We of the Never-Never

by Jeannie Gunn

All around and within the Settlement was bush: and beyond the bush, stretching away and away on every side of it, those hundreds of thousands of square miles that constitute the Never-Never—miles sending out and absorbing again from day to day the floating population of the Katherine.

Before supper the Telegraph Department and the Police Station called on the Cottage to present compliments. Then the Wag came with his welcome. “Didn’t expect you to-day,” he drawled, with unmistakable double meaning in his drawl. “You’re come sooner than we expected. Must have had luck with the rivers”; and Mac became enthusiastic. “Luck!” he cried. “Luck! She’s got the luck of the Auld Yin himself—skinned through everything by the skin of our teeth. No one else’ll get through those rivers under a week.” And they didn’t.

Remembering the telegrams, the Wag shot a swift quizzing glance at him; but it took more than a glance to disconcert Mac once his mind was made up, and he met it unmoved, and entered into a vivid description of the “passage of the Fergusson,” which filled in our time until supper.

After supper the Cottage returned the calls, and then, rain coming down in torrents, the Telegraph, the Police, the Cottage and the “Pub” retired to rest, wondering what the morrow would bring forth.

The morrow brought forth more rain, and the certainty that, as the river was still rising, the swim would be beyond the horses for several days yet; and because of this uncertainty, the Katherine bestirred itself to honour its tethered guests.

The Telegraph and the Police Station issued invitations for dinner, and the “Pub” that had already issued a hint that “the boys could refrain from knocking down cheques as long as a woman was staying in the place” now issued an edict limiting the number of daily drinks per man.

The invitations were accepted with pleasure, and the edict was attended to with a murmur of approval in which, however, there was one dissenting voice: a little bearded bushman “thought the Katherine was overdoing it a bit,” and suggested as an amendment that “drunks could make themselves scarce when she’s about.” But Mine Host easily silenced him by offering to “see what the missus thought about it.”

Then for a day the Katherine “took its bearings,” and keen, scrutinising glances summed up the Unknown Woman, looking her through and through until she was no longer an Unknown Woman, while the Măluka looked on interested. He knew the bush-folk well, and that their instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever niche in their lives they thought fit to place her. And as she slipped into a niche built up of strong, staunch comradeship, the black community considered that they, too, had fathomed the missus; and it became history in the camp that the Măluka had stolen her from a powerful Chief of the Whites, and, deeming it wise to disappear with her until the affair had blown over, had put many flooded rivers between him and his pursuers. “Would any woman have flung herself across rivers on wires, speeding on without rest or pause, unless afraid of pursuit?” the camp asked in committee, and the most sceptical were silenced.

Then followed other days full of pleasant intercourse; for once sure of its welcome, bushmen are lavish with their friendship. And as we roamed about the tiny Settlement, the Wag and others vied with the Măluka, Mine Host, and Mac in “making things pleasant for the missus”: relating experiences for her entertainment; showing all there was to be shown, and obeying the edict with cheerful, unquestioning chivalry.

Neither the Head Stockman nor the little bushman, however, had made any offers of friendship, Dan having gone out to the station immediately after interviewing the Măluka, while the little bushman spent most of his time getting out of the way of the missus whenever she appeared on his horizon.