LIFE IN THE BUSH
Mount Spencer country consisted of three runs adjoining each other,
known respectively as Mount Spencer, Haslewood, and Blue Mountain. The
whole area was nearly 400 square miles, capable of carrying over 20,000
head of cattle in any season; but when I first went there, there were
not above 12,000. Though some parts of the run were very rough riding,
it was all very good cattle country, and wonderfully well watered.
Numbers of large creeks ran in every direction, and large water-holes
were scattered all over the run, so that it hardly suffered at all in
the severest drought. The cattle were a very well-bred herd, and the
grass was first-rate, so they fattened splendidly. The head station
was at Mount Spencer, and the adjoining run was kept principally for a
breeding station. At Haslewood there was another station, with yards
and paddocks, and the run was fenced off from Mount Spencer by a line
of fence twelve miles long, and was used with Blue Mountain run for a
fattening station for bullocks. At Blue Mountain there was a small hut,
a horse paddock, and stockyard, and at the far end of Mount Spencer run
was another small hut, used for camping out, and a sapling yard for
yarding cattle at night, when it was too late to take them to the head
station.
[Illustration: THE FARM--MOUNT SPENCER.]
At Mount Spencer there were two stockmen, Frank Boyle and Timothy
Harris, and a couple of black boys. At Haslewood was another stockman,
Billy Burgess, with a couple of boys, one white and the other black;
and at Blue Mountain a half-caste named Yellow Pat lived by himself,
and looked after a mob of draught mares. Of course Rice and my brother
worked amongst the cattle themselves just like the other stockmen, but
this was all the “permanent staff” on the place, and quite sufficient
to work the cattle.
In mustering, more hands are required, but at such times neighbouring
stations always help each other, and send up a spare hand or two to
help muster and brand, and to bring back their own cattle, of which
there are sure to be some that have strayed on to their neighbours’
country. The ordinary work of a stockman is rather monotonous. Every
morning he gets on his horse, and goes out on the run, jogging
along about five miles an hour the whole day, and returning in the
afternoon. His business is to be constantly amongst the cattle, riding
the boundaries to put his own cattle back, and his neighbour’s away,
hunting up stray calves and bringing them home and branding them.
It is impossible to do too much of this work. The more cattle are
worked, and accustomed to the sight of men when they are young, the
better they will fatten when they grow up; and, of course, it is of
the greatest importance to get all the male calves branded before a
certain age. In rough country where there are few fences, numbers of
calves escape the general muster, and the more the stockmen scour the
run, and hunt them up, the better the station will pay. Sometimes the
stockman takes a black boy with him, but more frequently he is quite
alone. Occasionally he goes and camps out for a few days, to work some
outlying end of the run, rolling up sufficient beef and damper in his
blanket strapped across his saddle, to last him until he returns. In
rough country, such as the coast of Queensland, no one ought ever to
ride about the run alone. While riding hard after cattle through the
long grass, it is impossible to avoid a nasty fall occasionally; and
if a man were to be crippled away in the Bush, and unable to ride or
walk home, it is a thousand to one if he would ever be found before a
miserable death had overtaken him. Considering the number of men who
every day of their lives make a practice of riding about the Bush quite
alone, it is astonishing that more of them do not come to grief. But
the annals of the country contain ghastly records of the horrible death
of solitary riders who have met with an accident, and been rendered
helpless, and many an unfortunate being has disappeared entirely,
without leaving a trace of his fate. Years afterwards, perhaps, a
skeleton is found somewhere near where he was supposed to have been
lost, and the few who have not forgotten all about him connect the
discovery with the unknown end of the missing man. Not far from Mount
Spencer run, a man came to his end a few years ago, in a manner that
is almost unique in horror. He was away riding by himself in the Bush,
and his horse threw him, injuring his spine in the fall, so that he was
quite powerless to move. Close to where he fell was an enormous ants’
nest, and when he was found three days afterwards he was half eaten by
millions of ants. He was still conscious, but unable to speak, and died
very shortly afterwards. It is impossible to imagine a more terrible
death than to lie paralysed and helpless, to the agony of intolerable
thirst being added the torture of being eaten alive by crawling insects.
If any parallel could be found for the awfulness of such a fate, it
would be in the case of a man who was burned to death by a tree which
fell on him. He was working by himself, several miles away from
anywhere, and a burning tree fell on him, pinning him to the ground,
without doing him any serious injury. The tree was alight at the butt
end, some thirty feet away from where he lay; but it is a peculiarity
of some sorts of Australian trees that when once they are set on fire
they will smoulder entirely away, leaving nothing but a track of white
ashes in the grass. No efforts of the unfortunate man could extricate
him from his awful position, and after a time he appears to have
abandoned himself to his fate, for he amused himself by scratching a
record of his sensations with a knife upon the bottom of a tin dish
that lay within reach. It took a day and a half before the fire reached
him, and it is shocking to think of what his sufferings must have been.
When he was found he was nothing but a charred and blackened mass,
which no one would have taken to have been a man, had his fate not been
recorded on the tin dish that was found near him.
In the north of Queensland very few of the cattle-runs have boundary
fences. There are large paddocks, of course, but the cattle roam at
large over the greater portion of the run. All about the run, at
intervals of five or six miles, are cattle-camps, and the cattle that
belong to the surrounding districts are mustered on their respective
camps.
The camp is generally a level place, as free from stones as possible,
where there is water handy, and where the timber is not too thick. It
is the stockman’s business to ride round constantly, and put the cattle
on to the different camps, so as to accustom them to running there.
The same mobs of cattle frequent the same districts, and if they are
properly broken in they will run right into the camp by themselves,
when started with a few cracks of the stock-whip, and stay there till
the middle of the day. In mustering, of course, it is essential that
a stockman should know the country thoroughly, and be perfectly
acquainted with the run of all the gullies and creeks, or he will never
get all his cattle on to the camp.
Two mornings after I arrived at Mount Spencer, we all started out to
muster the Water-hole camp, at the lower end of the run, twelve miles
away. Frank and Billy had gone on the night before, and camped out,
to work the country on the far side of the camp. Having had breakfast
about five, Rice, my brother, Timothy, and I, started off, soon after
sunrise, with the man who had come up to buy cattle. He had been
butchering on the Palmer diggings, and made a rise, and was hunting up
a big mob of fat cattle to take back with him. He had a huge nugget of
gold hanging on to his watch-chain, and always wore a waistcoat and no
coat, a get-up which in the Bush somehow or other imparts an air of
blackguardism to a man which it is impossible to describe.
After going a few miles through the forest of endless gum-trees and
blood-wood, we crossed a big creek, and came to a succession of low
iron-bark ridges. Everywhere the country was heavily timbered, and it
was impossible to see more than half a mile through the trees in any
direction. Here we separated, Rice and the cattle-dealer going in one
direction, and Timothy, my brother, and I, in another. Presently a mob
of about seventy cattle appeared ahead of us in the long grass. We rode
up to them at a canter, shouting, and cracking our whips; and they set
off at a gallop, apparently in the right direction, for my brother and
Timothy pulled up and did not attempt to follow them.
A little farther on we came upon another small mob, which turned as
soon as they saw us, and trotted off towards a creek on our left. Off
went my brother after them, full gallop, through the grass, which was
up to his knees as he rode, shouting out that “he knew that old devil
of a white cow was off to the Island camp again.” He disappeared after
them over the creek, and we did not see him again until he turned up
on the camp an hour later, driving the refractory mob in front of him.
Timothy and I jogged along for some distance, and fell in with some
more cattle, that looked lazily at us as we rode up. Timothy scared
them up with a shout and a crack of his whip; but they did not seem in
any great hurry, and rather inclined to stop, so he turned to me, and
told me that “if I would keep behind them, that old yellow cow with a
down-horn would take me right into the camp, a couple of miles away,
while he went and tried the ridges away to the right.” I had not the
least idea where the camp was, and only very vague ideas of where I was
myself, and the idea of being shown the way about the Bush by a yellow
cow with a down-horn seemed rather novel; but Timothy had already
started, so I thought I had better do as I was told.
There was not a vestige of a track to be seen anywhere, and, as I
jogged along behind the mob, I could not help thinking to myself,
“Supposing this flaming old cow takes it into her head to go to the
wrong camp, like the other one did, or lies down, or gets sick, where
the deuce will I be?” The sun was just about square overhead, so it
was difficult to tell where the points of the compass lay, and I was
by no means sure that if the cow did not take me to the camp I could
find my way home again. However, she trotted along with a business kind
of an air that was very encouraging, always keeping in the lead of the
mob, while I brought up the rear. After crossing two more deep-running
creeks, and struggling down several awful gullies and up the other
side, clinging on to my horse’s mane with rather a weak feeling about
the inside during the final struggle that landed us on the top, I came
on to a long black-soil flat, covered with big box-trees, at the far
end of which I could see a big mob of cattle standing on a low ridge.
My pilot had led me as straight as a die, and when I got up I found
Frank and Billy were already on the camp with about 600 head of cattle.
There are few sights more picturesque than an Australian cattle-camp,
and it is one that anyone who takes an interest in stock will never
grow weary of.
The Water-hole camp lay on a broad low ridge, running down to a big
creek full of flooded gums and dark green she-oaks, about 300 yards
away. Close to the camp was a round water-hole, covered with lilac
water-lilies, from which the camp took its name. The cattle were moving
restlessly about on the camp, the cows bellowing in search of their
lost calves, their red, roan, and white colours looking wonderfully
bright in the sunlight, among the trunks of the black iron-bark trees.
The two stockmen, and a couple of black boys, were riding incessantly
round the edges of the camp to keep the cattle together, and prevent
them from straying away; so my brother and I lit our pipes, and rode in
amongst the cattle to have a look at them. The first thing that struck
me was what a very well-bred lot they were. Here and there was an old
crow-bait of a cow, a miserable relic of old times, crawling about to
save itself the annoyance of a funeral, but most of the cattle showed a
great deal of quality. Among the young ones there was scarcely a hard
skin to be seen, and some of the heifers were perfect pictures. There
were not many bullocks on the camp, as most of them had been cleared
off Mount Spencer and put on to Haslewood, but what there were left
were very healthy sights. It is astonishing to anyone who has been used
to cramming bullocks with oil-cake, hay, and mangolds, before they are
fit for the market, to see animals raised entirely on grass, with the
fat laid on level all over them wherever there is room for it. A mob
of seventy bullocks once left Mount Spencer that averaged over 1000
lbs. when they were killed, one of them weighing 1430 lbs. They were
four and five year olds, and the weight was taken as they hung up clean
in the butcher’s shop.
“Well, Sam,” said my brother as we finished a round of the camp, “what
do you think of them? Not a bad lot, are they?”
“Very sound,” said I. “What are those bullocks worth now?”
“Six pound ten delivered at the yard, and heaven send they may stick
at it. They’ve never been up to that before, around these edges. Look
there, at that white one; he’ll go over a thousand; and isn’t he a plum
to look at?”
The animal referred to was a four-year-old bullock, with the head of
a heifer on him, and a soft white skin, very deep in the girth, with
a broad, level back, on which the fat was laid on to admiration. It
struck me that I had seen many worse animals in the show-yards of the
old country, and there were several quite as good as him on the camp.
Climbing off our horses, we sat down on a log, and waited for the
others to come up to camp with the rest of the cattle. Our horses were
standing lazily brushing away the flies with their tails, with their
heads down, and their eyes half shut; but presently they pricked up
their ears and looked up. Following the direction in which they were
looking, we saw a long string of cattle in the distance, winding along
like a snake through the forest towards the camp. Timothy had fallen in
with Rice and the cattle-dealer, and they all three appeared, bringing
about 400 head of cattle with them. There were now about 1000 head on
the camp, and Frank and Billy declared it was pretty full--that is to
say, that all the cattle belonging to the district in which it lay were
there.
Nothing is more extraordinary than the knowledge of cattle that those
who work constantly among them acquire. A good stockman will go on to a
camp where there are 1000 head of cattle, and in ten minutes’ time will
tell you if there are any missing that should be there. Very likely he
has half-a-dozen similar camps in other parts of the run; but if he has
been a year or two on the place, he knows most of the cattle by sight
perfectly well. Although a great deal may be done by practice, no one
who is not born in the country ever possesses this power to the same
extent as a native, with some of whom it is really a remarkable gift.
Billy Burgess was a native of Australia, and was generally allowed to
be one of the best hands at working cattle in the north. His faculty
for remembering cattle was simply astounding. I have seen him come on
to a camp where he had not been for two years, and on which there were
about 1200 head of cattle at the time. After riding round the camp
amongst the cattle for a little while, he began inquiring from the
stockman who was working that part of the run at the time, why such and
such a cow or steer was not there, and in every instance he was right.
Animals that must have been almost calves when he was last there, he
instantly recognised; in fact, if once he saw a beast, it seemed as if
no alteration in its appearance could ever prevent him from identifying
it afterwards.
Having scattered a glance round the Water-hole camp, he said all the
bullocks were there that ought to be, and, as it was roasting hot, we
left the black boys to mind the camp, and went down to the creek to
have a feed, and to give the cattle a spell before we started drafting.
Dinner did not take long, none of us having brought more than a piece
of beef and a bit of damper, and most of us had forgotten to bring any
at all, and had an extra smoke instead. When we had finished we went
back to the camp, and Frank and my brother started drafting out the
bullocks, the cattle-dealer riding through the camp and picking the
ones that he wanted. Drafting on the camp, or “cutting out” as it is
generally called, is a very pretty performance to watch, if it is well
done. First of all a small mob is cut off from the main body of the
cattle, and driven gently away for a little distance, and then allowed
to stand. This is the nucleus of the draft-mob; for no beast will stand
still a moment by itself, and one of the hands is told off to watch
them. One or two men then ride in among the cattle, and draft out the
ones they want, one at a time, while the rest of the hands ride round
the camp and keep the cattle from breaking away. Both my brother and
Frank were very sound hands at cutting out, and they were both riding
first-rate camp-horses, so I watched them at work with the greatest
interest. A “camp-horse” is one used for cutting out cattle on a camp,
and very few horses are good at it; but the performance of a really
first-class one is a sight worth seeing. Each man picks his beast, and
edges him gently to the outside of the mob, on the side of the camp
nearest the draft-mob. The instant the animal finds itself cut off from
the camp it makes the most desperate efforts to rejoin the herd, and
the speed at which a bullock can travel, and the activity with which he
turns, are marvellous.
The timber was pretty thick round the camp, and as I watched my brother
it seemed as if he must inevitably come to grief; but a good camp-horse
is wonderfully smart upon his legs, and goes through the trees like
an eel. Away went the bullock round the edge of the camp, my brother,
with his reins loose, and his hat on the back of his head, going after
it through the timber as if there was no futurity. As he ranges up
alongside, the bullock wheels sharp round and gallops back again the
way that he came. Toby, the camp-horse, stops dead short, with a
violence that would have sent an inexperienced rider ten yards over
its head, and is off after the beast again like lightning, following
every twist and turn as if he was tied to the bullock’s tail with a
string. Toby’s heart and soul are in the work, and without a word or
a touch from his rider he hits out all he knows, to keep the animal
from getting back into the camp. This time as he comes up alongside,
the bullock lowers his head and charges; but Toby has had a horn in
his ribs before now, and avoids the sweep of the bullock’s head with
marvellous dexterity. For a while the tables are turned, and for a
hundred yards or so the bullock hunts Toby; and though the horse is as
quick on his legs as a rabbit, a pair of sharp horns are kept quite as
near his quarters as is pleasant. Finding that Toby is too quick for
him, the bullock turns and gallops back towards the camp. Once more the
horse is after him, and turns him back into the Bush; and this time the
bullock gives in, and trots sulkily off to join the draft-mob.
The cattle-dealer knew his business, and picked out about forty
grand-looking bullocks, which pretty well cleaned out the Water-hole
camp. On a camp of mixed cattle, of course, it is not very difficult to
pick the best bullocks; but when there are nothing but bullocks, and
perhaps eight or nine hundred of them, it takes a consummate judge to
go in and pick the cream of the camp, as he rides through them on his
horse. It was past three o’clock when we finished drafting, and, as we
had twelve miles to drive the cattle home, it looked liked taking us
all our time to get them in the yard before dark. Fat bullocks are the
worst kind of cattle to drive, as they are always inclined to break
away, and, of course, have to be driven dreadfully slow, in order
to take as little out of them as possible. A long drive home is very
tedious after a hard day’s ride, and it takes a great deal of patience
to prevent a man from hurrying the cattle. The great thing is never
to push them too fast at first. If cattle are allowed to start very
steady, they will walk quietly along, and by and by get over the ground
at a very fair pace; but if they are hustled when they first leave
the camp they will not settle down, and are certain to be troublesome
all the way home. On the whole, about two or two and a half miles an
hour is quite fast enough to drive cattle, and, of course, if they are
going to be on the road for some days or weeks, they must not be driven
nearly so fast. Droving, however--that is to say, taking a mob of
cattle on a journey extending, perhaps, over three or four months--is a
science of itself, and is a very different thing from merely driving a
mob home from the camp to the yards.
Some of the bullocks had come a long distance to camp in the morning;
so we took them home very slowly, and it was dark before we got within
two miles of the station. In a little while, however, the moon got up;
not the sickly, dissipated-looking object that makes night hideous in
northern latitudes, but a good, useful, healthy sort of moon that rose
suddenly in a circle of ruddy gold, and threw a powerful light over the
whole country.
We looked a very weird sort of procession, as we wound along through
the thick, long grass. The huge gums rose up on all sides, giants of
the forest, their towering tops meeting high overhead, and their stems,
white and ghostly, throwing deep, clear shadows across the brilliant
moonlight. Ahead of the cattle, to prevent them from going too fast,
rode one of the black boys, perched on an old white horse, and looking
as utterly disreputable as only a black boy can. Behind the mob rode
the rest of the men, wild-looking objects begrimed with dust and sweat,
their arms bare to the elbow, and each with the battered remains of
a broad-brimmed felt hat jammed on the back of his head. Every now
and then one of them would drop behind for a hundred yards, and the
ruddy light that shortly afterwards illuminated the end of his nose
proclaimed him to have stopped to light his pipe, which he dare not
do in the vicinity of the cattle. No one spoke. The men rode silently
behind the mob, checking instantly the slightest evidence of a wish to
break on the part of any of the cattle. They were getting very nervous,
and disinclined to go on, as they drew near the yard, and any mistake
on the part of the men would have been disastrous. The yard stood on a
slight rise about a quarter of a mile from the station, and on the side
from which we were approaching them the fences of two paddocks ran out
from the gates like wings.
Suddenly, as the cattle were going up the rise to the yard, three or
four ducks got up with a loud clatter out of a small water-hole in one
of the paddocks. With a sudden rush the bullocks turned and dashed down
the hill, breaking through the line of horsemen, and tearing off into
the Bush as if all the fiends were after them. Fortunately the country
below the yard was a pretty level plain; but the timber was thick,
and the grass three feet long, and full of fallen trees. To ride full
gallop by moonlight over such country seems little short of madness;
but his neck is the last thing that a stockman ever thinks of, and
away we all went after them, as hard as ever our horses could go. A
“new chum” on occasions like this is never of the slightest use, and
generally very much in the way; but this time I was saved from doing
any mischief by my horse going head over heels into the head of a
dead tree in the long grass, before I had gone 300 yards, and sending
me flying. Luckily I was able to catch him before he got clear of the
fallen timber. We were neither of us hurt, and in the distance I could
hear the men shouting at the cattle, so I cleared out of the way as
quickly as I could, to let them come up to the yard again. Fortunately
the cattle kept together pretty well, and the men were able to round
them up on the flat, about half a mile away, and brought them back to
the yard with the loss of only three, which got clear away over the
creek, where it was useless to follow them. This time they went into
the yard without any trouble, and with a sigh of relief we secured the
gates, and went down to the station and turned our horses out. Having
forgotten to take out with me anything to eat, I was beginning to get
hungry, as it was now about nine o’clock, and I had breakfasted at five
in the morning.
During the next few days we were out again every day, and collected
about a hundred fats; and some men belonging to the cattle-dealer
having come up in the meantime, he started off on the road to Cooktown,
over 500 miles away to the north. We heard afterwards that he got the
bullocks up all right, and made a big profit on them.
In Australia large mobs of mixed cattle are continually being moved
about from one station to another, or to stock outlying country,
and fat cattle are often obliged to travel an enormous distance to
market. For the Barcoo, and central districts of Queensland and South
Australia, the best markets are Melbourne and Adelaide, each of them
distant about 1000 miles. Droving, in consequence, becomes a regular
profession, and there are numbers of men who make a living, and a very
good one too, by nothing else but taking charge of cattle that are
travelling from one place to another. To take a mob of a thousand fat
bullocks over a thousand miles of all sorts of country, and bring them
into market in prime condition, is a business involving a great deal of
responsibility and care, for, although cattle are generally travelled
at the owner’s risks, of course the drover’s reputation depends upon
the order in which his cattle reach the end of the journey. A good
drover is always in requisition, and the wages of the head man in
charge of a mob are generally about £4 a week. It is a dog’s life,
too, a drover’s. From daylight to dark he is on horseback, exposed to
all kinds of weather, crawling along behind his cattle at the slowest
possible rate that is consistent with moving at all. If he averages
between four and five miles a day, on a long journey, it is quite as
fast as his cattle ought to travel. Every day the man in charge rides
on ahead of the mob, to pick a place for them to camp at night. Water,
of course, is a _sine qua non_, and he must have reliable information
as to the state of road for a hundred miles ahead of him, or he will
get his cattle in a terrible fix. Every night the cattle have to be
rounded up, and watched on the camp the whole night long. A drover
never gets more than four hours’ sleep at a stretch, and he is lucky if
he can get that for the first month his cattle are on the road.
There is nothing better for a new arrival in the country, who wishes
to get colonial experience, than to be sent on the road with a mob of
cattle. He will get an insight into the country and its ways, become
acquainted with the habits of cattle, get nothing but the plainest
possible food, and altogether he will have such a disgustingly bad
time, that he will afterwards accept any other sort of work with
cheerfulness.
[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF A STOCK YARD.]