Soon after the Fizzer left us the horse-teams came in, and went on, top-
heavy with stores for “inside”; but the “Macs” were now thinking of the
dry stages ahead, and were travelling at the exasperating rate of about
four miles a day, as they “nursed the bullocks” through the good grass
country.
Dan had lost interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the
cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly,
the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead
just then.
Dan tried to taunt me into action, and reviewed the “kennel” with
critical eyes. “Never saw a dog makin’, its own chain before,” he said
to the Maluka as I sat among billows of calico and mosquito netting. But
the homemaking instinct is strong in a woman, and the musterers went out
west without the missus. The Dandy being back at the Bitter Springs
superintending the carting of new posts for the stockyard there, the
missus was left in the care of Johnny and Cheon.
“Now we shan’t be long,” said Johnny, and Cheon, believing him,
expressed great admiration for Johnny, and superintended the scrubbing
of the walls, while I sat and sewed, yard after yard of oversewing, as
never woman sewed before.
The walls were erected on what is known as the drop-slab-panel
system—upright panels formed of three-foot slabs cut from the outside
slice of tree trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other,
between grooved posts—a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic
in appearance—outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the
natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls. As in
every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal
slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was
exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.
Cheon, convinced that the system was all Johnny’s was delighted with his
ingenuity. But as he insisted on the walls being scrubbed as soon as
they were up, and before the doors and windows were in, Johnny had one
or two good duckings, and narrowly escaped many more; for lubras’
methods of scrubbing are as full of surprises as all their methods.
First soap is rubbed on the dry boards, then vigorously scrubbed into a
lather with wet brushes, and after that the lather is sluiced off with
artificial waterspouts whizzed up the walls from full buckets. It was
while the sluicing was in progress that Johnny had to be careful; for
many buckets missed their mark, and the waterspouts shot out through the
doorways and window frames.
Wearing a mackintosh, I did what I could to prevent surprises, but
without much success. Johnny fortunately took it all as a matter of
course. “It’s all in the good cause,” he chuckled, shaking himself like
a water-spaniel after a particularly bad misadventure; and described the
“performance” with great zest to the Maluka when he returned. The sight
of the clean walls filled the Maluka also with zeal for the cause, and
in the week that followed walls sprouted with corner shelves and
brackets—three wooden kerosene cases became a handy series of
pigeonholes for magazines and papers. One panel in the diningroom was
completely filled with bookshelves, one above the other for our coming
books. Great sheets of bark, stripped by the blacks from the Ti Tree
forest, were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat
reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was
tacked up. And all the time Johnny hammered and whistled and planed,
finishing the bathroom and “getting on” with the office.
The Quiet Stockman coming in, was pressed into the service, and grew
quite enthusiastic, suggesting substitutes for necessities, until I
suggested cutting off the tail of every horse on the run, to get enough
horsehair for a mattress.
“Believe the boss’ud do it himself if she asked him,” he said in the
Quarters; and in his consternation suggested bangtailing the cattle
during the musters.
“Just the thing,” Dan decided; and we soon saw, with his assistance, a
vision of our future mattress walkin’ about the run on the ends of cows’
tails.
“Looks like it’s going to be a dead-heat,” Johnny said, still hammering,
when the Dandy brought in word that the Macs were within twelve miles of
the homestead. And when I announced next day that the dining-net was
finished and ready for hanging, he also became wildly enthusiastic.
“Told you from the beginning we shouldn’t be long,” he said, flourishing
a hammer and brimming over with suggestions for the hanging of the net.
“Rope’ll never hold it,” he declared; “fencing wire’s the thing,” so
fencing wire was used, and after a hard morning’s work pulling and
straining the wire and securing it to uprights, the net was in its
place, the calico roof smooth and flat against the ceiling, and its
curtains hanging to the floor, with strong, straight saplings run
through the folded hem to weigh it down. Cheon was brimming over with
admiration for it.
“My word, boss! Missus plenty savey,” he said. (Cheon invariably
discussed the missus in her presence.) “Chinaman woman no more savey
likee that,” and bustling away, dinner was soon served inside the net.
Myriads of flies, balked in their desire, settled down on the outside,
and while we enjoyed our dinner in peace and comfort, Cheon hovered
about, like a huge bloated buzz fly himself, chuckling around the
outside among the swarms of balked flies, or coming inside to see if
“any fly sit down inside.”
“My word, boss! Hear him sing-out sing-out. Missus plenty savey,” he
reiterated, and then calling a Chinese friend from the kitchen, stood
over him, until he also declared that “missus BLENTY savey,” with good
emphasis on the BLENTY.
The net was up by midday, and at ten o’clock at night the slow, dull
clang of a bullock-bell crept out of the forest. Cheon was the first to
hear it. “Bullocky come on,” he called, waddling to the house and waking
us from our first sleep; and as the deep-throated bell boomed out again
the Maluka said drowsily: “The homestead’s only won by a head. Mac’s at
the Warlochs.”
At “fowl-sing-out” we were up, and found Bertie’s Nellie behind the
black boys’ humpy shyly peeping round a corner. With childlike
impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs,
only to be overcome with unaccountable shyness.
“Allo, missus!” was all she could find to say, and the remainder of the
interview she filled in with wriggling and giggles.
Immediately after breakfast Mac splashed through the creek at a hand-
gallop and, dashing up to the house, flung himself from his horse, the
same impetuous, warmhearted “Brither Scot.”
“Patience rewarded at last,” he called in welcome; and when invited to
“come ben the hoose to the diningroom,” was, as usual, full of
congratulations. “My! We are some!” he said, examining every detail. But
as he also said that “the Dandy could get the trunks right off if we
liked to send him across with the dray,” we naturally “liked,” and
Johnny and the Dandy harnessing up, went with him, and before long the
verandah and rooms were piled with trunks.
Fortunately Dan was “bush” again among the cattle, or his heart would
have broken at this new array of links for the chain.
Once the trunks were all in, Mac, the Dandy, and Johnny retired to the
Quarters after a few more congratulations, Johnny continuing his
flourishes all the way across. Cheon however, with his charming
disregard for conventionality being interested, settled himself on one
of the trunks to watch the opening up of the others.
To have ordered him away would have clouded his beaming happiness; so he
remained, and told us exactly what he thought of our possessions, adding
much to the pleasure of the opening of the trunks. If any woman would
experience real pleasure, let her pack all her belongings into
trunks—all but a couple of changes of everything—and go away out-bush,
leaving them to follow “after the Wet” per bullock waggon, and when the
reunion takes place the pleasure will be forthcoming. If she can find a
Cheon to be present at the reunion, so much the better.
Some of our belongings Cheon thoroughly approved of; others were passed
over as unworthy of notice; and others were held up to chuckling
ridicule. A silver teapot was pounced upon with a cry of delight
(tinware being considered far beneath the dignity of a missus, and
seeing Sam had broken the china pot soon after its arrival, tinware had
graced our board for some time), pictures were looked at askance,
particularly an engraving of Psyche at the Pool; while the case for a
set of carvers received boundless admiration, although the carvers in no
way interested him.
The photographs of friends and relatives were looked carefully over, the
womenfolk being judged by what they might bring in a Chinese matrimonial
market.
“My word! That one good-looking. Him close up sixty pound longa China,”
was rather disconcerting praise of a very particular lady friend.
A brass lamp was looked upon as a monument of solid wealth, “Him gold,”
he decided, insisting it was in the face of all denials. “Him gold. Me
savey gold all right. Me live longa California long time,” he said,
bringing forward a most convincing argument; and, dismissing the subject
with one of his Podsnapian waves, he decided that a silver-coloured
composition flower-bowl in the form of a swan was solid silver; “Him
sing out all a same silver,” he said, making it ring with a flick of his
finger and thumb, when I differed from him, and knowing Cheon by now, we
left it at that for the time being.
After wandering through several trunks and gloating over blouses, and
skirts, and house-linen, and old friends the books were opened up, and
before the Maluka became lost to the world Cheon favoured them with a
passing glance. “Big mob book,” he said indifferently, and turned his
attention to the last trunk of all.
Near the top was a silver filigree candlestick moulded into the form of
a Convolvulus flower and leaf—a dainty little thing, but it appeared
ridiculous to Cheon’s commonsense mind.
“Him silly fellow,” he scoffed, and appealed to the Maluka for his
opinion: “him silly fellow? Eh boss?” he asked.
The Maluka was half-buried in books. “Um,” he murmured absently, and
that clinched the matter for all time. “Boss bin talk silly fellow”
Cheon said, with an approving nod toward the Maluka, and advised packing
the candlestick away again. “Plenty room sit down longa box,” he said,
truthfully enough, putting it into an enormous empty trunk and closing
the lid, leaving the candlestick a piece of lonely splendour hidden
under a bushel.
But the full glory of our possessions was now to burst upon Cheon. The
trunk we were at was half filled with all sorts of cunning devices for
kitchen use, intended for the mistress’s pantry of that commodious
station home of past ignorant imagination. A mistress’s pantry forsooth,
in a land where houses are superfluous and luxuries barred, and at a
homestead where the mistress had long ceased to be anything but the
little missus—something to rule or educate or take care of, according to
the nature of her subordinates.
In a flash I knew all I had once been, and quailing before the awful
proof before me, presented Cheon with the whole collection of tin and
enamel ware, and packed him off to the kitchen before the Maluka had
time to lose interest in the books.
Everything was exactly what Cheon most needed, and he accepted
everything with gleeful chuckles—everything excepting a kerosene Primus
burner for boiling a kettle. That he refused to touch. “Him go bang,” he
explained, as usual explicit and picturesque in his English.
After gathering his treasure together he waddled away to the kitchen,
and at afternoon tea we had sponge cakes, light and airy beyond all
dreams of airy lightness, no one having yet combined the efforts of
Cheon, a flour dredge, and an egg-beater, in his dreams. And Cheon’s
heart being as light as his cookery, in his glee he made a little joke
at the expense of the Quarters, summoning all there to afternoon tea
with a chuckling call of “Cognac!” chuckles that increased tenfold at
the mock haste of the Quarters. A little joke, by the way, that never
lost in freshness as the months went by.
At intervals during the days that followed Cheon surveyed his treasures,
and during these intervals the whirr of the flour dredge or egg-beater
was heard from the kitchens, and invariably the whirr was followed by a
low, distinct chuckle of appreciation.
All afternoon we worked, and by the evening the dining-room was
transformed: blue cloths and lace runners on the deal side-table and
improvised pigeon-holes; nicknacks here and there on tables and shelves
and brackets; pictures on the walls; “kent” faces in photograph frames
among the nicknacks; a folding carpet-seated armchair in a position of
honour; cretonne curtains in the doorway between the rooms, and inside
the shimmering white net a study in colour effect—blue and white matting
on the floor, a crimson cloth on the table, and on the cloth Cheon’s
“silver” swan sailing in a sea of purple, blue, and heliotrope water-
lilies. But best of all were the books row upon row of old familiar
friends; nearly two hundred of them filling the shelved panel as they
looked down upon us.
Mac was dazzled with the books. “Hadn’t seen so many together since he
was a nipper”; and after we had introduced him to our favourites, we
played with our new toys like a parcel of children, until supper time.
When supper was over we lit the lamp, and shutting doors and windows,
shut the Sanguine Scot in with us, and made believe we were living once
more within sound of the rumble of a great city. Childish behaviour, no
doubt, but to be expected from folk who can find entertainment in the
going to bed of fowls; but when the heart is happy it forgets to grow
old.
“A lighted lamp and closed doors, and the outside world is what you will
it to be,” the Maluka theorised, and to disprove it Mac drew attention
to the distant booming of the bells that swung from the neck of his
grazing bullocks.
“The city clocks,” we said. “We hear them distinctly at night.”
But the night was full of sounds all around the homestead, and Mac,
determined to mock, joined in with the “Song of the Frogs.”
“Quart pot! Qua-rt-pot!” he croaked, as they sang outside in rumbling
monotone.
“The roll of the tramcars,” the Maluka interpreted gravely, as the long
flowing gutturals blended into each other; and Mac’s mood suddenly
changing he entered into our sport, and soon put us to shame in make-
believing; spoke of “pining for a breath of fresh air”; “hoped” to get
away from the grime and dust of the city as soon as the session was
over; wondered how he would shape “at camping out,” with an
irrepressible chuckle. “Often thought I’d like to try it,” he said, and
invited us to help him make up a camping party. “Be a change for us city
chaps,” he suggested; and then exploding at what he called his
“tomfoolery,” set the dining-net all a-quivering and shaking.
“Gone clean dilly, I believe,” he declared, after thinking that he had
“better be making a move for the last train.”
Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again,
and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it.
The waggons spelled for two days at the Warlochs, and we saw much of the
“Macs.” Then they decided to “push on”; for not only were others farther
“in” waiting for the waggons, but daily the dry stages were getting
longer and drier; and the shorter his dry stages are, the better a
bullock-puncher likes them.
With well-nursed bullocks, and a full complement of them—the “Macs” had
twenty-two per waggon for their dry stages—a “thirty-five-mile dry” can
be “rushed,” the waggoners getting under way by three o’clock one
afternoon, travelling all night with a spell or two for the bullocks by
the way, and “punching” them into water within twenty-four hours.
“Getting over a fifty-mile dry” is, however, a more complicated
business, and suggests a treadmill. The waggons are “pulled out” ten
miles in the late afternoon, the bullocks unyoked and brought back to
the water, spelled most of the next day, given a last drink and
travelled back to the waiting waggons by sundown; yoked up and travelled
on all that night and part of the next day; once more unyoked at the end
of the forty miles of the stage; taken forward to the next water, and
spelled and nursed up again at this water for a day or two; travelled
back again to the waggons, and again yoked up, and finally brought
forward in the night with the loads to the water.
Fifty miles dry with loaded waggons being the limit for mortal bullocks,
the Government breaks the “seventy-five” with a “drink” sent out in
tanks on one of the telegraph station waggons. The stage thus broken
into “a thirty-five-mile dry,” with another of forty on top of that,
becomes complicated to giddiness in its backings, and fillings, and
goings, and comings, and returnings.
As each waggon carries only five tons, all things considered, from
thirty to forty pounds a ton is not a high price to pay for the cartage
of stores to “inside.”
But although the “getting in”, with the stores means much to the “bush-
folk,” getting out again is the ultimate goal of the waggoners.
There is time enough for the trip, but only good time, before the roads
will be closed by the dry stages growing to impossible lengths for the
bullocks to recross; and if the waggoners lose sight of their goal, and
loiter by the way, they will find themselves “shut in” inside, with no
prospect of getting out until the next Wet opens the road for them.
The Irish Mac held records for getting over stages; but even he had been
“shut in” once, and had sat kicking his heels all through a long Dry,
wondering if the showers would come in time to let him out for the next
year’s loading, or if the Wet would break suddenly, and further shut him
in with floods and bogs. The horse teams had been “shut in” the same
year, but as the Macs explained, the teamsters had broached their cargo
that year, and had a “glorious spree” with the cases of grog—a “glorious
spree” that detained them so long on the road that by the time they were
in there was no chance of getting out, and they had more than enough
time to brace themselves for the interview that eventually came with
their employers.
“Might a bullock-puncher have the privilege of shaking hands with a
lady?” the Irish Mac asked, extending an honest, horny hand; and the
privilege, if it were one, was granted. Finally all was ready, and the
waggons, one behind the other, each with its long swaying line of
bullocks before it, slid away from the Warloch Ponds and crept into the
forest, looking like three huge snails with shells on their backs,
Bertie’s Nellie watching, wreathed in smiles.
Nellie had brought to the homestead her bosom friend and crony, Biddy,
and the staff had increased to five. It would have numbered six, only
Maudie, discovering that the house was infested with debbil-debbils, had
resigned and “gone bush.” The debbil-debbils were supposed to haunt the
Maluka’s telescope, for Maudie, on putting her eye to the sight opening,
to find out what interested the Maluka so often, had found the trees on
the distant plain leaping towards her.
“Debbil-debbil, sit down,” she screamed, as, flinging the telescope from
her in a frenzy of fear, she found the distance still and composed.
“No more touch him, missus!” she shrieked, as I stooped to pick up the
telescope. “’Spose you touch him, all about there come on quick fellow.
Me bin see him! My word him race!”
After many assurances, I was allowed to pick it up, Maudie crouching in
a shuddering heap the while behind the office, to guard against
surprises. Next morning she applied for leave of absence and “went
bush.” Jimmy’s Nellie, however, was not so easily scared, and after
careful investigation treated herself to a pleasant half hour with the
telescope.
“Tree all day walk about,” she said, explaining the mystery to the
staff; and the looking-glass speedily lost in favour. The telescope
proved full of delights. But although it was a great sight to see a
piccaninny “come on big-fellow,” nothing could compare with the joy of
looking through the reversed end of the glass, into a world where great
men became “little fellow,” unless it were the marvel of watching dim,
distant specks as they took on the forms of birds, beasts, or men.
The waggons gone, and with them Nellie’s shyness, she quietly ousted
Rosy from her position at the head of the staff. “Me sit down first
time,” she said; and happy, smiling Rosy, retiring, obeyed orders as
willingly as she had given them. With Nellie and Rosy at the head of
affairs, house-cleaning passed unnoticed, and although, after the
arrival of unlimited changes of everything, washing-day threatened to
become a serious business, they coped with that difficulty by continuing
to live in a cycle of washing days—every alternate day only, though, so
as to leave time for gardening.
The gardening staff, which consisted of a king, an heir-apparent, and a
royal councillor, had been engaged to wheel barrow-loads of rich loamy
soil from the billabong to the garden beds; but as its members preferred
gossiping in the shade to work of any kind, the gardening took time and
supervision.
“That’ll do, Gadgerrie?” was the invariable question after each load, as
the staff prepared to sit down for a gossip; and “Gadgerrie” had to
start every one afresh, after deciding whose turn it was to ride back to
the billabong in the barrow.
Six loads in a morning was a fair record, for “Gadgerrie” was not often
disinclined for a gossip on court matters, but although nothing was done
while we were out-bush, the garden was gradually growing.
Two of the beds against the verandah were gaily flourishing, others
“coming on,” and outside the broad pathway a narrow bed had been made
all round the garden for an hibiscus hedge; while outside this bed
again, one at each corner of the garden, stood four posts—the Maluka’s
promise of a dog-proof, goat-proof, fowl-proof fence. So far Tiddle’ums
had acted as fence, when we were in, at the homestead, scattering fowls,
goats, and dairy cows in all directions if they dared come over a line
she had drawn in her mind’s eye. When Tiddle’ums was out-bush with us,
Bett-Bett acted as fence.
Johnny, generally repairing the homestead now, admired the garden and
declared everything would be “A1 in no time.”
“Wouldn’t know the old place,” he said, a day or two later, surveying
his own work with pride. Then he left us, and for the first time I was
sorry the house was finished. Johnny was one of the men who had not
“learnt sense” but the world would be a better place if there were more
Johnnies in it.
Just as we were preparing to go out-bush for reports, Dan came in with a
mob of cattle for branding and the news that a yard on the northern
boundary was gone from the face of the earth.
“Clean gone since last Dry,” he reported; “burnt or washed away, or
both.”
Rather than let his cattle go, he had travelled in nearly thirty miles
with the mob in hand, but “reckoned” it wasn’t “good enough.” “The time
I’ve had with them staggering bobs,” he said, when we pitied the poor,
weary, footsore little calves: “could ’av brought in a mob of snails
quicker. ’Tisn’t good enough.”
The Maluka also considered it not “good enough,” and decided to run up a
rough branding wing at once on to the holding yard at the Springs; and
while Dan saw to the branding of the mob the Maluka looked out his
plans.
“Did you get much hair for the mattress?” I asked, all in good faith,
when Dan came down from the yards to the house to discuss the plans, and
Dan stood still, honestly vexed with himself.
“Well, I’m blest!” he said, “if I didn’t forget all about it,” and then
tried to console me by saying I wouldn’t need a mattress till the
mustering was over. “Can’t carry it round with you, you know,” he said,
“and it won’t be needed anywhere else.” Then he surveyed the house with
his philosophical eye.
“Wouldn’t know the old place,” Johnny had said, and Dan “reckoned” it
was “all right as houses go.” Adding with a chuckle, “Well, she’s
wrestled with luck for more’n four months to get it, but the question
is, what’s she going to use it for now she’s got it?”