1901
“Out on the wastes of the Never Never--
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance for ever--
That's where the dead men lie!”
(Barcroft Boake,
in the Sydney Bulletin.)
I
Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the
Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly
over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of
brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse
plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines
of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had repeated them
mentally, he cursed aloud.
“_That's where the dead men lie!_ Poor Boake must have thought of this
God-forsaken part of an utterly God-forsaken country, I think, when he
wrote 'Out where the Dead Men Lie.' For I believe that God Almighty has
forgotten it! Oh for rain, rain, rain! Rain to send the Gilbert down
in a howling yellow flood, and turn this blarsted spinifex waste of
scorching sand and desolation into green grass--and save me and the
youngsters from giving it best, and going under altogether.... Boake
knew this cursed country well.... I wonder if he ever 'owned' a
station--one with a raging drought, a thundering mortgage, and a
worrying and greedy bank sooling him on to commit suicide, or else
provide rain as side issues.... I don't suppose he had a wife and
children to leave to the mercy of the Australian Pastoralists' Bank.
D----n and curse the Australian Pastoralists' Bank, and the drought, and
this scorching sand and hateful spinifex--and God help the poor cattle!”
He drew rein almost under the shade of a clump of stunted sandalwood,
which had, in good seasons, been a favourite mustering camp, and looked
about him, and then he passed his hand over his eyes to shut out for a
few moments the melancholy spectacle before him.
I have said that he pulled up “almost” under shelter; further he could
not advance, for the hard, parched ground immediately under the shade of
the sandalwoods was thickly covered by the stiffened sun-dried carcasses
of some hundreds of dead cattle, which, having become too weak to leave
the sheltering trees in search of food and water had lain down and died.
Beyond, scattered singly and about in twos and threes, were the remains
of scores of other wretched beasts, which, unable to drag themselves
either to the sandy river-bed or to the scanty shade of the stunted
timber, had perished where they fell.
With a heavy sigh Harrington dismounted, took off his water-bag from the
saddle, and pouring a little water into his hat, gave his horse a drink.
Then he drank a few mouthfuls himself, filled and lit his pipe, and sat
down, to rest awhile until the sun had lost its fierce intensity--and
think.
And he thought despairingly of the black prospect which for the past
six or seven months had tormented him by day, and haunted him at night,
broken now and then with a gleam of hope when the pitiless blue of
the sky changed to grey, and rain seemed near, only to be followed by
renewed and bitter disappointment.
“It cannot last much longer,” he thought; “even if rain came within
a week the rest of the poor brutes left alive will be too weak to
recover--and there's not hands enough on the station to cut leaves for
them. Even the blacks have cleared out lower down the river... found a
good water-hole I daresay, and, like wise niggers, are camping there.
Why doesn't Providence give a poor honest bullock as much show for his
life in a drought as a damned, filthy blackfellow! Instead of hoofs--in
this part of the country at any rate--cattle ought to have feet like a
bandicoot, then the poor beasts could worry along by digging waterholes
in the river bed.”
Then, sick at heart as he was, a faint smile flitted over his
sun-bronzed face at the fancy.
An hour passed, and Harrington, with another weary sigh, rose and
saddled his horse--one of the few now remaining to him and able to carry
a rider. Five miles away from the sandalwood camp was another and larger
patch of timber--tall, slender brigalows, which grew on the edge of a
dried-up swamp, once the haunt and breeding place of countless thousands
of wild duck, teal, and geese. This was another of the mustering camps
on Tinandra, and as it lay on his way home, he decided to go there and
see if any of the “Big Swamp” cattle were still alive. As he rode slowly
over towards the fringe of timber, the westering sun turned from a
dazzling, blinding gold to a gradually deepening red; and his sweating
horse gave a snort of satisfaction as the soft, spongy, and sandy
spinifex country was left behind, and the creature's hoofs struck upon
the hard sun-baked plain of yellow earth which lay between the two
camps. Looking down at the great, widely spreading cracks in the hungry
soil, the result of a seven-months' continuous drought, Harrington
almost unconsciously bent his head and thought that surely God would
send rain. He was not a religious man in the conventional sense--he
had never been inside a church in his life--but the memory of his dead
mother's belief in God's mercy and goodness was still strong within him.
The brigalow scrub was about half a mile in length, and stood between
the swamp and the high river bank. At the dried-up bed of the swamp
itself he did not care to look a second time; its once reedy margin was
now a sight of horror, for many hundreds of cattle had been bogged there
long months before, as they had striven to get further out to the centre
where there was yet left a little water, saved from evaporation by the
broad leaves of the blue water-lilies.
Skirting the inner edge of the scrub till he reached its centre, he
looked carefully among the timber, but not a beast was to be seen; then
dismounting he led his horse through, came out upon the river bank, and
looked across the wide expanse of almost burning sand which stretched
from bank to bank, unbroken in its desolation except by a few ti-trees
whose roots, deep down, kept them alive.
“Bob, old fellow,” he said to his horse, “we've another ten miles to
go, and there's no use in killing ourselves. I think that we can put in
half an hour digging sand, and manage to raise a drink down there in the
river bed.”
Still leading the animal, which seemed to know his master's intention,
Harrington walked down the sloping bank, his long riding-boots sinking
deeply into the fine, sandy soil, and Bob pricked up his ears and gave a
true stock-horse sigh of weariness and anticipation combined.
On the opposite side of the river bed and close under the bank were
growing two or three heavy ti-trees, and here, just as the sun had set,
he halted, again unsaddled, and after lighting a fire, began to scoop
out a hole with his quart pot in between the roots of the trees. For
some minutes he worked on with energy, then he stopped and listened,
and Bob, too, turned his head inquiringly, for he also had heard the
sound--it was only the cry of a beast, but it seemed so near that
Harrington ceased his digging and stood up to look.
Not a hundred yards distant he saw, by the light of the now brightly
blazing fire, four gaunt steers and a skeleton heifer, staggering and
swaying over the river sand towards him in their weakness and agony of
hunger and thirst The poor creatures had seen the man and the horse!
As they toiled towards the light of the fire, a dreadful, wheezing
moan came from the parched throat of the leading steer as it laboured
pantingly over to something human--something it associated with water,
and grass, and life, and presently the wretched animal, with one last
effort, fell in its tracks almost at Harrington's feet. It lay there
quiet enough for a minute or two, with lean, outstretched neck and one
horn buried in the sand, its fast glazing eye turned to the man, and
seeming to say, “Give me water or death.”
Harrington, wrought up and excited to the last pitch, flung himself upon
his knees, and placed his cheek against that of the dying steer, and a
sob burst from his bosom.
“O God, if there is a God! have mercy upon these Thy dumb creatures who
suffer such agony.”
He stepped up to his horse, took his revolver out of the pouch, and then
a merciful bullet ended the sufferings of the thirst-stricken animal at
his feet.
“Steady, Bob, old man! Steady there!” he said brokenly, “I may have to
do the same to you before long.” And then, tearing off a long piece of
dried ti-tree bark from one of the trees, he thrust it into the fire.
Then, with the blazing torch in his left hand, and his pistol in his
right, he tramped over the sand to the remaining cattle, and shot them
dead one by one.
Then back to his digging again. A drink of thick, muddy water for his
horse, and then with a dull sense of misery in his heart he led Bob up
the bank and began the last stage of his ride home--home to his anaemic,
complaining, shallow-brained wife and the weakly children who, instead
of being the consolation of his life in his misfortunes, were an added
and ever-present source of misery and despair.
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