This net was to be nearly ten feet square and twelve high, with a calico roof of its own drawn taut to the ceiling of the room, and walls of mosquito netting, weighted at the foot with a deep fold of calico, and falling from ceiling to floor, with a wide double overlapping curtain for a doorway. Imagine an immense four-poster bed-net, ten by ten by twelve, swung taut within a larger room, and a fair idea of the dining-net will have been formed. A room within a room, and within the inner room we hoped to find a paradise at mealtime in comparison to the purgatory of the last few months.
But the sewing did not end at that. A good husband usually provides his wife with sufficient clothing, he insinuated; but when he heard that further supplies were on the bullock waggons, he apologised, and as he waddled about kept one ear cocked to catch the first sound of the bullock bells.
Fortunately a holland dress was behaving beautifully. Harsh, crudely pink, galatea! Yet it was received as joyfully as ever a woman received a Paris gown; for although necessity may be the mother of invention, she more often brings thankful hearts into this world.
The walls were still unfinished, and doors and window frames gaped; but what did that matter? The missus had a dining-room, and as she presided at her supper-table in vivid pink and the pride of possession, Cheon looked as though he would have liked to shake hands with every one at once, but particularly with Johnny. Our cattle were scattered through a couple of thousand square miles of scrub and open timbered country, and therefore each section of the run had to be gone over again and again; each mob, when mustered, travelled to the nearest yard and branded.
Every available day of the Dry was needed for the work; but there is one thing in the Never-Never that refuses to take a secondary-place—the mailman; and at the end of a week we all found, once again, that we had business at the homestead; for six weeks had slipped away since our last mail-day, and the Fizzer was due once more. The Fizzer is unlike every type of man excepting a bush mail-man.
Here we are again! What ho! For five minutes everything was in confusion; horse bells and hobbles jingling and clanging, harness rattling, as horses shook themselves free, and pack-bags, swags, and saddles came to the ground with loud, creaking flops. Every one was lending a hand, and the Fizzer, moving in and out among the horses, shouted a medley of news and instructions and welcome.
Stacks of it! The Fizzer always shouted. Here, steady with that pack-bag. Eh, lads! What ho, Cheon! You bally ass! Full bags, missus! The Fizzer smiled amiably after the retreating figures, and then went to be entertained by Cheon.
He expected nothing else. He provided feasts all along his route, and was prepared to stand aside while the bush-folk feasted. Perhaps in the silence that fell over the bush homes, after his mail-bags were opened, his own heart slipped away to dear ones, who were waiting somewhere for news of our Fizzer. Eight mails only in a year is not all disadvantage. It may have been a disadvantage, perhaps, to have been so thirsty; but then only the thirsty soul knows the sweetness of slaking that thirst.
But then supper came every night and the Fizzer once in forty-two. At the first sound of voices, Cheon bustled in. He had said he had stacks of it, and he now bubbled over with it. The Sanguine Scot? So is he. Cut that one out. So is the brown. That is the Open Downs. Time is precious now. There is a limit to the number of hours a horse can go without water, and the thirst of the team fixes the time limit on the Downs.
Truly the Government is careful for the safety of its servants. Yet at that well the dice-throwing goes on just the same. And every letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence. The old programme all over again. Sixteen days is the time-limit for those five-hundred miles, and yet the Fizzer is expected because the Fizzer is due; and to a man who loves his harness no praise could be sweeter than that.
When the Fizzer is late there, death will have won at the dice-throwing. I suppose he got a salary. No one ever troubled to ask. He was expected, and he came, and in our selfishness we did not concern ourselves beyond that. That is what the Fizzer had to do by half-past eleven four weeks. Dan had lost interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead just then.
But the homemaking instinct is strong in a woman, and the musterers went out west without the missus. The Dandy being back at the Bitter Springs superintending the carting of new posts for the stockyard there, the missus was left in the care of Johnny and Cheon.
The walls were erected on what is known as the drop-slab-panel system—upright panels formed of three-foot slabs cut from the outside slice of tree trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other, between grooved posts—a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic in appearance—outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls. As in every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.
First soap is rubbed on the dry boards, then vigorously scrubbed into a lather with wet brushes, and after that the lather is sluiced off with artificial waterspouts whizzed up the walls from full buckets.
It was while the sluicing was in progress that Johnny had to be careful; for many buckets missed their mark, and the waterspouts shot out through the doorways and window frames. Wearing a mackintosh, I did what I could to prevent surprises, but without much success.
Johnny fortunately took it all as a matter of course. One panel in the dining-room was completely filled with bookshelves, one above the other for our coming books. Great sheets of bark, stripped by the blacks from the Ti Tree forest, were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up.
The Quiet Stockman coming in, was pressed into the service, and grew quite enthusiastic, suggesting substitutes for necessities, until I suggested cutting off the tail of every horse on the run, to get enough horsehair for a mattress. And when I announced next day that the dining-net was finished and ready for hanging, he also became wildly enthusiastic.
Cheon was brimming over with admiration for it. Cheon invariably discussed the missus in her presence. Hear him sing-out sing-out. Cheon was the first to hear it. With childlike impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs, only to be overcome with unaccountable shyness.
We are some! Once the trunks were all in, Mac, the Dandy, and Johnny retired to the Quarters after a few more congratulations, Johnny continuing his flourishes all the way across. Cheon however, with his charming disregard for conventionality being interested, settled himself on one of the trunks to watch the opening up of the others. To have ordered him away would have clouded his beaming happiness; so he remained, and told us exactly what he thought of our possessions, adding much to the pleasure of the opening of the trunks.
If she can find a Cheon to be present at the reunion, so much the better. Some of our belongings Cheon thoroughly approved of; others were passed over as unworthy of notice; and others were held up to chuckling ridicule. A silver teapot was pounced upon with a cry of delight tinware being considered far beneath the dignity of a missus, and seeing Sam had broken the china pot soon after its arrival, tinware had graced our board for some time , pictures were looked at askance, particularly an engraving of Psyche at the Pool; while the case for a set of carvers received boundless admiration, although the carvers in no way interested him.
The photographs of friends and relatives were looked carefully over, the womenfolk being judged by what they might bring in a Chinese matrimonial market.
That one good-looking. Me savey gold all right. But the full glory of our possessions was now to burst upon Cheon. Everything was exactly what Cheon most needed, and he accepted everything with gleeful chuckles—everything excepting a kerosene Primus burner for boiling a kettle. That he refused to touch. After gathering his treasures together he waddled away to the kitchen, and at afternoon tea we had sponge cakes, light and airy beyond all dreams of airy lightness, no one having yet combined the efforts of Cheon, a flour dredge, and an egg-beater, in his dreams.
A little joke, by the way, that never lost in freshness as the months went by. At intervals during the days that followed Cheon surveyed his treasures, and during these intervals the whirr of the flour dredge or egg-beater was heard from the kitchens, and invariably the whirr was followed by a low, distinct chuckle of appreciation. But best of all were the books—row upon row of old familiar friends; nearly two hundred of them filling the shelved panel as they looked down upon us.
Mac was dazzled with the books. When supper was over we lit the lamp, and shutting doors and windows, shut the Sanguine Scot in with us, and made believe we were living once more within sound of the rumble of a great city. Childish behaviour, no doubt, but to be expected from folk who can find entertainment in the going to bed of fowls; but when the heart is happy it forgets to grow old.
Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again, and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it. Nellie had brought to the homestead her bosom friend and crony, Biddy, and the staff had increased to five.
Me bin see him! My word him race! After many assurances, I was allowed to pick it up, Maudie crouching in a shuddering heap the while behind the office, to guard against surprises. The telescope proved full of delights. With Nellie and Rosy at the head of affairs, house-cleaning passed unnoticed, and although, after the arrival of unlimited changes of everything, washing-day threatened to become a serious business, they coped with that difficulty by continuing to live in a cycle of washing days—every alternate day only, though, so as to leave time for gardening.
The gardening staff, which consisted of a king, an heir-apparent, and a royal councillor, had been engaged to wheel barrow-loads of rich loamy soil from the billabong to the garden beds; but as its members preferred gossiping in the shade to work of any kind, the gardening took time and supervision.
Then he left us, and for the first time I was sorry the house was finished. Just as we were preparing to go out-bush for reports, Dan came in with a mob of cattle for branding and the news that a yard on the northern boundary was gone from the face of the earth. For over four months we had wrestled with luck for a house, only to find we had very little use for it for the time being, that is, until next Wet.
It came in handy to pack the chain away in while the dog was enjoying itself, for within twenty-four hours we were camped at the Bitter Springs, and two weeks passed before the homestead saw us again. As most of the boys had their lubras with them, it was an immense camp, but exceedingly pretty. Our camp being a stationary one, was, by comparison with our ordinary camps, a campe-de-luxe ; for, apart from the tent-fly, in it were books, pillows, and a canvas lounge, as well as some of the flesh-pots of Egypt, in the shape of eggs, cakes, and vegetables sent out every few days by Cheon, to say nothing of scrub turkeys, fish, and such things.
Dan had no objection to the eggs, cakes, or vegetables, but the pillows and canvas lounge tried him sorely. Roast scrub turkey was the first lesson cooked in the most correct style: a forked stick, with the fork uppermost, was driven into the ground near the glowing heap of wood ashes; then a long sapling was leant through the fork, with one end well over the coals; a doubled string, with the turkey hanging from it, looped over this end; the turkey turned round and round until the string was twisted to its utmost, and finally string and turkey were left to themselves, to wind and unwind slowly, an occasional winding-up being all that was necessary.
Dan was in clover, boiled cabbage being considered nectar fit for the gods, and after supper he put the remnants of the feast away for his breakfast.
Then the daily damper was to be made, and I took the dish without a misgiving. I felt at home there, for bushmen have long since discarded the old-fashioned damper, and use soda and cream-of-tartar in the mixture. But ours was an immense camp, and I had reckoned without any thought.
Kneeling in front of the dish, I pounded obediently at the mixture; and as they alternately cheered and advised and I wrestled with circumstances, digging my fists vigorously into the spongy, doughy depths of the damper, a traveller rode right into the camp.
The conveyance required judgment and watchful diplomacy, as the damper preferred to dip in a rolling valley between my extended arms, or hang over them like a tablecloth, rather than keep its desired form. Neither a cabbage nor a woman for five years! Think of it, townsfolk! Neither a cabbage nor a woman—with the cabbage placed first. I wonder which will be longest remembered. But he was even more of a character than I guessed. You see, it was when the news came through that the old Queen was dead, and being something historical that had happened, the chaps felt it ought to be celebrated properly.
Poor old Queen! And yet, perhaps, her grand, noble heart would have understood these, her subjects, and known them for the men they were—as loyal-hearted and true to her as the highest in the land.
Then Dan having found a kindred spirit in the traveller, laid a favourite trap for one of his favourite jokes: shaking out a worn old bluey, he examined it carefully in the firelight. We had boiled eggs for breakfast, and once more the traveller joined us. Cheon had sent the eggs out with the cabbage, and I had hidden them away, intending to spring a surprise on the men-folk at breakfast.
But Dan, wheeling with an exclamation of pleasure, sprung a surprise of his own on the missus. How many? Dan scratched his head trying to solve the problem. That one damper good fellow. The stodgy damper had made them feel full and uncomfortable; and to be full and uncomfortable after a meal spells happiness to a black fellow.
The difficult part to understand is how any woman can choose to stand aloof and freeze, with warm-hearted men all around her willing to take her into their lives. Let us hope it was because of the woman, and the books, and the cabbage, with the cabbage placed last. The man from Beyanst was our only visitor for the first week, in that camp, and then after that we had some one every day.
Dan went into the homestead for stores, and set the ball rolling by returning at sundown in triumph with a great find: a lady traveller, the wife of one of the Inland Telegraph masters. Her husband and little son were with her, but—well, they were only men.
It was five months since I had seen a white woman, and all I saw at the time was a woman riding towards our camp. I wonder what she saw as I came to meet her through the leafy bough gundies. It was nearly two years since she had seen a woman. It was a merry camp that night—merry and beautiful and picturesque.
The night was very cold and brilliantly starry, as nights usually are in the Never-Never during the Dry; the camp fires were all around us: dozens of them, grouped in and out among the gundies, and among the fires—chatting, gossiping groups of happy-hearted human beings. Around one central fire sat the lubras, with an outer circle of smaller fires behind them: one central fire and one fire behind each lubra, for such is the wisdom of the black folk; they warm themselves both back and front.
At our fireside we women did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amusement. And then these travellers, too, passed out of our camp to become, with the man from Beyanst, just pleasant memories.
But as I acknowledged the gallantry Dan looked on dubiously, not sure whether pretty speeches were a help or a hindrance to education. Beer and skittles! Every one was all right down the line! Lately, washing-days at the homestead had lost all their vim, for the creek having stopped running, washing had to be conducted in tubs, so as to keep the billabong clear for drinking purposes. The Bitter Springs—a chain of clear, crystal pools, a long winding chain, doubling back on itself in loops and curves—form the source of the permanent flow of the Roper; pools only a few feet deep, irregular and wide-spreading, with mossy-green, deeply undermined, overhanging banks, and lime-stone bottoms washed into terraces that gleam azure-blue through the transparent water.
There is little rank grass along their borders, no sign of water-lilies, and few weeds within them; clumps of palms dotted here and there among the light timber, and everywhere sun-flecked, warm, dry shade.
Nowhere is there a hint of that sinister suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints—a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves within a forest grove.
It is in appearance only the pools are isolated; for although many feet apart in some instances, they are linked together throughout by a shallow underground river, that runs over a rocky bed; while the turf, that looks so solid in many places, is barely a two-foot crust arched over five or six feet of space and water—a deathtrap for heavy cattle; but a place of interest to white folk.
I have never seen a ghost, but I know exactly how I will feel if ever I do. For a moment we stood spellbound with horror, and the next, realising what had happened, were kneeling down beside the piteous head.
The poor brute was perishing for want of food and water. All around the hole, as far as the head could reach, the turf was eaten, bare, and although it was standing in a couple of feet of water it could not get at it. The whole camp, black and white, came to the rescue but it was an awful work getting the exhausted creature out of its death-trap.
The hole had to be cut back to a solid ridge of rocky soil, saplings cut to form a solid slope from the bed of the river to the ground above, and the poor brute roped and literally hauled up the slope by sheer force and strength of numbers.
It was difficult to dislodge, and our efforts reminded Dan of a night spent in the camp of a geologist—a man with many letters after his name. Out of the water, the opal tints died out of the limestone, and the geologist in us went to sleep again when we found that all we had for our trouble was a piece of dirty-looking rock.
There was very little wrong with the patient, but the wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of rest. Until I met Cheon I thought the Chinese incapable of affection; but many lessons are learned out bush. Travellers—house-visitors—coming in on the fourth day, I hoped for a speedy release, but visitors were considered fatiguing, and release was promised as soon as they were gone. Fortunately the walls had many cracks in them—not being as much on the plumb as Johnny had predicted, and for a couple of days, watching the visitors through these cracks and listening to their conversation provided additional amusement.
The Fizzer having brought down the walls of conventionality, the traveller-guests proffered greetings and sympathy through the material walls, after which we exchanged mail-news and general gossip for a day or two; then just as these travellers were preparing to exchange farewells, others came in and postponed the promised release.
As there seemed little hope of a lull in visitors, I was wondering if ever I should be considered well enough to entertain guests, when Fate once more interfered. Little did they guess that they were angels unaware.
The one is the heritage of the simple-hearted, and the other—all the world has to give in exchange for this birthright. The elder lads, one fourteen and one ten years of age, found Cheon by far the most entertaining incongruity at the dinner, and when dinner was over—after we had settled down on the various chairs and stumps that had been carried out to the verandah again—they shadowed him wherever he went.
They were strangely self-possessed children; but knowing little more of the world than the black children their playmates, Cheon, in his turn, found them vastly amusing, and instructing them in the ways of the world—from his point of view—found them also eager pupils. For fifteen years things had been improving, and now everyone was to have a well-earned holiday. The children were to be christened and then shown the delights of a large town!
Darwin of necessity Palmerston, by the way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians. Hardly a typical town, but the best in the Territory. The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping, and as we slipped into fashions the traveller guests became interested.
But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked, and to the railway, where the iron monster ran. Already it had ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the two hundred. But it is thus the bush develops her Fizzers.
There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all comers, in addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time they came in.
Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. Real glad to see you! Sure of his own welcome wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome all men into his fellowship. He was one of the pillars of the Line Party.
In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, carpeted with feathery grasses and shooting scrubs, and walled in on either side with dense, towering forest or lighter and more scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter loneliness, zigzagging from horizon to horizons beyond, and guarding those two sensitive wires at its centre, as they run along their single line of slender galvanised posts, from the great bush that never ceases in its efforts to close in on them and engulf them.
A great broad highway, waiting in its loneliness for the generations to come, with somewhere in its length the line party camp, and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance traveller or two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and grazing along behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag across its shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred miles of solitude, here and there a horseman riding, and here and there a footman trudging on, each unconscious of the others.
From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days, with those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever running on before them and as they travel, now and then they touch a post for company—shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then a post for company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and wires can be.
Here at least is something in touch with the world something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an ever-present friend in dire necessity.
With those wires above him, any day a traveller can cry for help to the Territory, if he call while he yet has strength to climb one of those friendly posts and cut that quivering wire—for help that will come speedily, for the cutting of the telegraph wire is as the ringing of an alarm-bell throughout the Territory. In all haste the break is located, and food, water, and every human help that suggests itself sent out from the nearest telegraph station.
There is no official delay—there rarely is in the Territory—for by some marvellous good fortune, there everything belongs to the Department in which it finds itself. Just as Happy Dick is one of the pillars of the line party, so the line party is one of the pillars of the line itself. Up and down this great avenue, year in year out it creeps along, cutting scrub and repairing as it goes, and moving cumbrous main camps from time to time, with its waggon loads of stores, tents, furnishings, flocks of milking goats, its fowls, its gramophone, and Chinese cook.
Month after month it creeps on, until, reaching the end of the section, it turns round to creep out again. Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years Happy Dick had seen to its peace and comfort.
Nothing ever ruffled him. He considered himself an authority on three things only: the line party, dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including his dog Peter and his cheque-book, he left to the discretion of his fellow-men.
Peter—a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes larger than a fox-terrier—could be kept in order with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep order in the cheque-book.
The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds of miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays all salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin, and therefore when Happy Dick found himself the backbone of the line party, he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book. At first he was inclined to look upon it as a poor substitute for hard cash; but after the foreman had explained its mysteries, and taught him to sign his name in magic tracery, he became more than reconciled to it and drew cheques blithely, until one for five pounds was returned to a creditor: no funds—and in due course returned to Happy Dick.
Finally, in despair, the foreman took the cheque-book into custody, and Dick found himself poor once more. But it was only for a little while. Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was like taking a ticket in a lottery to accept a cheque from Happy Dick.
Happy Dick had his favourite places and people, and the Elsey community stood high in his favour. With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes as they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table, and before he left the homestead he expressed his approval in the Quarters:. Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four hours Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that appealed to him as an antidote to an outbush course of beef and damper.
Then a man rode into our lives who was to teach us the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word mate—a sturdy, thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and deep lines about his firm strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged tension.
The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. Bushmen are instinctively protective.
There is no other word that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness and helplessness. Knowing how hard the fight is out-bush for even the strong and enduring all their magnificent strength and courage stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it.
A lame dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women, any woman in need or sickness—each and all call forth this protectiveness; but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness like the helplessness of a strong man stricken down in his strength.
Understanding this also, we stood aside, and rejoicing as the sick man, benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily, and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without coercion, was the only chance for his life. There were times when the links in the chain seemed all blessing. Many travellers had come into our lives and passed on with a bright nod of farewell; but at the first stirring of the dawn, without one word of farewell, this traveller had passed on and left us; left us, and the faithful mate of those seven strong young years and those last few days of weariness.
The bush can be cruel at times, and yet, although she may leave us alone with our beloved dead, her very cruelty brings with it a fierce, consoling pain; for out-bush our dead are all our own. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with a mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew. He was his mate, and no one but himself must render the last services. Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there.
Quietly and unassumingly, the Dandy put all in order and then, soon after midday, with brilliant sunshine all about us, we stood by an open grave in the shade of the drooping glory of a crimson flowering bauhenia. Some scenes live undimmed in our memories for a lifetime—scenes where we have seemed onlookers rather than actors seeing every detail with minute exactness—and that scene with its mingling of glorious beauty, human pathos, and soft, subdued sound, will live, I think, in the memory of most of us for many years to come:.
Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy of soft grey-green, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it.
Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her, it comforted her in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood beside that grave mourning for her boy in her name.
The man looked hesitatingly at him. Then, this service rendered for the man who had done what he could for his comrade, his strong, unflinching heart turned back to its labour of love, and, all else being done, found relief for itself in softening and smoothing the rough outline of the newly piled mound, and as the man toiled, Mother Nature went on with her work, silently and sweetly healing the scar on her bosom, hiding her pain from the world, as she shrouded in starry crimson the burial place of her brave, enduring son—a service to be renewed from day to day until the mosses and grasses grew again.
But there were still other services for the mate to render and as the bush-folk stood aside, none daring to trespass here, a rough wooden railing rose about the grave. The man was yet a stranger to the ways of the Never-Never. He was always independent and would never take charity. Surely no man would refuse that. But daily the bushman put the woman to shame, while she stood dumb or stammering. With that brushing of the hand the inevitable reaction began, and for a little while we feared we would have another sick traveller on our hand.
But only for a little while. After a day or two of rest and care his strength came back, but his thoughts were ever of those seven years of steadfast comradeship. Simply and earnestly he spoke of them and of that mother, all unconscious of the heartbreak that was speeding only too surely to her. And yet those other two nameless graves on that little rise deep in the heart of the bush bear witness that other mothers have even deeper sorrows to bear.
Their sons are gone from them, and they, knowing nothing of it, wait patiently through the long silent years for the word that can never come to them. For a few days the man rested, and then, just when work—hard work—was the one thing needful, Dan came in for a consultation, and with him a traveller, the bearer of a message from our kind, great-hearted chief to say that work was waiting for the mate at the line party.
The day after that was filled in with preparations for a walk-about, and the next again found us camped at Bitter Springs. They also resembled each other, and all other days out-bush, in the necessity of dressing in a camp mosquito net. All the surface waters are drying up by then, and the outside cattle—those scattered away beyond the borders—are obliged to come in to the permanent waters, and must be gathered in and branded before the showers scatter them again. Introduction by Gail Timmerman-Vaughan.
We of the Never-Never. Stream audiobook and download chapters. Audiobook downloads. Search by: Title, Author or Keyword. Once l. One of the things I tried to do for this challenge was to read a number of books I have been meaning to read for some time. We of the Never Never was one such book. Because it is an Australian classic from the early 20th century, I expected to find parts of it confronting, and in that, I was not dis. From the outset, a melancholy air hangs over We of the Never-Never.
It's an Australian classic. Jeannie Gunn recounts her 15 month stint in a remote cattle property in the Northern Territory during It's a harsh li. This is a challenging book to review.
It very much reflects the attitudes of the time towards Aboriginal and Chinese people, attitudes which are now unacceptable and hard to read. However, there is also a lot to like about this book. It paints a vivid picture of station life, including the isolation. We of the Never-Never Jeannie Gunn.
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