Bidding my wizened dark-eyed old Italian harpist “Good-bye,” I made for the bush, and travelled north. I had a comrade with me. He was not a bad fellow—hailed from the East End of London, was utterly devoid of romance, and swore fearfully. As we slept out in the bush at night I cheered him up by playing the fiddle, till we both lay down side by side, our feet towards the camp fire, and slept.
I shall never forget that bush tramp. For three weeks we toiled along, our swags on our backs, from steep to steep, and from plain to plain, nothing but vast solitude and sweltering silence broken at intervals by the fleets of large parrots migrating across the tropic skies; as they passed overhead we would hear their dismal mutterings, till their curling wings faded away over the gum clumps on the everlasting skylines of the oceans of hills and plains around us.
Brisbane was about one hundred miles away. Day after day we continued our voyage across those everlasting seas of grey scrub and rock. The tropic sun belching down with full vigour raised blisters as big as soap bubbles on our bare necks; they would often burst and bring us great relief. Our supplies were running short, and we had got off the track and were completely bushed! The stiff bush grass tore the ends of our trouser legs completely away, and we looked terrible scarecrows, and got thin too. Often we would climb the highest steeps and gaze around in the hope of seeing some sign of human habitation. We were indeed two sad castaways on seas of desolation, moving slowly onward on sore feet under the tropic sun. As we sat by our camp fire at night my comrade would curse me for bringing him to such a God-forsaken country, indeed all my own valour vanished as we lay curled together in the darkness of that endless bush and heard the dingo’s wail as its creeping feet explored the waste far away.
One night, over the hills far off on the skyline, regiments of ragged gum-trees suddenly burst into view, as up crept the white Australian moonrise. We sat up and stared into each other’s eyes for company. I shall never forget the terror that made our teeth chatter. I gripped my revolver (I had bought it and a tin of one hundred cartridges before starting off from Brisbane). There far away on the steeps, like a monstrous human shadow, moved something, leaping from steep to steep like some ghastly spring-heeled Jack. The perspiration rolled down our faces. We were both speechless as we stood up and gazed at that terrible sight. Instinctively we clutched each other, as that terrible Aboriginal came towards us; up went our trembling hands in the moonlight. We shook visibly as we leaned against each other for support, and fired the six chambers of our revolvers in rapid succession. The hills echoed and re-echoed that cannonade; the enemy fell and we fainted! I poured some water down my comrade’s throat and half raised him up.
At daybreak, crestfallen and miserable that we had killed it, my chum and I buried the fallen enemy, a poor old man kangaroo!
Forest Track, “out-back”
Two days after that incident we were both hard at work pulling pumpkins and stacking straw on the cleared bush ground of a shanty. The stockman was a good fellow, he treated us kindly and rigged us both out in decent trousers. I had fine times at that lonely bush homestead. The stockman’s wife took a great fancy to me, and they would sit together by their shanty door, after the day’s work, and listen to my playing on the violin as though an angel had fallen from the clouds specially to entertain them. They had three little girls, plump little sunburnt girls too. They all loved me. How they romped with me, and how they cried when I went away! The stockman’s wife shed tears, and the old fellow’s voice sounded husky as he wished me “Good luck,” and those three little girls, with their bright eyes, wet with tears, are still looking up into my boyish sunburnt face, and their dear little hands still wave on the ridge of the steep as I ride away for ever, fading from their sight.
My companion got work on another station and found another comrade more suitable to his temperament than I. He swore that I was mad.