rooms, and Joe always kept his musket ready loaded, night and day,
just inside the doorway of the inner room. Two or three blacks would
sometimes call, and ask for flour, sugar, tobacco, or a firestick.
If they attempted to come inside the hut, Joe ordered them off,
backing at the same time towards the inner door, and he always kept a
sharp look-out for any movement they made; for they were very
treacherous, and he knew they would take any chance they could get to
kill him, for the sake of stealing the flour, sugar, and tobacco.
Two of them once came inside the hut and refused to go out, until Joe
seized his musket, and tickled them in the rear with his bayonet,
under the "move on" clause in the Police Offences Statute.
Early one morning there was a noise as of some disturbance in the
stockyard, and Joe, on opening the door of his hut, saw several
blacks spearing the sheep. He seized his musket and shouted, warning
them to go away. One of them, who was sitting on the top rail with
his back towards the hut, seemed to think that he was out of range of
the musket, for he made most unseemly gestures, and yelled back at
Joe in a defiant and contemptuous manner. Joe's gun was charged with
shot, and he fired and hit his mark, for the blackfellow dropped
suddenly from the top rail, and ran away, putting his hands behind
him, and trying to pick out the pellets.
One day a white stockman came galloping on his horse up to the door
of the hut, his face, hands, shirt and trousers being smeared and
saturated with blood. Joe took him inside the hut, and found that he
had two severe wounds on the left shoulder. After the bleeding had
been stanched and the wounds bandaged, the stranger related that as
he was riding he met a blackfellow carrying a fire-stick. He thought
it was a good opportunity of lighting his pipe, lucifer matches being
then unknown in the bush; so he dismounted, took out his knife, and
began cutting tobacco. The blackfellow asked for a fig of tobacco,
and, after filling his pipe, the stockman gave him the remainder of
the fig he had been cutting, and held out his hand for the firestick.
The blackfellow seemed disappointed; very likely expecting to receive
a whole fig of tobacco--and, instead of handing him the firestick
he threw it on the ground. At the first moment the stockman did not
suspect any treachery, as he had seen no weapon in possession of the
blackfellow. He stooped to pick up the firestick; but just as he was
touching it, he saw the black man's feet moving nearer, and becoming
suddenly suspicious, he quickly moved his head to one side and stood
upright. At the same instant he received a blow from a tomahawk on
his left shoulder. This blow, intended for his head, was followed by
another, which inflicted a second wound; but the stockman succeeded
in grasping the wrist of his enemy. Then began a wrestling match
between the two men, the stakes two lives, no umpire, no timekeeper,
no backers, and no bets. The only spectator was the horse, whose
bridle was hanging on the ground. But he seemed to take no interest
in the struggle, and continued nibbling the grass until it was over.
The black man, who had now dropped his rug, was as agile and nimble
as a beast of prey, and exerted all his skill and strength to free
his hand. But the white man felt that to loose his hold would be to
lose his life, and he held on to his grip of the blackfellow's wrist
with desperate resolution. The tomahawk fell to the ground, but just
then neither of the men could spare a hand to pick it up. At length,
by superior strength, the stockman brought his enemy to the ground.
He then grasped the thick, matted hair with one hand, and thus
holding the black's head close to the ground, he reached with the
other hand for the tomahawk, and with one fierce blow buried the
blade in the savage's brain. Even then he did not feel quite sure of
his safety. He had an idea that it was very difficult to kill
blackfellows outright, that theywere like American 'possums, and were
apt to come to life again after they had been killed, and ought to be
dead. So to finish his work well, he hacked at the neck with the
tomahawk until he had severed the head completely from the body; then
taking the head by the hair, he threw it as far as he could to the
other side of the track. By this time he began to feel faint from
loss of blood, so he mounted his horse and galloped to Joe Kermode's
hut.
When Joe had performed his duties of a good Samaritan to the stranger
he mounted his horse, and rode to the field of battle. He found the
headless body of the black man, the head at the other side of the
track, the tomahawk, the piece of tobacco, the rug, and the
firestick. Joe and the shepherd buried the body; the white man
survived.
THE GOVERNMENT STROKE.
"The Government Stroke" is a term often used in the colonies, and
indicates a lazy and inefficient manner of performing any kind of
labour. It originated with the convicts. When a man is forced to
work through fear of the lash, and receives no wages, it is quite
natural and reasonable that he should exert himself as little as
possible. If you were to reason with him, and urge him to work
harder at, for instance, breaking road metal, in order that the
public might have good roads to travel on, and show him what a great
satisfaction it should be to know that his labours would confer a
lasting benefit on his fellow creatures; that, though it might appear
a little hard on him individually, he should raise his thoughts to a
higher level, and labour for the good of humanity in general, he
would very likely say, "Do you take me for a fool?" But if you gave
him three dozen lashes for his laziness he will see, or at least
feel, that your argument has some force in it. As a matter of fact
men work for some present or future benefit for themselves. The
saint who sells all he has to give to the poor, does so with the hope
of obtaining a reward exceedingly great in the life to come. And
even if there were no life to come, his present life is happier far
than that of the man who grabs at all the wealth he can get until he
drops into the grave. The man who works "all for love and nothing
for reward" is a being incomprehensible to us ordinary mortals; he is
an angel, and if ever he was a candidate for a seat in Parliament he
was not elected. Even love--"which rules the court, the camp, the
grove"--is given only with the hope of a return of love; for
hopeless love is nothing but hopeless misery.
I once hired an old convict as gardener at five shillings a day. He
began to work in the morning with a great show of diligence while I
was looking on. But on my return home in the evening it was
wonderful to find how little work he had contrived to get through
during the day; so I began to watch him. His systematic way of doing
nothing would have been very amusing if it cost nothing. He pressed
his spade into the ground with his boot as slowly as possible, lifted
the sod very gently, and turned it over. Then he straightened his
back, looked at the ground to the right, then to the left, then in
front of him, and then cast his eyes along the garden fence. Having
satisfied himself that nothing particular was happening anywhere
within view, he gazed awhile at the sod he had turned over, and then
shaved the top off with his spade. Having straightened his back once
more, he began a survey of the superficial area of the next sod, and
at length proceeded to cut it in the same deliberate manner,
performing the same succeeding ceremonies. If he saw me, or heard me
approaching, he became at once very alert and diligent until I spoke
to him, then he stopped work at once. It was quite impossible for
him both to labour and to listen; nobody can do two things well at
the same time. But his greatest relief was in talking; he would
talk with anybody all day long if possible, and do nothing else; his
wages, of course, still running on. There is very little talk worth
paying for. I would rather give some of my best friends a fee to be
silent, than pay for anything they have to tell me. My gardener was
a most unprofitable servant; the only good I got out of him was a
clear knowledge of what the Government stroke meant, and the
knowledge was not worth the expense. He was in other respects
harmless and useless, and, although he had been transported for
stealing, I could never find that he stole anything from me. The
disease of larceny seemed somehow to have been worked out of his
system; though he used to describe with great pleasure how his
misfortunes began by stealing wall-fruit when he was a boy; and
although it was to him like the fruit
"Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe."
it was so sweet that, while telling me about it sixty years
afterwards, he smiled and smacked his lips, renewing as it were the
delight of its delicious taste.
He always avoided, as much as possible, the danger of dying of hard
work, so he is living yet, and is eighty-six years old. Whenever I
see him he gives me his blessing, and says he never worked for any
man he liked so well. A great philosopher says, in order to be happy
it is necessary to be beloved, but in order to be beloved we must
know how to please, and we can only please by ministering to the
happiness of others. I ministered to the old convict's happiness by
letting him work so lazily, and so I was beloved and happy.
He had formerly been an assigned servant to Mr. Gellibrand,
Attorney-General of Tasmania, before that gentleman went with Mr.
Hesse on that voyage to Australia Felix from which he never returned.
Some portions of a skeleton were found on the banks of a river, which
were supposed to belong to the lost explorer, and that river, and
Mount Gellibrand, on which he and Hesse parted company, were named
after him.
There was a blackfellow living for many years afterwards in the Colac
district who was said to have killed and eaten the lost white man;
the first settlers therefore call him Gellibrand, as they considered
he had made out a good claim to the name by devouring the flesh.
This blackfellow's face was made up of hollows and protuberances ugly
beyond all aboriginal ugliness. I was present at an interview
between him and senior-constable Hooley, who nearly rivalled the
savage in lack of beauty. Hooley had been a soldier in the Fifth
Fusiliers, and had been convicted of the crime of manslaughter,
having killed a coloured man near Port Louis, in the Mauritius. He
was sentenced to penal servitude for the offence, and had passed two
years of his time in Tasmania. This incident had produced in his
mind an interest in blackfellows generally, and on seeing Gellibrand
outside the Colac courthouse, he walked up to him, and looked him
steadily in the face, without saying a word or moving a muscle of his
countenance. I never saw a more lovely pair. The black fellow
returned the gaze unflinchingly, his deep-set eyes fixed fiercely on
those of the Irishman, his nostrils dilated, and his frowning
forehead wrinkled and hard, as if cast in iron. The two men looked
like two wild beasts preparing for a deadly fight. At length, Hooley
moved his face nearer to that of the savage, until their noses almost
met, and between his teeth he slowly ejaculated: "You eat white man?
You eat me? Eh?" Then the deep frown on Gellibrand's face began
slowly to relax, his thick lips parted by degrees, and displayed,
ready for business, his sharp and shining teeth, white as snow and
hard as steel. A smile, which might be likened to that of a humorous
tiger, spread over his spacious features, and so the interview ended
without a fight. I was very much disappointed, as I hoped the two
man-slayers were going to eat each other for the public good, and I
was ready to back both of them without fear, favour, or affection.
There is no doubt that the blacks ate human flesh, not as an article
of regular diet, but occasionally, when the fortune of war, or
accident, favoured them with a supply. When Mr. Hugh Murray set out
from Geelong to look for country to the westward, he took with him
several natives belonging to the Barrabool tribe. When they arrived
near Lake Colac they found the banks of the Barongarook Creek covered
with scrub, and on approaching the spot where the bridge now spans
the watercourse, they saw a blackfellow with his lubra and a little
boy, running towards the scrub. The Barrabool blacks gave chase, and
the little boy was caught by one of them before he could find
shelter, and was instantly killed with a club. That night the
picaninny was roasted at the camp fire, and eaten.
And yet these blacks had human feelings and affections. I once saw a
tribe travelling from one part of the district to another in search
of food, as was their custom. One of the men was dying of
consumption, and was too weak to follow the rest. He looked like a
living skeleton, but he was not left behind to die. He was sitting
on the shoulders of his brother, his hands grasping for support the
hair on the head, and his wasted legs dangling in front of the
other's ribs. These people were sometimes hunted as if they were
wolves, but two brother wolves would not have been so kind to each
other.
Before the white men came the blacks never buried their dead; they
had no spades and could not dig graves. Sometimes their dead were
dropped into the hollow trunks of trees, and sometimes they were
burned. There was once a knoll on the banks of the Barongarook
Creek, below the court-house, the soil of which looked black and
rich. When I was trenching the ground near my house for vines and
fruit trees, making another garden of paradise in lieu of the one I
had lost, I obtained cart loads of bones from the slaughter yards and
other places, and placed them in trenches; and in order to fertilize
one corner of the garden, I spread over it several loads of the
rich-looking black loam taken from the knoll near the creek. After a
few years the vines and trees yielded great quantities of grapes and
fruit, and I made wine from my vineyard. But the land on which I had
spread the black loam was almost barren, and yet I had seen fragments
of bones mixed with it, and amongst them a lower jaw with perfect
teeth, most likely the jaw of a young lubra. On mentioning the
circumstance to one of the early settlers, he said my loam had been
taken from the spot on which the blacks used to burn their dead.
Soon after he arrived at Colac he saw there a solitary blackfellow
crouching before a fire in which bones were visible. So, pointing to
them, he asked what was in the fire, and the blackfellow replied with
one word "lubra." He was consuming the remains of his dead wife, and
large tears were coursing down his cheeks. Day and night he sat
there until the bones had been nearly all burned and covered with
ashes. This accounted for the fragments of bones in my black loam;
why it was not fertile, I know, but I don't know how to express the
reason well.
While the trenching of my vineyard was going on, Billy Nicholls
looked over the fence, and gave his opinion about it. He held his
pipe between his thumb and forefinger, and stopped smoking in stupid
astonishment. He said--"That ground is ruined, never will grow
nothing no more; all the good soil is buried; nothing but gravel and
stuff on top; born fool."
Old Billy was a bullock driver, my neighbour and enemy, and lived,
with his numerous progeny, in a hut in the paddock next to mine. In
the rainy seasons the water flowed through my ground on to his, and
he had dug a drain which led the water past his hut, instead of
allowing it to go by the natural fall across his paddock. The floods
washed his drain into a deep gully near his hut, which was sometimes
nearly surrounded with the roaring waters. He then tried to dam the
water back on to my ground, but I made a gap in his dam with a
long-handled shovel, and let the flood go through. Nature and the
shovel were too much for Billy. He came out of his hut, and stood
watching the torrent, holding his dirty old pipe a few inches from
his mouth, and uttered a loud soliloquy:--"Here I am--on a
miserable island--fenced in with water--going to be washed away
--by that Lord Donahoo, son of a barber's clerk--wants to drown me
and my kids--don't he--I'll break his head wi' a paling--blowed
if I don't." He then put his pipe in his mouth, and gazed in silence
on the rushing waters.
I planted my ground with vines of fourteen different varieties, but,
in a few years, finding that the climate was unsuitable for most of
them, I reduced the number to about five. These yielded an unfailing
abundance of grapes every year, and as there was no profitable
market, I made wine. I pruned and disbudded the vines myself, and
also crushed and pressed the grapes. The digging and hoeing of the
ground cost about 10 pounds each year. When the wine had been in the
casks about twelve months I bottled it; in two years more it was fit
for consumption, and I was very proud of the article. But I cannot
boast that I ever made much profit out of it--that is, in cash--
as I found that the public taste for wine required to be educated,
and it took so long to do it that I had to drink most of the wine
myself. The best testimony to its excellence is the fact that I am
still alive.
The colonial taste for good liquor was spoiled from the very
beginning, first by black strap and rum, condensed from the steam of
hell, then by Old Tom and British brandy, fortified with tobacco--
this liquor was the nectar with which the ambrosial station hands
were lambed down by the publicans--and in these latter days by
colonial beer, the washiest drink a nation was ever drenched with.
the origin of bad beer dates from the repeal of the sugar duty in
England; before that time beer was brewed from malt and hops, and
that we had "jolly good ale and old," and sour pie.
A great festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on
the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks.
All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the
most extensive of squatters to the oldest of old hands. The
blackfellows were there, too--what was left of them. Billy Leura
walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta
came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand. Sissy,
six years old, was present; she inspected the blackfellow and the
ducks, and listened. Leura said he wanted to sell me the ducks, but
not for money; he would take old clothes for them. He was wearing
nothing but a shirt and trousers, both badly out of repair, and was
anxious to adorn his person with gay attire on the morrow. So I
traded off a pair of old cords and took the ducks.
Next day we had two guests, a Miss Sheppard, from Geelong, and
another lady, and as my house was near the lake, we did our
picnicking inside. We put on as much style as possible to suit the
occasion, including, of course, my best native wine, and the two
ducks roasted. Sissy sat at the table next to Miss Sheppard, and
felt it her duty to lead the conversation in the best society style.
She said:
"You see dose two ducks, Miss Sheppard?"
"Yes, dear; very fine ones."
"Well, papa bought 'em from a black man yesterday. De man said dey
was black ducks, but dey was'nt black, dey was brown. De fedders are
in de yard, and dey are brown fedders."
"Yes, I know, dear; they call them black ducks, but they are brown--
dark brown."
"Well, you see, de blackfellow want to sell de ducks to papa, but
papa has no money, so he went into de house and bring out a pair of
his old lowsers, and de blackfellow give him de ducks for de lowsers,
and dems de ducks you see."
"Yes, dear; I see," said Miss Sheppard, blushing terribly.
We all blushed.
"You naughty girl," said mamma; "hold your tongue, or I'll send you
to the kitchen."
"But mamma, you know its quite true," said Sissy. "Didn't I show you
de black man just now, Miss Sheppard, when he was going to de lake?
I said dere's de blackfellow, and he's got papa's lowsers on, didn't
I now?"
The times seemed prosperous with us, but it was only a deceptive
gleam of sunshine before the coming storm of adversity. I built an
addition to my dwelling; and when it was completed I employed a
paperhanger from London named Taylor, to beautify the old rooms. He
was of a talkative disposition; when he had nobody else to listen he
talked to himself, and when he was tired of that he began singing.
The weather was hot, and the heat, together with his talking and
singing, made him thirsty; so one day he complained to me that his
work was very dry. I saw at once an opportunity of obtaining an
independent and reliable judgment on the quality of my wine; so I
went for a bottle, drew the cork, and offered him a tumblerful,
telling him it was wine which I had made from my own grapes. As
Taylor was a native of London, the greatest city in the world, he
must have had a wide experience in many things, was certain to know
the difference between good and bad liquor, and I was anxious to
obtain a favourable verdict on my Australian product. He held up the
glass to the light, and eyed the contents critically; then he tasted
a small quantity, and paused awhile to feel the effect. He then took
another taste, and remarked, "It's sourish." He put the tumbler to
his mouth a third time, and emptied it quickly. Then he placed one
hand on his stomach, said "Oh, my," and ran away to the water tap
outside to rinse his mouth and get rid of the unpleasant flavour.
His verdict was adverse, and very unflattering.
Next day, while I was inspecting his work, he gave me to understand
that he felt dry again. I asked him what he would like, a drink of
water or a cup of tea? He said, "Well, I think I'll just try another
glass of that wine of yours." He seemed very irrational in the
matter of drink, but I fetched another bottle. This time he emptied
the first tumbler without hesitation, regardless of consequences. He
puckered his lips and curled his nose, and said it was rather
sourish; but in hot weather it was not so bad as cold water, and was
safer for the stomach. He then drew the back of his hand across his
mouth, looked at the paper which he had been putting on the wall, and
said, "I don't like that pattern a bit; too many crosses on it."
"Indeed," I said, "I never observed the crosses before, but I don't
see any harm in them. Why don't you like them?"
"Oh, it looks too like the Catholics, don't you see? too popish. I
hate them crosses."
"Really," I replied. "I am sorry to hear that. I am a Catholic myself."
"Oh, lor! Are you, indeed? I always thought you were a Scotchman."
Taylor finished that bottle of wine during the afternoon, and next
day he wanted another. He wanted more every day, until he rose to be
a three-bottle man. He became reconciled to the crosses on the
wall-paper, forgave me for not being a Scotchman, and I believe the
run of my cellar would have made him a sincere convert to popery--
as long as the wine lasted.
Soon after this memorable incident, the Minister and Secretary made
an official pleasure excursion through the Western District. They
visited the court and inspected it, and me, and the books, and the
furniture. They found everything correct, and were afterwards so
sociable that I expected they would, on returning to Melbourne,
speedily promote me, probably to the Bench. But they forgot me, and
promoted themselves instead. I have seen them since sitting nearly
as high as Haman in those expensive Law courts in Lonsdale Street,
while I was a despicable jury-man serving the Crown for ten shillings
a day. That is the way of this world; the wicked are well-paid and
exalted, while the virtuous are ill-paid and trodden down. At a
week's notice I was ordered to leave my Garden of Eden, and I let it
to a tenant, the very child of the Evil One. He pruned the vines
with goats and fed his cattle on the fruit trees. Then he wrote to
inquire why the vines bore no grapes and the fruit trees no fruit,
and wanted me to lower the rent, to repair the vineyard and the
house, and to move the front gate to the corner of the fence. That
man deserved nothing but death, and he died.