WORK AND PLAY
The captain's first cattle-muster was fixed for a certain day. I had the
honour of being invited specially to superintend the classing and
drafting of the bullocks, retaining the presumably marketable, and
condemning the irreconcilables. I was happy to accede, but a slight
difficulty stood in the way. The night preceding the muster had been
devoted to the coming ball at Dunmore, an anxiously-anticipated
festivity, to which all Port Fairy was bidden, and from which no loyal
Western man could be absent if alive. Certainly not the writer,
Terpsichore's not least ardent votary. The difficulty was to combine
drafting and dancing with a conscientious attention to both. "Minorca
lies in the middle sea." Lyne is half-way between Dunmore and
Hamilton--over twenty miles anyhow. The drafting would commence at
sunrise--the dancing would continue till daylight. Such trivial
discrepancies were negotiable, however,
Ere nerve and sinew began to fail
In the consulship of Plancus.
The ball was in its way perfect, "with music, moonlight, love, and
flowers," probably in the usual proportions. Daylight found the
revellers still unsated; but an hour before the first tremulous dawn
wavelet rippled over the pale sky-line I had doffed the canonicals,
slipped on boots and breeches, mounted my favourite hackney--"The
Gaucha" to wit--and was stretching out along the track to Eumeralla at
the rate of twelve miles an hour.
The summer morn was refreshingly cool, the first hour's ride delicious;
then an increasing drowsiness made itself felt, and ere long I would
have given all the world to lie down under a tree and sleep till noon.
But the inclination was sternly repressed, and less than another hour's
ride brought the creek in view, below the blackwood-crowned slopes of
Lyne, one of the loveliest spots in all the West. The position of the
stock-yard was denoted from afar by the great cloud of dust which rose
pillar-like to the clear sky, while the "roaring" of the restless,
excited cattle had been audible long before the dust-cloud was visible.
It was a lovely, clear, summer morning; yet, as I rode onward, the
sentence of Holy Writ kept ceaseless iteration through my brain as
curiously apposite, while ever and anon through the green forest echoed
the deep-resounding lowing of the imprisoned herd--"And the smoke of
their torment ascendeth for ever." As I rode up to the yard a score of
stock-horses stood under the trees. The ocean of unbroken greenery that
lay to the eastward was flame-tinted by the rising sun, but, early as
was the hour, work had begun. Joe Twist of Werrongourt, and Mackay of
Eumeralla, were at the drafting gates; the cattle were running through.
I was just in time to enter upon my duty as classifier, at which arduous
and delicate task I continued till noon. A half-hour for the mid-day
meal, a few minutes' grace while pipes are lighted, then through the
long, dusty hours of the hot afternoon the laborious, exciting work is
ceaselessly carried on. Strangers and pilgrims, calves and clear-skins,
are separated at the same time. The sun declines, dips lower still, and
lower. The day is done, and a highly respectable amount of necessary
work has been performed. The liberated herd streams back in a score of
droves to familiar pastures. Two hundred and twenty "boilers" are safe
in the small yard, the which will be started for their last drive on the
following morning. The stock-riders are accommodated on the station.
Some ride home--those who had no calves or stray cattle on their minds;
the rest remain, ready to give a hand with the boiling-down draft next
day. I partake of Captain Carr's hospitality, warmly thanked for my
exertions. Do I not doze off almost before the evening's meal is
concluded? I beg to be excused on the ground of fatigue, and depart
incontinently for bed thereafter. Do I turn round until sunrise next
morning? I trow not.
But I was soon in the saddle then, and away with the drove referred to.
What a rush they made when the gate was opened!--what a pace they went
for the first mile or two! I can see Joe Twist now on his favourite
stock-horse--a steed that even his master cared not to ride without his
permission--going like a Comanchee Indian, the merest trifle less than
racing speed, parallel with a tossing forest of horns, his bridle-hand
low, his stock-whip raised threateningly, the eager horse's head now on
the ground, now raised higher than a nervous rider would choose. Was
there another man "steadying the lead" on the opposite side, right well
mounted also, gallant in the pride of youthful horsemanship and the full
inspiration of "God's glorious oxygen"? It may have been so. Ah me!
those were pleasant days. Would they might return! Even as I write,
Still comes the memory sweet
Of bygone hours, long-gathered flowers
Pressed by our youth's gay feet.
It may not have been wholly in the interests of an Australian merino
principality that our shores were honoured by the captain's company and
capital. With him--and to a certain extent, it was understood, indebted
to his guardianship--came a Prince of Augustenburg, who had not then
succeeded to his present exalted position. This royal personage was
apparently not deeply interested in the pastoral life of Australia, and
remained to the last unconcerned about the weights and fineness of
fleece of merino sheep. Providence had arranged his destiny so as to be
unaffected by the wool market, or even by the prevalence of dry seasons.
He also spoke English indifferently, and, thus handicapped, preferred
the sylvan shades of Toorak and the tempered solitude of a club
smoking-room to the primeval waste. His more mercurial senior meanwhile
utilised his colonial experience to some purpose, as the sequel will
show.
Possibly a strict provincial life at Lyne became monotonous after the
"boilers" had realised some 30s. per head. The Ballarat diggers would
have eaten them gaily at £7 or £8 each a year or two after, but we did
not forecast that and a few other unimportant changes. After the calves
were branded, after the German shepherd had with paternal care cured the
Silesians of foot-rot--(how different from the demeanour of Australian
Corydon puffing at his foul pipe, and double-blanking the sheep, with
everybody connected with the place, from the ration-carrier upwards, as
he pares the offending hoof)--after these, and divers other engrossing
duties, had helped to hurry along the stream of Time, the captain
delegated such and the like, permanently, to Mr. J. R. Nowlan, a
gentleman who dwelt hard by, constituting him his managing partner. He
then betook himself with his Prince back to Europe, _via_ Panama, a
route then coming into fashion with Australian home-returning voyagers.
The travellers--including, I think, Messrs. Lang and Winter--had nearly
completed their foreign tour in an abrupt and melancholy fashion. While
crossing the Chagres river (I will not certify as to the name, but, if
doubtful on the point, communicate with Baron Lesseps, Captain Mayne
Reid, and Mr. Frederick Boyle) their light bark sprang a leak. They were
partly canoe-wrecked, and left by their boatman upon a sandbank in the
mid-stream of a big, rapid river, swarming with alligators. The river
was rising, which tended to limit their period of security. In this
strait, a small dug-out was seen approaching from the farther bank. The
Indian paddler explained by pantomime that he could take but two. That
was self-evident. One passenger even suggested risk. Then arose a
generous contention. To the Prince was unanimously yielded the _pas_.
The second place the captain was prayed to take. "No," said the gallant
veteran; "you fellows have all the world before you. I have had my
innings, and a deuced good one too. _Moi qui parle!_ Get in, either of
you; I'm dashed if I do." The time was rapidly growing shorter; the
sandbank contracting its area. The boatman gesticulated. The alligators,
presumably, were expectant. It was no time for overstrained ceremony.
One of the squatters stepped in, and the frail craft swirled into the
eddying current. It returned in time, and the _Greytown Herald_ missed a
sensational paragraph.
That was in other respects an exciting trip. Mr. Lang found himself,
when at Panama, relegated to a huge dormitory, crowded like a sixpenny
boarding-house. Comforting himself with the reflection that it was but
for a night, he invoked Somnus, all vainly. The groans of a sick man on
the next couch forbade repose. "What's the matter with him?" he inquired
at length of his nearest "strange bedfellow." "Only Isthmus fever," was
the answer. My friend shuddered, knowing how the railway labourers were
even then being decimated.
"And why is the bed between you and me vacant?" he went on to inquire.
"They buried a cholera patient out of it this morning. You don't happen
to have a cigar, do you?"
It was too late to retreat. The streets were none too safe. But it may
well be believed that the ex-owner of Lyne wished himself back among the
blackwood trees, or even in the stock-yard, were the day ever so dusty,
and what delicately constituted persons term oppressive. And when the
red sun aroused him from the troubled slumber which ended the night's
unrest, he naturally doubted whether cholera or "the fever" would first
lay upon him a fatal grasp.
Mr. Nowlan, an experienced manager, after Captain Carr's departure
"worked" Lyne pretty vigorously, selling the original herd as they
became fit for market, and putting on store cattle to the full carrying
capacity of the run. The gold discovery of course transmuted profits
magically. At the first onset of the revolution, cattle stations reaped
most of the benefit, so much less labour being required than on sheep
stations. Within a few years not only had large profits been realised
for the partnership, but the value of the property had quintupled. An
estate of freehold land had been purchased at Melton, near Melbourne,
from the profits of fat stock. A thousand head of cattle more than the
station had been purchased with were now depastured. At the
post-auriferous prices then obtaining, Lyne, with 3000 head of cattle,
was a very different property from that which Captain Carr had
originally purchased.
At this stage a plenipotentiary from Captain Carr arrived in the person
of Baron von Loesecke, a jolly, blue-eyed, fair-bearded Teuton, who had
married his only daughter and heiress. He prudently concluded to sell.
Lyne and the Melton property were accordingly, "on a future day, of
which," etc., put up to auction by, I think, Messrs. Kaye and Butchart.
The Baron used to remind us at the Melbourne Club a good deal of
Monsieur le Comte de Florac, in the character of his sentiments and the
quality of his English. He was good-natured, effusive, polite, though
ready to resent any criticism which he did not interpret as friendly.
"Do you think he intended himself to be satirical for me?" he once
inquired, with earnestness; "if I thought so, I would challenge him on
the instant." The challenge did not come off, and it need hardly be said
that no offence was intended to a guest and a foreigner. The day of sale
came off, and as we walked up from the Club the Baron requested a friend
to bid for him the amount of the reserve price, which had been fixed, I
think, at £6 or £5 : 15s. per head. The run was, if anything,
overstocked. As a number of stores had been recently put on, it was
thought a fair price. Whatever it was, owing to a misconception, he went
£500 higher than he had been instructed to do. The bidding was not very
brisk towards the end, the sale trembled on the balance for a minute or
two, then the purchaser came forward and made a further advance. The
station was knocked down to him. The Baron rushed up to his friend and
shook his hand enthusiastically; "You have made for me £500," he said,
"but I did hold my breath till the next offaire arrive." Mr. Nowlan, as
well as the captain, his heirs and assigns, must have realised
handsomely from the proceeds of Lyne. Purchased for less than £4000, it
fetched nearly £20,000, not reckoning intervening profits and the Melton
freehold. It afforded one more illustration of the strangely-assorted
luck which apparently besets colonial investments, the occasional
success of outsiders, not less than the hard measure too often dealt out
to pioneers.
I am not aware whether the last purchaser of Lyne found the scale of
profits perennial. I doubt it, inasmuch as Duffy's Act followed,
bringing darker days for the squatter. Fortune did not favour the
original owners either. Cheery and full of pluck to the last, George
Elms sailed for Fiji, as after an interval did his old comrade
Lang--pleasant, ever-courteous "Allan-a-Dale." It was the fashionable
"rush" for a while. They lie at rest under the whispering palm. Perhaps,
ere the last slumber, the murmur of the surges had lulled to sleep all
bitter memories of the wild southland in which their early manhood was
passed.