The Litany of a Bushman on the Borders might well run, “From native
dogs, from scabby sheep, from blacks, from droughts, from governors’
proclamations, good Lord, deliver us.”
The droughts come in their appointed season, and the day will be, when
wells and tanks and aqueducts will redeem many a part from the curse of
periodical barrenness: the blacks soon tame or fade before the white
man’s face; unfortunately the seat of the native dogs, and home-bred or
town-bred governing crotchets are more plentiful in long settled than
new found countries. At any rate, I have experienced them all, and now
give the following passage of my life for the benefit of the gentlemen
“who live at home at ease,” hatching theories for our good—Heaven help
their silliness!
I had been two years comfortably settled with a nice lot of cattle and
sheep, part my own, part on “thirds,” when the people south of me began
to complain of drought. _I_ had enough feed and water; the question was,
whether it would last.
I called my bullock-driver, Bald-faced Dick, into consultation. He was
laid up at the time with a broken leg. Dick strongly advised looking for
a new station “to the nor’ard.”
The sheep would do for months, but he thought we were overstocked with
cattle. I had a good deal of confidence in Dick’s judgment; for he was a
“first fleeter,” that is, came over with Governor Phillips in the first
fleet; had seen everything in the colony, both good and bad; had, it was
whispered, in early years fled from a flogging master, and lived, some
said, with the blacks; others averred with a party of Gully-rakers
(cattle-stealers); he swore horridly, was dangerous when he had drunk
too much rum, but was a thorough Bushman; by the stars, or by sun, and
the fall of the land, could find his way anywhere by day or night,
understood all kinds of stock, and could make bullocks understand him.
He knew every roving character in the colony, the quality of every
station, and more about the far interior than he chose to tell to every
one. With all his coarseness, he was generous and good-natured, and when
well paid, and fairly and strictly treated, stood upon “Bush honour,”
and could be thoroughly depended on.
Having had an opportunity of serving him in a rather serious matter
previous to his entering my service, I was pretty sure of his best
advice.
The end of it was, for a promise of five pounds he obtained from a
friend of his a description of a country hitherto unsettled, and
first-rate for cattle. These men, who can neither read nor write, have
often a talent for description, which is astonishing.
Having heard a minute detail of the “pack,” and studied a sort of map
drawn on the lid of a tea-chest with a burned stick, I decided on
exploring with my overseer, Jem Carden, and, if successful, returning
for the cattle and drags, all loaded for founding a station.
We only took our guns and tomahawks, with tea, sugar, a salt tongue, and
small damper ready baked, being determined to make long marches,
starting early, camping at mid-day, and marching again in the evening as
long as it was light.
Our first stage was only twenty-five miles to young Marson’s
cattle-station. Marson was a cadet, of a noble family, and having been
too fast at home and in India as a cavalry subaltern, had been sent out
with a fair capital to Australia, under the idea that a fortune was to
be had for asking, and no means of expense open in the Bush. What money
he did not leave in the bars and billiard rooms of Sydney, he invested
in a herd of six hundred cattle; to look after these, he had four men,
whom he engaged, one because he could fight, another because he could
sing, and all because they flattered him. With these fellows he lived
upon terms of perfect equality, with a keg of rum continually on the
tap. Then, for want of better society, he made his hut the rendezvous of
a tribe of tame blacks.
We found him sitting on the floor in a pair of trowsers and ragged
shirt, unwashed, uncombed, pale-faced and red-eyed, surrounded by
half-a-dozen black gins (his sultanas), a lot of dogs, poultry, a tame
kangaroo, and two of his men. The floor was littered with quart pots,
lumps of fat, and damper outside the hut; the relations of the black
ladies had made a fire, and were cooking a piece of a fine young heifer.
What with the jabbering of the gins, the singing and swearing of the
men, and the yelping of the dogs, it was no place for a quiet meal, so
we only stayed long enough to drink a pot of tea, so as not to offend,
and passed on to camp an hour under the shade of a thicket near the
river.
Marson having, with the assistance of his black friends, consumed all
his stock, has returned home; and, I hear, asserts everywhere that
Australia is not a country a gentleman can live in.
Our course next, after crossing the dividing range, lay over a very flat
country, all burned up as far as the eye could reach,—a perfect desert
of sand. The chain of pools which formed the river after rain, were
nearly choked up by the putrifying carcases of cattle, smothered in
fighting for water. The air was poisonous; the horses sank fetlock-deep
at every stride; the blazing sun was reflected back from the hot sand
with an intensity that almost blinded our half-shut eyes. After three
hours of this misery, we struck into a better country, and soon after
came up to the camp of a squatter, who had been forced forward by the
drought. He had marked out about twenty miles along the river for his
run,—a pretty good slice, I thought, when, before turning back, he said,
“That is all I want.” It was no business of ours, as we had views
further a-field. For three days we pushed on, making from thirty to
forty miles a day, without seeing anything exactly to our mind. We rode
over arid plains, dotted with scrubby brushwood, then up precipitous
hills; now leaping, now clambering down and up, and now riding round to
avoid dry gullies and ravines; passing occasionally breaks of green
pasture, but insufficiently watered for my purpose. Sometimes our way
lay along mountain sides, sometimes in the dry bed of a torrent.
Sometimes huge boulders interrupted our course, sometimes the gigantic
trunks of fallen trees. More than once we had to steer through a forest
of the monotonous, shadeless gum, with its lofty, dazzlingly white
trunks festooned with the brown, curly bark of the previous year, and
its parasol-like but shadeless branches, where crimson, green, and snowy
parrot tribes shrieked and whistled among the evergreen leaves. It is
impossible to conceive anything more gorgeous than these birds as they
fluttered in the sun; but I confess that, “on serious thoughts intent,”
during this journey, they were more often associated with my ideas of
supper than anything else.
The evening of the third day, we found ourselves obliged to camp down
with a scanty supply of brackish water, and no signs of any living
thing. The next day was worse; a land of silence and desolation, where
it seemed as if mountains had been crumbled up and scattered about in
hills and lumps. The dry earth cracked and yawned in all directions.
Failing to find water, we camped down, parched, weary, silent, but not
despairing.
The next morning the horses were gone.
I cannot find words to describe what we suffered in the subsequent
twelve hours. I had walked until my feet were one mass of blisters, and
was ready to lie down and die ten times in the day; but somehow I found
strength to walk, always chewing a bullet. At length, at nightfall, we
found our horses; and, nearly at the same time, to crown our
delight—water. At the sight of this, we both involuntarily sank down on
our knees to return thanks for life saved.
The next morning, after a scanty breakfast, we set to work, and by dint
of cutting away with axe and jack-knife, at the expense of clothes and
skin, through a brigalow scrub for half a mile, found our way into a gap
through which our track lay, and which we had missed. It led straight to
the dividing range.
After crossing five miles from the foot of the range, through a barren
tract, our eyes and hearts were suddenly rejoiced by the sight of the
wished-for land.
A plain, covered with fine green barley-grass, as high as our horses’
heads, and sprinkled over with the myal shrub, which cattle and sheep
will eat and thrive on, even without grass. Such was the delicious
prospect before us. A flood had evidently but lately subsided, for
lagoons full of water were scattered all about; a river running at the
rate of five miles an hour, serpentined as far as the eye could see,
from which the water-fowl fluttered up as we passed; the eagle hawks
were sweeping along after flocks of quail, and mobs of kangaroos hopping
about like huge rabbits. There was not a sign of horn or hoof anywhere,
but it was evident the aborigines were numerous, for there were paths
worn down where they had been in the habit of travelling, from one angle
of the river to another; we could trace their footmarks and of all
sizes, and thereupon we unslung our guns and looked at the priming.
Altogether I thought I had discovered the finest place for a
cattle-station in the colony; I found out afterwards that the first
appearance of a new country before it has been stocked is not to be
depended on.
We formed a camp in an angle of the river, so as to have protection on
three sides, ventured, in spite of the danger, to light a fire and cook
some game. Oh, how delicious was that meal! As I lay near the river’s
edge, peeping through the tall grass, I saw the horrid emus, that rare
and soon to be extinct bird, come down the slopes on the opposite side
to drink in numbers; a sure sign that white men were as yet strangers to
these plains.
We spent some days in examination, and during the exploration met with
adventures with the aborigines, I will not now relate. Having marked a
station with my initials, and in returning made out a route practicable
for drays, by which I afterwards made my way with a large herd of
cattle, although not without enduring more than I could tell in a few
lines.
Our horses having picked up their flesh in a fortnight’s spell on the
green plains, we got back at a rattling pace, but, before arriving home,
met with an adventure I shall not soon forget. It was at the first
station we reached after crossing the “barrens” that divided our newly
discovered country. A hut had just been built for the Stockman, a big
strong Irishman, more than six feet high, a regular specimen of a
Tipperary chicken. He had been entertaining us with characteristic
hospitality; and we were smoking our pipes round the fire, when the
hut-keeper rushed in without his hat, crying—
“Tom! Tom! the blacks are coming down on us, all armed, as hard as they
can run. Shut the door! for Heaven’s sake shut the door!” Tom banged it
to, and put his shoulder against it, while the keeper was pulling up the
bar, and Carden and I were getting the lock-cases off our fire-arms.
Unfortunately the door was made roughly of green wood, and had shrunk,
leaving gaps between the slabs.
In the mean time about thirty blacks hurled a volley of spears that made
the walls ring again; and then advancing boldly up, one of them thrust a
double-jagged spear through the door, slap into Tom’s throat. My back
was turned towards him, being busy putting a fresh cap on my carbine. I
heard his cry, and, turning, saw him fall into the arms of the
hut-keeper. I thrust the barrel of my piece through a hole against a
black devil, and fired at the same moment that my man did. The two
dropped; the rest retreated, but turned back, and caught up their dead
friends. Carden flung open the door again, and gave them the contents of
his other barrel. My black put the hut-keeper’s musket into my hand; I
gave them a charge of buckshot. Three more fell, and the rest, dropping
their friends, disappeared across the river. All this was the work of a
moment. We then turned our attention to the stock-keeper. The spear had
entered at the chin, and come out on the other side three or four
inches. There was not a great flow of blood, but he was evidently
bleeding inwardly. He was perfectly collected, and said he was quite
sure he should die.
We cut the end of the spear short off, but did not dare to take it out.
The hut-keeper got on a horse, leading another, and rode for a doctor
who lived one hundred and fifty miles off; he never stopped except to
give the horses a feed two or three times in the whole distance, but
when he reached his journey’s end, the doctor was out. In the mean time
poor Tom made his will, disposing of a few head of cattle, mare and
foal, and also signed a sort of dying testament to the effect that he
had never wronged any of the blacks in any way. The weather was very
hot, mortification came on, and he died in agony two days after
receiving his wound.
The outrage was reported to the Commissioner, but no notice was taken of
it although we were paying a tax for Border Police at the time.
Not many years have elapsed since we fought for our lives—since I read
the burial service over the poor murdered Stockman. A handsome
verandah’d villa now stands in the place of the slab hut; yellow corn
waves over the Irishman’s grave, and while cattle and sheep abound, as
well white men, women, and children, there is not a wild black within
two hundred miles.