We of the Never-Never

by Jeannie Gunn

Brumby horses being one of the problems of the run, and the destruction of brumby stallions imperative, as the nigger-hunt was apparently off, the brumby mob proved too enticing to be passed by, and for an hour and more it kept us busy, the Măluka and Dan being equally “set on getting a stallion or two.”

As galloping after brumbies when there is no trap to run them into is about as wise as galloping after a flight of swallows, we followed at a distance when they galloped, and stalked them against the wind when they drew up to reconnoitre: beautiful, clean-limbed, graceful creatures, with long flowing manes and tails floating about them, galloping freely and swiftly as they drove the mares before them, or stepping with light, dancing tread as they drew up and faced about, with the mares now huddled together behind them. Three times they drew up and faced about and each time a stallion fell before the rifles, then, becoming more wary, they led us farther and farther back, evading the rifles at every halt, until finally they galloped out of sight, and beyond all chance of pursuit. Then, Dan discovering he had acquired the “drouth,” advised “giving it best” and making for the Spring Hole in Duck Creek.

“Could do with a drop of spring water,” he said, but Dan’s luck was out this trip, and the Spring Hole proved a slimy bog “alive with dead cattle,” as he himself phrased it. Three dead beasts lay bogged on its margin, and held as in a vice, up to their necks in slime and awfulness stood two poor living brutes. They turned piteous terrified eyes on us as we rode up, and then Dan and the Măluka firing in mercy, the poor heads drooped and fell and the bog with a sickening sigh sucked them under.

As we watched, horribly fascinated, Dan indulged in a soliloquy—a habit with him when ordinary conversation seemed out of place. “ ‘Awful dry Wet we’re having,’ sez he,” he murmured, “ ‘the place is alive with dead cattle.’ ‘Fact,’ sez he, ‘cattle’s dying this year that never died before.’ ” Then remarking that “this sort of thing” wasn’t “exactly a thirst quencher,” he followed up the creek bank into a forest of cabbage-tree palms—tall, feathery-crested palms everywhere, taller even that the forest trees; but never a sign of water.

It was then two o’clock, and our last drink had been at breakfast—soon after sun-up; and for another hour we pegged wearily on, with that seven hours’ drouth done horses, the beating sun of a Territory October overhead, Brown stretched across the Măluka’s knees on the verge of apoplexy, and Sool’em panting wearily on. With the breaking of her leg little Tiddle’ums had ended her bush days, but as she lost in bush craft she gained in excellency as a fence personifier.

By three o’clock we struck water in the Punch Bowl—a deep, volcanic hole, bottomless, the blacks say, but apparently fed beneath by the river; but long before then Dan’s chuckle had died out, and soliloquies had ceased to amuse him.

At the first sight of the water we revived, and as Brown and Sool’em lay down and revelled on its margin, Dan “took a pull as an introduction,” and then, after unpacking the team and getting the fire going for the billy, he opened out the tucker-bags, having decided on a “fizz” as a “good quencher.”

“Nothing like a fizz when you’ve got a drouth on,” he said, mixing soda and cream-of-tartar into a cup of water, and drinking deeply. As he drank, the “fizz” spattered its foam all over his face and beard, and after putting down the empty cup with a satisfied sigh, he joined us as we sat on the pebbly incline, waiting for the billy to boil, and with the tucker-bags dumped down around and about us. “Real refreshing that!” he said, drawing a red handkerchief from his belt and mopping his spattered face and beard, adding, as he passed the damp handkerchief over his ears and neck with chuckling exaggeration: “Tell you what! A fizz ’ud be a great thing if you were short of water. You could get a drink and have a good wash-up with the one cupful.”

With the “fizz,” Dan’s interest in education revived, and after dinner he took up the rôle of showman of the Roper scenery once more, and had us scrambling over boulders and cliffs along the dry bed of the creek that runs back from the Punch Bowl, until, having clambered over its left bank into a shady glen, we found ourselves beneath the gem of the Roper—a wide-spreading banyan tree, with its propped-up branches turning and twisting in long winding leafy passages and balconies, over a feathery grove of young palm trees that had crept into its generous shade.

Here and there the passages and balconies graded one to another’s level, all being held together by innumerable stays and props, sent down from branch to branch, and from branches to the grassy turf beneath; and one sweeping limb, coming almost to the ground in a gentle incline before twisting away and up again, made ascent so simple that the men-folk sent the missus for a “stroll in midair,” sure that no white woman’s feet had yet trodden those winding ways. And as she strolled about the tree—not climbed—hindered only by her holland riding-skirt, Brown followed, anxiously but cautiously. Then, the spirit of vandalism taking hold of the Măluka, he cut the name of the missus deep into the yielding bark.