Smoke Signals
Travelling across country in Central Australia is usually very
monotonous. The same routine is gone through day after day, and there
is not even the relief of meeting new faces, for one's companions are
often the only human beings met with during the whole of a trip of many
weeks.
For the first few days of journeying towards the Musgraves, young
Stobart and Vaughan found everything new and intensely interesting. At
piccaninny daylight--which is the bush term for the rising of the
morning star--Mick Darby turned over on his swag and sat up, and called
out "Daylight! Daylight!"
The drover was so punctual with this call that it seemed to the boys as
if he must have been awake for hours, watching for the star to rise
blood-red above the eastern horizon. But years of bush travel, of
watching restless cattle, and of sleeping under the threat of danger
from prowling blacks had made the man respond immediately to any noise
or unusual sight. There was no period of stretching or yawning. Mick
was asleep one instant, and fully awake the next and shouting
"Daylight". The black boys were also light sleepers, trained out of
their native laziness by association with alert whites. There was
Yarloo, who had come in from the west with Boss Stobart's message and
had joined the white man's plant at once; and Ranui, a tall fine man
from North Queensland, who showed both in his build and name a trace of
Malay blood; and Ted and Teedee, two boys who had been with Mick since
they were "little fellas".
As soon as the morning call sounded, the black stockmen rolled out of
their camp-sheets, picked up their bridles, and went off in the grey
light on the tracks of the hobbled horses. Their skill in tracking was
a constant source of wonder to the boys. The type of country didn't
seem to matter at all; soft sand or hard stony tableland was all the
same to them; they tracked the wandering horses with as much careless
certainty as if they could actually see them, though on some nights
they had strayed, in search of feed, several miles away from camp.
When the black boys had gone, Sax and Vaughan collected wood for the
morning fire, raked last night's ashes together, and made a blaze.
Then they filled the seven quart-pots with water and set them near the
flame to boil for breakfast.
The drover was always busy in the early hours. There was probably a
piece of horse-gear to mend, a broken or faulty girth, the stuffing of
a saddle which had become lumpy, or a buckle which had torn away. When
these were all in order, there was the everlasting "damper" to make.
Vaughan volunteered to become assistant cook if Mick would give him
lessons in the great bush art of damper-making.
"You'd better start on Johnny-cakes," said the drover. "The mixture's
just the same, but if you make a mess you won't spoil a whole damper.
You watch me to-day. You can try your hand to-morrow, if you like."
It was still an hour or so before sunrise when the white boys had their
first lesson in bush cookery. Mick went over to one of the packs and
pulled out a seventy-pound bag of flour about half full. He untied the
mouth of the bag and took out a tin of baking-powder. Then he spread a
folded sack on the sand, and piled on it about five double handfuls of
flour, mixing a lidful of baking-powder with it. He gave this a good
stir round, dry as it was, and then made a hollow in the middle and
poured in water in which a little salt had been dissolved. The proper
mixing of the dough only came by experience, Mick told them; as dry as
possible and yet damp enough to stick together. The work was done
quickly but thoroughly.
"If you wanted it for a damper," explained Mick, giving the dough a
final roll, "you'd put the whole lot in together. But I'll show you
Johnny-cakes first; they're easier and don't take so long."
He divided the dough into little pieces and rolled each out in his
hands till it was the size and shape of an ordinary bun. He arranged
these on the bag and pulled it near the fire. "I always let the things
rise for a couple of minutes," he said. "Some chaps don't, but I
always do."
Then he prepared the fire for cooking. Every fragment of blazing wood
was put on one side, and a heap of soft glowing ashes left. With a
curved stick, this pile was scooped about till it was like a very big
saucer, all glowing hot and yet not actually burning. On this warm bed
the Johnny-cakes were dropped, leaving a space between each so that
they wouldn't run together. When all the white balls of dough were in
place, Mick flicked some of the ashes from the edge of the hollow on to
them, gradually increasing the amount till the cakes were covered right
over and the whole affair was a mound of grey with no sign of the
cooking cakes.
"How long before they're done?" asked Vaughan.
"Depends," answered Mick. "Depends on the size of them and the heat of
the fire. I don't like the fire too hot. We'll have a look at these
in about a quarter of an hour."
At the end of that time the top of the pile of ashes had begun to crack
here and there with the upward pressure of the rising Johnny-cakes.
Mick scooped one of them out from the edge. It was brown and hard on
the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it
where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread.
To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks
with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they
had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles.
"Another couple of minutes won't hurt," he said.
Presently the distant sound of a jangling stock-bell was heard, and a
few minutes later the horses came into camp, lead by an old black mare
who carried a bell, and driven by the four black boys riding bareback.
Everything was bustle for a few minutes. The horses were again hobbled
to prevent them from straying, and then the men all settled down to
breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a
quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea,
and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker--a
slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat for each
man. These are the bush rations year in and year out: meat, damper,
and tea. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and then the pack-bags were
weighted evenly and fastened up, horses caught and saddled, a final
look given round the camp to see that nothing was left behind, and the
three white men set out in a certain direction with no track and with
no guidance of any kind except that of the sun, followed at once by the
plant of horses driven by the blacks.
All day they rode, silent for the most part, but occasionally Mick
would answer a question as to a tree, a strange track, or a feature on
the horizon. No other living thing was seen hour after hour, save a
solitary eagle high in the air, a few lizards darting about the clumps
of porcupine grass, and ants and flies. These latter pests are the
curse of the back country. The weather was hot. That day and on
several others one hundred and thirty degrees was reached, and even
that temperature was exceeded now and then over sandhills and plains
which quivered in the heat. But the boys would not have minded the
heat if the flies had only left them alone. Long before dawn, before
even the morning star had risen, flies buzzed around them, making life
well-nigh unbearable.
A halt was made about noon for dinner, the packs and saddles taken off
the horses for an hour, and then the journey was resumed, each man
riding a fresh horse, for no one rides the same horse all day in
Central Australia, if he can possibly help it.
Evening camp was usually made near a water-hole or native well, but
sometimes the horses had to go as long as two days without a drink.
They were unsaddled and hobbled out, and allowed to roam about all
night and pick up scanty bits of food. It amazed the white boys to see
what very little herbage of any kind there was for an animal to live
on. No grass; just a dry uninviting bush here and there, growing up
out of loose barren sand, with, at long intervals, a clump of twisted
mulga trees. Yet the horses "did" well, and certainly the thousand
T.D.3 bullocks which had come down from the territory looked none the
worse for their trip over country just as barren as the boys were now
camped on.
After tea was the time the two white boys enjoyed most, for Mick would
light his pipe then, prop himself up against his swag, and, with a
quart-pot of tea by his side, tell them yarns about the back country.
Many of these narratives included Boss Stobart, for he and Mick had
gone about together a great deal, and had established overland droving
records which are still unbeaten. He told of drought and flood, of
thirst and hunger, of cattle rushes and disease, of mining camps, of
Afghans and their camels, of Chinamen and opium, of grog shanties, of
troopers, of wild blacks and still wilder whites, until his listeners'
minds flamed at the thought that they, even they, were in the country
where such adventures had taken place--and perhaps some day would be
met with by themselves. And at night, when they lay out on their swags
under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in
cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their
thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their
boyhood, but onwards into the unknown.
One day, when the routine of "the road" had gone on for more than a
fortnight, they were crossing a broad expanse of hard stony country,
shut in on the north by dense mulga scrub, when Sax noticed a thin
column of smoke rising from the trees a few miles away. He could
hardly believe his eyes, and when he looked again it was no longer
coming up from the trees, but was rising up and up and fading away
against the flawless blue of the sky. He was about to call Vaughan's
attention to it when his horse stumbled and nearly fell. Next time he
looked to the north the smoke was again rising from the trees, and then
again it was cut off, and floated away and was lost.
His curiosity was thoroughly roused. "Mick!" he shouted, for by this
time the boys had dropped the "Mr." when speaking to their drover
friend. "Mick! Is that _smoke_ over there in the trees?"
"Sure it's smoke," he answered. "And so's that ahead there." He
pointed across the plain, where the heat was dancing, to a little hill.
It must have been eight miles away, and from it rose a thin coil of
smoke. At first Sax thought it was merely the effect of the sun
causing everything in the distance to quiver and take on fantastic
shapes, but he trusted the bushman's eyes, and at last convinced
himself that it was indeed smoke.
"Then somebody must be camped there," said Vaughan.
"Is it a station, Mick, or just chaps travelling like ourselves?" asked
Sax.
"It's niggers, lad. They're signalling to one another."
The columns of smoke were at once invested with a new interest to the
two boys. Natives were near them, unseen, sending messages to other
natives at a distance. The simplicity of this bush telegraphy was
fascinating.
"What are they saying, Mick, d'you know?" asked Vaughan eagerly.
"This lot," said the drover, "is telling that other lot over there that
we're coming. So many white men, so many blacks, and so many horses.
We're getting into nigger country now."
"Will we see them?" asked the boys.
"No chance in life," replied the drover. "These niggers are wild and
scared to death of white men. They're different from the camp blacks
who hang round stations. They'll likely be station blacks themselves
some day, for the wild nigger's dying out. But just now, they keep
away and live their own lives. We call them warraguls."