Before a week was out the Maluka and Cheon had won each other’s undying
regard because of their treatment of the missus.
With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held
there by hospital routine, the Maluka decided on bed and feeding-up as
the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.
As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Maluka was
supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of
sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall. Rice-
water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and
every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the
Maluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being
administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes
straightened. (The mattress being still on the ends of cows’ tails, a
folded rug served in its place). There was very little wrong with the
patient, but the wonder was she did not become really ill through over-
eating and want of rest.
I pleaded with the Maluka, but the Maluka pleading for just a little
more rest and feeding-up, while Cheon gulped and choked in the
background, I gave in, and eating everything as it was offered, snatched
what rest I could, getting as much entertainment as possible out of
Cheon and the staff in between times.
For three days I lay obediently patient, and each day Cheon grew more
affectionate, patting my hands at times, as he confided to the Maluka
that although he admired big, moon-faced women as a feast for the eyes,
he liked them small and docile when he had to deal personally with them.
Until I met Cheon I thought the Chinese incapable of affection; but many
lessons are learned out bush.
Travellers—house-visitors—coming in on the fourth day, I hoped for a
speedy release, but visitors were considered fatiguing, and release was
promised as soon as they were gone.
Fortunately the walls had many cracks in them—not being as much on the
plumb as Johnny had predicted, and for a couple of days, watching the
visitors through these cracks and listening to their conversation
provided additional amusement. I could see them quite distinctly as, no
doubt, they could see me; but we kept a decorous silence until the
Fizzer came in, then at the Fizzer’s shout the walls of Jericho toppled
down.
“The missus sick!” I heard him shout. “Thought she looked in prime
condition at the Springs.” (Bush language frequently has a strong twang
of cattle in it.)
“So I am now,” I called; and then the Fizzer and I held an animated
conversation through the walls. “I’m imprisoned for life,” I moaned,
after hearing the news of the outside world; and laughing and chuckling
outside, the Fizzer vowed he would “do a rescue next trip if they’ve
still got you down.” Then, after appreciating fervent thanks, he shouted
in farewell: “The boss is bringing something along that’ll help to pass
some of the time—the finest mail you ever clapped eyes on,” and
presently patient and bed were under a litter of mail-matter.
The Fizzer having brought down the walls of conventionality, the
traveller-guests proffered greetings and sympathy through the material
walls, after which we exchanged mail-news and general gossip for a day
or two; then just as these travellers were preparing to exchange
farewells, others came in and postponed the promised release. As there
seemed little hope of a lull in visitors, I was wondering if ever I
should be considered well enough to entertain guests, when Fate once
more interfered.
“Whatever’s this coming in from the East?” I heard the Maluka call in
consternation, and in equal consternation his traveller-guest called
back: “Looks like a whole village settlement.” Then Cheon burst into the
room in a frenzy of excitement: “Big mob traveller, missus. Two-fellow-
missus, sit down,” he began; but the Maluka was at his heels.
“Here’s two women and a mob of youngsters,” he gasped. “I’m afraid
you’ll have to get up, little ’un, and lend a hand with them.”
Afraid! By the time the village settlement had “turned out” and found
its way to the house, I was out in the open air welcoming its members
with a heartiness that must have surprised them. Little did they guess
that they were angels unaware. Homely enough angels, though, they
proved, as angels unaware should prove: one man and two women from
“Queensland way,” who had been “inside” for fifteen years, and with them
two fine young lads and a wee, toddling baby—all three children born in
the bush and leaving it for the first time.
Never before had Cheon had such a company to provide for; but as we
moved towards the house in a body—ourselves, the village settlement, and
the Maluka’s traveller-guests, with a stockman traveller and the Dandy
looking on from the quarters, his hospitable soul rejoiced at the sight;
and by the time seats had been found for all comers, he appeared laden
with tea and biscuits, and within half an hour had conjured up a
plentiful dinner for all comers.
Fortunately the chairs were all “up” to the weight of the ladies, and
the remainder of the company easily accommodated itself to
circumstances, in the shape of sawn stumps, rough stools, and sundry
boxes; and although the company was large and the dining-table small,
and although, at times, we feared the table was about to fulfil its oft-
repeated threat and fall over, yet the dinner was there to be enjoyed,
and, being bush-folk, and hungry, our guests enjoyed it, passing over
all incongruities with simple merriment—a light-hearted, bubbling
merriment, in no way comparable to that “laughter of fools,” that
crackling of thorns under a pot, provoked by the incongruities of the
world’s freak dinners. The one is the heritage of the simple-hearted,
and the other—all the world has to give in exchange for this birthright.
The elder lads, one fourteen and one ten years of age, found Cheon by
far the most entertaining incongruity at the dinner, and when dinner was
over—after we had settled down on the various chairs and stumps that had
been carried out to the verandah again—they shadowed him wherever he
went.
They were strangely self-possessed children; but knowing little more of
the world than the black children their playmates, Cheon, in his turn,
found them vastly amusing, and instructing them in the ways of the
world—from his point of view—found them also eager pupils.
But their education came to a standstill after they had mastered the
mysteries of the Dandy’s gramophone, and Cheon was no longer
entertaining.
All afternoon brass-band selections, comic songs, and variety items,
blared out with ceaseless reiteration; and as the men-folk smoked and
talked cattle, and the wee baby—a bonnie fair child—toddled about,
smiling and contented, the women-folk spoke of their life “out-back,”
and listening, I knew that neither I nor the telegraph lady had even
guessed what roughness means.
For fifteen years things had been improving, and now everyone was to
have a well-earned holiday. The children were to be christened and then
shown the delights of a large town! Darwin of necessity (Palmerston, by
the way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians). Darwin with its one
train, its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public
buildings, its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers’ walk, its two or
three empty, wide, grass-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed,
iron-built bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins—a
development of the white-ant pest—and lastly, its great sea, where ships
wander without tracks or made ways! Hardly a typical town, but the best
in the Territory.
The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping,
and as we slipped into fashions the traveller guests became interested.
“Haven’t seen so many women together for years,” one of them said.
“Reminds me of when I was a nipper,” and the other traveller “reckoned”
he had struck it lucky for once. “Three on ’em at once,” he chuckled
with indescribable relish. “They reckon it never rains but it pours.”
And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a
homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.
But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all
impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked,
and to the railway, where the iron monster ran.
Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair
toddling baby was sitting on its mother’s pommel-knee, smiling out on
the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a
couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and
before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the
two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back in a few weeks, at one
year old, compares favourably with one of the Fizzer’s trips. But it is
thus the bush develops her Fizzers.
After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt,
preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit to the
Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy Dick’s bullocks and a
great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan proved a strong ally; and
besides, as the musterers were in and Happy Dick due to arrive by
midday, Cheon’s hands were full with other matters.
There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the
Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all comers, in
addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black
boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his
own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one
of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time
they came in.
Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. “Good-day! Real
glad to see you!” was his usual greeting. Sure of his own welcome
wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome
all men into his fellowship. “Real glad to see you,” he would say, with
a ready smile of comradeship; and it always seemed as though he had
added: “I hope you’ll make yourself at home while with me.” In some
mysterious way, Happy Dick was at all times the host giving liberally of
the best he had to his fellow-men.
He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. “Born in it, I think,” he
would say. “Don’t quite remember,” adding with his ever-varying smile,
“Remember when it was born, anyway.”
When the “Overland Telegraph” was built across the Australian continent
from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide, was cut for it
through bush and scrub and dense forests, along the backbone of
Australia, and in this avenue the line party was “born” and bred—a party
of axemen and mechanics under the orders of a foreman, whose duty it is
to keep the “Territory section” of the line in repair, and this avenue
free from the scrub and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.
In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon hundreds
of miles, carpeted with feathery grasses and shooting scrubs, and walled
in on either side with dense, towering forest or lighter and more
scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter loneliness, zigzagging
from horizon to horizons beyond, and guarding those two sensitive wires
at its centre, as they run along their single line of slender galvanised
posts, from the great bush that never ceases in its efforts to close in
on them and engulf them. A great broad highway, waiting in its
loneliness for the generations to come, with somewhere in its length the
line party camp, and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance
traveller or two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and
grazing along behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag
across its shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred miles
of solitude, here and there a horseman riding, and here and there a
footman trudging on, each unconscious of the others.
From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days, with
those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever running on
before them and as they travel, now and then they touch a post for
company—shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then a post for
company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and
wires can be. Here at least is something in touch with the world
something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an ever-
present friend in dire necessity. With those wires above him, any day a
traveller can cry for help to the Territory, if he call while he yet has
strength to climb one of those friendly posts and cut that quivering
wire—for help that will come speedily, for the cutting of the telegraph
wire is as the ringing of an alarm-bell throughout the Territory. In all
haste the break is located, and food, water, and every human help that
suggests itself sent out from the nearest telegraph station. There is no
official delay—there rarely is in the Territory—for by some marvellous
good fortune, there everything belongs to the Department in which it
finds itself.
Just as Happy Dick is one of the pillars of the line party, so the line
party is one of the pillars of the line itself. Up and down this great
avenue, year in year out it creeps along, cutting scrub and repairing as
it goes, and moving cumbrous main camps from time to time, with its
waggon loads of stores, tents, furnishings, flocks of milking goats, its
fowls, its gramophone, and Chinese cook. Month after month it creeps on,
until, reaching the end of the section, it turns round to creep out
again.
Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years Happy
Dick had seen to its peace and comfort. Nothing ever ruffled him. “All
in the game” was his nearest approach to a complaint, as he pegged away
at his work, in between whiles going to the nearest station for killers,
carting water in tanks out to “dry stage camps,” and doing any other
work that found itself undone. Dick’s position was as elastic as his
smile.
He considered himself an authority on three things only: the line party,
dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including his dog Peter and his
cheque-book, he left to the discretion of his fellow-men.
Peter—a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes
larger than a fox-terrier—could be kept in order with a little
discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion
in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep
order in the cheque-book.
The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds of
miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays all
salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin, and
therefore when Happy Dick found himself the backbone of the line party,
he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book. At first he was
inclined to look upon it as a poor substitute for hard cash; but after
the foreman had explained its mysteries, and taught him to sign his name
in magic tracery, he became more than reconciled to it and drew cheques
blithely, until one for five pounds was returned to a creditor: no
funds—and in due course returned to Happy Dick.
“No good?” he said to the creditor, looking critically at the piece of
paper in his hands. “Must have been writ wrong. Well, you’ve only
yourself to blame, seeing you wrote it”; then added magnanimously,
mistaking the creditor’s scorn: “Never mind, write yourself out another.
I don’t mind signing ’em.”
The foreman and the creditor spent several hours trying to explain
banking principles, but Dick “couldn’t see it.” “There’s stacks of ’em
left!” he persisted, showing his book of fluttering bank cheques.
Finally, in despair, the foreman took the cheque-book into custody, and
Dick found himself poor once more.
But it was only for a little while. In an evil hour he discovered that a
cheque from another man’s book answered all purposes if it bore that
magic tracery, and Happy Dick was never solvent again. Gaily he signed
cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the
cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin
bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was like taking
a ticket in a lottery to accept a cheque from Happy Dick.
“Real glad to see you,” Happy Dick said in hearty greeting to us all as
he dismounted, and we waited to be entertained. Happy Dick had his
favourite places and people, and the Elsey community stood high in his
favour. “Can’t beat the Elsey for a good dog-fight and a good game of
cribbage,” he said, every time he came in or left us, and that from
Happy Dick was high praise. At times he added: “Nor for a square meal
neither,” thereby inciting Cheon to further triumphs for his approval.
As usual, Happy Dick “played” the Quarters cribbage and related a good
dog-fight—“Peter’s latest “—and, as usual before he left us, his pockets
were bulging with tobacco—the highest stakes used in the Quarters—and
Peter and Brown had furnished him with materials for a still newer dog-
fight recital. As usual, he rode off with his killers, assuring all that
he would “be along again soon,” and, as usual, Peter and Brown were
tattered and hors-de-combat, but both still aggressive. Peter’s death
lunge was the death lunge of Brown, and both dogs knew that lunge too
well to let the other “get in.”
As usual, Happy Dick had hunted through the store, and taken anything he
“really needed,” paying, of course, by cheque; but when he came to sign
that cheque, after the Maluka had written it, he entered the dining-room
for the first time since its completion.
With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes as
they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table, and before
he left the homestead he expressed his approval in the Quarters:
“Got everything up to the knocker, haven’t they?” he said. “Often heard
toffs decorated their tables with rags in hobble rings, but never
believed it before.”
Happy Dick gone, Cheon turned his attention to the health of the missus;
but Dan, persuading the Maluka that “all she needed was a breath of
fresh air,” we went bush on a tour of inspection.