In Bad Company, and other stories

by Rolf Boldrewood

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 roadway 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 sativa, 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 stock-yard, 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.