In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

Then he prepared the fire for cooking. Every fragment of blazing wood was put on one side, and a heap of soft glowing ashes left. With a curved stick, this pile was scooped about till it was like a very big saucer, all glowing hot and yet not actually burning. On this warm bed the Johnny-cakes were dropped, leaving a space between each so that they wouldn't run together. When all the white balls of dough were in place, Mick flicked some of the ashes from the edge of the hollow on to them, gradually increasing the amount till the cakes were covered right over and the whole affair was a mound of grey with no sign of the cooking cakes.

"How long before they're done?" asked Vaughan.

"Depends," answered Mick. "Depends on the size of them and the heat of the fire. I don't like the fire too hot. We'll have a look at these in about a quarter of an hour."

At the end of that time the top of the pile of ashes had begun to crack here and there with the upward pressure of the rising Johnny-cakes. Mick scooped one of them out from the edge. It was brown and hard on the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread. To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles. "Another couple of minutes won't hurt," he said.

Presently the distant sound of a jangling stock-bell was heard, and a few minutes later the horses came into camp, lead by an old black mare who carried a bell, and driven by the four black boys riding bareback. Everything was bustle for a few minutes. The horses were again hobbled to prevent them from straying, and then the men all settled down to breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea, and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker—a slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat for each man. These are the bush rations year in and year out: meat, damper, and tea. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and then the pack-bags were weighted evenly and fastened up, horses caught and saddled, a final look given round the camp to see that nothing was left behind, and the three white men set out in a certain direction with no track and with no guidance of any kind except that of the sun, followed at once by the plant of horses driven by the blacks.

All day they rode, silent for the most part, but occasionally Mick would answer a question as to a tree, a strange track, or a feature on the horizon. No other living thing was seen hour after hour, save a solitary eagle high in the air, a few lizards darting about the clumps of porcupine grass, and ants and flies. These latter pests are the curse of the back country. The weather was hot. That day and on several others one hundred and thirty degrees was reached, and even that temperature was exceeded now and then over sandhills and plains which quivered in the heat. But the boys would not have minded the heat if the flies had only left them alone. Long before dawn, before even the morning star had risen, flies buzzed around them, making life well-nigh unbearable.

A halt was made about noon for dinner, the packs and saddles taken off the horses for an hour, and then the journey was resumed, each man riding a fresh horse, for no one rides the same horse all day in Central Australia, if he can possibly help it.

Evening camp was usually made near a water-hole or native well, but sometimes the horses had to go as long as two days without a drink. They were unsaddled and hobbled out, and allowed to roam about all night and pick up scanty bits of food. It amazed the white boys to see what very little herbage of any kind there was for an animal to live on. No grass; just a dry uninviting bush here and there, growing up out of loose barren sand, with, at long intervals, a clump of twisted mulga trees. Yet the horses "did" well, and certainly the thousand T.D.3 bullocks which had come down from the territory looked none the worse for their trip over country just as barren as the boys were now camped on.

After tea was the time the two white boys enjoyed most, for Mick would light his pipe then, prop himself up against his swag, and, with a quart-pot of tea by his side, tell them yarns about the back country. Many of these narratives included Boss Stobart, for he and Mick had gone about together a great deal, and had established overland droving records which are still unbeaten. He told of drought and flood, of thirst and hunger, of cattle rushes and disease, of mining camps, of Afghans and their camels, of Chinamen and opium, of grog shanties, of troopers, of wild blacks and still wilder whites, until his listeners' minds flamed at the thought that they, even they, were in the country where such adventures had taken place—and perhaps some day would be met with by themselves. And at night, when they lay out on their swags under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their boyhood, but onwards into the unknown.

One day, when the routine of "the road" had gone on for more than a fortnight, they were crossing a broad expanse of hard stony country, shut in on the north by dense mulga scrub, when Sax noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the trees a few miles away. He could hardly believe his eyes, and when he looked again it was no longer coming up from the trees, but was rising up and up and fading away against the flawless blue of the sky. He was about to call Vaughan's attention to it when his horse stumbled and nearly fell. Next time he looked to the north the smoke was again rising from the trees, and then again it was cut off, and floated away and was lost.