Belmont was a well known and prettily situated pleasure resort in those days on one of the beautiful bays in Lake McQuarrie. The homestead of Mr. Williams stood on the top of a hill overlooking the lake and the surrounding country, and was about sixteen miles from Newcastle through the bush in which I was lost, as stated in the preceding chapter. On the hillside there were splendid fruit orchards teeming with all manner of fruits. Here in rich abundance grew oranges, apples, pears, bananas, figs, apricots, grapes, quinces and water melons galore, besides many others, while beyond the orchards there was again the bush with its magnificent red, blue and grey gum trees, some of them towering to the height of two hundred and fifty feet with a girth above the ground of thirty feet—monarchs of the bush, whilst around their feet grew the sweet-scented honeysuckle, sarsaparilla, bush oak, stringy bark, ti tree and various others almost too numerous to mention. The bay formed between the headlands of Belmont and Southlands, where there is a large steam saw mill, had a lovely white sandy beach, and the bay itself was alive with fish, while the shores were thronged with wild duck, curlews, quail, black swans and penguins. On the lake were several rowing boats and a sailing yacht, the house was large with extensive grounds and was a constant rendezvous for large parties of ladies and gentlemen from Sydney and other places who came for both pleasure and sport. My work lay chiefly in looking after the boats, teaching Mr. Williams’ children to swim and also any visitors wishing to learn, and making myself generally useful.
One day while out in the lake with three young lady visitors whom I was giving swimming lessons to, and who had for the first time that morning ventured some thirty yards from the shore, I saw the dorsal fin of a large shark not more than fifty feet outside of us. For the moment I was almost paralysed with fear for my charges, then to my relief I realized that as yet they knew nothing of the danger that threatened them, so I sang out:
“Now ladies, this way, a race, a race for the shore; away, away, see who will win it.”
The young ladies at once took up the challenge and struck out for the beach. I followed them, urging them on with words of encouragement, although my heart was in my mouth until we all stood safely on the shore. I looked out across the waters, but the shark, through God’s great mercy had not followed us, and was nowhere to be seen, one of us, to say the least of it, had just escaped a horrible death.
As the young ladies knew nothing about the narrow escape we had just had, I thought it better not to tell them, as they would have been terribly upset, and, as I afterwards learnt, this was the first time a shark had been seen in this part of the lake, but I kept a sharper look out when I had occasion to be in the water either for pleasure or duty.
About a week afterwards a fisherman on the other side of the lake caught a large shark which had one eye torn out and the other seemed to be injured. This, no doubt, was the shark that I saw, and owing to its defective sight we all escaped.
Our providential escape, however, was brought forcibly back to my mind some three months later by a dreadful tragedy that happened in a fisherman’s family named Boyd living in a cottage at the entrance of the lake, their cottage standing about thirty feet from the water’s edge.
On the day it happened, just about sunset, Mr. Boyd and his wife were sitting at their cottage door facing the lake and watching their two youngest children playing on the sands; presently their eldest daughter Nellie, a girl about eighteen years of age came out of the cottage in a loose wrapper and went down to the water for a bathe. A large Newfoundland dog followed her, and swam about with her. The girl had swum about seventy or eighty feet from the shore when her father whistled to the dog, who immediately started to swim back to his master, and had got about half way to the shore when the girl gave a terrible shriek, and in sight of her parents disappeared beneath the water.
Hearing the shriek the dog turned at once and swam out again towards the place where he had left his young mistress. The poor father sprang into the boat and pushed it off into the stream, while her mother, poor soul, stood wringing her hands, and moaning piteously on the shore. With every nerve strained her husband pulled after the dog, which seemed to be swimming towards the entrance of the lake barking all the time. The poor man knew that his child had been seized by a shark, but still he followed the faithful animal, the mother’s frantic cries ringing in his ear, and urging him on. When he got to about one hundred yards from the dog, he could see that between its barks it was trying to snap at something beneath the water. Suddenly it gave a terrified howl, and seemed to be in difficulty. When he reached it, he found one of the poor dog’s hind legs had been bitten clean off, and the faithful beast was drowning. There was no sign or trace of his daughter, and after rowing about for some time he was forced to give up the search and return to his grief-stricken wife. It was an awful fate for one so young and full of life to meet her death in sight of the door of her home and loved ones, and they powerless to help or save.
But the lake and those who lived near it had not seen the last of the shark, as I found to my cost a few weeks later. As I have already said I was passionately fond of swimming, and often, when my day’s work was done, I would swim across the lake to Southland, rest awhile and swim back. After the tragedy at Boyd’s I was very careful to keep a good look out, but on this particular day it had been fearfully hot, the temperature being I should think 90 degrees in the shade. I had been out with a riding party looking after the horses and by the time we returned and I had settled the horses for the night, I felt pretty fagged, the water looked very tempting, so in I went, and struck out for Southland, landed, had a run along the beach, and started to swim back to Belmont.