No Money—Sleeping Out—Bushed!—The Stockman’s Shanty

Stranded in Brisbane without a cent I slept down on the wharfs and sometimes curled my half-starved body up by the warm funnel of the deep-sea tramp boats. I will not weary you with the details of those days and nights, excepting to tell you that hundreds of English boys, and the pluckiest boys of your country too, go through all that I went through in the land of the Golden Fleece. I was soon in rags, sunburnt and miserable. I mixed with English and Colonial tramps, some good men and some no good; most of them wore shaggy beards and others tried to keep shaved and had forgotten their names in the attempt to lose their identity—sad “ne’er-do-wells” of the civilised world, who had hurried across the world to save their necks or preserve their liberty!

It is wonderfully easy to sink into the depths of Failure’s Hell. The human relics that make up the sad side of existence are fascinating folk, full of sarcastic wit and most of them of a sentimental turn of mind, and strange as it may seem, deep in their hearts better men than those who climb the heights of ambition on one leg—instead of crawling up on all-fours and dying of old age half-way up.

I remember one night while we were all sitting huddled in our rags round the funnel of the English Mail Boat, one old chap (at least he seemed old to me as I was only fifteen years of age) would sit by moonlight reading and writing poetry. He had fine eyes, and he and I got interested in each other, and I found out gradually that he was a University man, who in a moment of mental aberration had signed a cheque and passed it. He had travelled the South Seas, lived in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, could quote all the poets and as far as I was able to judge wrote beautiful poems. When he read one of them to me, inspired by memories of his boyhood, I was quite touched and he noticed it by my eyes, and I with my impulsive temperament could have kissed that sad old mouth as the beautiful words trembled out of it and his face lit up to find that at last in the cold old world he had found an appreciative listener. Out of the big tail pocket of his ragged coat he pulled a dirty old bundle which was all of his poetic work. He read all the poems to me; the longer ones I could not understand, as they were on Greek subjects, but nevertheless I listened attentively, and now that I am older I thank God that I did. We slept for nights and nights in a wharf dust-bin together, and one night I waited and waited and he never came. I know he would have come if he were able to. I never saw him again; he and his poetry left me for ever—God bless him wherever he is.

After that I spent days and days trying to get a berth on one of the homebound ships, but there were so many looking for the same post that I gave it up as hopeless and eventually got a job in a tanning yard where they cured sheep and cow skins. Even after all these years I can still smell that yard under the tropic sun and the terrible odours of advanced putrefaction. My wages were thirty-five shillings a week. I stayed just three weeks, got my violin out of pawn and started fiddling on the public streets. After the second day I chummed in with an Italian harp-player. He taught me a lot of fine Italian melodies, and in a week we were the talk of Queensland capital. I used to stand by his side at night when all the streets were lighted up and put my whole soul into my playing as I thought of my proud old father and my sisters, and then with my big-rimmed Australian hat in my hand bowed to the street audience as they shied in the silver pieces. In two weeks I had eight pounds in my pocket, and as it always does happen, and will happen till the world ends, when I went to the post office there was a letter from home with four five-pound notes in it! How I would have jumped to get that a week before; but my heart was touched nevertheless by those kindly hands and tender thoughts across the world, heedful of my welfare.

Bidding my wizened dark-eyed old Italian harpist “Good-bye,” I made for the bush, and travelled north. I had a comrade with me. He was not a bad fellow—hailed from the East End of London, was utterly devoid of romance, and swore fearfully. As we slept out in the bush at night I cheered him up by playing the fiddle, till we both lay down side by side, our feet towards the camp fire, and slept.

I shall never forget that bush tramp. For three weeks we toiled along, our swags on our backs, from steep to steep, and from plain to plain, nothing but vast solitude and sweltering silence broken at intervals by the fleets of large parrots migrating across the tropic skies; as they passed overhead we would hear their dismal mutterings, till their curling wings faded away over the gum clumps on the everlasting skylines of the oceans of hills and plains around us.

Brisbane was about one hundred miles away. Day after day we continued our voyage across those everlasting seas of grey scrub and rock. The tropic sun belching down with full vigour raised blisters as big as soap bubbles on our bare necks; they would often burst and bring us great relief. Our supplies were running short, and we had got off the track and were completely bushed! The stiff bush grass tore the ends of our trouser legs completely away, and we looked terrible scarecrows, and got thin too. Often we would climb the highest steeps and gaze around in the hope of seeing some sign of human habitation. We were indeed two sad castaways on seas of desolation, moving slowly onward on sore feet under the tropic sun. As we sat by our camp fire at night my comrade would curse me for bringing him to such a God-forsaken country, indeed all my own valour vanished as we lay curled together in the darkness of that endless bush and heard the dingo’s wail as its creeping feet explored the waste far away.

One night, over the hills far off on the skyline, regiments of ragged gum-trees suddenly burst into view, as up crept the white Australian moonrise. We sat up and stared into each other’s eyes for company. I shall never forget the terror that made our teeth chatter. I gripped my revolver (I had bought it and a tin of one hundred cartridges before starting off from Brisbane). There far away on the steeps, like a monstrous human shadow, moved something, leaping from steep to steep like some ghastly spring-heeled Jack. The perspiration rolled down our faces. We were both speechless as we stood up and gazed at that terrible sight. Instinctively we clutched each other, as that terrible Aboriginal came towards us; up went our trembling hands in the moonlight. We shook visibly as we leaned against each other for support, and fired the six chambers of our revolvers in rapid succession. The hills echoed and re-echoed that cannonade; the enemy fell and we fainted! I poured some water down my comrade’s throat and half raised him up.

At daybreak, crestfallen and miserable that we had killed it, my chum and I buried the fallen enemy, a poor old man kangaroo!

Two days after that incident we were both hard at work pulling pumpkins and stacking straw on the cleared bush ground of a shanty. The stockman was a good fellow, he treated us kindly and rigged us both out in decent trousers. I had fine times at that lonely bush homestead. The stockman’s wife took a great fancy to me, and they would sit together by their shanty door, after the day’s work, and listen to my playing on the violin as though an angel had fallen from the clouds specially to entertain them. They had three little girls, plump little sunburnt girls too. They all loved me. How they romped with me, and how they cried when I went away! The stockman’s wife shed tears, and the old fellow’s voice sounded husky as he wished me “Good luck,” and those three little girls, with their bright eyes, wet with tears, are still looking up into my boyish sunburnt face, and their dear little hands still wave on the ridge of the steep as I ride away for ever, fading from their sight.

My companion got work on another station and found another comrade more suitable to his temperament than I. He swore that I was mad.