After the cyclone had wrecked the building, scattering timber and sheets of iron in all directions, everything had lain exactly where it had fallen for some weeks, at the mercy of the wind and weather. At the end of those weeks a travelling Chinese carpenter arrived at the station with such excellent common-sense ideas of what a bush homestead should be, that he had been engaged to rebuild it.
His plans showed a wide-roofed building, built upon two-foot piles, with two large centre rooms opening into each other and surrounded by a deep verandah on every side; while two small rooms, a bathroom and an office, were to nestle each under one of the eastern corners of this deep twelve-foot verandah. Without a doubt excellent common-sense ideas; but, unfortunately, much larger than the supply of timber. Rough-hewn posts for the two-foot piles and verandah supports could be had for the cutting, and therefore did not give out; but the man used joists and uprights with such reckless extravagance, that by the time the skeleton of the building was up, the completion of the contract was impossible. With philosophical indifference, however, he finished one room completely; left a second a mere outline of uprights and tye-beams; apparently forgot all about the bathroom and office; covered the whole roof, including verandahs, with corrugated iron; surveyed his work with a certain amount of stolid satisfaction; then announcing that “wood bin finissem,” applied for his cheque and departed; and from that day nothing further has been done to the House, which stood before us “mostly verandahs and promises.”
Although Mac’s description of the House had been apt, he had sadly underrated the furniture. There were four chairs, all “up” to my weight, while two of them were up to the Măluka’s. The cane was all gone, certainly, but had been replaced with green-hide seats (not green in colour, of course, only green in experience, never having seen a tan-pit). In addition to the chairs, the dining-table, the four-poster bed, the wire mattress, and the looking glass, there was a solid deal side table, made from the side of a packing-case, with four solid legs and a solid shelf underneath, also a remarkably steady washstand that had no ware of any description, and a remarkably unsteady chest of four drawers, one of which refused to open, while the other three refused to shut. Further, the dining-table was more than “fairly” steady, three of the legs being perfectly sound, and it therefore only threatened to fall over when leaned upon. And lastly, although most of the plates and all the cups were enamel ware, there was almost a complete dinner service in china. The teapot, however, was tin, and, as Mac said, as “big as a house.”
As for the walls, not only were the “works of art” there, but they themselves were uniquely dotted from ceiling to floor with the muddy imprints of dogs’ feet—not left there by a Pegasus breed of winged dogs, but made by the muddy feet of the station dogs, as they pattered over the timber, when it lay awaiting the carpenter, and no one had seen any necessity to remove them. Outside the verandahs, and all around the house, was what was to be known later as the garden, a grassy stretch of hillocky ground, well scratched and beaten down by dogs, goats, and fowls; fenceless itself, being part of the grassy acres which were themselves fenced round to form the homestead enclosures. Just inside this enclosure, forming, in fact, the south-western barrier of it, stood the “billabong,” then a spreading sheet of water; along its banks flourished the vegetable garden; outside the enclosure, towards the south-east, lay a grassy plain a mile across, and to the north-west were the stock-yards and house paddock—a paddock of five square miles, and the only fenced area on the run; while everywhere to the northwards, and all through the paddock, were dotted “white-ant” hills, all shapes and sizes, forming brick-red turrets among the green scrub and timber.
“Well!” Mac said, after we had completed a survey. “I said it wasn’t a fit place for a woman, didn’t I?”
But the Head-stockman was in one of his argumentative moods. “Any place is a fit place for a woman,” he said, “provided the woman is fitted for the place. The right man in the right place, you know. Square people shouldn’t try to get into round holes.”
“The woman’s square enough!” the Măluka interrupted; and Mac added, “And so is the hole,” with a scornful emphasis on the word “hole.”
Dan chuckled, and surveyed the queer-looking building with new interest.
“It reminds me of a banyan tree with corrugated-iron foliage,” he said, adding as he went into details, “In a dim light the finished room would pass for the trunk of the tree and the uprights for the supports of the branches.”
But the Măluka thought it looked more like a section of a mangrove swamp, piles and all.