SCRUB LIFE.
Next day I was up with the sun to see what my burn was like, Terry
O'Gorman having let my place go when he burnt a fortnight before. I was
assured that I had a good burn, but when I saw the black waste,
gridironed with logs and strewn with big stumps, I was a bit dismayed.
What on earth could I do with it to make a living? It looked pretty
hopeless.
I tried to get a fire going round some of the big stumps, but, of
course, they wouldn't burn, being too green. When I looked at the place,
and thought how many years it would be before it was clear of refuse, it
made me feel despairing. Of course, I know now that I had a really good
burn, and was lucky, and that in five years I would be able to plough
patches, with no other effort than dropping a match here and there, when
the logs had rotted a bit; but experience has to be learned. I tried
digging a patch, but that was hopeless, the ground being a network of
roots, almost impossible to dig among; so I gave that up too. I could
have planted corn easy enough; but then, even if the roads had been
decent, the price of haulage to the station would have been more than
the crop would fetch; so there was nothing to do but sow grass in the
clearing. Plenty of rain lately had brought Braun's paddock into seed,
and I set to work to reap it. A week's work gave me more than enough to
sow my burn.
Of course, I made a botch of the sowing at first, putting on about five
times as much as was necessary, but soon got the hang of it, and a
week's work finished it, a faint green sheen down on the creek showing
that the seed was good and fertile. Then I got to work on a creek flat
where the silt was piled high over the maddening roots, and got a number
of vegetable seeds put in. All sorts of garden truck here grow
prolifically, almost without cultivation. Terry and Len finished sowing
the former's place same time as I did, and next day proposed a trip out
to the Range by way of a holiday. As I hadn't been there I was eager to
go.
The track lay through dense scrub all the way, being an old road well
made forty years ago, and disused for a decade. It was used hauling
cedar out to the Range, with a view to shooting it down the mountain
side to the Mulgrave River, down which it would be rafted to the sea. As
they salved only about one log in twenty the scheme didn't pay, so was
abandoned, and the road, with its bridges and box-cuttings, went to
ruin. We tramped along and, in an hour or so, saw, as through an open
door at the end of the avenue of scrub, the sunlit grass of the open
forest at the range head, and a glimpse of a gum tree or two. Presently
we were waist deep in the lush grass, clambering over the mouldering
cedar logs lying there by the score, with the scent of the gums strong
in our nostrils, and the shrilling of the cicadas nearly deafening us. A
few minutes more and we were standing among gigantic granite boulders,
looking down at such a glorious view as I had never seen before.
The Trade wind was snoring strong on this exposed position, and there
was a champagne-like exhilaration about the slightly rarified,
gum-scented air which set us laughing and romping like school-kids. The
Range went almost sheer down 2000 feet or more to the Mulgrave Valley at
our feet. On the other side, facing us, stretched a heavily timbered
range of mountains. At each end to right and left was a glimpse of blue
sea, and in the background to the extreme right the blue mass of Bartle
Frere, Queensland's highest mountain. Winding along the valley floor ran
the narrow violet ribbon of river, flecked with white here and there,
where were rapids. I found it hard to realise that those low bushes were
really tall trees, and that that narrow blue streak of water was half a
mile wide in places. I think one could notice a man moving on the white
sandbanks, the atmosphere is so clear. Away to the left, where the
valley opened out, could be seen the chess-board of cultivated
canefields, with Gordon Vale and its mill embosomed among them. Further
still, a bit of Cairns, the Inlet and the blue sea, with a tiny speck or
two on it, which close investigation showed to be steamers entering or
leaving the port.
The Range, steep as it is, is clothed from foot to summit with grass and
timber. The ground is gravelly; the formation free granitic. There is
plenty of water there, as elsewhere on the tableland. We shot a couple
of scrub turkeys (megapodii) on our way home. Good enough eating but
gamey, and one soon tires of them. They are about as big as a good-sized
rooster. I'd never go after them with a shot-gun unless I was really
hungry. When started off the ground the poor wretches just make for the
handiest branch, and squat there. A shot-gun is plain murder, while a
pea rifle will give them a sporting chance, for if you miss they are off
a hundred yards or so to another branch, and one must want a change of
diet pretty badly before one will force a way through prickly
lawyer-vines after him.
Just before we turned into Braun's a huge cassowary, with three chicks,
stalked on to the track ahead. We stopped dead, and the beautiful bird
then hesitatingly came towards us with her slow, dainty step, and we had
a real good "dekko," as she turned her handsome blue and red head this
way and that, eyeing us with eager curiosity. Terry then said "Boo!" and
she was off like a shot. Not being "sports," not one of us had even
dreamed of raising the gun at her.
Christmas Day was at hand--beautifully fine. Last one I had spent making
up for Valparaiso before a howling Southerly; a tremendous sea was on,
and it was freezing cold.
Len took me in to his parents' place to spend the day, and I was
introduced to Dad, Mum, and a host of strapping brothers and sisters.
Dad was a fine-looking, middle-aged man, tall and spare, with short,
square-cut, sandy beard, thoughtful grey eyes, good-humoured smile,
and spoke concisely and deliberately, laying emphasis on every other
word, thus:--"_Well_, Mr. Senex, I am _delighted_ to _make_ your
_acquaintance_." He was a more or less self-educated, well read man, a
most interesting companion and a keen debater, though rather prone to
excitement in argument. Lastly, he was the most confirmed optimist I
have ever met. Mum was a handsome Junoesque blonde, sharp of eye and
tongue, distinctly the boss, and inclined to make the most of it. Rather
cold and hard perhaps, but kind-hearted enough. They were very good to
me in my early struggling days, and I was glad to accept their
ungrudging hospitality.
Christmas Day passed with the usual accompaniment of pudding and other
fairly solid comestibles, and I stopped there overnight, as a picnic had
been arranged for next day to go and see the famous Lake Barrine. The
day was bright and clear, and about twenty of us set out through the
dense scrub along a fairly good road. After an hour or two's march we
turned into a narrow pad, and presently saw a blue gleam through the
trees. It was a steep descent, and the first effect of the sight of the
lake was, queerly enough, that of looking right _up_ at it.
However, we were soon at the water's edge, and I got my first view of
the deep cobalt blue mere, lying calm and peaceful, embosomed in the
dense scrub.
It is about a square mile in extent, very pretty, dangerous to bathe in
if one is a poor swimmer, as the banks are steep and very deep (the
water being six feet deep only eight feet from the bank). It is locally
considered unfathomable, which probably means that a forty-fathom line
would bottom it. Still one could get comfortably drowned there. I have
heard enthusiasts compare these little lakes, Eacham, Barrine and
Euramoo, to the Irish Killarney, which is a wild absurdity, though the
lakes are pretty enough to be worth going to see. The three of them,
about three miles apart, are perched on the very lip of the Range, 2500
feet above sea-level, and are the craters of extinct volcanoes. Barrine
is blue, cheerful and bright; Eacham is green, cold and depressing, and
one has a feeling as of some dreadful Thing just below the surface,
waiting for one's foot to slip. Euramoo I haven't seen, though only a
mile or two away, since the scrub is impenetrable. The blacks think
these lakes "debil-debil," and won't go near them after sundown.
Our party boiled the billy, explored round a bit, played the usual
picnic games, and had a dip in the enticingly cool water. I, who can't
swim, in spite of my thirteen years at sea, cautiously kept within reach
of the overhanging shrubs growing close to the water. Then, as the cows
must be milked though the heavens fall, and those who had some to put
through were beginning to get restive, we packed up and wended our way
home again, I going straight out to the barn to be in trim for work next
day.
The next three weeks I worked at clearing a site for a house, planting
panicum grass on the creek banks, and attending to the vegetables,
which, with a few good rainy days, were looking well. The rainy season
burst on us early in January, and for nearly a fortnight it poured in a
steady, ceaseless torrent, drumming on the iron roof of the barn until
one had almost to shout to be heard. By mid-January my grass was a foot
high, pumpkins running all over the place, and I had about three
thousand cabbages coming on well, which I thought to make money out of
by and bye.
Terry and Len were timber-cutting on the former's place, in spite of the
wet. When it got really too bad, we stayed in the barn, played crib,
mended clothes, got axes and brush-hooks to a razor-like sharpness, and
so on. One thing about the wet weather was that it was warm, and it
didn't matter how soaked you got, so long as you wore the universal
short-sleeved grey flannel, and changed at once on coming home. You
could work then in the wet all day without ill-effect.