CHAPTER XXIII.
Joyful Experiences of Cow-Cockying.
So I went in to interview the factory people. I had to go to the expense of a new pair of boots for the occasion. I hadn't been wearing boots for months, but could hardly go in in bare feet. I had to take shares in the factory, and buy a separator—on terms; and right here is where I found for the first time a use for the chest full of blocks I had brought up to haul the scrub down with. I sold the lot to old Pardy for a fiver and paid for my boots, deposit on shares and separator, and exes. in town out of it. In due course the separator was brought out, in pieces on a pack horse the last mile or so, and erected in the split slab dairy.
What an event the first separating was! What though I forgot to clean the vaseline out of certain little holes and corners, and the cream wouldn't pass through; that, in my anxiety to avoid turning too slow, I went at eighty revolutions instead of sixty, and the final result hardly covered the bottom of a gallon billy. We owned property! stock!! machinery!!! and we washed up the glistening new parts afterwards with pride and joy, which soon faded, by the way. And it rained, and kept on raining—probably to make up for the drought. The moisture poured in chilly streams through the rusty old iron roof of the bails, and sometimes I got nearly as much rainwater as milk. The roads speedily became bogs, and the creeks rose, and kept high for weeks. I was wet through morning, noon and night, and everything in the house got damp and mildewed. Boots looked, and smelt, like old bronze. Of course, we wouldn't have been so miserable had we possessed a good big house, good bails, yards, fences, and so forth; but these luxuries needed cash—which I hadn't got, so I had to put up with makeshifts.
Braun was away somewhere and wouldn't fence his creek boundary. I couldn't. So behold! when I stepped out in the dismal, grey, misty dawn two cows would be in Braun's, one at Domino's Hill, two miles off one way, one in O'Gorman's, and the others playing hide-and-seek over about five hundred acres of overgrown, loggy paddock. The result was that I was often only starting to milk at 10.30 a.m. In the afternoon it was much the same. You would follow them up to see where they planted. Go back to the place at 4 p.m. No sign of them. After an hour's search you might come across them at the end of O'Brien's or Braun's or O'Gorman's or somewhere—but never the lot of them together. Finally I got hold of some plain wire and ran four wires along Braun's. Then other people's stray steers came along, walked through it wherever they pleased, as steers will, and kept me all my spare time patching up that makeshift. But it kept the cows home, anyway.
Then carrying the cream. I had to take it down to a place opposite Liston's, three miles away. Had neither horse nor money to buy one. Tried to carry a can down by myself once, but never again. Ever try to carry thirty pounds or so of liquid in a sixteen-pound can, all smooth and polished tinned steel? Try it and see how she goes. The weight keeps shifting, and one staggers round all over the shop, and staggering on a muddy road nearly knee deep, things happen. You soon find yourself plastered thick from head to foot. The wife volunteered to help, so we slung the cursed can on a stick and carried it on our shoulders that way. Tramp, tramp through the bog, puffing and panting in the steamy heat across two deep creeks and along slippery "sidlings," struggling down to Roden's, where we left the cans to be picked up by the carter sixteen hours later and taken into the train, which eventually took it to the factory, where the cream was almost invariably graded second-class.
One day sticks in my memory. It had been intensely hot, and we got to Roden's late. There we heard a tale of woe. Mr. Roden was in hospital, and there was only Mrs. Roden and a kid to milk thirty cows. Of course I, like an ass, offered to help, forgetful that I had my own to see to, and by the time I thought of my own affairs it was getting dusk and the delayed thunderstorm threatened. We hurried off, I with two empty cream cans slung, Chinaman fashion, on a stick across the shoulders, the wife with a billy containing a jewfish still alive, which Mrs. Roden had given her—a special luxury we hadn't tasted for a year. We had just got into the thick scrub when the storm burst on us. It speedily became pitch dark, and there we were, two miles from home, the rain pouring in buckets full, drenched and shivering, slowly picking our way among the innumerable roots and stumps by the lightning flashes' flickering glare, I in front, the wife behind hanging on to my belt. Every now and then I would feel a jerk, and a flop and smothered groan apprised me that the wife had fallen down again. Then a wail, "W-where's me fish?" and we would both be down on our knees in the mud feeling round for that precious fish until a lightning flash showed us where it was. Finally I slung the cans to one side and half-led, half-carried the poor girl home.
When we arrived at the brow of a short steep pinch leading down to our creek, we realised the impossibility of walking—just sat down in the mud and tobogganed down it. We reached home, covered with mud, drenched and exhausted, at 8 p.m. The cows weren't milked that night.
This was about the end of March. In the following October our first child was born. Of course we didn't know. Still, what might have happened! Well, just about this time I heard Hood had a horse for sale, so I went and saw him. He was an old steeplechaser, twenty years old, and very thin and ribby. He stood about six feet high at the shoulder.
I asked Hood what he had on him. "Thirty bob," said Hood.