On the Wallaby Through Victoria

by Elinor Mordaunt

Over the mountain is “Lindt’s,” where the motor disgorges its passengers for a couple of hours or more before the return journey. There is no need, should you wish to go there, to waste your breath in explanations to anyone around Melbourne; you have simply to mention the name, and they will all be ready to tell you the distance and the way to reach the place. It is a boarding-house, such as in England we could never even imagine, built all on one floor, with many meandering passages and odd corners, the whole structure having spread gradually to supply the demand made upon it. But, after all, it is not an ordinary boarding-house, and it is not an ordinary hotel, though as many as twenty casual guests will often lunch there on a fine day, while a number of the best class of Melbourne people stay there from Saturday till Monday, or even for the entire summer holidays; though, to my mind, in the winter—when the big wood-fires are all burning and the forest shivers around it—there is a more subtle delight to be found in the place; besides, though high, it is sheltered from the coldest winds, and it is glorious to feel fresh and vigorous enough for real long walks. Still, it is not the scenery, the giant gums, and tree-ferns, the mountains, and the peep between them of an immensity of distance—no words can ever describe the all-exquisite blue of the distance in Australia—that makes the place so distinctive, for there are other spots as favoured. It is Lindt himself, the great man, the mighty talker. He is so vigorous that he must be moving and talking the whole time, and he moves in a large breezy way; while he talks—well, he talks like nothing in the world so much as Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” For years he lived in New Guinea, and has some of the most beautiful photos I ever saw taken there by himself. He will show them to you—he will show you anything, including his own heart—I do not know that he would not even show you his bank-book.

The coming of the motor every day is either a tragedy or a comedy to Herr Lindt; it is quite enough, anyhow, in the play of the emotions that overflow on to you from “mine host” to make an entire drama.

Each midday when he goes down to the gate to await the arrival of this chariot of fate, it is heralded by a sort of Greek chorus, in which all the parts are taken by Lindt, at one moment a pæan of hope, and at another a dirge of despair. As the motor rounds the last corner—even if you are some yards away up the rustic steps which lead to the house and cannot see it approach—a subtle but distant change in the atmosphere tells you in a single moment whether the luncheon-table is going to be full to overflowing or graced only by a bare two or three beyond the resident guests. But deep as Herr Lindt’s feelings are, they do not long remain too deep for words, and if the worst has happened, the storm bursts in a torrent.

“Nobody coming!” he will cry, as if the expression of his grief was literally squeezed out of him by some internal agony. “Nobody—nobody—One gentleman and a female—and the driver! O mein Gott! mein Gott! Ach Gott in Himmel what have I done to be thus ruined? Ach! tut! one mann mit a female, and dinner ready for twenty! It is mein death, mein ruin!”—and the huge man will almost weep with sheer disappointment.

Sometimes, out of mischief, I would remind him: “I am here, Herr Lindt; you have me, you know.” And this was always the last straw. He was too uniformly courteous to express his opinion as to what I might amount to as far as money went, but you should have seen the look that he would cast on me as he opened the little gate, with all the air of a fallen monarch, to the one or two passengers that the motor had brought to him. Still, in general, he was the most genial of hosts; no trouble was too great for him to take for the comfort and amusement of his guests. Besides, he is the Lindt of Lindt’s! He has created Lindt’s, adapting one of the most beautiful spots possible to human needs; not merely the needs of food or shelter, but that other need which we all feel—for a flavour of personal liking and interest that will hold us, even when the best scenery in the world seems but dust and ashes.

An alternative of Lindt’s—and in some moods, also in some company, a very seductive one—is afforded by supplying oneself with a luncheon-basket, and driving in the motor merely to the summit of the hill, then camping till it returns. The spot to choose is just where the clear waters of the reserve pass at a distance of some fifty feet below the road, separated from it only by a steep bank and a thick belt of tree-fern and forest myrtle—another tree like the Ti-tree most absolutely Japanese in form, every curiously twisted bough soft and grey with lichen. The stream is looped here, and there is a little plateau of the greenest moss—real green this time—within the arm of the loop, on which to build one’s fire, kindling it surely and quickly with what is called “bull’s-wool,” the thick, dry fibre, like fine cocoa-nut matting, which forms the hair shirt of the gum-tree between the white skin and the cream and green and madder-tinted bark.

Billy-tea—the leaves thrown into the billy while the water is boiling fast and furious, just before it is lifted from the fire, then let stand till they have settled—is like no other tea in the world for aroma and flavour. A hint of the wild has somehow become imprisoned in this domesticated beverage; it is impregnated with the scent of the gum-trees and a species of smokiness that is somehow delicious, and, above all, it is hot and fresh, a drink fit for the gods—though by no means to be wasted in libations—the blue smoke of the fire, rising so steadily to the still bluer sky, forming the incense of this woodland communion. Chiefly I remember the thinnest slices of ham—at such picnics à deux—and brown bread-and-butter, carried in the true wanderer’s fashion—a solid wad cut out of the brown loaf and a small pat of butter inserted, then the bit of bread that has been removed cut to a thin slice and replaced on the top—an altogether ideal arrangement, as in the hottest weather the butter kept cool and firm, while even if it did melt a trifle, it would only melt into the bread, and none be lost. All this, and that divine beverage, and the clear racing stream at our feet, and the ferns and the trees all about us. I would draw you a little map of it—but we must each find our own way to Paradise, and I would hurry no one, for, after all, we cannot live our lives out in such a delectable place; while, when once it is passed, there is one oasis the less on the desert way.

In England everyone speaks of the gum-tree, or eucalyptus, as if there was only one possible species of it, as they speak of Australia itself and its climate. But, in truth, the gum-trees are almost as varied as the country and the climate. They are a “pernicketty” family, too: one sort will flourish in one place and wilt away only a few miles distant, another grow to profusion in one district, and elsewhere hardly be met with. Besides, all the forest growth is not composed entirely of the eucalyptus tribe, although it is to a very large extent.

In the Victorian Grampians is to be found for the most part blue gum and messmate, stringy bark, and red and white iron bark. In the Wombat Forest, extending along the dividing range from Cheswick to Mount Macedon, is found messmate, peppermint, and swamp-gum. Farther eastward iron bark and stringy bark prevail, and red gum follows the course of the Murray and its tributaries; while on the Wimmera Plains is massed the dwarf eucalyptus known as the Mallee Scrubb, the roots of which make such ideal firewood. In the Haelesville Forests, of which I have been writing, is found spotted gum, mountain ash, messmate, and white gum, the prevailing timber in Gippsland being the stringy bark.