Excursions to these gullies rank among the most pleasant experiences of a holiday. After a tramp of an hour or two through the “scrub,” a halt is made for luncheon, and then the “billy” is boiled. The “billy” is an Australian boiling-pot in which delicious tea is made. A suitable spot is selected, stones are gathered upon which the pot is placed, and then the “scrub” is searched for pieces of wood and dried fern. The pot is surrounded with these and the fire is kindled. A muslin bag filled with tea is immersed in the boiling water, where it remains for a few moments. Then it is withdrawn and the tea is ready. I confess to having had a great prejudice against “billy” tea at first. It seemed to me to be only another form of the stewing-pot in the North of England, and to be a deliberate invitation to dyspepsia. And now I have quite a liking for it. Any who wish may try the experiment for themselves. The one thing to avoid is keeping the muslin bag in the pot for too long a time.
The “bush” is being slowly conquered. Town and city folk hardly know that it exists, so rapidly have the plough and the “forest devil” cleared the ground in the great centres. But in many parts it still offers great obstacles to pioneers. Where roads are not yet made, and river beds not yet formed or deepened, life is by no means easy. At a pension like ours in Lorne, where people from all over the State assemble, some weird and curious stories are told by visitors of the adventures which have befallen them. One of the most interesting was related by a clergyman who has served in various parts of the State. A few months ago he received a request asking him to marry a young couple in the bush. The day was fixed, and he was preparing to ride over to perform the ceremony, when suddenly a monsoonal storm burst upon the landscape, and in a few hours the creek had become a river. There was no means of telegraphic communication between the parson and the bridegroom, but simultaneously each went out to meet the other, directed by their sense of the fitness of things. They met at the stream, but lo! the bride was missing; the swollen river had cut her off. The ready bridegroom, however, was not easily daunted, and he had no intention of postponing the wedding. While the clergyman waited at the river bank the bridegroom rode off for his bride. The happy pair arrived in due time, and both of them waded through the river and presented themselves to be married. Dripping with water they were made man and wife, and then, reentering the stream, they crossed it, took to their horses, and rode off to commence their new career. There have been many romantic marriages in the world, but none surely more romantic than this.
CHAPTER XIII
SOME BUSH YARNS
In this our lazy midsummer holiday in February, our resting-place is on the margin of the “bush.” As befits the occasion and the place, we have laid in a stock of bush stories, and in particular we are yielding ourselves to the enchantment of “We of the Never Never”—that frankly true and weird story of life in the Northern Territory, where a man’s nearest neighbour is sixty or ninety miles away. And then, just as we finish the “Never Never” stories, there comes into our holiday life a dear old soul who knows all about the “Never Never” country, who has traversed its wilds and felt the strange pull of its life. She becomes, happily for our party, reminiscent, and night after night we listen to the recital of her adventures. Bordering upon seventy, her mind retains the clearness almost of youth, and the simple life in the open has left her face bronzed yet scarcely wrinkled, while her hair is as brown as a woman’s in her thirties. It is difficult to realise that this quiet old lady, well educated and mentally alert to all that is going on in the Commonwealth to-day, commenced her career as a bush traveller, and has wandered over thousands of miles of uninhabited country.
The spirit of adventure is in her blood. Her grandfather came out in the vessel Duff in 1796 as a missionary to the islands that lie to the north of Queensland. Then there were real cannibals abroad, and a white person was in peculiar peril. After a brave attempt to evangelise these cannibals, the missionary found it necessary to remove to Sydney, where he became evangelist and missionary to the scattered people in the country round about. He had “assigned” to him one of the convicts from Botany Bay, but this precious scoundrel, learning that a little money was hidden in the house, conspired with another convict and made a murderous attack upon his master. The “wee little wife”—she was quite petite—rushed forward to assist her husband, and received upon her arm a blow from a knife which laid bare the flesh to the bone. Both husband and wife being left for dead, the robbers decamped, taking with them all the money in the house. When the little woman recovered, she seized her infant child and ran with him through the bush to Sydney, seven miles distant, to seek aid. And that little fellow, who narrowly escaped assassination, became the father of our delightful companion of the “Never Never” adventures.
The grandfather and grandmother in the region around Sydney were involved in many strange experiences in the early days of the nineteenth century. Railways and roads, in the modern sense of the word, were then unknown. Bush tracks were the only roads available for travellers. Lawlessness was common enough, and very difficult to suppress. England at that time was sending her convicts to Botany Bay, as later to Van Diemen’s Land. Some of the convicts were villains of the deepest dye; others were victims of iniquitous laws, and were transported for the most trifling offences. Again and again the convicts broke loose, and took to bushranging. They raided cattle reaches, and drove off hundreds of beasts over the border. They “held up” travellers in the approved Dick Turpin or Claude Duval style. Life was held very cheaply then.
Persons who lived in the bush were always nervous when they had to go into Sydney to pay money into the bank, or to withdraw it. One day a “neighbour” of the missionary grandfather, learning that the latter was driving into Sydney, begged him to bank a sum of five hundred pounds for him. The commission was too dangerous, and it was declined. But the wee little wife, with woman’s wit, hit upon a scheme for conveying the money safely, and she accepted the commission. The buggy in which they drove was high, and she, little woman, was very short, hence it was necessary for her to have a footstool. Within the covering of this footstool she sewed the bank-notes, and the journey commenced. Within an hour of the time of starting they were “held up” by masked bushrangers, who in the most polite manner requested husband and wife to dismount while the buggy was thoroughly searched. The little lady was assisted to the ground, and her footstool handed to her. Upon this she sat, watching the robbers examine the buggy. When they were satisfied they politely assisted her to the carriage, together with the innocent stool, and then profusely apologised for the inconvenience that had been caused. The story of the little lady’s wit is treasured in the family, and is quoted against cynics who allege that missionaries and their wives are deficient in the quality of sharpness.
Brought up in an atmosphere of adventure, it is not surprising that the son of the old pioneer became in turn a traveller. When he married, the “Never Never” country called to him, and in a few years he started off, with his little family, upon a journey of two thousand miles. Our versatile old friend who tells us the story was at that time a girl of seven, and although sixty years have passed away since the memorable adventure, the details of the scenes are still fresh in her memory. First there was a kind of gipsy caravan in which the family lived and slept when the weather was unpropitious, and in which the stores were kept. Then came servants and cattle and horses, the latter for use on the new homestead to which they were bound in the great West, four months’ march distant. The roads were rough and perilous. There was always the danger of the bushranger. And, most serious of all, it was necessary never to lose sight of water. There was no cross-country route available for the travellers; they were compelled to come down from the north as far as Melbourne, and then turn again north-west towards their destination. Melbourne was at that time a mere collection of huts. Where flourishing suburbs now stand there was the dense bush. In Melbourne itself a creek ran, and the gutters of the streets were deep streamlets in which one might easily be drowned. The whole region was wild and unsubdued. In the heart of the country through which they passed the natives roamed at will, conquered though uncivilised.
Sometimes they encountered hostile tribes arrayed in their warpaint, and in search of an enemy to kill. For one of their superstitions was that the death of any young tribesman must be surely due to the evil influence of another tribe, and when such a death occurred the warriors would go forth to kill some black or other—it did not matter who he was—so that equilibrium might be restored. Once our travellers encountered a band of warriors in search of a black to kill, and they had evidently determined to dispatch the native belonging to the caravan. For three days the poor fellow lay hidden in the van, fearing to show himself, and for three days the warriors waited for their prey. At last the discharge of a gun, with a fall of birds, convinced them that it would be imprudent to remain longer in the neighbourhood of this new “debbel debbel” which could evidently kill birds and might kill them. The journey was continued amid profound stillness, which was broken only by the screaming of parrots and the laughter of the jackass. On one of its stretches the travellers were three weeks without encountering a solitary human being, and then they lighted upon a shepherd, whom they were ready to embrace.