‘Them with the cattle, after they’d gone a little way, starts a-spearin’ ’em, an’ the mob breaks, an’ never stops till they gets to the fust seven-mile hut, where the other lot was; and the chap there, seein’ some with spears stickin’ in ’em, gallops off to the head station, and out comes ole Davies an’ all hands.
‘No; no more new country for me—not if I knows it! [59] ]I’m a-gettin’ too old now for such a little game as they played on me out there. Is that the supper-bell a-ringin’? Well, it’s the finest sound I’ve heard for five ’underd miles an’ more.’
[60]
]KEEPING SCHOOL AT ‘DEAD FINISH.’
A Reminiscence of ‘The Rivers.’
The people at Dead Finish had never applied for such a thing, nor dreamt of, nor wished for it, neither they nor their children. These latter were mostly of an age now to be of use about the house or in the field. They had imagined themselves, these half-a-dozen or so of scattered families hidden in the gloomy recesses of coastal scrubs, quite secure from any officious interference with their offspring by the Government. And, without exception, they took it as a most uncalled-for act of tyranny, this proposed establishment of a school and a teacher in their midst, and well within the two-mile radius from all.
Here was the corn just ready to be pulled and husked, and got ready for Tuberville, and who was to do it with Tom, Jack and Bill wasting their time at a school?
‘If Mr Gov’ment was here,’ growled ‘Brombee’ O’Brien, the largest selector of the lot, ‘I’d give ’im a bit o’ my mind. Wot bizness he got, comin’ an’ takin’ the kids just as they’re a-gittin’ handy? Why didn’t he come afore, when they was bits o’ crawlers, an’ no use to no one? Anyhow, me an’ the missis niver ’ad no schoolin’; [61] ]an’ why should they? Will learnin’ cut through a two-foot log? Will ’rethmetic split palin’s or shingles? Will readin’ an’ writin’ run brombees, or drive a team o’ bullocks, or ’elp to plough or ’arrer? No; it ain’t likely. Then wot’s the good of it? Garn? Wot they givin’ us?’
Thus Mr O’Brien, at a meeting of neighbours specially convened to confront the unlooked-for emergency, and whose own ideas he voices to the letter.
And when, later, the Inspector (taken at first for the ‘Gov’ment’) puts in an appearance, the case is set before him precisely as above. But, instead of listening to reason, he only rated them, told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and dilated largely on the beauty and advantage of a State education at only threepence per week each child, and one shilling for seven or over. A paternal Government, he said, had long mourned over their degraded and benighted condition; and, at last, having, after much trouble, and at great expense, secured a most accomplished gentleman as a teacher, resolved that one of his first tasks should be that of making Dead Finish an ornament, in place of a reproach, to the district.
This was, so the Inspector thought, putting the thing neatly indeed. But it was all of no avail. They not only unanimously refused to have anything to do with the erection of the school, but also to receive the teacher when he arrived. They swore, too, that their children should not leave work for education, and in the end, used language unrecordable here, and such as the Inspector had never in all his life heard before. But he [62] ]persevered; and, bringing a couple of men from the township fifty miles away, set them to work.