The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-07
Strange Stories of the Australian Bush
BY MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.

Strange stories of the Bushl Fearsome
indeed would these be, could the Great
Grim Wild give up all it's secrets. Austria
liza is old-old-in the second childhood of
it's boar antiquity. But of the peoples that
dwelt there in ancient days, and of the
cataclysms which have made the land what
it is. TO history has been written save such
as may be found in it's extinct volcanoes,
its strange mammals, fits weird-looking
gum trees and the legends Of the blacks.
The civilizing Englishman marches with
long steps when once he sets foot on the
soil. He is an iconoclast, and an instru-
ment of fate. tending to the survival of the
fittest. He brings firearms, reach-me-
downs, railways, the penny post the beau
tiful workings of civil law. and, worst of
all, grog. Under his influence, bush ro-
nance of the old wild sort must needs die
quickly, and there is small hope, in
brand new commonwealth, that anything
will be left of the peculiar poetry of the
bush.
When was young imagination had yet
chance Of rioting among the possibilities of
UNEMPLOYED wastes Now the explorer has
but an undistinguished vocation, and little
remains to be learned behind even the fast
nesses of the north coast range or below
the Carpentaria Blight. The Barcoo dis
trict is not now an unattaipable, uninhab-
liable terror. You can't stretch a line
eighty miles without touching a piano or
a sewing machine. Bushmen grumble, for
ladies and babies are as thick as bandit
coots, while 1t Is a quarter of century
or over since the old never-never country
ceased to be the white mans grave. This
stunts things back TO the beginning, when
cannibals held their orgies within forty
miles of where Brisbane government house
stands, and wild white men still roamed
the bush.
Convicts, these, mostly, as long as penal
settlements lasted and afterwards-with-
In my own time-occasional escapes from
New Caledonia. One of such-an ex-chef-
did for nearly year provide palais-royal
fare for a sQuatter in the coast blocks,
who till then had cheerfully subsidized on
salt junk and damper, and who afterwards,
as far as his palate went, a spoiled
man. How the French cook concocted
those dainty dishes l know not. Brunton
Stephens, the Australian poet, tells the
tale of how Chinaman wrought succu-
lent pies out of a litter of newborn pup
pies. 1t is certain, however. that for those
who look, the bush has delicacies to fur
nish forth Roman banquet. L can with
personal knowledge speak of the excel
lence of iguana flesh; also of a sort of
truffie fungus to be dug in the scrub, and
of weird but toothsome larvae, pouched
mice and eggs Of a monster ant-all OF
which require imitation to be appreciated.
WILD WHITE MEN.
The wild white men make a chapter of
their own in the strange romance of the
Bush. / remember a certain goblin terror
of my nursery days. taking rank with
Debil-debil of the blacks camp-the wild
white man Of Bribie island-who could be
whistled for by the authorities to carry
us away and eat us If we were naughty.
The Bribie island marooner-a shipwrecked
seaman who had cast his lot with the
blacks, and would not be persuaded to leave
them-was before my time. however. So
was William Buckley, the first runaway
from Governor Philips's convict station--a
giant in stature, and in the astonished eyes
OF the natives beholding white man for
the first time-a supernatural visftant.
of their own chiefs, or, as they put II, lone
fellow-black. gone bong (dead) and jumped
up white man,"
This superstition has saved the life of