KILFERA
Our border ruffians being settled with for good and all, we pioneers
were enabled to devote ourselves to our legitimate business--the
breeding and fattening of cattle. For this industry the Port Fairy
district was eminently fitted, and at that time--how different from the
present!--sheep and wool were rather at a discount. Of course, some men
had sufficient foresight and shrewdness to back the golden fleece, but
their experiences were not encouraging.
The heavy herbage and rich soil of the West tended lamentably to
foot-rot. The flocks seemed to be in a state of chronic lameness. The
malady either reduced wool increase and condition to a point
considerably below zero, or necessitated the employment of such a number
of hands in applying bluestone and butyr of antimony (the remedies of
the period), that the shearing subsidy was considerably encroached on.
Then there was "Scab"--word of dread and hatefulness, herald of ruin and
loss, of endless torment to all concerned, of medicated dippings,
dressings, deaths and destructions innumerable; the dreadful
multiplication of station hands, who assisted with cheerful but
perfunctory effort, patently disbelieving in "any species of cure," and
looking on the whole affair--disease, dressing, and dipping--as a
manifest dispensation of Providence for the sustentation of the "poor
man."
When all had been done that could be done by the proprietor in his
desperate need, a single sheep straying among the straggling flocks, or
reintroduced by a careless or malignant station hand (and the latter
crime is alleged to have been more than once committed), was sufficient
to undo a year's labour. Then the distracting, expensive task had to be
commenced _de novo_.
In those days, too, when fencing was not; when the shepherds comprised,
perhaps, the very worst class of labour in the colonies, it may be
guessed how hard and anxious a life was that of the western Victorian
sheepowner.
His neighbour, too, was but too often his natural enemy. A careless
flockholder might supply a nucleus of contagion from which a whole
district would suffer. This state of matters continued until the gold
discoveries, when the shepherds having mostly withdrawn themselves, and
a compulsory admixture of flocks taking place, scab spread throughout
the length and breadth of Victoria. What its cost to the Government and
to private persons was before it was finally stamped out would be
difficult, very difficult, to find out--so large a sum that it would
have paid all concerned ten times, a hundred times over, to have
purchased all infected stock at, say, £5 per head, only to have cut the
throats of and cremated the lot.
"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth" is a scriptural
aphorism strictly applicable to acarian development. Many a well-to-do
sheepholder was burnt out of house and home by the quick-spreading ovine
leprosy which germinated at a friend's carelessly-ordered establishment.
So that it came to pass that the "Gallants of Westland" were loath to
exchange the free roving lives of cattle-tending caballeros for the
restricted, "pokey," worrying round of duties to which the sheepholders
seemed doomed. At one of our gatherings, at which--the majority being
cattle-men--a toast involving a little indirect self-laudation was duly
honoured, a pioneer squatter from a distance remarked gravely, "How
little you fellows can realise what a life _we_ have been leading in our
district the last year or two!" He had just finished "cleaning" his
flocks, as had also his neighbours. He certainly looked, as the
financial survivor of a drought expressed it once, as though he had
"come through the Valley of the Shadow."
When we rubbed along thus jovially, deeming life to be "a great and
glorious thing," fat cows were well sold at £2 per head, and bullocks at
£3. Certainly you could buy stores (or, as they primevally called them,
"lean cattle") at from 10s. to 16s., prices which left a margin. The
Messrs. Manifold bought a large number of bullocks from the Shelleys, of
Tumut, at the latter price, somewhere about the year 1845. How they
fattened at Purrumbeet and Leura may be imagined! They fetched top
prices, but were not thought to pay so well as the early ripening
station-breds, on which the 3M brand was thenceforth chiefly placed.
I became possessed of a herd of a thousand head about the same time,
which I took "on terms," as the arrangement was thus called--a
convenient one for beginners with more country than capital, and _vice
versa_. I was to have one-third of the increase, and to be paid ten per
cent upon all sales of fat cattle. They were to be "personally
conducted" by me from the Devil's River--a place uncanny sounding, but
not otherwise objectionable. They were the property of Messrs. Curlewis
and Campbell; the first-named gentleman arranged preliminaries with me
in town, and in a few days I again started from Melbourne with high
hopes and three stock-riders.
Our route lay over country that has since become historical. One half of
the herd was located at Strathbogie, and through those forest-clothed
solitudes and adown the steep shoulder of the leading range had we to
drive our unwilling cattle. It was on that occasion that I made
acquaintance with my good, warm-hearted friend Charles Ryan--then a gay
young bachelor living at Kilfera, on the Broken River. We met at an
extremely small, not to say dismal hut at Strathbogie, already inhabited
by Messrs. Joe Simmons, Salter, and Hall, who, together with my men and
myself, were constrained to abide therein till the cattle, weak and low
after their drive from the head of the Abercrombie in New South Wales,
were mustered.
"Come along over with me and let them muster the cattle themselves,
_you_ have only to take delivery," was his highly natural salutation
(_i.e._ natural to Charles Ryan), and I came along accordingly.
Kilfera station was a comfortable bachelor homestead, and it struck me,
as I saw it for the first time, that it had a distinctly "Galway" look
about it. The hospitality was free and unstinted. I was not the only
guest. As we rode up we came upon a match at quoits, the players at
which wore the air of non-combatants. There was a fine upstanding son of
Peter Fin, "Modderidderoo" by name, in the stables; on the next day I
was shown the very panel where Mr. Jack Hunter had jumped "The Badger"
over a three-railed fence, without bridle or saddle.
"We saw him coming up the paddock," said my host (he had gone down to
catch his horse and taken no bridle with him), "at a swinging
hand-gallop, and all turned out of the verandah to look. He had only a
switch in his hand; when he came to the creek he took it at a fly, and
then faced the three-railed fence at the stable. He went over here--over
this very rail--and came down sitting as square as if he was riding in
the park, holding his hat, too, in both hands." "How did he stop the
horse?" "He jumped off on the straw heap here, and fell on his legs like
a cat." I had a slight previous acquaintance with the gentleman referred
to, whose whilom sobriquet of "Jack the Devil" was fully deserved, as
far as feats of horsemanship were concerned. He rode equally well in a
side-saddle, and once at least defied the minions of the law decorously
attired in a lady's riding habit, with hat, gloves, and whip to match.
To complete the "wild sports of the West" flavour with which my fancy
had invested Kilfera, entered to us that night, travelling with horses,
one Mr. Crowe, evidently of kin to the "three Mr. Trenches of
Tallybash," popularly known as "mad Crowe." Slightly eccentric to an
unprejudiced observer he appeared to be. He was a tall, fair-haired,
athletic fellow, and he had not been half an hour in the house before,
after gifting all his horses with impossible qualities and improbable
pedigrees, he offered to row, wrestle, ride, drink, or fight any one of
the company for a liberal wager. He finished off the evening's
entertainment by volunteering and going outside to execute an imitation
of an Irish "keen" at a wake, a performance which was likely to have
cost him dear, as it offended the sensibilities of several of the
station hands, who were strongly minded to arise and "hammer" him
(Crowe) for belittling their native land. "How happily the days of
Thalaba went by" at Kilfera; indeed, I regarded with complacency the
somewhat protracted muster of the Strathbogie herd. However, one fine
day they were mustered and counted out to me, mixed with the Devil's
River contingent; blacks and brindles, yellows and strawberries,
snaileys and poleys, old and young, they were "a mixed herd" in every
sense. But cattle were cattle in those days. So I bade farewell to my
kind friend and pleasant acquaintances, and took the road for Port
Fairy--four hundred miles or so. But an odd hundred leagues of a journey
was nothing then. How the country must have altered since those days. No
Beechworth diggings--Castlemaine, Sandhurst, and Ballarat all in the
"forest primeval" stage, innocent of cradle and pick, windlass and
bucket. Quartz indeed! The first time it was mentioned in my hearing was
by James Irvine, who was chaffing Captain Bunbury about the quality of
his run on the Grampians, and averring that the only chance of his
cattle getting fat was in the event of their being able to live on
quartz. Quartz, quotha! I hardly knew what it meant, save that it was a
kind of rock. Heavens! Could I have foreseen how closely it was to be
interwoven with my destiny--with all our destinies, for the matter of
that!
It was the autumn season, and the way was pleasant enough, after we left
the sunless glens and darksome mountain-sides of Strathbogie. We passed
Seven Creeks homestead, then, or somewhat later, the property of Mr.
William Forlonge. He, like the rest of us, did not know when he was well
off, and must move northward evermore, towards the great Saltbush
Desert, that false Eldorado, which, like the loadstone mountain in the
Arabian tale, has attracted and ruined so many a life, swallowed how
many a fortune! However, _nil desperandum_ is his motto; and if fortune
favours the brave, the plucky veteran of the pastoral army should come
out well in the end.
By easy stages we fared on till we came to Kilmore. That flourishing
city, as I suppose it calls itself now, was then chiefly noted for its
mud, the depth and blackness of which were truly remarkable. A few
potato-growing farms and the usual complement of public-houses made up
the town. There I lost two horses, a serious and melancholy occurrence
which was likely to interfere with our march. I left the cattle to come
on, and resolved to ride to Melbourne to find them or get others. I knew
they were likely to "make" in that direction, about the Upper Plenty.
At Kinlochewe I encountered the late Mr. Dalmahoy Campbell. He condoled
with me. How pleasant is a sympathetic manner from an older man to a
youngster! I have never forgotten those who, in my youth, were kindly
and tolerant. He gave me the advice of an experienced overlander, and
promised to write to a friend in the neighbourhood to look out for the
runaways.
At the next stage I encountered my old friend Fred Burchett, late of
"The Gums," another Port Fairy man, luckily also bound that way with a
herd of cows and calves--the latter given in--which he had purchased
from Mr. Shelley, at Tumut. His cattle were just ahead, and he proposed
that we should join forces at Keilor, and journey together the rest of
the way. Nothing could be nicer. I forgot my griefs. "Lost horses," like
"lost sheep," produce acute suffering while they last; but the agony
abates, as Macaulay said. I spent the evening with him, and next day
went on to Melbourne.
Poor dear Fred! The kindest, the best-tempered, the most humorous of
men! How many a laugh we had together! It has always been a grief to me
that he died before the advent of Bret Harte or Mark Twain! How he would
have revelled in their inimitable touches, their daring drolleries,
their purest pathos. A well-read man and a fair scholar, his was a mind
nearly related to that of Charles Lamb, of whose wondrous semitones of
mirth and melancholy he had the fullest appreciation. He, though living
fifty miles away, was one of the "Dunmore mob," and aided generally in
the symposia which were there enjoyed. It was a great stroke of luck our
being able to join forces, and I looked forward to the rest of the
journey as quite a pleasant picnic party.
I did not get my truant horses (they were ultimately recaptured), but I
foraged up other remounts and rejoined my cattle, with which I made a
cut across country _via_ Deep Creek, Woodlands, and Keilor, then the
property of Mr. J. B. Watson, and exhibiting no foreshadowing of a
railway station. Mr. Burchett was only one stage ahead, I was told. At
the Little River I overtook him. This was his observation on that
eccentric watercourse. Scanning with an eye of deepest contemplation its
cavernous channel and apparently perfect freedom from the indispensable
element, he thus delivered himself: "They call this the Little River.
Well they may! It's the smallest blooming river _I_ ever came across!
Why, we had hard work to get water enough in it to boil our kettle
with!"
After this amalgamation everything went prosperously. We had plenty of
driving power, and the cattle strung along the road daily with
comparatively nimble feet. Something of this cheerfulness may be
attributed to the fact that we had ceased to camp or watch them. Judging
correctly that after so long a trail they would be indisposed to ramble,
we left them out at night, and slept the sleep of the just. At daylight
they were always well within view, generally lying down, and
half-an-hour's work put them all together. Fred was always averse to
early exercise, so we compromised matters by his lending me his one-eyed
cob, "The Gravedigger," so called from a partial resemblance to the
animal incautiously acquired by the Elder in "Sam Slick" at a Lower
Canadian horse fair. "They're a simple people, those French; they don't
know much about horses; their priests keeps it from 'em." This quotation
Fred had always in his mouth, and as "The Gravedigger" was not quite
what he appeared to be, a perfectly-shaped and well-mannered cob, there
certainly was a resemblance. One of his peculiarities, probably arising
from defective vision, was an occasional paroxysm of unreasonable fear,
accompanied by backjumping, which had occasionally unseated his master
and others. One day, however, Fred rode into camp with a triumphant
expression, having just had a stand-up fight with "The Gravedigger." "He
tried all he knew, confound him!" he explained, "but he couldn't shift
me an inch. I had too much mud on my boots." This novel receipt for
horsemanship was comprehensible when we glanced at the amount of solid
western mud disposed not only on the boots, but upon his whole person
and apparel. I had no compunction, therefore, in taking it out of "The
Gravedigger" in those early morning gallops, and he was decidedly less
unsocial for the rest of the day in consequence.
The only bad night we had was just before we came to the Leigh River.
There we were amid "purchased land," that bane of the old-world
pastoralist, so had to watch all night and keep our horses in hand,
which was unprecedented.
When daylight broke my comrade said, with an air of tremendous
deliberation, "The men can bring on the cattle well enough now, Rolf;
suppose you and I go and breakfast at the Leigh Inn?" I caught at the
idea, and we rode on the seven miles as happy as schoolboys at the idea
of a real breakfast with chops and steaks, eggs and buttered toast, on a
clean tablecloth. After a night's watching, too, our appetites were
something marvellous. Fred related to me how on a previous occasion he
had originated this "happy thought," and, not to be deficient of every
adjunct to luxurious enjoyment, had ordered a bath, and borrowed a clean
shirt from the landlord. We contented ourselves with the bath on this
turn.
As we sat in the pleasant parlour a couple of hours later, serene and
satisfied--I might say satiated--reading the latest _Port Phillip
Patriot_, we saw the long string of cattle draw down a deep gorge into
the valley, and cross the river in front of the house. Then we ordered
out the horses, paid our bill, and, with a sigh of gastronomic
retrospect, followed the trail across the plain.