Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

A few, whose faith in the possibilities of the alleged reefs on Boulder Creek was not to be shaken by mere alluvial success, went back with their winnings, and used them to keep the mill going, while they drove and tunnelled and sank in search of the phantom reefs. A few—a very few—thought again of bygone dreams they had had about selections of their own, and set out, bursting with good intentions of taking up land somewhere. But the majority had no such thoughts and no such cares. They had struck a patch; they had money in hand, the result of their toil on the patch; and now they were free to spend it, without a thought or care—spend it as freely as they had made it, spend it in the search of a similarly engrossing delight to that which they had experienced in the finding of it; and when it was gone—if any gave a moment's consideration to the question, it was answered by mentally jerking the head towards the creek—when it was gone, they would come back and get some more. What comes easy, goes easy; and who cares for the morrow when to-day overflows with content?

In search of the delights they needed, their energies were quickened by the fact that Christmas and the New Year were approaching. A twelvemonth before there had been a dearth of entertainment, more than usually pronounced, in the neighbourhood of Boulder Creek, and not even the combined persuasiveness of the inhabitants could induce the landlord of Cudlip's Rest to "set 'em up" for luck in an all-round shout. Just to stimulate the spirit of good fellowship, one man had dexterously annexed a couple of bottles of Pain-killer from a hawker's waggon he stumbled across, and those who were in his vicinity toasted one another and the general run of the diggings in nobblers of it; but it was not a success, and the festive season was even less exhilarating to the revellers than it was to those who had not participated in the "find."

Now the situation was different. There was money in the land, and with the memory still acute how, the year before, the landlord of Cudlip's Rest had been deaf to their blandishments, and proof against their numbers (for he had abstained even from replenishing his stock lest a wave of communistic instinct might sweep up Boulder Creek), they turned with one accord towards the town of Birralong. As they toiled and slaved along Boulder Creek, when they thought of Birralong at all it was to heap upon it and its inhabitants the scorn they considered was justly earned by a settlement which looked at a miner askance, and from whence stores, for years past, had been unobtainable save on a cash basis. The name of Marmot did not rank high with the fossickers when funds were low, and the joys of the Carrier's Rest were only known to the man who had "struck it" from time to time in the creek; but the aloofness of Cudlip's Rest the previous Christmas still rankled, and, not for any special admiration or respect for it, Birralong was chosen as the scene of the coming festivities.

Marmot, having completed on the day before the last order he was expecting for the season, was taking it easy on the verandah, sitting, as was his wont, in his shirt-sleeves and with a pipe in his mouth, on the tobacco-box in front of the open doorway, just where he received the full benefit of any draught which might be set up by the heated iron roof over his head and the cool of the shade in the store. There was not much danger of taking cold; rather would a chill have been enjoyable as a change from the sweltering heat of the summer's day. The steady swing of the grasshopper's song—like the wavering hum of a telegraph pole pitched in a high, shrill key—came through the hot air on all sides, until it seemed to spring from the ground in answer to the heat-rays that beat upon it—a response from the great dusty parched crust to the ceaseless throb of the heat-waves pulsing and splashing upon it, like the ripple and rattle of shingle stones at the rush of retreating tides. There was no wind, not even a breeze; and yet the heat came in wafts and currents, as it comes from an open furnace-door as the up-draught ebbs and flows. The tough, tanned skin of old Marmot glistened with a faint moisture one moment as an extra hot wave rolled by, drying hard and rough a second later as the parched air sucked up the moisture like a greedy flame licks oil.

The life of the bush was silent, save for the grasshoppers and an occasional stridulation from an energetic cicada (locust, as the bush-term has it, and which, like many another bush-name, seems to have been given because it was inappropriate, for the cicada is anything but a locust, while the "grasshopper" is nothing else). The leaves of the gums hung motionless, with their sharp edge turned to the sun-glare, so as to let the fierce heat strike on the stems and curl the shed-bark into long festoons—and puzzle the minds of the new chums why broad leaves cast no shade. Under the folds of the shed-bark the lizards cuddled asleep, and occasionally a tree-snake shared their shelter; while far down, squeezing into the farthest corner, away from the heat and glare, and away from their unwelcome neighbours, the green tree-frogs spread their ball-pointed toes and turned their golden eyes up to the light to watch the coiled mystery as they slept.

The iron of the store-roof popped and crackled now and then as a sheet of "galvanized," expanding, strained on a nail and buckled. And yet from further down the township road there came the whirr and shriek of Smart's buzz-saw rending its way through hard-wood logs; the clang and jangle of Cullen's hammers as they fell on iron and anvil; and more sleepily, more drowsily, more in keeping with the hot languor of the day, the hum of the children's voices as they chanted their task in unison on the open verandah of the school-house. Marmot, listening and heeding, thought, and the thoughts grew in importance in his mind and in impressiveness, until, forgetful that the court was not sitting and that he was alone, he took the pipe from his lips, and, pointing the stem down the dusty, sun-scorched track, exclaimed—

"The cause—the fust cause—the great cause—the cause of our being a nation—the nation; yes, bust me, the nation—is—what?"

He waited for an answer from the silence of the verandah, and, receiving none, save the crackle of the sheets of iron in the roof, pointed with his pipe-stem in the direction of the sounds from the township.

"That!" he exclaimed. "There it is—energy—go—good Anglo-Saxon go. That's what makes us what we are. Here's the bush asleep. If there's any niggers in it, they're asleep. Even the lizards are asleep. The trees stop growing, and won't even make a shade; but us—do we stop? No! There ain't nothin' that'll stop us. We didn't make the world altogether maybe, but, by smoke, we're making it fit for our needs. Who'd work this hot spell except us? Who'd run this country except us? Here's Australia; there's Africa; there's America; there's India; and there's "home;" and who runs the lot if it ain't us? And what's the world outside of that lot? A few paddocks full of dargoes and black-fellows ready to cut each other's throats if it wasn't for us."

He put his pipe once more between his lips, and sat thinking in silence. The buzz-saw whirred and jarred; the hammers clanged and jangled; the school-children droned and hummed; and beyond Marmot saw in his fancy the selections whence they came to school. Always the same picture, inasmuch that in each there was work. Here a man was working with his hoe in his pumpkin patch; there another cared for his maize; a third was splitting shingles for the roof of a shed he was building; a fourth was splitting logs with a heavy maul and wedge for fencing rails; a fifth was fixing water-tanks to be ready when the rain came; while a sixth was digging a waterhole in the hard, baked earth also to be ready for the rain. On every selection, as it came into Marmot's mind, there was work going on—work that made the tanned skins of the workers glisten with the beads of sweat; work that made moving pictures against a background of nature at rest. Inside the selection houses the women did their share, and sometimes outside as well. Beyond the houses and the selections, in the gullies of the ranges, men worked as they sought for mineral wealth when the sun was high, as well as when it was low; on the big paddocks of the station the bush slept, and the flocks and herds huddled wherever shelter could be found, but the men were never still, not even in the station homesteads. Everywhere that the mind of Marmot wandered, every scene that came to him as he sat and mused, showed white men, the men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, tireless, restless, working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, passed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon and the work they had done, and would do, for the world that gave them birth.