LIFE AT DJERINALLUM
WHILE the children played happily together the grown folk had many an
anxious consultation as to ways and means.
"I wish I could persuade you to stay with us, Elsie," said her sister.
"Let your husband go by himself, on his wild goose chase after gold."
"Oh, I can't do that," said Mrs. Hume. "I can rough it, and it will do
Fergus good, but I am afraid of it for Jeanie."
"Let me keep her," said Mrs. McDonald eagerly. "Oh, do, Elsie! I have
always wanted a little girl to pet and take care of and Jean will be
ever so much safer with me than travelling through the wild country you
are going into on your way to the Gold Fields."
"It might be best," Mrs. Hume said thoughtfully. "I will talk it over
with Fergus and leave Jean in your care, going with him, if he agrees."
Mr. Hume, however, had very decided ideas as to what was best to be
done.
"Since your sister and her husband are so anxious to keep you, my dear,
I am sure it will be best for you and Jean to stay here at the run. My
trip to the Gold Fields is only an experiment. It will be a long, hard
journey and an expensive one, and I may not find anything worth doing
when I get there, and in that case will return and take up stock
farming. McDonald offers me a chance now, but I feel as though I ought
to make the trial before accepting help.
"I will take Fergus with me. The trip will not hurt him and he would
drive you distracted if left here with Sandy. I shall do better work
feeling that you and the lassie are safe and well cared for here."
"I hate to have you go without me, but I must do as you think best,"
said his wife. So it was arranged, and with a heavy heart Jean saw her
father and brother drive away from the run, starting on their long trip
to the Gold Fields.
"Why does father have to go away?" she asked her uncle, who had taken
her before him for a ride on his big, black horse, "The Bruce."
"He has gone to hunt for gold, lassie, so you can have fine clothes to
wear," he answered.
"I'd rather have father here and not have fine clothes," she said, her
lip quivering. "How do they get gold in fields, Uncle? I didn't know it
grew like flowers and grass."
"It doesn't, lassie," he answered. "They just call the place they find
it the Gold Fields. It is dug out of the earth, where it is found mixed
with sand and stone."
"Well, where are the Gold Fields and who found there was gold there?"
asked Jean. She liked her burly uncle, who was always ready to talk to
her and who explained everything about the run so pleasantly.
"The Gold Fields extend all over Western Australia," said Mr. McDonald.
"Gold was first discovered here in 1823 and people have gone mad with
gold fever ever since. The precious metal has been found in Victoria,
New South Wales and Queensland, but recently it has been discovered in
Western Australia. The miners often strike a good lead and grow very
rich, but it is a hard life and especially so in the districts where
there is little water. In the old days men often died of thirst, but now
they have ways of storing the rain which falls in the wet season so that
they do not suffer much.
"There are many interesting things about the gold regions if the life
there is hard. Trains of camels carry the swag of the miners across the
sandy deserts. These beasts were imported especially for this work,
since they can go longer without water than any other animals, and
often it is a long ways from one good water hole to another. The miners
'peg out' their claims in the new places and set to work sifting the
sands in which are found the grains of gold, sometimes as large as nuts.
Soon there is a camp started. Little canvas huts dot the country. Then
if the camp proves successful, houses are built and finally a city will
grow up, almost as if by magic. One city, that of Ballarat, has grown in
twenty-five years to be one of the handsomest in Australia. It has broad
streets, fine houses, and a beautiful park. The swamp land near by has
been made into a lake surrounded by velvet-turfed pleasure grounds,
planted with wonderful trees and flowers. Kalgoorlie, in only ten years,
is almost a golden city, to which water is brought two hundred miles in
pipes, to drive the engines which extract the gold from the quartz."
"Thank you, Uncle, for telling me all about it," said Jeanie. "I hope
father will find a good mine and then sell it out quickly and come back
to buy a run near you. That is what I should like best of anything."
"So should I, child," her uncle smiled at her. "Here we are at the
stables. Jump down and run and call Sandy for me and I'll take you both
with me while I go over the sheds."
"I've always wanted to know about these queer looking sheds," said Jean
as she and Sandy trudged after her uncle.
"This long building is the wool shed," he said. "Now it is empty and
quiet, but when it is shearing time there is noise enough. At this end
is the wool press, and the shearing board runs along the sides of the
shed. Sheep used to be sheared by hand, but Lord Wesley's brother
invented a machine for shearing which is a wonderful thing. Would you
two youngsters like to ride around the run with me? I have to go over to
the paddocks to-day."
"Oh, Uncle, may I ride?" exclaimed Jean. "I had a little Shetland pony
at home and I have missed him so much."
"You may ride Sandy's pony, and he will take Wallace, while I will ride
'The Bruce,'" said Mr. McDonald, and both the children fairly jumped
with delight. They rode around the run, the master looking everything
over carefully.
"Every paddock has its own flock," he explained to Jean. "In one the
ewes are kept, in another the wethers, and then there is a paddock for
the horses and another for the cows."
"How do you get so many animals fed," asked Jean.
"They graze on the grass, and those great fields of alfalfa over there
are grown to use as food. It has to be irrigated and is quite a little
trouble, but it pays in the end. That house is where the manager lives,
with his family and the jackaroos."
"What is a jackaroo? Some kind of a bird?" asked Jean. Sandy shouted
with laughter and his uncle smiled as he answered,
"No, child, jackaroo is the name given to the young fellows who are new
at the station and just learning Australian customs. All kinds of jokes
are played on them by the old hands and they have a hard time at first.
A story is told of some Englishmen who had just come out and were going
hunting. They hadn't found any game and so they asked some station hands
if they had seen any. 'There's a jackaroo down near the water hole,'
said the cook, wickedly, so the two men hurried away to shoot the
strange animal, and lo! it was a young man like themselves."
"What do jackaroos do, Uncle?" asked Jean.
"Well, they have to learn to do all the work there is to do at a
station, so that some day they may get to be managers or even run
stations of their own. They have to ride the boundary every day to see
that there are not holes in the fences, and that the water holes are
full. Only one man is needed to look after 7,500 sheep, so he is kept
pretty busy."
"There are so many buildings somebody must have to look after them. Do
the jackaroos do that?" asked Jean.
"No, all the repair work on the station is given to a set of men who dig
water holes, build fences, and do any necessary carpenter work. These
draw their groceries, meat, and so forth from the stores, but do not eat
at our tables. I don't believe Wu Ling would stand it if he had to cook
for them."
"Isn't he funny?" said Jean, laughing. "He lets me come in the kitchen
and watch him bake brownie, but he won't allow Fergus or Sandy there at
all. Do all stations have Chinese cooks?"
"Not all, but a great many do. The Chinese are the best cooks we can
get. A great many people hate the yellow-skinned Celestials and raise a
hue and cry about a 'White Australia,' but I don't know what we of the
far stations would do without them."
"Wu Ling cooks very good things," said Sandy. "But he got very angry
when Fergus called him 'pig tail.'"
"That wasn't nice of Fergus," said Jean. "What beautiful thistles and
sweet briar, Uncle."
"Not beautiful in our eyes," said her uncle, as they rode by a
magnificent clump of sweet briar, the pink blossoms making a lovely spot
of colour against the purple of the thistles. "Some patriotic Scot
brought the first thistles to Australia, and an English family the
roses, and many's the day I have wished they never came. The soil here
is so rich that everything grows fast, and the thorny plants have spread
all over the land, in some places growing so thick that they have
ruined whole tracts of grazing land. They are nearly as bad as the
foxes. These were brought to destroy the rabbits which ate up the crops,
but Mr. Reynard likes chicken far better than hare, and he has increased
so rapidly that it is almost impossible to get rid of him, though
rewards are offered for his scalp and in one year over thirty thousand
skins were brought in."
"Do they scalp rabbits, too?" asked Jean.
"Trapping rabbits is a regular Australian business," said her uncle. "A
good trapper can make £4 a week catching them, and the fur is used to
make felt hats."
"There are lots and lots of interesting things in your country," said
Jean brightly.
"But shearing time will be the fun," said Sandy.
"Oh, I'd like to see them shear. May I, Uncle?" cried Jean.
"Yes, indeed, you may see anything you like. We'll make a regular
station-hand of you before you are done," he laughed.
"I'm only a little jackaroo now," she said. "What is that queer noise?
It seemed to come from under those trees."
[Illustration: "'THAT IS THE LYRE BIRD, ISN'T HE A HANDSOME FELLOW?'"]
"That is the lyre bird, isn't he a handsome fellow? See, there he is
beneath that bottle tree. We have a pair of them and never allow them to
be touched, as they are quite rare in this part of the country, though
found quite frequently in the scrub.
"The tail of the male is just like an old-fashioned lyre, and it is one
of the most interesting of our birds."
"Did you say that was a bottle tree?" asked Jean.
"Yes. Don't you see it is shaped just like a huge bottle, the branches
growing out of the mouth? The stems have water in them, and if you are
ever lost in the Bush and thirsty, find a bottle tree and get a drink.
The Blacks eat the roots, which are full of a kind of gum."
"I never heard of such a place as this," said Jean. "It seems as if
everything in Australia was useful. Everything but little girls," she
added.
"Little girls are very useful in making other people happy," said her
uncle kindly.
"But I'd like to be really useful and learn to do something," said Jean.
"You will when you are bigger," he answered. "You must get well and
strong before you can do very much, lassie. But you will be useful
enough as you grow older."
"I don't see why you are in such a hurry to go to work," said Sandy. "I
think you have a pretty fine time!"