CAMP LIFE.
Next day we all set to on my place. I solemnly allowed Terry the honour
of cutting the first lawyer-bush on it. We found it fairly easy going,
and, after getting a start, I kept on with the brushing, while the other
two commenced falling. They bogged in to such good purpose that I had
hard work to keep ahead of them, and by sun-down there was pretty well
an acre brushed and felled, and my heart swelled as I looked at it with
a feeling of achievement. I really had made a start!
After this my two mates went on working on Terry's place and I on mine,
being now fairly well qualified to use a brush-hook; we met at meals,
and of course at night. I would be working away, not doing too bad, but
thinking I was doing double it, when I'd hear Terry's jovial yell,
"She's off, boys; she's off!"
Then away I would go twenty chains or so to where they were working, to
find them just making a start. There's an attractive sort of picnicky
atmosphere about these al-fresco repasts in the bush. There is the fire
in front of us, to be carefully stamped out afterwards; the sooty billy
full of tea, with a palatable little tang of wood smoke in it, stands
near-by. We, each seated on a bit of bag, or our hat, lean comfortably
against the spurs of the handiest tree, the overhanging dense foliage
making pleasant shade. In front the fresh-fallen scrub sends forth its
characteristic pleasant, sweetish smell. If you are on the side of a
hill, you catch a glimpse, over your falling, of miles of rolling
scrub--a tangle of all shades of green--with perhaps the blue hills in
the far background. We have been working hard, and have appetites that
many "townies," having forgotten what it is like to be naturally,
healthily hungry, refer to as savage or voracious. Our digestions might
be worth a million dollars to the dyspeptic Rockefeller. Ergo, our beef
and damper are food of the gods, and the black billy tea is pure nectar.
Presently the vacuums (abhorred alike by man and nature) being
comfortably filled, we lay back and lazily smoke for a few minutes,
watching the white Trade clouds sail majestically overhead. The snoring
breeze fans our faces refreshingly; there are no mosquitoes in this
favoured place to worry us; it is good to be alive. Then turn to again
with a will, slog away till dusk, and so home to the old barn. If you
feel like it, run down to the little flat on the creek, where Braun made
a garden long ago, and various vegetables are running wild, holding
their own with the weeds in this generous climate. We can always get a
pumpkin, cucumber, or some chokoes and beans. Then tea, yarn and smoke,
perhaps a game of crib; turn in, read a bit, if not too tired; lights
out, and a chorus of snores till morning.
This is in fine weather, like that first week I spent at the barn. When
wet, like the succeeding month, well--that's a cow of another colour
entirely. You go out grumbling, get wet through almost at once, and have
to tramp back home for lunch. You spend half your time picking dozens of
bloated leeches off yourself. Every rotten log you touch leaves a legacy
of microscopic scrub-itch parasites on you, which drive you nearly
frantic at night, until you bathe yourself in kerosene. The sky is a
uniform sheet of grey; the trees become a dismal sage-green, half-hidden
by the grey rain squalls drifting across the clearing. A dank weeping
fog settles down 'tween squalls, which drifts in and wets everything.
You are wet through, your pants cling coldly and stiffly, like canvas,
and all is misery. Home at night, and the wood is damp and burns badly,
emitting volumes of stinging smoke, which an erratic breeze blows back
in clouds into the main room--to hang about in clouds impossible to
dissipate. Your "nap" is clammy and uninviting. Everything feels sticky,
as if wet sugar had touched it, and your best boots get covered with a
green moss. But it's an ill wind, etc., and the neighbouring cow cockies
screech with joy to see the grass grow an inch a day, as it can do up
here, while their collective Strawberry likens herself unto a barrel of
generous proportions, and her udder swells beyond the (cocky's) dreams
of avarice.
Frogs are a bit of a nuisance sometimes. They have a habit of coming
into the camp o' nights, and often you wake with a start as something
clammy and cold comes plop on your face or chest. Going out at night
with a hurricane lamp, you tread on dozens. You can always tell when you
tread on a frog. He goes "pop," like a cork coming out of a bottle.
There are countless millions of them, all sizes and colours, from the
great black fellow as big as your boot down to the beautiful little
light green tree-frog, about the size of the top joint of your little
finger. He's a handsome little chap, with two narrow myrtle-green
stripes down the back, red gold shining eyes, and queer little
spatulated fingers and toes.
We took it in turns to be cook of the mess, and a hell of a mess I did
cook up, my first attempt at damper. However, I got into the way of it,
and was soon a fair cook, even rising to the height of boiled puddings
occasionally. Saturdays were washing days, and the three of us would
knock off at dinner time, go down to the clear rushing creek, strip,
have a "bogie," and wash the discarded change before donning the clean
duds. Afterwards one of us would tramp two miles or so to where the
storekeeper's cart came out, for the week's tucker. Sometimes he didn't
come, and that meant a weary tramp of ten miles into the township, and a
still wearier tramp back again, with perhaps a thirty-pound load slung
on your shoulders, arriving back after dark, utterly deadbeat, covered
in mud from various and frequent falls. Queer how soon one learns to
pick up a track. I used to wonder at first how blokes found their way
round in day-time in the scrub; yet in three weeks or so behold your
humble servant cautiously picking his way along a pad in the scrub at
night, and getting through all right. It's a fool's game though in the
dark, for if an old man carpet snake happens to be in your road, and you
step on him, well--you'll get hurt!
I had a narrow squeak once. It was pitch dark, and I had just crawled
through a slip-rail, making for a pad to Braun's, when I brought up all
standing, with my outstretched hands on a horse's rump. Braun had come
out on a visit to his place, and it was his frisky young colt that had
poked his way through the scrub trying to get back. If that happened a
hundred times, in ninety-nine the bloke would be kicked to death before
he could say "knife." I was the lucky one.
[Illustration: I had some 20 acres brushed, and two or three felled.]
I went on working for about six weeks, by which time I had some twenty
acres brushed and two or three felled--not so bad for a new hand. Then
one day I had a good long think over my affairs. It was mid-May, and my
licence to occupy would not be issued before September. Until I had that
document I would not be able to borrow from the Agricultural Bank, and
my slender resources were reduced to about L20. Right here I made one of
the biggest mistakes in my life. I ought to have stayed on, working away
and cutting expenses (one could live very comfortably on ten shillings a
week those times); then in July gone down to the sugar mills below the
range in the Mulgrave Valley, coming back at the end of the year to burn
off, with a good cheque in my pocket, never being more than twenty miles
away. Instead of that, I came to the decision to go South and get away
to sea again for six months or so. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything
about the Mills, and didn't like to palm myself off as an expert mill
hand. I thought even the "rat-gangers" had to be skilled men. Afterwards
I was one of a rat-gang myself for a while, and found one only had to be
expert at "dodging Pompey." However, I had to learn by experience, so I
let a contract to young Len to fall what I had brushed at thirty-five
shillings an acre, paid him L16 in advance as _bona fides_, and the
end of May found me in Townsville, dead broke, wondering if I'd have to
tramp the way down to Newcastle, and how the devil I was to earn the
cash to pay Len for the balance of my falling.