On the Wallaby Through Victoria

by Elinor Mordaunt

I have said that the schoolmaster and schoolmarm in the back blocks face difficulties and meet with conditions almost incredible to their fellow men and women at home. The distance makes the outlook larger. An afternoon visit becomes a long day’s journey, an adventure, an undertaking. The Bush parson and the Bush doctor live a life completely different from the life of a country parish. The very fact of being so constantly on horseback, as they are, makes a difference. The many hours of open air, of sunshine and storm that are involved when they go to visit a patient or christen a baby—it all makes a difference, and a wholesome one too.

Then the postman; think of the country postman at home! His leisurely ways, his thick boots, his slow, steady progress, his many pauses for gossip and refreshment, all dignified by a sort of consideration which the other yokels show him as a servant of the King. Then think of the mailmen in Australia, of their dependence on their maps, and their knowledge of the country, the danger they are in from thirst, from privation, from the chance of being bushed, and from blacks—not, perhaps, in Victoria so much now, but certainly up North, which very fairly represents many other places as they were fifty or sixty years ago.

Only last year a mailman missed his way up by the Archer River, and turned up, nearly a week later, 120 miles farther south than he should have been, having gone right round Coen, for which he was bound, without striking his track. Again, quite lately another mailman in the same district was lost for fourteen days, having travelled round and round in a circle. When the police found him he was delirious, and fought them wildly, thinking they meant to murder him and steal the mailbag, which he had stuck to through all his suffering.

Coen, which is in Queensland, on the Cape York Peninsula, is indeed a place of tragedies. Another young mailman on the same track disappeared, and when his forsaken camp was discovered at the foot of Marsley’s Spur, a note was found pinned to the bag. “Please do not touch the mails; am away horse-hunting.” But though this man’s tracks were followed for miles, no trace of his body was ever found. One mailman, worn out by despair and long, dry stages, shot himself when within actual sight of Coen Post Office; while another was drowned while attempting to cross the Archer. In a district such as this even the arrival of a bill by post would cease to be a commonplace and inevitable event, the wonder being that it should arrive at all.

One often sees little boxes in the country places nailed to some tree on the road. It is there that the letters for the settlers, squatters, and cockies are left by the mailmen; while it is generally one of the duties of the daughter of the house to ride for the mail once, or perhaps twice, a week, twenty miles or so to where the precious documents have been dropped into the private box.

Another thing besides pluck and resource that the way-back districts breed is the true spirit of friendship. The first time I went up-country in Australia I travelled by night, arriving at my destination soon after four in the morning, and such a morning as I believe only an Australian spring can show: cool and fragrant, though it was at the height of a great drought, and enveloped in a haze of wonderful blue.

In spite of the beauty of the morning I must say I was feeling rather miserable and forsaken, and in doubt as to what was going to happen next, when I climbed wearily out of the train and saw no one I knew on the platform; and little wonder, I thought, considering the hour. However, my anxiety did not last long, for two young girls in fresh white dresses claimed me, explaining that they had promised my friends to come and meet me, and take me to their house, where I could have breakfast, and rest till later in the day, when I should be fetched.

That was my first introduction to a sulky, I remember. I and one of the girls packed into the odd little vehicle, and the other girl ran behind through the still sleeping township. There were a lot of streets, all with very imposing names at the corners on large name-boards, but we did not take much notice of them—indeed, there was nothing beyond the names to distinguish them from the open spaces of spare ground, between the little tin-roofed houses, across which we and the sulky and the running girl cut at a hard gallop.

When I arrived there was a room ready for me and a hot bath, the girls themselves having started the bath-heater before they came to the station; and a fire of logs—a welcome sight, for there was a nip of frost in the air—and tea and thin bread-and-butter, and a nightdress ready aired, so that I need not trouble to unpack. Of all the warm-hearted kindnesses I have ever met with in this country, this preparation for the coming of a woman who was an absolute stranger—simply the friend of another friend, herself a new-chum—lingers in my mind as one of the kindest. To this moment I remember vividly the feeling of exquisite comfort with which I snuggled my tired limbs in among the bedclothes, after my bath, and lay there, with the blinds down, sipping tea in the dancing firelight.

It is odd how often one can do with, and delight in, a fire in one’s bedroom out here; but days which have been blazing hot are apt to end with a cold night, and then the wood fires are so tempting, so cheerful and companionable. I recollect once staying a night with some friends on Mount Macedon, where the sitting-room boasted a really huge open fireplace, in which burnt an immense log, part of the trunk of a tree, banked up with smaller pieces. This monster burnt steadily all day till about eleven o’clock at night, by which time the middle of it had become a glowing mass of crimson, that finally broke, with a soft crash, a flare of sparks, and thick fall of silver-grey ash. It is a sound one grows after a time to listen for and love, this breaking of the burnt-through logs. Once up-country I was lodging in a little wooden shanty, through the cracks of which I could see the stars as I lay in bed. The nights were very cold, and I used to make up a good fire the last thing—the fireplace and chimney being the only part of the house built of bricks—to be regularly awakened after some hours by the soft crash of falling logs. Yet, though the nights were cold, the days were such a blaze of golden sunshine that my sheets—there were only one pair for each bed—used to be taken off, washed and dried, and aired in the sun, and put back again the same morning.