work is even now being ministered to
with the strong, skilled hands of hundreds of men. All the
same, the inspecting overseer is a necessary personage in the
interests of the State. He it is who descries 'a bit of slumming,'
however minute; who arrests progress, lest bolts be
driven instead of screwed; who compels 'packing' and other
minute but important details upon which the safety of the
travelling public depends.
How efficiently is man aided by his humbler fellow-creatures,
whom, for all that, he does by no means adequately
respect or pity. See those two noble horses on their way to
be hooked-on to a line of trucks! They are grand specimens
of the Australian Clydesdale—immense creatures, highly fed,
well groomed, and, it would appear, well trained.
They have no blinkers, and from the easy way in which,
unled, they step along the edge of the embankment, where
431there is but a foot-wide path, lounging through the navvies
without pausing or knocking against anybody, they seem fully
to comprehend the peculiarities of railway life. They are
attached by chains hooked to the axles of two of the six
trucks, weighing some fifty or sixty tons, which require to be
moved. Once in motion, of course, the draught is light,
but the incline is against them, and the dead pull required
to start the great weight is no joke. At the word they go
into their collars with a will, the near horse, a magnificent
dark bay, almost on his knees, and making the earth and
metal fly at the side of the rails in his tremendous struggle to
move the load. He strains every muscle in his powerful
frame gallantly, unflinchingly, as if his life depended upon the
task being performed and all at a word; he is neither touched
nor guided.
He knew his duty a dead sure thing,
And went for it then and there.
His comrade lacks apparently the same high tone of feeling,
for his efforts are stimulated by an unjustifiable expression on
the part of the driver, and a bang on the ribs with a stout
wattle. The line of trucks moves, however; then glides
easily along the rails. When the end of the 'tip' is reached
both horses stop, are released, walk forward a few paces, and
stand ready for the next feat of strength and handiness.
This happens to be pay-day on the line, which agreeable
performance takes place monthly. The manner of personal
remuneration I observe to be this: the paymaster and his
assistant, with portentous, ruled pay-sheets, take their seats
in a trench. The executive official carries a black leather
bag, out of which he produces a number of sealed envelopes
variously endorsed.
Different sections are visited, and the men are called up
one by one. Small delay is there in handing over the indispensable
cash. 91. William Jones, £9: 12s.; 90. Thomas
Robinson, £9: 4s., one day; 89. John Smith, £8: 16s., two
days. Smith acquiesces with a nod, signifying that he is
aware that the two days during which he was, let us say,
indisposed after the last pay-day have been recorded against
him, and the wage deducted. There is no question apparently
as to accuracy of account. The envelopes are stuffed into
432trouser-pockets, mostly without being opened. A few only
inspect their contents, and gaze for a second upon the crisp
bank-notes and handful of silver. Some of the sums thus
paid are not small—gangers and other minor officials receiving
as much as twelve and thirteen shillings a day; the ordinary
pick and shovel men, eight. Overtime is paid for extra, which
swells the amount received. One payment for fencing subcontractors
exceeded eighty pounds. Sixteen hundred pounds,
all in cash, came out of the superintendent's wallet that day.
I noticed the men for the most part to be under thirty,
many of them almost boyish in appearance. They were
cleanly in person, well dressed and neat for the work they
have to do, well fed, and not uncomfortably lodged considering
the mildness of the climate. One and all they show grand
'condition,' as is evidenced by the spread of shoulder, the
development of muscle, with the lightness of flank observable
in all. As to nationality they are pretty evenly divided; the
majority are British, but an increasing proportion of native-born
Australians is observable, I am told. With regard to pre-eminence
in strength and staying power the home-bred English
navvy chiefly bears the palm, though I also hear that the
'ringer' in the pick and shovel brigade is a Hawkesbury man,
of Cornish parents, a total abstainer, and an exemplary workman.
With such a monthly outflow of hard cash over a restricted
area, it may be imagined what a trade is driven by boarding-house
keepers and owners of small stores. The single men
take their meals at these rude restaurants, paying from 18s.
to £1 per week. The married men live in tents or roughly-constructed
huts in the 'camps' nearest to their work.
I fear me that on the day following pay-day, and perhaps
some others, there is gambling and often hard drinking. The
money earned by strenuous labour and strict self-denial during
the month is often dissipated in forty-eight hours. The
boarding-house keepers are popularly accused, rightly or
wrongly, of illegally selling spirits. Doubtless in many instances
they do so, to the injury of public morals and the
impoverishment of the families of those who are unable to
resist the temptation. A heavy penalty is always enforced
when proof is afforded to the satisfaction of justice; but
reliable evidence of this peculiar infraction of the law is
433difficult to obtain, the men generally combining to shield the
culprits and outswear the informer.
A few miles rearward is the terminus of this iron road that
is stretching so swiftly across the 'lone Chorasmian waste.'
Here converge caravans from the inmost deserts. Hence
depart waggon-trains bearing merchandise in many different
directions. What a medley of all the necessaries, luxuries,
and superfluities of that unresting, insatiable toiler, man!
They lie strewed upon the platform, or heaped in huge
mounds and pyramids under the lofty goods sheds. Tea and
sugar, flour and grain, hay and corn, chaff and bran, machines
of a dark and doubtful character connected with dam-making
and well-sinking; coils of wire, cans of nails, hogsheads of
spirits, casks of wine, tar, paint, oil, clothing, books, rope,
tools, windlasses, drums of winding gear, waggons, carts, and
buggies all new and redolent of paint and varnish; also
timber and woolpacks, and, as the auctioneer says, hundreds
of articles too numerous to mention. What a good
customer Mr. Squatter is, to be sure, while there is even the
hope of grass, for to him are most of these miscellaneous
values consigned, and by him or through him will they be
paid for.
We are now outside of agriculture. The farmer, as such,
has no abiding-place here. That broad, dusty trail leads,
among other destinations, to the 'Never Never' country,
where ploughs are not, and the husbandman is as impossible
as the dodo.
Perhaps we are a little hasty in assuming that everything
we see at the compendious depôt is pastorally requisitioned.
That waggon that creaks wailingly as it slowly approaches,
with ten horses, heavy laden though apparently empty, proclaims
yet another important industry. Look into the bottom
and you will see it covered with dark red bricks, a little
different in shape from the ordinary article. On a closer view
they have a metallic tinge. They are ingots of copper, of
which some hundreds of tons come weekly from the three
mines which send their output here. As for pastoral products,
the line of high-piled, wool-loaded waggons is almost
continuous. As they arrive they are swiftly unloaded into
trucks, and sent along a special side-line reserved for their
use. Flocks of fat sheep and droves of beeves, wildly staring
434and paralysed by the first blast of the steam-whistle, arrive,
weary and wayworn. At break of day they are beguiled into
trucks, and within six-and-thirty hours have their first (and
last) sight of the metropolis.
In the meantime herds of team-horses, bell-adorned, make
ceaseless, not inharmonious jangling; sunburnt, bearded
teamsters, drovers, shepherds, mingled with navvies, travellers,
trim officials, tradesfolk, and the usual horde of camp-followers,
male and female, give one the idea of an annual fair held
upon the border of an ancient kingdom before civilisation
had rubbed the edges from humanity's coinage, and obliterated
so much that was characteristic in the process.
I stood on the spot an hour before daybreak on the
following morn. Hushed and voiceless was the great industrial
host. Around and afar stretched the waste, broadly
open to the moonbeams, which softened the harsh outline of
forest thicket and arid plain. The stars, that mysterious
array of the greater and the lesser lights of heaven, burned
in the cloudless azure—each planet flashing and scintillating,
each tiny point of light 'a patine of pure gold.' The low
croon of the wild-fowl, as they swam and splashed in the river-reach,
was the only sound that caught the ear. Glimmering
watch-fires illumined the scattered encampment. For the
moment one felt regretful that the grandeur of Night and
Silence should be invaded by the vulgar turmoil of the coming
day.
One of the aids to picturesque effect, though not
generally regarded as artistic treatment, is the clearing and
formation of roads through a highland district. Such a region
is occasionally reached by me, and never traversed without
admiration. The ways are surrounded by wooded hills, some
of considerable altitude, on the sides and summits of which
are high piled
rocks, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.
But here the road-clearing, rarely supplemented by engineering
disfigurement, produces the effect of a winding, thickly-grown
avenue. On either side stand in close order the
frenelas, casuarinas, and eucalypts of the forest primeval,
with an occasional kurrajong or a red-foliaged, drought-slain
callitris, 'like to a copper beech among the greens.' The floor
435of this forest-way is greenly carpeted with the thick-growing
spring verdure, a stray tiny streamlet perhaps crossing at
intervals, while leaflets of the severed saplings are bursting
through in pink or dark-red bunches. In the far distance
rises a dark-blue range, towering over the dim green ocean of
forest, and marking the contrast sharply between the land of
hill and dale and the monotonous levels of the lower country.
With all the capriciousness of Australian seasons the
springtime of this year has shown a disposition to linger—waving
back with grateful showers and dew-cooled nights and
mornings the too impatient summer. Still is the grass brightly
green of hue, the flower unfaded. The plague of dust has
been stayed again and again by the welcome rainfall. There
has never been more than one day when the winds have risen
to a wintry bleakness. But who recks of so trifling a discomfort
from such a cause, and will not King Sol be avenged
upon us ere Christmastide be passed—ere the short, breezeless
nights of January are ended?
What contrasts and discrepancies Dame Nature sanctions
hereabouts in the formation of her feathered families! That
soaring eagle, so far above us heavenward, in the blue
empyrean, how true a monarch among birds is he! Now he
stoops, circling lower and yet lower still, with moveless outstretched
pinion and searching gaze that blenches not before
the sun's fiercest rays. The tiny blue-throated wren perches
fearlessly near, and hops with delicate feet from stone to stone
amid the sheltering ferns. That downy white-breasted diver,
a ball of feathers in the clear pool of the mountain streamlet,
now with a ripple become invisible—the devoted pelican, with
sword-like beak and pouch of portentous dimensions. Lo!
there sits he with his fellows by the edge of a shallowing
anabranch, or revels with them in the evil days of drought
upon the dying fish which in hundreds are cast upon the
shore. As I tread the homeward path, the skylark springs
upward from the waving grass; trilling his simple lay, he
mounts higher and yet higher, no unworthy congener, though
inferior as a songster to his British namesake. In the adjacent
leafless trees is a flight of gaunt, dark-hued, sickle-beaked
birds. Travellers and pilgrims they, relatives of earth's oldest,
most sacred bird races. Behold a company of the ibis from
far far wilds. Their presence here is ominous and boding.
436They are popularly supposed to migrate coastwards only when
the great lakes of the interior begin to fail. This, however, is
not an unfailing test of a dry season, as in long-dead summers
I have had occasion to note. They are not too dignified,
in despite of their quasi-sacred hierophantic traditions, to eat
grasshoppers. As these enemies alike of farmers and squatters
are now despoiling every green thing, let us hope that the ibis
contingent may have appetites proportioned to the length of
their bills and the duration of their journey. A white variety
of the species is occasionally noted, but he is rare in comparison
with the darker kind.
By the creek bank, in the early morn, the well-remembered
note of the kingfisher, so closely associated with our youth,
sounds close and clear. Yonder he sits upon the dead limb
of the overhanging tree—greenish blue, purple-breasted as of
yore. Stonelike he plunges into the deep pool, reappearing
with a small fish or allied water-dweller. More beautiful is
his relative the lesser kingfisher, metallic in sheen, with
crimson breast—flashing like a feathered gem through the
river shades, or burning like a flame spot against the mouldering
log on which he sits. Of palest fawn colour, with long
black filament at the back of his head, that graceful heron, the
'nankeen bird' of the colonist, is also of the company; the
white-necked, dark-blue crane, and that black-robed river pirate
the cormorant. While on the bird question, surely none are
more delicately bright, more exquisitely neat of plumage and
flawless of tone, than the Columba tribe. Ancient of birth
are they as 'the doves from the rocks,' and principally for
their conjugal fidelity have been honoured, by the choice of
Mr. Darwin, as exemplars in working out experiments connected
with the origin of species. In western wanderings
I find five varieties of the pigeon proper. The beautiful
bronze-wing, the squatter, and the crested pigeon. Besides
these, two varieties of the dove are among the most exquisitely
lovely of feathered creatures. Both are very
small—one scarcely larger than a sparrow. The 'bronze-wing'
is too well known to need description. The 'squatter pigeon'
is a plainer likeness, with a spot of white on either cheek, and,
as its name implies, is unwilling to fly up, being struck down
occasionally with the whip or a short throwing stick in the act
of rising. The crested pigeon, the most graceful and attractive
437of the family, is from its tameness and extreme cleanliness of
habit most suitable for the aviary. In colouring, the breast is
a delicate slate-grey tinged with faintest pink as it rises towards
the wing muscles, the front wings barred with dark, pencilled
cross-lines, the larger feathers of the extremities a burnished
green, and the last row having feathers of a vivid dark pink
or crimson. A crest and elongated pointed tail give character
and piquancy to the whole appearance. As they fly up, a
whirring noise, not unlike that of the partridge, is heard.
When the male bird swells his chest and lowers his wings in
defiance or ostentation, he produces a sound not unlike that
of his long-civilised congener. They will lay and hatch in
captivity, and I observed in an aviary one of the females
sitting on her eggs complacently in a herring tin.
It was rather too far to walk this time; besides, the days
are shortening. From Tumut to Tumberumba is forty-five
miles all out, and a bad road. At breakfast-time we had no
earthly idea of how or where to get a horse. A friend in
need tided over that difficulty. So, mounted upon a clever
mountain-bred hackney, we cleared the town about 9.30 A.M.,
and headed for the Khyber Pass (in a small way), up which
the road winds south-easterly. The time was short, but we
meant going steadily, if not fast, all through, and trusted, as
we have done 'with a squeeze' full many a time and oft
before, to 'save the light.'
Buggies are comfortable vehicles when roads are good and
horses fresh. You can carry your 'things' with you, and,
in cases of entertainments, come out with more grandeur and
effect than if on horseback. But give me the saddle, 'haud
juventutis immemor.' It brings back old times; and certainly
for people whose appearance is in danger of being compromised
by a tendency to increased weight, riding is the
more healthful exercise. Besides, one always feels as if adventures
were possible to cavaliers. Wheels circumscribe one
too narrowly. You must start early. You had better not drive
late. Your stopping-places must be marked and labelled as
it were. You are affiché, for good or evil.
438Now, once started on a fine morning, on a good horse, a
'lazy ally' feeling seems to pervade the surroundings and the
landscape. If you meet wayside flowers, you may linger to
gather them. You may avail yourself of chance invitations,
secure that you can 'pull up time' late or early. As you
sail away, if your horse walks well and canters easily (as does
this one), you insensibly think of 'A day's ride, a life's
romance.' Is that romance yet over? It may be. We are
'old enough to know better.' But still we were quite sure
when we started that we should meet with an adventure or two.
First of all, we saw two young people in a buggy, driving
towards the mountain land which lay eastward in a cloud-world.
There was something in the expression of their backs
as they passed us which suggested an early stage of the Great
Experiment. The bride was fair, with, of course, a delicate
complexion—that goes without saying in this part of the
world. The bridegroom was stalwart and manly looking.
Presently we were overtaken by another young lady of prepossessing
appearance, with two attendant cavaliers, well
mounted and evidently belonging to the same party. Bound
for some miles along the same lonely but picturesque road,
we asked permission to join the party, and fared on amicably.
Together we breasted the 'Six-Mile Hill,' and at length
emerged upon the alpine plateau, which for many miles lies
between the towns before mentioned.
Here the scene changed—the climate, the soil, the timber,
the atmosphere. Eastward lay the darkly-brooding Titans of
Kiandra, snow-capped and dazzling, the peaks contrasting
with their darksome rugged sides, the blue and cloudless
sky. Beneath our feet, beside and around us, lay the
partially-thawed snow of Saturday's fall, in quantities which
would have delighted the hearts of certain children of our
acquaintance.
Snow in the abstract, 'beautiful snow,' is a lovely nature-wonder,
concerning which many things have been sweetly
sung and said. But in the concrete, after a forty-eight hours'
thaw, it is injurious to roads, in that it causes them to be
'sloppy' and in a sense dangerous to horse and rider. Given
a red, soapy soil, somewhat stony, sticky, and irregularly
saturated, it must be a very clever steed, the ascents, descents,
and sidelings being continuous, that doesn't make a mistake
439or two. All the same, the girl on the well-bred chestnut horse
kept sailing away, up hill, down hill, and along sidelings steep
as the roof of a house; the whole thing (to quote Whyte-Melville)
'done with the graceful ease of a person who is
playing upon a favourite instrument while seated in an armchair.'
We kept in sight the second detachment, coming up
in time to bid farewell as they turned off to the residence of
the bride's family, where there was to be a dance in celebration
of the auspicious event. We separated with my unspoken
benison upon so promising a pair.
The wedding guests having departed, we paced on for
half-a-dozen miles until a break in the solemn forest, like a
Canadian clearing, disclosed the welcome outline of the half-way
hostelry. Here were there distinct traces of the austerity
of the patriarch Winter, so mild of mien on the lower levels.
Half a foot of snow lay on the roofs of barn and stable, while
the remnant of a gigantic snow-image, reduced to the appearance
of a quartz boulder, lay in front of the house.
A bare half-hour for refection was all that could be spared
here, and as our steed ate his corn with apparently the same
zest that characterised our consumption of lunch, it was time
well spent. Boot and saddle again.
'But first, good mine host, what is the exact distance?
The sun is low; the road indifferent rough; the night unfriendly
for camping out.'
'Fifteen mile if you take the "cut"; eighteen by the
road, every yard of it.'
'We mistrust short "cuts,"' say we, consulting the watch,
which indicates 3.30 P.M.; 'they have lured us into difficulties
ere now. But three miles make a tempting deduction
from the weary end of the journey. We cannot miss it.
Thanks; of that I am aware. Turn to the left, opposite the
second house, cross the creek, turn to the right, and follow
straight on.'
Of course. Just so. The old formula. How many a
time have we cursed it and the well-intentioned giver, by
all our gods, when stumbling, hours after, trackless, over
an unknown country in darkness and despair. Reflected that
by merely following the high road we should have been
warmly housed, cheered, and fed long before. However,
unusual enterprise or the mountain air induces us to try the
440short cut aforesaid; only this time, of course, we turn to
the left, and immediately perceive ('facilis descensus Averni')
that the path leads into a tremendous glen, with sides like
the roof of a house. We dismount, as should all prudent
riders not after cattle, and lead down our active steed. At
the foot of the cañon is a hurrying, yellow-stained mountain
stream. Dark-red bluffs, undermined and washed to the
gravel, exposed in all directions. 'Worked and abandoned'
is plainly visible to the eye of the initiated upon the greater
portion of the locality; but still lingering last are miners'
cottages and a garden here and there. Children, of course.
Ruddy of hue and sturdy, they abound like the fruits of a
colder clime in these sequestered vales.
'What is the name of this—place?' say we guardedly to a
blue-eyed boy, good-humouredly nursing a fractious baby.
'Upper Tumberumba,' he returns answer proudly.
'And the road to the town?'
'Cross the creek and follow down for six mile, and there
you are.'
The road on the far side of the violent little creek follows
that watercourse, and is fairly made. Bridges are the main
consideration, for there seem to be trois cent milles water-races,
some too deep to fall into scathless; and 'beauty born
of murmuring sound' must be plentiful, judging from the
rushing, gushing, leaping, and tumbling waters before and
around us.
This is a land of sluices, of head-races and tail-races,
evidently, where 'first water' and 'second,' dam sites, and
creek claims, with all the unintelligible phraseology of 'water
diverted from its natural course for gold-mining purposes,'
were once in high fashion and acceptance. As the short
winter day darkens without warning, we trust that the bridges
are sound, more especially as we have just cantered over one
with a hole in it as big as a frying-pan.
One advantage secured by our adoption of the 'cut' is
patently that of drier footing, the which causes our steed to
amble with cheerfulness and alacrity. The night comes on
apace, but there is still sufficient light to distinguish the roadway
from obstacles and pitfalls. When the well-known sound
of the water-mill breaks the stillness, light and voices betray the
proximity of a township, and Tumberumba proper is reached.
441When we quit Tumberumba in the early morn for the
return journey to Tumut, the air is charged with vapour,
the mists lie heavily upon the hills. The low grey sky, the
drizzle and the damp which pervade all nature, suggest 'The
Lewis' or other Hebridean region. One can fully realise
the sort of weather chiefly prevailing when the King of Bora
uttered his pathetic farewell 'to his little Sheilah,' returning
to his desolate dwelling alone, to distract himself as best he
might with the company of the simple (but not vulgar)
fishermen and a reasonable consumption of alcohol.
This opens up to the contemplative mind the whole vast
'Grief Question, and how people bear it.' What volumes
might be written about the sorrows of the bereaved, the
forsaken men or women!—'all the dull, deep sorrow, the
constant anguish of patience.' How the slow torture drags
on, varied only by pangs of acute mental pain—the throbs,
the rackings, the utterly unendurable torment—what time
the agonised spirit elects to quit its earthly tenement and
face the dread unknown, rather than longer suffer the too
dreadful present! So the soldier, captured by Indians, shoots
himself to escape the inevitable torture. Also in this connection
regarding anodynes, distractions, solaces, and medicaments,
the which can be used harmlessly by one class of
patients, but in no wise by others.
'An early start makes easy stages,' saith the seer. So it
comes to pass that soon after mid-day we find ourselves at
the Bago Cabaret, after which we incontinently dismount,
fully minded to bait, after four or five hours' battling with
the stony, sticky, slippery sidelings of the track. The good
horse well deserves a feed. Also, thanks to the keenness of
the atmosphere, we experience a steady prompting towards
luncheon.
The horse is led away, and in the parlour we find a fire,
a welcome, and agreeable society. We learn that the wedding
dance duly took place, well attended, and a great success—our
fair informants having been there and danced till daylight,
after which they walked home a trifle of five miles,
which, with snow still on the ground, showed, in our opinion,
praiseworthy pluck and determination; a convincing proof,
were any needed, that the Anglo-Saxon race has not degenerated
in this part of the world. 'The reverse if anything,'
442as the irascible old gentleman in the hunting-field made
answer after a fall, when it was politely inquired of him
'whether he was hurt.'
But pleasures are like poppies spread—
fair yet fleeting in the very constitution of them; so an hour
having quickly passed, much refreshed in sense and spirit,
we tackle the twenty-six very long miles, in our estimation,
which divide us from the fair Tumut Valley. Still lowers
the day. The mists shut out the snow-crowned peaks. The
forest is saturated with moisture, which ever and anon drops
down like a shower-bath when the breeze stirs the leaves
briskly. It is not a gala day, exactly. But oh, how good
for the country!
What beneficent phenomena are the early and the latter
rain! As we look downwards we can see thousands of tiny
clover leaflets, none of your Medicago sativa, with its yellow
flower and deadly burr, but the true, sweet-scented English
meadow plant, fragrant in spring, harmless, fattening, and
sustaining to a wonderful degree, whenever it can command
the moisture which is its fundamental necessity of growth.
In days to come, every yard of this grand primeval woodland
will be matted with it and the best English grasses, not forgetting
that prime exotic the prairie grass (Bromus unioloides).
We are not aware whether there has been an extensive
forest reserve proclaimed hereabouts, but in the interests of
the State there should be. These grand, pillar-like timber
trees, straight as gun-barrels, a hundred feet to the lowest
branch, the growth of centuries, should not be abandoned
to the bark-stripper, the ring-barker, the indiscriminate feller
of good and bad timber alike. There is material here—gum,
messmate, mountain ash, every variety of eucalyptus—to
serve for the sawpits, the railway bridges, and sleepers of
centuries to come, if properly guarded and supervised. And
it behoves the elected guardians of the public rights to permit
no private monopoly or forestalling; to see to the matter in
time. For many an unremembered year have these glorious
groves been slowly maturing. The carelessness of a comparatively
short period may permit their destruction.
The eucalypts, as a family, have been subjected to undeserved
contumely and scorn as trees which produce leaves
443but do not furnish shade, which are 'withered and wild in
their attire' as regards umbrageous covering. All depends
upon the locality, the altitude, the consequent rainfall. Here
the frondage is thick yet delicate in the older trees, while
among the younger growth the habit is almost as dense
and drooping as that of the Acmena pendula, which many of
them resemble in the mass of pink-grey leafage. I notice,
too, the beautiful blackwood or hickory of the colonists
(Acacia melanoxylon), though not in great abundance nor of
unusual size. Nothing, for instance, like the specimens near
Colac, Western Victoria, or between Port Fairy and Portland.
And scrutinising closely the different genera, we discovered a
tree which bore a curious resemblance to a hybrid between
the eucalyptus and the said blackwood. The leaves were
thick, blunt-edged, and singularly like the blackwood. The
bark was like that of the mimosa on the stem and branches,
but roughened towards the butt. The blossom—for it was
just out—was unmistakably that of the eucalyptus tribe. We
had never met with the specimen before and it puzzled us.
It is locally known as the 'water gum.' The true mimosa and
the wild cherry (Exocarpus cupressiformis) were common—this
last of no great size; the wild hop occasionally. The
English briar was not absent—as to which we foresee, for this
rich soil, trouble in the future.
Lonely and hushed—in a sense awful—is this elevated
region. The solitude becomes oppressive as one rides mile
after mile along the silent highway, nor sees nor hears a sign
of life save the note of the infrequent wood-thrush or the cry
of the soaring eagle. But lo! the ruins of an ancient stock-yard!
Easily recognised as belonging to the hoar antiquity of
a purely pastoral régime. The selector-farmers do not put up
such massive corner posts or cyclopean gateways. Not for
them and their slight enclosures is the rush of a hundred wild
six-year-old bullocks, with a due complement of 'ragers,' given
every now and again to carry a whole side of the yard away.
This was the station stock-yard, doubtless, what time 'Bago
Jemmy' and other stock-riders of the period acquired a
colony-wide reputation for desperate riding (and equally hard
drinking) amid these break-neck gullies and hillsides. They
are gone; the wild riders, the wild cattle. Even the rails of
the stock-yard have been utilised for purposes wide of their
444original intention. 'Their memorial is perished with them,'
all save the huge corner and gate-posts, which, embedded
four feet in the ground, are regarded as difficult and expensive
to remove, and of no particular use, ornament, or value
when uprooted. So they remain, possibly to puzzle future
antiquarians, like the round towers of the Green Isle.
This is my last ramble for a while through the plains and
forests of the North-West; would that it had been made
under more pleasing circumstances. 'How shall I endure
to behold the destruction of my kindred?' The quotation
is apposite. All pastoralists are akin to me by reason of
old memories; and if Rain comes not in this month of
March, or even in April, their destruction, financially, seems
imminent.
What a weary time it is in the 'plains dry country,' whither
my wandering steps have strayed at present. Far as eye can
see, there is no herb nor grass nor living plant amid the
death-stricken waste; not even the hard-visaged shrub—the
attenuated, closely-pruned twigs of the salsolaceous plant.
Earlier in the season a large proportion of the stock were
removed, and were agisted at a high cost. The remainder
were left to live or die as the season may turn out. The
station-holders have at length become reckless, and have
ceased to take trouble about the matter.
How hard it seems! For years the energetic, sanguine
pastoralist shall invest every pound he has made, and more
besides, in stud animals of high value, in judicious improvements,
from which he is reasonably certain in a few years to
receive splendid interest for the capital invested. When his
plans are matured, when the improvement of his stock is
demonstrated, will not his fame redound to the furthest limits
of Australia? Eventually he will be able to revisit or for
the first time behold Europe. All imaginable triumphs will
be his. Rich, fortunate, envied, he will be amply repaid
for the toils, the sacrifices, the privations of his earlier
years.
445'Then comes a frost, a killing frost.' Well, not exactly
that, though frosts of considerable severity do occur, hot as is
the climate; but it 'sets in dry.' No rain comes after spring;
none during summer; none in autumn; curious to remark,
none even in winter—except, of course, insignificant or partial
showers. That seems strange, does it not? Instead of
from sixteen to twenty-six inches of rain in twelve months,
there fall but six—even less perhaps. What is the consequence
of all this? The creeks, the dams, the rivers dry up; the
grass perishes; what little pasturage there may be, is eaten up
by the famishing flocks.
During the summer it does not appear that the evil will
be of such magnitude. The stock look pretty well. There
is water; and the diet of dust, leaves, and sticks, with unlimited
range, and no shepherds to bother, does not seem to disagree
with them. Then the autumn comes, with shorter days;
longer, colder nights. Still no rain! The sheep, the cattle,
even the wild horses, begin now to feel the cruel pinch of
famine. The weakest perish; the strong become weak; day by
day numbers of the enfeebled victims are unable to rise after
the weakening influences of the chilly night. The water-holes
become muddy; defiled and poisoned with the carcases of
animals which have had barely strength to drag themselves
to the tempting water, over many a weary mile, have drunk
their fill, and then lacked power to ascend the steep bank or
extricate themselves from the clinging mud.
What a time of misery and despair is this for the luckless
proprietor! He sees before his eyes the thousands and tens
of thousands of delicately woolled sheep, in whose breeding
and multiplication he has taken so much pains,—on behalf of
which he has studied treatises, and gone into all the history
of the merino family since the days of ancient Spanish
Cabanas, Infantados, Escurials, what not,—converted into a
crowd of feeble skeletons, perishing in thousands before his
eyes without hope or remedy, save in the advent of rain,
which, as far as appearances go, may come next year or the
year after that.
Is it possible to imagine a condition more melancholy,
more hopeless, more calculated to drive to suicide the hapless
victim of circumstances, beyond his—beyond any man's control?
It has had the effect ere now. The torturing doubt, the
446hope deferred, has resulted in the dread, irrevocable step.
And who can find it in his heart to condemn?
In a season like this, every one can realise the benefit of
railways. How would these inland wastes be supplied were
it not for the all-powerful steam-king? The dwellers hereabouts
would scarcely have bread to eat; the necessaries of
life would be enhanced in price; forage would be unattainable,
except at prices which would resemble feeding them upon
half-crowns. Talking to a teamster the other day about the
signs of the times, I remarked that he and his comrades were
compelled to carry quantities of forage with which to support
their horses, while delivering loading.
'We'll have to carry a tank soon,' replied the tall, sun-bronzed
Australian, 'if the season holds on this way. The
water-holes are getting that low and choked up with dead
stock as they're neither fit for man or beast to drink; and we
lose horses too.'
'How is that?'
'Well, the heat, or the dust, or the rubbish in the chaff
kills 'em. I can't rightly tell what it is; but these three teams
lost five horses in one day—dropped down dead on that
terrible hot Sunday.'
I did not wonder. There were the upstanding, well-conditioned
Clydesdales walking along with their loads,
gamely enough, but in a perfect cloud of dust. Above them
the burning sun; around, the sandy, herbless waste. Different
surroundings from those of the misty Northern Isles, from
which their ancestors, near or remote, had come! Ponderous,
heavy of hoof and hair, it seemed wonderful that they can do
the work and travel the immense distances they do, under
conditions so alien to their natural state. I inquired of
their driver, himself an example of gradual adaptation to
foreign habitude, whether the medium-sized, lighter-boned
draught horses did not stand the eternal sun and drought
better than their larger brethren. He thought they did.
'Wanted less food, and not so liable to inflammation or leg
weariness.' I should be disposed to think that the Percheron
horse, of which valuable breed several sires have lately been
imported to Melbourne from Normandy, would be suitable for
the long, hot, waggon journeys of the interior—a clean-limbed,
active, spirited horse, immensely powerful for his size, easily
447kept, and more likely 'to come again' after exceptional fatigue.
But I know from experience that the Australian horse in every
class, from the Shetland pony to the Shire, is the strongest,
most active, and most enduring animal that the world can
show. And I hesitate in the assertion that by any other
horse can he be profitably superseded.
As one traverses the arid waste, from time to time a whirlwind
starts up within sight; a sand-pillar raises itself,
contrasting strangely with the clear blue ether. Darkly
smoke-coloured, furiously plunging about the base, it gradually
fines off into the upper sky if you follow it sufficiently long.
'People doubt,' said the Eastern traveller to his guide,
'what produces those sand-pillars which so suddenly appear
before us.'
'There is no doubt about the matter, praise be to Allah!'
quoth the Bedouin. 'It is perfectly well known, say our
holy men, that they are (Djinns) evil spirits.'
Is it so? and do they come to dance exultingly amid the
stricken waste, over ruined hopes, dying herds and flocks—to
mock at the vain adventurer who deemed that he could alter
natural conditions and wrest fame and fortune from the
ungenial wilds? Who may tell? They can scarcely afford
a good omen. The unimaginative boundary-rider regards
them as a 'sign of a dry season.' More likely, one would
say, they are its result. In a long-continued drought the
production of dust must needs be favourable to the action of
whirlwinds.
The oppressiveness of the summer is more felt in March,
perhaps, than in any other month of the year. The hot
weather has tired out the bodily power of resistance. One
yearns and pines for a change; if it comes not, an intolerable
weariness, a painful languor, renders life for all not in robust
health hard indeed to bear. Gradually relief arrives in the
added length and coolness of the nights. Rain does not
come, but the mosquitoes disappear. The dawn is almost
chilly; the system is refreshed and invigorated. With the
first heavy fall of rain a decided change of temperature takes
place. In those happier sections of the continent, where this
is the first cool month, the weather is all that can be wished.
'Ces jours cristals d'automne,' so much beloved by Madame de
Sevigné at Petits Rochets, are reproduced. The friendly fireside—emblem
448of domestic happiness—awaits but the first
week of April to be once more kindled. The plough is
seen again upon the fallow fields. The birds chirp, as if with
fresh hope, from the reviving woodlands. Nothing is needed
but a rainfall for the full happiness of man and his humbler
fellow-creatures. May His mercy, so often shown at sorest
need, not fail us now!
From what road-reports come across me, I gather that
typhoid fever is no infrequent visitor when the water becomes
scarce, when sources are polluted, and the carcases of the
rotting stock lie strewed over larger areas. Medical men
seem to be at odds about the generation of this dire disease.
Fever germs, bacilli, bacteria, water pollution, direct contagion,—all
seem to have their advocates. It seems probable that
towards the end of a drought the very air, uncleansed by
shower and storm, becomes charged with disease germs. As
to water pollutions, sometimes the disease is at its fiercest
before a heavy fall of rain, to disappear almost magically
afterwards. At other times the rain seems to intensify the
epidemic. The dry air of the interior, however hot, has
always been thought to be antagonistic to the disease. It
has not proved so of late years. Occasionally there is an outbreak
of exceptional virulence in some particular locality; but
nothing has hitherto been elicited as to the special conditions
tending to produce or to aggravate the disease.
At and around Bourke matters seem approaching a crisis.
Much of the 'made' water on the back blocks has failed of
late, and the stock have been brought into the 'frontage,'
there to drink their fill, doubtless, but to be utterly deprived
of food as represented by the ordinary herbage. If rain does
not come within a month, dire destruction, worse and more
extensive than in any previous drought, must take place; and
yet since 1866 I have so often heard the same prediction,
and it was never fulfilled. In the meantime man can do
nought but hope and pray, if faith be his in the Divine
Disposer of events. In days to come, a comprehensive system
of water supply may alleviate much suffering and prevent
misfortune; but though water may be secured and stored, the
sparse herbage of the boundless plain, the red-soiled forest,
cannot be so treated. Unless the rainfall be timely in these
far solitudes, no human energy or forecast can avert disaster.
449
In the saddle once more, and away for a week's journeying
o'er the wide Australian Waste! The springtime is again
with us. The clouds have dispensed their priceless moisture,
albeit not all too generously. The level sun-rays shine clear
over leagues of bright-hued turf and greenwood free. The
pale, dawn-streaked azure was cloudless; the morning air
keenly crisp. All nature is now jubilant. The voice of
Spring, faint in tone but wildly sweet, is audible to the lover
of nature. The cry of birds, the rustling leaves in the tall
trees that shade the winding river, and the green waste of dew-besprinkled
herbage, awaken thoughts of long-dead years—of
the season of youth—of the lost Aïdenn of the heart's
freshness.
That Paradise we shall regain nevermore, ah me! But we
must do our devoir as best we may in these days of the aftertime.
Many a mile must be passed before nightfall, and we
are a little short of time as usual; but our steed is fleet and
free, the livelong day is before us, and the experienced
cavalier can cover a long long stretch of woodland and
plain before latest twilight without distressing the good horse
either.
So we follow the winding waggon-tracks at only a moderate
pace; observing as we go, in plant-and bird-life, floweret and
herb, visible signs of development since our last acquaintance
with them. The beautiful bronze-winged pigeon flits shyly
through the thickets to her nest with its two white eggs, not
unlike those of the tame congener. In the brook-ponds or
marshy shallows the blue heron, the pied ibis, and the white
spoonbill are wading or lounging, with the listless elegance of
their tribe. The gigantic 'brolgan' or 'Native Companion,'
tallest of Australian cranes, is to be seen in companies, ever
and anon mirthfully conversing or 'dancing high and
disposedly' before his ranked-up comrades.
For all manner of wild-fowl this is the 'close season.'
Marauding teamsters, and others who should know better,
now and then disregard the law; but on the whole the statute
is enforced. A season of rest permits the black duck and the
wood-duck, that smallest and most elegant of geese (for such is
450the Anas boscha in scientific nomenclature), the shoveller, the
teal, the imposing mountain-duck, to rear their broods in peace.
While we are environed by that darksome eucalyptus, the
sombre 'iron-bark' of the colonists, the mournful balāh, and
the cypress-seeming pine, no token of the advancing spring
greets us. 'A fringe of softer green' may brighten the pine
wood, but as yet the touch of the magician's wand is unheeded.
But as we speed towards the noonday, and the great plains
of the North-West spread limitless before us, the frondage
changes. The monotony of the endless champaign is broken
by clumps and belts of timber. And amid these welcome
oases of leafage might a botanist hold revel and delight his
inmost soul. There is a sprinkling of casuarina and pine, but
these copses are crowded with new and strangely-beautiful
shrubs. First in pride of place comes the wilgah, or native
willow, a brightly-green umbrageous tree, with a short upright
stem and drooping salicene festoons, evenly cropped at the
precise distance that the stock can reach from the ground.
There are few lawns or meadows in Britain that would not be
improved by the transplantation of the wilgah from these
untended gardens of the wild. The mogil (native orange) is
a dense-growing shrub, not wholly unlike the prince of fruit-
and flower-bearers; to complete the resemblance, it is possessed
of a fruit resembling in appearance only, faintly perhaps in
perfume, the European original. The leopard-tree, with
spotted bark, has for a comrade the beef-wood, with blood-red
timber, almost bleeding to the remorseless axe. The glaucous-foliaged
myall, 'intense and soulful-eyed,' with its swaying arms
and drooping habit, looks like a tree out of its mind. It
boasts, with its more sturdy cousin, the yarran, a strangely-powerful
violet perfume. These, with thorn acacias and
delicate fringed-leaved mimosas, seem ready to burst into flower
with the next calm tropical day. An early-blooming acacia
has made a commencement; a shower of fresh, golden sprays
illumines its tender greenery.
Here our pretty, pink-legged, pink-eyed flock-pigeons, with
their crests raised, and their pointed tails elevated as they
perch, rejoin us. The grey and crimson galāh parrots are still
numerous. They have surely delegated their nursery duties.
They must pair and multiply, but, like fashionable parents,
manage to enjoy the pleasures of society notwithstanding.
451The day is still young. The great flocks of merino sheep,
running loose in paddocks enclosed only by wire fences, have
not arisen to commence their daily round of nibbling. About
five thousand are encamped near the corner of an intersecting
gate. Near them are the remnants of a leading aboriginal
family, in the shape of twenty or thirty 'red forester' kangaroos,
popularly called 'soldiers.' These curiously-coloured marsupials
are so bright of hue that one wonders whether they
gradually acquired the colour (pace Darwin) so as to assimilate
with the red earth of the plains over which they bound.
They do not trouble themselves to go far out of my way—they
simply depart from the road; and in calmly crossing a
track one of the flying does 'takes off' a yard before she
comes to it, and clearing the whole breadth without an effort,
sends herself over about twenty feet without disturbing her
balance.
Early as the season is, long trains of wool-waggons, drawn
by bullocks or horses, are slowly crossing the plains. They
carry from thirty to fifty bales each, much skill of its kind
being required to secure the high-piled loads in position. At
one rude hostelry I counted not less than twelve bullock-waggons
so laden. The teams—at that moment unyoked, and
feeding in a bend of the creek, from fourteen to eighteen in
each—made up a drove of nearly two hundred head. Their
bells sound like the chimes of a dozen belfries, pealing in
contest. On the waggons, drawn up with shafts towards the
railway terminus, were, say, four hundred bales of wool,
representing a value of not less than six thousand pounds.
Each bale bore in neat legend the brand of the station, with the
weight, number, and class thereon imprinted, as 'J.R., Swan
Creek—No. 1120—First combing.'
The last month enjoyed at least one sufficing fall of rain,
not less than two inches by the rain-gauge. It is hard to
cause these salsiferous wastes 'to blossom like the rose';
but a result closely analogous invariably follows rainfall. Along
the watercourses, the alluvial flats and horseshoe 'bends' are
ankle high with wild trefoil and quick-springing grasses. The
cotton-bush and salt-bush, perennial fodder plants often most
'wild and withered' of attire even when fairly nutritious to the
flocks, put forth shoots and spikelets of a tender appearance.
All Nature, strange as her vestments may be, under a southern
452sky, is full of the beauty and tenderness of the earth's jubilee,
joyous Spring.
But surely we are impinging on the domain of the giant
Blunderbore, falsely alleged to have been slain by the irreverent
Jack, prototype of the modern 'larrikin' in his turbulent
denial of authority. Yea, and yonder plain is his poultry-yard.
Hither come his cochins and dark brahmas to be fed on corn
as large as bullets, with tenpenny nails by way of tonic. They
walk softly along, lowering their lofty heads to the earth,
running too, occasionally, like dame Partlet, after a grasshopper,
and diversifying their attitudes like Chanticleer.
We count them, twenty-six in all, gigantic fowls able to pick
the hat from your head. They are emus! See the quarry,
and neither hound nor hunter! When, lo! from out the
further belt of timber rides forth a band of horsemen. They
are shearers, bound on a holiday excursion. The preceding
day has been wet, and the supply of sheep consequently short.
All are well mounted, and look picturesque as they burst into
a sudden gallop, and every horse does its best to overtake
the (figuratively) flying troop, now setting to for real work.
The pace is too good for the majority; but one light weight,
mounted on a long-striding chestnut, that probably has ere
now carried off provincial prizes, is closing on the apteryx
contingent. Another quarter of a mile—yes—no—by George!—yes.
He has collared the leader; he crosses and recrosses
the troop. Had he but a stockwhip or lasso he could wind
either round one of the long necks so invitingly stretched.
But he has proved the superior speed of his horse. Such a
trial was said in old days to have sent to the training-stable
one of Sydney's still quoted race-horses. There is no need to
kill aimlessly one of the inoffensive creatures; and he pays
an unconscious tribute to the modern doctrine of mercy by
drawing off and rejoining his comrades.
Further still our roving commission has carried us; we
have halted at the homestead of a great pastoral estate. A
cattle-station in the days when small outlay in huts and
yards was fitting and fashionable, now it has been 'turned
into sheep,' as the phrase goes. A proprietor of advanced
views has purchased the place, less for the stock than for the
broad acres, and the improvement Genie has worked his will
upon the erstwhile somnolent wilderness.
453The change has been sweeping and comprehensive. The
vast area of nearly half a million of acres has been enclosed
and subdivided by the all-pervading wire-fencing. A couple
of hundred thousand merinos, with a trifle of forty thousand
half-grown lambs, now graze at large, without a shepherd
nearer than Queensland. A handsome, well-finished house
stands by the artificial sheet of water, formed by the big dam
which spans the once meagre 'cowall' or anabranch of the
main stream.
A windmill-pump irrigates the well-kept garden, where
oranges are in blossom and ripening their golden globes at the
same time. Green peas and cauliflowers, maturing early,
appeal to a lower æstheticism. The stables, the smithy, the
store, the men's huts, the carpenter's shop, form a village of
themselves; not a small one either.
A quarter of a mile northward, backed up by a dense
clump of pines, stands the woolshed, an immense building
with apparently acres of roofing and miles of battened floors,
£5000 to £6000 representing the cost. It is now in full
blast. We walk over with the centurion to whom that particularly
delicate commission, the captaincy of 'the shed,'
has been entrusted. It is by no means an ordinary sight.
We ascend a few steps at the 'top' of the shed, and look
down the centre aisle, where sixty men are working best
pace, as men will only do when the pay is high, and
each man receives all he can earn by superior skill or
strength.
They are chiefly young men, though some are verging on
middle age, and an old man here and there is to be seen.
Scarcely any but born Australians are on the 'board,' as the
section devoted to the actual shearing operation is termed.
Though an occasional Briton or foreigner enters the lists, the
son of the soil has long since demonstrated his superior
adaptation to this task, wherein skill and strength are so
curiously blended.
Watch that tall shearer half-way down the line. A native-born
Australian, probably of the second or third generation, he
stands six feet and half an inch, good measurement, in his
stockings. His brawny fore-arm is bare to the elbow. Broad-shouldered,
deep-chested, light-flanked, he would have
delighted the eye of Guy Livingstone. You cannot find any
454man out of Australia who can shear a hundred and fifty full-grown
sheep in a day—as he can—closely, evenly, with
wonderful seeming ease and rapidity. Like his horsemanship—a
marvel in its way—it has been practised from boyhood,
and, as with arts learned early in life, a perfection almost
instinctive has resulted.
The shearers proper are all white men. The pickers-up
and sorters of the fleece are a trifle mixed, the former being
chiefly aboriginal blacks, some of the latter Chinamen. In
the pressing demand for labour which obtains when a thousand
sheds are at work, or preparing to shear, in the early spring
months, over the length and breadth of the land, the inferior
races find their opportunity.
A pound a week, lodging, and a liberal diet-scale, render
the shearing season a kind of carnival for the proletariat, from
the first fierce gleam of the desert sun in July, till the mountain
snow-plains are cleared in January and February.
There are eight men at the wool-table—a broad, battened
platform—on which the fleeces are spread, skirted, rolled up,
and self-tied by an ingenious infolding knack, thrown into the
wool-sorter's narrow pathway, and by him transferred to the
separate bins of first and second combing, clothing, super, etc.
The next stage carries them to the wool-presses, which somewhat
complicated machinery, aided by skilled and experienced
labourers, turns out daily fifty to sixty neatest, compactest
bales. Thence on trucks propelled to the dumping-press,
an hydraulic ram-driven monster, which reduces them to
less than half their former size, and hoops them with iron
bands.
Waggon teams are in attendance at the dumping-sheds,
and before sundown much of the wool that was on the
sheep's backs at sunrise will be loaded up, or on the road to
the railway terminus.
Even that bourne of the weary wayfarer by coach, and
the dusty, bearded teamster, is shifting its position nearer and
nearer annually to the great central wilderness. As I ride
homeward, the tents of navvy gangs appear suddenly through
the darkening twilight, in the midst of pine-wood and wilgah
brakes. The muffled thunder of blasts is borne ever and
anon through the rarely-vexed atmosphere, as the sandstone
hills are riven. But the central plain once reached, no work
455but the shallow trench and the low embankment will be
required for hundreds of miles.
In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own
railway platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when
possibly a tramway thence to the dumping-room will be a
recognised and necessary 'improvement.' When that day
comes, shearers and washers will arrive by train from the coast-range,
or the 'Never Never' country; King Cobb will be
deposed or exiled; 'Sundowners' will be abolished; and
much of the romance and adventure of pastoral life will have
fled for ever.
In the list of rambles, possible in the event of certain
undefined conditions coming to pass, one fairly-original project
has always commended itself to me. An overland tramp
from Sydney to Melbourne in the garb and character of a
swagman seemed to offer special inducements. Inexpensive
as to wearing apparel and including a position not difficult to
keep up, the idea suggested health, variety, and adventure.
From such a standpoint all grades of society might be
observed in new and striking lights.
Circumstances prevented me, during the present holiday
season, from carrying out this plan in its entirety. Nevertheless
I found myself, in company with the usual midsummer
contingent of strangers and pilgrims, in the metropolis of the
southern colony; like them in quest of the rare anodyne which
deadens care and allays regret. And what a blessed and
salutary change is this from the inner wastes, the sun-scorched
deserts, whence some of us have emerged but recently! I am
not going to cry down the Bush, the good land of spur and
saddle, of manly endeavour and steadfast endurance, which
has done so much for many of us; but after a long cruise it
is conceded that every sailor-man, from foremost Jack to the
Captain bold, needs a 'run ashore.' His health demands it;
his morale is, in the long run, not deteriorated thereby. For
analogous reasons those of us who dwell afar from the green
coast-fringe, having perhaps more than our share of sunshine,
require a sea change. Every bushman, gentle or simple,
should compass an annual holiday, which I recommend him to
456pass, if possible, in the colony where he does not habitually
reside.
'Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit' is an aphorism
which has been variously garbed. I endorse the dictum,
with limitations. For the removal of that insidious mental
fungus, provincial prejudice, there is no remedy like a moderate
dose of travel.
Chief among the luxuries in the nature of Christmas gifts
with which the wayfarer is presented on arrival in Melbourne
may be reckoned an almost total immunity from the heat
tyranny. The thermometer registers a scale usually associated
with personal discomfort, but oppressiveness is neutralised by
certain adjuncts of civilisation—lofty houses, cool halls, and
shady trees. The ever-sighing sea-breeze—fair Calypso of
the desert-worn Ulysses—invites to soft repose; while the
prevalence of ice, as applied to the manufacture of comforting
beverages, transforms thirst into a disguised blessing. The
glare of the noonday sun, so harmful to the precious gift of
sight, even to reason's throne, is here 'blocked,' to use the
prevailing idiom of the week, by a hundred cunning devices.
The marvels of capitalised industry, the results of science, the
miracles of art, are daily displayed. Old friends, new books,
freshly-coined ideas, strange sights, wonder-signs of all shades
and hues, press closely the flying hours. The tired reveller
sinks into dreamless rest each night, only to enter upon a
fresh course of enjoyment and adventure with the opening
morn.
I find myself following a multitude on one of the first days
after arrival, not 'to do evil,' it may be humbly asserted, but
to behold the Inter-Colonial Cricket Match. We step out
past the Treasury and enter a side alley of Eden. The broad,
asphalted walk leads through an avenue of over-arching elms—a
close, embowered shade over which our enemy, the sun, has
scant power. Anon we cross a winding streamlet, rippling
through a gloom of fern-trees and a miniature tropical forest.
There the thrush and blackbird flit unharmed, the moss velvet
carpets the dark mould, and but a slanting sun-ray flecks the
shadows from the close-ranked lofty exotics—'a place for
pleading swain and whispering lovers made.' But the order
of the day for all sorts and conditions of men and maids is
plainly Richmond Park. Only a few deserters are seen from
457the ranks of the holiday-seeking army as we thread the leafy
defiles. Presently we emerge upon the unshaded road which,
through the Jolimont estate—erstwhile a Viceregal residence—conducts
us to the Melbourne cricket-ground.
Here, truly, is a sight for unaccustomed eyes. The great
enclosure encircled by ornamental iron railings, larrikin proof,
as I am informed, its level, close-shaved green a turf triumph
and species of enlarged billiard-table as applied to cricket
purposes. It is girdled by a ring of well-grown oaks and elms,
through which the glossy-leaved Norfolk Island fig-trees, pushing
their more lavish and intense foliage, communicate a southern
tone.
I stand invested with the privileges of the pavilion, an
imposing three-storeyed edifice, containing all necessary
conveniences for the comfort of the athletes of the contest,
as well as of their friends and well-wishers, who are in the
proud position of members. The arrangements are liberal and
comprehensive. Refreshment bars and luncheon tables, lavatories,
dressing-rooms, billiards, and other palliatives are here
provided, while on the western side are asphalted grounds,
defended by wire netting, where the votaries of the racquet
and tennis-ball display their skill. From the graduated tiers
of seats in the lower or upper rooms, as well as from the roof
itself, a perfect view of the game may be obtained; while on
either side of the lawn, under cover or otherwise, full provision
is made for the comfort of the gentler sex, always liberal in
patronage of these popular contests. Around the remaining
portions of the enclosure, and protected from the profanum
vulgus by a high iron fence, accommodation is provided for
the rank and file of the spectators, who, at a small cost, are
admitted.
The hour is come and the man. Twelve o'clock has struck.
New South Wales has won the toss. From the pavilion gate
the manly form of Murdoch is seen to issue, cricket-armoured,
with trusty bat in hand. He enters the arena amid general
plaudits, followed by Alec Bannerman. Then forth file the
eleven champions of Victoria, who spread themselves variously
over the field. Palmer gives the ball a preliminary spin;
Blackham stretches his limbs and stands ready and remorseless—a
cricketer's fate—behind the wicket. The first ball is
catapulted—swift speeding, with dangerous break. Murdoch
458'pokes it to the off' or 'puts it to leg,' and the great
encounter has commenced.
Wonderful and chiefly comprehensible must it be to the
uninitiated or the foreigner to mark the rapt attention with
which the performance is viewed by the thousands of all
classes and ages who are now gathered around. Ten thousand
people watch every flight of ball or stroke of bat with eager
interest, with prompt, instructed criticism. Wonderful order,
indeed a curious silence, for the most part, prevails. It is
too serious a matter for light converse. The interchange of
opinion is conveyed with bated breath; a narrow escape, to
be sure, is noted with a sigh of relief; a hit with cheers and
clapping of hands. When the fatal ball scatters the stumps,
or drops into the hands of the watchful adversary, one
unanimous burst of applause breaks from the vast assemblage.
His Lordship the Bishop of Melbourne, who sits in one of
the front seats watching the scene with an air compounded of
interest and toleration, doubtless wishes that he could secure
a congregation on great occasions so large, so deeply observant,
so closely critical, so sincerely aroused. Doubtless his
Lordship, conceding, with the kindly wisdom that distinguishes
him, that the people must have their recreations, would admit
that from no other spectacle could so many persons of all
ranks and ages, and both sexes, derive so large an amount of
innocent gratification.
The 'cricket is so good' that several days elapse before the
perhaps somewhat too-protracted match is over. Heavy scoring
on both sides in the first innings. An exciting finish on the
fifth day wrests the chaplet temporarily from New South Wales.
Victoria wins with three wickets to go down. But those
who are willow-wise aver that if—ah me! those ifs—Spofforth
and Massie had been there, the latter with the advantage of
the matchless wicket, another tale might have been told—
From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn,
And Flodden had been Bannockbourne.
The bells have chimed on that fateful midnight when died
the old year; the radiant stranger is a crowned king. In the
forenoon we turn our steps westwards, and enter another of the
parks with which this city has been generously endowed. A
459holiday-loving race, certes, are we Australians. Had Victoria
been a Roman province, her populace would have been regally
furnished with panem et circenses, or known the reason why.
With the eight hours' system, high wages, and frequent holidays,
the working-man of the period, compared with his European
brother, is an aristocrat. But here we are once more on the
Flemington race-course, and of it, as of the Melbourne cricket-ground,
we feel inclined to assert (pace Trollope) that it must
be, in its way, the best in the world.
Much thoughtful care has been bestowed upon the grounds,
the buildings, the adjuncts; much money spent since the old
days, when it differed little from an ordinary cattle-paddock.
And the results are bewildering. Whence this lovely lawn
'with verdure clad,' where, amid flowers and fountains, crowds
of well-dressed people stroll and linger, protected as in their
own gardens from inconvenient sound or sight? this broad,
smooth terrace-promenade below the Stand? this immense
edifice, where in sheltered comfort every stride of the race can
be seen? these perfect arrangements for the protagonists—brute
and human—in the Olympian games we have come to
witness? Is this the place where often amid heat and dust,
not infrequently under soaking showers, the same sports have
been witnessed by the much-enduring crowd? or has the
Eastern enchanter of our boyhood carried off the ancient
race-course bodily, and replaced it with this garden of Armida?
If the surroundings are complete, and the concomitants
exhilarating, the weather is delicious. All things have combined
to make this first-born of the opening year a day of days.
The unobtrusive sun is merely warm; the bright, blue sky
softly toned by fleeting clouds; the sea-breeze whispers of the
wave's cool marge and ocean caves.
'On such a day it were a joy to die,' and as in the first
race—the 'Hurdle'—one beholds Sparke's rider pulling
desperately at the chain-bit in his horse's mouth, as he fights
madly for the lead, it appears but too probable that he is
destined for the sacrifice. The violent chestnut, however,
contrary to an established theory, does not run himself out,
or smash his jockey. He retains the lead gallantly, and, with
the exception of a perilous bang over the last hurdle, touches
nothing. He wins the race from end to end, confounding
the backers of Lady Hampden and Vanguard, the latter horse
460having carried a hurdle on his hocks for some distance, and
so lost his very good show in the race.
Archie wins the Bagot Plate, confirming his friends in
their previous good opinion. Those, however, who backed
him for 'the Standish' on the strength of it, are doomed to
furnish another example of the 'you never can tell' theory,
as he is therein beaten by Mr. Charles Lloyd's Chuckster.
The remaining races are well contested, and many a good
horse extends himself ere the Criterion Stakes, the last race
on the programme, are won; but, curious to relate, one feels
more interested in the people nowadays than in the horses.
The pleasant walks and talks, which are possible in this equine
paradise, detract from the keen interest with which formerly
the possible winners were regarded. Even the luncheon at a
friend's table (one of a series provided by the Management),
with its accompaniments of smiles, champagne, and lightsome
converse, takes its place as a principal event. Afternoon tea,
not less pleasant in its way, succeeds; after which function the
mass of handsomely-appointed equipages in the carriage enclosure
begins to disintegrate, driving up singly to the side entrance.
Whether the beer, presumably imbibed by the coachman, has
got into the horses' heads, I am unable to state; but the latter
prefer the use of their hind-legs temporarily. This effervescence,
however, soon subsides. The four-in-hands depart. Carriage
after carriage rolls away; their daintily-attired occupants are
whirled off safely. Nous autres take the Flemington road,
or fight for a railway seat; and a day of pleasure, marked with
a white stone for some of us, comes cheerily to an end.
A DRY TIME
461
As I ride, as I ride,
With a full heart for my guide.
Browning.
The moon has waxed and waned, yet one may not, in 1883,
recall with the poet
The lonesome October
Of a most immemorial year,
inasmuch as that month in these Southern wilds is for the
most part a gleesome, companionable time, rich in flower-birth
and fruit-promise. None the less, if the windows of heaven
be not the sooner opened, the present year of our Lord will
be aught but immemorial in the chronicles of the land.
Surely the blessed dews of heaven, the rain for which in
these arid wastes all Nature cries aloud, will not long be denied.
How clearly can we realise the force of the strong Saxon of
the Vulgate, 'And the famine was sore in the land.'
Here now exists the same hopeless, long-protracted absence
of all moisture which drove the Patriarch to 'travel' with his
flocks and herds, viz. camels and she-asses, his sons and their
families, from dried-out Canaan to the rich 'frontage' of the
Nile. Here, as then, in that far historic dawn, is dust where
grass grew and water ran. Strange birds crowd the scanty
pools, while among the great hordes of live stock, reared in
plenteous seasons, the strong are lean and sad-eyed, the weak
are perishing daily with increasing rapidity.
The hand of man, which has done so much to reclaim
these wondrous wastes, is powerless against Nature's cruel fiat.
None can do more than wait and pray; for the end must come,
when the days shorten and the nights grow cold, even in this
462summer land; and utter, unredeemed ruin is the goal towards
which many of the proprietors have perforce turned their eyes
these many weary months past.
The fair but fleeting promise of the bygone month has
been unredeemed. Only a few days of the threatening sun
have sufficed to wither the tender herbage, the springing plantlets
which essayed to cover the baked soil. The broad road
seems that veritable way to Avernus, so bare, sun-scorched,
adust is it, for hundreds of leagues. Far away one may note
its swaying deflections, and hold a parallel course, guided
solely by the well-nigh continuous dust-line of the waggon-trains.
Yet, maugre the terrors of the time, certain feathered inhabitants
have their provision secured to them. How else
trip and flit from myall twig to pine bough, bright-eyed and
fearless, this pair of delicious tiny doves? The most exquisitely
formed and delicately lovely of all the Columba family,
they are, perhaps, the smallest—not larger than the brown
bush-quail. Not half the size of the crested pigeon, there is
a family resemblance in the fairy pink legs, the pointed tail,
the bronze bars of the wing-feathers, the tones of the soft,
azure breast. By no means a shy bird, as if conscious that
few fowlers could be cruel to the hurt of so delicate a thing of
beauty, so rare a feathered gem, in these stern solitudes.
Not that all the tribes of the air can be described as beautiful
and harmless. Riding slowly through a belt of timber,
musing, it may be, on the undeserved sorrows of the lower
animals, I am suddenly and violently assaulted—'bonneted,'
as the humorous youth of the period has it. I clutch my
hat just in time to save it from being knocked off. There
are two round holes near the brim, which I had not previously
observed, and a cock magpie is flying back to his station on a
tree hard by, much satisfied in his mind. It is a well-known
habit of this bold, aggressive bird in the breeding season.
He keeps watch, apparently, the livelong day, hard by the
nest, and, pledged to drive away intruders, is no respecter of
persons. Long years since, the present writer was similarly
attacked; when essaying to lift his hat some hours afterwards,
and finding resistance, he discovered that the bird's beak had
penetrated the felt and inflicted a smart cut. Blood had
actually been shed, and, having dried, caused adhesion. The
463'piping crow,' as ornithologically the magpie of the colonies is
designated, is not truly a magpie at all. He is carnivorous
and insectivorous. Withal a handsome bird, with glossy raven
breast and back, and most melodious, flute-like carol, at
earliest morn and eve. He is easily tamed, and in captivity
learns to talk, to whistle, and even to swear with clearness
and accuracy—more particularly the last accomplishment.
As a member of the household, he exhibits great powers of
adaptation, has the strongest conviction as to his rank and
position, despises children, whose undefended legs he pecks,
and will engage in desperate combat with dog or cat, turkey
or gamecock. An Australian naturalist of eminence gives his
testimony to the courage with which a tame bird of the species
relieved the tedium of a homeward-bound voyage by its
constant duels with such gamecocks as the coops produced.
Feeding in the open plain, and in a leisurely way inspecting
the sparse vegetation with an eye to grasshoppers, strolls a
bustard with his mate. This noble game-bird, the wild turkey
of the colonists, is fully equal, perhaps superior, in flavour to
his tame congener. Longer in neck and limb, crane-like of
head, the plumage presents several points of resemblance
which justifies his title to the name. He has also the trick of
strutting with drooped wings and outspread tail before the
female. Shy and difficult of approach by the sportsman on
foot, he is easily circumvented by riding or driving around in
circles, gradually narrowing, when an easy shot is gained.
A reminiscence arises here of the regal sport of hawking
enjoyed in connection with a bird of this species. Hard hit
with double B, he found it difficult to rise above the tall grass
of the marshy plain where he had been stalked, though
gradually gaining strength. As he cleared the reed-tops, a
wedge-tailed eagle (the eagle-hawk of the colonists) swooped
down from airy heights and dashed at the huge bird like a
merlin at a thrush. Very nearly did the 'lammergeier' make
prize of him, but the long sweep of the bustard's wing kept
him ahead. Presently he got 'way on,' assisted by a slight
breeze. Down the wind went hawk and quarry, neck and
neck, so to speak, while the sportsman put his horse to speed,
going straight across country, with head up and eyes fixed on
the pair, as they gradually rose higher in the sky. Ever and
anon the eagle would make a dash at the wounded bird, but
464whether the temporary shock had only staggered him, or that
it was nature's last effort, the edible one soared away far and
fast, eventually disappearing from our gaze.
While on the subject of hawking, there is little doubt
that the 'aguila' referred to might be trained to fly at the
larger game—turkeys, geese, kangaroo, and emu—while the
smaller falcons, which are sufficiently plentiful, might be equally
effective in pursuit of the traditional heron. The beautiful
blue crane of the colonists (Ardea Australis) is found in every
streamlet and marsh, as also the spoonbill, the white crane
(snowy of hue, and with curious fringing wing-feathers), not
forgetting the bittern.
Young Australia, gentle or simple, might find worse employment
than riding forth in the fresh morn of the early summer,
with hawk on wrist, inhaling even this faintest flavour of the
romance of the great days of chivalry.
On the broad, still reaches of the river, or the wide sheets
of water artificially conserved, behold we the pelican, in no
wise differing in appearance from the traditional dweller in
the wilderness. Whether the Australian is unselfishly prodigal
in the matter of heart's blood in favour of her young is
difficult of proof, forasmuch as no living man, apparently,
ever sets eyes on a youthful pelican. In the untrodden deserts
which surround the heart of the continent is popularly deemed
to lie the haunt of the brooding bird; and an Australian
poetess has mourned the fate of the gallant brothers—bold
and practised explorers—last seen on their way to the unknown,
half-mystic region, 'where the pelican builds her nest.'
As the hot breath of the fast-coming summer proves yet
more deadly to every green thing, the pelican flocks sail coastward
in great numbers from their failing streams and marshes.
With them comes the beautiful black swan—'rara avis in
terra,' but here an everyday sight—graceful, with scarlet
beak, wreathed neck, and 'pure cold webs'; the wild, musical
note clanging from the soaring, swaying files cleaving the
empyrean. Rarely-seen waders and swimmers are of the
contingent if the 'weather holds dry'—a wayworn, far-travelled
host, priceless to the naturalist could he but observe
them.
Let but the stern drought continue unbroken, all-heedless
of man and his great army of dependants, through the brief
465spring, the long summer—till the days shorten and (even
here) the nights grow cold—unprecedented losses must occur
in certain localities. Still, hope is not dead. The dry zone
is restricted in area. Outside and around it, what the shepherds
term 'fine storms' have refreshed the pastures. Even
yet there is corn in Egypt.[4] There is grass and to spare
beyond the Queensland border. Thither will many a sorely-oppressed
proprietor send a section of flock or herd, availing
himself of the time-honoured institution of 'travelling for
feed.' Such, neither more nor less, was the last resort of
those grand historic sheiks of the desert, even Abraham and
Lot, when 'the land was not able to bear them'; and to
such an alternative must the latter-day, salt-bush sheik turn
in his need, or see his live stock perish before his eyes, in
thousands and ten thousands.
4. There is no corn in Egypt now (as far as Queensland is referred
to) it must be admitted with deep regret. The famine in the land has
reached the biblical record of 'seven years of drouth.'
He will improvise a nomadic establishment with dray and
tent, shepherds and cooks, stock-riders and bullock-drivers,
horses and cattle, everything save camels, needed in a patriarchal
migration. Even these last ungainly thirst-defiers are
now bred in Australia. Hard by the tropic he will pass into
a land of grass prairies and flooded streams—the promised
land of the desert-worn hosts. He will here find himself—'most
ingenious paradox'—in a region where live stock are
high-priced, but where 'country' is cheap. He will rent,
perhaps purchase another run. The drought which drove
him forth may so and in such manner make his fortune yet.
Let us hope so, in all sympathy and good fellowship. There
he will reach his haven of rest. He may sell out again, or
decide to cast in his fortunes with the newer colony, but in
any case he will remain there until, as far as King Sol is concerned,
'this tyranny be over-past.'
AUSTRALIAN COLLIES
466
In the stage of the early history of New South Wales, when
her increasing herds bid fair to overspread the waste, the dog,
his ancient and faithful servant, came to the aid of man. The
Scotch collie, friend of the lonely hill-shepherd in North
Britain from time immemorial, was unanimously elected to
fill the responsible position—not, however, as being the only
available canine connected with stock management, for the
Smithfield drover's dog had also emigrated, that wonderful
stump-tailed animal, which managed to keep his master's
cattle separate at the great London mart, though thousands
of beeves be around, unfenced and unyarded. Matchless in
his own department, he was gradually superseded by the
collie, which came to the front as a better all-round dog, more
intelligent, faithful, and companionable; when trained, equally
suitable for the 'working' of sheep or cattle.
The breed, at first pure as imported, became crossed with
other varieties of the multiform genus Canis, and so suffered
partial deterioration. Still, such was the original potency of
the collie proper, that many of the mongrels, even the product
of the ovicidal 'dingo,' were excellent workers, in some
instances even superior to their pure-bred comrades. The
climate, too, appeared to be favourable to the breed. The
Australian offspring of the imported collies were handsome,
vigorous animals, with correct 'flag and feather,' yet reproducing
the traits of fidelity and human attachment concerning which
so many a tale was told, poem written, and picture painted in
the old land. The 'harder' or fiercer animals were chosen
for cattle work, and being bred for the qualities of 'heeling,'
and even doing a mild imitation of bull-baiting on occasions,
467became almost a distinct breed. In the old-fashioned cattle
districts, like Monaro and the Abercrombie River, where in
early days a sheep was never seen, the cattle dogs—true
collies in appearance and extraction—were very different in
their manners and customs from their sheep-guiding relatives
of the settled districts, whose 'bark was (so much) worse than
their bite.'
It was quite the other way with the cattle dogs. They
were encouraged to 'heel' or bite the fetlocks of the stubborn,
half-wild cattle, in a way which bustled them along as crack
or cut of stockwhip could never effect. In the case of a
breaking beast they would hang on to his tail, and perhaps,
when bringing back a wild yearling to the yard, assault tail,
heels, nose, and ears impartially, with dire results. They ran
their chance of being kicked or horned at this rough-and-tumble
game, but from practice became exceeding wary of
these and other dangers. A cattle dog has been seen to
'work' (or help drive) a drove of horses, heeling when desired
to do so most impartially, and yet managing to keep clear of
the dangerous kicks which the half-wild colts aimed at him.
Every man of experience with stock will bear testimony to
the admirable service which a good cattle dog will perform.
Wearied and low-conditioned droves they will 'move' in a
way which no amount of whip and shouting will effect. On
the other hand, where caution and diplomacy are required,
their sagacity is astonishing.
I once had occasion, 'in the forties,' to drive a small lot of fat
cattle some days' journey to a coast town in Western Victoria.
They had come to me in a deal, and I wished to turn them
into cash. It was a good way from home. The vendors
simply 'cut them out' from the camp, accompanied me to the
Run boundary, and gave me their blessing. I had no mate
but an ancient cattle dog. It may be surmised by the experienced
how many times the home-bred cattle tried to break
back. Again and again I thought they would have beaten
me. I kept one side, the dog Peter the other, necessarily.
Had either rashly caused a separation the game was up. It
was beautiful to see the old dog's generalship. If a beast
diverged on his side, he would walk solemnly out, keep wide
and dodge him in with the smallest expenditure of voice or
emotion. By this time some of the others would be looking
468back, preparatory to a dash homeward. These he would
hustle up promptly, just sufficiently and no more. That I
was watchful on my side needs no telling; an occasional tap or
whipcrack kept them going. Even fat cattle know when the
stockwhip is absent. We—I say it advisedly—yarded them
safely that night, when a well-managed hostelry consoled me
for the frightful anxiety I had undergone. Next day they
travelled more resignedly, and the third night saw them
delivered to 'the man of flesh and blood' in Portland, and,
what was better still, paid for.
In the Port Fairy district, then chiefly devoted to cattle,
were many famous cattle collies. Old Mr. Teviot at Dunmore
had three I remember, their peculiarity being that they
understood nothing but Lowland Scotch, in which dialect
they had, though Australian by birth, been trained. 'Far
yaud' (as Dandie Dinmont says), and other mysterious commands,
wholly unintelligible to us youngsters, they understood
and obeyed promptly. But it was amusing to watch the air
of surprise or indifference with which they regarded the
stock-riders, who sometimes in time of need suggested 'Fetch
'em along, boy!' or 'Go on outside.' Like most people to
whom dogs are wildly attached, Mr. Teviot was austere of
manner towards them, feeding regularly, but permitting no
familiarity. How they loved him in consequence! If
returning from a trip to the township after dark, they would
listen for the footfall of his horse, and long before human
ear caught the far, faint sound, would rise up solemnly and
walk half a mile or more along the road to greet him. These
dogs were popularly credited with being able to do anything
but talk, and were renowned throughout the country-side for
their obedience and thorough comprehension of their owner's
wishes.
I once owned a cattle collie of great intelligence, by name
Clara, the daughter of a one-eyed female of the species, celebrated
for her 'heeling' propensities. The mother was uncertain
as to temper, and was often soundly chastised by her owner
for erratic work or short-comings. After a good flogging she
jumped up and fawned upon him with the fondest affection,
thus verifying the ancient adage. But Clara was a gentle
and kindly creature though a good driver, and in all respects
strangely intelligent, a handsome black and tan as to colour.
469In yard work she showed out to the greatest advantage.
Always keenly observant at such times, and curiously eager
to assist—leaving a very young family on one occasion. One
day in particular a panel of the stock-yard was broken; there
was no time for repairs. But Clara was on guard, and there
she stayed, never letting a beast through till the drafting was
over.
Poor Clara! she met with an early death. Coming back
from a muster, she was forgotten in the hurry and bustle.
The weather was hot; the distance greater than usual. It
was supposed that she died of thirst, or was killed by the
dingoes, for she was never seen alive afterwards.
Peter, a Sydney-side dog, brought down by his owner
before 1840 or thereabouts, with some of the early herds,
was probably one of the cleverest animals in his way that ever
followed a beast. His owner was a Sydney native of the
'flash gully-raking sort,' from whom probably Peter had
received his education in indifferent company. We judged
this from the cautious and unobtrusive way in which he went
about his work. He was a medium-sized, dark-coloured dog,
wiry and active. He was not fond of working for any one
but his master, who could make him do all sorts of queer
things. When he came into the kitchen and the maidservants
chaffed him, he had only to whisper 'Heel 'em,
Peter!' and the next minute the girls would be screaming and
scampering, with Peter's teeth very close to their ankles.
When tired—and they often travelled far and fast—he would
come to the horse's fore-leg and beg to be taken up. Pulled
up to the pommel of the saddle, he would sit upright, quite
gravely, leaning against his master until he was sufficiently
rested; then, when dropped to earth, he would go to work
with amazing vigour. If any particular beast kicked him, he
would wait till there was a crush at a gate, and 'heel' that
very animal to a certainty at a time when it was impossible
to retaliate.
The collie, on the other hand, whom fate had destined
to a less romantic association with sheep, was trained and
exercised differently. He was expected to guide and intimidate
his timorous, delicate, though often frantic and obstinate
charge chiefly by the sound of his voice and a threatening
manner. Biting was forbidden under severe penalties.
470'Working wide'—that is, continually running beyond, ahead,
outside of the flock, which was therefore turned, stopped, or
directed—was inculcated in every possible way. It is to be
noted that the fashion is chiefly inherited, the untrained puppy
of pure blood doing most of it as naturally as the pointer
puppy lifts his fore-leg. A slight nip now and then in driving
weary or obstinate sheep is permitted, but nothing approaching
injury to the easily-hurt flock. It is an interesting sight
to mark a trained collie walking back and forward in the rear
of a large flock, intimating to them as plainly as possible
without speech that they are to move along steadily in a
given path, and, though permitted to nibble as they go, by no
means to straggle unduly.
Then observe that shepherd with his flock of, say, two or
three thousand. If strong and in good order, the 'head'
will string out fully half a mile in advance of the 'body' and
'tail.' If left alone they will soon be out of sight at the
rear-guard. Then a division would follow, and once away,
after nightfall, wild dogs and dangers are on every side of
them. Nor could the shepherd on foot, as he is always, run
round ahead and turn them. By the time he reached the
head, the tail would be marching in a different direction.
When he turned them, the head would be gone again,
etc. etc.
But mark the dog! Despatched by a wave of the hand,
he races off at full speed. He flies round the scattered sheep,
keeping wide, however, and so consolidating them, until he
reaches the leaders, which, directly they see him, scurry back
to the centre of the flock. Returning, he walks dutifully
behind, with the air of one who has fulfilled his mission. In
half an hour perhaps the same performance is repeated. In
the middle of the day, if warm, the flock indulges in a 'camp'
by a water-hole or other suitable locality. As it feeds home to
the yard, very little of the morning activity is observed. Our
collie, while watchful and ready for a lightning dash at a
moment's notice, walks soberly behind, evidently contented
with the day's work.
As the New Zealand shepherd, a man in his best years of
strength and activity, is a different man from the elderly and
often feeble shepherd of Australia, so the collie of Maoriland,
having to climb rock-strewn defiles, and search amid glacier
471plateaux and savage solitudes, for the scattered, half-wild
flocks, has an air of seriousness and responsibility. There is
but little frolic and gamesomeness about him. The dogs of
Ettrick and Yarrow, accustomed to snow and the blasts of
an iron winter, claim kinship with him. Compelled to act
on his own discretion, he tracks outliers, finds and collects
his flock in all weathers.
'Sirrah, ma mon, they're awa!' says James Hogg to his
wonderful collie, the 'dark-grey puppy' that he bought for
a pound, if I mistake not. The dog, in the drear darkness
of a snowstorm, goes forth, and hours afterwards is found
guarding the four hundred lost lambs, not one being missing.
So when muster-day comes, the New Zealand collie makes
for the mountain peaks: on the lonely plain far above the
snow-line, where in severe seasons a hundred sheep may be
found dead and frozen, he beats and quarters his country, till
he finds and brings down to the appointed place all the
straggling lots that may have summered there.
Independently of the qualities necessary for the successful
mobilisation of sheep, the collie is, perhaps, of all the sub-varieties
of the canine race, the most faithful and sympathetic.
Time after time has one observed the tramping shepherd
or swagman and his dog. Poor and despised, 'remote,
unfriended, melancholy, slow,' the forlorn wayfarer had one
staunch friend—one faithful ally—that regarded not his
poverty, his lowly condition, his lack of self-denial. Who has
not marked the tramp asleep sub Jove at daylight, with
scant shelter or covering, his watchful dog sitting near,
prepared to show his teeth, or indeed do something more, at
the nearer approach of the stranger? The dog of the imprisoned
shepherd, immured by Sir Hugo de Pentonville for
inebriety, lies stretched disconsolately before the prison gate,
howling at intervals, apparently in deepest despair, betraying
on the other hand the most frantic joy at his release. The
railway favourite goes heavily, mourning as unmistakably as a
Christian—more sincerely than some—in abstracted gloom,
melancholy gait, and aimless daily search for his master,
untimely slain by the remorseless Juggernaut. A hundred
times has one caught the watchful eye of affection with which
the collie regards his ragged owner, as if fearing to lose the
least word or gesture.
472And though the recipients of this unstinted devotion rarely
appear to appreciate the gift so lavishly bestowed, it must be
recorded, for the honour of human nature, that instances of
the contrary do occur. But the other day, a lonely pilgrim,
who had been ailing few weeks past, was found by the good
Samaritan, cold in death, with his arm round his dog's neck.
A shepherd will carry the young family of his (female) collie,
born during a journey, tied in a handkerchief, at much
expenditure of toil and trouble. In many an instance
blood feuds, savage conflicts ending in manslaughter—suicides
even—have occurred, connected with injustice, real or fancied,
to the 'dawg.' 'Love me, love my dog,' is an ancient adage
by no means without force in Australia. But recently a
farmer deliberately shot a neighbour whom he accused,
wrongfully or otherwise, of killing his dog. Prior to that
occurrence a shepherd, noticed to be despondent for days past,
telling one inquirer that some one had poisoned his dog,
hanged himself.
Touching the price of a really good dog, it may range
from two pounds to twenty—an owner often declaring that
he would not part with his dog for the last-named sum.
Within the present month, indeed, two legal processes, to the
writer's knowledge, have been put in force in the collie
interest. In one case £10 was sued for as being the
value of a cattle dog, alleged to have been illegally poisoned.
The other was nothing less than a 'Search-warrant for
stolen goods and chattels,' commanding the Sergeant of
Police and all constables of Bundabah to make diligent
search, in the daytime, at the residence of the man
referred to, whose name is not known, but who can be
identified, for the said black collie slut, named in the information
as 'feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away as aforesaid,
and if you find the same, that you secure the said black collie
slut, and bring the person in whose custody you find the same
before me, or some other justice of the peace.—(Signed) John
Jones, J.P.'
At the annual pastoral and agricultural shows, the trial of
sheep dogs has never-failing interest for the spectators. Most
curious is it to note the gravity with which each competing
collie essays to drive three wildish paddocked sheep into a
very small fold of hurdles.
473The free exhibition of strychnine, rendered necessary by
the incursions of the dingo, and, 'sorrow it were and shame to
tell,' by the increase of foxes, has led to the death of many a
valued collie. But good animals are now carefully looked
after. Greater attention is paid to breeding. Dogs of the
best strains are annually imported. And as the ranks of
Australian collies are thus recruited with pure blood and
high-class animals, it is not too much to assert, that as a
stock dog, our Australian collie is not inferior to his British
ancestors, while he may claim even a wider range of accomplishments
and experience.
IN THE BLOOM OF THE YEAR
474
The first week of December! And seeing that we are in the
realm of Australia, in the district of Riverina, where the
season has been wet, which is 'dry country' English for
triumphantly prosperous, also that vegetable growth is at its
acme, we regard our title as fully justified.
All plant-life is now profusely, riotously luxuriant. A
drenching winter, following a wet autumn, preceded a late,
showery spring; thus, and because of which, the pastures and
cornfields, the orchards and gardens, are rich with verdure and
promise to a degree unknown since the proverbial year of 1870.
Some few sultry days have we had, but the true Australian
summer has not, so far, appeared in its lurid, wasting splendour.
Hardly a ripening tinge is yet visible on the wide-waving
prairies, the bespangled meadows, the shaded forest lawns.
Wild flowers of every shape and hue—blue and scarlet, pink
and orange, white and yellow, perfumed or scentless—glorify
the landscape.
As we drive along, this balmy, breezy, sun-bright day,
through the champaign, which lies anear and around an
inland country town, let us (if haply it may tend to dispel
some small portion of the ignorance of our British friends as
to the 'bush of Australia') put on record the 'scenes and
sounds of a far clime' in this season of the year.
The wheat crops, standing strong and level for leagues
around, as high, generally, as the rail fence which protects
them, have not as yet been assailed; but the reaper and
binder has made many a foray into the hayfields. Here we
notice one of the results of machinery. In the majority of
instances the oats, though green of hue, are in sheaves and
475stooks. The time-honoured spring romance of fragrant haycocks
is hastening to its doom, inasmuch as the greater
portion of the oat-crop saved is intended to be reduced into
chaff, as being more portable or saleable in that form. It is
obviously better economy, by using the reaper and string-binder,
to have it arranged mechanically in sheaves and hand-placed in
stooks. It is then more convenient for loading, stacking, and
the final operation of the chaff-cutter. Most of these sheaves
are six feet and over in height. Heavy-headed, too, withal.
We were informed that four tons of chaff to the acre is not
an uncommon yield this year. The lambs, which are running
with their mothers in the great enclosures, wire-fenced and
ring-barked as to timber, through which the high road passes,
are wonderfully well-grown and healthy-looking. The percentage,
averaging from eighty to ninety, is exceptionally high,
when it is considered that the expense of tendance is nominal.
From five to seven thousand ewes—even more sometimes—are
running in each paddock, unwatched and untended till
marking-time, thence to the shearing, which is also the weaning
period. This year the shepherd-kings have a right royal
time of it, though not more than sufficient to compensate
them for the losses and crosses of the last decade. Apropos
of this woolly people, here approaches an aged shepherd.
He is mounted, so that he has received his cheque. Solvent
and resolved, he is journeying to the town, on pleasure bent,
of a rational nature let us hope. The flies of mid-day are
troublesome, but he has a net-veil round his weather-beaten
face; so has the steady veteran steed. The collie, following
dutifully, is unprotected from flies, but accoutred with a wire
muzzle—not, as the young lady from the city supposed, to
prevent his biting the sheep, but lest he should swallow the
innocent-seeming morsel of meat by the wayside, intended
for vagrom canines, and containing the deadly crystals of
strychnine. Certes, with plenteousness the land runs o'er,
this gracious year of our Lord 1887. The cattle lounging
about the roads—the roads, like the fields, knee-deep in
thick green grass—with their shining coats and plump bodies,
testify to the bounty of the season. The birds call and
twitter. The skylark, faint reflex as he is of his English
compeer, yet mounts skyward and sings his shorter lay rejoicingly.
The wild-duck, gladsome and unharmed, swims in
476the meres which here and there divide the river meadows.
The fat beeves in the paddock ruminate contemplatively, or
recline around some patriarchal tree. All nature is joyous;
the animated portion 'rich in spirits and health,' the vegetable
contingent spreading forth and burgeoning in unchecked
development. As we pass Bungāwannāh, one of the large
estates, formerly squattages, which alternate with the farms
and smaller pastoral holdings, a fallow doe with her fawn
starts up from the long grass, gazing at us with startled but
mildly-timid eye. They are outliers from a herd of nearly a
hundred, which have increased from a few head placed there
by a former proprietor.
In this our Centennial year it must be conceded that
Australia is a land of varied products. We pass orchards
where the apples are reddening fast, where apricots are turning
pink, and the green fig slowly filling its luscious sphere.
We note the vivid green of the many-acred vineyards, now in
long rows, giving an air of formal regularity to the cultivated
portion of the foreground. Then we descry the dark green
and gold of an orangery, hard by the river-bank—in this year
a most profitable possession to the proprietor.
Amid this abundance we miss one figure sufficiently
familiar to the traveller in other lands, or the European
resident, viz. 'the poor man.' He may be somewhere about,
but we do not encounter him. He does not solicit alms,
at any rate. His nearest counterpart is the swagman or
pedestrian labourer. He is differentiated from the shearer and
the 'rouseabout' (the shearing-shed casual labourer), who
travel, the former invariably, the latter occasionally, on horseback.
But the humble dependant upon the aristocratic
squatter or prosperous farmer is a well-fed, fairly well-dressed
personage, who affords himself an unlimited allowance of
tobacco. Say that he elects to journey afoot in an equestrian
country, he needs pity or charity from no man.
When one thinks of England, with its three hundred souls
to the square mile, one cannot but be thankful, in spite of
the ignorant, insolent diatribes of the Ben Tillett agitator
class, for the condition of the labouring classes in this
favoured country. They are at a premium, and will be for
years to come, while tens of thousands of acres of arable land
are awaiting the hands which shall clear and plant them.
477Meanwhile, a small annual rent is obtained for the State by
means of purely pastoral possession—a form of occupation
destined to be surely, if slowly, superseded by agriculture,
when demanded by the needs of a more developed epoch
and a denser population.
This particular district has for many years been settled
after a fashion which permits of moderate-sized holdings.
For a lengthened period, therefore, have the exotic trees and
shrubs, which even the humblest farms boast, grown and
flourished. The tall, columnar poplars, the wavy, tremulous
aspens, the umbrageous elms, are large of girth, stately of
height, and broad of shade. They are to be seen around the
farm-house, or near the mansion which peeps out amid wood
and meadow. Here a row of stately elms borders the roadside,
affording a grateful shade to the weary wayfarer. The
season has been exceptionally humid, as when
Low thunders bring the mellow rain
Which makes thee broad and deep.
Yet the oak is not so common. Slow of growth, he does not
seem to assimilate himself to all soils, although in a few
localities he may be observed doing no discredit to his
British comrades. The lime, the Oriental plane, the ash, the
willow, and the sycamore proclaim the generous nature of the
soil and climate which they have reached, so far across the
foam. Besides these are the noble Paulownia imperialis,
majestic with gigantic leaves and purple-scented flowers; the
catalpa and even the magnolia, beauteous and fragrant—a
botanic miracle. The olive grows rapidly, forgetting oft in
eagerness to add branch to branch to mature the fruit, which
will one day furnish a valuable export.
All these with others in this last season are spreading
their green pennants to the summer breeze—grateful in
shade to the traveller wearied and adust; beautiful to
the eye of the lover of all plant-life; 'things of beauty
and of joy for ever,' even to those whose sense of
harmonious landscape-arrangement is rudimentary and undeveloped.
We halt for an instant on the verdant level, hard by the
little creek whose waters, this gracious year, run yet with
musical monotone, to watch the drivers of these high-piled
478waggons, who are even now unloosing their teams. There
are five waggons, which, with wheels of the adamantine iron-bark
eucalyptus, are warranted to carry the heaviest loads
procurable; and heavy loads they are. Forty bales of wool
in each, or thereabouts. Sixty or seventy horses in the
five teams, all 'grade' Clydesdales or Suffolks, and averaging
in value from £25 to £35 each. The 200 bales of
wool are worth, say at £20 each, £4000; £1500 for the
team horses; £300 for the waggons. A not inconsiderable
total of values. Stay! In haste we have forgotten the sixty
sets of harness and the tarpaulins,—£5000 or £6000 in all.
A large property to be in the hands of five young fellows
hardly known to the proprietor of the freight. It is fortunate
that there are no robber barons at this time of day to demand
tribute, or land pirates and buccaneers, except those who collect
the intercolonial protective duties.
The hare which runs across the road in front of us is an
introduced, imported animal, like the deer we saw a while
back. He is becoming numerous, but, unlike his cousin and
comrade, 'Brer Rabbit,' has not been disastrously destructive.
The settlers eat him at present. 'Brer Rabbit' in some
districts has commenced to reverse the process.
Among the manifold natural beauties of the season we
must by no means omit the hedgerows; in beauteous blossom
these, and though, perhaps, chiefly too wild and luxuriant, yet
affording pleasing contrast to the bare utilitarianism of rail and
wire fence, and the monotony of the barked, murdered woods.
Various are they, ranging from the dark green of the hawthorn,
lovely with sweet souvenir bloom of long-past English springs,
to the pink flower-masses of the quince, the crimson showers
of the rose-hedges, and the yellow hair of the Acacia armata;
while high, towering, thorny, impervious, with brightest
glittering greenery, grows the Osage orange—a transatlantic
importation, which in some respects is the most effective green
wall known, being a species of live barbed wire, with an
agreeable appearance of leafage, yet exuding a bitter juice,
which prevents its mutilation by live stock. All these, interspersed
occasionally with the sweetbriar, the scent and wild-rose
flower of which almost atone for its predatory habits, its
illegal occupation of Crown Lands. In one instance an
economical or patriotic farmer had permitted the fast-growing
479eucalyptus saplings to interlace his 'drop' fence—an effective
and not wholly unpicturesque road border.
From time to time amid the larger enclosures we came
across a half-forlorn, half-picturesque patch 'where once a
garden smiled.' A roofless cottage, a score of elms and
poplars, with straggling rose-bushes abloom among the thistles,
mark the abandoned homestead. In the 'distressful country'
these would be the signs of an eviction. Here, when Michael
or Patrick unhouses himself, he does so with a comfortable
cheque in his pocket and the wherewithal to 'take up' a
larger holding, perhaps six hundred and forty acres, or even in
the central district, two thousand five hundred, by the payment
in cash to the Crown—of how much does the reader unlearned
in the New South Wales land laws believe? Two shillings
per acre! The remaining balance of eighteen shillings per
acre to be paid in twenty years, with interest at five per cent,
or ninepence per acre annually! The neighbouring landholder
has bought out honest Pat or Donald, or François or
Wilhelm, as the case may be—several nationalities being here
represented—giving him a handsome profit in cash for his labour
and outlay. The fences are then pulled down, the roof falls
in, the elms, the poplars, with a few peach-trees and roses,
alone remain to tell the tale of the deserted homestead. As
we pass one of these, a grand cloth-of-gold bush, six feet and
more in height, hanging over a fence, tempts us with its
fragrant clusters. We choose a lovely bud and an opening
flower, with its curiously-blended shades of gold and faintest
pink, and, much moralising, go our way.
In the good old days, when there was no salvation outside
of vast pastoral holdings, when small freeholds were considered
not only inexpedient but immoral, this was held to be a
waterless region, unfit for the habitation of man, away from
the river frontage. Now near every farm appears a dam or
other successful method of conserving water. The homesteads,
too, are well built, and substantial for the most part, standing
in neatly-kept gardens and fruitful orchards. Milch kine
graze in the fields or stroll about the grassy roadways, sleek-skinned,
well-bred, and profitable-looking.
No indications save those of comfortable living and easy-going
rural prosperity present themselves. Buggies or tax-carts
with active horses, driven mostly by farmers' wives or
480daughters, trot briskly along the high-road to the town, going
to or returning from their marketing. Occasionally a girl on
horseback canters by, sometimes escorted, often without
cavalier or attendant. The road-maintenance man jogs by in
his covered cart, filling up ruts with metal here and there, or
clearing a drain where the storm-water runs too impetuously.
In all this savage land which I have described in detail, there
are no lions or tigers, no bushrangers, no Indians. In fact,
but for a few varieties of vegetation, one might fancy oneself
back again in rural England.
FALLEN AMONG THIEVES
481
In the spring of 1867 I had occasion to travel from my
station, Bundidgaree, near Narandera, on the Murrumbidgee
River, to the historic town of Wagga Wagga, the residence of
Mr. Arthur Orton, whose claim to the Tichborne title and
estates was then agitating Britain and her Colonies. An
elderly nurse returning to her home was to accompany me in
an American buggy. The roads were good; the weather fine;
the horse high in condition, exceptional as to pace and
courage. Yet was the situation doubtful, even complicated.
The road was risky, the head-station lonely and unprotected.
A gang of bushrangers, under a leader popularly known as
'Blue-cap,' was at the time I mention within twenty or thirty
miles of Narandera. There was a strong probability that I
should encounter them, or that they would visit the station
during my absence. Either hap was disagreeable, not to say
dangerous. I left home with mingled feelings. But circumstances
were obdurate. I had to go. The outlaws, five in
number, were 'back-block natives,' all young men with the
exception of a middle-aged personage known as 'The Doctor.'
He was credited with having 'done time,' that is, served a
sentence of imprisonment, which apparently had not led to
reformation, as he was looked upon as the most dangerous
member of the band. Not as yet committed to acts of bloodshed,
they had exchanged shots with Mr. Waller of Kooba—a
station below Narandera—who had surprised them while
encamped upon his Run. He was a determined man and a
well-known sportsman. The story was that he nearly shot
'Blue-cap,' that gentleman having slipped behind a stock-yard
post, which received the breast-high bullet. The honours of
482war remained with the squatter, however, whose party forced
the robbers to retreat across the river, leaving (like the Boers)
horses, saddles, and swags behind. It was not known when
I started whether they had gone up or down the river.
Meanwhile, the pair of police troopers who protected the
district of Narandera, a region about a hundred miles square,
were 'in pursuit.'
The question of carrying arms had to be dealt with. I
thought at first of a double-barrelled gun and revolver. But
the idea of an effective defence against five well-mounted, well-armed
men, the while embarrassed with a frightened woman
and two spirited horses, did not seem feasible. I finally
decided to trust to the probability of not meeting the evil-doers
at all, and to go unarmed rather than to carry arms which I
could not use effectively. The journey to Wagga, about fifty-five
miles, was accomplished safely. Making an early start
next day, about three-fourths of the return trip was over when
I came opposite to Berrembed, the homestead of my
neighbour Mr. Lupton. I was walking the horses over a
curious formation of small mounds, provincially known as
'dead men's graves,' when I became aware of three horsemen
coming along the road towards me.
My first thought was, 'Here they are-bushrangers!' my
second, 'It cannot be the gang—these are too young; and I
don't see the "Doctor."' The foremost rider, enveloped in a
poncho, decided the question by throwing it back and
presenting a revolver, at the same time calling out in what he
meant to be a tone of intimidation, 'Bail up. Stop and get
out. If yer move to get a pistol I'll blow yer brains out.' By
the time he had come to the end of this unlawful demand, he
had ridden close up, and held the revolver, into the barrel of
which I could see, and also that it was on full cock, unpleasantly
close to my head. He was a bush-bred cub, hardly
of age, who had but little practice, evidently, in the highwayman
line, for his hand trembled and his face was pale under
the sun-bronzed skin.
Thus I felt (like Mickey Free's father) somewhat perturbed,
as, if I tried to bolt, he might shoot me on purpose, and if I
stayed where I was, he might shoot me by accident. Meanwhile,
I secured the reins to the lamp iron, and got down in a
leisurely manner. 'I have no arms,' I said, as I stood by the
483off-side horse—the celebrated Steamer; 'there's no hurry. I
can't well run away.'
'Give up yer money,' he said gruffly.
'I haven't any.'
'That be hanged! A man like you don't travel without
money.'
'I generally have some, but I paid a bill at Martin's
(naming an inn a few miles nearer Wagga) and it cleaned me out.'
'Hand out them watches, then!'
He saw by the appearance of my waistcoat that I had
more than one. I had brought back a watch belonging to a
relative from Wagga, where it had been sent for repair. They
were both gold watches of some value.
As he sat on his horse, I being on foot, he kept his bridle-reins
and the levelled revolver in one hand, and reached down
to me for the spoil. As he did so, I looked him in the eye,
thinking that a strong, active man might have pulled him off
his horse, grabbed the revolver, and shot one if not both of his
comrades. I had no intention of trying the double event
myself, but I know a man or two who would have chanced it
with such a youthful depredator.
What I said was, 'You don't often get two gold watches
from one man.'
'No. I know we don't. Turn out that portmanteau.'
'There's only a suit of clothes and my hair brushes. You
don't want them.'
At this stage of the intercourse, old Steamer, an impatient
though singularly good-tempered animal, moved on, as of one
proclaiming, 'This foolery has lasted long enough.' I
walked to his head and soothed him, upon which one of the
subordinates said civilly, 'I'll hold your horse, Mr. Boldrewood.'
I looked at him with surprise, and saw for the first time
that he was Mr. Lupton's stock-rider, and the other 'road
agent' the son of that gentleman. The mystery was explained.
They were pressed men. We were within sight of the home
station. The rest of the gang were helping themselves to the
proprietor's best horses in the stock-yard when they saw me
coming along the road. So they had detailed this youth for
my capture, and ordered the two others to go with him to
'make a show' in case of the traveller resisting.
484However, the interview was nearly at an end. The first
robber dismissed me with a brief 'You may go now.' I drove
off slowly, not desiring to show haste, in case the capricious
devil which abides in this particular breed might prompt him
to call me back. He did so indeed, but it was only to say,
'Show us yer pipe. You might have a good 'un.' I exhibited
an old briar-root, at which he waved his hand disdainfully,
and going off at a gallop, made for the homestead with his
attendants on either side, like the wicked Landgrave in
Burger's ballad.
I drove in leisurely fashion until they were out of sight,
when I let my horses out at their usual 'travelling' pace of
twelve miles an hour, or a trifle over, and was not long before
I 'reached my cattle-gate.'
While the 'momentous question' was in the stage of discussion
I had been anxious and troubled—so to speak, afraid.
Not for my personal safety. I did not think any bushranger
in the district would slay me in cold blood. We were popular
in our neighbourhood, for though I was the Chairman of
the Narandera Bench when the Police Magistrate of Wagga,
Mr. Baylis, was absent, and as such officially a terror to evil-doers,
my wife had endeared herself to our humbler neighbours
by acts of charity and womanly sympathy in cases of sickness
or other sore need. But what I was afraid of, tremulously
indeed, was lest the outlaws should 'commandeer' one or
both of my horses. Eumeralla, a fine upstanding grey, bred
at Squattlesea Mere, good in saddle and harness, and carried
a lady, was most valuable, while Steamer, who died after
twenty years of priceless service, was simply invaluable. I
was only saved from this disastrous loss by the fact that
Mr. Lupton's stock-yard (he was absent from home—perhaps
fortunately) was full of good station hacks, and as his stud was
of high reputation in the district, his loss on that occasion
proved my salvation. What had happened at Berrembed was
simply this. The bushrangers, with Mr. 'Blue-cap' in command,
arrived in the early afternoon unexpectedly. There
were few men about the place. The overseer and Mr. Lupton
were away. Mrs. Lupton, the governess and the children, with
the eldest son, a boy of sixteen, and the stock-rider, were at
home. The master of the house had firmly expressed his
intention to defend his home, and to that end had sent to
485Melbourne for a magazine-rifle, capable (it was said) of
discharging sixteen cartridges in quick-firing time. The gang,
hearing of this preparation, had sworn to pay him out for it at
an early visit. In his absence they behaved well, assuring the
lady of the house that 'she need not be apprehensive; they
only wanted horses and the new repeating-rifle,' which last
they demanded at once. She was not frightened—a native-born
Australian, come of a Border family, she was not
timorous, and had presence of mind enough to deny knowledge
of the rifle. The leader was better informed. 'That
won't do, Mrs. Lupton. Master Johnnie shot a bullock
with it last Saturday. Better give it up. These chaps
might turn rusty. They're quiet enough now.' The lady
yielded to force majeure. The governess was sent to bring
the rifle from the shower-bath, where it had been placed,
and the bushrangers rode off. One of the men, after roaming
through the house, appeared with the baby in his arms, which
he had taken from the nurse, alleging that 'it reminded him of
his happy home.' This was intended as a joke, and no harm
came to the infant, who did not seem to object to a change of
nurses. No pillage took place other than that of the rifle and
a remount all round. Besides losing their horses and saddles
at Kooba, and being reduced to an infantry force, having to
cross the river ignominiously upon a sheep-wash temporary
bridge, they had another mischance. They called at Brookong
Station on Mr. Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh. Here they treated
themselves to grog, in which they vainly tried to make Mr.
Fetherstonhaugh join them, and finally went off across country.
Near the Urangeline Creek they were startled by the galloping
of a body of horsemen in pursuit (as they thought), and racing
desperately away, rode into the Urangeline, then in half flood.
The others got out, but the 'Doctor,' parting company with
his horse, was unfortunately drowned, thus cheating the
hangman, and not improbably preventing the commission of
bloodshed, into which his evil influence might have led his
less-hardened comrades. They were next heard of near
Narandera, as to which my wife had a sensational visit from
a person in the confidence of the police.
On the morning of my departure she was told by the maidservant
that a man outside wished to speak to her. He
would not come in, or dismount from his horse. Rather
486surprised, but being, like our neighbour Mrs. Lupton,
Australian born, and not afraid of men or horses or anything
in a general way, she walked up to the horseman, who sat in
his saddle in the middle of the courtyard, formed by a dining-room
and kitchen on one side and store on the other. He
was not anxious to be overheard, as he leaned forward and in
an agitated voice said that he had been sent by the Senior
Constable of Police at Narandera to inform her that the
bushrangers had recrossed the river, and might be expected to
visit the station on that or the following day. If there were
arms in the house she was advised to conceal them for fear of
irritating the bushrangers; that the police could not come themselves,
as they were following up the tracks in another direction.
This was not cheering news. But action was taken promptly.
The armoury consisted of a two-grooved rifle, carrying a bullet
of such size that, unlike the 'Mauser,' there was no fear of its
penetrating a vital organ without causing instant death. I
used to make good practice from an upper chamber at any
mark within a hundred and twenty or thirty yards' distance.
There was also an effective double-barrel, with a couple of
revolvers. A young relative of the family lived with us and
helped with the management. We could have made a decent
defence probably after warning given. But in nineteen out
of twenty cases no warning is given, or, as in this case, too late
to be of service.
It so happened that a wool-bale had been suspended in an
outer room, into which broken fleece, pieces picked up on the
Run, was placed from time to time. Under the wool, therefore,
the guns were hidden for the present.
When I returned from Wagga after my adventure I was
naturally anxious to hear if the bushrangers had called in my
absence. My first words to the châtelaine were, 'Have you
seen the bushrangers?'
Answer—'No. Have you?'
'Well—ahem—I—have!'
Then the story was told in full.
This band, compared with the career and exploits of other
gentlemen of the road, hardly rose above the amateur level.
They were taken by a sergeant of police and his troopers on
the Lachlan. He came unexpectedly one morning, and
marching towards them with a determined air, called upon
487them in the Queen's name to surrender. 'Blue-cap'
levelled his rifle. 'What!' roared the sergeant in a voice of
thunder. He had known of him when he was a stock-rider,
indifferently honest. 'You d—d scoundrel! Would you
shoot me?'
Whether the idea of the awful crime in the provincial
mind, implied in resisting much less attempting the life of
such a magnate, overbore the remains of his courage (they
were pretty sick of the outlaw business), or that he shrank
from deliberate murder, cannot be told; at any rate, they
were disarmed, handcuffed, and conducted to the nearest
lock-up—magazine-rifle and all. Brought in due course before
a bench of magistrates, they were committed to take their
trial at the next ensuing Court of Assize, to be holden at
Wagga Wagga.
I had occasion to visit the 'Place of Crows' (aboriginal
name of Wagga Wagga) some weeks after. The Assizes were
coming on, and armed with the police magistrate's order, I
interviewed the captives.
When the cell door was opened, and my friend of the
poncho and revolver stood revealed, 'quanto mutatus ab illo
Hectore!'—'the plume, the helm, the charger gone'—we
looked on each other with very different expressions.
'Well, young man,' said I with careless raillery.
He grinned, as who should say 'Met afore.'
'Better have stuck to the mail-driving,' I continued.
'It's too late to think of that now,' he made answer; 'but
I wish I'd broken my leg the day I started this bloomin'
racket. It was all through the "Doctor" as they called him.
He led us chaps into it, simple, with those yarns of his.
Anyway, he's dead and gone now. Serve him dashed well
right—and me too for being a fool! I was earning good
money, and had no call to turn out. And this is what it's
done for me. What d'yer think we're goin' to get? They
won't hang us?'
'No,' said I; 'you'll get a dozen years' gaol. Luckily
you didn't kill any one, so the chief can let you off light. If
you behave yourselves you'll be all out again before the end
of your sentence.'
'I'll behave all right—no fear!' he replied. 'I'm full up
of this "cross" work.'
488With the leader, 'Captain Blue-cap,' I had a more lengthened
interview. Not a bad-looking young fellow, of the stock-rider
type, it seemed inexplicable that he should have preferred the
life of a hunted outlaw to that of the well-paid, well-fed, easy-going
life of a stock-rider. A gentleman's life, so to speak:
independent, with change and variety in fair proportion, three
or four good horses always at command, and receiving an
amount of consideration far above that of any other employé
under the rank of overseer; to whose orders, if the proprietor
of the station was resident, he did not always hold
himself bound to attend. And now—here he was, a fettered
captive in the dungeon of the period, awaiting trial, certain of
ten years' penal servitude, and not without fear of five years
additional, before he walked out a free man again.
We had an amicable conversation, there being 'no
animosity' on either side, apparently. It has always struck
me as a favourable trait in human nature, that criminals in
a general way rarely harbour revengeful feeling against
magistrates and others, who are, officially, their natural
enemies. Nothing is more common than to hear them say,
of the police or higher officials, 'Oh, they're paid for it; it's
all in the day's work. I don't blame 'em for doin' their
duty.' But the amateur they do hate with an exceeding bitter
hatred, as having 'gone out of his way' to do them injury.
For which interference with the natural order of affairs they
are ready to exact, and have before now exacted, memorable
revenge.
However that may be, we chatted away, without the introduction
of moral axioms on my side or anarchical references
on his. It was a lovely, early summer day, without a solitary
cloud in the bright blue sky, and he may, as he watched the
sunlight fleck the elm-tree within sight of the barred window
of his cell, have had a spasm of regret. For this is what he
said, gloomily: 'They call it a short life and a merry one. I
didn't see nothen jolly about it.'
'Many a man's found that out, but you're a young
man. If you give no trouble in gaol you'll not have to
serve all your time. Face it, and look forward to coming
out again.'
'God knows!' he said. 'I might be dead before then; but
it's the only thing to do, I suppose.'
489'Did you ever get hit,' I said, 'in a scrimmage with the
police?'
'That near done for me,' he explained, pulling back his
singlet and showing a large, ragged cicatrice over the region
of the heart. 'I wish to God it had. But it wasn't the
police.'
'How then?'
'Goin' up to a hut at night; the feller waited for me.
Them marks are slugs.'
'Wonder it didn't kill you,' I said. 'Must have been a
good handful of them.'
'Well, I crawled off, and some chaps I knowed nursed me
till I got round. But it was a near thing. "Born to be
hanged," they say, "save you a lot." But it won't run to that,
d'ye think, sir, when we haven't killed any one?'
'Not quite,' I said, 'though you fired at Mr. Waller and
his men with intent, as the Act says, to do serious bodily
harm. You'll get a term of imprisonment of course.'
'A long "stretch," I expect,' he said. 'Well; it's no use
cryin'. Good-bye, sir, and thanks very much.'
Then we parted. He went on his way and I saw him no
more; circumstances prevented that. I never met him or
his companions again. They were sentenced to twelve years'
imprisonment, and as all this happened thirty odd years ago,
they must be out years and years since. Let us hope that
they reformed. It is on the cards, also, that they may have
'struck it rich' on a Queensland or West Australian goldfield.
After this capture and disposal of our highwaymen, the
land had rest for a season. One of the consequences of the
outbreak might have had an ending calculated to surprise the
European wool-buyer. Just before the bale of broken fleece
referred to was filled up and put into the press, Mrs. Boldrewood
recollected that she had never seen the box of ammunition
since the day they were huddled into the wool-bale. It
was hastily examined and the explosives hauled out, just as
the press was being put down; great was the laughter in the
shed, as the men thought of the faces of the wool-brokers in
a London saleroom when the 'mixed pieces' were turned out
for inspection.
I never got my watch back, though my cousin recovered
his. The police heard that the bushrangers had, holding out
490a hatful of watches, invited the stock-rider to choose one, for
his noble conduct and 'moral support' in my affair. He
chose my young friend's, which he afterwards returned to him.
But mine I saw never again, having to content me with a
silver one of small value for the next decade.
A TRANSFORMATION SCENE
491
'Look alive, boys,' said Hugh Tressider; 'we must slog on
for the next hour or two. Pitch dark, and going to be a wet
night; but if we don't lose the road we shall pull Barallan
before bedtime. There we're sure of a yard and a welcome.
A night's sleep won't do us any harm.'
'A night's sleep? Dashed if I've had any for a week,'
growled the head stock-rider. 'I'm fit to drop off my
bloomin' moke this minute; and he's just the size to kick me
for falling. Them blessed B.R. cattle's like a mob of
kangaroos for breaking and rushin' if so much as a 'possum
squeals or a stick breaks. But I know Mr. Bayard's is a
regular stunning place to stop at. Gentle or simple, it's all
one to him. He's a gentleman as is a gentleman; and every
workin' man in the district 'll say the same.'
'All right, Joe; then stir up those lads and the blackfellow
a bit; don't let the tail cattle struggle, whatever you do.
I'll go on with the lead; my old horse will keep the track.'
'What a thundering wild night it's going to be,' said the
drover to himself as he threaded his way through the thick-growing
timber, skirting the half-seen wildish herd, which, but
a week from the pastures where they had been bred, were still
troublesome and prone to break back at the smallest opportunity.
The rain, which had held off during the gusty, stormy
day, now came down in driving sleety showers, ice-cold, and
wetting to the skin the dogged, silent horsemen, who, by the
nature of things, were incompletely clothed for resisting so
serious a downfall. The cattle, beginning to low with discomfort
and uneasiness, were with difficulty restrained from
facing towards the opposite point of the compass, away from
492the blinding storm, which now drove full in their teeth. To
those unacquainted with the skill, acquired by long experience
in this particular occupation, it would have seemed little short
of a miracle that four men and a black boy, who had also the
special care of a pack-horse, could guide six hundred head of unwilling,
half-wild cattle through a thickly-timbered country on so
dark a night, with rain and storm to complicate matters withal.
But it was possible. It was done well and effectively.
The leader's horse, an Arab-looking grey, visible from time to
time, denoted each turn and direction of the road. The quick
eyes of the stock-riders were seldom at fault, and detecting
each straggling animal, they were instant to urge a wheel before
separation from the main body took place. The gregarious
habit of cattle was in their favour, as also their indisposition to
straggle overmuch in the darkness. When they were doubtful,
the piercing organ of the man of the woods was called into
play. His decision was prompt and unerring.
It was, 'Me see 'um two fellows cow and that one red
bullock yan along a gully, likit picaninny way. You hold 'em,
this one pack-horse, me fetch 'um.' And back they came
accordingly. One hour, then another, had slowly passed.
The rain had ceased, but the heavens were ebon black and
murky. Still rode the man, who had first spoken, at the head
of the great drove, which, lowing from time to time, kept
plodding monotonously forward, at other times silent and all
but soundless as a procession of ghostly beeves, escorted by a
company of spectre horsemen.
Wet and weary, chilled to the bone, too dispirited to speak—indeed
conversation would have been difficult under the
circumstances of compulsory separation—the jaded stock-riders
moved on; the rain-drops showering from the leaves as they
brushed from time to time under the low-growing shrubs and
sapling eucalyptus, the horses' feet sinking deeply in the clay
and decomposed gravel of the forest; or splashing shoulder-deep
through the mountain streams that crossed their track;
their watchful outlook strained and concentrated to the fullest,
each man at his allotted station. It was a phase of Australian
backwoods life not always credited to the much-enduring
bushman.
'By George! this is a hard life,' soliloquised the weary
pioneer, for such he had been in more than one colony, as he
493sat, stiff, sore, and aching in every limb, upon his game but
over-tired horse. 'Hold up, old man, you haven't had the
saddle off your back nor I my clothes for the last six-and-thirty
hours; but another half-hour will see you in a good paddock
and me in Barallan parlour, with the cattle safe inside of post
and rails, if we haven't taken a wrong track. Only for Bandah
we should have followed the old Bundoorah road, a mile back,
and found ourselves in the middle of a howling scrub, with a
strong chance of losing these confounded B.R. cattle, the worst
herd to drive in the district, and no more likelihood of bed or
supper than if we were afloat on a raft.'
And here the travel-worn bushman, sodden and soaked,
splashed and sleepy as he was, laughed aloud at the absurdity
of the conceit.
Managing to light his pipe again by sheltering the match
with his shut hand against the night-wind, in a manner peculiar
to backwoods Australians, he was silent for a while. Then
recommenced: 'Yes, a hard life, this of mine; work and
anxiety by day and by night, wet and dry, hot or cold, burnt
up and scorched in the summer, half drowned and starved
with cold in the winter, and all for what? Just for a decent
living, with little enough chance of putting by anything for a
rainy day—I mean for a dry season,' he added, with another
laugh. 'Well, though it is a hard life, I wouldn't exchange
it for everyday work in a merchant's office, in a bank, or a
Government department. These may be very well for some
people, but they wouldn't suit Hugh Tressider at all. Give
me the open air for it! And then, hard as the occasional
rubs are, you have the benefit of contrast, and enjoy it all the
more, as I shall a good supper and a good bed, which I'm
morally certain to drop in for to-night. What a trump that
Arnold Bayard is! If all squatters were like him, travelling
would be a luxury and a privilege. Besides, I have the comfort
of thinking—and it does keep me from being a peg too
low at times—that all my hard work has not been for my own
advantage, and that I have benefited others. Bless all their
hearts! How I wish I could do more for them. Was that a
dog's bark? Yes, by Jove! and there's the Barallan paddock
fence on the left; it makes a wing to the stock-yard. Right
you are, old man' (to his horse); 'we can't go wrong now;
we'll go back, and help a bit with the tail.'
494Making back to the next horseman, Tressider shook up the
leg-weary but still game and willing hackney, and finding his
way to the rear, informed all hands of the change in their
immediate prospects, with the certainty of a speedy entrance
into a haven of rest and refection. The intelligence had a
distinctly stimulating effect. The pace of the drove was perceptibly
quickened. Men, dogs, and horses seemed to have
acquired new life and spirit. In less than half an hour the
cattle were safely bestowed in a capacious stock-yard, the gates
carefully secured, and the whole party dismounted before the
outbuildings of Barallan Station.
Though it had been dark for four hours by the watches of
the night, it was not more than half-past ten by the clock.
Lights were still visible in the principal building, and a glowing
fire in the men's kitchen showed that the cook was all alive,
or had very lately retired.
A tall man with an abundant beard now advanced, and
looked earnestly in the face of Tressider as he advanced to
meet him. 'Oh, it's you, old man!' he said, in a voice every
intonation of which bespoke kindly, unequivocal welcome. 'I
expected you yesterday. What a drenching you must have
had this miserable day. Mrs. Bayard has gone to bed, but
there's nothing to prevent you and me from being comfortable
for another hour. Of course the cattle are in the yard?'
'Yes.'
'Well, look here, you fellows, put your horses through that
wicket-gate. Capital feed inside, and not too big a paddock.
Joe hasn't turned in yet. He'll soon have supper ready for
you. And, hold on, when you've turned out your horses, come
up to the back door of the house. A glass of grog all round
won't hurt any of you this cold night.'
'Thank you, Mr. Bayard,' was the reply from the oldest
stock-rider.
In fifteen minutes at the outside Hugh Tressider was
enabled to realise the justice of his proposition, that from the
great contrasts of existence the essence of pleasure is extracted.
His waterproof valise had furnished a complete change of
dry garments, arrayed in which he was seated before a blazing
fire, subsequent to the absorption of a glass of hot grog. A
substantial meal was imminent, and as he watched the neat-handed
Phyllis deftly covering that hospitable board, he was
495confirmed in the opinion that life had but few avenues of
higher enjoyment open to him.
Arnold Bayard, the owner of the station, a wealthy and
much-respected magnate in the land, had a particular fancy for
this young fellow, whom he watched enjoying himself after his
day, or indeed days, of toil and travail, with paternal benevolence.
'A deuced hard-working, honourable, well-principled young
fellow,' he was wont to say. 'Every one ought to do him a
good turn. I wish all the young ones were like him. His
father, Captain Tressider, an old Waterloo veteran, bought that
farm of theirs, on the Upper Hunter, instead of a station in
the old days, and ruined himself trying to grow oranges and
olives, and all that rot, instead of sheep and cattle. When
he died, Hugh was left with his mother and the little brothers
and sisters to look after. Quite a boy himself, too. He
buckled to it then, and it has been all against collar with him
ever since. Working like a nigger, and living like one, too,
sometimes, but he has managed to keep them going, and
pay for their education, though he came off rather short himself.
Never mind that; I say he is as true a gentleman as
ever stepped, and some day he must come out right. The
Tressiders are high enough in point of birth. There's a title,
too, in the family, I'm told, if the next heir at home were
cleared off, but of course Hugh's too practical a fellow ever to
bother his head about that.'
Thus far, Mr. Bayard. But this was only to strangers.
Most of the people in the district knew so much, and honoured
Hugh Tressider accordingly. Nobody could be poorer; no
one could work harder. But curious as it may seem to those
people who persist in manufacturing a stage Australia for
themselves,—which is as like the country as the English milord
of the Porte St. Martin, with his boule-dogue, his top-coat,
and the ever-present 'god-dam,' to the real aristocrat,—there
are few places where gentle birth and the manners which
chiefly accompany that accidental circumstance are more truly
honoured. So it will not be considered as anything very
wonderful by Australians that Hugh Tressider, though only
a drover by occupation, who received a certain sum per head
for the conveying of large lots of cattle from one part of the
colonies to another, known to be the son of a retired military
officer, to be proverbially just, true, and self-respecting in all
496his dealings, was held in high estimation accordingly, and took
rank socially with the best people, many of whom could have
counted a thousand pounds to his every ten.
Hugh slept the sleep of the just that night, it may be
confidently stated—the delicious, dreamless, utter repose of
the fatigued worker; a luxury which the dwellers in high places
of the earth very seldom taste. The dawn of a winter's
morning had, however, but faintly commenced to tinge the
lowering sky when he instinctively arose, and dressing with
expedition proceeded to stir up his men and make preparations
for an early start. The hut cook, an official whose position
rarely permits of morning slumbers, was already up, and had
the fire lighted which was to boil the huge breakfast-kettle.
A restricted toilette suffices for road-hands in winter time.
In half an hour the horses were saddled, a breakfast of beefsteak,
damper, and hot tea disposed of, the packer fully
accoutred, and all was ready for the road.
'Now boys,' says Tressider, 'I'll count the cattle out of
the yard. There won't be another chance for a while. We've
had a good night of it, thanks to Mr. Bayard. Let them
feed for an hour or two, as soon as they steady to the road,
and I'll overtake you somewhere about the Burnt Hut Flat.'
Having counted out his herd, which he was gratified to
find turned out the correct number of six hundred and twenty-three—a
matter which might well have otherwise resulted after
the darkling difficulties of the previous night—and seen them
straggle out over the wet green grass, the young man betook
himself with a light heart back to the 'big house,' which he
reached just in time for the family breakfast.
Here were assembled all the olive branches—from Melanie,
aged sixteen, and giving promise of general captivation, to
a roly-poly three-year-old boy, who ruled the household
despotically, and sat on Hugh's knee, with wide wondering
eyes scanning his features, as if seriously considering whether
they had met in a former state of existence.
'Very glad to see you, Mr. Tressider,' said the lady of the
house, a handsome, hospitable matron, as became the
châtelaine of Barallan and the wife of Arnold Bayard; she
couldn't well have been otherwise. 'We were afraid that you
were going to be one of the mysterious guests who come after
every one is in bed, and go away before they get up.'
497'Like the avenger of blood in Anne of Geierstein, mother,'
put in Melanie, with her hand on her parent's arm. 'There
is something so weird about cattle-men. They always seem
to be doing their work at unearthly hours, or beside watch-fires,
like the people in the German legends.'
'And don't they have to light fires when they travel with
sheep?' asked Jack, aged fourteen. 'Girls don't know anything
about stock, do they, father?'
'They know as much as some boys who forget to fasten
gates, and let the weaners "box" after a day's hard drafting,'
returned Mr. Bayard with mildly reproachful emphasis. Here
Mr. Jack subsided, while a certain tremulous movement of the
lip showed the effect of the reminder.
'Never mind, poor old man! he'll remember next time.
I'm sure he was as sorry as any one,' said the tender mother,
giving a squeeze to the boy's hand. 'And now, breakfast is
quite ready. You had better sit here, Mr. Tressider, and you
can tell me how they all were at Rimandah, and who won
the tennis match.'
'By the way,' said the Master, seating himself in a contemplative
way before a noble round of beef, 'there is an
English newspaper and a letter for you in the smoking-room;
came yesterday. We were so busy yarning over the fire last
night that I forgot to tell you.'
'They'll keep till after breakfast,' said Hugh calmly.
'There isn't a soul out of Australia that I care two straws
about. I suppose some one has sent me a Times with
nothing in it that can possibly concern me. Thanks; I will
take some chicken-pie. I can fall back upon corned beef on
the road, though one never seems to tire of it.'
'How are they all on the Allyn?' said Mr. Bayard. 'Have
you heard from home lately?'
'Oh, doing quite splendidly,' said the young man, his face
lighting up with an expression of tenderness which transfigured
the weather-beaten features and imparted a pathetic lustre to
his dark-grey eyes. 'Elinor was improving in her drawing—going
to be quite an artist. Fairy was taking lessons in
singing; she always had a wonderful voice. Bob was head of
his class at school, and was safe for a scholarship if he kept
up the pace. Mother was stronger than she had been for
years. I shall get back there at Christmas time if I've luck
498on this journey, and we're going to be no end jolly. The
Armordens are coming over from Braidwood, and we shall be
as happy as kings—much happier, indeed, by late accounts.'
'I'm sure you deserve it,' said Mrs. Bayard half-unconsciously
to herself. 'But what a terrible day you must have
had of it yesterday. It never ceased raining here. It is
perishing weather even now. However you can endure your
life in such a season as this, astonishes me.'
'We get used to it, Mrs. Bayard, like the eels, you know.
Somebody must do it, or who would buy the Barallan cattle,
and get them to market?'
'Yes, I see; but I can't bear to think of nice people—of
one's friends, you know—sitting in the saddle through these
long, dismal, bitter nights, or watching by fires in the forest,
like demons or ghosts.'
'That's the pleasantest part of it, I assure you. When the
virtuous drover has eaten his supper, made up his fire, and
lighted his pipe, he feels—well, nearly as comfortable as Mr.
Bayard here when he has locked up the house and put out
the lamp for the night. It doesn't always rain, either.'
'Here are your letters and paper, Mr. Tressider,' said
Melanie, who had quietly arisen from the breakfast-table;
'I was afraid dad would forget them again. Hadn't you
better open them? I would if I had letters from England.'
'You have my permission,' said the lady of the house.
'Some people are dreadfully cold-blooded about letters.
Fancy a woman leaving her letters unread all this time!'
'Theirs are pleasanter than ours,' murmured the recipient.
'That is, generally speaking. Ha! This seems a different
hand from the last correspondent. I thought I knew the old
fellow's writing well.'
With the sleepless curiosity of youth, Melanie and Jack had
kept their eyes fixed upon their friend's face. To their great
and unaffected surprise they observed him to flush all over,
bronzed cheek and forehead, and afterwards to turn deadly
pale. The letter slipped from his nerveless hand, and his
eyes assumed such a fixed and strange expression, that the
young people were alarmed. Mr. and Mrs. Bayard, with
averted heads, were discussing matters of family interest, and
so had escaped the bit of melodrama.
Mr. Bayard was recalled by Melanie's eager tones—
499'Oh, father! Mr. Tressider's taken ill. He's had some
bad news in his letter.'
'Why, old fellow, what is it?' inquired Bayard, turning to
him with a face of sincere concern. 'Anything gone wrong
at home? I didn't know you heard from relatives in the old
country.'
Hugh Tressider stood up and looked at his good friend
with a staid and serious expression, not by any means habitual.
'All is well; better than well, my dear Mr. Bayard. I
know it will rejoice your kind heart. But it was rather
sudden, and as unexpected as an order to become Governor-General.
I'm Lord Trewartha, that's all; and there's
Trewartha Castle, with not much of an income yet, but a
fair sum in cash at my credit to support the dignity. More
will fall in when another relative dies. It rather knocked me
over at first. The thought of all I could do for the girls and
Bob, and the poor Mother who has slaved her soul out all
these years for us, was too much for me—my heart struck
work for a minute or so. I nearly fainted. There's the
letter.'
'And you're a lord?—Lord Trewartha—a real live lord!'
said Melanie and Jack, each taking hold of a hand, and
jumping up and down with wild excitement and the exuberant,
unselfish joy of youth. 'Oh, what fun! Isn't it splendid?
And will people have to say, "Yes, my lord," and "No, my
lord," and "If your lordship please"? Of course you will
send these crawling B.R. cattle to Jericho.' This last was
Master Jack's suggestion.
'I shall carry out my engagements, even if I were made a
marquis,' said Hugh, recovering his spirits, 'which I read
somewhere is ever so much higher than a baron. And you
are all to call me Hugh, without Mr. or anything. That is
all the difference. Otherwise I shall leave you nothing in my
will. And now I must go and have a smoke with your father,
or I shall have a fit.'
It was all true. Is true. For the matter of that, something
very like it happened only the other day under nearly
similar circumstances. Hugh Tressider will never more need
to undertake to drive cattle from Kiandra (let us say) to the
Paroo, or from Mount Cornish to Adelaide, at per head.
Elinor and Fairy will have such private lessons and masters
500and general embellishment that they will do more than pass
muster among their European kinsfolk. Bob will graduate at
Oxford or Cambridge, and if ever he revisits Australia—as
being a younger brother he probably will—it will be impossible
to tell him, at first sight, from the imported Anglo-Saxon
aristocrat.
And Hugh Tressider, what of him? As he smokes his
pipe that evening by the camp-fire—one of the last of the
series he is likely to warm himself by—what avenues of
enjoyment, hitherto undreamed of, seem lengthening out into
vast and endless grandeur, like the Sphinx-guarded paths of
Egyptian cities, all ending in wondrous palaces, purple-draped
and gold-illumined! The hard and homely present nearly
faded out of sight; only by an effort could he recall himself
to the rude primeval surroundings he was so soon to quit for
ever. A peer of England! A man of fortune! The heir of
an ancient name! Free to meet and mingle with the world's
best and fairest, bravest and most exalted, on terms of
freedom and equality. His foot slipped into a pool of ice-cold
water amid the tussocks of frosted grass as he thought of
all this, and with a light laugh at the incongruity of his
situation and prospects, he resumed his walk around the
recumbent drove.
At no distant date the Tressider family sailed for England,
when doubtless most of the good things in keeping with their
altered fortunes were duly dispensed to and appreciated by
them.
IN BUSHRANGING DAYS
501
The practice of 'intromitting with the lieges travelling on
their lawful business'—as Captain Dugald Dalgetty (sometime
of Marischal College, Aberdeen) hath it—is an ancient and
fascinating, if irregular mode of financial reconstruction. It
has always commended itself as a combination of business
and pleasure to those bolder spirits who chafe at the
restriction of an over-timorous social system.
From the days of the mad Prince and Poins there were
those 'for sport sake content to do the profession some
grace.' Risks of death and dishonour were thus taken in
countries boasting a high civilisation—a short shrift and a high
gallows constituting the accepted termination of a period of riot
and revelry; and though the strong hand of the law rarely failed
to bring the bold outlaw to his doom, certain alleviations always
served to cast a glamour around the pleasant and profitable,
if perilous career of the highwayman.
Brigand or bandit, pirate or smuggler, bushranger or
buccaneer, as might be, he rarely failed to enlist the feminine
sympathy, which has flowed forth in all ages towards the doer
of bold deeds—the scorner of gold save for revel and gift—the
fearless withstander of the law.
The feats of these heroes of Alsatia have been sung and
their valour vaunted in the ballads of all lands and ages;
indeed they have formed no inconsiderable portion of the
material. 'Yo Soy Contrabandista' never fails to evoke a
storm of applause from every Spanish audience.
They have flourished alike under the rule of kings and the
co-operative coercion of democracy. Monarchies fail to
extirpate, republics to suppress them. They apparently owe
502their existence to some unexplained ordinance of Dame
Nature, whose enfans gatés they are. Her forest children
they. Lords of the Waste, roamers through wood and wold,
formulating thus a world-old protest against the dulness of
respectability, the greed of industrialism, the selfishness of
property.
Products as well of the careless ordering of new countries
as of the stern discipline of older communities, small wonder
that they should have arisen in this brand-new, scarce century-old
Austral land of ours, hugging the South Pole and dissevered
from many of the formalities of civilisation. Small
wonder, I say, that amid our pathless woods and sea-like
plains, with every natural advantage and conceivable aid
from the habits of a migratory, restless, centaur-like population,
these unlicensed tax-gatherers should have appeared. Thus
the profession and practice of what is now called 'Bushranging'
occurred at a very early period of Australian history. The
term easily grew out of the natural desire of the escaped felon,
desperate from harsh treatment, or perhaps merely averse to
toil, to hide himself in the woods which then surrounded the
settlements.
The old English words 'wood' and 'forest,' 'copse' and
'thicket,' had been superseded by the comprehensive colonial
term 'bush,' doubtless suggested by the close approximation
to 'scrub' or 'jungle,' which the interminable eucalyptus
wilderness then presented to the first emigrant Britons. 'The
bush' came next, as more fully comprehensive and explanatory,
signifying something analogous to the Dutch-African 'veldt,'
not necessarily woodland, but the waste lands of the Crown
generally. This nomenclature must have mystified later arrivals
considerably, much of the so-called 'bush' being composed of
plains nearly, and in some cases altogether, without timber
of any description.
The wandering robber, necessarily 'a burgher of that
desert city,' came then, by general consent, to be described
as a 'bushranger.' The term was even Latinised, as the
philologist may discover by reading the description in St.
James's Church, Sydney, on the tablet placed there to
commemorate the death of Dr. Wardell, of 'Wardell's Bush,'
Petersham, slain in the early thirties, 'latrone vagante' (sic).
The first robbers were in all cases convicts. For the small
503proportion of free men employed as guards and warders,
overseers and head workmen, there was obviously no temptation
to leave recognised positions, to ramble through the
terrible foodless wastes, with a price on their heads, as was
the stern usage of the period.
But in the case of the reckless felon the conditions were
different. He had been flogged—he was worked in irons for
bad conduct. If returned by his employer to the authorities
as useless or stubborn, no prospect lay before him but that
of ending a wretched life in the severer penal settlements,
where incorrigibles were doomed to chains and slavery. He
declared for the open sky, the free forest. The toll levied on
the drays of the squatter, the homestead of the farmer, or the
wayfarer on the high-road, was necessarily the chief, almost
the only support of outlaws. For a time they lived and
flourished. Having secured arms—the fowling-piece, musket,
or pistol of the period—they entrapped or intimidated the
unwary traveller. They made stubborn defence against the
minions of the law, unless the odds were too great. In some
instances, having discovered retreats known only to the
aboriginal tribes or outlying shepherds, mostly sympathisers,
their evasion of justice was prolonged for years. The end,
however, was but delayed. Tracked down, betrayed, slain in
fair fight with police, with soldiers, with settlers combining for
self-defence, the same fate awaited all.
Found with arms in their hands, they were hanged as a
matter of course. No sentence of imprisonment afforded
them hope of escape, with further possibilities of crime.
They had played the great hazard, and the forfeit was duly
paid.
Living in this condition of continual warfare—their hand
against all men, and, with rare exceptions, all men against
them, the gallows or the bullet their certain doom—it is not
to be wondered at that crimes of violence shocked and aroused
the community. 'As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,'
was the familiar proverb quoted in reference to deeds of
blood and rapine. With fancied wrongs and years of oppression
to avenge, they showed no mercy. They had received
none. Fighting with the rope round their necks, they were
reckless and ruthless. And when the last act of the grim
tragedy was played, with the hangman for stage manager and
504a quasi-criminal crowd for audience, the leading actor had
more than once boasted of a score of murders and kindred
outrages.
At the first outbreaks the highwaymen of the period had
neither horses nor arms worthy of the name. Revolvers were
unknown; pistols were far from being 'arms of precision.'
Rifles even were rare; only the fowling-piece and the Tower
musket were in common use. Horses, too, were scarce. So
that the colonial summons of 'Bail up,' or even the old-fashioned
British demand, 'Your money or your life,' came
mostly from a ragged Robinson Crusoe-like individual behind
a tree, with a rusty gun-barrel protruding therefrom.
Of course after the 'breaking out' of Port Phillip—as the
earliest colonisation of Victoria was disrespectfully termed—in
1837, persons of darksome record hasted to the new settlement
to hide from the law or prey on the public. Among
them were three escaped Tasmanian felons, named Williams,
Jepps, and Fogarty.
This worthy triumvirate raided the wilds of the Upper
Plenty, robbing and holding to ransom the lieges, terrorising
a line of farm-houses. They took prisoners my good friend
Charles Ryan and the late Mr. Alick Hunter, adding insult
to injury by eating the breakfast prepared for the latter
gentleman and his friends. What the fashionables of the
day wanted on the banks of the Plenty Rivulet I never could
make out. But it was considered 'the thing' apparently to
have a farm in that locality; it was even surmised that
these aristocratic amateurs might make money by the practice
of agriculture—a delusion long dispelled. What the
solid fact amounted to re Jepps and Co. was that, like the
footpads in Don Juan, their first accost was 'D—— your eyes,
your money or life.' So much for the 'first robbers' in
Victoria.
To them enter four gentlemen—volunteers, squatters of
the period and overlanders at that—Mr. Henry Fowler, of
Fowler's Flat, near Albury; Mr. Peter Snodgrass, M.L.A.,
son of the Colonel and Lieutenant-Governor of that name,
historically known as commanding the 13th Portuguese
Regiment, when on August 31, 1813, he mounted the
'imminent deadly breach' at the siege of St. Sebastian;
505Lieutenant Robert Chamberlain, a retired military man; and
Mr. Gourlay, squatter. Arming in haste, they followed hard on
the tracks of the spoilers, and, as they crossed the creek flat, discovered
the bushrangers entrenched in a slab hut, fully prepared
for battle. The outlaws had the best of the position, having
cover, behind which they could fire through windows and other
openings. The attacking force did not stop to weigh probabilities,
but charged up to the fortress, the besieged returning
fire with effect. Mr. Chamberlain was slightly wounded; Mr.
Fowler was shot through the jaw. But 'blood will tell.' The
volunteers were cool and determined. One of the robbers
was shot dead, and the others captured before the smoke had
well cleared from the tiny battle scene, which compared
favourably as to killed and wounded with more pretentious
engagements. The prisoners were conveyed to Melbourne,
there to await trial, sentence, and execution. Their captives,
I may mention, finding themselves neglected, promptly quitted
the field, their position between two fires being eminently
unsafe.
It were tedious to follow the calendar of crime more
or less connected with the highway in old colonial days.
In many instances the records testify not less to the unflinching
courage of the settlers than to the recklessness of the
robbers.
Among memorable incidents that of Mr. Charles Fisher
Shepherd, of Monaro, deserves to be recorded. On the 14th
of December 1835, being attacked by bushrangers at night,
also deserted or betrayed by other inmates of the station, he
shot one robber dead and kept up a fight against odds in the
most gallant manner, until, being wounded in the head and
half-a-dozen other places, he was left for dead. He recovered,
however, as if by a miracle, and gave evidence at the trial and
conviction of the chief criminal and his abettors.
As far back as 1830 this evil, so far from being stamped
out by chain-gang and gallows, assumed alarming proportions,
as may be judged by a newspaper extract containing a letter
from Mr. George Suttor to Mr. E. B. Suttor, of Baulkam
Hills. On the 27th of October in that year, a meeting of the
magistrates and inhabitants of Bathurst was called at the
Court-house to consider what steps should be taken as to a
band of bushrangers. They were led by a desperate convict,
506said to have been flogged unjustly; and numbering at times
from twenty to thirty, kept the district in a state of alarm.
Murder, as well as serious depredations, was laid to their
charge. A body of volunteers numbering twelve, well armed
and mounted, was at once formed, Mr. W. H. Suttor being
nominated commander by Major Macpherson.
They started at five o'clock P.M., after hearing of a fresh
robbery committed at the house of one Arkell. Mr. Suttor,
always a friend of the aboriginal race, met two aboriginal
natives who knew him, and enlisted them as guides. They
ran the tracks until the robbers were descried in a rocky glen
near the Warragamba River, about an hour before sunset.
The volunteers dismounted and prepared to take them by a
coup de main, but a stone falling, alarmed the gang. They
instantly took to the trees for cover, and kept up an incessant
fire. The volunteers stood their ground and returned the
fire. While Mr. Suttor was on the rock giving orders, a
bullet passed through his hat. The firing was kept up for
about an hour. Two bushrangers were wounded and fell,
but were got to the rear. Mr. Suttor made a feint to charge,
which caused the robbers to run from their position, though
he had but an empty carbine to threaten with. He then
effected a retreat, none of his men being wounded. Mr.
Charles Suttor was the last to leave the glen. All remounted
their horses, which they had left in charge of the two blacks
and a lad they had taken from the bushrangers.
The night after the skirmish was stormy, and Mr. Suttor
was vexed to find that most of the horses had strayed; while
seeking them the mounted police were met with, eager to
overtake the bushrangers. Had they but come up sooner,
their united force would have been sufficient to take or shoot
the whole gang. In the encounter which took place, two of
the troopers were shot and five of the horses lost. Lieutenant
Brown did all that a brave officer could, even carrying off the
wounded men on the back of his own horse.
The number of the robber band was between fourteen and
twenty. They escaped at that time, but were pursued by
Captain Walpole and Lieutenant Moore with separate detachments,
to whom they surrendered. 'Major Macpherson
was much pleased with the brothers Suttor for going forward
in the prompt manner they did' (sic).
507There was talk of a 'rising' at Mudgee, which did not
come off; and doubtless all the 'banditti,' by which term
they are referred to in this interesting letter signed G. Suttor,
under date October 27, 1830, were shot or taken in usual
course. Let us trust that our country may never fall short
of sons of the soil ready to act with the courage and loyalty
of the Messrs. Suttor and the other Australian volunteers in
the 'battle' described.
Although gold-mining on a large scale practically commenced
in New South Wales in the month of May 1851,
when Mr. John Richard Hardy was appointed the first Goldfields
Commissioner, and, with a body of mounted police,
commenced to issue licenses and to administer the law at
Ophir, where a large number of diggers had already collected,
and where an eighteen-ounce nugget was found a day or two
after their arrival, no robberies of consequence were committed.
Still, tent thefts were frequent. Mysterious disappearances
from time to time took place, while drunken brawls, horse-stealing,
unlicensed liquor selling, and such-like, kept the
police fully employed.
But no organised road robbery on a large scale occurred
until 1862. Then all Australia was thrilled by an announcement
of the gold escort robbery by Gardiner's gang, near
Forbes in New South Wales. A peculiar significance attached
to this daring crime, from the fact of the perpetrators being
chiefly native-born Australians. It shook the general belief,
long held, that the sons of the soil were free from the reproach
attached to their progenitors. The New South Wales natives
were proverbially sober. Not prone to the graver crimes,
reared amid favourable surroundings, the type had developed
few of the faults of former generations. Much might be
expected of the coming race. This optimistic opinion was
now unrooted. The details of the crime left but little hope
for the philanthropist, while it confirmed the cynic's mockery
of his kind.
On the 15th of June 1862, the gold escort coach from
Forbes was stopped and robbed by Gardiner's gang, eight or
ten men in all, with blackened faces, and wearing red shirts.
Bullock drays had been placed across the narrow road, and
a rude breastwork constructed, at a place locally known as
508'Eugowra Rocks.' Behind this an armed band suddenly
appeared. No challenge was given, but at the word 'Fire'
from the leader, a volley was poured into the coach, on which
sat the police in charge of the gold. The sergeant and the
trooper were hit. The sergeant fell, wounded in the side.
The police, taken by surprise, made no effectual defence.
The horses, left to themselves, bolted and overturned the
coach. The robbers then took possession of the escort gold
and notes, packed in four iron boxes, amounting to about
fourteen thousand pounds in value. It is in evidence that a
division was made, which gave about twenty-two pounds weight
of gold to each man besides his share of the notes—roughly,
one thousand pounds or more each—a tempting booty enough
even in those days of universal plenty and comparative wealth,
enjoyed by all sorts and conditions of men throughout Australia—those
colonies which had not as yet produced gold, sharing
almost equally in enhanced profits and heightened wages with
those which had.
Very soon after the robbers had packed their ill-gotten
gold upon the coach leaders and ridden hard for the gullies
of the Weddin mountainland, which had many a time and
oft sheltered fugitives from justice, the police, with that indispensable
sleuth-hound the black tracker, were on their
trail.
So hot was the pursuit, that on the Thursday following,
Superintendent Saunderson's division came up with part of
the gang, in one of the fastnesses of 'the Weddin'—discovered
their camp and the scales with which the gold had
been weighed and divided. They caught sight of the outlaws,
but, on their tired horses, failed to overtake them, splendidly
mounted as they appeared to be. However, they were forced
to abandon a pack-horse, which the police found to be richly
laden, having in four bags, secured to the saddle, about fifteen
hundred ounces of gold.
Sir Frederick Pottinger, Mr. Mitchell, C.P.S., and Detective
Lyons also arrested two men near Narandera, one of whom
had with him two hundred and thirteen ounces of gold and
one hundred and fifty pounds in notes. These were doubtless
accessories or confederates. A reward per head was offered
by the Government for information leading to capture of any
of the gang. Thus ran the proclamation:—
509'Mail and Escort Robbery
'£1000 Reward, and Pardon to an Accomplice
'Whereas it has been represented to the Government that
on the afternoon of the 15th inst. the gold escort from the
Lachlan was attacked on the road between Forbes and Orange
by a band of armed men, said to be ten in number, and
described as dressed in red shirts and caps, with their faces
blackened, who fired on and wounded the police forming the
guard, opened the mail-bags and letters, and carried off a
large amount of gold dust and money: Notice is hereby
given that a reward of one thousand pounds will be given by
Government for such information as shall lead to the apprehension
and conviction, within six months from this date, of
each of the guilty parties; and a pardon will also be granted
to any accomplice in the above outrage who shall first give
such information.
Charles Cowper.
'Colonial Secretary's Office, Sydney, June 17, 1862.'
The great gold robbery having been accomplished, the
actors in which were for a time uncaptured and unpunished,
other enterprises of the same nature disturbed the land.
More than one gang had apparently been formed, whose
doings were heard of, sometimes in one direction, sometimes
in another.
Well armed and admirably mounted, they were not easily
overtaken or overpowered by the police force of the day, then
recently organised on the centralising system, which has since
proved so efficacious. Before the advent of Captain Mayne,
Captain M'Lerie, and Inspector-General Fosbery, the police
in New South Wales were under the control of the magistrates
of the district, much as obtained formerly in the rural parts of
England. The system did not work well: one police magistrate
might be alert and courageous, likely to keep his men in
good order; another might be easy-going, slack of discipline—mentally
even in near resemblance to Justice Shallow. It
was evident that there would be little esprit de corps, each
division working for its own hand.
510But when the new régime came into force all was changed.
The force became at once semi-military in discipline, in
prestige, in general organisation. The officers, each in
graduated rank, responsible for a district, maintained a high
standard of efficiency, while the inspector-general at headquarters
enjoyed much the same power and rank as the
military commandant of a colony. From that time forth the
bush outlaws were more easily traced, more often captured,
and more invariably punished than had been the case in
former years.
Still, the circumstances of the country were so much in
favour of this particular class of offender, that from time to
time society waxed impatient at the protracted immunity of
known criminals fresh from the scene of notorious outrage.
Outlying stations were attacked, and more than one household
had reason to rejoice at their narrow escape from capture and
ill-treatment. Perhaps one of the most daring outrages of
Hall and Gilbert's gang was the attack on the house of
Mr. David Campbell, of Goimbla. The story of the siege and
of his memorable defence I had from his own lips in the
summer of 1869. He was then living at Cunningham Plains,
where I visited him en route from Narandera to Goulburn.
Mr. Campbell was Scottish by descent, though born in
India. A keen sportsman, a high-couraged, chivalrous gentleman,
he was justly indignant that he should be menaced by
the lawless men who were then terrorising the country. In
expectation of an attack, he made more than usual provision
in the way of arms; a double supply of which were at hand
in places of concealment.
Thus his story ran:—
It was the time of the evening meal. Mrs. Campbell was
a refined, delicately-nurtured woman, but none the less fearless
in time of trial, as the event proved. Hearing a noise, Mr.
Campbell went out into a passage, at the end of which he saw
an armed man, who at once fired at him. He returned fire
without effect, retiring upon his base of operations. A volley
from the front of the house crashed through the windows.
The siege had begun.
Mr. Campbell returned fire so accurately and repeatedly,
having several rifles and fowling-pieces, that the robbers
believed more than one man to be behind the defences.
511Mrs. Campbell carried ammunition and helped to load. On
one occasion, when crossing the line of fire, a bullet grazed
her neck. All this time the firing was kept up briskly, though
more than once a proposal came to harm nothing if the
garrison surrendered, but with ruffianly threats if the defence
was continued. One only reply was made, 'Come and take us.'
After half an hour's incessant fusillade, a new idea struck
the attacking party. The outbuildings were composed of
'pisé,' a preparation of rammed earth, as its name implies,
much favoured by Mr. Campbell, and singularly adapted for
dwellings in an arid land. Now came a lull with fresh
disposition of forces.
The stable immediately in the rear of the cottage was
discovered to be in flames. A favourite horse of Mr.
Campbell's, unable to escape, was burnt alive. As the screams
of the tortured animal pierced the night air, his owner (he
confessed) felt uncommonly wolfish. 'I will have one of you
for poor Highflyer,' said he, as he ground his teeth. The
burning stable would have caused the roof of the cottage to
catch fire, as there was a dray loaded with hay standing
between it and the back of the house, had not Mrs. Campbell
and the servant maid courageously covered the hay with a
tarpaulin.
During the pause in the firing which took place, after
the flames lighted up the scene, Mrs. Campbell made an
important reconnaissance. Stealing to the corner of the
verandah, she examined a high paling fence, from behind
which the assailants had commenced the attack. 'I saw,'
she told her husband on returning, 'a man jumping up
from time to time, and looking over towards the house.'
Mr. Campbell awaited the next appearance, and, taking a
snap-shot, sent a bullet through the outlaw's throat. A final
volley was fired and returned. Then silence ensued. Half
an hour afterwards the 'besieged resident' walked down to the
men's hut and brought up the station-hands, who had preserved
a strict neutrality during the engagement. They found
O'Malley lying dead under a tree, whither he had been dragged
by his companions through the standing oats. The siege of
Goimbla had been raised.
Mr. Keightley's experiences as a 'besieged resident' were
512not dissimilar from those of Mr. Campbell. A Goldfields
Commissioner, a sportsman, and a determined man, he was
attacked in his own house at Dunn's Plains, near Bathurst,
while the robbers of the escort were still at large.
Like Mr. Campbell, he was prepared, was a dead shot, and
killed one of his assailants. I may mention that I knew Mr.
Keightley well for many years, and had the account of the
affair from himself. The gang surrounded the house at mid-day,
and finding such cover as they might, commenced firing,
after calling upon the garrison to surrender. Mr. Keightley,
on his part, kept up a brisk fire from time to time, and
dislodged several of the besiegers from their hiding-places.
He himself narrowly escaped being hit on several occasions,
as his position was not completely protected. Bourke had
been the most daring and aggressive of the party, and in
gaining a nearer position, he partially exposed himself and was
laid low by a snap-shot.
Up to this stage of the affair the conditions were not unlike
those of the Goimbla siege. The robbers lost a man in each
case. But here the circumstances varied materially. The
attack on Mr. Keightley's household was during daylight—the
one on Mr. Campbell's after nightfall. On the death of
O'Malley, the robbers decided upon a retreat; but soon after
Bourke fell, a discovery was made that Mr. Keightley's
ammunition had been expended. He was therefore at their
mercy, and had no alternative but to yield.
The four persons then in the house—Mr. and Mrs.
Keightley, Dr. Pechey, a relative of the lady of the house, and
a servant woman—surrendered themselves to the bushrangers,
who announced their intention of shooting Mr. Keightley in
requital for their comrade's death. To this end he was
marched to some distance by two of the bushrangers, while
the others were holding a colloquy with Mrs. Keightley and
the servant, who passionately implored them to spare Mr.
Keightley's life.
They retorted that he had not spared Bourke's, and also
that 'he had boasted that he would have the reward which
the Government had offered for their capture.'
Mrs. Keightley replied that he had never dreamed of a
reward: he was the last man to take blood-money; if he
had shot Bourke it was in defence of his home, which any
513man would do. Furthermore, if they would allow her to ride
to Bathurst, she would undertake to bring them five hundred
pounds in notes on the following day.
'How could you get that?' asked Ben Hall.
'From my father. You know that he is a wealthy man,
and would gladly give it to me for such a purpose. Surely
you will not kill my husband in cold blood before my face?'
The lady was young and beautiful. Her tears and
entreaties in this dread position were such as to have moved
the sternest heart. She was a native-born Australian, like
themselves.
They had shed blood, but it had been in fair fight. They
had never been accused of inhumanity otherwise. They
relented, finally agreeing to take the five hundred pounds
if brought to a certain tree, visible for a considerable
distance, by a specified hour on the next day. The
messenger was to come alone. They would hold her husband
as a hostage for the performance of the bond.
The two men told off as executioners had by this time
called upon their prisoner to turn his back towards them for
the fatal shot.
'I have never done that to any man living, and will not
now,' returned he; 'fire away!'
As he folded his arms and looked his captors in the face, a
voice was heard from below—
'Hold on! There's to be no shooting; we've agreed to
take the money.'
Mrs. Keightley was then suffered to depart in company
with Dr. Pechey for Bathurst, while her husband remained in
the custody of the gang, pending the arrival of the ransom. It
may be imagined that his feelings were of a mingled nature.
He was assured of the safety of his wife. Still, he could not
be free from anxiety as to his own, in case of default of payment
or pursuit by the police.
But the brave woman well performed her part. As the
appointed hour on the next day drew perilously near, a horseman
was seen from afar to approach the track to the well-known
fire-scathed tree. He reached it, and throwing down a
package, returned as he came. It was speedily taken possession
of, and found to contain one hundred five-pound notes.
Then Mr. Keightley was released.
514Many years have elapsed since these events took place.
Few of the actors are now living. The hand of time and the
Nemesis of the law have thinned the ranks of the combatants.
Their deeds and adventures are passing into the domain of
legend and tradition. In a few decades they may take rank
with Dick Turpin and Claude Duval, while the feats of
Gardiner's 'Darkie' may be quoted by the 'coming race' as
in rivalry with those of Black Bess of sainted memory.
THE END
Printed byR. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
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