THE ROMANCE OF A FREEHOLD
In a recent advertisement in the _Australasian_ I observed public notice
to be given that "the rich agricultural lands of the Kangatong estate,
near Port Fairy, would be subdivided at an early date, and sold in farms
to suit purchasers." What changes time doth bring! When I first saw the
ground referred to, then known as "Cox's Heifer Station," how could one
divine the transformation it was fated to undergo? As little in 1844 was
prevision possible of the separate sale notices in which it would figure
as the years rolled on. It epitomises the history of the district,
perhaps of the colony.
First of all, "that well-known fattening station known as Kangatong,
with choice herd of cattle, stock-horses given in," etc. Then, "that
fully improved, fenced, and subdivided sheep property, of which the wool
is so favourably known to Melbourne buyers." Again, "that valuable
pastoral estate of Kangatong, comprising 35,000 (let us say) acres of
freehold"; and now, lastly, "those rich agricultural lands, divided
into farms to suit purchasers."
All these progressive wonders were to be evolved from the lone primeval
waste upon which a solitary horseman then gazed in the autumn of 1844.
And the wand of the squatter-sorcerer was to do it all. I might then
have seen lakelets glittering in the sun, orchards and cornfields, barns
and stables, mansion and offices, a village in itself, the spacious
wool-shed and the scientific wash-pen, had I possessed the prophetic
eye. But Fate held her secrets closely then as now. Only the vast
eucalyptus forest, stretching unbroken to the horizon, waved its sombre
banners before me. Only the scarce-trodden meadows of the waste lay
unfed, untouched around me. I beheld a pastoral paradise without so much
as a first inhabitant, and at which the very beasts of the field had
hardly arrived. It was a spectacle sufficiently solemn to have awed a
democrat, to have imbued even the Arch-Anti----, well, Anti-Capitalist,
with some respectful consideration for pioneers, whether in toil or
triumph. How I appeared on the scene at this particular juncture came
about in this wise.
When I first arrived in Port Fairy, the "Heifer Station" was what would
be called in mining parlance "an abandoned claim," and possibly
"jumpable," to use another effective expression with which the
gold-fields have enriched the Australian vernacular. Mr. John Cox of
Werrongourt had reconsidered his first intention of segregating the
immature females of his herd--probably as too expensive--had withdrawn
them and their herdsmen, leaving hut and yards untenanted, the run
unoccupied. This last was now for sale with "improvements." I really
can't recall the date of that comprehensive euphemism, which included
everything, from a watch-box to a wool-shed, from a brush-yard to a
family mansion. Perhaps about the time when the children of married
servants advertised for were feelingly referred to as "encumbrances."
However, improvements and encumbrances notwithstanding, we must get on
with our "Heifer Station" history. Here it was for sale, with one hut,
one log-yard, and the right to 40,000 acres, more or less, of
first-class pasture--for how much? Would I could get the offer again!
_Thirty pounds!_ This was the price--everybody knew it. Mr. Cox wanted
to sell--had plenty of country at Werrongourt--couldn't be bothered with
it. The best thing I could do was to go and see it, or close for it at
once. Mr. Cox was in Tasmania just at present, but had, of course, left
instructions. Thus far the friendly public. I thought I would go and
see. So I mounted Clifton, the grandson of Skeleton, and turned my face
to the setting sun. Making my way to Tarrone, where at that time Mr.
Chamberlain lived, I explained to him the object of my tourist
wandering. I was most hospitably received. It turned out afterwards that
he had had a hint that I wanted to "sit down" somewhere in his
neighbourhood. The runs at that time were, as may be imagined, very
sparsely stocked. If the Commissioner of Crown Lands was in a bad
temper, he had the power to "give away" to the interloper a seriously
appreciable portion of any pastoral area, however long established and
secure the occupant might fancy himself to be.
So, as he afterwards told one of the neighbours, he determined to show
me every courtesy; after which, appealing to all chivalrous feelings in
my nature, he felt that I could not, in common decency, annex any
portion of his (Mr. Chamberlain's) run. This was a shade of diplomacy
sometimes roughly described as characteristic of "the old soldier." If
so, my host's military experiences, as on another historical occasion,
served him well. When I left Tarrone that morning, with a guide, towards
the Heifer Station, I would have driven on to Western Australia--a
pastoral Vanderdecken--rather than infringe on the tolerably liberal
boundaries which he claimed for Tarrone.
I rode along and passed the great Tarrone Marsh, with its well-defined
wooded banks and its miles upon miles of mournful reeds, wild-duck and
bittern haunted. My guide pointed out to me a place where, riding one
day a mare that he described as "touchy," by the edge of the marsh,
suddenly a blackfellow jumped out from behind a tree--"a savage man
accoutred proper." The touchy mare gave so sudden a prop, accompanied by
a desperate plunge, that he was thrown almost at the feet of the
"Injun." Others appeared--like Roderick Dhu's clansmen--from every bush
and "stony rise," which had till this moment sheltered them. He raised
himself doubtfully, much expectant of evil; relations had certainly been
strained of late between the races. However, they did not (apparently)
kill him, he being there to relate the story. I forget what trifle
prevented them.
Then he proceeded to sketch the "lay of the country." Told me (of
course) that "I couldn't miss the place if I followed the swamp round
for two or three miles, then made for the east a bit, till I came to
some thickish country, then to look out for a ti-tree crick as would
lead down to the main crick. I'd cut the tracks where they had been
tailing the heifers. Then I'd see the hut and yard." He then went on his
way, having "to run in a beast to kill," and I saw him no more. No
track, no road, no bridle-path was there, no known thoroughfare; while,
after you left the great Tarrone Marsh, there was not a landmark to
speak of within twenty miles, not a bit of open country the size of a
corn-patch. A long, solitary, unsatisfactory day lay before me.
Sometimes I was pretty sure I was on the "run"; at other times I was
confident that I was off it. I found the creek a minute but
permanent-looking rivulet, with occasional water-holes. The hut and
yards were on this watercourse; both inexpensive structures. I saw,
however, that the whole country-side was covered with a sward of
kangaroo grass two or three feet high, and as thick as a field of
barley. No doubt it was good fattening country, but I did not take to it
somehow. It was a "blind" place, in stock-riders' phrase--no open
country, no contrasts, no romance about it in fact. "_Toujours_
gum-tree," as Sir Edward Deas Thomson said when he drove Sir Charles
Fitzroy and Colonel Mundy--somewhere about that time--with a
four-in-hand drag to Coombing, near Carcoar. I didn't fancy it
altogether, good though the grass undoubtedly was. I managed to make my
way back to Tarrone that night, where I recruited after the toils of
the day. I informed my gallant and politic host that I thought I should
go farther west. We parted on the morrow--to his relief, doubtless--with
feelings of high mutual consideration.
Years afterwards we had many a laugh about the fright I gave him; and
when I was safely settled at Squattlesea Mere, less than twenty miles to
the westward, I nearly concluded an agreement with him to rent Tarrone
for five years, with the option of purchase, while he went to England.
This was a year or two before the gold. The rental asked for run, herd
(the same numbers, ages, and sexes to be returned), and homestead was
calculated upon the fat cattle prices of the period--£2 : 10s. for cows,
£3 for fat bullocks; so was the purchase money. I often thought how
awfully sold my friend and neighbour would have been, as a shrewd man of
business, not wholly unmindful of the main chance, had I closed with his
offer. I finally declined it on the ground of the run being fully
stocked up--our _bête noir_ in those deliciously simple days, when we
thought it took ten acres, more or less, to fatten a bullock.
But though it was not considered good form to settle down too close to a
man's horse paddock, it would never have done to have taken the first
occupier's word for what was his lawful right of run. By his own account
there was never any permanent water "out back." All the decent land
within twenty miles was his; the best thing the intending pastoralist
could do was to go clean out of the district. Had the Dunmore people
listened thus dutifully to Mr. Hunter of Eumeralla, they would never
have taken up Dunmore, which, in the future, turned out a more valuable
property than Eumeralla.
Nor would the Messrs. Aplin have got St. Kitts, the runs of Yambuk and
Tarrone being popularly supposed to absorb all the available country
between their boundaries. Mr. Lemann, however, managed to insert himself
and his belongings, wedge-fashion, between Tarrone and Kangatong, on the
border of the Tarrone Marsh. Though small of stature, and not stalwart,
he held his own, and fattened a decent average of his herd of 1000 or
1200 head annually until he sold out to Mr. Smith. Mr. Lemann had
formerly been a kind of neighbour of ours, having fed his herd
previously in the vicinity of a creek running into the Upper Yarra, near
a flat which, if I mistake not, is known as "Lemann's Swamp" to this
day.
He was a well-informed man, who took a great interest in liberal
politics. I well recollect his being filled with righteous wrath at the
high-handed act of Rajah Brooke in making a clean sweep of a fleet of
pirates. I said then, and have since been confirmed in my opinion, that
the gallant ruler of Sarawak knew his business better than his Exeter
Hall critics.
Mr. Lemann had for working overseer and general stand-between him and
personal exertion a country Englishman named Tom Cook, who with his wife
managed everything that his stock-rider Hugh was not responsible for. I
took some interest in the family, as we had hired Thomas aforesaid from
the emigrant vessel as ploughman, and he had been in our service in that
capacity at Heidelberg. From the fair-haired, fresh-coloured English
farm labourer that he was then, I watched his development through
various stages of colonial experience--into dairyman, knock-about-man,
bullock-driver, and finally stock-rider at Kangatong. I rather think he
had his smock-frock when he came to us, with English rustic tongue and
gait. When I afterwards saw him at Mr. Smith's muster (I had sold Mr.
Gibb, the dealer, who was lifting the fat cattle there, an additional
drove, just started for Melbourne, at £8 all round, cash) he was quite
the stock-rider of the period, with neat boots and seat to match, a
sharp eye for calves, and, alas! a colonially-acquired taste for grog,
and a fight afterwards, if possible.
However, such were only occasional recreations, between which he was a
first-rate worker and most worthy fellow. He and his good wife reared a
family of Australian-born East Saxons; his eldest son--a tall fellow
with a team of his own, grown a carrier--took away the first load of
wool I ever sent from Squattlesea Mere, in 1862 or thereabouts.
Among other things in which Cook showed his power of adaptation was the
building of a stone cottage and dairy for Mr. Lemann. The country being
of volcanic formation, stone to any amount was on hand, and he
principally built the walls, nearly two feet in thickness, of a very
snug bachelor establishment--a vast improvement, both in summer and
winter, upon the ordinary slab architecture.
After deciding not to buy Mr. Cox's heifer station, I happened to be
staying at Grasmere, when I met, one evening, two strange gentlemen, a
mile or two from the place, coming along rather travel-worn as to their
steeds. These were my worthy friends James Dawson, now of Camperdown,
and his friend and partner Mr. Selby. They, like Mr. Lemann, had been
trying to make cattle pay on the Upper Yarra ranges--had, like him,
concluded to start for the west country, then reported to be the best
grass going, and not all taken up. They speedily heard of Mr. Cox having
a station for sale, and he soon after returning from Tasmania, Mr.
Dawson closed with him for the £30 or thereabouts. Messrs. Dawson and
Selby shortly afterwards brought up their cattle, and, with their
belongings, occupied the run. I always suspected Mr. Dawson, who was
philologically inclined, to have extracted the name Kangatong from the
aborigines subsequently, and christened the run after his arrival. It
was among the things not generally known before his advent. Gradually
and judiciously, as time passed on, Kangatong was improved, and so
successfully managed that it took rank as one of the best paying
stations in the district. Mr. Dawson and his family showed exceptional
kindness towards the blacks who lived near them. Kangatong was just
outside of the "tauri," or hereditary district of "the Children of the
Rocks," or matters might not have continued so pacific, my old friend
being of a temper singularly intolerant of injustice. But his tribelet
had long mingled with the whalers of the Port, from which they were
distant less than twenty miles. I doubt Port Fairy Campbell and his
merry men had "civilised" them previously--_i.e._ shot a few of the more
troublesome individuals. However, Mr. Dawson succeeded in making a
valuable collection of data, from which he was enabled to publish his
late work upon the manners, language, and religious customs of certain
Australian aboriginals, which has received favourable mention from the
_Saturday_ and other leading reviews.