WARDSMAN AND DECKHAND.
At the beginning of February I took up my duties as wardsman at the
hospital. The young lady, who had been patiently waiting some ten years
or so for me in Melbourne, had written to say that she thought we would
be better struggling along together, and she was willing to rough it
with me, even if she had to live in a tent. So I told her to have all
ready for New Year, 1915, and in the meantime I would devote the whole
of 1914 to making a cheque.
With this end in view I would do the light graft at the hospital until
the end of May, then, conquering the feeling of dislike, go down to the
Richmond again, and try for a job as deckhand aboard one of the tugboats
hauling punts of cane up and down the river--technical work, not too
hard and well paid. So I communicated with the manager at the mill,
explaining that I was a fully qualified sailorman, and received a reply
that if I would guarantee to stop the full season he would guarantee me
a berth. So that was all right.
I soon fell in with the hospital routine, though continued close
companionship with sickness, and sometimes death, had a depressing
effect on my sensitive, rather highly-strung nerves.
We always had a Chinaman or two, and it made my gorge rise to see the
pretty white nurses attending to some of the specimens, though the
washing of 'em fell to me (ugh!). I remember one dreadful old morphia
fiend, about seventy, who was brought in dying, and who passed out next
day. I was detailed to watch him die, and perform the necessary offices
immediately after death, but being called away for a few minutes, I
missed his actual passing. When I returned he was lying there, his
glassy eyes, shrivelled monkey face and dropped jaws, exposing the long
yellow decayed fangs, making a perfectly dreadful sight; and even in
that minute or two the horrible flies----. God! the mere sound of a
blowfly has made me feel sick ever since then.
There was another old fellow named Ah Chi who also passed out, and in
connection with whose death the matron made a peculiar "mistake in
identity." His son had told her to ring up No. 16 when old Ah Chi passed
in his checks. She rang up No. 60--a business house presided over by a
gentleman named Archibald Davidson. I imagine his surprise, and
presumably pleasure, on hearing through the telephone a sweet feminine
voice, "Is that Archie?" One could imagine the said Archie tumbling over
himself to do the polite, and wondering if he should address the fair
unknown as "Yes, pet; you're the one."
The sweet voice continues: "Hospital. Matron speaking. Look here,
Archie; your father died last night, and as the weather's so hot you'd
better make arrangements for the funeral at once."
Quoth Archie: "What the devil are you talking about, madame?"
"W-why, isn't that Ah Chi, Chinatown?"
"Good Lord, no! This is Davidson, Messrs. Blank and Co." Collapse of
matron.
I had to sit by the bedside of more than one alien watching them die;
mostly at night, for the reason that, if they possibly can, they will
get up and try to crawl away somewhere just before their passing. An
unpleasant job, sitting waiting, like a ghoul or a vulture, and trying
not to seem impatient.
None of us objected to attending the little Japs, though. They were
always scrupulously clean, and, though nobody save a fool wants to see
many of them knocking round here, yet they are real men one can respect,
aye! and like--in their own country.
Every week saw fresh scrub-falling accident cases brought in. One in
particular ought to be recorded, as showing that peace hath her heroes
as well as war. An old chap, aged about sixty, scrub-falling by himself,
had a tree jump back at him, jambing his foot and grinding it to pulp.
He tied a bit of string round below the shin, cut off the bits of foot
still dangling, and then crawled two miles through the scrub to a road.
The cream cart passed shortly, outward bound.
"What's up, Bill?"
"Oh, had a bit of an accident" (he had his coat over the leg). "Pick me
up when you come back. Y'll only be about twenty minutes or so, eh? Oh,
well, I can last double that," and he lit his pipe.
Old Buckboard whipped his nags to a canter, and got back in less than
the quarter-hour. Then he saw the injury.
"Christ!" he said; "if I'd seen that, their bloomin' cream cud a' gone
t'ell."
"Yes, I know," said old Bill. "That's why I didn't show it yer."
After it was fixed up at the hospital, the doctor was sympathising with
him.
"'S all right, Doc," he broke in; "I'll be savin' footgear now."
The weeks passed on, and I, being personally associated with the rest of
the staff, saw things that the casual patient never heeds. For instance,
the gentle, patient nurses, never out of temper, always calm, cool and
prompt. No complaints, despite the comparatively meagre pay and long
hours; the querulous complaints of sick men, made irritable by long
hours of pain, passing over them like water off a duck's back, or to be
met with a cheerful smile, and a "Well, now, cheer up; it's not that
bad, I'm sure." Only when off duty and "done up" does the mask drop a
little. And mighty little real gratitude they get from the average
patient, or thanks either, beyond a few conventional phrases.
Just before I left the hospital there came tragedy to my selection. Old
Paddy and a mate were falling my road, the council having decided to
fall all roads adjacent to cleared selections, and the son of a
neighbouring selector, a lad some twelve years old, used to bring their
tucker out to them. On this occasion the lad had stopped to watch them
let a big drive go, although they had told him to trot along. Paddy's
mate was at work on the driver, while he himself was brushing round
their next drive.
A call: "Look out, Paddy; she's crackin'."
Paddy trotted along to the boy, who was astride a slow old mare that
wouldn't get a move on. "Come on, kid. Git a bit further off. Told yer
t' git outer this before."
A wild yell: "She's comin' back! Run, man, run!! Oh, Gord! the boy!"
The lad dug his heels into the mare's ribs, but she only shook her head,
and started a slow walk. Paddy made a jump for him, caught him round the
waist, and tried to drag him out of the saddle. Too late. Next second
the tree caught the boy across the shoulders, drove him into the horse,
and both into the earth, Paddy being thrown to one side with but a few
bruises and scratches. Imagine the feelings of the poor mother!
Outwardly though she took it like a Spartan; but it was no surprise that
when her baby was born, five months later, she went West without an
effort to hold on to life, heart-broken. May her soul find rest! Make no
mistake; the slain trees can, and do, often get their revenge.
I left the hospital towards the end of May, all square, and with enough
over to get to the Richmond, where I had to show up by 25th June. I saw
the Lands Commissioner to obtain permission to leave my selection for a
short while.
"That's all right," he said. "So long as it's bona fide wage-earning,
and we know where you are, we don't penalise a selector with a good
record. Drop me a post card once a month, and you can stop away till the
end of the year." I thanked him and promised.
Next day I was on the "briny" en route for Brisbane; had rather a stormy
passage down. I paid a duty call to the Lands Office, and informed them
I was highly satisfied, and into the willing ears of several reporters
poured a glowing account of the district, which duly appeared in next
day's papers.
I went by train to Lismore, and on to Broadwater by boat, and I enjoyed
the interesting boat trips up the Tweed and down the Richmond. I got to
Broadwater about 6 p.m. on a dismal day pouring with rain, to find a
strike on and the mill hung up. I won't say anything about the strike,
but, well--a pound a week and tucker isn't much, now is it? I had cut
things rather fine--in fact I had only about five shillings left; so I
interviewed the manager, who gave me permission to camp in the barracks
along with a couple of decent blokes who came regularly from Sydney each
year, and who, being like myself under an award, didn't join the strike
camp.
They remembered me. "Hello, Senex, you here again?"
"Yes; and damn near broke, too."
"Cripes! You're not the only pebble on the beach. We are, too."
"Well, what are you going to do about tucker?" said I.
"Reckon the best thing we can do is to have what you sailor blokes call
a tarpaulin muster," said Jim. "What you got, Bill?"
Bill turned out his pockets. "Oh! seven and a sprat."
Jim had eight bob, and I five and six. By combining our resources and
buying cheap stuff "in bulk" we lived eight days on that lot, till the
strike finished and work started. Jim had built a fish trap, which was
mainly responsible for our success, the river teeming with fish of all
sorts. I was duly appointed deckhand on one of the tugs, powerfully
engined but slightly ancient. The bloke in charge was rather a martyr to
liver complaint, but he was ordinarily so decent that one could easily
be tactful, and pass over the livery bouts. The engineer was German, but
when the war started he became "Hanoverian"--as indeed I believe he was,
only he didn't say so before. Not at all a bad sort, but apt to lose his
head when things went wrong.
We'd be toddling along with a string of empty punts astern, when the
regulation "doodlum-clink" would suddenly change to a series of terrific
bangs. A wail of despair from below. "It's der whackum (vacuum) agin!"
Then would we tie up to the handiest wharf and effect repairs, with much
banging of hammers and clashing of tools thrown angrily about. Next day,
perhaps, we would haul a punt off a shallow place, stirring up much mud.
A few minutes later a powerful smell of burning rubber, and loud oaths
in a strong German accent, would apprise us of another disaster. Up
would come the "sheaf," tearing his hair and dancing on his cap. "What's
wrong, Franz?" says our skipper, with that quietly sarcastic attitude
which is more maddening than a blow.
"Blitzen und picklehaubes! Der Cotdom gon-denzer iss choged vit zand!!"
"Well, clear the damn thing then. What'r'ye makin' such a fuss for?"
"But der rupper backing iss burnt!" with much gesticulation.
"Well," says the skipper, with a disgusted look. "Want me to give you
one o' m' boots to mend it with? Put a new bit of rubber in!"
Franz, not apparently having thought of it before, dives below again,
and we wait until the orgy of oaths, bangs, thumps and thumb-smashings
has ceased, and he comes up again, wiping his brow, to inform us that
"she's all right now till someting eless goes."
But it was always the "whackum," and it "went" pretty often, in fact
nearly every day for a month, and Franz talked wildly of "shucking his
yob." This statement roused old Tom (the skipper) to ribald contumely.
"What! You 'shuck' your 'yob.' Why! a bloomin' charge of dynamite
wouldn't shift you, and you know it, and" (with bitter emphasis) "you
can't stuff me with that, old 'shap.'"
At last one day Franz's bete noir broke so badly that we were left
alongside a downstream wharf for ten hours while he took the whole
caboodle up to the mill in a launch, to be properly seen to. After that
it went all right. Time passed quickly, the work was interesting, even
the deckhand's job calling for the exercise of some brains and
common-sense, and I averaged about L12 a month right through.
It was a bitter satire on deep sea life. When I was mate of an 8000-ton
steamer I got L10 and find my own uniform, instruments, etc., and had a
position to live up to. Here, deckhand on a little tub we could have
carried on our poop, I was actually banking more than my pay as mate, no
position to keep up, and, having no responsibility, sleeping well at
night!
We sometimes came up late, and the river on a fine night is really
beautiful. We brought up the last load of the season on 22nd January,
1915, and the same night I took passage in the "Brundah" for Sydney,
with about L60 in my pocket. She was due at Broadwater at 10 p.m., and I
went up to old Tom's place to bid him good-bye.
At nine o'clock we heard a siren. "Hello, she's before her time. Hurry
up, Charlie." She had just cast off when I reached the wharf, so I
chartered a trap and drove hell for leather through a pelting rain storm
to Wardell. I tumbled into the ferry skiff, tipped the boatman to put me
alongside the "Brundah," scrambled frantically aboard, to find--she was
going to tie-up till daylight. In due course we left the river, arrived
in Sydney after a rather stormy passage, and thus ended the second stage
of my journey.