A COO-EE sounded long, clear, vibrant. Moongarr Bill and Wombo, who had
gone on ahead, were fixing camp. Lady Bridget's musical voice caught up
the note. She answered it with another COO-EE, to Cudgee's delight.
'My word! Ba'al newchum, that feller white Mary,' said he.
They had rounded a knoll abutting on the green line of ti-trees and
swamp oak. It was a barren hump; upon its crest, and alone in barbaric
majesty, stood a row of grass trees silhouetted against the sunset sky.
Weird sentinels of the bridal camp they seemed--tall, thick black
trunks like palm-stems, from each of which spread an enormous tuft of
gigantic grass blades green and upright in the middle, grey and jaggled
and drooping where they hung over at the bottom. Out of each green
heart sprang a great black spear many feet in height.
The stony knoll dropped sheer like a wall. On the other side of it was
a space the size of an amphitheatre, a large part of it spread with
soft green grass, like a carpet, and the rest of the floor scattered
with low shrubs and big tussocks. Amongst them was a herb giving out a
fragrance, when the feet crushed it, like that of wild thyme. The whole
air seemed filled with a blend of aromatic perfumes.
Here was a roofless room, open on one side where a break in the
ti-trees showed the sandy bed of the creek, which, at first, to Lady
Bridget's fancy, had the appearance of a broad shallow stream. On this
side, low rocks with ferns growing in their crannies, edged the stream.
On the opposite shore, one giant eucalyptus stood by itself and cast
its shadow across. Beyond, lay the gum-peopled immensity of the bush.
The stony walls of the knoll, curving inward and sheltering a thick
growth of ferns and scrubby vegetation, closed in the bridal chamber.
Creepers festooned the rocky ledges and crevices. Here and there, a
young sapling slanted forward to greet the morning sun when it should
rise behind the hummock.
Moongarr Bill had undone the pack-bags and was building a fire between
two large stones. The flames leaped up, the dead twigs crackled. Long
years after, Lady Bridget could recall vividly the smell of the dry
burning gum leaves--her first experience of a bush campfire.
Close to the fire, under the flank of the rocky knoll the tent was
pitched, a roll of blankets and oilskin thrown just within it.
Presently, from the hummock above came the sound of Cudgee's axe. He
had felled the youngest of the grass-trees, and was now chopping off
its green tuft. Soon he appeared, carrying a huge bunch of the coarse
blades of foliage, which he brought to the tent. With an odd mixture of
emotions, Lady Bridget watched her husband take the grass tops from the
black boy and spread them carefully on the floor of the tent, heaping
up and smoothing the mass into a bed, upon which he laid the oilskin
and then one of the blankets--they were new white blankets, fresh from
the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering
them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and,
over that, the one she had had at her back.
'No down pillows or linen sheets allowed in a bush camp-out, my lady
Biddy,' he said with a laugh, a half timorous glance at his wife, but
her answering smile reassured him.
'You'll never sleep on a sweeter bed,' he said, sniffing the resinous
fragrance of the grass-tree tops. He would not let her help him with
the upper blankets when she wished to lend a hand.
'No, this camp is my own show. Go and look at the scenery until I've
got our wigwam in order.'
And she submissively obeyed.
Against the other side of the rock wall, the black boys had built a
second fire. The horses were hobbled and grazing along the green border
of the creek. The buggy propped up, was covered with a tarpaulin. The
pack-bags had disgorged their contents. A miscellaneous heap of camp
properties lay on the ground. And now, Cudgee's axe was at work again,
stripping a section of bark from a gum tree, for what purpose Lady
Bridget did not divine.
She walked down to the creek and stood among the rocks at its edge. She
had expected a rippling stream, and, to her disappointment, saw only a
broad strip of dry sand, along which Moongarr Bill was mooching, a
spade in his hand.
'What are we going to do for water?' she exclaimed.
'Dig for it, my ladyship,' answered Moongarr Bill. 'That's one of the
upside-down things in 'Stralia. Here's two of them--mighty queer, come
to think of it--the rivers that run underground and the cherries that
grow with their stones outside.'
Lady Bridget observed that she was already acquainted with that
oft-quoted botanical phenomenon. In her rides around Leichardt's Town
she had been shown and had tasted the disagreeable little orange berry
which has a hard green knob at the end of it and is, for some ironical
reason, called a cherry. She also told Moongarr Bill that in England
she had seen a dowser searching for hidden springs by means of a forked
hazel twig carried in front of him which pointed downwards where there
was water and asked why Australians didn't adopt a similar method. At
which Moongarr Bill laughed derisively, and said he did not hold with
any such hanky-panky.
'Bad luck, Biddy,' McKeith said behind her. 'If there had been the
proper amount of rain in these last three or four months, we'd have had
the one thing that's wanting now to make this the ideal camp I've had
on the top of my fancy--a running creek of pure water. But never
mind--the water's there, though you can't see it.... That's got it,
Bill!'
For already the sand was darkening and moisture was oozing in the hole
Moongarr Bill had been digging, and which he widened gradually into a
respectable pool of water. When it had settled down, all the billies
were filled and the horses driven to it, whinnying for a drink.
Lady Bridget watched the evening meal being prepared between the two
fires--only watched, for she was sternly forbidden to set hand to it.
'No canned goods, nor cooked food,' McKeith said, were allowed at this
lay-out. Moongarr Bill was first-class at frying steak. He himself was
going to boil the quart-pot tea and would give Biddy a demonstration in
johnny-cakes, made bush fashion at their own camp fire. The sheet of
bark had been cut into sections--one sub-divided into small squares to
serve as plates. The inside looked clean as paint, and smelled of
Mother Nature's still-room. Colin mixed the flour and water upon the
larger sheet and worked up a stiff dough. He kneaded it, slapped it
between his broad palms, cut it and baked the cakes in the ashes; then,
butter being the only luxury permitted, he split them and buttered
them; and Lady Bridget found in due time that not even the lightest
Scotch scones taste better than bush johnny-cakes.
Quart pot tea, likewise--made also in true bush fashion. First the
boiling of the billy--Colin's own particular billy, battered and
blackened from much usage--half the battle, he explained, in brewing
bush tea. Then, regulation handfuls of tea and brown store sugar thrown
in at the precise boiling moment. Now the stirring of the frothing
liquid with a fresh gum-twig. Then the blending and the cooling of
it--pouring the beverage from one quart pot into another, and finally
into the pannikins ready for the drinking.
Proudly, round the rock-flank of the hummock, Moongarr Bill brought
fried steak and potatoes steaming in a clean tin dish and done to a
turn, then went to cook more for himself at his own camp. They ate off
the bark plates. Salt, sugar and mustard came out of small ration bags.
McKeith produced black-handled knives and forks--the last a concession.
And good to taste were the fizzling johnny-cakes and the strong, sweet,
milkless tea.
Such was Lady Bridget's real marriage feast.
They were hungry, yet they dallied over the repast. It was the most
delicious food she had ever tasted, Bridget said. They made little
jokes. He was entranced by her happiness. Joyously she compared this
banquet with others she had eaten in great houses and European
restaurants, which were the last word in luxury. Oh! how she loved the
dramatic contrast of it. Nature was supreme, glorious.... Oh no, no!
never could she hanker after that which she had left behind--for ever.
Because, if ever she were to go back again to the old life, she would
be an ugly dried-up old woman for whom the smart world would have no
further use....
Then suddenly she became quiet, and busied herself in the tent, while
McKeith took out his pipe and smoked in ruminative bliss. When she came
back she had no more talk of contrasts or of her old life, no more
fantastic outbursts. Indeed, there seemed to have come over her a mood
of sweet sobriety, of blushing, womanly shyness.
'Mayn't I be your squaw and help you to wash up?' she said, when he
collected the tin pots and pannikins and proceeded to get the camp
shipshape. No, she was not to stir a finger towards the dirty work. It
was HIS job to-night. Another camping-out time she might play the squaw
if she liked. She was not on in this act.
He amused her greatly by his tidy bush methods. The billies were
refilled, the ration-bags laid ready for the morning.
Now darkness had fallen. He put more logs on the fire, and the flames
blazed up. Then he made up a little pile of johnny-cakes that he had
not buttered, and covered it with the bark plates. 'We shall have to
make an early start, and there'll be no time to bake fresh ones--and no
more use for these things,' he said. The square of bark on which he had
mixed the dough was in his hands and he was about the fling it among
the bushes, but she stopped him.
'No--don't throw it away.... I--I want it for a keepsake, Colin.'
He stared at her in surprise. The red flames threw a strange glow on
her face, and made her eyes look very bright.
'My dearest! A sheet of bark!' Then a great light broke on him. The
strip of bark dropped from his hands. His arms went out and enfolded
the small woman, lifting her almost from the ground as he crushed her
against his breast and kissed her lips with the first passionate
lover's kisses he had ever given her.... 'Oh, my dear--my sweetheart!'
He gave a big, tremulous laugh.... 'There was never any woman in the
world like you.... To think of your caring about just a sheet of bark!'
'You made me my first johnny-cakes upon it.... And to-night is the
beginning of our married life--and oh, Colin, it is the first time I
have felt really married to you, and I want a bit of the bush to
remember it by.'
He kissed her again.... The miracle was accomplished. He seemed to have
no words in which to say all that filled his heart.
The night sounds of the bush stirred the vast silence. For the first
time, Lady Bridget heard the wail of the curlew--a long note, weirdly
melancholy. It startled her out of her husband's arms. There were
uncanny swishings of wings in the great gum tree on the other side of
the creek. And now the clanking of the horses' hobbles which had been
dilatory, intermittent, became sharply recurrent. A shout from Moongarr
Bill cut short the monotonous corroboree tune which the two black boys
had been singing at their camp some little distance away.
'My word, I believe YARRAMAN* break him hobble!'
[*Yarraman--horse.]
At which the boys scampered off through the grass, and presently came
the cracking of a stock whip among the trees.
'It's all right, Moongarr Bill's after them,' said McKeith, as his
bride released herself from his arms. 'But if you don't mind darling.
I'd better just see if anything has started the beasts.'
Lady Bridget watched him disappear round the knoll. The curlews went on
wailing, and as if in answer a night owl sent forth his portentous
HOOT--HOOT!... Apparently nothing was much amiss with the horses; they
had quieted down again. Lady Bridget picked up the strip of bark and
carried it in her arms into the tent, laughing to herself as she did so.
'Only a sheet of bark! What a fool I am--But it's quite appropriate,
anyway.'
She put it beside her dressing-bag, and then went out once more into
the night. Through the interlacing gum branches she saw a great coppery
disk, and the moon rose slowly to be a lamp in her bridal chamber. How
wonderful the stars were!... There was the Southern Cross with its
pointers, and the Pleiades. And that bright star above the tops of the
trees, which seemed to throw a distinct ray of light, must be Venus....
The moon was high enough to cast shadows--black--distorted. The low
clumps of shrubs beyond the carpet of grass looked like strange couched
beasts....
As she stood by the rocks at the creek edge, she heard her husband
speaking to Moongarr Bill, who seemed to be walking down along the
sandy bed.
'Horses all right, Bill?'
'Oh, ay--just a possum up a tree gev Julius Caesar a start.... Been
digging a decent bath-hole for the ladyship in the morning, boss.
There's plenty there.'
'I wish it was as near the surface at Moongarr, Bill. We shall have our
work cut out making new bores, if the dry weather lasts.'
'My word, it's no joke going down three thousand feet. Amazing queer
the amount of water running underground on this dried-up old earth.'
'But we can always strike it, Bill; no matter how dried up the outside
looks, there's the living spring waiting to be tapped. And how's that
in human nature too, Bill. Same idea, eh?'
Moongarr Bill emitted a harsh grunt.
'My best girl chucked me a month back, boss, and as for your darned
sentiment and poetry, and sech-like--well, I ain't takin' any just at
present.'
'Bad luck, Bill! Struck a dead-head that time, eh?... Well, good-night.'
'Good-night, boss--and good luck to you. I reckon your spring ain't a
dead-head, anyway.... Say, Mr McKeith, me and the boys are shifting our
fire over to the other side of the creek.... Keep the 'osses from
hevin' any more of their blessed starts.... Handier for gettin' them up
in the morning.'
[*Yarraman--Horse.]