CHAPTER I

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MY TROPIC ISLE

BY

E. J. BANFIELD

AUTHOR OF "THE CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER"

T. FISHER UNWIN

LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20

1911

TO

MY WIFE

"What dost thou in this World? The Wilderness

For thee is fittest place."

MILTON.

"Taught to live

The easiest way, nor with perplexing thoughts

To interrupt sweet life."

MILTON.

PREFACE

Much of the contents of this book was published in the NORTH QUEENSLAND

REGISTER, under the title of "Rural Homilies." Grateful acknowledgments

are due to the Editor for his frank goodwill in the abandonment of his

rights.

Also am I indebted to the Curator and Officers of the Australian Museum,

Sydney, and specially to Mr. Charles Hedley, F.L.S., for assistance in

the identification of specimens. Similarly I am thankful to Mr. J.

Douglas Ogilby, of Brisbane, and to Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne, F.R.S.,

F.G.S., of Torquay (England).

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER.

I. IN THE BEGINNING

II. A PLAIN MAN'S PHILOSOPHY

III. MUCH RICHES IN A LITTLE ROOM

IV. SILENCES

V. FRUITS AND SCENTS

VI. HIS MAJESTY THE SUN

VII. A TROPIC NIGHT

VIII. READING TO MUSIC

IX. BIRTH AND BREAKING OF CHRISTMAS

X. THE SPORT OF FATE

XI. FIGHT TO A FINISH

XII. SEA WORMS AND SEA CUCUMBERS

XIII. SOME MARINE NOVELTIES

XIV. SOME CURIOUS BIVALVES

XV. BARRIER REEF CRABS

XVI. THE BLOCKADE OF THE MULLET

XVII. WET SEASON DAYS

XVIII. INSECT WAYS

XIX. INTELLIGENT BIRDS

XX SWIFTS AND EAGLES

XXI. SOCIALISTIC BIRDS

XXII. SHARKS AND RAYS

XXIII. THE RECLUSE OF RATTLESNAKE

XXIV. HAMED OF JEDDAH

XXV. YOUNG BARBARIANS AT PLAY

XXVI. TOM AND HIS CONCERNS

XXVII. DEBILS-DEBILS

XXVIII. TO PARADISE AND BACK

XXIX. THE DEATH BONE

ILLUSTRATIONS

(Not included in this eBook)

"AT ONE STRIDE COMES THE DARK"

Photo by Caroline Hordern

COCONUT AVENUE

Photo by Caroline Hordern

THE BUNGALOW

FERN OF GOD

PARASITIC FERN

THE COVE, PURTABOI

BRAMMO BAY, FROM GARDEN

PANDANUS PALM

PECTINARIAN TUBES

CLAM SHELL (Tridaena gigas) EMBEDDED IN CORAL

FIRE FISH (Pterois lunulata).

TRIGGER FISH (Balistapus aculeatus)

CORALS

EGG CAPSULES OF BAILER SHELL

DEVELOPMENT OF BAILER SHELL

EGG CAPSULES OF MOLLOSC, ATTACHED TO FAN CORAL

HARLEQUIN PIGFISH (Kiphocheilus fasciatus)

"FAERY LANDS FORLORN," TIMANA.

NEST OF GREEN TREE ANT

MATCH-BOX BEANS

PALL-KOO-LOO

WHERE SWIFTLETS BUILD

SWIFTLETS' NESTS

H. Barnes, Jun., Photo. Australian Museum

UMBRELLA TREE (Brassaia actinophylla)

Photo by Caroline Hordern

HAMED OF JEDDAH

BLACKS' TOYS--1. PIAR-PIAR; 2. BIRRA-BIRRA-GOO; 3. PAR-GIR-AH

TURTLE ROCK, PURTABOI

DISGUISES OF CRABS

WYLO DEFIANT

THE DEATH BONE

YANCOO'S LAST RITE

MY TROPIC ISLE

CHAPTER I

IN THE BEGINNING

Had I a plantation of this Isle, my lord--

* * * * *

I' the Commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit . . . riches, poverty

And use of service, none.

SHAKESPEARE

How quaint seems the demand for details of life on this Isle of Scent and

Silence! Lolling in shade and quietude, was I guilty of indiscretion when

I babbled of my serene affairs, and is the penalty so soon enforced? Can

the record of such a narrow, compressed existence be anything but dull?

Can one who is indifferent to the decrees of constituted society; who is

aloof from popular prejudices; who cares not for the gaieties of the

crowd or the vagaries of fashion; who does not dance or sing, or drink to

toasts, or habitually make any loud noise, or play cards or billiards, or

attend garden parties; who has no political ambitions; who is not a

painter, or a musician, or a man of science; whose palate is as averse

from ardent spirits as from physic; who is denied the all-redeeming vice

of teetotalism; who cannot smoke even a pipe of peace; who is a casual, a

nonentity a scout on the van of civilisation dallying with the universal

enemy, time--can such a one, so forlorn of popular attributes, so weak

and watery in his tastes, have aught to recite harmonious to the, ear of

the world?

Yet, since my life--and in the use, of the possessive pronoun here and

elsewhere, let it signify also the life of my life-partner--is beyond the

range of ordinary experience, since it is immune from the ferments which

seethe and muddle the lives of the many, I am assured that a familiar

record will not be deemed egotistical, I am scolded because I did not

confess with greater zeal, I am bidden to my pen again.

An attempt to fulfil the wishes of critics is confronted with risk. Cosy

in my security, distance an adequate defence, why should I rush into the

glare of perilous publicity? Here is an unpolluted Isle, without history,

without any sort of fame. There come to it ordinary folk of sober

understanding and well-disciplined ideas and tastes, who pass their lives

without disturbing primeval silences or insulting the free air with the

flapping of any ostentatious flag. Their doings are not romantic, or

comic, or tragic, or heroic; they have no formula for the solution of

social problems, no sour vexations to be sweetened, no grievance against

society, no pet creed to dandle. What is to be said of the doings of such

prosaic folk--folk who have merely set themselves free from restraint

that they might follow their own fancies without hurry and without

hindrance?

Moreover, if anything be more tedious than a twice-told tale, is it not

the repetition of one half told? Since a demand is made for more complete

details than were given in my "Confessions," either I must recapitulate,

or, smiling, put the question by. It is simplicity itself to smile, and

can there be anything more gracious or becoming? Who would not rather do

so than attempt with perplexed brow a delicate, if not difficult, duty?

I propose, therefore, to hastily fill in a few blanks in my previous

sketch of our island career and to pass on to features of novelty and

interest--vignettes of certain natural and unobtrusive features of the

locality, first-hand and artless.

This, then, is for candour. Studiously I had evaded whensoever possible

the intrusion of self, for do not I rank myself among the nonentities--

men whose lives matter nothing, whose deaths none need deplore. How

great my bewilderment to find that my efforts at concealment--to make

myself even more remote than my Island--had had by impish perversity a

contrary effect! On no consideration shall I part with all my secrets.

Bereave me of my illusions and I am bereft, for they are "the stardust I

have clutched."

One confessedly envious critic did chide because of the calculated

non-presentation of a picture of our humble bungalow. So small a pleasure

it would be sinful to deny. He shall have it, and also a picture of the

one-roomed cedar hut in which we lived prior to the building of the house

of comfort.

Who could dignify with gilding our utterly respectable, our limp history?

There is no margin to it for erudite annotations. Unromantic,

unsensational, yet was the actual beginning emphasis by the thud of a

bullet. To that noisy start of our quiet life I meander to ensure

chronological exactitude.

In September of the year 1896 with a small par of friends we camped on

the beach of this Island--the most fascinating, the most desirable on the

coast of North Queensland.

Having for several years contemplated a life of seclusion in the bush,

and having sampled several attractive and more or less suitable scenes,

we were not long in concluding that here was the ideal spot. From that

moment it was ours. In comparison the sweetest of previous fancies became

vapid. Legal rights to a certain undefined area having been acquired in

the meantime, permanent settlement began on September 28, 1897.

For a couple of weeks thereafter we lived in tents, while with clumsy

haste--for experience had to, be acquired--we set about the building of a

hut of cedar, the parts of which were brought from civilisation ready for

assembling. Houses, however, stately or humble, in North Queensland, are

sacrificial to what are known popularly as "white ants" unless special

means are taken for their exclusion. Wooden buildings rest on piles sunk

in the ground, on the top of which is an excluder of galvanised iron in

shape resembling a milk dish inverted. It is also wise to take the

additional precaution of saturating each pile with an arsenical solution.

Being quite unfamiliar with the art of hut-building, and in a frail

physical state, I found the work perplexing and most laborious, simple

and light as it all was. Trees had to be felled and sawn into proper

lengths for piles, and holes sunk, and the piles adjusted to a uniform

level. With blistered and bleeding hands, aching muscles, and stiff

joints I persevered.

While we toiled our fare, simplicity itself, was eaten with becoming lack

of style in the shade of a bloodwood-tree, the tents being reserved for

sleeping. When the blacks could be spared, fish was easily obtainable,

and we also drew upon the scrub fowl and pigeon occasionally, for the

vaunting proclamation for the preservation of all birds had not been

made. Tinned meat and bread and jam formed the most frequent meals, for

there were hosts of simple, predestined things which had to be painfully

learned. But there was no repining. Two months' provisions had been

brought; the steamer called weekly, so that we did not contemplate

famine, though thriftiness was imperative. Nor did we anticipate making

any remarkable addition to our income, for the labour of my own hands,

however eager and elated my spirits, was, I am forced to deplore, of

little advantage. I could be very busy about nothing, and there were

blacks to feed, therefore did we hasten to prepare a small area of forest

land, and a still smaller patch of jungle for the cultivation of maize,

sweet potatoes, and vegetables. Fruit, being a passion and a hobby, was

given special encouragement and has been in the ascendant ever since, to

the detriment of other branches of cultural enterprise.

I have said that our Island career began with an explosion. To that

starting-point must I return if the narration of the tribulations our

youthful inexperience suffered is to be orderly and exact.

While we camped, holiday-making, the year prior to formal and rightful

occupancy, in a spasm of enthusiasm, which still endures, I selected the

actual site for a modest castle then and there built in the accommodating

air. It was something to have so palpable and rare a base for the

fanciful fabric. All in a moment, disdaining formality, and to the,

accompaniment of the polite jeers of two long-suffering friends, I

proclaimed "Here shall I live! On this spot shall stand the probationary

palace!" and so saying fired my rifle at a tree a few yard's off. But the

stolid tree--a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a few ruby

crystals in sparse antra all that remained significant of past

life--afforded but meagre hospitality to the, soft lead.

"Ah!" exclaimed one of my chums, "the old tree foreswears him! The Island

refuses him!"

But the homely back gate swings over the charred stump of the boorish

tree burnt flush with the ground. Twelve months and a fortnight after the

firing of the shot which did not echo round the world, but was merely a

local defiant and emphatic promulgation of authority, a fire was set to

the base of the tree, for our tents had been pitched perilously close.

Space was wanted, and moreover its bony, imprecating arms, long since

bereft of beckoning fingers, menaced our safety. I said it must fall to

the north-east, for the ponderous inclination is in that direction, and

therein forestalled my experience and delivered the whole camp as

hostages into the hands of fortune.

In apparent defiance of the laws of gravity the tree fell in the middle

of the night with an earth-shaking crash to the south-east. There was no

apparent reason why it did not fall on our sleeping-tent and in one act

put an inglorious end to long-cogitated plans. Because some gracious

impulse gave the listless old tree a certain benign tilt, and because

sundry other happenings consequent upon a misunderstanding of the laws of

nature took exceptional though quite wayward turnings, I am still able to

hold a pen in the attempt to accomplish the task imposed by imperious

strangers.

And while on the subject of the clemency of trees, I am fain to dispose

of another adventure, since it, too, illustrates the brief interval

between the sunny this and the gloomy that. Fencing was in progress--a

fence designed to keep goats within bounds. Of course, the idea was

preposterous. One cannot by mere fencing exclude goats. The proof is

here. To provide posts for the vain project trees were felled, the butts

of which were reduced to due dimensions by splitting. A dead tree stood

on a slope, and with the little crosscut we attacked its base, cutting a

little more than half-way through. When a complementary cut had been made

on the other side, the tree, with a creak or two and a sign which ended

in "swoush," fell, and as it did so I stepped forward, remarking to the

taciturn black boy, "Clear cut, Paddy!" The words were on my lips when a

"waddy," torn from the vindictive tree and flung, high and straight into

the inoffensive sky, descended flat on the red stump with a gunlike

report. The swish of the waddy down-tilted the frayed brim of my

cherished hat!

The primary bullet is not yet done with, for when the tree which had

reluctantly housed it for a year was submitted to the fires of

destruction among the charcoal a blob of bright lead confirmed my

scarcely credited story that the year before the datum for our castle,

then aerial and now substantial, had been established in ponderous metal.

What justification existed for the defacement of the virginal scene by an

unlovely dwelling--the, imposition of a scar on the unspotted landscape?

None, save that the arrogant intruder needed shelter, and that he was

neither a Diogenes to be content in a tub nor a Thoreau to find in boards

an endurable temporary substitute for blankets.

It was resolved that the shelter should by way of compensation be

unobtrusive, hidden in a wilderness of leaves. The sacrifice of those

trees unhaply in prior occupation of the site selected would be atoned

for by the creation of a modest garden of pleasant-hued shrubs and

fruit-trees and lines and groves of coconut-palms. My conscience at least

has been, or rather is being, appeased for the primary violation of the

scene, for trees perhaps, more beautiful, certainly more useful, stand

for those destroyed. The Isle suffers no gross disfigurement. Except for

a wayward garden and the most wilful plantation of tropical fruit-trees,

no change has been wrought for which the genius of the Isle need demand

satisfaction.

Though of scented cedar the hut was ceilingless. Resonant corrugated iron

and boards an inch thick intervened between us and the noisy tramplings

of the rain and heat of the sun. The only room accommodated some

primitive furniture, a bed being the denominating as well as the

essential feature. A little shambling structure of rough slabs and iron

walls contrived a double debt to pay--kitchen and dining-room.

From the doorsteps of the hut we landed on mother earth, for the verandas

were not floored. Everything was as homely and simple and inexpensive as

thought and thrift might contrive. Our desire to live in the open air

became almost compulsory, for though you fly from civilisation and its

thralls you cannot escape the social instincts of life. The hut became

the focus of life other than human. The scant hut-roof sheltered more

than ourselves.

On the narrow table, under cover of stray articles and papers, grey

bead-eyed geckoes craftily stalked moths and beetles and other fanatic

worshippers of flame as they hastened to sacrifice themselves to the

lamp. In the walls wasps built terra-cotta warehouses in which to store

the semi-animate carcasses of spiders and grubs; a solitary bee

constructed nondescript comb among the books, transforming a favourite

copy of "Lorna Doone" into a solid block. Bats, sharp-toothed, and with

pin-point eyes, swooped in at one door, quartered the roof with brisk

eagerness, and departed by the other.

Finding ample food and safe housing, bats soon became permanent lodgers.

For a time it was novel and not unpleasant to be conscious in the night

of their waftings, for they were actual checks upon the mosquitoes which

came to gorge themselves on our unsalted blood. But they increased so

rapidly that their presence became intolerable. The daring pioneer which

had happened during its nocturnal expeditions to discover the very

paradise for the species proclaimed the glad tidings, and relatives,

companions, and friends flocked hither, placing themselves under our

protection with contented cheepings. Though the room became mosquitoless,

serious objections to the scavengers developed. Before a writ of ejection

could be enforced, however, a sensational cause for summary proceedings

arose.

In the dimness of early morning when errant bats flitted home to cling to

the ridge-pole, squeaking and fussy flutterings denoted unwonted

disturbance. Daylight revealed a half concealed, sleeping snake, which

seemed to be afflicted with twin tumours. A long stick dislodged the

intruder, which scarce had reached the floor ere it died violent death.

Even the snake spectre did no seriously affright the remaining bats,

though it confirmed the sentence of their immediate banishment. In the

eye of the bats the sanctuary of the roof with an odd snake or two was

preferable to inclement hollow branches open to the raids of

undisciplined snakes. Definite sanitary reasons, supplemented by the fact

that where bats are there will the snakes be gathered together, and a

pious repugnance to snakes as lodgers, made the casting out of the bats a

joyful duty.

So we lived, more out of the hut than in it, from October, 1897, until

Christmas Day, 1903. We find the bungalow, though it, too, has no

ceiling, much more to our convenience, for the hut has become crowded. It

could no longer contain our content and the portable property which

became caught in its vortex.

In the designing of the bungalow two essentials were supreme, cost and

comfort--minimum of cost, maximum of comfort. Aught else was as nothing.

There was no alignment to obey, no rigid rules and regulations as to

style and material. The surroundings being our own, we had compassion on

them, neither offering them insult with pretentious prettiness nor

domineering over them with vain assumption and display. Low walls,

unaspiring roof, and sheltering veranda, so contrived as to create, not

tickling, fidgety draughts but smooth currents, "so full as seem asleep,"

to flush each room so sweetly and softly that no perceptible difference

between the air under the roof and of the forest is at any time

perceptible.

Since the kitchen (as necessary here as elsewhere) is not only of my own

design but nearly every part of the construction absolutely the work of

my unaided, inexperienced hands, I shall describe it in detail--not

because it presents features provocative of pride, but because the ideas

it embodies may be worth the consideration of others similarly situated

who want a substantial, smokeless, dry, convenient appurtenance to their

dwelling. Two contrary conditions had to be considered--the hostility of

white ants to buildings of wood, and the necessity for raising the floor

but slightly above the level of the ground.

A bloodwood-tree, tall, straight, and slim, was felled. It provided three

logs--two each 15 feet long and one 13 feet. From another tree another

13-foot log was sawn. All the sapwood was adzed off; the ends were

"checked" so that they would interlock. Far too weighty to lift, the logs

were toilfully transported inch by inch on rollers with a crowbar as a

lever. Duly packed up with stones and levelled, they formed the

foundations, but prior to setting them a bed of home-made asphalt

(boiling tar and seashore sand) was spread on the ground where they were

destined to lie. Having adjusted each in its due position, I adzed the

upper faces and cut a series of mortices for the studs, which were

obtained in the bush--mere thin, straight, dry trees which had succumbed

to bush fires. Each was roughly squared with the adze and planed and

tenoned.

Good fortune presented, greatly to the easement of labour, two splendid

pieces of driftwood for posts for one of the doors. To the sea also I was

indebted for long pieces to serve as wall plates, one being the jibboom

of what must have been a sturdily-built boat, while the broken mast of a

cutter fitted in splendidly as a ridge-pole. For the walls I visited an

old bean-tree log in the jungle, cut off blocks in suitable lengths, and

split them with maul and wedges into rough slabs, roughly adzed away

superfluous thickness, and carried them one by one to the brink of the

canyon, down which I cast them. Then each had to be carried up the steep

side and on to the site, the distance from the log in the jungle being

about three hundred yards.

Within the skeleton of the building I improvised a rough bench, upon

which the slabs were dressed with the plane and the edges bevelled so

that each would fit on the other to the exclusion of the rain. Upon the

uprights I nailed inch slats perpendicularly, against which the slabs

were placed, each being held in place temporarily until the panel was

complete, when other slats retained them. The rafters were manipulated of

odd sorts of timber and the roof of second-used corrugated iron, the

previous nail holes being stopped with solder. A roomy recess with a

beaten clay floor was provided for the cooking stove. Each of the two

doors was made in horizontal halves, with a hinged fanlight over the

lintel, and the window spaces filled with wooden shutters, hinged from

the top. The floor (an important feature) is of asphalt on a foundation

of earth and charcoal solidly compressed. But before carting in the

material boards were placed temporarily edgeways alongside the bedlogs

round the interior. Then when the earthen foundation was complete the

boards were removed, leaving a space of about an inch, which was filled

with asphalt, well rammed, consistently with the whole of the floor

space.

All this laborious work--performed conscientiously to the best of my

ability--occupied a long time, and from it originated much backache and

general fatigue, and at the end I found that I had been so absorbed in

the permanence rather than the appearance of the dwelling that one of the

corner posts was out of the perpendicular and that consequently the

building stood awry. Grace of style it cannot claim; but neither "white

ants" nor weather trouble it.

And to what sweet uses has adversity made us familiar! When I bought a

boat to bring hither I knew not the distinguishing term of a single

halyard, save the "topping lift," and even that scant knowledge was idle,

for I was blankly ignorant of the place and purpose of the oddly-named

rope. Necessity drove me to the acquirement of boat sense, and now I

manage my home-built "flattie"--mean substitute for the neat yacht which

necessity compelled me to part with--very courageously in ordinary

weather; and I am content to stay at home when Neptune is frothy at the

lips.

A preponderant part of the furniture of our abode is the work of my own

unskilled hands--tables, chairs, bookshelves, cupboards, &c. There is

much pleasure and there are also, many aches and pains in the designing

and fashioning serviceable chairs from odd kinds of bush timber.

In the making of a chair, as in the building of a boat by one who has had

no training in any branch of carpentry, there is scope for the personal

element. Though the parts have been cut and trimmed with minute care and

all possible precision, each, according to requirements, being the

duplicate of the other, when they come to be assembled obstructive

obstinacy prevails. One of the most fiendish things the art of man

contrives is a chair out of the routine design made by a rule-of-thumb

carpenter. Grotesque in its deformities, you must needs pity your own

mishandling of the obstinate wood. Have you courage to smile at the

misshapen handiwork, or do you cowardly, discard the deformity you have

created? How it grunts and groans as pressure is applied to its stubborn

bent limbs! Curvature of the spine is the least of its ills. It limps and

creaks when fixed tentatively for trial. Tender-footed, it stands awry,

heaving one leg aloft--as crooked and as perverse as Caliban. In good

time, botching here, violent constraint there, the chair finds itself or

is forced so to do, for he is a weak man who is not stronger than his own

chair. So, after many days' intense toil--toil which even troubled the

night watches, for have I not lain awake with thoughts automatically

concentrated on a seemingly impossible problem, plotting by what illicit

and awful torture it might be possible for the tough and stubborn parts

to be brought into juxtaposition--there is a chair--a solid, sitable

chair, which neither squeaks, nor shuffles, nor shivers. May be you are

ashamed at the quantity of mind the dull article of furniture has

absorbed; but there are other reflections--homely as well as philosophic.