In Quest of Gold; Or, Under the Whanga Falls

by Alfred St. Johnston

When they had returned to the camp after their visit to the waterfall, they found that Murri had got back. All that he brought was one kangaroo rat and a parrot. A very poor result for so long a morning's hunting.

"This all you get along um gully?" asked George, pointing to the black fellow's very scanty spoils.

Murri shook his head, and said, "Mine kill pigeums, two pigeums, along o' quandangs. Murri plenty much hunglee. Mine go make fire, cook um pigeums, and mine patter" (eat) "um bofe."

This speech was so characteristic of the Australian black that neither of the boys was at all surprised at it. Although Murri was in many ways an exceptional specimen of the aboriginal race, it was not to be supposed that he should be free from all their faults and failings. Generosity can hardly be expected to be found among the virtues of a man who, like his ancestors for countless generations, has always thought of himself first, and of supplying his own requirements to the full before he gives away of his superfluity. Murri had killed the birds by his own skill and with his own strength, and who had so good a right as he to cook and eat them? That was what he himself would have said had he been asked, and he felt no shame in owning to George that he had cooked and eaten them himself. It was as useless to talk to him of generosity or self-sacrifice as it would be to try to make a man blind from his birth understand the meaning of colours.

Later in the afternoon, about two hours before sunset, the boys again walked towards the waterfall. Alec, who was not nearly so good a climber as George, utterly refused to climb up the cliff at the place Geordie had first ascended it. He said that he had some respect for his bones if Geordie had not, and climb up that cliff, which was no better than a stone wall, he would not. It was with some little difficulty that they found any less steep place, but they did at last discover one, some little way to the right hand side of the fall.

As soon as Alec had been shown the channel that George thought best for their purpose, he began to work. He was never one to spare himself when there was a difficult task on hand, and he flung himself into this new labour with all his usual ardour. George found his energy contagious, and they worked to such purpose that when they left off, some little time before sunset, they had collected a great pile of rocks at the edge of the stream with which they intended to begin their dam next day.

As it was evident, from the amount of work they had before them, that their stay in the valley would be of some duration, the boys determined to make more extensive preparations for camping than they usually did. It was almost too late that night to do anything, but they devoted the next day to building themselves a sort of little hut, which would not only shelter them from the heat by day and from the heavy dews of night, but would serve as some sort of protection if they were again attacked by myalls.

The one great danger in travelling in the wild parts of Queensland is the probability of being attacked by the fierce black natives, and every traveller in that little known country should be constantly on his guard. It is only natural that the native black races should retaliate upon the white intruders, at whose hands they have suffered so much; and as they have not the courage, or indeed the weapons, to enable them to attack a well-peopled station, they wait until they have a chance of murdering a solitary shepherd, or surrounding and surprising a small party when travelling away from civilised parts.

It was the thought of their exposed situation in case of an attack that guided Alec in his choice of a position for their camp. After examining the gully on both sides, he found a place that he thought admirably suited to his purpose. On the opposite side of the stream from that on which they had first encamped, there was a little opening in the side of the ravine. It was only a sort of wide crack in the rock, down which perhaps in times of heavy rain a little waterfall might flow. The width of it across the opening was about ten feet, and it was about the same, or a little more, in depth, at which distance the two walls of rock met at an angle.

Alec, who was a practical fellow, saw that this would give him two sides to his house, and, that if he built a wall of some sort across the front of it, he would have the shell of a comfortable, although triangular, shelter. Without waste of further time he and George set to work to collect a number of the large stones that were scattered thickly along all the edge of the stream and in it. With these they slowly (for the work was none of the easiest beneath a blazing tropical sun) built a wall about four feet high across the front of the little opening. They knew, from the previous day's experience, that they could not expect much of that sort of work from Murri, so they set him to chop down a good big pile of brushwood from the scrub that grew a little way down the gully. To this kind of labour Murri was much more accustomed, as the natives build their gunyahs of boughs of trees and brushwood. He could use a hatchet quite as expertly as the boys, and in a short time had cut quite as much as they would want for their purpose.