This was the song of our pioneers. Men shouted and talked, and laughed and joked, saws rasped and axes rang, and all the while duty went merrily on. Birds and beasts, never disturbed before in the solitude of their homes, except by wandering blacks, crowded round—only keeping a safe distance away—and wondered whatever the matter could be. The musical magpies, or laughing jackasses, said they would soon settle the business; they would frighten those new chums out of their wits, and out of the woods. So they started to do it. They laughed in such loud, discordant, daft tones that at times Archie was obliged to put his fingers in his ears, and guns had to be fired to stop the row. So they were not successful. The cockatoos tried the same game; they cackled and skraighed like a million mad hens, and rustled and ruffled their plumage, and flapped their wings and flew, but all to no purpose—the work went on.
The beautiful lorries, parrakeets, and budgerigars took little notice of the intruders, but went farther away, deserting half-built nests to build new ones. The bonnie little long-tailed opossum peeped down from his perch on the gums, looking exceedingly wise, and told his wife that not in all his experience had there been such goings on in the forest lands, and that something was sure to follow it; his wife might mark his words for that. The wongawongas grumbled dreadfully; but great hawks flew high in the air, swooping round and round against the sun, as they have a habit of doing, and now and then gave vent to a shrill cry which was more of exultation than anything else. "There will be dead bones to pick before long." That is what the hawks thought. Snakes now and then got angrily up, puffed and blew a bit, but immediately decamped into the denser cover.
The dingoes kept their minds to themselves until night fell, and the stars came out; the constellation called the Southern Cross spangled the heaven's dark-blue, then the dingoes lifted up their voices and wept; and, oh, such weeping! Whoso has never heard a concert of Australian wild dogs can have no conception of the noise these animals are capable of. Whoso has once heard it, and gone to sleep towards the end of it, will never afterwards complain of the harmless musical reunions of our London cats.
But sleep is often impossible. You have got just to lie in bed and wonder what in the name of mystery they do it for. They seem to quarrel over the key-note, and lose it, and try for it, and get it again, and again go off into a chorus that would "ding doon" Tantallan Castle. And when you do doze off at last, as likely as not, you will dream of howling winds and hungry wolves till it is grey daylight in the morning.
CHAPTER II.
BURLEY NEW FARM.
There was so much to be done before things could be got "straight" on the new station, that the days and weeks flew by at a wonderful pace. I pity the man or boy who is reduced to the expedient of killing time. Why if one is only pleasantly and usefully occupied, or engaged in interesting pursuits, time kills itself, and we wonder where it has gone to.
If I were to enter into a minute description of the setting-up of the stock and agricultural farm, chapter after chapter would have to be written, and still I should not have finished. I do not think it would be unprofitable reading either, nor such as one would feel inclined to skip. But as there are a deal of different ways of building and furnishing new places the plan adopted by the three friends might not be considered the best after all. Besides, improvements are taking place every day even in Bush-life. However, in the free-and-easy life one leads in the Bush one soon learns to feel quite independent of the finer arts of the upholsterer.
In that last sentence I have used the adjective "easy;" but please to observe it is adjoined to another hyphenically, and becomes one with it—"free-and-easy." There is really very little ease in the Bush. Nor does a man want it or care for it—he goes there to work. Loafers had best keep to cities and to city life, and look for their little enjoyments in parks and gardens by day, in smoke-filled billiard-rooms or glaringly-lighted music-halls by night, go to bed at midnight, and make a late breakfast on rusks and soda-water. We citizens of the woods and wilds do not envy them. We go to bed with the birds, or soon after. We go to sleep, no matter how hard our couches may be; and we do sleep too, and wake with clear heads and clean tongues, and after breakfast feel that nothing in the world will be a comfort to us but work. Yes, men work in the Bush; and, strange to say, though they go there young, they do not appear to grow quickly old. Grey hairs may come, and Nature may do a bit of etching on their brows and around their eyes with the pencil of time, but this does not make an atom of difference to their brains and hearts. These get a trifle tougher, that is all, but no older.
Well, of the three friends I think Archie made the best Bushman, though Bob came next, then Harry, who really had developed his powers of mind and body wonderfully, which only just proves that there is nothing after all, even for a Cockney, like rubbing shoulders against a rough world.