“FIVE-HEAD” CREEK
I
I had ridden all day through an endless vista ot ghostly grey gums and
ironbarks, when I came in sight of the long wavering line of vivid
green foliage which showed me that I had reached my destination--a
roughly-built slab hut with a roof of corrugated iron. This place was
to be my home for six months, and stood on the bank of Five-Head
Creek, twenty-five miles from the rising city of Townsville in North
Queensland.
Riding up to the building, I got off my wearied, sweating horse, and,
removing the saddle and my blanket and other impediments, led him to
the creek to drink, and then hobbled and turned him loose to feed on the
soft lush grass and reeds growing along the margin of the water. Then
I entered the empty house, made a brief examination of it, and wondered
how my mate would like living in such an apparently comfortless abode.
I must mention that I had come from Townsville to take charge of
Five-Head Creek cattle run, which had suffered so severely from a
terrible drought that it had been temporarily abandoned. We were to
look after and repair the fencing, many miles' length of which had been
destroyed by fire or succumbed to white ants, to search for and collect
the remnant of the cattle that had not perished in the drought, and see
after the place generally. My mate was to follow me out in a few days
with a dray-load of stores.
I lit a fire, boiled a billy of tea, and ate some cold beef and damper.
Then, as the sun dipped below a range of low hills to the westward, I
filled my pipe, and, walking down to the bank of the creek, surveyed my
environs.
“What a God-forsaken-looking country!” I thought as I gazed around me;
and, indeed, the prospect was anything but inviting. On both sides of
the creek the soil showed evidences of the severity of the past drought.
Great gaping fissures--usun cracks we called them--traversed and
zig-zagged the hot, parching ground, on which not a blade of grass was
to be seen. Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were
oases of green--thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves
defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter
months; but underneath them lay the shrivelled carcasses and whitening
bones of hundreds of cattle which had perished of starvation--too weak
even to totter down to die, bogged in the banks of the creek. As I
sat and smoked a strong feeling of depression took possession of me; I
already began to hate the place, and regretted I could not withdraw from
my engagement.
Yet in less than a week I began to like it, and when I left it I did so
with some regret, for I had made friends with sweet Mother Nature, whose
loving-kindness is with us always in wild places, though we may not know
it at first, and take no heed of her many calls and silent beckonings to
us to come and love, and rest and dream, and be content upon her tender,
mighty bosom.
My horse, cropping eagerly at the soft grass and salty pigweed, suddenly
raised his head and pricked up his ears. He had heard something and was
listening, and looking across to the opposite bank I saw a sight that
lifted me out of my sudden fit of depression and then filled me with
delight.
Two stately emus were walking along in single file, the male bird
leading, holding his head erect, and marching like the drum-major of a
regiment of Guards. On the margin of the bank they halted and looked at
the horse, which now stood facing them; a minute's scrutiny satisfied
both parties that there was nothing to fear from each other, and then
the great birds walked down the bank to a broad dry patch of bright
yellow sand, which stretched halfway across the bed of the creek. Here
the male began to scratch, sending up a shower of coarse sand, and
quickly swallowing such large pebbles as were revealed, whilst the
female squatted beside him and watched his labours with an air of
indifference. Her digestive apparatus was, I suppose, in good order, and
she did not need three or four pounds' weight of stones in her gizzard,
but she did require a sand bath, for presently she too began to scrape
and sway from side to side as she worked a deep hole beneath her body,
just as a common hen scrapes and sways and ruffles her feathers in the
dry dust of the farmyard. In less than five minutes the huge bird was
encompassed in a cloud of flying sand, and working her long neck, great
thick legs, and outspread toes exactly as an ordinary fowl. Then, having
thoroughly covered herself with sand from beak to tail, she rose,
shook herself violently, and stalked away up the bank again, where her
companion soon followed her, and I lost sight of the pair as they strode
through the thick green of the she-oak trees.
As darkness fell I built up a larger fire and spread my blanket beside
it to sleep under the open sky instead of in the deserted house, for
the night was soft, warm, and windless. Overhead was a firmament of
cloudless blue, with here and there a shining star beginning to
show; but away to the south-west a dark line of cloud was rising and
spreading, and I felt cheered at the sight, for it was a sign of rain.
As I watched it steadily increasing the first voices of the night began
to call--a 'possum squealed from the branches of a blue gum in the
creek, and was answered by another somewhere near; and then the long,
long mournful wail of a curlew cried out from the sunbaked plain beyond.
Oh, the unutterable sense of loneliness that at times the long-drawn,
penetrating cry of the curlew, resounding through the silence of the
night amid the solitude of vast Australian plains, causes the solitary
bushman or traveller to feel! I well remember on one occasion camping
on the banks of the Lower Burdekin River, and having my broken
slumbers--for I was ill with fever--disturbed by a brace of curlews,
which were uttering their depressing cries within a few hundred yards
of me, and how I at last became so wrought up and almost frenzied by
the persistency of their doleful notes, that I followed them up with a
Winchester rifle, mile after mile, wasting my cartridges and exhausting
mind and body in the vain attempt to shoot them in the dark. There is to
my knowledge nothing so mournful as the call of the curlew, unless it
be the moaning cry of a penguin out upon the ocean, when a sea-fog
encompasses the ship that lies becalmed. There is something so intensely
human about it--as if some lost soul were wailing for mercy and
forgiveness.
But on this night the cry of the curlew was pleasing to my ear, for as
I lay and watched the rising bank of cloud, I heard others calling from
the opposite bank of the creek, and then a parrot screamed shrilly--and
I knew that rain was certain. I jumped up, carried my blanket, saddle,
and gun into the house, and then went out to collect firewood. My horse,
as he heard my footsteps, bounded up, hobbled as he was, from the bed
of the creek, and neighed to me in the darkness. He too smelt the coming
rain, and was speaking to me out of his gladness of heart. I called back
to him, and then set to work and soon collected a number of dry logs,
which I carried in to the hut and threw down on the hard earthen floor
made of pulverised ant heaps, just as the welcome thunder muttered away
off in the distance.
I brought a burning brand from the fire, threw it inside, and then
called to my horse. Taking off his hobbles, I slipped the bridle over
his head, and brought him in under shelter of the verandah, where he
stood quietly, with a full stomach and contented mind, watching the
coming storm.
Half an hour later the iron roof of the house was singing a sweet,
delightful tune to the heavy down-pouring rain, which, till long past
midnight, fell in generous volume, the dry, thirsty soil drinking it
in with gladness as it closed up the gaping fissures, and gave hope and
vigour and promise of life to the parched and perishing vegetation of
the wide plains around.
With supreme satisfaction I sat at the open door, and smoked and
watched, with my fire blazing merrily away; then, before it was too
late, I stripped off, and went out and let the rain wash off the dust
and dirt of a day's journey under a fierce, baking sun. How cool,
delightful, and invigorating it felt!
I dried myself with a spare shirt, and then lay down on my blanket
beside the fire to listen contentedly to the clamour of the rain upon
the roof. About two in the morning the downpour ceased, the sky cleared,
and a fair half-moon of silvery brightness shone out above the tops of
the white gum forest. Fifty yards or so away, in front of the door, a
shallow pool had formed in a depression of the hard, sun-baked soil, and
as the soft light of the moon fell upon it there came a whirr of wings
as a flock of night-roving, spur-winged plover lit upon its margin. I
could have shot half a dozen of them from where I sat, but felt that I
could not lift gun to shoulder and slaughter when there was no need,
and their shrill cries, as they ran to and fro, afforded me an infinite
pleasure.
I took off my horse's bridle, put his hobbles on again, rubbed my cheek
against his warm, moist nose, and left him. An hour before daylight
he stepped quietly inside and stood near the fire--the mosquitoes were
annoying him, and he had come in to get the benefit of what little smoke
was arising from the burning logs.
At dawn, as I lay half-awake, I heard a sound that made me jump to my
gun--the soft quacking of wild duck in the creek. Stealing cautiously
down through the fringe of she-oaks, I came to a fine broad pool, in the
centre of which was a small sandbank, whereon stood a black duck with
a brood of seven half-fledged ducklings around her, dabbling merrily
amongst the weed and _débris_ of the margin. Of course, no one who
_thinks_, unless impelled by sheer hunger, would shoot either an
incubating or “just familied” duck, and I laid down my gun with an
exclamation of disappointment. But I was soon to be rewarded, for
a minute or two later five beautiful black and white Burdekin ducks
flashed down through the vista of she-oaks, and settled on the water
less than thirty yards away from me. They lit so closely together that
my first barrel killed two, and my second dropped one of the others as
they rose. I waded in and brought them ashore.*
* The name “Burdekin” hat been given to these ducks became
they are to common on the river of that name. Their wings
are pure white and black.
I wonder how many people know how to cook and eat wild duck as they
should be cooked and eaten--when they are plentiful, and when the man
who shoots them is, in his way, a gourmet, and is yet living away from
civilisation and restaurants? This is _the_ way. Pluck the feathers
off the breast and body, then cut the breast part out, sprinkle it
with salt, impale it upon a stick--if you have a stick or branch of
any kind--and hold it over a fire of glowing wood coals. If you have
no skewer, then lay the red, luscious-looking flesh upon the coals
themselves, and listen to it singing and fizzing, as if it were
impatiently crying out to you to take it up and eat it!
When I returned, the sunrays were piercing through the gum-trees and
dissipating a thin mist which hung about the green, winding fringe of
she-oaks bordering the creek. From the ground, which now felt soft,
warm, and springy to my naked foot, there came that sweet earthy smell
that arises when the land has lain for long, long months under a sky of
brass, and all green things have struggled hard to live. As I drew near
the hut I saw that the flock of spur-winged plover were still standing
or running about the margin of the newly-formed pool. They took not the
slightest notice of my approach, and I was careful not to alarm them,
knowing that as long as the water remained they would continue to haunt
the vicinity of the pool, and, besides that, I already had three plump
ducks, which would last me at least till the following morning.
After breakfast I set out to make a detailed examination of the creek
for a distance of three or four miles towards its source. I was glad to
find some very extensive water-holes at intervals of a few hundred yards,
then would come a stretch of sand from bank to bank, for owing to the
want of rain the water had fallen very low, though it was still flowing
by percolation through the sand. Yet, in time of flood, the whole of the
flat country was submerged, and some of the large gum-trees growing on
the banks held in their forks, thirty-five feet from the ground, great
piles of dead wood and tangled debris that had been deposited there in a
great flood of two years before.
I was not long in making a very pleasing discovery--all the pools
contained fish, some of which were of good size, for the water was so
clear that I could see them swimming about, and I remembered now with
satisfaction that among the stores coming on in the dray was a bundle of
fishing-tackle which I had bought in Townsville. Bird life all along the
creek was plentiful; but this was to be expected, as the long drought
had naturally driven game of all sort towards the water. I saw two or
three small kangaroos, and everywhere along the margin were bandicoot
holes, where the little pig-like creatures had been digging for roots.
Two miles from the hut I came across a well-constructed native
fish-weir, and near by found the site of a camp; evidently a party of
blacks had been enjoying themselves quite recently, fishing and cattle
killing, for under some scrub I found the head and foreleg of a young
steer.
As I walked my horse slowly over the sand under the fringing oaks, I
made the unpleasant discovery that snakes were very plentiful--not only
the harmless carpet snake, but the deadly brown and black-necked tiger
variety; though against this were a corresponding number of iguanas,
both of the tree-climbing and water-haunting species. The latter, to
which I shall again allude, is a particularly shuddersome reptile. I had
never before seen these repulsive creatures, and, indeed, had never
heard of them.
I returned to the hut at noon, and to my surprise found a party of
thirty or more blacks camped under some Leichhardt trees. They seemed a
fairly healthy lot of savages, and were not alarmed when they saw I was
carrying a gun. I rode quietly up to them, and shook hands with two or
three of the bucks, who spoke a little English. They were, they told me,
from the Ravenswood district, which they had left some weeks ago, and
were now travelling towards the Burdekin, hunting as they went.
Some of them came to the hut with me, and I saw at once that they had
not taken anything of mine, though among other articles I had left on a
wooden seat outside were several plugs of tobacco. I gave them a plug to
divide, and then asked the most voluble of them how many cattle they had
speared.
“Baal blackfellow spear him cattle,” he answered.* “What about that
young fellow bullock you been eat longa creek?” I inquired.
* Lit., “We blacks did not spear any cattle.”
They assured me that they had not speared the animal, which they had
found lying at the bottom of a deep gully with a broken leg. Then
knowing it could not live, they had killed and eaten it. I was pleased
to hear this, and have no doubt the poor creatures told the truth.
They remained with myself and mate for a month, and proved of great
assistance to us in fencing and other work, and I learnt much valuable
bush-craft from these wandering savages, especially of their methods of
hunting and fishing. I shall now give the reader an account of some of
the happy days my mate and myself spent in this lonely spot.