Thirty Years in Australia

by Ada Cambridge

A few yards, we hopefully reckoned it: it turned out nearer half a mile. It might have been midnight, for all the daylight or sunlight that we saw during that dreadful passage: we were like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace, enveloped in a glare as of the infernal regions. The tree-torches over our heads dropped blazing leaves on us (the useful grey shawl again intervening): the grass-blades caught and curled up at the very tires of the wheels; the buggy sides blistered like our hands and cheeks. Not a word did we speak, except to urge on the horses, on which our lives depended, and which we are convinced they saved.

They shivered and jumped and snorted a little when the flames came very near, or they were touched by a spark, but never for a moment gave way to the panic which would have been natural, and which would have destroyed us all. Digging their heads into their chests, obeying voice, whip, and rein, they strained along doggedly, keeping the track as they had done on the steep sidings, until they brought us out at last into light and safety. Such nerve and courage I never saw or heard of in horses, which can stand almost anything better than fire at close quarters. But this pair were unmatchable.

We staggered into port, and tried, with our parched tongues, to tell the tale. Never shall I forget the shock I received from the behaviour of the person interviewed. The thin veneer of his sympathy for us was as glass over his solid and shining satisfaction at hearing how his waste land was getting cleared—at no expense to him. I thought I had never met a more heartless man.

Then, after a night in the humble chalet of two young fellows, just starting squatting for themselves in a romantic nook of the hills—who ought not to have been asked to entertain a lady, but did it most hospitably with the best at their command, we passed on to our next adventure.

It was another lovely morning, and the usual bottle of new milk and private spirit-flask compensated somewhat for the chops I had not been able to eat at breakfast. It was a beautiful if rough drive down the hills to the river-flats and another little hamlet that is now a full-grown town, with a railway to it. On the way we stopped to watch the evolutions of an eagle-hawk, which had caught up an opossum (stupid as an owl in daylight), and was sailing through the ether with it, fiercely chased by all the other birds of the neighbourhood. They call these great creatures eagle-hawks, but they are wholly eagles, to all intents and purposes. I have seen one swoop over a terrified flock, claw up a good-sized lamb, and soar away with it as if it were a mouse.

Leaving the township, we came presently to a river—the Mitta, in flood. And here our incomparable horses, which had saved us from a fiery, saved us from a watery, grave—possibly. G., it is true, was a good swimmer, but I was not, and the worst might have happened. Drownings of venturesome travellers, under the same circumstances, were frequently reported in those days.

That river had to be crossed. There was no bridge, of course, and not a soul within miles of whom to make inquiries as to the fording-place. The only thing to do, therefore, was to take the last one known, while anticipating—rightly as it proved—that it would be found washed out and gone. "Oh, you can't cross there now," they told us, after we had done it.

I and all our belongings were gathered upon the buggy seat, skirts tucked round me, railing and portmanteau tightly clutched; G. knelt on the cushion of the driver's seat, and we plunged in. Deeper, deeper, deeper, until we swayed and rocked and swung round upon our axis, and the current took the horses off their feet and began to drift them down. But their heads still pointed to the old landing-place: with all their strength they held back against the stream; and swimming steadily, got us ashore without an upset, and, with a tremendous spurt and scramble, up a bank that would have tried the mettle of a South African bullock team.

It was the last "pinch." By noon we reached the wide-spreading roofs of a house which was simply a free hotel for every passer-by—that house where even the blacks were made welcome, one of them having the run of visitors' bedrooms in the night. There G. left me, returning after a few hours with our little boy and his nurse and the doctor's horse. And the following day we were at home.