ON THE ROAD
I
"My dear nephew, I haven't sent you a letter since the last one which I
never wrote, yet you have come in answer to the one you never got. I
wrote because I wanted you to come and receive the property, and I never
posted it because I didn't know your address, and you couldn't come if I
did, because you don't exist. Yet here you are and I think you look very
pleased to receive the property which you haven't got yet. I was so
afraid I should die sudden after this long lingering illness, but it's
you who has come suddenly and the illness hasn't begun yet. So here am I
speechless, but you are doing a lot of talking to your dear uncle who
never had a nephew. What does it matter to me if you are Jack Grant
because I am not, but took the name into the grant of land given me on
the land grant system at a shilling an acre. So like a bad shilling the
name turns up again on the register, so that the land goes back to the
grant and the Grant to the land. But a better-looking nephew I never
wish to see, being as much like me as an ape is like meat. So when I'm
dead I won't be alive to trouble you, and I'll trouble no further about
you since you might as well be dead for all I care."
In this vein Tom ranted on the next morning, when they had set out in
the glorious early dawn. Tom never wearied of the uncle under the
umbrella. He told the tale to everybody who would listen, and wore out
Jack's ears with these long and facile pleasantries.
They were both glad to get away from the crazy, lugubrious place. Jack
refused to give it a thought further, though he felt vaguely, at the
back of his mind, that he knew something about it already. Something
somebody had told him.
Rackett had stayed behind, so they made no very good pace, leading the
pack-horse. But they pushed on, being already overdue at the homestead
of one of Tom's Aunts, who was expecting them.
Once on horseback and in the open morning, Jack wished for nothing more.
Women, death, skeletons, the dance into the darkness, the future, the
past, love, home, and sorrow all disappeared in the bright well of the
daylight, as if they'd dropped into a pool. He wanted nothing more than
to ride, to jog along the track on the rather wet road, through bush and
scrub still wet with rain, in a pure Westralian air that was like a
clean beginning of everything, seeing the tiny bushman's flowers
sparking and gilding eerily in the dunness of the world.
By mid-day they reached the highway to Geraldton, via Gingin, and camped
at the Three-mile Government well in perfect good spirits. Everything
was gone, everything was forgotten except the insouciance of the moment.
They knew the uselessness of thinking and remembering and worrying. When
worry starts biting like mosquitoes, then, if it bites hard enough,
you've got to attend. But it's like illness, avoid it, beat it back if
you can.
They found the high-road merely a bush-track after all. If it was near a
settlement, or allotments or improved lands, it might run well for
miles. But for the most part, it was exceedingly bad, full of holes of
water, and beginning in places to be a bog.
Tom was now at his best, out in the bush again. All his bush lore came
back to him, and he was like an animal in its native surroundings. His
charm came back too, and his confidence. He went ahead looking keenly
about, like a travelling animal, pointing out to Jack first this thing
and then the other, initiating him into bush wisdom, teaching him the
big cipher-book of the bush. And Jack learned gladly. It was so good, so
good to be away from homesteads, and women, and money, watching the
trees and the land and the marks of wild life. And Tom, a talker once he
was wound up, told the histories of settlers, their failures and
successes, and their peculiarities. It seemed to Jack there was a
surplus of weird people out there. But then, Tom said, the weird ones
usually came first, and they got weirder in the wild.
They passed an enormous hollow tree, from which issued an old man with a
grey beard that came to his waist, dressed in rags. A grey-haired, very
ragged woman also came out, carrying a baby. Other children crawled
around. The travellers called Good-day! as they passed.
Tom said the woman's baby was the youngest of seventeen children. The
eldest son was already grown up, a prosperous young man trading in
sandal-wood. But Dad and Mum liked the bush, and would accept nothing
for their supposed welfare, either from their sons or anyone else.
In the middle of the afternoon they passed a sundowner trekking with a
cartful of produce down to Middle Swan. At four o'clock they camped for
half an hour, to drink a billy of tea. Before the water boiled they saw
two tramps coming down the road. The slouchers came straight up and
greeted the boys, eyeing them curiously up and down.
"Wot cheer, mate!" said one, a ruffianly mongrel.
"Good O! How's the goin' Gingin way?" asked Tom.
"Plenty grass an' water this time o' the year. But look out for the
settlers this side. They ain't over hopeful." He turned to stare at
Jack. Then he continued, to Tom: "How's it y' got y' baby out?"
"New chum," explained Tom. He spoke quietly, but his mouth had hardened.
"You blokes want anything of us?"
"Yessir," said the spokesman, coming in close. "We wants bacca."
"Do you?" said Tom pleasantly, and he pulled out his pouch. "I've only
got three plugs. That's one apiece for me an' the baby, an' you can have
the other to do as you likes with. But chum here doesn't keer much for
smokin', so he might give you his."
There was a tone of finality in Tom's voice.
"You've surely got more blasted cheek than most kids," said the fellow.
"What've ye got planted away in y' swags?" He glanced at his mate. "We
don't want to use no bally persuasion, does we, Bill?"
Bill was of villainous but not very imposing appearance. He had weak
eyes, a dirty hairy face, and a purple mouth showing unbecomingly
through his whiskers.
Tom calmly filled his pipe, and waving to the first tramp, gave him
sufficient to fill his cutty. The fellow took it, ignoring his mate, and
began to fill up eagerly. He sat down by the fire, and taking a hot
ember, lit up, puffing avidly.
"The other can have my share, if he wants it," said Jack.
"Thank you kindly," said the other with a sneer. And as he stuffed it in
his pipe: "It'll do for a start." But he was puffing almost before he
could finish his words.
They smoked in silence round the fire for some time. Then Tom rose and
went over to the pack, as if he were going to give in to the ruffians.
One swaggy rose and followed him.
The other tramp, taking not the slightest notice of the boy sitting
there, reached out his filthy hand and began to fill his pockets with
everything that lay near the fire: the packet of tea, a spoon, a knife.
He had got as far as the spoon when the astonished Jack said: "Drop it!"
as if he were speaking to a dog.
The man turned with a snarl, and made to cuff him. Jack seized his wrist
and twisted it cruelly, making him drop the spoon and shout with pain.
The other swaggy at once ran on Jack from the rear, and fell over him.
Tom rushed on the second swaggy and fell too. Over they all went in a
heap. Jack laughed aloud in the scrimmage, as he gripped the swaggy's
wrist with one hand and with the other emptied out the contents of the
pocket again. He brought out two knives, one of which didn't belong to
him. Dropping the lot for safety, he got to his feet. Tom and the second
swaggy were rolling and unlocking. That villain spied the open knife,
seized it and sprang to his feet, snarling and brandishing.
"Come on, ye pair of----"
Jack gave another twist to the wrist of the prisoner, who howled, and
then he kicked him three yards away. But his heart smote him, for the
kick was so bony, the tramp was thin and frail. Then, full of the black
joy of scattering such wastrels, he sprang unexpectedly on the other
tramp. The swaggy gave a yell, and fled. For a minute or two the couple
of ragged, wretched, despicable figures could be seen bolting like
running vermin down the trail. Then they were out of sight.
Tom and Jack sat by the fire and roared with laughter, roared and roared
till the bush was startled.
They were just packing up when someone else came down the road. It was a
young woman in a very wide skirt on a very small pony, riding as if she
were used to it. This was not the figure they expected to see.
"Why!" cried Tom, staring. "I do believe it's Ma's niece grown up."
It was. She was quite pleasant, but her hands were stub-fingered and
work-hardened, and her voice was common.
"Y' didn't come along yesterday, as Ma expected," she explained, "so I
just took Tubby to see if y' was coming today. How's the twins? How's
Monica and Grace? I do wish they'd come."
"They're all right," said Tom.
"We heard about your Dad and your Gran. Fancy! But I wish Monica had
come with you. She was such a little demon at school. I'm fair longing
to see her."
"She's not the only one of you that's a demon!" said Tom, in the correct
tone of banter, putting over his horse and drawing to the girl's side,
and becoming very manly for her benefit. "An' what's wrong with us, that
you aren't glad to see us?"
"Oh, you're all right," said the cousin. "But a girl of your own age is
more fun, you know."
"Well, I don't happen to be a girl of your own age," said Tom. "Just by
accident, I'm a man. But come on. There's some roughs about. We might
just as well get out of their way."
He trotted alongside the damsel, leaving Jack to bring the pack-horse.
Jack didn't mind.
II
So they went on, receiving a rough and generous hospitality from, one or
another of Tom's or Jack's relations, of whom there were astonishingly
many, along the grand bush track to Geraldton. If they weren't direct
relations, they were relations by marriage, and it served just as well.
There were the Brockmans, there were the Browns, and Gales, and Davises,
Edgars and Conollys, Burgesses, Cooks, Logues, Cradles, Morrises,
Fitzgeralds and Glasses. Families united by some fine-drawn connection
or other; and very often much more divided than united, by some very
plain-drawn feud. Their names like brooks trickled across the land, and
you crossed and re-crossed. You would lose a name entirely: like the
Brockman name. Then suddenly it reappeared as Brackman, and "Oh yes,
we're cousins!"
"Who isn't cousin!" thought Jack.
Some of them had huge tracts of land fenced in. Some had little bits of
poor farms. Sometimes there were deserted farms.
"And to think," said Tom, "that none of them is my own mother's
relations. All Dad's, or else Ma's. Mostly Ma's."
It was queer the way he hankered after his own real mother. Jack, for
his part, didn't care a straw who was his mother's relation and who
wasn't. But you would have thought Tom lived under a Matriarchy, and
derived everything from a lost mother.
It was not wet enough yet to be really boggy, though camping out was
damp. However, they mostly got a roof. If it wasn't a relation's, it was
a barn, or the "Bull and Horns" by Gingin. And to the boys, all that
mattered was whether they were on the right road: often a very puzzling
question; or if the heavy rain would hold off; if there was plenty of
grub; if the horses seemed tired or not quite fit; if they were going to
get through a boggy place all right; if the packs were fast; if they
made good going. The inns were "low" in every sense of the word,
including the low-pitched roof. And full of bugs, however new the
country. With red-nosed, grassy-whiskered landlords who thumbed the
glasses when there were any glasses to thumb. And there were always men
at these inns, almost always the same kind of brutal, empty roughs.
"Look here," said Jack, "wherever we go there are these roughs, and more
roughs, and more. Where the devil do they come from, and how do they
make a living? Apart from farm labourers, I mean."
"A lot of them are shearers," said Tom, "drifting from job to job,
according to climate. When shearing season's over here, they work on to
the south-west, where it's cooler. And then there are kangaroo and
'possum snarers. That young fellow we saw rooked of all his sugar last
night was a skin-hunter. They get half-a-crown apiece for good 'roo
skins, and it's quite a trade. The others last night were mostly
sandalwood getters. There's quite a lot of men make money collecting
bark for export, and manna-gum. That rowdy lot playing fifty-three were
a gang of well-sinkers. Then what with timber-workers, haulers,
teamsters, junkers--oh, there's all sorts. But they're mostly one sort,
swabs, rough and rowdy, an' can't keep their pants hitched up enough to
be decent. You've seen 'em. They're mostly like the dirty old braces
they wear. All the snap gone out of 'em, all the elastic perished. They
just work and booze and loaf, and work and booze. I hope I'll never get
so that I don't keep myself spruce. I hope I never will. But that's the
worst o' the life out here. Nobody hardly keeps spruce."
Jack kept this well in mind. He too hated a man slouching along with a
discoloured face, and trousers slopping down his insignificant legs. He
loathed that look which tramps and ne'er-do-wells usually have, as if
their legs weren't there, inside their beastly bags. Despicable about
the rear and the legs. The best of the farmers, on the contrary, had
strong, sinewy legs, full of life. Easu was like that, his powerful legs
holding his horse. And Tom had good, live legs. But poor Dad had not
been very alive, inside his pants.
"Whatever I do, I'll never go despicable and humiliated about the legs
and seat," said Jack to himself, as he pressed the stirrups with his
toes and felt the powerful elasticity of his thighs, holding the live
body of the horse between his muscles in permanent grip. And it seemed
as if the powerful animal life of the horse entered into him, through
his legs and seat, and made him strong.
"What's a junker, Tom?"
"A low, four-wheeled log hauler, with a long pole."
"I thought it was a man. A swab is a man?"
"Yes. He's any old drunk."
"But a swaggy is a tramp?"
"It is. It is one who humps it. If he's got a pack, it's his swag. If
he's only got a blanket and a billy, it's his bluey and his drum. And if
he's got nothing, it's Waltzing Matilda."
"I suppose so," said Jack. "And his money is his sugar?"
"Right-O! son!"
"And Chink is Chinaman?"
"No, sir. That's Chow. Chink means prison. An' a lag is a ticketer: one
who's out on lease. Now what more Child's Guide to Knowledge do you
want?"
"I'm only getting it straight. Jam and dog both mean 'side'?"
"Verily. Only dog is sometimes same as bully tinned meat."
"And what's _stosh?_"
"Landin' him one."
Jack rode on, thinking about it.
"What's a remittance man, really, Tom?"
"A waster. A useless bird shipped out here to be kept south o' the line,
because he's a disgrace to England. And his family soothes their
conscience by sending him so much a month, which they call his
remittance, 'stead o' letting him starve, or work. Like Rackett. Plenty
o' money sent out to him to stink on."
"Why don't you like Rackett?"
"I fairly despise him, an' his money. He's absolutely useless baggage,
rotting life away. I can't abear to see him about. Old George gave me
the tip he was leaving our place, else I'd never have gone and left him
loose there."
"He is no harm."
"How do you know? If be hasn't got a disease of the body, he's got a
disease of the soul."
"What disease?"
"Dunno."
"Does he take drugs?"
"I reckon that's about his figure. But he's an eyesore to me, loafin',
loafin'. An' he's an eyesore to Ma, save for the bit he teaches Lennie.
An' when he starts talkin' on the high fiddle, like he does to Mary the
minute she comes down, makes you want to walk on his face."
Poor Rackett! Jack marvelled that Tom had always been so civil.
The two jogged along very amicably together. Tom was
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. At the same time, he was in his own
estimation a gentleman, and a person of consideration. It was "thus far"
with him.
But whoever came along, they all drew up.
"Hello, mate! How's goin'? . . . Well, so long!"
One youth was walking to Fremantle to take a job offered by his uncle,
serving in a grocery shop. The lad was in tatters. His blanket was tied
with twine, his battered billy hung on to it. But he was jubilant. And
now he is one of Australia's leading lights. Even it is said of him that
he never forgot the kindness he received on the road.
But most of the trailers were sundowners, sloping along anyhow,
subsisting anyhow, but ready with the ingenious explanation that they
"chopped a bit," or "fenced a bit," or "trapped a bit." Perhaps they
never realised how much bigger was the bit they loafed.
They were not bad. The bad ones were the scoundrels down from the
Never-Never, emerging in their rags and moral degradation after years on
the sheep runs or cattle stations, years of earnings spent in drink and
squalid, beastly debauchery. Some were hoarding their cheques for
coast-town consumption, like the first two rogues, and cadging and
stealing their way.
But then there were families driving to the nearest settlement to do a
bit of shopping, or visit their relations, or fetch the doctor to "fix
up Teddy's little leg." Once there was a posse of mounted police, very
important and gallant, with horses champing and chains clinking. They
were out after a criminal supposed to have been landed on the coast by a
dago boat "from the other side." Then there was an occasional Minister
of the Gospel, on a pony, dressed in black. Jack's heart always sank
when he saw that black. He decided that priests should be white, or in
orange robes, like the Buddhist priests he had seen in Colombo, or in a
good blue, like some nuns.
Gradually the road became a home: more a home than any homestead.
"Let's get!" was Tom's perpetual cry, when they were fixed up in the
house of some relation, or in some inn. He only felt happy on the road.
Sometimes they went utterly lonely for many miles. Sometimes they passed
a deserted habitation. But there were always signs of life near a well.
And often there were milestones.
"Fifty-seven miles to where?"
"I don't know. We're leagues from Gingin. Certainly fifty-seven miles to
nowhere of any importance on the face of this earth."
"Wonder what Gingin means?"
"Better not ask. You never know what these natives'll be naming places
after. Usually something vile. But gin means a woman, whatever Gingin
is."
Gradually they got further and further, geographically, mentally, and
emotionally, from Wandoo and all permanent associations. Jack was glad.
He loved the earth, the wild country, the bush, the scent. He wanted to
go on forever. Beyond the settlements--beyond the ploughed land--beyond
all fences. That was it--beyond all fences. Beyond all fences, where a
man was alone with himself and the untouched earth.
Man escaping from Man! That's how it is all the time. The passion men
have to escape from mankind. What do they expect in the beyond? God?
They'll never find the same God! Never again. They are trying to escape
from the God men acknowledge, as well as from mankind, the acknowledger.
The land untouched by man. The call of the mysterious, vast, unoccupied
land. The strange inaudible calling, like the far-off call of a
kangaroo. The strange, still, pure air. The strange shadows. The strange
scent of wild, brown, aboriginal honey.
Being early for the boat, the boys camped for twenty-four hours in a
perfectly lonely place. And in the utterly lonely evening Jack began
craving again: for Monica, for a woman, for some object for his passion
to settle on. And he knew again, as he had always known, that nowhere is
free, so long as man is passionate, desirous, yearning. His only freedom
is to find the object of his passion, and fulfil his desires and satisfy
his yearning, as far as his life can succeed. Or else, which is more
difficult, to harden himself away from all desire and craving, to harden
himself into pride, and refer himself to that other god.
Yes, in the wild bush, God seemed another god. God seemed absolutely
another god, vaster, more calm and more deeply, sensually potent. And
this was a profound satisfaction. To find another, more terrible, but
also more deeply-fulfilling god stirring subtly in the uncontaminated
air about one. A dread god. But a great god, greater than any known. The
sense of greatness, vastness, and newness, in the air. And the strange,
dusky, gray eucalyptus-smelling sense of depth, strange depth in the
air, as of a great deep well of potency, which life had not yet tapped.
Something which lay in a man's blood as well--and in a woman's blood--in
Monica's--in Mary's--in the Australian blood. A strange, dusky,
gun-smelling depth of potency that had never been tapped by experience.
As if life still held great wells of reserve vitality, strange unknown
wells of secret life-source, dusky, of a strange, dim, aromatic sap
which had never stirred in the veins of man, to consciousness
and effect. And if he could take Monica and set the dusky, secret,
unknown sap flowing in himself and her, to some unopened life
consciousness--that was what he wanted. Dimly, uneasily, painfully he
realised it.
And then the bush began to frighten him, as if it would kill him, as it
had killed so much man-life before, killed it before the life in man had
had time to come to realisation.
He was glad when the road came down to the sea. There, the great,
pale-blue, strange, empty sea, on new shores with new strange sea-birds
flying, and strange rocks sticking up, and strange blue distances up the
bending coast. The sea that is always the same, always a relief, a
vastness and a soothing. Coming out of the bush, and being a little
afraid of the bush, he loved the sea with an English passion. It made
him feel at home in the same known infinite of space.
Especially on a windy day, when the track would curve down to a
greeny-grey opalescent sea that beat slowly on the red sands, like a
dying grey bird with white wing-feathers. And the reddish cliffs with
sage-green growth of herbs, stood almost like flesh.
Then the road went inland again, through a swamp, and to the bush. To
emerge next morning in the sun, upon a massive deep indigo ocean,
infinite, with pearl-clear horizon; and in the nearness, emerald-green
and white flashing unspeakably bright on a pinkish shore, perfectly
world-new.
They were nearing the journey's end. Nearing the little port, and the
ship, and the world of men.