We of the Never-Never

by Jeannie Gunn

The uninitiated may think that the first was sent out by mistake and that the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it—in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—an address could never be too vague. The bush-folk love to say that when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it decided to use that in its place.

And so it would seem. “Down South” envelopes are laboriously addressed with the names of stations and vias here and vias there; and throughout the Territory men move hither and thither by compulsion or free-will giving never a thought to an address; while the Department, knowing the ways of its people, delivers its letters in spite of, not because of, these addresses. It reads only the name of the man that heads the address of his letters and sends the letters to where that man happens to be. Provided it has been clearly stated which Jones is meant the Department will see to the rest, although it is wise to add Northern Territory for the guidance of Post Offices “Down South.” “Jones travelling with cattle for Wave Will,” reads the Department; and that gossiping friendly wire reporting Jones as “just leaving the Powell,” the letter lies in the Fizzer’s loose-bag until he runs into Jones’s mob; or a mail coming in for Jones, Victoria River, when this Jones is on the point of sailing for a trip south, his mail is delivered on shipboard; and as the Department goes on with its work, letters for east go west, and for west go south—in mail-bags, loose-bags, travellers’ pockets or per black boy—each one direct to the bush-folk as a migrating bird to its destination.

But, painstaking as our Department is with our mail-matter, it excels itself in its handling of telegrams. Southern red tape has decreed—no doubt wisely as far as it goes—that telegrams shall travel by official persons only; but out-bush official persons are few, and apt to be on duty elsewhere when important telegrams arrive; and it is then that our Department draws largely on that surplus supply of common sense.

Always deferential to the South, it obediently pigeon-holes the telegram, to await some official person, then, knowing that a delay of weeks will probably convert it into so much waste paper, it writes a “duplicate,” and goes outside to send it “bush” by the first traveller it can find. If no traveller is at hand, the “Line” is “called up” and asked if any one is going in the desired direction from elsewhere; if so, the “duplicate” is repeated “down the line,” but if not, a traveller is created in the person of a black boy by means of a bribing stick of tobacco. No extra charge, of course. Nothing is an extra in the Territory. “Nothing to do with the Department,” says the chief; “merely the personal courtesy of our officers.” May it be many a long day before the forgotten shipment of red tape finds its way to the Territory to strangle the courtesy of our officers!

Nothing finds itself outside this courtesy. The Fizzer brings in great piles of mail-matter, unweighed and unstamped, with many of the envelopes bursting or, at times, in place of an envelope, a request for one; and “our officers,” getting to work with their “courtesy,” soon put all in order, not disdaining even the licking of stamps or the patching or renewing of envelopes. Letters and packets are weighed, stamped, and repaired—often readdressed where addresses for South are blurred; stamps are supplied for outgoing mail-matter and telegrams; postage-dues and duties paid on all incoming letters and parcels—in fact, nothing is left for us to do but to pay expenses incurred when the account is rendered at the end of each six months. No doubt our Department would also read and write our letters for us if we wished it, as it does, at times, for the untutored.

Wherever it can, it helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to “find room somewhere” in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport assistance—the general opinion being that “a man that refuses to carry a man’s mail to him ’ud be mean enough to steal bread out of a bird-cage.”

In all the knowledge of the bush-folk, only one man had proved “mean enough.” A man who shall be known as the Outsider, for he was one of a type who could never be one of the bush-folk, even though he lived out-bush for generations: a man so walled in with self and selfishness that, look where he would, he could see nothing grander or better than his own miserable self, and knowing all a mail means to a bushman, he could refuse to carry a neighbour’s mail—even though his road lay through that neighbour’s run—because he had had a difference with him.

“Stealing bread from a caged bird wasn’t in it!” the homestead agreed, with unspeakable scorn; but the man was so reconciled to himself that the scorn passed over him unnoticed. He even missed the contempt in the Măluka’s cutting “Perfectly!” when he hoped we understood him. (The Outsider, by the way, spoke of the Never-Never as a land where you can Never-Never get a bally thing you want! the Outsider’s wants being of the flesh pots of Egypt). It goes without saying that the Măluka sent that neighbour’s mail to him without delay, even though it meant a four-days’ journey for a “boy” and station horses, for the bush-folk do what they can to help each other and the Department in the matter of mails, as in all else.

Fortunately, the Outsider always remained the only exception, and within a day or two of the Fizzer’s visit a traveller passed through going east who happened to know that the “chap from Victoria Downs was just about due at Hodgson going back west,” and one letter went forward in his pocket en route to its owner. But before the other could be claimed Cheon had opened the last eighty-pound chest of tea, and the homestead fearing the supply might not be equal to the demands of the Wet, the Dandy was dispatched in all haste for an extra loading of stores. And all through his absence, as before it, and before the Fizzer’s visit, Dan and the elements “kept things humming.”

Daily the soakage yielded less and less water, and daily Billy Muck and Cheon scrimmaged over its yield; for Billy’s melons were promising to pay a liberal dividend, and Cheon’s garden was crying aloud for water. Every day was filled with flies, and dust, and prickly heat, and daily and hourly our hands waved unceasingly, as they beat back the multitude of flies that daily and hourly assailed us—the flies and dust treated all alike, but the prickly heat was more chivalrous, and refrained from annoying a woman. “Her usual luck!” the men-folk said, utilising verandah-posts or tree-trunks for scratching posts when not otherwise engaged. Daily “things” and the elements hummed, and as they hummed Dan and Jack came and went like Will-o’-the-Wisps—sometimes from the south-east and sometimes from the north-east; and as they came and went, the Măluka kept his hand on the helm; Happy Dick filled in odd times as he alone knew how; a belated traveller or two passing out came in, and went on, or remained; Brown of the Bulls sent on a drover ahead of the mob to spy out the land, and the second letter left the rack, while all who came in, or went on, or remained, during their stay at the homestead, stood about the posts and uprights waving off flies, and rubbing and wriggling against the posts like so many Uriah Heeps, as they laid plans, gossiped, gave in reports, or “swopped yarns.” The Territory is hardly an earthly paradise just before the showers. Still, Cheon did all he could to make things pleasanter, regaling all daily on hop-beer, and all who came in were sure of a welcome from him—Dan invariably inspiring him with that ever fresh little joke of his when announcing afternoon tea to the quarters. “Cognac!” he would call, and also invariably, Dan made a great show of expectant haste, and a corresponding show of disappointment, when the teapot only was forthcoming.