CURTAIN FALLS
BUSH HOSPITALITY
In the pioneer period of the pastoral industry, which has since known such phenomenal development and, alas! no less phenomenal declension, the hospitality of the dwellers in the wilderness was proverbially free and unchallenged. But even then there were 'metes and bounds.' Like Colonial society—though apparently 'a free and a fetterless thing'—there were lines of demarcation. These, though unsubstantial and shadowy to superficial observers, were nevertheless discovered by experiment to be strangely hard and fast.
In those Arcadian days the stranger, on arriving at the homestead of a man whom he had never seen, and whose name possibly he had scarcely heard, was warranted by custom, on riding up to the door, in proposing to stay all night. It was the rule of the period. If there was no inn within a dozen miles, it became an unquestioned right.
The owner or manager of the station, if at home, welcomed the stranger with more or less courtesy, according to his disposition, assisting the guest, whom Allah had sent him, to take off his saddle and place it in the verandah of the cottage, to turn out his horse in the paddock, or, in default of that "improvement," to hobble or tether the trusty steed on good pasture.
If the personages referred to were absent, the traveller, unless he happened to be abnormally diffident, informed the cook, hut-keeper, or any station hand whom he might chance to encounter, that he had come to stay all night, turned his horse out, and entering the plainly-furnished abode, made himself as comfortable as circumstances would admit of.
If his host delayed his coming, supper was served. The stranger foraged about among the books and newspapers, and with the aid of tobacco, managed to spend the evening, retiring to rest in the apartment indicated, with perfect cheerfulness and self-possession.
If, as chiefly happened, the hard-worked colonist returned from the quest of lost sheep or strayed cattle before bedtime, he usually expressed himself much gratified by the unexpected companionship, and after a cheery confab about the latest news, politics, prospects (pastoral), and a parting smoke, both retired to the couches where unbroken slumbers were the rule. It was a mutual benefit. The monotonous life of the squatter was cheered by the advent of a fresh face, fresh news and ideas. The weary traveller found frank entertainment for man and beast, company and a guide, possibly, for the morrow's journey.
In these strictly equestrian days (for gentlefolk) no man could carry more than a limited change of apparel in the leather valise strapped to the fore-part of the saddle. Saddlebags were occasionally used, but they were held to be cumbrous. The journeys were rough and protracted. Clean linen has ever been unwillingly dispensed with by the Briton. In that barbaric epoch, Crimean shirts could not be, the quarrel with the Sultan about the mythical keys not having arisen. Paper collars, much more celluloids, were in the future. The only recognised departure from the full-dress white raiment, the 'biled shirt' of the American humorist to come, was the check or 'regatta' shirt.
Now this was a garment of compromise, not disreputably soiled after a couple of days' use. Still its existence as a respectable article of apparel had a limit. When that was reached, the stranger was permitted to levy on the host's wardrobe, if a bachelor, to the extent of one coloured shirt, leaving his own in lieu. This was held to be fair exchange—the alien vestment, when washed, being, if of ordinary texture and age, of equal average value to the one taken; the host doing likewise when on his travels. The chief and perhaps only undesirable result was, that every proprietor on a frequented line of road had a collection of the most varied and cosmopolitan autographs in marking ink, on his shirts, probably ever noticed in one gentleman's wardrobe.