Just before mid-day—five days after we had left the homestead—we rode through the Southern slip rails to find the Dandy at work “cleaning out a soakage” on the brink of the billabong, with Cheon enthusiastically encouraging him. The billabong, we heard, had threatened to “peter out” in our absence, and riding across the now dusty wind-swept enclosure we realised that November was with us, and that the “dry” was preparing for its final fling—“just showing what it could do when it tried.”

With the South-east Trades to back it up it was fighting desperately against the steadily advancing North-west monsoon, drying up, as it fought, every drop of moisture left from last Wet. There was not a blade of green grass within sight of the homestead, and everywhere dust whirled, and eddied, and danced, hurled all ways at once in the fight, or gathered itself into towering centrifugal columns, to speed hither and thither, obedient to the will of the elements.

Half the heavens seemed part of the Dry, and half part of the Wet: dusty blue to the south-east, and dark banks of clouds to the north-west, with a fierce beating sun at the zenith. Already the air was oppressive with electric disturbances, and Dan, fearing he would not get finished unless things were kept humming, went out-bush next morning, and the homestead became once more the hub of our universe—the south-east being branded from that centre. Every few days a mob was brought in, and branded, and disbanded, hours were spent on the stockyard fence; pack-teams were packed, unpacked, and repacked; and every day grew hotter and hotter, and every night more and more electric, and as the days went by we waited for the Fizzer, hungry for mail-matter, with a six weeks’ hunger.

When the Fizzer came in he came with his usual lusty shouting, but varied his greeting into a triumphant: “Broken the record this time, missus. Two bags as big as a house and a few et-cet-eras!” And presently he staggered towards us bent with the weight of a mighty mail. But a Fizzer without news would not have been our Fizzer, and as he staggered along we learned that Mac was coming out to clear the run of brumbies. “Be along in no time now,” the Fizzer shouted. “Fallen clean out with bullock-punching. Wouldn’t put his worst enemy to it. Going to tackle something that’ll take a bit of jumping round.” Then the mail-bags and et-cet-eras came down in successive thuds, and no one was better pleased with its detail than our Fizzer: fifty letters, sixty-nine papers, dozens of books and magazines, and parcels of garden cuttings.

“Last you for the rest of the year by the look of it,” the Fizzer declared later, finding us at the house walled in with a litter of mail-matter. Then he explained his interruption. “I’m going straight on at once,” he said “for me horses are none too good as it is, and the lads say there’s a bit of good grass at the nine-mile”, and, going out, we watched him set off.

“So long!” he shouted, as cheerily as ever, as he gathered his team together. “Half-past eleven four weeks.”

But already the Fizzer’s shoulders were setting square, for the last trip of the “dry” was before him—the trip that perished the last mailman—and his horses were none too good.

“Good luck!” we called after him. “Early showers!” and there was a note in our voices brought there by the thought of that gaunt figure at the well—rattling its dicebox as it waited for one more round with our Fizzer: a note that brought a bright look into the Fizzer’s face, as with an answering shout of farewell he rode on into the forest. And watching the sturdy figure, and knowing the luck of our Fizzer—that luck that had given him his fearless judgment and steadfast, courageous spirit—we felt his cheery “Half-past eleven four weeks” must be prophetic, in spite of those long dry stages, with their beating heat and parching dust eddies—stages eked out now at each end with other stages of “bad going.”

“Half-past eleven four weeks,” the Fizzer had said; and as we returned to our mail-matter, knowing what it meant to our Fizzer, we looked anxiously to the northwest, and “hoped the showers” would come before the “return trip of the Downs.”

In addition to the fifty letters for the house, the Fizzer had left two others at the homestead to be called for—one being addressed to Victoria Downs (over two hundred miles to our west), and the other to—

F. Brown, Esq.,
In Charge of Stud Bulls going West
Via northern territory.

The uninitiated may think that the first was sent out by mistake and that the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it—in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—an address could never be too vague. The bush-folk love to say that when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it decided to use that in its place.

And so it would seem. “Down South” envelopes are laboriously addressed with the names of stations and vias here and vias there; and throughout the Territory men move hither and thither by compulsion or free-will giving never a thought to an address; while the Department, knowing the ways of its people, delivers its letters in spite of, not because of, these addresses. It reads only the name of the man that heads the address of his letters and sends the letters to where that man happens to be. Provided it has been clearly stated which Jones is meant the Department will see to the rest, although it is wise to add Northern Territory for the guidance of Post Offices “Down South.” “Jones travelling with cattle for Wave Will,” reads the Department; and that gossiping friendly wire reporting Jones as “just leaving the Powell,” the letter lies in the Fizzer’s loose-bag until he runs into Jones’s mob; or a mail coming in for Jones, Victoria River, when this Jones is on the point of sailing for a trip south, his mail is delivered on shipboard; and as the Department goes on with its work, letters for east go west, and for west go south—in mail-bags, loose-bags, travellers’ pockets or per black boy—each one direct to the bush-folk as a migrating bird to its destination.

But, painstaking as our Department is with our mail-matter, it excels itself in its handling of telegrams. Southern red tape has decreed—no doubt wisely as far as it goes—that telegrams shall travel by official persons only; but out-bush official persons are few, and apt to be on duty elsewhere when important telegrams arrive; and it is then that our Department draws largely on that surplus supply of common sense.

Always deferential to the South, it obediently pigeon-holes the telegram, to await some official person, then, knowing that a delay of weeks will probably convert it into so much waste paper, it writes a “duplicate,” and goes outside to send it “bush” by the first traveller it can find. If no traveller is at hand, the “Line” is “called up” and asked if any one is going in the desired direction from elsewhere; if so, the “duplicate” is repeated “down the line,” but if not, a traveller is created in the person of a black boy by means of a bribing stick of tobacco. No extra charge, of course. Nothingisan extra in the Territory. “Nothing to do with the Department,” says the chief; “merely the personal courtesy of our officers.” May it be many a long day before the forgotten shipment of red tape finds its way to the Territory to strangle the courtesy of our officers!

Nothing finds itself outside this courtesy. The Fizzer brings in great piles of mail-matter, unweighed and unstamped, with many of the envelopes bursting or, at times, in place of an envelope, a request for one; and “our officers,” getting to work with their “courtesy,” soon put all in order, not disdaining even the licking of stamps or the patching or renewing of envelopes. Letters and packets are weighed, stamped, and repaired—often readdressed where addresses for South are blurred; stamps are supplied for outgoing mail-matter and telegrams; postage-dues and duties paid on all incoming letters and parcels—in fact, nothing is left for us to do but to pay expenses incurred when the account is rendered at the end of each six months. No doubt our Department would also read and write our letters for us if we wished it, as it does, at times, for the untutored.

Wherever it can, it helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to “find room somewhere” in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport assistance—the general opinion being that “a man that refuses to carry a man’s mail to him ’ud be mean enough to steal bread out of a bird-cage.”

In all the knowledge of the bush-folk, only one man had proved “mean enough.” A man who shall be known as the Outsider, for he was one of a type who could never be one of the bush-folk, even though he lived out-bush for generations: a man so walled in with self and selfishness that, look where he would, he could see nothing grander or better than his own miserable self, and knowing all a mail means to a bushman, he could refuse to carry a neighbour’s mail—even though his road lay through that neighbour’s run—because he had had a difference with him.

“Stealing bread from a caged bird wasn’t in it!” the homestead agreed, with unspeakable scorn; but the man was so reconciled to himself that the scorn passed over him unnoticed. He even missed the contempt in the Măluka’s cutting “Perfectly!” when he hoped we understood him. (The Outsider, by the way, spoke of the Never-Never as a land where you can Never-Never get a bally thing you want! the Outsider’s wants being of the flesh pots of Egypt). It goes without saying that the Măluka sent that neighbour’s mail to him without delay, even though it meant a four-days’ journey for a “boy” and station horses, for the bush-folk do what they can to help each other and the Department in the matter of mails, as in all else.

Fortunately, the Outsider always remained the only exception, and within a day or two of the Fizzer’s visit a traveller passed through going east who happened to know that the “chap from Victoria Downs was just about due at Hodgson going back west,” and one letter went forward in his pocket en route to its owner. But before the other could be claimed Cheon had opened the last eighty-pound chest of tea, and the homestead fearing the supply might not be equal to the demands of the Wet, the Dandy was dispatched in all haste for an extra loading of stores. And all through his absence, as before it, and before the Fizzer’s visit, Dan and the elements “kept things humming.”

Daily the soakage yielded less and less water, and daily Billy Muck and Cheon scrimmaged over its yield; for Billy’s melons were promising to pay a liberal dividend, and Cheon’s garden was crying aloud for water. Every day was filled with flies, and dust, and prickly heat, and daily and hourly our hands waved unceasingly, as they beat back the multitude of flies that daily and hourly assailed us—the flies and dust treated all alike, but the prickly heat was more chivalrous, and refrained from annoying a woman. “Her usual luck!” the men-folk said, utilising verandah-posts or tree-trunks for scratching posts when not otherwise engaged. Daily “things” and the elements hummed, and as they hummed Dan and Jack came and went like Will-o’-the-Wisps—sometimes from the south-east and sometimes from the north-east; and as they came and went, the Măluka kept his hand on the helm; Happy Dick filled in odd times as he alone knew how; a belated traveller or two passing out came in, and went on, or remained; Brown of the Bulls sent on a drover ahead of the mob to spy out the land, and the second letter left the rack, while all who came in, or went on, or remained, during their stay at the homestead, stood about the posts and uprights waving off flies, and rubbing and wriggling against the posts like so many Uriah Heeps, as they laid plans, gossiped, gave in reports, or “swopped yarns.” The Territory is hardly an earthly paradise just before the showers. Still, Cheon did all he could to make things pleasanter, regaling all daily on hop-beer, and all who came in were sure of a welcome from him—Dan invariably inspiring him with that ever fresh little joke of his when announcing afternoon tea to the quarters. “Cognac!” he would call, and also invariably, Dan made a great show of expectant haste, and a corresponding show of disappointment, when the teapot only was forthcoming.

But Cheon’s little joke and the afternoon tea were only interludes in the heat and thirst and dust. Daily things hummed faster and faster, and the South-east Trades skirmished and fought with the North-west monsoon, until the Willy-Willys, towering higher and higher sped across the plain incessantly, and whirled, and spun and danced like storm witches, in, and out and about the homestead enclosure, leaving its acres all dust, and only dust, with the house, lightly festooned in creepers now, and set in its deep-green luxuriant garden of melons, as a pleasant oasis in a desert of glare and dust.

Daily and hourly men waved and perspired and rubbed against scratching posts, and daily and hourly the Willy-Willys whirled and spun and danced, and daily and hourly as they threatened to dance, and spin, and whirl through the house, the homestead sped across the enclosure to slam doors and windows in their faces, thus saving our belongings from their whirling, dusty ravages; and when nimbler feet were absent it was no uncommon sight to see Cheon, perspiring and dishevelled, speeding towards the house like a huge humming-top, with speeding Willy-Willys speeding after him, each bent on reaching the goal before the other. Oftentimes Cheon outraced the Willy-Willys, and a very chuckling, triumphant Cheon slammed-to doors and windows, but at other times, the Willy-Willys outraced Cheon, and, having soundly buffeted him with dust and debris, sped on triumphant in their turn, and then a very wrathful, spluttering, dusty Cheon sped after them. Also after a buffeting Cheon was generally persuaded an evil spirit dwelt within certain Willy-Willys.

But there is even a limit to keeping things humming during a Territory November; and things coming to a climax in a succession of dry thunderstorms, two cows died in the yards from exhaustion, and Dan was obliged to “chuck it.”

“Not too bad, though,” he said, reviewing the years work, after fixing up a sleeping camp for the Wet.

The camp consisted of a tent-fly, extended verandah-like behind the Quarters, open on three sides to the air and furnished completely with a movable four-legged wooden bunk: and surveying it with satisfaction, as the Willy-Willys danced about it, Dan reckoned it looked pretty comfortable. “No fear of catching cold, anyway,” he said, and meant it, having got down to the root of hygiene; for among Dan’s pet theories was the theory that “houses are fine things to catch cold in,” backing up the theory by adding: “Never slept in one yet without getting a cold.”

The camp fixed up, Dan found himself among the unemployed, and, finding the Măluka had returned to station books and the building of that garden fence, and that Jack had begun anew his horse-breaking with a small mob of colts, he envied them their occupation.

“Doing nothing’s the hardest job I ever struck,” he growled, shifting impatiently from shade to shade, and dratting the flies and dust; and even sank so low as to envy the missus her house.

“Gives her something to do cleaning up after Willy-Willys,” he growled further, and in desperation took to outracing Willy-Willys—“so the missus ’ull have a bit of time for pitching,” and was drawn into the wood-heap gossip, until Jack provided a little incidental entertainment in the handling of a “kicker.”

But Jack and the missus had found occupation of greater interest than horse-breaking, gossiping, or spring cleaning—an occupation that was also affording Dan a certain amount of entertainment, for Jack was “wrestling with book-learning,” which Dan gave us to understand was a very different thing from “education.”

“Still it takes a bit of time to get the whole mob properly broken in,” he said, giving Jack a preliminary caution. Then, the first lesson over, he became interested in the methods of handling the mob.

“That’s the trick, is it? You just put the yearlings through the yard, and then tackle the two-year-olds.” he commented, finding that after a run through the Alphabet we had settled down to the first pages of Bett-Bett’s discarded Primer.

Jack, having “roped all the two-year-olds” in that first lesson, spent all evening handling them, and the Quarters looked on as he tested their tempers, for although most proved willing, yet a few were tricky or obstinate. All evening he sat, poring over the tiny Primer, amid a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes, with the doggedness all gone from his face, and in its place the light of a fair fight, and, to no one’s surprise, in the morning we heard that “all the two-year-olds came at his call.”

Another lesson at the midday spell roped most of the three-year-olds, and another evening brought them under the Quiet Stockman’s will, and then in a few more days the four-year-olds and upwards had been dealt with, and the Primer was exhausted.

“Got through with the first draught, anyway,” Dan commented, and, no Second Book being at our service we settled down to Kipling’s “Just-So Stories.” Then the billabong “petering out” altogether, and the soakage threatening to follow suit, its yield was kept strictly for personal needs, and Dan and the Măluka gave their attention to the elements.

“Something’s got to happen soon,” they declared, as we gasped in the stifling calm that had now settled down upon the Territory; for gradually the skirmishings had ceased, and the two great giants of the Territory element met in the centre of the arena for their last desperate struggle. Knee to knee they were standing, marvellously well matched this year, each striving his utmost, and yet neither giving nor taking an inch; and as they strove their satellites watched breathlessly.

Even the Willy-Willys had lain down to watch the silent struggle, and Dan, finding himself left entirely without occupation, “feared he would be taking to book-learning soon if something didn’t happen!” “Never knew the showers so late,” he growled; and the homestead was inclined to agree that it was the “dead-finish”; but remembering that even then our Fizzer was battling through that last stage of the Dry, we were silent, and Dan remembering also, devoted himself to the “missus,” she being also a person of leisure now the Willy-Willys were at rest.

For hours we pitched near the restful green of the melon-beds, and as we pitched the Măluka ran fencing wires through two sides of the garden fence, while Tiddle’ums and Bett-Bett, hovering about him, adapted themselves to the new order of things, finding the line the goats had to stop at no longer imaginary. And as the fence grew, Dan lent a hand here and there, the rejected and the staff indulged in glorious washing-days among the lilies of the Reach; Cheon haunted the vegetable patch like a disconsolate ghost; while Billy Muck, the rainmaker, hovered bat-like over his melons, lending a hand also with the fence when called upon. As Cheon mourned, his garden also mourned, but when the melons began to mourn, at the Măluka’s suggestion, Billy visited the Reach with two buckets, and his usual following of dogs, and after a two-mile walk gave the melons a drink.

Next day Billy Muck pressed old Jimmy into the service and, the Reach being visited twice, the melons received eight buckets of water Then Cheon tried every wile he knew to secure four buckets for his garden. “Only four,” he pleaded, lavish in his bribes. But Billy and Jimmy had “knocked up longa a carry water,” and Cheon watched them settle down to smoke, on the verge of tears. Then a traveller coming in with the news that heavy rain had fallen in Darwin—news gleaned from the gossiping wire—Cheon was filled with jealous fury at the good fortune of Darwin, and taunted Billy with rain-making taunts. “If he were a rain-maker,” he taunted, “he would make a little when he wanted it, instead of walking miles with buckets,” and the taunts rankling in Billy’s royal soul, he retired to the camp to see about it.

“Hope he does the trick,” the traveller said, busy unpacking his team. “Could do with a good bath fairly soon.” But Dan cautioned him to “have a care,” settling down in the shade to watch proceedings. “These early showers are a bit tricky,” he explained, “can’t tell how long they’ll last. Heard of a chap once who reckoned it was good enough for a bath, but by the time he’d got himself nicely soaped the shower was travelling on ten miles a minute, and there wasn’t another drop of rain for a fortnight, which wasn’t too pleasant for the prickly heat.”

The homestead rubbed its back in sympathy against the nearest upright, and Dan added that “of course the soap kept the mosquitoes dodged a bit,” which was something to be thankful for. “There generally is something to be thankful for, if you only reckon it out,” he assured all. But the traveller, reduced to a sweltering prickliness by his exertions, wasn’t “noticing much at present,” as he rubbed his back in his misery against the saddle of the horse he was unpacking. Then his horse, shifting its position, trod on his foot; and as he hopped round, nursing his stinging toes, Dan found an illustration for his argument. “Some chaps,” he said, “ ’ud be thankful to have toes to be trod on”; and ducking to avoid a coming missile, he added cheerfully, “But there’s even an advantage about having wooden legs at times. Heard once of a chap that reckoned ’em just the thing. Trod on a death-adder unexpected-like in his camp, and when the death-adder whizzed round to strike it, just struck wood, and the chap enjoyed his supper as usual that night. That chap had a wooden leg,” he added, unnecessarily explicit; and then his argument being nicely rounded off, he lent a hand with the pack-bags.

The traveller filled in Dan’s evening, and Neaves’ mate coming through next day, gave the Quarters a fresh start and then just before that sundown we felt the first breath of victory from the monsoon—just a few cool, gusty puffs of wind, that was all, and we ran out to enjoy them, only to scurry back into shelter, for our first shower was with us. In pelting fury it rushed upon us out of the northwest, and rushing upon us, swept over us and away from us into the south-east, leaping from horizon to horizon in the triumph of victory.

As a matter of course, it left a sweltering awfulness behind it, but it was a promise of better things; and even as Dan was inquiring with a chuckle “whether that chap in the Quarters had got a bath out of it,” a second pelting fury rushed over us, filling Cheon’s heart with joy, and Billy with importance. Unfortunately it did not fill the water-butts with water, but already the garden was holding up its head, and Billy was claiming that he had scored a win.

“Well?” he said, waylaying Cheon in the garden, “Well, me rainmaker? Eh?” and Cheon’s superstitious heart bowed down before such evidence.

A ten-minutes’ deluge half an hour later licked up every grain of dust, filled the water-butts to overflowing, brought the insect pest to life as by magic, left a shallow pool in the heart of the billabong, and added considerably to Billy’s importance. Had not Brown of the Bulls come in during that ten-minutes’ deluge, Cheon would probably have fallen to offering sacrifices to Billy. As it was, he could only load him with plum-cake, before turning his attention to the welcoming of Brown of the Bulls.

“What was the boss drover’s fancy in the way of cooking?” he inquired of the missus, bent on his usual form of welcome, and the boss drover, a great burly Queenslander, with a voice as burly as his frame, answered for himself with a laughing “Vegetables! and as many as you think I’ve room for.” Then, as Cheon gravely measured his inches with his eye, a burly chuckle shook the boss drover’s great frame as he repeated: “Just as many as you think I can hold,” adding in half apology: “been away from women and vegetables for fifteen months.”

“That’s nothing,” we told him, quoting the man from Beyanst, but hopeful to find the woman placed first. Then acting on a hint from Cheon, we took him to the banana clump.

During the evening another five-minutes’ deluge gladdened our hearts, as the “lavender” bugs and other sweet pests of the Territory insect pest saddened our bodies.

Soon after breakfast-time Happy Dick was across “To see how you’ve fared,” he said, and then, to the diversion of Brown of the Bulls, Cheon and Happy Dick rejoiced together over the brimming water-butts, and mourned because the billabong had not done better, regretting the while that the showers were so “patchy.”

Then while Happy Dick was assuring us that “both Warlochs were bankers,” the Sanguine Scot rode in through the slip-rails at the North track, waving his hat in greeting and with Bertie and Bertie’s Nellie tailing along behind him.

“Back again!” Mac called, light-hearted as a schoolboy just escaped from drudgery, while Bertie’s Nellie, as a matter of course, was overcome with ecstatic giggles.

With Mac and the showers with us, we felt there was little left to wish for, and told Brown of the Bulls that he might now prepare to enjoy himself, and with a chuckle of anticipation Brown “hoped” the entertainment would prove “up to samples already met with,” as he could “do with a little enjoyment for a change.”