FELLING KARRI.
We had not far to walk; the sun was now almost oppressively hot, and the steamy atmosphere was full of the rich, moist smell of the damp earth and the undergrowth. The woodcutters, who fell these immense trees, are so skilled that they can gauge the exact spot on which they will fall to within a few inches; such accuracy is a matter of life and death in tree-felling. When we arrived on the scene the great trunk of the karri was already sawn through by two men working on a kind of little platform erected round it. For an instant the slim, white tree tottered, while we held our breath, then it began to fall slowly, at first with a crackling sound; finally it came crashing and tearing its way among the neighbouring trees, followed by a shower of leaves; there was a sound as of the firing of a big gun; all the earth trembled; it seemed, as if the whole vast silence of the forest was shaken. A second tree that we saw felled measured one hundred and fifty-eight feet to the first fork.
The woodcutters are paid by the load that the bullocks draw, the bare trunk of the tree when its branches have been lopped off. We were told that they can make as much as £6 a week. The cost of living does not amount to much more than 25s. a week for a single man, as he can board sumptuously at the Hall for 22s., and the price of lodgings is about 1s. 6d. This leaves a considerable surplus, and in Big Brook there is no means of spending money. In consequence, men occasionally go off to the nearest town when they have amassed a small capital, and stay there till it is all spent, and they have nothing to show for it. They work eight hours a day, and everything is regulated by contract. They are of various nationalities, but all of magnificent physique. While we were waiting to remount our railway trucks, a team of forty-eight bullocks passed, dragging one enormous log of twenty tons weight, the drivers cracking their long whips, screaming and leaping into the air in a frenzy of inarticulate excitement that somehow conveyed a meaning to the bullocks. Soon after we began the return journey we passed through a belt of jarrah, the still harder kind of eucalyptus that we had only seen in the form of piles; the trunks were reddish instead of white like the karri.
We saw also for the first time a common feature of the Western Australian bush, the curious “Black Boys,” called in Queensland “grass trees.” They look like a knotted dead trunk with bulrushes growing on the top in thick bunches. Sometimes the trunk is forked, and there are a pair of odd bushy heads on one black misshapen trunk.
The bush in this part of Australia has little diversity. The keen air of the early morning had made us very hungry, in spite of so substantial a breakfast, and we were not sorry to reach Jarraduck, the settlement in the forest where lunch was waiting in another large wooden hall. The long tables were decorated with masses of golden wattle and purple kennedya. Lunches of this kind, and we sampled very many, are always just alike, varying only with the resources of the neighbourhoods,—lots of flowers and a warm welcome, plates of assorted cold meats, of which turkey is an almost inevitable ingredient; elaborate sweets, of which one is always an excellent trifle, and fruit of the district, in this case the small, sweet, thick-skinned local orange.
The refined-looking, sweet-faced landlady seemed inappropriate to the rough surroundings. “We shall just stay here till we can better ourselves,” she explained. A few more hours brought us out of the forest, there were more clearings, homesteads became more frequent, the red soil was freshly ploughed for oats, orchards began to take the place of the eucalyptus, with apple trees not yet in blossom, and orange and lemon trees covered with fruit. The country became hilly, and half-castes were at work in the fields, shock-headed, and unintelligent-looking. We had left the bush behind, and were now in the region of an older settlement, the fruit-growing district of Western Australia. Fruit-growing is becoming one of the most important factors of Western Australian industry, and it is hoped that it will prove an even greater source of prosperity, because a more permanent one, than the gold that cannot last for ever. The climate, and much of the soil in the South-West are admirably adapted for all kinds of fruit-growing. The apples are excellent, so are the oranges, pears, plums, apricots, and peaches, strawberries and gooseberries, all of which are grown successfully. Fruit-growers, who have taken care in selecting a holding where the soil and conditions are favourable for their crops, have not long to wait before reaping their profits, as six-year-old apple trees have been known to produce from £50 to £60 an acre. It is important also to select a fruit for growing that will travel and keep. In 1913 there were still more than 88,000 acres suitable for the cultivation of fruit or vine-growing, subdivided into convenient blocks and waiting for selectors.
Bridgetown is the centre of the fruit-growing district of Western Australia. Motor-cars were waiting to show us the neighbourhood, and we started in the golden light of the late afternoon sun to see something of the country. It was our first experience of Australian motorists. To enjoy motoring in Australia one must have an adventurous disposition. Except in the neighbourhood of large towns the roads are very rough; indeed, the long droughts make it impossible that they should be otherwise. The soft, dry soil crumbles away, the light dust is stirred up by every passing vehicle, leaving deep ruts, so that the same road is often on different levels, and a car runs along at a sharp angle, with one wheel poised on the edge of a rut, and the other in a hollow. Practised drivers achieve this difficult accomplishment with much skill and the minimum of jolting, but even so, the car often takes flying leaps. So we started on an apparently breakneck career, holding tight on to the sides of the motor, and dashed up and down hills that an English motorist would have hesitated to look at, red and rutty as a Devonshire lane in winter. We never knew the name of that kindly motorist, who so gallantly risked his own and our lives, not to mention his machine, in showing us as much as possible of the surrounding country before the light faded. He was one of the many, many unknown friends who did us some passing kindness on our rapid journey, leaving only a warm memory behind it. Hail and farewell to each and all of them!
The country-side was very beautiful, more English, and less unfamiliar-looking, than anything we had yet seen, with steeply undulating hills and valleys, springing young green crops, and orchards, with apple trees whitened against some parasitical scab, or oranges and lemons. The comfortable homesteads had a more finished and abiding air than anything we had yet seen; for Bridgetown, as our host explained to us, “is a very old settlement—sixty years old!” It even possessed a tiny stone church, which gave it a pleasantly homely and established air. We crossed the beautiful Blackwood river by a picturesque wooden bridge where the river flows through a deep gorge up which black and white wild duck were sailing. In the fading glow of the sunset the country looked still more English, for the groups of gum trees that crowned the hills were indistinguishable, and the evening light seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of calm contentment over the thriving country-side, as of a day’s work well done. We ran through the little scattered township, to the Freemason’s Hotel, at which our friend the motorist deposited us, and vanished into the dusk.
OXEN HARNESSED TO A LOG AT BIG BROOK.