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 aftertime. 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 'iron-bark' of the colonists, the mournful balāh, 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 galāh 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 watercourses, 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 grasshopper, 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 race-horses. 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 æstheticism. 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 half-way 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.