He could not see that at all for a long time, and thought I was having a lark with him, but when at last I said there was a lady at the bottom of it, he winked and thought he knew all about it. So at break of day the next morning we went on board the schooner, and I started in the cook's galley making breakfast for all hands. I peeled potatoes and flogged the steak as if I had never done anything else in my life, because the captain would not engage me before I had shown my capabilities; but after my trial he was quite satisfied and engaged me for the trip at eight pounds per month, and then I stipulated before signing articles that I should have leave of absence until break of day next morning, as it was necessary for me to put my affairs in order before I left Mackay. After having given my word of honour to return, I went ashore again. There was enough for me to see to. My "boss" did not owe me anything, as I had received my last cheque on the previous Saturday; but there were my tools to dispose of. These went for a trifle among the other men: one took one piece, one another, and the "boss" gave me his cheque for the lot. Then there were the horses and saddles; these also were got rid of before dinner-time, and when evening came I had sold my allotment which I had bought for twenty-five pounds, for one hundred and fifty pounds, and had all the money lodged in the bank. I had not, therefore, done so badly in Mackay the eighteen or nineteen months I had been there. Not only, on an average, had I enjoyed myself pretty well, but the sum total which I now had to my credit was as near two hundred and fifty pounds as possible. After tea I had nothing to do but reflect on the wisdom or otherwise of the step I had taken. I walked about the streets for a long time, and as I knew very well that my sweetheart expected me as usual I found myself circling round the house in which she lived. She did not, of course, know that I was going away, and as she usually expected me about seven o'clock of an evening, my feet seemed perforce to carry me towards the house. I did not go in; at eight o'clock I saw her sitting by the window, at nine o'clock she was there still, at ten o'clock I saw her sitting by the window as I came past the place, at eleven o'clock she was standing outside, and I was right up to her before I saw her. The reader must not expect too much confidence from me; I cannot repeat what she said, and will only say this—that I have never seen her since, and that with a heavy heart I went on board the schooner next morning, when we hoisted anchor and left for the South Sea Islands.
Dear reader, if I were to tell you all that happened to me on this journey in the same detailed way as I have told you about my travels through Queensland, it would take me too far away and also occupy too much space, so I have thought it better to leave it all out and take up the thread of my history at the point when I again arrived in Port Mackay about nine months after. Should this effort of mine meet with the approbation of the public, I shall be very glad to write another book about my adventures in the South Seas, but at present I will content myself by saying that although many things I saw upon this journey were new and startling to me, yet on the whole we had a good journey, and that I was paid off in Mackay when we came back, and at once took a passage in a steamer for Brisbane.
CHAPTER XII.
BRISBANE—TRAVELS IN THE "NEVER NEVER" LAND.
I went on board the Black Swan on taking leave of the captain and my other friends on the schooner, and after an uneventful passage arrived in Brisbane. Times had altered greatly in Queensland, for the worse I thought, since I was there last. The rich people had grown richer, and the poor poorer. It is sad at the present day to walk about the town and look at all the semi-destitute people whom one sees on every side, and then think of the "booms" which used to be a few years ago. My objects in coming to Brisbane were many. I had now, as I thought, sufficient capital to establish myself in a small way at my trade, and I intended to look out for a suitable place near town where I might begin. I was also on the look-out for a wife; but that was only in a general sense, and when all is said, I believe that what I considered most important was to enjoy myself. In any case, with over three hundred pounds in the bank I felt pretty independent and considered myself entitled to spend all I could earn so long as I could keep this nest-egg safe. The town was busy, work was plentiful, but although I went about every night and spent all I earned, yet I by no means liked Brisbane. I do not propose to criticise the inhabitants thereof in a general way, but so far as it concerns my narrative at this point I must say a few words. I was very unsuccessful in finding any girl whom I thought might suit me for a wife, and who, at the same time, herself approved of me for a husband. The reason, as I understood it, was this: Brisbane was, and is, crammed full of young women who are glad to stand in a shop from morning to night for half-a-crown a week and find themselves. Whether such girls can or cannot make a cup of tea I do not know, but my general impression of them was that they would rather not, if they could avoid it. Then as for servant-girls, it is a common delusion to believe that they are well off in Brisbane; the fact is that the majority of people who keep a servant both overwork her and use her as a coat-of-arms wherewith to set themselves off, and one never by any chance reads a book either in Australia or elsewhere in which a servant is spoken of as possessed of even common sense. Of course, the better class of girls will revolt at contemptuous treatment, and they are, therefore, scarce in Brisbane, and have always been. In the bush of course it is different: there the servant is not spoken of as the "slavey" and thought of as a fool, and as a consequence they are neither the one nor the other. But a tradesman in Brisbane has no opportunity whatever of meeting any young woman outside these circles, because the greatest possible social distinction exists between such people as, say a bank clerk, or even a grocer's clerk, and a tradesman or a labourer; so is it between a music-teacher, shop-girl, dressmaker, or a servant. I found it so, and that had a great deal to do with my dislike to Brisbane; but, apart from that, I had been so used to the free life of the bush, and more lately then to the changing scenes among the South Sea Islands, that I could not endure for long the everyday life of the shop and the boarding-house, and the boarding-house and the shop. I therefore engaged myself as carpenter to a squatter who had a large station on the Darling Downs, and right glad was I when I shook the dust of Brisbane off my feet again. But before leaving this city I should like to speak about the last piece of work I did there, because it is in such striking contrast to the state of the carpenter's trade at the present time. One Saturday morning when I came to work, my employer asked me to put a few tools in my basket and go out to his private house to perform certain work there. As I crossed Queen Street a man came running after me and asked me if I wanted a job of carpenter's work. I said "No." When I came a little further up, along George Street, a publican came running out of his door, smiling all over his face, saying I was the very man he wanted, as he could see by the basket I carried that I was a carpenter. I told him I was not open to engagement; but he would not take "no" for an answer. After a long conversation in the street, in which he implored me to do just this little job for him that he wanted, while I explained that I was on my road to work for which I already was engaged. I was on the point of cutting it short by going away, when he asked me in any case to come into his hotel and have a glass of beer. When I came in he renewed the attack in this way—he asked me just to oblige him by looking at the work and telling him what it was worth. He then showed me a large shutter which stood under a rough window opening in the yard, and told me that all he wanted was for a man to fit this shutter to the opening and put hinges on it; he had the hinges. Now, what was it worth? I saw that he intended me to do it if he could get me, but I by no means wanted to. I said it was worth thirty shillings at the least: "All right," cried he, "do it, and I will give you thirty shillings."
I was caught now, so I gave in. I took my saw out and fitted the shutter, screwed the hinges, and took my thirty shillings, all in less than an hour. This is eleven or twelve years ago. I have not worked in Brisbane since, but I know a friend of mine who two years ago put a shilling advertisement in the papers for a carpenter to do a few days' work, and in less than half an hour after the paper was out he had thirty-two applicants! I was now working on one of the largest stations on the Darling Downs. I had only come there in a roving sort of way, under a six months' agreement which was made in Brisbane, and I had no intention whatever of staying longer, but although the wages were less than what I could earn in Brisbane, or in any other town, I thought I should like to see a large sheep station, and I was told by the agent in town that I should be sure to like it. The property itself covered I do not know how many square miles, divided into paddocks, and in each or most of these paddocks stood a house in which the boundary rider and his family lived. The duty of this man is not fatiguing; he has to look out that the fences are in good repair and report to the head station when anything is out of order. Therefore his day's work is generally done when after breakfast he has been jogging round the boundary fence. For this work the wages are about thirty-five pounds sterling a year with double rations, a free house, use of cow, &c. These boundary riders are by no means the only employees on the station. There were general labourers, carriers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, storekeepers, carpenters, and a host of people who came and went without my knowing they did so, but the whole formed quite a little township at the head station. Once a year, when the wool was clipped off the two hundred thousand sheep there, it was an extra busy time. Then the shearers would arrive, sixty in number, and with all their assistants they would make nearly a hundred persons. Besides these there were the washers, who washed the sheep by elaborate machinery. There would be so many people that I do not know how the "boss" knew them all. Every one of them earned good money, although in various degrees. The shearers earned three shillings and sixpence for every score of sheep they could shear. An average day's work is from fifty to a hundred sheep. Then the wool-packers, who pressed the wool into bales, had also piecework, and this was a favourite job reserved as a reward for old hands. They earned at it a pound or more a day. This was of course for a short time only out of the year, but when one station is done shearing another generally begins, and the men can, therefore, keep on for at least six months at a stretch with very little lost time. The tradesmen on the station seemed all part and parcel of the station, old identities, who had made their homes there years before and did not intend to shift. I heard it whispered that the squatter meant to try and break through the monopoly that some of the old hands had created, and that some new blood might be infused, and I believe that I had been engaged to hang as the sword of Damocles over the other carpenters' heads, but I refused the rôle. The head carpenter was an old, worn-out man with a large family. He had been there seventeen years. He had one hundred pounds a year and double rations, with a free house, wood, water, and many little perquisites. I daresay he had saved a little money, but any one may easily understand that a man over fifty years of age, with a large family and a settled home where he has been for seventeen years, does not like the prospect of change and to have to make a new start in life. Such a billet as that of tradesman on a station is much sought after, and in many respects is incomparably better than the position occupied in town by a married man who works for wages. But neither the one nor the other suited my ambition. If I had been doomed to choose between the two, I think I should, after all, have taken the lot of the man in town, for he is more independent if he is poorer. It is all very well to work for a master when one is young, but as one gets on for thirty years of age he likes to be his own master. At least that was my opinion. There seemed to me something so forbidding in the ringing of the large bell on the station. It would ring at a quarter to six on a morning for all hands to get out of bed and dress. Then it rang at six o'clock for starting work. It rang for dinner, and it rang when we were to start again. It was all correct enough; I have no fault to find with it, I cannot suggest anything better, but all the same I did not like it.
My work on the station was otherwise both pleasant and independent enough. A great deal of it consisted in making and hanging gates for the various paddocks. These would be made at home in the shop and afterwards carted out to their places. Then I would get a labourer with me and we would drive off in a spring-cart from one gate to the other, and hang them. It was a regular journey across the paddocks, and involved about a fortnight's trip every time.
The man who earned the most money of all the employees on the station was the shearers' cook. The shearers had a large house to themselves and managed their own housekeeping, inasmuch as they engaged and paid their own cook and bought and paid for anything they liked to eat, so that they should not grumble over the provisions. But that object has never yet been attained with shearers, either with the lot on this station or any other set of shearers I have ever seen. They are the most frightful grumblers, and who is so fit an object for their displeasure as their servant—their own servant, the cook? One thing, they pay him well. The wages of a shearers' cook is the shearing price of a score of sheep per week, or three-and-sixpence a week for every shearer. You will therefore see that in a large shearing shed like this, with sixty shearers, the cook earned ten guineas per week besides his food. But for this money he had to do more than an ordinary man can do, and take more insults than an ordinary dog would tolerate. First of all, the shearers always insist on having their table spread with good things, puddings and cake every day. He had also to bake bread, chop wood, fetch water, keep the hut clean, and in short everything else that was wanted. Nobody but the very smartest men can do it. But his work is not everything. When the bell rings for meal-time, I have seen shearers come out of the shed, making for the hut, howling at the same time: "I wonder if that —— of a cook has got that —— breakfast ready!" Everything has to stand ready for them to "rush;" and even if it does, yet one seldom hears other conversation than such as: "I say, cook, do you call them —— peas boiled? D—— you! If I had my way you should be kicked out!"
But as the majority only can dismiss their cook, he is not sent away notwithstanding, and it is quite understood that it is part of his duty to assume a respectful demeanour towards his employers. Yet, unless a cook is a good fighting man, it is not a billet that I would recommend any friend of mine to come all the way from Denmark to fill.