# In Bad Company, and other Stories/Walks Abroad

WALKS ABROAD
Only a month to midsummer—A.D. 1883—when on this verge of the great north-western plain-ocean we fall across a section of the railway to Bourke in course of construction. Nature is here hard beset by Art. What a mighty avenue has the contractor's army cut through the primeval forest! The close-ranked trees taper, apparently, to nothingness until the horizon is reached. In the twelve miles that your sight reaches, there is not the smallest curve—no departure from the mathematically straight line. If you could see a hundred and twenty miles, you would find none greater than is visible now; for this avenue is something over that length, and is said by railway men to be one of the longest 'pieces of straight' in the world.
The still incompleted work is even now being ministered to with the strong, skilled hands of hundreds of men. All the same, the inspecting overseer is a necessary personage in the interests of the State. He it is who descries 'a bit of slumming,' however minute; who arrests progress, lest bolts be driven instead of screwed; who compels ’packing' and other minute but important details upon which the safety of the travelling public depends.
How efficiently is man aided by his humbler fellow-creatures, whom, for all that, he does by no means adequately respect or pity. See those two noble horses on their way to be hooked-on to a line of trucks! They are grand specimens of the Australian Clydesdale—immense creatures, highly fed, well groomed, and, it would appear, well trained.
They have no blinkers, and from the easy way in which, unled, they step along the edge of the embankment, where ​there is but a foot-wide path, lounging through the navvies without pausing or knocking against anybody, they seem fully to comprehend the peculiarities of railway life. They are attached by chains hooked to the axles of two of the six trucks, weighing some fifty or sixty tons, which require to be moved. Once in motion, of course, the draught is light, but the incline is against them, and the dead pull required to start the great weight is no joke. At the word they go into their collars with a will, the near horse, a magnificent dark bay, almost on his knees, and making the earth and metal fly at the side of the rails in his tremendous struggle to move the load. He strains every muscle in his powerful frame gallantly, unflinchingly, as if his life depended upon the task being performed and all at a word; he is neither touched nor guided.
He knew his duty a dead sure thing,
And went for it then and there.
His comrade lacks apparently the same high tone of feeling, for his efforts are stimulated by an unjustifiable expression on the part of the driver, and a bang on the ribs with a stout wattle. The line of trucks moves, however; then glides easily along the rails. When the end of the 'tip' is reached both horses stop, are released, walk forward a few paces, and stand ready for the next feat of strength and handiness. This happens to be pay-day on the line, which agreeable performance takes place monthly. The manner of personal remuneration I observe to be this: the paymaster and his assistant, with portentous, ruled pay-sheets, take their seats in a trench. The executive official carries a black leather bag, out of which he produces a number of sealed envelopes variously endorsed.
Different sections are visited, and the men are called up one by one. Small delay is there in handing over the indispensable cash. 91. William Jones, £9: 12s.; 90. Thomas Robinson, £9: 4s., one day; 89. John Smith, £8: 16s., two days. Smith acquiesces with a nod, signifying that he is aware that the two days during which he was, let us say, indisposed after the last pay-day have been recorded against him, and the wage deducted. There is no question apparently as to accuracy of account. The envelopes are stuffed into ​trouser-pockets, mostly without being opened. A few only inspect their contents, and gaze for a second upon the crisp bank-notes and handful of silver. Some of the sums thus paid are not small—gangers and other minor officials receiving as much as twelve and thirteen shillings a day; the ordinary pick and shovel men, eight. Overtime is paid for extra, which swells the amount received. One payment for fencing sub-contractors exceeded eighty pounds. Sixteen hundred pounds, all in cash, came out of the superintendent's wallet that day.
I noticed the men for the most part to be under thirty, many of them almost boyish in appearance. They were cleanly in person, well dressed and neat for the work they have to do, well fed, and not uncomfortably lodged considering the mildness of the climate. One and all they show grand 'condition,' as is evidenced by the spread of shoulder, the development of muscle, with the lightness of flank observable in all. As to nationality they are pretty evenly divided; the majority are British, but an increasing proportion of native-born Australians is observable, I am told. With regard to pre-eminence in strength and staying power the home-bred English navvy chiefly bears the palm, though I also hear that the 'ringer' in the pick and shovel brigade is a Hawkesbury man, of Cornish parents, a total abstainer, and an exemplary workman.
With such a monthly outflow of hard cash over a restricted area, it may be imagined what a trade is driven by boarding-house keepers and owners of small stores. The single men take their meals at these rude restaurants, paying from 18s. to £1 per week. The married men live in tents or roughly-constructed huts in the 'camps' nearest to their work.
I fear me that on the day following pay-day, and perhaps some others, there is gambling and often hard drinking. The money earned by strenuous labour and strict self-denial during the month is often dissipated in forty-eight hours. The boarding-house keepers are popularly accused, rightly or wrongly, of illegally selling spirits. Doubtless in many instances they do so, to the injury of public morals and the impoverishment of the families of those who are unable to resist the temptation. A heavy penalty is always enforced when proof is afforded to the satisfaction of justice; but reliable evidence of this peculiar infraction of the law is ​difficult to obtain, the men generally combining to shield the culprits and outswear the informer.
A few miles rearward is the terminus of this iron road that is stretching so swiftly across the 'lone Chorasmian waste.' Here converge caravans from the inmost deserts. Hence depart waggon-trains bearing merchandise in many different directions. What a medley of all the necessaries, luxuries, and superfluities of that unresting, insatiable toiler, man! They lie strewed upon the platform, or heaped in huge mounds and pyramids under the lofty goods sheds. Tea and sugar, flour and grain, hay and corn, chaff and bran, machines of a dark and doubtful character connected with dam-making and well-sinking; coils of wire, cans of nails, hogsheads of spirits, casks of wine, tar, paint, oil, clothing, books, rope, tools, windlasses, drums of winding gear, waggons, carts, and buggies all new and redolent of paint and varnish; also timber and woolpacks, and, as the auctioneer says, hundreds of articles too numerous to mention. What a good customer Mr. Squatter is, to be sure, while there is even the hope of grass, for to him are most of these miscellaneous values consigned, and by him or through him will they be paid for.
We are now outside of agriculture. The farmer, as such, has no abiding-place here. That broad, dusty trail leads, among other destinations, to the 'Never Never' country, where ploughs are not, and the husbandman is as impossible as the dodo.
Perhaps we are a little hasty in assuming that everything we see at the compendious depot is pastorally requisitioned. That waggon that creaks wailingly as it slowly approaches, with ten horses, heavy laden though apparently empty, proclaims yet another important industry. Look into the bottom and you will see it covered with dark red bricks, a little different in shape from the ordinary article. On a closer view they have a metallic tinge. They are ingots of copper, of which some hundreds of tons come weekly from the three mines which send their output here. As for pastoral products, the line of high-piled, wool-loaded waggons is almost continuous. As they arrive they are swiftly unloaded into trucks, and sent along a special side-line reserved for their use. Flocks of fat sheep and droves of beeves, wildly staring ​and paralysed by the first blast of the steam-whistle, arrive, weary and wayworn. At break of day they are beguiled into trucks, and within six-and-thirty hours have their first (and last) sight of the metropolis.
In the meantime herds of team-horses, bell-adorned, make ceaseless, not inharmonious jangling; sunburnt, bearded teamsters, drovers, shepherds, mingled with navvies, travellers, trim officials, tradesfolk, and the usual horde of camp-followers, male and female, give one the idea of an annual fair held upon the border of an ancient kingdom before civilisation had rubbed the edges from humanity's coinage, and obliterated so much that was characteristic in the process.
I stood on the spot an hour before daybreak on the following morn. Hushed and voiceless was the great industrial host. Around and afar stretched the waste, broadly open to the moonbeams, which softened the harsh outline of forest thicket and arid plain. The stars, that mysterious array of the greater and the lesser lights of heaven, burned in the cloudless azure—each planet flashing and scintillating, each tiny point of light 'a patine of pure gold.' The low croon of the wild-fowl, as they swam and splashed in the river-reach, was the only sound that caught the ear. Glimmering watch-fires illumined the scattered encampment. For the moment one felt regretful that the grandeur of Night and Silence should be invaded by the vulgar turmoil of the coming day.
One of the aids to picturesque effect, though not generally regarded as artistic treatment, is the clearing and formation of roads through a highland district. Such a region is occasionally reached by me, and never traversed without admiration. The ways are surrounded by wooded hills, some of considerable altitude, on the sides and summits of which are high piled
rocks, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world.
But here the road-clearing, rarely supplemented by engineering disfigurement, produces the effect of a winding, thickly-grown avenue. On either side stand in close order the frenelas, casuarinas, and eucalypts of the forest primeval, with an occasional kurrajong or a red-foliaged, drought-slain callitris, 'like to a copper beech among the greens.' The floor ​of this forest-way is greenly carpeted with the thick-growing spring verdure, a stray tiny streamlet perhaps crossing at intervals, while leaflets of the severed saplings are bursting through in pink or dark-red bunches. In the far distance rises a dark-blue range, towering over the dim green ocean of forest, and marking the contrast sharply between the land of hill and dale and the monotonous levels of the lower country.
With all the capriciousness of Australian seasons the springtime of this year has shown a disposition to linger—waving back with grateful showers and dew-cooled nights and mornings the too impatient summer. Still is the grass brightly green of hue, the flower unfaded. The plague of dust has been stayed again and again by the welcome rainfall. There has never been more than one day when the winds have risen to a wintry bleakness. But who recks of so trifling a discomfort from such a cause, and will not King Sol be avenged upon us ere Christmastide be passed—ere the short, breezeless nights of January are ended?
What contrasts and discrepancies Dame Nature sanctions hereabouts in the formation of her feathered families! That soaring eagle, so far above us heavenward, in the blue empyrean, how true a monarch among birds is he! Now he stoops, circling lower and yet lower still, with moveless outstretched pinion and searching gaze that blenches not before the sun's fiercest rays. The tiny blue-throated wren perches fearlessly near, and hops with delicate feet from stone to stone amid the sheltering ferns. That downy white-breasted diver, a ball of feathers in the clear pool of the mountain streamlet, now with a ripple become invisible—the devoted pelican, with sword-like beak and pouch of portentous dimensions. Lo! there sits he with his fellows by the edge of a shallowing anabranch, or revels with them in the evil days of drought upon the dying fish which in hundreds are cast upon the shore. As I tread the homeward path, the skylark springs upward from the waving grass; trilling his simple lay, he mounts higher and yet higher, no unworthy congener, though inferior as a songster to his British namesake. In the adjacent leafless trees is a flight of gaunt, dark-hued, sickle-beaked birds. Travellers and pilgrims they, relatives of earth's oldest, most sacred bird races. Behold a company of the ibis from far far wilds. Their presence here is ominous and boding. ​They are popularly supposed to migrate coastwards only when the great lakes of the interior begin to fail. This, however, is not an unfailing test of a dry season, as in long-dead summers I have had occasion to note. They are not too dignified, in despite of their quasi-sacred hierophantic traditions, to eat grasshoppers. As these enemies alike of farmers and squatters are now despoiling every green thing, let us hope that the ibis contingent may have appetites proportioned to the length of their bills and the duration of their journey. A white variety of the species is occasionally noted, but he is rare in comparison with the darker kind.
By the creek bank, in the early morn, the well-remembered note of the kingfisher, so closely associated with our youth, sounds close and clear. Yonder he sits upon the dead limb of the overhanging tree—greenish blue, purple-breasted as of yore. Stonelike he plunges into the deep pool, reappearing with a small fish or allied water-dweller. More beautiful is his relative the lesser kingfisher, metallic in sheen, with crimson breast—flashing like a feathered gem through the river shades, or burning like a flame spot against the mouldering log on which he sits. Of palest fawn colour, with long black filament at the back of his head, that graceful heron, the 'nankeen bird' of the colonist, is also of the company; the white-necked, dark-blue crane, and that black-robed river pirate the cormorant. While on the bird question, surely none are more delicately bright, more exquisitely neat of plumage and flawless of tone, than the Columba tribe. Ancient of birth are they as 'the doves from the rocks,' and principally for their conjugal fidelity have been honoured, by the choice of Mr. Darwin, as exemplars in working out experiments connected with the origin of species. In western wanderings I find five varieties of the pigeon proper. The beautiful bronze-wing, the squatter, and the crested pigeon. Besides these, two varieties of the dove are among the most exquisitely lovely of feathered creatures. Both are very small—one scarcely larger than a sparrow. The 'bronze-wing' is too well known to need description. The 'squatter pigeon' is a plainer likeness, with a spot of white on either cheek, and, as its name implies, is unwilling to fly up, being struck down occasionally with the whip or a short throwing stick in the act of rising. The crested pigeon, the most graceful and attractive ​of the family, is from its tameness and extreme cleanliness of habit most suitable for the aviary. In colouring, the breast is a delicate slate-grey tinged with faintest pink as it rises towards the wing muscles, the front wings barred with dark, pencilled cross-lines, the larger feathers of the extremities a burnished green, and the last row having feathers of a vivid dark pink or crimson. A crest and elongated pointed tail give character and piquancy to the whole appearance. As they fly up, a whirring noise, not unlike that of the partridge, is heard. When the male bird swells his chest and lowers his wings in defiance or ostentation, he produces a sound not unlike that of his long-civilised congener. They will lay and hatch in captivity, and I observed in an aviary one of the females sitting on her eggs complacently in a herring tin.
FROM TUMUT TO TUMBERUMBA
It was rather too far to walk this time; besides, the days are shortening. From Tumut to Tumberumba is forty-five miles all out, and a bad road. At breakfast-time we had no earthly idea of how or where to get a horse. A friend in need tided over that difficulty. So, mounted upon a clever mountain-bred hackney, we cleared the town about 9.30 a.m., and headed for the Khyber Pass (in a small way), up which the road winds south-easterly. The time was short, but we meant going steadily, if not fast, all through, and trusted, as we have done 'with a squeeze' full many a time and oft before, to 'save the light.'
Buggies are comfortable vehicles when roads are good and horses fresh. You can carry your 'things' with you, and, in cases of entertainments, come out with more grandeur and effect than if on horseback. But give me the saddle, 'haud juventutis immemor.' It brings back old times; and certainly for people whose appearance is in danger of being compromised by a tendency to increased weight, riding is the more healthful exercise. Besides, one always feels as if adventures were possible to cavaliers. Wheels circumscribe one too narrowly. You must start early. You had better not drive late. Your stopping-places must be marked and labelled as it were. You are affiché for good or evil.
​Now, once started on a fine morning, on a good horse, a 'lazy ally' feeling seems to pervade the surroundings and the landscape. If you meet wayside flowers, you may linger to gather them. You may avail yourself of chance invitations, secure that you can 'pull up time' late or early. As you sail away, if your horse walks well and canters easily (as does this one), you insensibly think of 'A day's ride, a life's romance.' Is that romance yet over? It may be. We are 'old enough to know better.' But still we were quite sure when we started that we should meet with an adventure or two.
First of all, we saw two young people in a buggy, driving towards the mountain land which lay eastward in a cloud-world. There was something in the expression of their backs as they passed us which suggested an early stage of the Great Experiment. The bride was fair, with, of course, a delicate complexion—that goes without saying in this part of the world. The bridegroom was stalwart and manly looking. Presently we were overtaken by another young lady of prepossessing appearance, with two attendant cavaliers, well mounted and evidently belonging to the same party. Bound for some miles along the same lonely but picturesque road, we asked permission to join the party, and fared on amicably. Together we breasted the 'Six-Mile Hill,' and at length emerged upon the alpine plateau, which for many miles lies between the towns before mentioned.
Here the scene changed—the climate, the soil, the timber, the atmosphere. Eastward lay the darkly-brooding Titans of Kiandra, snow-capped and dazzling, the peaks contrasting with their darksome rugged sides, the blue and cloudless sky. Beneath our feet, beside and around us, lay the partially-thawed snow of Saturday's fall, in quantities which would have delighted the hearts of certain children of our acquaintance.
Snow in the abstract, 'beautiful snow,' is a lovely nature-wonder, concerning which many things have been sweetly sung and said. But in the concrete, after a forty-eight hours' thaw, it is injurious to roads, in that it causes them to be 'sloppy' and in a sense dangerous to horse and rider. Given a red, soapy soil, somewhat stony, sticky, and irregularly saturated, it must be a very clever steed, the ascents, descents, and sidelings being continuous, that doesn't make a mistake ​or two. All the same, the girl on the well-bred chestnut horse kept sailing away, up hill, down hill, and along sidelings steep as the roof of a house; the whole thing (to quote Whyte-Melville) 'done with the graceful ease of a person who is playing upon a favourite instrument while seated in an armchair.' We kept in sight the second detachment, coming up in time to bid farewell as they turned off to the residence of the bride's family, where there was to be a dance in celebration of the auspicious event. We separated with my unspoken benison upon so promising a pair.
The wedding guests having departed, we paced on for half-a-dozen miles until a break in the solemn forest, like a Canadian clearing, disclosed the welcome outline of the half-way hostelry. Here were there distinct traces of the austerity of the patriarch Winter, so mild of mien on the lower levels. Half a foot of snow lay on the roofs of barn and stable, while the remnant of a gigantic snow-image, reduced to the appearance of a quartz boulder, lay in front of the house.
A bare half-hour for refection was all that could be spared here, and as our steed ate his corn with apparently the same zest that characterised our consumption of lunch, it was time well spent. Boot and saddle again.
'But first, good mine host, what is the exact distance? The sun is low; the road indifferent rough; the night unfriendly for camping out.'
'Fifteen mile if you take the "cut"; eighteen by the road, every yard of it.'
'We mistrust short "cuts,"' say we, consulting the watch, which indicates 3.30 p.m.; 'they have lured us into difficulties ere now. But three miles make a tempting deduction from the weary end of the journey. We cannot miss it. Thanks; of that I am aware. Turn to the left, opposite the second house, cross the creek, turn to the right, and follow straight on.'
Of course. Just so. The old formula. How many a time have we cursed it and the well-intentioned giver, by all our gods, when stumbling, hours after, trackless, over an unknown country in darkness and despair. Reflected that by merely following the high road we should have been warmly housed, cheered, and fed long before. However, unusual enterprise or the mountain air induces us to try the ​short cut aforesaid; only this time, of course, we turn to the left, and immediately perceive ('facilis descensus Averni') that the path leads into a tremendous glen, with sides like the roof of a house. We dismount, as should all prudent riders not after cattle, and lead down our active steed. At the foot of the cañon is a hurrying, yellow-stained mountain stream. Dark-red bluffs, undermined and washed to the gravel, exposed in all directions. 'Worked and abandoned' is plainly visible to the eye of the initiated upon the greater portion of the locality; but still lingering last are miners' cottages and a garden here and there. Children, of course. Ruddy of hue and sturdy, they abound like the fruits of a colder clime in these sequestered vales.
'What is the name of this—place?' say we guardedly to a blue-eyed boy, good-humouredly nursing a fractious baby.
'Upper Tumberumba,' he returns answer proudly.
'And the road to the town?'
'Cross the creek and follow down for six mile, and there you are.'
The road on the far side of the violent little creek follows that watercourse, and is fairly made. Bridges are the main consideration, for there seem to be trois cent milles water-races, some too deep to fall into scathless; and 'beauty born of murmuring sound' must be plentiful, judging from the rushing, gushing, leaping, and tumbling waters before and around us.
This is a land of sluices, of head-races and tail-races, evidently, where 'first water' and ' second,' dam sites, and creek claims, with all the unintelligible phraseology of 'water diverted from its natural course for gold -mining purposes,' were once in high fashion and acceptance. As the short winter day darkens without warning, we trust that the bridges are sound, more especially as we have just cantered over one with a hole in it as big as a frying-pan.
One advantage secured by our adoption of the 'cut' is patently that of drier footing, the which causes our steed to amble with cheerfulness and alacrity. The night comes on apace, but there is still sufficient light to distinguish the road-way from obstacles and pitfalls. When the well-known sound of the water-mill breaks the stillness, light and voices betray the proximity of a township, and Tumberumba proper is reached.
​When we quit Tumberumba in the early morn for the return journey to Tumut, the air is charged with vapour, the mists lie heavily upon the hills. The low grey sky, the drizzle and the damp which pervade all nature, suggest 'The Lewis' or other Hebridean region. One can fully realise the sort of weather chiefly prevailing when the King of Bora uttered his pathetic farewell 'to his little Sheilah,' returning to his desolate dwelling alone, to distract himself as best he might with the company of the simple (but not vulgar) fishermen and a reasonable consumption of alcohol.
This opens up to the contemplative mind the whole vast 'Grief Question, and how people bear it.' What volumes might be written about the sorrows of the bereaved, the forsaken men or women!—'all the dull, deep sorrow, the constant anguish of patience.' How the slow torture drags on, varied only by pangs of acute mental pain—the throbs, the rackings, the utterly unendurable torment—what time the agonised spirit elects to quit its earthly tenement and face the dread unknown, rather than longer suffer the too dreadful present! So the soldier, captured by Indians, shoots himself to escape the inevitable torture. Also in this connection regarding anodynes, distractions, solaces, and medicaments, the which can be used harmlessly by one class of patients, but in no wise by others.
'An early start makes easy stages,' saith the seer. So it comes to pass that soon after mid-day we find ourselves at the Bago Cabaret, after which we incontinently dismount, fully minded to bait, after four or five hours' battling with the stony, sticky, slippery sidelings of the track. The good horse well deserves a feed. Also, thanks to the keenness of the atmosphere, we experience a steady prompting towards luncheon.
The horse is led away, and in the parlour we find a fire, a welcome, and agreeable society. We learn that the wedding dance duly took place, well attended, and a great success—our fair informants having been there and danced till daylight, after which they walked home a trifle of five miles, which, with snow still on the ground, showed, in our opinion, praiseworthy pluck and determination; a convincing proof, were any needed, that the Anglo-Saxon race has not degenerated in this part of the world. 'The reverse if anything,' ​as the irascible old gentleman in the hunting-field made answer after a fall, when it was politely inquired of him 'whether he was hurt.'
But pleasures are like poppies spread—
fair yet fleeting in the very constitution of them; so an hour having quickly passed, much refreshed in sense and spirit, we tackle the twenty-six very long miles, in our estimation, which divide us from the fair Tumut Valley. Still lowers the day. The mists shut out the snow-crowned peaks. The forest is saturated with moisture, which ever and anon drops down like a shower-bath when the breeze stirs the leaves briskly. It is not a gala day, exactly. But oh, how good for the country!
What beneficent phenomena are the early and the latter rain! As we look downwards we can see thousands of tiny clover leaflets, none of your Medicago saliva, with its yellow flower and deadly burr, but the true, sweet-scented English meadow plant, fragrant in spring, harmless, fattening, and sustaining to a wonderful degree, whenever it can command the moisture which is its fundamental necessity of growth. In days to come, every yard of this grand primeval woodland will be matted with it and the best English grasses, not forgetting that prime exotic the prairie grass (Bromus unioloides).
We are not aware whether there has been an extensive forest reserve proclaimed hereabouts, but in the interests of the State there should be. These grand, pillar-like timber trees, straight as gun-barrels, a hundred feet to the lowest branch, the growth of centuries, should not be abandoned to the bark-stripper, the ring-barker, the indiscriminate feller of good and bad timber alike. There is material here—gum, messmate, mountain ash, every variety of eucalyptus—to serve for the sawpits, the railway bridges, and sleepers of centuries to come, if properly guarded and supervised. And it behoves the elected guardians of the public rights to permit no private monopoly or forestalling; to see to the matter in time. For many an unremembered year have these glorious groves been slowly maturing. The carelessness of a comparatively short period may permit their destruction.
The eucalypts, as a family, have been subjected to undeserved contumely and scorn as trees which produce leaves ​but do not furnish shade, which are 'withered and wild in their attire' as regards umbrageous covering. All depends upon the locality, the altitude, the consequent rainfall. Here the frondage is thick yet delicate in the older trees, while among the younger growth the habit is almost as dense and drooping as that of the Acmena pendula, which many of them resemble in the mass of pink-grey leafage. I notice, too, the beautiful blackwood or hickory of the colonists (Acacia melanoxylon), though not in great abundance nor of unusual size. Nothing, for instance, like the specimens near Colac, Western Victoria, or between Port Fairy and Portland. And scrutinising closely the different genera, we discovered a tree which bore a curious resemblance to a hybrid between the eucalyptus and the said blackwood. The leaves were thick, blunt-edged, and singularly like the blackwood. The bark was like that of the mimosa on the stem and branches, but roughened towards the butt. The blossom—for it was just out—was unmistakably that of the eucalyptus tribe. We had never met with the specimen before and it puzzled us. It is locally known as the 'water gum.' The true mimosa and the wild cherry (Exocarpus cupressiformis) were common—this last of no great size; the wild hop occasionally. The English briar was not absent—as to which we foresee, for this rich soil, trouble in the future.
Lonely and hushed—in a sense awful—is this elevated region. The solitude becomes oppressive as one rides mile after mile along the silent highway, nor sees nor hears a sign of life save the note of the infrequent wood-thrush or the cry of the soaring eagle. But lo! the ruins of an ancient stock-yard! Easily recognised as belonging to the hoar antiquity of a purely pastoral régime. The selector-farmers do not put up such massive corner posts or cyclopean gateways. Not for them and their slight enclosures is the rush of a hundred wild six-year-old bullocks, with a due complement of 'ragers,' given every now and again to carry a whole side of the yard away. This was the station stockyard, doubtless, what time 'Bago Jemmy' and other stock-riders of the period acquired a colony-wide reputation for desperate riding (and equally hard drinking) amid these break-neck gullies and hillsides. They are gone; the wild riders, the wild cattle. Even the rails of the stock-yard have been utilised for purposes wide of their ​original intention. 'Their memorial is perished with them,' all save the huge corner and gate-posts, which, embedded four feet in the ground, are regarded as difficult and expensive to remove, and of no particular use, ornament, or value when uprooted. So they remain, possibly to puzzle future antiquarians, like the round towers of the Green Isle.
IN THE THROES OF A DROUGHT
This is my last ramble for a while through the plains and forests of the North-West; would that it had been made under more pleasing circumstances. 'How shall I endure to behold the destruction of my kindred?' The quotation is apposite. All pastoralists are akin to me by reason of old memories; and if Rain comes not in this month of March, or even in April, their destruction, financially, seems imminent.
What a weary time it is in the 'plains dry country,' whither my wandering steps have strayed at present. Far as eye can see, there is no herb nor grass nor living plant amid the death-stricken waste; not even the hard-visaged shrub—the attenuated, closely-pruned twigs of the salsolaceous plant. Earlier in the season a large proportion of the stock were removed, and were agisted at a high cost. The remainder were left to live or die as the season may turn out. The station-holders have at length become reckless, and have ceased to take trouble about the matter.
How hard it seems! For years the energetic, sanguine pastoralist shall invest every pound he has made, and more besides, in stud animals of high value, in judicious improvements, from which he is reasonably certain in a few years to receive splendid interest for the capital invested. When his plans are matured, when the improvement of his stock is demonstrated, will not his fame redound to the furthest limits of Australia? Eventually he will be able to revisit or for the first time behold Europe. All imaginable triumphs will be his. Rich, fortunate, envied, he will be amply repaid for the toils, the sacrifices, the privations of his earlier years.
​'Then comes a frost, a killing frost.' Well, not exactly that, though frosts of considerable severity do occur, hot as is the climate; but it ' sets in dry.' No rain comes after spring; none during summer; none in autumn; curious to remark, none even in winter—except, of course, insignificant or partial showers. That seems strange, does it not? Instead of from sixteen to twenty-six inches of rain in twelve months, there fall but six—even less perhaps. What is the consequence of all this? The creeks, the dams, the rivers dry up; the grass perishes; what little pasturage there may be, is eaten up by the famishing flocks.
During the summer it does not appear that the evil will be of such magnitude. The stock look pretty well. There is water; and the diet of dust, leaves, and sticks, with unlimited range, and no shepherds to bother, does not seem to disagree with them. Then the autumn comes, with shorter days; longer, colder nights. Still no rain! The sheep, the cattle, even the wild horses, begin now to feel the cruel pinch of famine. The weakest perish; the strong become weak; day by day numbers of the enfeebled victims are unable to rise after the weakening influences of the chilly night. The waterholes become muddy; defiled and poisoned with the carcases of animals which have had barely strength to drag themselves to the tempting water, over many a weary mile, have drunk their fill, and then lacked power to ascend the steep bank or extricate themselves from the clinging mud.
What a time of misery and despair is this for the luckless proprietor! He sees before his eyes the thousands and tens of thousands of delicately woolled sheep, in whose breeding and multiplication he has taken so much pains,—on behalf of which he has studied treatises, and gone into all the history of the merino family since the days of ancient Spanish Cabanas, Infantados, Escurials, what not,—converted into a crowd of feeble skeletons, perishing in thousands before his eyes without hope or remedy, save in the advent of rain, which, as far as appearances go, may come next year or the year after that.
Is it possible to imagine a condition more melancholy, more hopeless, more calculated to drive to suicide the hapless victim of circumstances, beyond his—beyond any man's ontrol? It has had the effect ere now. The torturing doubt, the ​hope deferred, has resulted in the dread, irrevocable step. And who can find it in his heart to condemn?
In a season like this, every one can realise the benefit of railways. How would these inland wastes be supplied were it not for the all-powerful steam-king? The dwellers hereabouts would scarcely have bread to eat; the necessaries of life would be enhanced in price; forage would be unattainable, except at prices which would resemble feeding them upon half-crowns. Talking to a teamster the other day about the signs of the times, I remarked that he and his comrades were compelled to carry quantities of forage with which to support their horses, while delivering loading.
'We'll have to carry a tank soon,' replied the tall, sun-bronzed Australian, 'if the season holds on this way. The waterholes are getting that low and choked up with dead stock as they're neither fit for man or beast to drink; and we lose horses too.'
'How is that?'
'Well, the heat, or the dust, or the rubbish in the chaff kills 'em. I can't rightly tell what it is; but these three teams lost five horses in one day—dropped down dead on that terrible hot Sunday.'
I did not wonder. There were the upstanding, well-conditioned Clydesdales walking along with their loads, gamely enough, but in a perfect cloud of dust. Above them the burning sun; around, the sandy, herbless waste. Different surroundings from those of the misty Northern Isles, from which their ancestors, near or remote, had come! Ponderous, heavy of hoof and hair, it seemed wonderful that they can do the work and travel the immense distances they do, under conditions so alien to their natural state. I inquired of their driver, himself an example of gradual adaptation to foreign habitude, whether the medium-sized, lighter-boned draught horses did not stand the eternal sun and drought better than their larger brethren. He thought they did. 'Wanted less food, and not so liable to inflammation or leg weariness.' I should be disposed to think that the Percheron horse, of which valuable breed several sires have lately been imported to Melbourne from Normandy, would be suitable for the long, hot, waggon journeys of the interior—a clean-limbed, active, spirited horse, immensely powerful for his size, easily ​kept, and more likely 'to come again' after exceptional fatigue. But I know from experience that the Australian horse in every class, from the Shetland pony to the Shire, is the strongest, most active, and most enduring animal that the world can show. And I hesitate in the assertion that by any other horse can he be profitably superseded.
As one traverses the arid waste, from time to time a whirlwind starts up within sight; a sand-pillar raises itself, contrasting strangely with the clear blue ether. Darkly smoke-coloured, furiously plunging about the base, it gradually fines off into the upper sky if you follow it sufficiently long.
'People doubt,' said the Eastern traveller to his guide, 'what produces those sand-pillars which so suddenly appear before us.'
'There is no doubt about the matter, praise be to Allah!' quoth the Bedouin. 'It is perfectly well known, say our holy men, that they are (Djinns) evil spirits.'
Is it so? and do they come to dance exultingly amid the stricken waste, over ruined hopes, dying herds and flocks—to mock at the vain adventurer who deemed that he could alter natural conditions and wrest fame and fortune from the ungenial wilds? Who may tell? They can scarcely afford a good omen. The unimaginative boundary-rider regards them as a 'sign of a dry season.' More likely, one would say, they are its result. In a long-continued drought the production of dust must needs be favourable to the action of whirlwinds.
The oppressiveness of the summer is more felt in March, perhaps, than in any other month of the year. The hot weather has tired out the bodily power of resistance. One yearns and pines for a change; if it comes not, an intolerable weariness, a painful languor, renders life for all not in robust health hard indeed to bear. Gradually relief arrives in the added length and coolness of the nights. Rain does not come, but the mosquitoes disappear. The dawn is almost chilly; the system is refreshed and invigorated. With the first heavy fall of rain a decided change of temperature takes place. In those happier sections of the continent, where this is the first cool month, the weather is all that can be wished. 'Ces jours cristals d'automne,' so much beloved by Madame de Sevigne at Petits Rochets, are reproduced. The friendly ​fireside—emblem of domestic happiness—awaits but the first week of April to be once more kindled. The plough is seen again upon the fallow fields. The birds chirp, as if with fresh hope, from the reviving woodlands. Nothing is needed but a rainfall for the full happiness of man and his humbler fellow-creatures. May His mercy, so often shown at sorest need, not fail us now!
From what road-reports come across me, I gather that typhoid fever is no infrequent visitor when the water becomes scarce, when sources are polluted, and the carcases of the rotting stock lie strewed over larger areas. Medical men seem to be at odds about the generation of this dire disease. Fever germs, bacilli, bacteria, water pollution, direct contagion,—all seem to have their advocates. It seems probable that towards the end of a drought the very air, uncleansed by shower and storm, becomes charged with disease germs. As to water pollutions, sometimes the disease is at its fiercest before a heavy fall of rain, to disappear almost magically afterwards. At other times the rain seems to intensify the epidemic. The dry air of the interior, however hot, has always been thought to be antagonistic to the disease. It has not proved so of late years. Occasionally there is an outbreak of exceptional virulence in some particular locality; but nothing has hitherto been elicited as to the special conditions tending to produce or to aggravate the disease.
At and around Bourke matters seem approaching a crisis. Much of the 'made' water on the back blocks has failed of late, and the stock have been brought into the 'frontage,' there to drink their fill, doubtless, but to be utterly deprived of food as represented by the ordinary herbage. If rain does not come within a month, dire destruction, worse and more extensive than in any previous drought, must take place; and yet since 1866 I have so often heard the same prediction, and it was never fulfilled. In the meantime man can do nought but hope and pray, if faith be his in the Divine Disposer of events. In days to come, a comprehensive system of water supply may alleviate much suffering and prevent misfortune; but though water may be secured and stored, the sparse herbage of the boundless plain, the red-soiled forest, cannot be so treated. Unless the rainfall be timely in these far solitudes, no human energy or forecast can avert disaster.
A SPRING SKETCH
In the saddle once more, and away for a week's journeying o'er the wide Australian Waste! The springtime is again with us. The clouds have dispensed their priceless moisture, albeit not all too generously. The level sun-rays shine clear over leagues of bright-hued turf and greenwood free. The pale, dawn-streaked azure was cloudless; the morning air keenly crisp. All nature is now jubilant. The voice of Spring, faint in tone but wildly sweet, is audible to the lover of nature. The cry of birds, the rustling leaves in the tall trees that shade the winding river, and the green waste of dew-besprinkled herbage, awaken thoughts of long-dead years—of the season of youth—of the lost Aïdenn of the heart's freshness.
That Paradise we shall regain nevermore, ah me! But we must do our devoir as best we may in these days of the after-time. Many a mile must be passed before nightfall, and we are a little short of time as usual; but our steed is fleet and free, the livelong day is before us, and the experienced cavalier can cover a long long stretch of woodland and plain before latest twilight without distressing the good horse either.
So we follow the winding waggon-tracks at only a moderate pace; observing as we go, in plant- and bird-life, floweret and herb, visible signs of development since our last acquaintance with them. The beautiful bronze-winged pigeon flits shyly through the thickets to her nest with its two white eggs, not unlike those of the tame congener. In the brook-ponds or marshy shallows the blue heron, the pied ibis, and the white spoonbill are wading or lounging, with the listless elegance of their tribe. The gigantic 'brolgan' or 'Native Companion,' tallest of Australian cranes, is to be seen in companies, ever and anon mirthfully conversing or 'dancing high and disposedly' before his ranked-up comrades.
For all manner of wild-fowl this is the 'close season.' Marauding teamsters, and others who should know better, now and then disregard the law; but on the whole the statute is enforced. A season of rest permits the black duck and the wood-duck, that smallest and most elegant of geese (for such is ​the Anas boscha in scientific nomenclature), the shoveller, the teal, the imposing mountain-duck, to rear their broods in peace.
While we are environed by that darksome eucalyptus, the sombre 'ironbark' of the colonists, the mournful bālah, and the cypress-seeming pine, no token of the advancing spring greets us. 'A fringe of softer green' may brighten the pine wood, but as yet the touch of the magician's wand is unheeded. But as we speed towards the noonday, and the great plains of the North -West spread limitless before us, the frondage changes. The monotony of the endless champaign is broken by clumps and belts of timber. And amid these welcome oases of leafage might a botanist hold revel and delight his inmost soul. There is a sprinkling of casuarina and pine, but these copses are crowded with new and strangely-beautiful shrubs. First in pride of place comes the wilgah, or native willow, a brightly-green umbrageous tree, with a short upright stem and drooping salicene festoons, evenly cropped at the precise distance that the stock can reach from the ground. There are few lawns or meadows in Britain that would not be improved by the transplantation of the wilgah from these untended gardens of the wild. The mogil (native orange) is a dense-growing shrub, not wholly unlike the prince of fruit-and flower-bearers; to complete the resemblance, it is possessed of a fruit resembling in appearance only, faintly perhaps in perfume, the European original. The leopard-tree, with spotted bark, has for a comrade the beef-wood, with blood-red timber, almost bleeding to the remorseless axe. The glaucous-foliaged myall, 'intense and soulful-eyed,' with its swaying arms and drooping habit, looks like a tree out of its mind. It boasts, with its more sturdy cousin, the yarran, a strangely-powerful violet perfume. These, with thorn acacias and delicate fringed-leaved mimosas, seem ready to burst into flower with the next calm tropical day. An early-blooming acacia has made a commencement; a shower of fresh, golden sprays illumines its tender greenery.
Here our pretty, pink-legged, pink-eyed flock-pigeons, with their crests raised, and their pointed tails elevated as they perch, rejoin us. The grey and crimson galah parrots are still numerous. They have surely delegated their nursery duties. They must pair and multiply, but, like fashionable parents, manage to enjoy the pleasures of society notwithstanding.
​The day is still young. The great flocks of merino sheep, running loose in paddocks enclosed only by wire fences, have not arisen to commence their daily round of nibbling. About five thousand are encamped near the corner of an intersecting gate. Near them are the remnants of a leading aboriginal family, in the shape of twenty or thirty 'red forester' kangaroos, popularly called 'soldiers.' These curiously-coloured marsupials are so bright of hue that one wonders whether they gradually acquired the colour (pace Darwin) so as to assimilate with the red earth of the plains over which they bound. They do not trouble themselves to go far out of my way—they simply depart from the road; and in calmly crossing a track one of the flying does 'takes off' a yard before she comes to it, and clearing the whole breadth without an effort, sends herself over about twenty feet without disturbing her balance.
Early as the season is, long trains of wool-waggons, drawn by bullocks or horses, are slowly crossing the plains. They carry from thirty to fifty bales each, much skill of its kind being required to secure the high-piled loads in position. At one rude hostelry I counted not less than twelve bullock-waggons so laden. The teams—at that moment unyoked, and feeding in a bend of the creek, from fourteen to eighteen in each—made up a drove of nearly two hundred head. Their bells sound like the chimes of a dozen belfries, pealing in contest. On the waggons, drawn up with shafts towards the railway terminus, were, say, four hundred bales of wool, representing a value of not less than six thousand pounds. Each bale bore in neat legend the brand of the station, with the weight, number, and class thereon imprinted, as 'J.R., Swan Creek—No. 1120—First combing.'
The last month enjoyed at least one sufficing fall of rain, not less than two inches by the rain-gauge. It is hard to cause these salsiferous wastes 'to blossom like the rose'; but a result closely analogous invariably follows rainfall. Along the water-courses, the alluvial flats and horseshoe 'bends' are ankle high with wild trefoil and quick-springing grasses. The cotton-bush and salt-bush, perennial fodder plants often most 'wild and withered' of attire even when fairly nutritious to the flocks, put forth shoots and spikelets of a tender appearance. All Nature, strange as her vestments may be, under a southern ​sky, is full of the beauty and tenderness of the earth's jubilee, joyous Spring.
But surely we are impinging on the domain of the giant Blunderbore, falsely alleged to have been slain by the irreverent Jack, prototype of the modern 'larrikin' in his turbulent denial of authority. Yea, and yonder plain is his poultry-yard. Hither come his cochins and dark brahmas to be fed on corn as large as bullets, with tenpenny nails by way of tonic. They walk softly along, lowering their lofty heads to the earth, running too, occasionally, like dame Partlet, after a grass-hopper, and diversifying their attitudes like Chanticleer. We count them, twenty-six in all, gigantic fowls able to pick the hat from your head. They are emus! See the quarry, and neither hound nor hunter! When, lo! from out the further belt of timber rides forth a band of horsemen. They are shearers, bound on a holiday excursion. The preceding day has been wet, and the supply of sheep consequently short. All are well mounted, and look picturesque as they burst into a sudden gallop, and every horse does its best to overtake the (figuratively) flying troop, now setting to for real work. The pace is too good for the majority; but one light weight, mounted on a long-striding chestnut, that probably has ere now carried off provincial prizes, is closing on the apteryx contingent. Another quarter of a mile—yes—no—by George!—yes. He has collared the leader; he crosses and recrosses the troop. Had he but a stockwhip or lasso he could wind either round one of the long necks so invitingly stretched. But he has proved the superior speed of his horse. Such a trial was said in old days to have sent to the training-stable one of Sydney's still quoted racehorses. There is no need to kill aimlessly one of the inoffensive creatures; and he pays an unconscious tribute to the modern doctrine of mercy by drawing off and rejoining his comrades.
Further still our roving commission has carried us; we have halted at the homestead of a great pastoral estate. A cattle-station in the days when small outlay in huts and yards was fitting and fashionable, now it has been 'turned into sheep,' as the phrase goes. A proprietor of advanced views has purchased the place, less for the stock than for the broad acres, and the improvement Genie has worked his will upon the erstwhile somnolent wilderness.
​The change has been sweeping and comprehensive. The vast area of nearly half a million of acres has been enclosed and subdivided by the all-pervading wire-fencing. A couple of hundred thousand merinos, with a trifle of forty thousand half-grown lambs, now graze at large, without a shepherd nearer than Queensland. A handsome, well-finished house stands by the artificial sheet of water, formed by the big dam which spans the once meagre 'cowall' or anabranch of the main stream.
A windmill-pump irrigates the well-kept garden, where oranges are in blossom and ripening their golden globes at the same time. Green peas and cauliflowers, maturing early, appeal to a lower aestheticism. The stables, the smithy, the store, the men's huts, the carpenter's shop, form a village of themselves; not a small one either.
A quarter of a mile northward, backed up by a dense clump of pines, stands the woolshed, an immense building with apparently acres of roofing and miles of battened floors, £5000 to £6000 representing the cost. It is now in full blast. We walk over with the centurion to whom that particularly delicate commission, the captaincy of 'the shed,' has been entrusted. It is by no means an ordinary sight. We ascend a few steps at the 'top' of the shed, and look down the centre aisle, where sixty men are working best pace, as men will only do when the pay is high, and each man receives all he can earn by superior skill or strength.
They are chiefly young men, though some are verging on middle age, and an old man here and there is to be seen. Scarcely any but born Australians are on the ' board,' as the section devoted to the actual shearing operation is termed. Though an occasional Briton or foreigner enters the lists, the son of the soil has long since demonstrated his superior adaptation to this task, wherein skill and strength are so curiously blended.
Watch that tall shearer halfway down the line. A native-born Australian, probably of the second or third generation, he stands six feet and half an inch, good measurement, in his stockings. His brawny fore-arm is bare to the elbow. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested, light-flanked, he would have delighted the eye of Guy Livingstone. You cannot find any ​man out of Australia who can shear a hundred and fifty full-grown sheep in a day—as he can—closely, evenly, with wonderful seeming ease and rapidity. Like his horsemanship —a marvel in its way—it has been practised from boyhood, and, as with arts learned early in life, a perfection almost instinctive has resulted.
The shearers proper are all white men. The pickers-up and sorters of the fleece are a trifle mixed, the former being chiefly aboriginal blacks, some of the latter Chinamen. In the pressing demand for labour which obtains when a thousand sheds are at work, or preparing to shear, in the early spring months, over the length and breadth of the land, the inferior races find their opportunity.
A pound a week, lodging, and a liberal diet-scale, render the shearing season a kind of carnival for the proletariat, from the first fierce gleam of the desert sun in July, till the mountain snow-plains are cleared in January and February.
There are eight men at the wool-table—a broad, battened platform—on which the fleeces are spread, skirted, rolled up, and self-tied by an ingenious infolding knack, thrown into the wool-sorter's narrow pathway, and by him transferred to the separate bins of first and second combing, clothing, super, etc. The next stage carries them to the wool-presses, which somewhat complicated machinery, aided by skilled and experienced labourers, turns out daily fifty to sixty neatest, compactest bales. Thence on trucks propelled to the dumping-press, an hydraulic ram -driven monster, which reduces them to less than half their former size, and hoops them with iron bands.
Waggon teams are in attendance at the dumping-sheds, and before sundown much of the wool that was on the sheep's backs at sunrise will be loaded up, or on the road to the railway terminus.
Even that bourne of the weary wayfarer by coach, and the dusty, bearded teamster, is shifting its position nearer and nearer annually to the great central wilderness. As I ride homeward, the tents of navvy gangs appear suddenly through the darkening twilight, in the midst of pine-wood and wilgah brakes. The muffled thunder of blasts is borne ever and anon through the rarely-vexed atmosphere, as the sandstone hills are riven. But the central plain once reached, no work ​but the shallow trench and the low embankment will be required for hundreds of miles.
In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own railway platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when possibly a tramway thence to the dumping-room will be a recognised and necessary 'improvement.' When that day comes, shearers and washers will arrive by train from the coast-range, or the 'Never Never' country; King Cobb will be deposed or exiled; 'Sundowners' will be abolished; and much of the romance and adventure of pastoral life will have fled for ever.
NEW YEAR'S DAY 1886
In the list of rambles, possible in the event of certain undefined conditions coming to pass, one fairly-original project has always commended itself to me. An overland tramp from Sydney to Melbourne in the garb and character of a swagman seemed to offer special inducements. Inexpensive as to wearing apparel and including a position not difficult to keep up, the idea suggested health, variety, and adventure. From such a standpoint all grades of society might be observed in new and striking lights.
Circumstances prevented me, during the present holiday season, from carrying out this plan in its entirety. Nevertheless I found myself, in company with the usual midsummer contingent of strangers and pilgrims, in the metropolis of the southern colony; like them in quest of the rare anodyne which deadens care and allays regret. And what a blessed and salutary change is this from the inner wastes, the sun-scorched deserts, whence some of us have emerged but recently! I am not going to cry down the Bush, the good land of spur and saddle, of manly endeavour and steadfast endurance, which has done so much for many of us; but after a long cruise it is conceded that every sailor-man, from foremost Jack to the Captain bold, needs a 'run ashore.' His health demands it; his morale is, in the long run, not deteriorated thereby. For analogous reasons those of us who dwell afar from the green coast-fringe, having perhaps more than our share of sunshine, require a sea change. Every bushman, gentle or simple, should compass an annual holiday, which I recommend him to ​pass, if possible, in the colony where he does not habitually reside.
'Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit' is an aphorism which has been variously garbed. I endorse the dictum, with limitations. For the removal of that insidious mental fungus, provincial prejudice, there is no remedy like a moderate dose of travel.
Chief among the luxuries in the nature of Christmas gifts with which the wayfarer is presented on arrival in Melbourne may be reckoned an almost total immunity from the heat tyranny. The thermometer registers a scale usually associated with personal discomfort, but oppressiveness is neutralised by certain adjuncts of civilisation—lofty houses, cool halls, and shady trees. The ever-sighing sea-breeze—fair Calypso of the desert-worn Ulysses—invites to soft repose; while the prevalence of ice, as applied to the manufacture of comforting beverages, transforms thirst into a disguised blessing. The glare of the noonday sun, so harmful to the precious gift of sight, even to reason's throne, is here 'blocked,' to use the prevailing idiom of the week, by a hundred cunning devices. The marvels of capitalised industry, the results of science, the miracles of art, are daily displayed. Old friends, new books, freshly-coined ideas, strange sights, wonder-signs of all shades and hues, press closely the flying hours. The tired reveller sinks into dreamless rest each night, only to enter upon a fresh course of enjoyment and adventure with the opening morn.
I find myself following a multitude on one of the first days after arrival, not 'to do evil,' it may be humbly asserted, but to behold the Inter-Colonial Cricket Match. We step out past the Treasury and enter a side alley of Eden. The broad, asphalted walk leads through an avenue of over-arching elms—a close, embowered shade over which our enemy, the sun, has scant power. Anon we cross a winding streamlet, rippling through a gloom of fern-trees and a miniature tropical forest. There the thrush and blackbird flit unharmed, the moss velvet carpets the dark mould, and but a slanting sun-ray flecks the shadows from the close-ranked lofty exotics—'a place for pleading swain and whispering lovers made.' But the order of the day for all sorts and conditions of men and maids is plainly Richmond Park. Only a few deserters are seen from ​the ranks of the holiday-seeking army as we thread the leafy defiles. Presently we emerge upon the unshaded road which, through the Jolimont estate—erstwhile a Viceregal residence—conducts us to the Melbourne cricket-ground.
Here, truly, is a sight for unaccustomed eyes. The great enclosure encircled by ornamental iron railings, larrikin proof, as I am informed, its level, close-shaved green a turf triumph and species of enlarged billiard-table as applied to cricket purposes. It is girdled by a ring of well-grown oaks and elms, through which the glossy-leaved Norfolk Island fig-trees, pushing their more lavish and intense foliage, communicate a southern tone.
I stand invested with the privileges of the pavilion, an imposing three-storeyed edifice, containing all necessary conveniences for the comfort of the athletes of the contest, as well as of their friends and well-wishers, who are in the proud position of members. The arrangements are liberal and comprehensive. Refreshment bars and luncheon tables, lavatories, dressing-rooms, billiards, and other palliatives are here provided, while on the western side are asphalted grounds, defended by wire netting, where the votaries of the racquet and tennis-ball display their skill. From the graduated tiers of seats in the lower or upper rooms, as well as from the roof itself, a perfect view of the game may be obtained; while on either side of the lawn, under cover or otherwise, full provision is made for the comfort of the gentler sex, always liberal in patronage of these popular contests. Around the remaining portions of the enclosure, and protected from the profanum vulgus by a high iron fence, accommodation is provided for the rank and file of the spectators, who, at a small cost, are admitted.
The hour is come and the man. Twelve o'clock has struck. New South Wales has won the toss. From the pavilion gate the manly form of Murdoch is seen to issue, cricket-armoured, with trusty bat in hand. He enters the arena amid general plaudits, followed by Alec Bannerman. Then forth file the eleven champions of Victoria, who spread themselves variously over the field. Palmer gives the ball a preliminary spin; Blackham stretches his limbs and stands ready and remorseless—a cricketer's fate—behind the wicket The first ball is catapulted—swift speeding, with dangerous break. Murdoch ​'pokes it to the off' or 'puts it to leg,' and the great encounter has commenced.
Wonderful and chiefly comprehensible must it be to the uninitiated or the foreigner to mark the rapt attention with which the performance is viewed by the thousands of all classes and ages who are now gathered around. Ten thousand people watch every flight of ball or stroke of bat with eager interest, with prompt, instructed criticism. Wonderful order, indeed a curious silence, for the most part, prevails. It is too serious a matter for light converse. The interchange of opinion is conveyed with bated breath; a narrow escape, to be sure, is noted with a sigh of relief; a hit with cheers and clapping of hands. When the fatal ball scatters the stumps, or drops into the hands of the watchful adversary, one unanimous burst of applause breaks from the vast assemblage. His Lordship the Bishop of Melbourne, who sits in one of the front seats watching the scene with an air compounded of interest and toleration, doubtless wishes that he could secure a congregation on great occasions so large, so deeply observant, so closely critical, so sincerely aroused. Doubtless his Lordship, conceding, with the kindly wisdom that distinguishes him, that the people must have their recreations, would admit that from no other spectacle could so many persons of all ranks and ages, and both sexes, derive so large an amount of innocent gratification.
The 'cricket is so good' that several days elapse before the perhaps somewhat too-protracted match is over. Heavy scoring on both sides in the first innings. An exciting finish on the fifth day wrests the chaplet temporarily from New South Wales. Victoria wins with three wickets to go down. But those who are willow-wise aver that if—ah me! those ifs—Spofforth and Massie had been there, the latter with the advantage of the matchless wicket, another tale might have been told—
From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, And Flodden had been Bannockbourne.
The bells have chimed on that fateful midnight when died the old year; the radiant stranger is a crowned king. In the forenoon we turn our steps westwards, and enter another of the parks with which this city has been generously endowed. A ​holiday-loving race, certes, are we Australians. Had Victoria been a Roman province, her populace would have been regally furnished with panem et circenses, or known the reason why. With the eight hours' system, high wages, and frequent holidays, the working-man of the period, compared with his European brother, is an aristocrat. But here we are once more on the Flemington race-course, and of it, as of the Melbourne cricket-ground, we feel inclined to assert (pace Trollope) that it must be, in its way, the best in the world.
Much thoughtful care has been bestowed upon the grounds, the buildings, the adjuncts; much money spent since the old days, when it differed little from an ordinary cattle-paddock. And the results are bewildering. Whence this lovely lawn 'with verdure clad,' where, amid flowers and fountains, crowds of well-dressed people stroll and linger, protected as in their own gardens from inconvenient sound or sight? this broad, smooth terrace-promenade below the Stand? this immense edifice, where in sheltered comfort every stride of the race can be seen? these perfect arrangements for the protagonists—brute and human—in the Olympian games we have come to witness? Is this the place where often amid heat and dust, not infrequently under soaking showers, the same sports have been witnessed by the much-enduring crowd? or has the Eastern enchanter of our boyhood carried off the ancient race-course bodily, and replaced it with this garden of Armida?
If the surroundings are complete, and the concomitants exhilarating, the weather is delicious. All things have combined to make this first-born of the opening year a day of days. The unobtrusive sun is merely warm; the bright, blue sky softly toned by fleeting clouds; the sea-breeze whispers of the wave's cool marge and ocean caves.
'On such a day it were a joy to die,' and as in the first race—the 'Hurdle'—one beholds Sparke's rider pulling desperately at the chain-bit in his horse's mouth, as he fights madly for the lead, it appears but too probable that he is destined for the sacrifice. The violent chestnut, however, contrary to an established theory, does not run himself out, or smash his jockey. He retains the lead gallantly, and, with the exception of a perilous bang over the last hurdle, touches nothing. He wins the race from end to end, confounding the backers of Lady Hampden and Vanguard, the latter horse ​having carried a hurdle on his hocks for some distance, and so lost his very good show in the race.
Archie wins the Bagot Plate, confirming his friends in their previous good opinion. Those, however, who backed him for 'the Standish' on the strength of it, are doomed to furnish another example of the 'you never can tell' theory, as he is therein beaten by Mr. Charles Lloyd's Chuckster. The remaining races are well contested, and many a good horse extends himself ere the Criterion Stakes, the last race on the programme, are won; but, curious to relate, one feels more interested in the people nowadays than in the horses. The pleasant walks and talks, which are possible in this equine paradise, detract from the keen interest with which formerly the possible winners were regarded. Even the luncheon at a friend's table (one of a series provided by the Management), with its accompaniments of smiles, champagne, and lightsome converse, takes its place as a principal event. Afternoon tea, not less pleasant in its way, succeeds; after which function the mass of handsomely-appointed equipages in the carriage enclosure begins to disintegrate, driving up singly to the side entrance. Whether the beer, presumably imbibed by the coachman, has got into the horses' heads, I am unable to state; but the latter prefer the use of their hind-legs temporarily. This effervescence, however, soon subsides. The four-in-hands depart. Carriage after carriage rolls away; their daintily-attired occupants are whirled off safely. Nous autres take the Flemington road, or fight for a railway seat; and a day of pleasure, marked with a white stone for some of us, comes cheerily to an end.