The Fizzer was due at sundown, and for the Fizzer to be due meant that
the Fizzer would arrive, and by six o’clock we had all got cricks in our
necks, with trying to go about as usual, and yet keep an expectant eye
on the north track.
The Fizzer is unlike every type of man excepting a bush mail-man. Hard,
sinewy, dauntless, and enduring, he travels day after day and month
after month, practically alone—“on me Pat Malone,” he calls it—with or
without a black boy, according to circumstances, and five trips out of
his yearly eight throwing dice with death along his dry stages, and yet
at all times as merry as a grig, and as chirrupy as a young grasshopper.
With a light-hearted, “So long, chaps,” he sets out from the Katherine
on his thousand-mile ride, and with a cheery “What ho, chaps! Here we
are again!” rides in again within five weeks with that journey behind
him.
A thousand miles on horseback, “on me Pat Malone,” into the Australian
interior and out again, travelling twice over three long dry stages and
several shorter ones, and keeping strictly within the Government time-
limit, would be a life-experience to the men who set that limit if it
wasn’t a death-experience. “Like to see one of ’em doing it ’emselves,”
says the Fizzer. Yet never a day late, and rarely an hour, he does it
eight times a year, with a “So long, chaps,” and a “Here we are again.”
The Fizzer was due at sundown, and at sundown a puff of dust rose on the
track, and as a cry of “Mail oh!” went up all round the homestead, the
Fizzer rode out of the dust.
“Hullo! What ho! boys,” he shouted in welcome, and the next moment we
were in the midst of his clattering team of pack-horses.
For five minutes everything was in confusion; horse bells and hobbles
jingling and clanging, harness rattling, as horses shook themselves
free, and pack-bags, swags, and saddles came to the ground with loud,
creaking flops. Every one was lending a hand, and the Fizzer, moving in
and out among the horses, shouted a medley of news and instructions and
welcome.
“News? Stacks of it” he shouted. The Fizzer always shouted. “The gay
time we had at the Katherine! Here, steady with that pack-bag. It’s
breakables! How’s the raisin market? Eh, lads!” with many chuckles.
“Sore back here, fetch along the balsam. What ho, Cheon!” as Cheon
appeared and greeted him as an old friend. “Heard you were here. You’re
the boy for my money. You BALLY ass! Keep ’em back from the water
there.” This last was for the black boy. It took discrimination to fit
the Fizzer’s remarks on to the right person. Then, as a pack-bag dropped
at the Maluka’s feet, he added: “That’s the station lot, boss. Full
bags, missus! Two on ’em. You’ll be doing the disappearing trick in half
a mo’.”
In “half a mo’” the seals were broken, and the mail-matter shaken out on
the ground. A cascade of papers, magazines, and books, with a fat, firm
little packet of letters among them: forty letters in all—thirty of them
falling to my lot—thirty fat, bursting envelopes, and in another “half
mo’” we had all slipped away in different directions—each with our
precious mail matter—doing the “disappearing trick” even to the Fizzer’s
satisfaction.
The Fizzer smiled amiably after the retreating figures, and then went to
be entertained by Cheon. He expected nothing else. He provided feasts
all along his route, and was prepared to stand aside while the bush-folk
feasted. Perhaps in the silence that fell over the bush homes, after his
mail-bags were opened, his own heart slipped away to dear ones, who were
waiting somewhere for news of our Fizzer.
Eight mails ONLY in a year is not all disadvantage. Townsfolk who have
eight hundred tiny doses of mail-matter doled out to them, like men on
sick diet can form little idea of the pleasure of that feast of “full
bags and two on ’em,” for like thirsty camels we drank it all in—every
drop of it—in long, deep, satisfying draughts. It may have been a
disadvantage, perhaps, to have been so thirsty; but then only the
thirsty soul knows the sweetness of slaking that thirst.
After a full hour’s silence the last written sheet was laid down, and I
found the Maluka watching and smiling.
“Enjoyed your trip south, little ’un?” he said, and I came back to the
bush with a start, to find the supper dead cold. But then supper came
every night and the Fizzer once in forty-two.
At the first sound of voices, Cheon bustled in. “New-fellow tea, I
think,” he said, and bustled out again with the teapot (Cheon had had
many years’ experience of bush mail-days), and in a few minutes the
unpalatable supper was taken away, and cold roast beef and tomatoes
stood in its place.
After supper, as we went for our evening stroll, we stayed for a little
while where the men were lounging, and after a general interchange of
news the Fizzer’s turn came.
News! He had said he had stacks of it, and he now bubbled over with it.
The horse teams were “just behind,” and the Macs almost at the front
gate. The Sanguine Scot? Of course he was all right: always was, but
reckoned bullock-punching wasn’t all it was cracked up to be; thought
his troubles were over when he got out of the sandy country, but hadn’t
reckoned on the black soil flats. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he took to
punching something else besides bullocks before he’s through with it,”
the Fizzer shouted, roaring with delight at the recollection of the
Sanguine Scot in a tight place. On and on he went with his news, and for
two hours afterwards, as we sat chewing the cud of our mail-matter, we
could hear him laughing and shouting and “chiacking.”
At daybreak he was at it again, shouting among his horses, as he culled
his team of “done-ups,” and soon after breakfast was at the head of the
south track with all aboard.
“So long, chaps,” he called. “See you again half-past eleven four
weeks”; and by “half-past eleven four weeks” he would have carried his
precious freight of letters to the yearning, waiting men and women
hidden away in the heart of Australia, and be out again, laden with
“inside” letters for the outside world.
At all seasons of the year he calls the first two hundred miles of his
trip a “kid’s game.” “Water somewhere nearly every day, and a decent
camp most nights.” And although he speaks of the next hundred and fifty
as being a “bit off during the Dry,” he faces its seventy-five-mile dry
stage, sitting loosely in the saddle, with the same cheery “So long,
chaps.”
Five miles to “get a pace up”—a drink, and then that seventy-five miles
of dry, with any “temperature they can spare from other parts,” and not
one drop of water in all its length for the horses. Straight on top of
that, with the same horses and the same temperature, a run of twenty
miles, mails dropped at Newcastle Waters, and another run of fifty into
Powell’s Creek, dry or otherwise according to circumstances.
“Takes a bit of fizzing to get into the Powell before the fourth
sundown,” the Fizzer says—for, forgetting that there can be no change of
horses, and leaving no time for a “spell” after the “seventy-five-mile
dry “—the time limit for that one hundred and fifty miles, in a country
where four miles an hour is good travelling on good roads has been fixed
at three and a half days. “Four, they call it,” says the Fizzer,
“forgetting I can’t leave the water till midday. Takes a bit of fizzing
all right”; and yet at Powell’s Creek no one has yet discovered whether
the Fizzer comes at sundown, or the sun goes down when the Fizzer comes.
“A bit off,” he calls that stage, with a school-boy shrug of his
shoulders; but at Renner’s Springs, twenty miles farther on, the
shoulders set square, and the man comes to the surface. The dice-
throwing begins there, and the stakes are high—a man’s life against a
man’s judgment.
Some people speak of the Fizzer’s luck, and say he’ll pull through, if
any one can. It is luck, perhaps—but not in the sense they mean—to have
the keen judgment to know to an ounce what a horse has left in him,
judgment to know when to stop and when to go on—for that is left to the
Fizzer’s discretion; and with that judgment the dauntless courage to go
on with, and win through, every task attempted.
The Fizzer changes horses at Renner’s Springs for the “Downs’ trip”; and
as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like
an auctioneer’s hammer. “He’s fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That
colt’s A1. The chestnut’s done. So is the brown. I’ll risk that mare.
That black’s too fat.” No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or
approved, until the team is complete; and then driving them before him
he faces the Open Downs—the Open Downs, where the last mail-man
perished; and only the men who know the Downs in the Dry know what he
faces.
For five trips out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-
baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human
habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man—“hardly enough wood
to boil a quart pot,” the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering
about 160 degrees (there is no shade-temperature on the Downs);
shadeless, trackless, sun-baked, crab-holed plains, and the Fizzer’s
team a moving speck in the centre of an immensity that, never
diminishing and never changing, moves onward with the team; an immensity
of quivering heat and glare, with that one tiny living speck in its
centre, and in all that hundred and thirty miles one drink for the
horses at the end of the first eighty. That is the Open Downs.
“Fizz!” shouts the Fizzer. “That’s where the real fizzing gets done, and
nobody that hasn’t tried it knows what it’s like.”
He travels its first twenty miles late in the afternoon, then, unpacking
his team, “lets ’em go for a roll and a pick, while he boils a quart
pot” (the Fizzer carries a canteen for himself); “spells” a bare two
hours, packs up again and travels all night, keeping to the vague track
with a bushman’s instinct, “doing” another twenty miles before daylight;
unpacks for another spell, pities the poor brutes “nosing round too
parched to feed,” may “doze a bit with one ear cocked,” and then packing
up again, “punches ’em along all day,” with or without a spell. Time is
precious now. There is a limit to the number of hours a horse can go
without water, and the thirst of the team fixes the time limit on the
Downs. “Punches ’em along all day, and into water close up sundown,” at
the deserted Eva Downs station.
“Give ’em a drink at the well there,” the Fizzer says as unconcernedly
as though he turned on a tap. But the well is old and out of repair,
ninety feet deep, with a rickety old wooden windlass; fencing wire for a
rope; a bucket that the Fizzer has “seen fit to plug with rag on account
of it leaking a bit,” and a trough, stuffed with mud at one end by the
resourceful Fizzer. Truly the Government is careful for the safety of
its servants. Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses so eager
for a drink that the poor brutes have to be tied up, and watered one at
a time; and so parched with thirst that it takes three hours’ drawing
before they are satisfied—three hours’ steady drawing, on top of twenty-
three hours out of twenty-seven spent in the saddle, and half that time
“punching” jaded beasts along; and yet they speak of the “Fizzer’s
luck.”
“Real fine old water too,” the Fizzer shouts in delight, as he tells his
tale. “Kept in the cellar for our special use. Don’t indulge in it much
myself. Might spoil my palate for newer stuff, so I carry enough for the
whole trip from Renner’s.”
If the Downs have left deep lines on the Fizzer’s face, they have left
none in his heart. Yet at that well the dice-throwing goes on just the
same.
Maybe the Fizzer feels “a bit knocked out with the sun,” and the water
for his perishing horses ninety feet below the surface; or “things go
wrong” with the old windlass, and everything depends on the Fizzer’s
ingenuity. The odds are very uneven when this happens—a man’s ingenuity
against a man’s life, and death playing with loaded dice. And every
letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence.
A drink at the well, an all-night’s spell, another drink, and then away
at midday, to face the tightest pinch of all—the pinch where death won
with the other mail-man. Fifty miles of rough, hard, blistering,
scorching “going,” with worn and jaded horses.
The old programme all over again. Twenty miles more, another spell for
the horses (the Fizzer never seems to need a spell for himself), and
then the last lap of thirty, the run into Anthony’s Lagoon, “punching
the poor beggars along somehow.” “Keep ’em going all night,” the Fizzer
says; “and if you should happen to be at Anthony’s on the day I’m due
there you can set your watch for eleven in the morning when you see me
coming along.” I have heard somewhere of the Pride of Harness.
Sixteen days is the time-limit for those five-hundred miles, and yet the
Fizzer is expected because the Fizzer is due; and to a man who loves his
harness no praise could be sweeter than that. Perhaps one of the
brightest thoughts for the Fizzer as he “punches” along those desolate
Downs is the knowledge that a little before eleven o’clock in the
morning Anthony’s will come out, and, standing with shaded eyes, will
look through the quivering heat, away into the Downs for that tiny
moving speck. When the Fizzer is late there, death will have won at the
dice-throwing.
I suppose he got a salary. No one ever troubled to ask. He was expected,
and he came, and in our selfishness we did not concern ourselves beyond
that.
It is men like the Fizzer who, “keeping the roads open,” lay the
foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the
Never-Never along the Fizzer’s mail route, in all probability they will
be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that
day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in
repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be
forgotten; for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.
Three days’ spell at Anthony’s, to wait for the Queensland mail-man from
the “other-side” (another Fizzer no doubt, for the bush mail-service
soon culls out the unfitted), an exchange of mail-bags, and then the
Downs must be faced again with the same team of horses. Even the Fizzer
owns that “tackling the Downs for the return trip’s a bit sickening;
haven’t had time to forget what it feels like, you know,” he explains.
Inside to Anthony’s, three days’ spell, over the Downs again, stopping
for another drink at that well, along the stage “that’s a bit off,” and
back to the “kid’s game,” dropping mail-bags in twos and threes as he
goes in, and collecting others as he comes out, to say nothing of the
weary packing and unpacking of his team. That is what the Fizzer had to
do by half-past eleven four weeks.
“And will go hopelessly on the spree at the end of the trip,” say
uncharitable folk; but they do not know our Fizzer. “Once upon a time I
was a bad little boy,” our Fizzer says now, “but since I learnt sense a
billy of tea’s good enough for me.”
And our Fizzer is not the only man out-bush who has “learnt sense.” Man
after man I have met who found tea “good enough,” and many more who
“know how to behave themselves.” Sadly enough, there are others in
plenty who find their temptations too strong for them—temptations that
the world hardly guesses at.
But I love the bush-folk for the good that is in them, hidden, so often,
carefully away deep down in their brave, strong hearts—hearts and men
that ring true, whether they have “learnt sense,” or “know how to
behave,” or are only of the others. But every man’s life runs parallel
with other lives, and while the Fizzer was “punching along” his dry
stages events were moving rapidly with us; while perhaps, aways in the
hearts of towns, men and women were “winning through the dry stages” of
their lives there.