At our appointed time we left the homestead, taking the north-west track
for over a mile to continue the dust-throwing; and for the whole length
of that mile Dan reiterated the “advantages of surprise parties,” and
his opinion that “things were just about properly fixed up for one”; and
when we left the track abruptly and set off across country at right
angles to it, Sambo’s quick questioning, suspicious glance made it very
evident that he, for one, had gleaned no inkling of the patrol, which
naturally filled Dan with delight.
“River to-night, Sambo,” he said airily, but after that one swift glance
Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever—Sambo was always difficult to
fathom—while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the
success of his dust-throwing, proving with many illustrations that “it’s
the hardest thing to spring a surprise on niggers. Something seems to
tell ’em you’re coming,” he explained. “Some chaps put it down to
second-sight or thought-reading.”
When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the
trip. “Bluffed ’em this time all right,” he assured us, little guessing
that the blacks at the “Red Lilies,” thirty miles away, and other little
groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were
conjecturing on the object of the Maluka’s visit—“something having told
them we were coming.”
The “something” however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading,
but a very simple, tangible “something.” Sambo had gone for a stroll
from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack’s boys had gone for a
stroll from Jack’s camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic
columns of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen
above the timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at
the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon. The Maluka was on the
river, and when the Maluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off
forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Maluka, but no one
cares about vexing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
On stations in the Never-Never the blacks are supposed to camp either in
the homesteads, where no man need go hungry, or right outside the
boundaries on waters beyond the cattle, travelling in or out as desired,
on condition that they keep to the main travellers’ tracks—blacks among
the cattle having a scattering effect on the herd, apart from the fact
that “niggers in” generally means cattle-killing.
Of course no man ever hopes to keep his blacks absolutely obedient to
this rule; but the judicious giving of an odd bullock at not too rare
intervals, and always at corroborree times, the more judicious winking
at cattle killing on the boundaries, where cattle scaring is not all
disadvantage, and the even more judicious giving of a hint, when a hint
is necessary, will do much to keep them fairly well in hand, anyway from
openly harrying and defiant killing, which in humanity is surely all any
man should ask.
The white man has taken the country from the black fellow, and with it
his right to travel where he will for pleasure or food, and until he is
willing to make recompense by granting fair liberty of travel, and a
fair percentage of cattle or their equivalent in fair payment—openly and
fairly giving them, and seeing that no man is unjustly treated or hungry
within his borders—cattle killing, and at times even man killing by
blacks, will not be an offence against the white folk.
A black fellow kills cattle because he is hungry and must be fed with
food, having been trained in a school that for generations has
acknowledged “catch who catch can” among its commandments; and until the
long arm of the law interfered, white men killed the black fellow
because they were hungry with a hunger that must be fed with gold,
having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged
“Thou shalt not kill” among its commandments; and yet men speak of the
“superiority” of the white race, and, speaking, forget to ask who of us
would go hungry if the situation were reversed, but condemn the black
fellow as a vile thief, piously quoting—now it suits them—from those
same commandments, that men “must not steal,” in the same breath
referring to the white man’s crime (when it finds them out) as “getting
into trouble over some shooting affair with blacks.” Truly we British-
born have reason to brag of our “inborn sense of justice.”
The Maluka being more than willing to give his fair percentage, a
judicious hint from him was generally taken quietly and for the time
discreetly obeyed, and it was a foregone conclusion that our “nigger
hunt” would only involve the captured with general discomfiture; but the
Red Lilies being a stronghold of the tribe, and a favourite hiding-place
for “outsiders,” emergencies were apt to occur “down the river,” and we
rode out of camp with rifles unslung and revolvers at hand.
Dan’s sleep had in no wise lessened his faith in the efficiency of dust-
throwing, and as we set out he “reckoned” the missus would “learn a
thing or two about surprise parties this trip.” We all did, but the
black fellows gave the instruction.
All morning we rode in single file, following the river through miles of
deep gorges, crossing here and there stretches of grassy country that
ran in valleys between gorge and gorge, passing through deep Ti Tree
forests at times, and now and then clambering over towering limestone
ridges that blocked the way, with, all the while, the majestic Roper
river flowing deep and wide and silent on our left, between its water-
lily fringed margins. It would take a mighty drought to dry up the
waters of the Territory—permanent, we call them, sure of our rivers and
our rains. Almost fifty miles of these deep-flowing waterways fell to
our share; thirty-five miles of the Roper, twelve in the Long Reach,
besides great holes scattered here and there along the beds of creeks
that are mighty rivers in themselves “during the Wet.” Too much water,
if anything, was the complaint at the Elsey, for water everywhere meant
cattle everywhere.
For over two hours we rode, prying into and probing all sorts of odd
nooks and crannies before we found any sign of blacks, and then, Roper
giving the alarm, every one sat to attention. Roper had many ways of
amusing himself when travelling through bush, but one of his greatest
delights was nosing out hidden black fellows. At the first scent of
“nigger” his ears would prick forward, and if left to himself, he would
carry his rider into an unsuspected nigger camp, or stand peering into
the bushes at a discomfited black fellow, who was busy trying to think
of some excuse to explain his presence and why he had hidden.
As Roper’s ears shot forward and he turned aside towards a clump of
thick-set bushes, Dan chuckled in expectation, but all Roper found was a
newly deserted gundi camp, and fresh tracks travelling eastwards—tracks
left during the night—after our arrival at the river, of course.
Dan surveyed the tracks, and his chuckles died out, and, growing
sceptical of the success of his surprise party, he followed them for a
while in silence, Sambo riding behind, outwardly stolid, but no doubt,
inwardly chuckling.
Other eastward-going tracks a mile or so farther on made Dan even more
sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory
of “something always telling ’em somehow,” and, losing interest in
nigger-hunts, he became showman of the Roper river scenery.
Down into the depths of gorges he led us, through ferny nooks, and over
the sandy stretches at the base of the mighty clefts through which the
river flows; and as we rode, he had us leaning back in our saddles, in
danger of cricking our necks, to look up at lofty heights above us,
until a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had
clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky
surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses’ necks
in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides
of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. “Nothing like
variety,” Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning
well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far
side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved
style; dropping from ledge to ledge as he went, stepping carefully along
their length, he would pause for a moment on their edges to judge
distance, then, gathering his feet together, he would sway out and drop
a foot or more to the next ledge. Riding Roper was never more than
sitting in the saddle and leaving all else to him. Wherever he went
there was safety, both for himself and his rider whether galloping
between trees or beneath over-hanging branches, whether dropping down
ridges with the surefootedness of a mountain pony, or picking his way
across the treacherous “springy country.” No one knew better than he his
own limits, and none better understood “springy country.” Carefully he
would test suspicious-looking turf with a cautious fore-paw, and when
all roads proved risky, in his own unmistakable language he would advise
his rider to dismount and walk over, having shown plainly that the
dangerous bit was not equal to the combined weight of horse and man.
When Roper advised, wise men obeyed.
But gorges and ridges were not all Dan had to show us. Twice in our
thirty-five miles of the Roper—about ten miles apart—wide-spreading
rocky arches completely span the river a foot or so beneath its surface,
forming natural crossing-places; for at them the full volume of water
takes what Dan called a “duck-under,” leaving only smoothly flowing
shallow streams, a couple of hundred yards wide, running over the rocky
bridgeways. The first “duck-under” occurs in a Ti Tree valley, and,
marvelling at the wonder of the rippling streamlet so many yards wide
and so few in length, with that deep, silent river for its source and
estuary—we loitered in the pleasant forest glen, until Dan, coming on
further proofs of a black fellow’s “second-sight” along the margins of
the duck-under, he turned away in disgust, and as we followed him
through the great forest he treated us to a lengthy discourse on
thought-reading.
The Salt Creek, coming into the Roper with its deep, wide estuary,
interrupted both Dan’s lecture and our course, and following along the
creek to find the crossing we left the river, and before we saw it again
a mob of “brumbies” had lured us into a “drouth” that even Dan declared
was the “dead finish.”
Brumby horses being one of the problems of the run, and the destruction
of brumby stallions imperative, as the nigger-hunt was apparently off,
the brumby mob proved too enticing to be passed by, and for an hour and
more it kept us busy, the Maluka and Dan being equally “set on getting a
stallion or two.”
As galloping after brumbies when there is no trap to run them into is
about as wise as galloping after a flight of swallows, we followed at a
distance when they galloped, and stalked them against the wind when they
drew up to reconnoitre: beautiful, clean-limbed, graceful creatures,
with long flowing manes and tails floating about them, galloping freely
and swiftly as they drove the mares before them, or stepping with light,
dancing tread as they drew up and faced about, with the mares now
huddled together behind them. Three times they drew up and faced about
and each time a stallion fell before the rifles, then, becoming more
wary, they led us farther and farther back, evading the rifles at every
halt, until finally they galloped out of sight, and beyond all chance of
pursuit. Then, Dan discovering he had acquired the “drouth,” advised
“giving it best” and making for the Spring Hole in Duck Creek.
“Could do with a drop of spring water,” he said, but Dan’s luck was out
this trip, and the Spring Hole proved a slimy bog “alive with dead
cattle,” as he himself phrased it. Three dead beasts lay bogged on its
margin, and held as in a vice, up to their necks in slime and awfulness
stood two poor living brutes. They turned piteous terrified eyes on us
as we rode up, and then Dan and the Maluka firing in mercy, the poor
heads drooped and fell and the bog with a sickening sigh sucked them
under.
As we watched, horribly fascinated, Dan indulged in a soliloquy—a habit
with him when ordinary conversation seemed out of place. “‘Awful dry Wet
we’re having,’ sez he,” he murmured, “‘the place is alive with dead
cattle.’ ‘Fact,’ sez he, ‘cattle’s dying this year that never died
before.’” Then remarking that “this sort of thing” wasn’t “exactly a
thirst quencher,” he followed up the creek bank into a forest of
cabbage-tree palms—tall, feathery-crested palms everywhere, taller even
that the forest trees; but never a sign of water.
It was then two o’clock, and our last drink had been at breakfast—soon
after sun-up; and for another hour we pegged wearily on, with that seven
hours’ drouth done horses, the beating sun of a Territory October
overhead, Brown stretched across the Maluka’s knees on the verge of
apoplexy, and Sool’em panting wearily on. With the breaking of her leg
little Tiddle’ums had ended her bush days, but as she lost in bush craft
she gained in excellency as a fence personifier.
By three o’clock we struck water in the Punch Bowl—a deep, volcanic
hole, bottomless, the blacks say, but apparently fed beneath by the
river; but long before then Dan’s chuckle had died out, and soliloquies
had ceased to amuse him.
At the first sight of the water we revived, and as Brown and Sool’em lay
down and revelled on its margin, Dan “took a pull as an introduction,”
and then, after unpacking the team and getting the fire going for the
billy, he opened out the tucker-bags, having decided on a “fizz” as a
“good quencher.”
“Nothing like a fizz when you’ve got a drouth on,” he said, mixing soda
and cream-of-tartar into a cup of water, and drinking deeply. As he
drank, the “fizz” spattered its foam all over his face and beard, and
after putting down the empty cup with a satisfied sigh, he joined us as
we sat on the pebbly incline, waiting for the billy to boil, and with
the tucker-bags dumped down around and about us. “Real refreshing that!”
he said, drawing a red handkerchief from his belt and mopping his
spattered face and beard, adding, as he passed the damp handkerchief
over his ears and neck with chuckling exaggeration: “Tell you what! A
fizz ’ud be a great thing if you were short of water. You could get a
drink and have a good wash-up with the one cupful.”
With the “fizz,” Dan’s interest in education revived, and after dinner
he took up the role of showman of the Roper scenery once more, and had
us scrambling over boulders and cliffs along the dry bed of the creek
that runs back from the Punch Bowl, until, having clambered over its
left bank into a shady glen, we found ourselves beneath the gem of the
Roper—a wide-spreading banyan tree, with its propped-up branches turning
and twisting in long winding leafy passages and balconies, over a
feathery grove of young palm trees that had crept into its generous
shade.
Here and there the passages and balconies graded one to another’s level,
all being held together by innumerable stays and props, sent down from
branch to branch, and from branches to the grassy turf beneath; and one
sweeping limb, coming almost to the ground in a gentle incline before
twisting away and up again, made ascent so simple that the men-folk sent
the missus for a “stroll in midair,” sure that no white woman’s feet had
yet trodden those winding ways. And as she strolled about the tree—not
climbed—hindered only by her holland riding-skirt, Brown followed,
anxiously but cautiously. Then, the spirit of vandalism taking hold of
the Maluka, he cut the name of the missus deep into the yielding bark.
There are some wonderful trees on the Elsey, but not one of them will
compare with the majesty and grandeur of that old banyan. Away from the
world it stands beyond those rocky ways and boulders, with its soft
shade sweeping curves, and feathery undergrowth, making a beautiful
world of its own. For years upon years it has stood there—may be for
centuries—sending down from its branches those props for its old age,
bountiful with its shade, and indifferent whether its path-ways be
trodden by white feet or black.
After the heat and “drouth” we could have loitered in that pleasant
shade; but we were due at the Red Lilies “second night out”; and it
being one of the unwritten laws of a “nigger-hunt” to keep
appointments—“the other chaps worrying a bit if you don’t turn up”—soon
after four o’clock we were out in the blazing heat again, following the
river now along its higher flood-bank through grassy plains and open
forest land.
By five o’clock Dan was prophesying that “it ’ud take us all we knew to
do the trick in daylight,” but at six o’clock, when we were still eight
miles from the Red Lilies, the Maluka settled the question by calling
for a camp there and then. “The missus had had enough,” the Maluka
decided, and Dan became anxious. “It’s that drouth that’s done it,” he
lamented; and although agreeing with the Maluka that Jack would survive
a few hours’ anxiety, regretted we had “no way of letting him know.” (We
were not aware of the efficiency of smoke signalling).
We turned back a short distance for better watering for horses, settling
down for the night at the second “duck-under”—McMinn’s bar—within sound
of the rushing of many waters; for here the river comes back to the
surface with a mighty roar and swirling currents. “Knockup camp,” Dan
christened it in his pleasant way, and Sambo became unexpectedly
curious. “Missus knock up?” he asked, and the Maluka nodding, Sambo’s
question was forgotten until the next mid-day.
By then we had passed the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-
bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green grass,
that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug,
smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three
hundred feet of water, as we stood among our horses.
“Slewed!” Jack called in answer, through hollowed hands. “Didn’t worry.
Heard—the—missus—had—knocked—up,” and Dan leaned against his horse, limp
with amazement.
“Heard the missus had knocked up?” he gasped. “Well, I’m blowed! Talk of
surprise parties!” and the old black fellows looked on enjoying the
effect.
“Black fellow plenty savey,” they said loftily, and Dan was almost
persuaded to a belief in debbel-debbels, until our return to the
homestead, when Jimmy’s Nellie divulged the Court secret; then Dan
ejaculated another “Well, I’m blowed!” with the theory of second-sight
and thought-reading falling about his ears.
After a consultation across the river in long-drawn-out syllables, Jack
decided on a horse muster for the return trip—genuine this time—and went
on his way, after appointing to meet us at Knock-up camp next evening.
But our horses refusing to leave the deep green feed, we settled down
just where we were, beside the river, and formed a curious camping-
ground for ourselves, a small space hacked out and trampled down, out of
the dense rank grass that towered above and around us.
But this was to be a record trip for discomfort. Dan, on opening out the
tucker-bags, announced ruefully that our supply of meat had “turned on
us”; and as our jam-tin had “blown,” we feared we were reduced to damper
only, until the Maluka unearthed a bottle of anchovy paste, falsely
labelled “Chicken and Ham.” “Lot’s wife,” Dan called it, after “tackling
some as a relish.”
Birds were everywhere about the lagoons—ducks, shags, great geese, and
pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and
after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper,
we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But
revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed
bullets of the Maluka’s rifle reducing an unfortunate duck to a tangled
mass of blood and feathers we were obliged to accept, willy-nilly, the
prospect of damper and “Lot’s wife” for supper. But our hopes died hard,
and we sneaked about the gorgeous lagoons, revolvers in hand, for a good
hour, “larning a thing or two about the lagoons” from Dan as we sneaked.
The Red Lily lagoons lie away from the Roper, on either side of it,
wide-spreading and shallow—great sheets of water with tall reeds and
rushes about them, and glorious in flowering time with their immense
cup-shaped crimson blossoms clustering on long stalks above great
floating leaves—leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I
think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins
of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and oftentimes
douce native companions.
Being so shallow and wide-spreading, the lagoons would dry up early in
the “dry” were it not that the blacks are able to refill them at will
from the river; for here the Roper indulges in a third “duck-under,” so
curious that with a few logs and sheets of bark the blacks can block the
way of its waters and overflow them into the lagoons thereby ensuring a
plentiful larder to hosts of wild fowl and, incidentally, to themselves.
As the mystery of this “duck-under” lies under water, it can only be
described from hearsay. Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock
runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and
terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the
stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its
northern borders, while the lesser current glides quietly around the
southern side, slipping partly over the submerged wall, and partly
through a great side-long cleft on its face—gliding so quietly that the
cleft can be easily blocked and the wall heightened when the waters are
needed for the lagoons. Black-fellow gossip also reports that the island
can be reached by a series of subterranean caves that open into daylight
away at the Cave Creek, miles away.
Getting nothing better than one miserable shag by our revolvers, we
faced damper and “Lot’s wife” about sundown, returning to camp through a
dense Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like
creatures, inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from
almost every branch of every tree. “Flying foxes,” Dan called them, and
Sambo helped himself to a few, finding “Lot’s wife” unsatisfying; but
the white folk “drew the line at varmints.”
“Had bandicoot once for me Christmas dinner,” Dan informed us, making
extra tea “on account of ‘Lot’s wife’” taking a bit of “washing down.”
Then, supper over, the problem of watering the horses had to be solved.
The margins of the lagoons were too boggy for safety, and as the horses,
fearing alligators apparently, refused the river, we had a great
business persuading them to drink out of the camp mixing dish.
The sun was down before we began; and long before we were through with
the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning
to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching—skimming along and
above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the
river, but reaching right across it, and away beyond the tree tops.
Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and
as it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying
creatures, we remembered Dan’s “flying foxes.” In unbroken continuity
the cloud swept out of the pine forest, along the river, and past us,
resembling an elongated kaleidoscope, all dark colours in appearance;
for as they swept by the shimmering creatures constantly changed
places—gliding downwards as they flew, before dipping for a drink to
rise again with swift, glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry
all the while. Like clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such
myriads that, even after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen
minutes passed before they began to straggle out, and twenty before the
last few stragglers were gone. Then, as we turned up stream to look
after them, we found that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning
out over the tree tops. The evening drink accomplished, it was time to
think of food.
Dan welcomed the spectacle as an “impromptu bit of education. Learnt
something meself, even,” he said with lordly superiority. “Been out-bush
forty years and never struck that before”; and later, as we returned to
camp, he declared it “just knocked spots off De Rougemont.”
But it had taken so long to persuade the horses that a drink could
proceed out of a mixing dish, that it was time to turn in by then; and
Dan proceeded to clear a space for a sleeping ground with a tomahawk.
“Seems no end to education once you start,” he chuckled, hacking at a
stubborn tussock. “Reckon no other woman ever learned to make a bed with
a tomahawk.” Then Sambo created a diversion by asking for the loan of a
revolver before taking a message to the blacks’ camp.
“Big mob bad fellow black fellow sit down longa island,” he explained;
and Dan, whimsical under all circumstances, “noticed the surprise party
wasn’t exactly going off without a hitch.” “Couldn’t have fixed up
better for them if they’ve got a surprise party of their own up their
sleeves,” he added ruefully, looking round at the dense wall of grass
about us; and as he and the Maluka swung the two nets not six feet
apart, we were all of one mind that “getting murdered was an experience
we could do nicely without.” Then Sambo returning and swinging his net
in the narrow space between the two others, set Dan chuckling again.
“Doesn’t mean to make a target of himself,” he said; but his chuckle
died out when Sambo, preparing to curl up in the safest place in the
camp, explained his presumption tersely by announcing that “Monkey sit
down longa camp.” Monkey was a law unto himself, and a very unpleasant
law, being a reputed murderer several times over, and when he and his
followers were about, white men saw to their rifles; and as we turned in
we also agreed “that this wasn’t exactly the kind of nigger hunt we had
set out for.” “It makes a difference when the other chap’s doing the
hunting, Sool’em, old girl,” Dan added, cautioning her to keep her
“weather eye open,” as he saw to his rifle and laid it, muzzle outwards,
in his net. Then, as we settled down for the night with revolvers and
rifle at hand, and Brown at the head of our net, he “hoped” the missus
would not “go getting nightmare, and make things unpleasant by shooting
round promiscuous like,” and having by this tucked himself in to his
satisfaction, he lay down, “reckoning this ought to just about finish
off her education, if she doesn’t get finished off herself by niggers
before morning.”
A cheerful nightcap; but such was our faith in Sool’em and Brown as
danger signals, that the camp was asleep in a few minutes. Perhaps also
because nigger alarms were by no means the exception: the bush-folk
would get little sleep if they lay awake whenever they were camped near
doubtful company. We sleep wherever we are, for it is easy to grow
accustomed even to nigger alarms, and beside, the bush-folk know that
when a man has clean hands and heart he has little to fear from even his
“bad fellow black fellows.” But the Red Lilies were beyond our
boundaries, and Monkey was a notorious exception, and shrill cries
approaching the camp at dawn brought us all to our elbows, to find only
the flying foxes returning to the pine forest, fanning inwards this
time.
After giving the horses another drink, and breakfasting on damper and
“Lot’s wife,” we moved on again, past the glory of the lagoons, to
further brumby encounters, carrying a water-bag on a pack-horse by way
of precaution against further “drouths.” But such was the influence of
“Lot’s wife” that long before mid-day the bag was empty, and Dan was
recommending bloater-paste as a “grand thing for breakfast during the
Wet seeing it keeps you dry all day long.”
Further damper and “Lot’s wife” for dinner, and an afternoon of thirst,
set us all dreading supper, and about sundown three very thirsty,
forlorn white folk were standing by the duck-under below “Knock-up
camp,” waiting for the Quiet Stockman, and hoping against hope that his
meat had not “turned on him”; and when he and his “boys” came jangling
down the opposite bank, and splashing and plunging over the “duckunder”
below, driving a great mob of horses before them we assailed him with
questions.
But although Jack’s meat was “chucked out days ago” he was merciful to
us and shouted out: “Will a dozen boiled duck do instead? Got fourteen
at one shot this morning, and boiled ’em right off,” he explained as we
seized upon his tucker-bags. “Kept a dozen of ’em in case of accidents.”
Besides a shot-gun, Jack had much sense.
A dozen cold boiled duck “did” very nicely after four meals of damper
and bloater-paste; and a goodly show they made set out in our mixing
dish.
Dan, gloating over them, offered to “do the carving.” “I’m real good at
the poultry carving trick, when there’s a bird apiece,” he chuckled,
spearing bird after bird with a two-pronged fork, and passing round one
apiece as we sat expectantly around the mixing dish, all among the
tucker-bags and camp baggage. And so excellent a sauce is hunger that we
received and enjoyed our “bird apiece” unabashed and unblushingly—the
men-folk returning for further helpings, and the “boys” managing all
that were left.
All agreed that “you couldn’t beat cold boiled duck by much”; but in the
morning grilled fish was accepted as “just the thing for breakfast”;
then finding ourselves face to face with Lot’s wife, and not too much of
that, we beat a hasty retreat to the homestead; a further opportune
“catch” of duck giving us heart for further brumby encounters and
another night’s camp out-bush. Then the following morning as we rode
towards the homestead Dan “reckoned” that from an educational point of
view the trip had been a pronounced success.