CHAPTER III[ToC]
THE BUSH
It was not quite bush, to start with, because we travelled by railway to our immediate destination, and that was a substantial township set amongst substantial farms and stations, intersected by made roads. But on the way we had samples of typical country, between one stopping-place and another. First, there were the ugly, stony plains, with their far-apart stone fences, formed by simply piling the brown boulders, bound together by their own weight only, into walls of the required height. This dreary country represented valuable estates, and remains of the same aspect and in the hands of the same families, I believe, still. Gradually these stone-strewn levels merged into greener and softer country, which grew the gum-trees we had heard so much of; and presently we came to closely-folded, densely-forested hills, the "Dividing Range"—a locality to be afterwards associated with many charming memories—where snow and cloud-mists enwrapped one in winter, and from which the distant panorama of the low-lying capital and the sea was lovely on a clear day. But it was like eating one's first olive, that first acquaintance with Bush scenery; we had not got the taste of it. I cannot remember that we admired anything. Rather, an impression remains—the only one that does remain—of a cheerless effect upon our minds. Perhaps the weather had changed.
There was no lack of cheer in the welcome awaiting us at our journey's end. Our clergyman-host met us on the railway platform with the face of a father greeting children home from school. There was a cab waiting, into which our traps were thrown, but we preferred to walk up to the parsonage through the streets of the clean little town, that we might study its unexpected points and see how enterprising and civilised the Bush could be. The parson's wife, aged twenty-one and four years married, received us on the doorstep of the cheerful house, and at once we were as perfectly at home in it as in our own. That was the way with all Australian houses, we found.
Sunday was certainly wet. The two parsons drove out to a Bush service in the afternoon, and we their wives had a bad quarter of an hour listening to the bell ringing for the evening one, while yet there was no sign of their return who had promised to be back for tea; the boggy roads and swollen water-courses so delayed them that it was on the stroke of church time ere they turned up. But next day the sun shone again, and we were taken for a drive over macadamised roads and shown things that corrected our opinion of Bush scenery. And that day, neighbouring clergymen, Sunday off their minds, came to make our acquaintance, all full of information and advice for us, all eager themselves for news from the "Old Country." Mrs C. gave them shakedowns on sofas and floor, to which they repaired at disgraceful hours of the night, because they could not stop talking. Where is that party now?—the merriest clerical party I was ever in. The host, our friend from that day, and godfather to one of our sons, was made a bishop, and died but a few months ago; his merry wife is a broken-hearted widow, crippled with neuritis. One of the guests, in after years still more intimately dear, became an archdeacon, and is now dead also. Two others are past work, resting in retirement until the end comes. We, the youngest of the group, bar one, are beginning to realise that the evening for us also is drawing on.
It was here, by the way, that we had news of the commencement of the war between France and Prussia. It came by the monthly mail-boat, which was our one channel of communication with the world. This budget gave texts for the discussions that are so memorable for their vivacity and charm. A great day was mail-day in those times. Looking back, I cannot remember that we fretted much over our four blank weeks, during which the most awful and personally serious things might happen without our knowing it; but I do remember that when we got the cable many of us grumbled because it took away the interest of mail-day, which became to us as a novel of which we know the ending before we begin to read it.
Holiday travels ended on the last day of August. That night we started for the up-country post to which G. had been appointed, and where he was expected to begin his duties on the following Sunday. August 31st was a Wednesday, and therefore ample time seemed to have been allowed for a journey from Melbourne which the daily coach accomplished in less than a couple of days (and which is now done by the Sydney express in four hours). However, "the year of the great flood" was already making its reputation. Bridges and culverts had been washed away, and the coach-road was reported impassable for ladies. Men could wade and swim, assist to push the vehicle and extricate it from bogs—they were expected to do so—but the authorities in Melbourne advised my husband that the conditions were too rough for me. Consequently we took a round-about route, whereby it was still reckoned that we should get to our destination before Sunday.
The C.'s saw us off during the afternoon—not back to town, but on by the railway which ended at the Murray. We were passed on from friend to friend until a group of kind men—whom I never saw before or since, but shall never forget—established us on board the little Murray streamer which was to be our home till Saturday. It was the mild spring night of that part of the colony, which embraces so many climates; and I can see now, in my mind's eye, the swirl of the brimming river that so soon after overflowed the town; the lights of the wharf and the boat, which spangled the dark sky and water with sparks from its wood-fed furnace; the generally romantic picturesqueness of a scene—one of a sensational series—which indelibly impressed itself upon me, an imaginative young person seeing the world for the first time.