The Deserted Hut—Visiting in the Bush—Stockriders

There were a lot of lonely men in those days, tramping the ocean-wide bush lands, real helmless derelicts of humanity, as they staggered on the currents of luck into the stockman’s farm at sunset, wailed their pitiful tales of better days behind, mumbled their thanks over the tea and sugar given by a kindly hand for their billy-can, and tramped away once more into the solitude of gums and scrub. On and on they go that way till they die.

One afternoon, while we were both sitting under the shade of a gum clump out of the stare of the flashing eye of the sun, I noticed some white bones gleaming in the dried-up grass and scrub. It was the skeleton of some bushman; a rotten swag blanket lay under the white skull and the knee bones were drawn up to the chest, showing the way he died out there alone. As the white night mists crept over the hollows and the winds stirred the gums over that relic of loneliness, both sad at heart, we turned away and did not camp till we were miles away from that spot. The impression left after that sight hung on us for a long time.

Once we came across an old bush shanty by a river side. We crept in its little doorless room; through chinks overhead we saw the blue sky and the blossoms of wild vines that clung over the rotting roof. The old chair was still there velveted all over with grey moss, and the hearth was thick with bush flowers. On the wall still hung the photo of a young girl; the face though nearly faded away was a strikingly sweet one; we felt instinctively that some sorrow, some long-ago romance, was connected with that photograph. There was the mouldy bunk-bed wherein the bushman had slept, and outside under an old gum, surrounded by wattle bush in full bloom, was a grave, a small roughly made cross over it, and that told us all as we stood by it while the frogs chanted in the marsh just below. I can tell you that the sight of that tiny ancestral hall, rotting out there in the silence, and the grave hard by, affected me much more than if I had stood among the ruins of Imperial Rome.

A day or so after we arrived at the station, about twenty miles from Arrawatta, and both tired out fell asleep on a bank just below a stockman’s big wooden house and were both suddenly awakened by a loud, gruff, but kindly voice saying, “Hello, youngsters, would you like some tucker?” We sat up quickly and did not require any persuasion as that big bearded fellow astride his horse told us to follow him up the slope. When we arrived inside his wife had the table already laid; they had noticed us both asleep on the slope outside and there is no place in the world that can beat the colonial squatter for helping the bush wanderers who are down on their luck. By Jove! we did have a feed, and as my friend and I told the tall daughter, the squatter and his wife our adventures and all we had seen they seemed to admire our pluck and did all they could to cheer us up and invited us to stay the night, which we did. There was a vineyard on the next slope, and in a shed close by enormous bins full of the new season’s wine. I think we must have drunk about two quarts each; I know that it livened us up, and that night before going to bed we all sang and my comrade and I sang and played to them some homeland songs. They had a visitor over from the next ranch. He was an Irishman with merry blue eyes and a large pug nose. He owned the world’s largest feet; I never saw such feet, and though he got drunk and did step dances and jigs and swayed dangerously about, he never fell, for as soon as he lost his mental balance his feet came to the rescue; on them he swayed often with a terrible port or starboard list, but always just in the nick of time slowly righted himself. Irishmen are like Englishmen out in Australia. When they hear that you are from the “Old Country” out comes their hand and in a firm grip you are sworn friends. The Irishman will give you anything you ask for, will half undress himself and place his clothes on your back, even though you don’t want them; you are liable, however, to be sworn enemies at daybreak when the reaction sets in, but if you know the way to manage them they are soon smoothed over and you will find that you can keep about half of the clothes without further threats.

We were near the border line that separates New South Wales and Queensland then, and when we left next day we came across the drovers marching across the country behind their cattle, bound south I think. I can still see them in my mind as they passed away from us over the sweltering hot plains, sitting astride their horses and cracking their stock whips over their heads as the long ring of dancing flies that wheeled round and round their big-rimmed hats parted in two and then joined itself again, started to dine viciously off the eyes, necks and steam that rose from the stockrider and his steed. It’s not all honey (except for the flies), but nevertheless the bush drovers in their wild life on the plains have happy lives; always on the move, they camp, yarn, smoke and sing across the bushlands, always many miles away from the spot where they camped the night before, and they have supplied the Australian poets with any amount of inspired work in the songs of the bush and of the rollicking men of the plains.

About a week after seeing those drovers pass by we arrived at a place called “Bummer’s Creek” and stayed there for several days, helping Riley the boss to build some outhouses. There seemed a good many loafers hanging about that small township, for the Australian bush climate does not inspire men to work. We were offered two horses at five shillings each and I at once bought them. We sat astride, William and I, and proudly waving our hands bade the men of the township farewell as we started up the slope. I plied the stock whip and in less than half-an-hour we had almost travelled three hundred yards! I was not much of a judge of horse-flesh at that time, and I felt pretty wild at being so sucked in. Two of the bushmen crept up the slope and then suddenly discharged their revolvers close to the ears of those two horses of ours, and that seemed to wake them up and off we went! Before sunset we looked back and were out of sight of the township. I got terribly sore through the protruding backbone of that stubborn beast; sometimes William would dismount and laughing get behind and push it as its big eyes stared like soap bubbles with fright. I felt sorry for it though, especially when its underlip protruded as though through extreme nausea it yearned to be sick and couldn’t. My comrade’s horse was nearly as broken up as mine. We held a consultation together and decided to turn them adrift. Away they went across the bush that night; we saw their delighted tail stumps sticking up as they galloped across a patch of moonlight and disappeared and became wild horses of the boundless plains.