JOURNEY UP COUNTRY—ANECDOTES OF BUSH LIFE.
Our friends accepted an invitation to go up country to visit a cattle station and also a sheep run, and to spend a week or so in the bush. They went by train as far as the railway could carry them, and were met at the station by a wagon which enabled them to finish their journey. They arrived at the station late in the afternoon, after a delightful drive through the gum-tree forest and across a small plain. It was not strictly a plain, however, as the ground was undulating, and in the hollows between the ridges there was generally a growth of trees from a quarter to a half a mile in width which broke the monotony of the landscape. The road was not the smoothest in the world, and before they had gone half way Harry and Ned both remarked that they would have excellent appetites for supper, and hoped that the meal would not be long delayed after their arrival at the cattle station.
The party received a cordial welcome from their host, Mr. Syme, who had preceded them a day in advance and sent his younger brother to the railway to meet them. About half a mile from the house they saw three or four men lying on the ground by the roadside, evidently taking a rest or waiting for something. They reminded our young friends of the individuals frequently seen in the United States, and known as “tramps,” and after getting out of earshot of the party Ned asked their new acquaintance, who was escorting them, what those men were.
“Oh! those are sundowners,” was the reply, and then there was a pause.
“Sundowners!” exclaimed Harry. “What is a sundowner?”
“A sundowner is what you call a tramp in America,” was the reply; “and he gets his name from one of his peculiarities. It is the custom all over Australia—I mean in the country districts—to feed and lodge anybody who comes along, and if he has no money there is no charge for his entertainment. He is expected to move on in the morning the first thing after breakfast, unless we happen to have work for him and can give him employment at regular wages. If he comes along anywhere in the afternoon before sunset, he is expected to do any odd work that may be handy until supper, as a payment in part, at least, for his night’s entertainment.
“Most of these fellows don’t like to work,” he continued, “and so they take good care not to arrive at a place before sunset. If they find they are getting too near it, they sit or lie down on the ground and wait until the sun has disappeared below the horizon. That is why we call them sundowners, as they turn up just after the sun has gone down.”
“It is certainly very liberal on the part of the people in the country to feed and lodge all comers,” remarked Ned.
“Well, we think it’s not illiberal. It is the custom of the country which has grown up from the early days when farms were far apart and travelers were few in number. When the custom first began, the number of this sort of travelers would not exceed a dozen in a month. Nowadays we often lodge that number in a single night, and sometimes it is a pretty heavy tax on us. I don’t think it will be many years before we have laws that will restrict these wanderers somewhat, just as you have tramp laws in many of the States of your Union. There is a very large number of idlers going about the country and subsisting in this way. They always pretend to be searching for employment, but whenever employment is offered, it is not the kind that they want. They are like an American tramp I heard of once, who was always looking in winter for a job at hay-making, and in summer he wanted to find employment at cutting ice. When one of these fellows gets to a sheep station, he says he knows nothing about sheep, but understands everything about cattle; at the cattle station he reverses his story, and wants a job at shepherding.”
“Don’t you have trouble with them sometimes?” one of the youths remarked. “Are they willing to accept what you offer them, or do they demand something better?”
“As to that,” was the reply, “there is a good deal of difference among them. We don’t feed them with the best that the place affords, and the majority of them accept the situation and take what we choose to give. Cold meat and bread are their usual fare, and there is always enough of that. Sometimes they make a row, and demand to be fed just in the same way that we feed our own farm hands. For instance, only last evening I was called into the men’s dining-room to quell a disturbance caused by a sundowner. The travelers’ table was supplied with cold meat, bread, and tea, while the table of our farm hands had on it bread and hot roast mutton. The sundowner had a knife in his hand and was threatening to kill the kitchen maid unless she gave him hot mutton instead of cold.”
“What did you do about it?”
“I told him that if he could not eat cold meat he was not hungry enough to eat anything, and if he did not put that knife away one of our men would knock his head off. He became quiet at once and sat down to his supper, muttering something about not being treated like a gentleman. We would like to shut our doors altogether against this class of fellows, but there are difficulties in the way. We would be liable at times to turn away honest and deserving men who were really in search of employment, and furthermore, the revengeful scoundrels would set our buildings on fire during the night, or perhaps kill our cattle and horses. They would be less likely to do the latter than the former, as the destruction of our buildings by fire would be much easier and safer than the other proceeding. We certainly need some kind of legal restriction over these sundowners, and we will get it in the course of time.”
The house at which our friends arrived was large and spacious, and its external appearance, as they approached it, betokened hospitality. It covered a considerable area of ground but was only a single story in height, with the exception of one end, where there was an upper story occupied by the female servants. The men employed at the place ate and slept in a building in the rear of the principal house, the two being connected by a kitchen and a shed. The house was substantially constructed of wood, the sides being double walled with planking, while the roof sloped gently to the front. There were gutters at the eaves to catch all the water which came down in the form of rain, and convey it to a large cistern just in the rear of the main dwelling. Their host explained that they had a fine spring close to the house, from which they usually obtained their supply of water. “This spring sometimes gives out in seasons of excessive dryness,” said he, “and then we fall back upon the cistern.”
“You have been long enough in Australia,” he continued, “to learn the full value of water, and we are obliged to be careful in the use of it and in selecting a location for our house. In the great drought, when we had no rain for two years, we suffered exceedingly and a great many of my cattle perished for thirst. Since then I have built a reservoir for storing water, and if another drought should come, I don’t think my herds will suffer as much as they did.”
Dr. Whitney and our young friends were shown to the rooms they were expected to occupy during their stay. Dr. Whitney was assigned to a good-sized bedroom, while the youths were placed in another bedroom close to it and equipped with two beds. They made a brief survey of the room and concluded that they would be very comfortable. Harry remarked that it was quite as good as any room they had thus far occupied in Australian hotels. They devoted a short time to removing the dust of travel and putting themselves in a condition of cleanliness, and shortly after they appeared on the veranda, where their host was awaiting them, and dinner was announced.
The size of the dining-room indicated that the place was an hospitable one, as the table was capable of accommodating not fewer than twenty people without crowding. Harry took note of the menu which comprised their meal, and according to his memorandum it was as follows:—
“Soup of kangaroo tail, mutton pie, roast beef, potatoes, cauliflower and parsnips, hot and cold bread, plum pudding and tea. There were also some canned apricots of home production. Altogether it was a very substantial meal, excellent in quality, liberal in quantity, and well cooked throughout.”
The evening was passed in front of a big fire in the large sitting-room. As the night was chilly and somewhat damp, the fire was very welcome. The time was passed in conversation concerning the cattle business, interspersed with stories of Australian life. Harry and Ned asked the permission of their host to make use of their notebooks, and their request was readily granted. Accordingly, they kept their pencils in their hands, and placed on paper anything which seemed to them particularly interesting.
Harry made note of a statement of their host concerning the cattle business and its ups and downs. One of his notes reads as follows:—
“To go into the cattle business, one ought to have a capital of not less than fifty thousand dollars, and he could use one hundred thousand to advantage. His first step is to secure a tract of land, and this he does by getting a grant from the government allowing him to occupy an area of ground several miles square at a rental of ten or twenty shillings annually for each square mile. His next step is to secure location, and to do this he travels a great deal through the interior, visiting ground that has not been taken up, and exercising his judgment as to the choice of ground. He must take care to find a place where there is good grass and good water; he wants a certain amount of timber on his land, but not too much, and the water holes must be at suitable distances apart. Many a man has come to grief in the cattle business owing to his bad selection of a location.
“A man who takes a large area of ground in this way is called a ‘squatter.’ You can put this down in your notebooks, young men, that a squatter in Australia is just the reverse of the same individual in America. In your country, the squatter is a man who lives upon a small tract of land which he cultivates himself, while here he is a man, as I said before, who takes a large area of ground for pastoral purposes. The equivalent of the American squatter is here called a ‘selector,’ and between the selectors and the squatters there is a perpetual warfare, as the selector is allowed by law to select a location for a farm on any government land, whether occupied by a squatter or not. The selectors give the squatters a great deal of trouble, and many of us think that the colonial governments have treated us very badly.
“Well, after getting our ground we proceed to stock it, and with fifty thousand dollars we can buy about twenty-five hundred head of cattle. Then we put up our buildings, employ our stockmen, and set to work. If we have good luck we can pay our expenses, almost from the beginning, by sending fat cattle to market. For the first five years we sell only fat cattle; at the end of that time we have doubled our original stock, and then we begin to sell ordinary cattle as well as fat ones. From that time on, if no mishap befalls us, we can sell twelve or fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of cattle every year, including all kinds. At this rate the profits are satisfactory, and in fifteen or twenty years, a man who has started out with fifty thousand dollars can retire on eight or ten times that amount.”
Harry asked what were the drawbacks to the cattle business; that is, what were the kinds of bad luck that could happen to a man who engaged in it.
“As to that,” replied Mr. Syme, “there are several things which it is not possible to foresee or prevent. In the first place, nobody can foresee a great drought when cattle perish of thirst and starvation; added to this danger is that of diseases to which cattle are subject, especially pleuro-pneumonia. Whole herds may be carried away by this disease, and if it once gets established among the cattle of an estate it is very difficult to eradicate it. Sometimes it is necessary to kill off an entire herd in order to get rid of the disease, and I have heard of cattle runs that were depopulated successively two or three times by pleuro-pneumonia, and their owners ruined. Sometimes the market is very low in consequence of an over-supply, and the price cattle furnish is a very poor remuneration to stock raisers.
“Sheep farming is more profitable, on the whole, than cattle farming,” he continued; “but the risks are somewhat greater in consequence of the greater liability of sheep to disease. There are several diseases peculiar to sheep which carry them off in great numbers, and they are affected by drought quite as much as cattle are. A sheep run can be started with a small capital, and you might almost say with no capital at all. For instance, a man with very little money, or practically with none at all, can find a location and squat upon it, and then go to one of the cities, and if he is known to be a respectable, honest, and industrious man and free from vicious habits, he can find somebody who will supply the capital for buying a few hundred sheep. With these sheep he can make a start, and if he is industrious and attentive to business, and has no bad luck with his flocks, he will make money rapidly. In ten years he will have a comfortable fortune; but, on the other hand, he is liable at any time to be ruined by two successive bad seasons of drought and disease. Sometimes the price of wool is so low that it leaves very little profit to the sheep farmer after paying for shepherds, shearers, and other employees, and the expense of taking his wool to the sea-coast.”
Their host remarked, in conclusion, that he was afraid the good days of cattle and sheep farming had gone and would never come again. “Land has become dear,” he said, “and labor unions compel us to pay high prices for stockmen and shearers, especially the latter, and the prices of wool are not as good as they used to be. The wool market of the world is low, and so is the cattle market. Since the practise of freezing beef and mutton and carrying the frozen meat to England has come into vogue the prices of meat have improved, but the supply is so abundant and the sources of it so numerous that we have not been greatly benefited by the new process. There still remains enough in either business to encourage those who are in it to continue, but the inducements for new enterprises of this kind are not great.”
Some of the stories that were told about experience on cattle and sheep runs were so interesting to our young friends that they made note of them. One of the party told of the dangers surrounding the life of the stock-riders, the men who look after the herds on a cattle estate.
“He has some hard duties to perform,” said the narrator. “He gets his breakfast early in the morning and starts out at once, mounted on horseback, and with a horse that is more or less unruly. Each stock-rider, or stockman, as we call him, has a particular part of the run assigned to him, and every morning he goes along the boundary of it, and if his own cattle have strayed across the line, he drives them back again; likewise, if he finds his neighbor’s cattle have strayed into his territory, he drives them out. He is expected to show himself to his cattle at least once a day, to accustom them to the sight of men, and also to train them to go where they are wanted whenever he cracks his whip and rides in among them.
“The group of cattle belonging to each stockman is called a ‘herd,’ and he is expected to train them so that they will recognize his authority. A bunch of fifty or so is called a ‘mob,’ and it takes several mobs to make up a herd. All over the run, at intervals of two or three miles, are places where the cattle assemble when they hear the stockman’s whip. These places are called ‘cattle camps’; they are open spaces of level ground and are always near water; in fact, many of them are used as regular watering places for the mobs and herds of cattle. Occasionally the animals are driven into these camps, either for the purpose of branding the calves or selecting cattle to be sent to market. You will have an opportunity of seeing one of these to-morrow, as a man arrived here to-night who is buying cattle to take to Melbourne.
“Well, the stock-rider is on horseback for the greater part of the day. Sometimes he takes his dinner with him and sometimes he comes back to the station to get it, and in the afternoon goes to a different part of his section. Sometimes he does not come back at all, and the next morning a search is made for him. Of course there is now and then a man who runs away and leaves his employment, but this is rarely the case, as there is no occasion for him doing so unless he has committed some offense.”
The youths listened in breathless silence, waiting for what would come next.
“There really ought to be two men riding together at all times, so that if a mishap occurs to one of them, the other can help him out of his trouble, and, if unable to do so, can go for assistance; and we generally send out a black boy on horseback with each stockman. A few months ago one of our stockmen, who had gone out alone, failed to come home at night, and we were at once apprehensive that something had happened to him. His horse came back along about midnight, and the next morning several of us started out to find him. We tried to make use of the intelligence of the horse to guide us to the place where he had left his master, but, unfortunately, it was an animal that he had ridden only a few times and there was no attachment whatever between man and beast. We rode along the boundary where we knew he was accustomed to go, but did not find him. We spread out over all the ground we could cover and shouted continually, in the hope that he would hear us and answer. We made a complete circuit of the portion of the run in his charge, and, finding no traces of him, we struck off haphazard across the middle of it. We kept up our shouting and finally heard a faint answer.
“Then we rode in the direction of the sound, and in fifteen or twenty minutes we reached the man’s side. It seems that his horse had stumbled over a fallen log so violently as to pitch the rider over his head. In falling, the man had the misfortune to break his leg. The horse stood and looked at him a few minutes while he tried to call the animal to his side, but to no purpose. The beast threw his head and then his heels into the air and trotted off. He was soon out of sight in the bush and the stockman was left alone, disabled in the way I tell you.
“There was no water in this vicinity and he had no food with him, and he could not walk or stand on account of his broken leg. He could crawl slowly, but only a short distance at a time. He knew that he was out of the regular track of riders, and it might be days or weeks before he would be discovered. He suffered great pain in his injured limb, and very soon the tortures of thirst began, to be followed later in the day by those of hunger.
“All the rest of the day and all through the night he lay there in great suffering and wondering if relief would ever come. Along towards morning he heard a rustling in the grass near him, and then other similar sounds, which he soon concluded were caused by snakes. When daylight came he found that his fears and horrors were realized. Moving around him were several serpents, and they manifested a tendency to approach nearer and nearer. Some of them went away as the sun rose and the full light of day shone upon him, but others remained in his immediate neighborhood. He beat the ground with the butt of his whip in the hope of scaring them away; his effort was partially successful but not wholly so. One large snake came close to his side and actually traversed his body. He dared not make a motion, for fear the serpent would turn upon him and inflict a fatal bite. He lay there as still as a block of marble till the snake, having satisfied his curiosity, glided away into the grass.
“All through the afternoon and until we found him, the reptiles remained there. They seemed to understand that the man was disabled, and evidently they were determined to take their own time in enjoying his sufferings. This was the state of affairs when we found him. He said that when he heard our call he almost feared to reply, lest it should rouse his unpleasant neighbors and cause them to take the aggressive.
“We killed two of the snakes not a dozen yards from where the man was lying, and if we had made a vigorous search, it is probable that we could have despatched more of them. We brought the man to the house as quickly as possible, improvising a rude sort of litter, which was carried, with the man upon it, by two of our blacks. Two of us relieved them occasionally, when they were wearied of carrying the burden. In a short time the man was well again, but he said that the horrors of that night were too much for him, and he would seek some other occupation than that of stock-rider. He left us as soon as he recovered, and I don’t know what became of him.”
“That reminds me,” said another of the party, “of the case of a man who met with a similar accident, being thrown from his horse and getting a broken leg. The place where he fell happened to be near a large ant hill, and in a few moments he was covered with the terrible black ants that we have here in Australia. He was horribly bitten by them all over his body, but principally on head and hands, the other parts being somewhat protected by his clothing. After two or three hours of torture he managed to crawl away from his awful position, but for several hours afterwards the ants continued their attacks; and when he was found by one of his fellow-stockmen, his face was so swollen that he could not see, and he was barely able to articulate. Face and hands became a mass of sores, and it was weeks before he recovered. When he got well, his face was pitted like that of the victim of an attack of smallpox, and he suffered for a long time with a partial paralysis of his limbs. I have heard of one or two other instances of the same sort, and can hardly imagine anything more terrible.”