for action, and the driver--for whom the bagman had shouted twice as
against the stranger's once--took the opportunity to observe that he
always thought a man ought to stick up for his own country.
The stranger ignored him and opened fire on the bagman. He proceeded to
prove that that was all rot--that patriotism was the greatest curse on
earth; that it had been the cause of all war; that it was the false,
ignorant sentiment which moved men to slave, starve, and fight for the
comfort of their sluggish masters; that it was the enemy of universal
brotherhood, the mother of hatred, murder, and slavery, and that the
world would never be any better until the deadly poison, called the
sentiment of patriotism, had been “educated” out of the stomachs of the
people. “Patriotism!” he exclaimed scornfully. “My country! The darned
fools; the country never belonged to them, but to the speculators,
the absentees, land-boomers, swindlers, gangs of thieves--the men the
patriotic fools starve and fight for--their masters. Ba-a!”
The opposition collapsed.
The coach had climbed the terraces on the south side of the river, and
was bowling along on a level stretch of road across the elevated flat.
“What trees are those?” asked the stranger, breaking the aggressive
silence which followed his unpatriotic argument, and pointing to a grove
ahead by the roadside. “They look as if they've been planted there.
There ain't been a forest here surely?”
“Oh, they're some trees the Government imported,” said the bagman, whose
knowledge on the subject was limited. “Our own bush won't grow in this
soil.”
“But it looks as if anything else would--”
Here the stranger sniffed once by accident, and then several times with
interest.
It was a warm morning after rain. He fixed his eyes on those trees.
They didn't look like Australian gums; they tapered to the tops, the
branches were pretty regular, and the boughs hung in shipshape fashion.
There was not the Australian heat to twist the branches and turn the
leaves.
“Why!” exclaimed the stranger, still staring and sniffing hard. “Why,
dang me if they ain't (sniff) Australian gums!”
“Yes,” said the driver, flicking his horses, “they are.”
“Blanky (sniff) blanky old Australian gums!” exclaimed the
ex-Australian, with strange enthusiasm.
“They're not old,” said the driver; “they're only young trees. But they
say they don't grow like that in Australia--'count of the difference in
the climate. I always thought--”
But the other did not appear to hear him; he kept staring hard at the
trees they were passing. They had been planted in rows and cross-rows,
and were coming on grandly.
There was a rabbit trapper's camp amongst those trees; he had made a
fire to boil his billy with gum-leaves and twigs, and it was the scent
of that fire which interested the exile's nose, and brought a wave of
memories with it.
“Good day, mate!” he shouted suddenly to the rabbit trapper, and to the
astonishment of his fellow passengers.
“Good day, mate!” The answer came back like an echo--it seemed to
him--from the past.
Presently he caught sight of a few trees which had evidently been
planted before the others--as an experiment, perhaps--and, somehow,
one of them had grown after its own erratic native fashion--gnarled and
twisted and ragged, and could not be mistaken for anything else but an
Australian gum.
“A thunderin' old blue-gum!” ejaculated the traveller, regarding the
tree with great interest.
He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silently smoking
and gazing straight ahead, as if the past lay before him--and it _was_
before him.
“Ah, well!” he said, in explanation of a long meditative silence on
his part; “ah, well--them saplings--the smell of them gum-leaves set me
thinking.” And he thought some more.
“Well, for my part,” said a tourist in the coach, presently, in a
condescending tone, “I can't see much in Australia. The bally colonies
are--”
“Oh, that be damned!” snarled the Australian-born--they had finished the
second flask of whisky. “What do you Britishers know about Australia?
She's as good as England, anyway.”
“Well, I suppose you'll go straight back to the States as soon as you've
done your business in Christchurch,” said the bagman, when near their
journey's end they had become confidential.
“Well, I dunno. I reckon I'll just take a run over to Australia first.
There's an old mate of mine in business in Sydney, and I'd like to have
a yarn with him.”
A DAY ON A SELECTION
The scene is a small New South Wales western selection, the holder
whereof is native-English. His wife is native-Irish. Time, Sunday, about
8 a.m. A used-up looking woman comes from the slab-and-bark house, turns
her face towards the hillside, and shrieks:
“T-o-o-m_may_!”
No response, and presently she draws a long breath and screams again:
“_Tom_m-a-a-y!”
A faint echo comes from far up the siding where Tommy's presence is
vaguely indicated by half a dozen cows moving slowly--very slowly--down
towards the cow-yard.
The woman retires. Ten minutes later she comes out again and screams:
“_Tom_my!
“Y-e-e-a-a-s-s!” very passionately and shrilly.
“Ain't you goin' to bring those cows down to-day?”
“Y-e-e-a-a-s-s-s!--carn't yer see I'm comin'?”
A boy is seen to run wildly along the siding and hurl a missile at a
feeding cow; the cow runs forward a short distance through the trees,
and then stops to graze again while the boy stirs up another milker.
An hour goes by.
The rising Australian generation is represented by a thin, lanky youth
of about fifteen. He is milking. The cow-yard is next the house, and is
mostly ankle-deep in slush. The boy drives a dusty, discouraged-looking
cow into the bail, and pins her head there; then he gets tackle on to
her right hind leg, hauls it back, and makes it fast to the fence.
There are eleven cows, but not one of them can be milked out of the
bail--chiefly because their teats are sore. The selector does not
know what makes the teats sore, but he has an unquestioning faith in a
certain ointment, recommended to him by a man who knows less about
cows than he does himself, which he causes to be applied at irregular
intervals--leaving the mode of application to the discretion of his son.
Meanwhile the teats remain sore.
Having made the cow fast, the youngster cautiously takes hold of the
least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and dodges the cow's hock. When he
gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats, and
things go on more smoothly. Now and then he relieves the monotony of
his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in the
adjacent pen. Other times he milks into his mouth. Every time the cow
kicks, a burr or a grass-seed or a bit of something else falls into the
milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed stream--on
the principle that what's out of sight is out of mind.
Sometimes the boy sticks his head into the cow's side, hangs on by a
teat, and dozes, while the bucket, mechanically gripped between his
knees, sinks lower and lower till it rests on the ground. Likely as
not he'll doze on until his mother's shrill voice startles him with an
inquiry as to whether he intends to get that milking done to-day; other
times he is roused by the plunging of the cow, or knocked over by a calf
which has broken through a defective panel in the pen. In the latter
case the youth gets tackle on to the calf, detaches its head from the
teat with the heel of his boot, and makes it fast somewhere. Sometimes
the cow breaks or loosens the leg-rope and gets her leg into the bucket
and then the youth clings desperately to the pail and hopes she'll get
her hoof out again without spilling the milk. Sometimes she does, more
often she doesn't--it depends on the strength of the boy and the pail
and on the strategy of the former. Anyway, the boy will lam the cow down
with a jagged yard shovel, let her out, and bail up another.
When he considers that he has finished milking he lets the cows out
with their calves and carries the milk down to the dairy, where he has
a heated argument with his mother, who--judging from the quantity of
milk--has reason to believe that he has slummed some of the milkers.
This he indignantly denies, telling her she knows very well the cows are
going dry.
The dairy is built of rotten box bark--though there is plenty of good
stringy-bark within easy distance--and the structure looks as if it
wants to lie down and is only prevented by three crooked props on the
leaning side; more props will soon be needed in the rear for the dairy
shows signs of going in that direction. The milk is set in dishes made
of kerosene-tins, cut in halves, which are placed on bark shelves fitted
round against the walls. The shelves are not level and the dishes are
brought to a comparatively horizontal position by means of chips and
bits of bark, inserted under the lower side. The milk is covered by
soiled sheets of old newspapers supported on sticks laid across the
dishes. This protection is necessary, because the box bark in the roof
has crumbled away and left fringed holes--also because the fowls roost
up there. Sometimes the paper sags, and the cream may have to be scraped
off an article on dairy farming.
The selector's wife removes the newspapers, and reveals a thick, yellow
layer of rich cream, plentifully peppered with dust that has drifted in
somehow. She runs a forefinger round the edges of the cream to detach it
from the tin, wipes her finger in her mouth, and skims. If the milk and
cream are very thick she rolls the cream over like a pancake with her
fingers, and lifts it out in sections. The thick milk is poured into a
slop-bucket, for the pigs and calves, the dishes are “cleaned”--by the
aid of a dipper full of warm water and a rag--and the wife proceeds
to set the morning's milk. Tom holds up the doubtful-looking rag that
serves as a strainer while his mother pours in the milk. Sometimes the
boy's hands get tired and he lets some of the milk run over, and gets
into trouble; but it doesn't matter much, for the straining-cloth has
several sizable holes in the middle.
The door of the dairy faces the dusty road and is off its hinges and has
to be propped up. The prop is missing this morning, and Tommy is accused
of having been seen chasing old Poley with it at an earlier hour. He
never seed the damn prop, never chased no cow with it, and wants to know
what's the use of always accusing him. He further complains that he's
always blamed for everything. The pole is not forthcoming, and so an old
dray is backed against the door to keep it in position. There is more
trouble about a cow that is lost, and hasn't been milked for two days.
The boy takes the cows up to the paddock sliprails and lets the top rail
down: the lower rail fits rather tightly and some exertion is
required to free it, so he makes the animals jump that one. Then he
“poddies”--hand-feeds--the calves which have been weaned too early.
He carries the skim-milk to the yard in a bucket made out of an
oil-drum--sometimes a kerosene-tin--seizes a calf by the nape of the
neck with his left hand, inserts the dirty forefinger of his right
into its mouth, and shoves its head down into the milk. The calf sucks,
thinking it has a teat, and pretty soon it butts violently--as calves do
to remind their mothers to let down the milk--and the boy's wrist gets
barked against the jagged edge of the bucket. He welts that calf in the
jaw, kicks it in the stomach, tries to smother it with its nose in the
milk, and finally dismisses it with the assistance of the calf rope and
a shovel, and gets another. His hand feels sticky and the cleaned finger
makes it look as if he wore a filthy, greasy glove with the forefinger
torn off.
The selector himself is standing against a fence talking to a neighbour.
His arms rest on the top rail of the fence, his chin rests on his hands,
his pipe rests between his fingers, and his eyes rest on a white
cow that is chewing her cud on the opposite side of the fence. The
neighbour's arms rest on the top rail also, his chin rests on his hands,
his pipe rests between his fingers, and his eyes rest on the cow. They
are talking about that cow. They have been talking about her for three
hours. She is chewing her cud. Her nose is well up and forward, and her
eyes are shut. She lets her lower jaw fall a little, moves it to one
side, lifts it again, and brings it back into position with a springing
kind of jerk that has almost a visible recoil. Then her jaws stay
perfectly still for a moment, and you would think she had stopped
chewing. But she hasn't. Now and again a soft, easy, smooth-going
swallow passes visibly along her clean, white throat and disappears. She
chews again, and by and by she loses consciousness and forgets to chew.
She never opens her eyes. She is young and in good condition; she has
had enough to eat, the sun is just properly warm for her, and--well, if
an animal can be really happy, she ought to be.
Presently the two men drag themselves away from the fence, fill their
pipes, and go to have a look at some rows of forked sticks, apparently
stuck in the ground for some purpose. The selector calls these sticks
fruit-trees, and he calls the place “the orchard.” They fool round these
wretched sticks until dinnertime, when the neighbour says he must be
getting home. “Stay and have some dinner! Man alive! Stay and have some
dinner!” says the selector; and so the friend stays.
It is a broiling hot day in summer, and the dinner consists of hot
roast meat, hot baked potatoes, hot cabbage, hot pumpkin, hot peas, and
burning-hot plum-pudding. The family drinks on an average four cups of
tea each per meal. The wife takes her place at the head of the
table with a broom to keep the fowls out, and at short intervals she
interrupts the conversation with such exclamations as “Shoo! shoo!”
“Tommy, can't you see that fowl? Drive it out!” The fowls evidently pass
a lot of their time in the house. They mark the circle described by the
broom, and take care to keep two or three inches beyond it. Every now
and then you see a fowl on the dresser amongst the crockery, and there
is great concern to get it out before it breaks something. While dinner
is in progress two steers get into the wheat through a broken rail which
has been spliced with stringy-bark, and a calf or two break into
the vineyard. And yet this careless Australian selector, who is too
shiftless to put up a decent fence, or build a decent house and who
knows little or nothing about farming, would seem by his conversation
to have read up all the great social and political questions of the
day. Here are some fragments of conversation caught at the
dinner-table. Present--the selector, the missus, the neighbour,
Corney George--nicknamed “Henry George”--Tommy, Jacky, and the younger
children. The spaces represent interruptions by the fowls and children:
Corney George (continuing conversation): “But Henry George says, in
'Progress and Poverty,' he says--”
Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”
Corney: “He says--”
Tom: “Marther, jist speak to this Jack.”
Missus (to Jack): “If you can't behave yourself, leave the table.”
Tom [Corney, probably]: “He says in Progress and--”
Missus: “Shoo!”
Neighbour: “I think 'Lookin' Backwards' is more--”
Missus: “Shoo! Shoo! Tom, can't you see that fowl?”
Selector: “Now I think 'Caesar's Column' is more likely--Just look at--”
Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!”
Selector: “Just look at the French Revolution.”
Corney: “Now, Henry George-”
Tom: “Marther! I seen a old-man kangaroo up on--”
Missus: “Shut up! Eat your dinner an' hold your tongue. Carn't you see
someone's speakin'?”
Selector: “Just look at the French--”
Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!” (turning suddenly and unexpectedly
on Jacky): “Take your fingers out of the sugar!--Blast yer! that I
should say such a thing.”
Neighbour: “But 'Lookin' Backwards”'
Missus: “There you go, Tom! Didn't I say you'd spill that tea? Go away
from the table!”
Selector: “I think 'Caesar's Column' is the only natural--”
Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!” She loses patience, gets up and fetches a young
rooster with the flat of the broom, sending him flying into the yard; he
falls with his head towards the door and starts in again. Later on the
conversation is about Deeming.
Selector: “There's no doubt the man's mad--”
Missus: “Deeming! That Windsor wretch! Why, if I was in the law I'd have
him boiled alive! Don't tell me he didn't know what he was doing! Why,
I'd have him--”
Corney: “But, missus, you--”
Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”
THAT THERE DOG O' MINE
Macquarie the shearer had met with an accident. To tell the truth, he
had been in a drunken row at a wayside shanty, from which he had escaped
with three fractured ribs, a cracked head, and various minor abrasions.
His dog, Tally, had been a sober but savage participator in the drunken
row, and had escaped with a broken leg. Macquarie afterwards shouldered
his swag and staggered and struggled along the track ten miles to the
Union Town hospital. Lord knows how he did it. He didn't exactly know
himself. Tally limped behind all the way, on three legs.
The doctors examined the man's injuries and were surprised at his
endurance. Even doctors are surprised sometimes--though they don't
always show it. Of course they would take him in, but they objected to
Tally. Dogs were not allowed on the premises.
“You will have to turn that dog out,” they said to the shearer, as he
sat on the edge of a bed.
Macquarie said nothing.
“We cannot allow dogs about the place, my man,” said the doctor in a
louder tone, thinking the man was deaf.
“Tie him up in the yard then.”
“No. He must go out. Dogs are not permitted on the grounds.”
Macquarie rose slowly to his feet, shut his agony behind his set
teeth, painfully buttoned his shirt over his hairy chest, took up his
waistcoat, and staggered to the corner where the swag lay.
“What are you going to do?” they asked.
“You ain't going to let my dog stop?”
“No. It's against the rules. There are no dogs allowed on premises.”
He stooped and lifted his swag, but the pain was too great, and he
leaned back against the wall.
“Come, come now! man alive!” exclaimed the doctor, impatiently. “You
must be mad. You know you are not in a fit state to go out. Let the
wardsman help you to undress.”
“No!” said Macquarie. “No. If you won't take my dog in you don't take
me. He's got a broken leg and wants fixing up just--just as much as--as
I do. If I'm good enough to come in, he's good enough--and--and better.”
He paused awhile, breathing painfully, and then went on.
“That--that there old dog of mine has follered me faithful and true,
these twelve long hard and hungry years. He's about--about the only
thing that ever cared whether I lived or fell and rotted on the cursed
track.”
He rested again; then he continued: “That--that there dog was pupped
on the track,” he said, with a sad sort of a smile. “I carried him for
months in a billy, and afterwards on my swag when he knocked up.... And
the old slut--his mother--she'd foller along quite contented--and sniff
the billy now and again--just to see if he was all right.... She follered
me for God knows how many years. She follered me till she was blind--and
for a year after. She follered me till she could crawl along through the
dust no longer, and--and then I killed her, because I couldn't leave her
behind alive!”
He rested again.
“And this here old dog,” he continued, touching Tally's upturned nose
with his knotted fingers, “this here old dog has follered me for--for
ten years; through floods and droughts, through fair times and--and
hard--mostly hard; and kept me from going mad when I had no mate nor
money on the lonely track; and watched over me for weeks when I was
drunk--drugged and poisoned at the cursed shanties; and saved my life
more'n once, and got kicks and curses very often for thanks; and forgave
me for it all; and--and fought for me. He was the only living thing that
stood up for me against that crawling push of curs when they set onter
me at the shanty back yonder--and he left his mark on some of 'em too;
and--and so did I.”
He took another spell.
Then he drew in his breath, shut his teeth hard, shouldered his swag,
stepped into the doorway, and faced round again.
The dog limped out of the corner and looked up anxiously.
“That there dog,” said Macquarie to the hospital staff in general, “is a
better dog than I'm a man--or you too, it seems--and a better Christian.
He's been a better mate to me than I ever was to any man--or any man
to me. He's watched over me; kep' me from getting robbed many a time;
fought for me; saved my life and took drunken kicks and curses for
thanks--and forgave me. He's been a true, straight, honest, and faithful
mate to me--and I ain't going to desert him now. I ain't going to kick
him out in the road with a broken leg. I--Oh, my God! my back!”
He groaned and lurched forward, but they caught him, slipped off the
swag, and laid him on a bed.
Half an hour later the shearer was comfortably fixed up.
“Where's my dog!” he asked, when he came to himself.
“Oh, the dog's all right,” said the nurse, rather impatiently. “Don't
bother. The doctor's setting his leg out in the yard.”
GOING BLIND
I met him in the Full-and-Plenty Dining Rooms. It was a cheap place in
the city, with good beds upstairs let at one shilling per night--“Board
and residence for respectable single men, fifteen shillings per week.”
I was a respectable single man then. I boarded and resided there. I
boarded at a greasy little table in the greasy little corner under the
fluffy little staircase in the hot and greasy little dining-room or
restaurant downstairs. They called it dining-rooms, but it was only one
room, and them wasn't half enough room in it to work your elbows when
the seven little tables and forty-nine chairs were occupied. There was
not room for an ordinary-sized steward to pass up and down between the
tables; but our waiter was not an ordinary-sized man--he was a living
skeleton in miniature. We handed the soup, and the “roast beef one,” and
“roast lamb one,” “corn beef and cabbage one,” “veal and stuffing one,”
and the “veal and pickled pork,” one--or two, or three, as the case
might be--and the tea and coffee, and the various kinds of puddings--we
handed them over each other, and dodged the drops as well as we could.
The very hot and very greasy little kitchen was adjacent, and it
contained the bathroom and other conveniences, behind screens of
whitewashed boards.
I resided upstairs in a room where there were five beds and one
wash-stand; one candle-stick, with a very short bit of soft yellow
candle in it; the back of a hair-brush, with about a dozen bristles in
it; and half a comb--the big-tooth end--with nine and a half teeth at
irregular distances apart.
He was a typical bushman, not one of those tall, straight, wiry, brown
men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many
drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight
active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean
shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots--“larstins,” they
called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly
through their noses, the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly;
and ride like--like--well, they _could_ ride.
He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old
colonial school to which he belonged. They _had_ careless and forgetful
ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he'd come to
Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau,
a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin bog. I sat
beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he told me
all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting round to the other
side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He'd been kicked by a horse, he
said, and had been a little dull o' hearing on that side ever since.