JOYFUL EXPERIENCES OF COW-COCKYING.
So I went in to interview the factory people. I had to go to the expense
of a new pair of boots for the occasion. I hadn't been wearing boots for
months, but could hardly go in in bare feet. I had to take shares in the
factory, and buy a separator--on terms; and right here is where I found
for the first time a use for the chest full of blocks I had brought up
to haul the scrub down with. I sold the lot to old Pardy for a fiver and
paid for my boots, deposit on shares and separator, and exes. in town
out of it. In due course the separator was brought out, in pieces on a
pack horse the last mile or so, and erected in the split slab dairy.
What an event the first separating was! What though I forgot to clean
the vaseline out of certain little holes and corners, and the cream
wouldn't pass through; that, in my anxiety to avoid turning too slow, I
went at eighty revolutions instead of sixty, and the final result hardly
covered the bottom of a gallon billy. We owned property! stock!!
machinery!!! and we washed up the glistening new parts afterwards with
pride and joy, which soon faded, by the way. And it rained, and kept on
raining--probably to make up for the drought. The moisture poured in
chilly streams through the rusty old iron roof of the bails, and
sometimes I got nearly as much rainwater as milk. The roads speedily
became bogs, and the creeks rose, and kept high for weeks. I was wet
through morning, noon and night, and everything in the house got damp
and mildewed. Boots looked, and smelt, like old bronze. Of course, we
wouldn't have been so miserable had we possessed a good big house, good
bails, yards, fences, and so forth; but these luxuries needed
cash--which I hadn't got, so I had to put up with makeshifts.
Braun was away somewhere and wouldn't fence his creek boundary. I
couldn't. So behold! when I stepped out in the dismal, grey, misty dawn
two cows would be in Braun's, one at Domino's Hill, two miles off one
way, one in O'Gorman's, and the others playing hide-and-seek over about
five hundred acres of overgrown, loggy paddock. The result was that I
was often only starting to milk at 10.30 a.m. In the afternoon it was
much the same. You would follow them up to see where they planted. Go
back to the place at 4 p.m. No sign of them. After an hour's search you
might come across them at the end of O'Brien's or Braun's or O'Gorman's
or somewhere--but never the lot of them together. Finally I got hold of
some plain wire and ran four wires along Braun's. Then other people's
stray steers came along, walked through it wherever they pleased, as
steers will, and kept me all my spare time patching up that makeshift.
But it kept the cows home, anyway.
Then carrying the cream. I had to take it down to a place opposite
Liston's, three miles away. Had neither horse nor money to buy one.
Tried to carry a can down by myself once, but never again. Ever try to
carry thirty pounds or so of liquid in a sixteen-pound can, all smooth
and polished tinned steel? Try it and see how she goes. The weight keeps
shifting, and one staggers round all over the shop, and staggering on a
muddy road nearly knee deep, things happen. You soon find yourself
plastered thick from head to foot. The wife volunteered to help, so we
slung the cursed can on a stick and carried it on our shoulders that
way. Tramp, tramp through the bog, puffing and panting in the steamy
heat across two deep creeks and along slippery "sidlings," struggling
down to Roden's, where we left the cans to be picked up by the carter
sixteen hours later and taken into the train, which eventually took it
to the factory, where the cream was almost invariably graded
second-class.
One day sticks in my memory. It had been intensely hot, and we got to
Roden's late. There we heard a tale of woe. Mr. Roden was in hospital,
and there was only Mrs. Roden and a kid to milk thirty cows. Of course
I, like an ass, offered to help, forgetful that I had my own to see to,
and by the time I thought of my own affairs it was getting dusk and the
delayed thunderstorm threatened. We hurried off, I with two empty cream
cans slung, Chinaman fashion, on a stick across the shoulders, the wife
with a billy containing a jewfish still alive, which Mrs. Roden had
given her--a special luxury we hadn't tasted for a year. We had just got
into the thick scrub when the storm burst on us. It speedily became
pitch dark, and there we were, two miles from home, the rain pouring in
buckets full, drenched and shivering, slowly picking our way among the
innumerable roots and stumps by the lightning flashes' flickering glare,
I in front, the wife behind hanging on to my belt. Every now and then I
would feel a jerk, and a flop and smothered groan apprised me that the
wife had fallen down again. Then a wail, "W-where's me fish?" and we
would both be down on our knees in the mud feeling round for that
precious fish until a lightning flash showed us where it was. Finally I
slung the cans to one side and half-led, half-carried the poor girl
home.
When we arrived at the brow of a short steep pinch leading down to our
creek, we realised the impossibility of walking--just sat down in the
mud and tobogganed down it. We reached home, covered with mud, drenched
and exhausted, at 8 p.m. The cows weren't milked that night.
This was about the end of March. In the following October our first
child was born. Of course we didn't know. Still, what might have
happened! Well, just about this time I heard Hood had a horse for sale,
so I went and saw him. He was an old steeplechaser, twenty years old,
and very thin and ribby. He stood about six feet high at the shoulder.
I asked Hood what he had on him. "Thirty bob," said Hood.
"Done," said I, and dragged the moke home.
We called him Napoleon Bonaparte, and stood looking at him that evening,
telling each other he wasn't too bad at all. The old, old saggy-kneed
animal would look "noble" when he picked up a bit; he showed quality,
didn't he now? in spite of his age--and so forth, until, our eyes
meeting, we burst out laughing, with a simultaneous exclamation, "'On
Our Selection' to the life."
We found the old chap would eat anything, being used to kids petting
him; so we filled him up with odds and ends of porridge, cabbage stalks,
bread, spud peelings, and so on, and, strange to say, he did pick up. He
was a whale on separated milk, and got plenty of it. Anyway, the poor
old fellow carried the cream (attached to his back by a weird
contrivance of cornbags and rope) for two years, so he paid for himself.
Then he got sick and developed a booming cough--a very curfew, tolling
the knell of Bona-parting.
I called in a bloke to look at him.
"Oh," says he: "it's on'y gripes. Give 'im a good 'earty kick in the
guts. That'll settle 'im."
I didn't try the recipe, and poor old Boney settled himself that
night--in the cowyard; and I had to cut him up and drag him away in
sections for cremation.
What sickening shocks we did have that year, to be sure! Our first
cheque was sixteen shilings for the month, after share-money and
separator instalment were deducted. Then the long-suffering storekeeper
stopped credit, and for a while we lived on what we could grow, with
scrub turkey, and once or twice bandicoot. The latter weren't bad, in
fact, very palatable; but they looked ratty. The Government remitted the
year's rent, but bank interest and rates had to be met; and my biggest
cheque for the year was L8. Oh, it was a daisy time! However, my cows
had all had heifer calves; I brought them safely past weaning point, and
got L4 a head for them on the top of a risen market that the week after
was fallen to L2. This was one of the rare strokes of luck I have had,
and paid two-thirds of Old Store's account, renewing credit.
In October a daughter was born to us, who, thanks to the dreadful
climate (whites can't live up here, you know) hasn't had a day's
sickness yet! In December my young heifers calved, and the cheques each
month from the factory increased, so that I got clear of debt, and
actually felt what having a few pounds in the bank was like. I managed
to keep the 1917 crop of calves. It was a good year.
In 1918 things went swimmingly again, but a plague of caterpillars ate
me out, and I lost half the youngsters, but still I crept ahead a bit
financially. In June my son and heir made his appearance. Another
miserably bright, bonny, rosy-cheeked victim of the climate. At the end
of the year Hood had a look at my timber, and offered to cart logs to
the mill, and haul the resulting sawn timber out again if I paid for
cutting the logs up; he to charge cartage as a cash deposit to me on my
standing timber. I jumped at the chance, for, lo! here was a new house
for us. I could just manage to scrape enough cash together to pay for
cutting at the mill. In February, 1919, I got the house up, paying for
its erection with two young heifers.
Now we had indeed turned the corner, and could begin to believe that our
struggling days were really behind us. A month or two later Hood, who
had shifted out close to us, made a proposal to join forces: I to look
after the cows, of which he had a decent herd; he to work his bullocks;
all proceeds to be pooled and shared.
It has worked well, for he is a white man and a good mate. We have had a
plague of caterpillars again, but got over it without serious loss, and
it really looks as if we were at last firmly on our feet, with a
prospect of a continued comfortable competence--thanks mainly to the
unselfish self-denial and splendid management of that greatest of all
blessings--a good wife. We aren't millionaires yet, but can't growl, and
are infinitely better off than our town brethren, with all their picture
palaces, handy shops and what not. Anyhow, the rosy cheeks of our two
splendid kiddies would be enough to reconcile us to the, perhaps,
somewhat lonely life. In spite of (perhaps because of) hard struggles
and difficulties overcome anything but easily, neither of us feel
inclined to quit even now that we could, and with the passing of time
the little home we have carved out of the scrub for ourselves becomes
more homely and dearer to our hearts.