In Bad Company and other stories

At one time or other Jack had been in the employment of all the principal stockholders in the Port Fairy district, including Mr. John Cox of Werongurt, the Messrs. Rutledge, Campbell, and Macknight, Kennedy, Carmichael, and others. His never staying very long in one place was less due to any fault of his own than to an inherent restlessness and love of change. A born roamer, with strong Bohemian proclivities, Jack had wandered over a considerable portion of the colony. With commendable taste he latterly elected to make Western Victoria his habitual residence; and, strangely enough, he was fated to finish a roving life as nearly as possible at the place where he first took service, more than forty years since, on his first arrival in the district.

A fellow-worker and in a sense a companion of my youth, he 'was a part of those fresh days to me.' Many a day we rode together in the heaths and marshes, the forests and volcanic trap-ridges which lie between the lower Eumeralla and the sea. At many a muster have I heard Jack's cheery shout, and enjoyed with others his drolleries at camp and drafting-yard. Now poor Jack's whip is silent; his songs and jests are hushed for evermore. A man with few faults and no vices. 'Born for a protest' (as Mrs. Stowe says somewhere) 'against the excessive industrialism of the age.' Many a dweller in the Port Fairy district must have felt sincerely grieved at the news of poor old Jack's ending, and deemed that 'they could have better spared a better man.'

Peter Kearney, who came to Port Fairy first with Mr. Frank Cobham from Monaro (a good specimen of the old race of stock-riders), was one of Jack's earlier contemporaries. With Tom Glendinning, generally known in the district as 'Old Tom,' he was employed for a time on the Eumeralla station. Irish by birth and 'Sydney-siders' by residence, these last had served apprenticeship to every grade of colonial experience. The naming, indeed, of the Eumeralla station and river was due to 'Old Tom' and his mates, who brought from New South Wales the J.T.H. cattle (formerly the brand of John Terry Hughes), with which the station was first 'taken up' by Mr. Hunter. From some fancied resemblance to the Umaralla (spelt differently, by the way), one of the streams which mingle their waters with the Snowy River near the Bredbo, the men christened the new watercourse after the old one. There is no special resemblance, rather the reverse, inasmuch as the Port Fairy river, if such it be, runs mostly underground, percolating through marshes and trap dykes, and generally pursues an erratic course, while the Umaralla of New South Wales is a merry, purling, snow-fed stream, which nearly attained celebrity by drowning Mr. Tyson, who crossed it ahead of our cattle in 1870, unobtrusively travelling, as was his wont, on horseback to Gippsland.

While on the subject of stock-riders, it is noticeable how many different nationalities and sub-varieties there were among them. Peter and Old Tom were, as I said before, Irishmen, both light weights, first-rate riders, and extremely good hands at 'breaking-in cattle to the run' – that lost or almost unnecessary art, except 'down the Cooper, where the Western drovers go,' or thereabouts. I may stop here to state that 'Clancy of the Overflow,' quoted by a writer who signs himself 'Banjo,' which appeared lately, was, in my opinion, the best bush-ballad since Lindsay Gordon. It has the true ring of spur and snaffle combined with poetic treatment – a conjunction not so easy of attainment as might be supposed. When charged with the responsible duty of breaking-in store cattle freshly turned out, Old Tom was ever mounted and away by daylight. He disregarded breakfast, knowing that the early morn is the time for getting on the tracks of wandering cattle. Carrying his quart-pot with him, a wedge of damper and a similar segment of cold corned-beef, after he had gone round his cattle and satisfied himself that none of the leaders were away, then, and not till then, he lighted a fire, made his tea, and settled to his breakfast with a good appetite and a clear conscience. He came with me from Campbell's farm, in order to point out Squattlesea Mere, then unoccupied, somewhere about May 1843. We stayed at Dunmore for lunch. The members of the firm were absent, but good, kind Mrs. Teviot provided me with such a meal of corned-beef, home-baked bread, fresh butter, short-cake and cream, that, as I told my guide, I was provisioned for twenty-four hours if needful. As it happened, by some mischance, we were very nearly that precise time before we had the next meal.

'Jemmy' White, Mr. John Cox's stock-rider at Werongurt, and Joe Twist, his assistant, a native-born Tasmanian, had both followed Mr. Cox's fortunes from Clarendon in the lovely island. 'Jemmy' was a solid, elderly man of considerable experience, and under his management the Werongurt Herefords were kept in admirable order. He, like his fellow-servant Buckley, was assisted by Mr. Cox in the purchase of a run adjoining his master's station, where, with a flock of sheep to start with, he became independent and comparatively rich. After marrying and settling down, he built himself a comfortable brick house at Louth, and died the possessor of beeves and pastures, horses and sheep, in patriarchal plenty.

Joe Twist – now, doubtless, 'old Mr. Twist,' and a substantial burgess of Macarthur – was a boy when I first came to the district, but growing up in the fulness of time, was promoted to be head stock-rider, vice White retired. He had by that time developed into one of the smartest hands in a yard that ever handled drafting-stick, as well as a superb horseman in connection with cattle-work. He would stand in a stock-yard among the excited, angry cattle (and those that came out of the Mount Napier lava country were playful enough) as if horns were so many reeds, even waiting until the charging beast was almost upon him before stepping out of the way, with the cool precision of a Spanish toreador.

With all due respect for the ancestral Briton, whom every good Australian should reverence, I hold that the native-born artist, while equal in staying power, far surpasses him in dexterity. What Britisher could ever shear as many sheep – ay, and shear them well – as the 'big blow' men of the Riverina sheds? Natives they of Goulburn, Bathurst, the Hawkesbury, Campbelltown – all the earlier Sydney settlements. Can any imported 'homo' even now pilot twenty bullocks, with the wool of a small sheep-station on the iron-bark waggon, along the roads the teamster safely travels? And similarly for 'scrub-riding,' drafting, and camp-work, though many of the old hands, grown men before they ever touched Australian shores, became excellent, all-round bushmen, yet the talent, to my mind, lies with their sons and grandsons, who are as superior when it comes to pace and general efficiency as Searle and Kemp to the Thames watermen.

Well remembered yet is the first typical Australian stock-rider I ever set eyes on – a schoolboy then out for a holiday. I was riding to Darlington, our Mount Macedon Run, early in the 'forties,' with a relative. From Howie's station a young man, detailed to show us a short cut, rode up, furnishing to my delighted vision the romantic presentment of a real stock-rider of the wild, such as I had longed to see. Tall, slight, neatly dressed, with spur and stockwhip, strapped trousers and cabbage-tree hat, 'accoutred proper,' he joined us, mounted upon a handsome three-parts bred mare, in top condition. She shied and plunged playfully as she came up.

'Now, Miss Bungate,' he said, with mock severity of tone, 'what are you up to?'

This was one of the mental photographs, little heeded at the time, which were of use in days to come. Tom or Jack, 'Howie's Joe' or 'Ebden's Bill' – the rider's name cannot be guaranteed by me, but that bay mare I never can forget. 'Wincing she went, as doth a wanton colt.' The summer leaves may fall, and that dreary season, the winter of age, come on apace, but Miss Bungate will be enshrined among the latest memories which Time permits this brain to register and recall.

The stock-riders of the past were a class of men to whom the earlier pastoralists were much indebted. Placed in positions of great trust and responsibility, they were, in the main, true to their salt and loyal to their employers. If they occasionally erred in the wild confusion of strayed cattle and unbranded yearlings, presumably the property of the Government (was there not a celebrity thus claiming all estrays humorously designated 'Unbranded Kelly'?), their temptations were great. Without their aid, living lonely lives on the remoter inland stations, the cattle herds, often menaced or decimated by the blacks, and roaming over vast areas of natural pasture, would never have enabled their owners to amass fortunes and create estates. They were, as a rule, fearless sons of the wilderness, having some of the vices but many of the virtues which have always honourably distinguished pioneers.

MOUNT MACEDON

In the later days of 1842 I paid my first visit to Macedon, beyond which mountain our sheep-station, Darlington, had been formed in 1838. The overseer, on a business visit to Melbourne, whether in recognition of personal merit, or as desiring to do the polite thing to his employer's son, invited me to return with him. I jumped at the proposal. The paternal permission being granted, the following day saw me mounted upon a clever cob named Budgeree, a survivor of the overland party from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1838, fully accoutred for my first journey into Bushland – the land of mystery, romance, and adventure, which I have well explored since that day – that Eldorado whence the once-eager traveller has returned war-worn and pecuniarily on a level with the majority of pilgrims and knights-errant.

And o'er his heart a shadowFell as he foundNo spot on groundThat looked like Eldorado.

We reached Howie's Flat, spending the night at the solitary stock-rider's hut near Woodend. I still recall the keenness of the frost, which came through the open slabs and interrupted my repose. Macedon was the first mountain I had encountered in real life, familiar as I was with his compeers in books. I regarded his shaggy sides, his towering summit, with wonder and admiration, as we rode along the straggling dray-track of the period.

Walls of dark-stemmed eucalypti bounded the narrow road; shallow runlets trickled across the rock ledges; while the breeze, strangely chill even at mid-day, but rippled the ocean of leafage. Gloomy alike seemed the endless forest ways, the twilight defiles, the rough declivities. At one such place my companion remarked, 'This blinded gully is where Joe Burge capsized the wool dray last shearing.' I thought it would be a nice place for robbers. German stories of the Bandit of the Black Forest and such-like thrilling romances, which ended in the travellers being carried off into caverns or tied up to trees, began to come into my head. I was glad when we sighted the open country again.

We arrived at Darlington next day, not without adventures, in that we lost one horse. He slipped his head out of the tether rope, so we had to double-bank old Budgeree, who proved himself a weight-carrier, equal to the emergency.

What a change has passed over the land since then! Mr. Ebden was at Carlsruhe; Mr. Jeffreys close by; the Messrs. Mollison at Pyalong; and Coliban, Riddell, and Hamilton at Gisborne. Hardly any one else in the direct line of road. What waving prairies of grass! what a land of promise! what a veritable Australia Felix, was the greater portion of the country we rode over!

A decade has almost rolled by. What motley band is this which faces outward, from Melbourne, along the selfsame road on which old Macedon looks grimly down, as they ramble, straggling past under his very throne? They are gold miners, actual or presumptive.

Both worlds, all nations, every landHad sent their conscripts forth to standIn the gold-seeker's ranks.

Mother Hertha has for once hidden her treasures so carelessly that the most unscientific scratching shall suffice to win them. A hundred deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run parallel with the once sole roadway. Wild oaths in strange tongues awaken the long-silent echoes. All ranks and orders of men are mingled as in the old crusades. Different they, alas, in purpose as in symbol! Watch-fires gleam on all sides. Night and day seem alike toilsome, troubled, vulgarised by noise and disorder, strangely incongruous with the solemn mountain shadows and the old stern solitude.

Again the years have passed. The lurid, early goldfields are no more. Order reigns where crime and lawless violence once were rife. Handsome towns have succeeded to the crowded, squalid encampments where dwelt the fierce toilers for gold, the harpies, the camp-followers, the victims. I am seated in a commodious stage coach, which behind a well-bred team bowls along at a creditable pace over a well-kept, macadamised road. We are en route to Sandhurst, now a model town, with trees overshadowing the streets, a mayor and a corporation, gaols and hospitals, libraries and churches. Yet, as we pass Macedon, tales are told of mysterious disappearances of home-returning diggers, which recall my early association of brigands with the dark woods and lonely ravines.

'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.' Shade of Mr. Cape, is the quotation correct, or are we doing dishonour to that great man's memory, – 'building better than he knew,' – and the careful heed of quantities, inculcated by personal application to our feelings, in the days of heedless boyhood? Times have changed with a vengeance. Again in Melbourne! It is changed, I trow. Great, famous, rich, one of the known and quoted cities of the earth. We have helped to produce this triumph. But at what a price? Our youth has gone in the process. When we look at all the fine things that fill one's vision by day, by night, within its lofty halls, amid its crowded streets, we feel like the man in the old story, who for power and wealth sold himself to the Fiend. 'All that's very fine, my friend,' an unkind sprite whispers to us. 'You may or may not enjoy a part of this splendour, but you are not so young as you were. I won't mention the D – in polite society, but the demon of Old Age will leave his card on you before long.'

Yes, we are still extant, not wholly invalided, in this year of grace 1884. Instead of sitting on the box of Cobb's coach in Bourke Street at 6 A.M., while the punctual Yankee driver is waiting for the Post-office clock to strike, my old friend and I, en route for his well-known hospitable home on the spurs of Macedon, enter a comfortable railway carriage at mid-day. As we are whirled luxuriously through the grassy, undulating downs and wide-stretching plains which surround Melbourne on the north-east, we have ample leisure to enjoy the view. Macedon is visible from the outset, dimly shadowed, kingly as of old, raising his empurpled bulk athwart the summer sky. Passing the towers of Rupertswood, the thriving towns of Gisborne and Riddell's Creek – did I not know them in their earliest 'slab' or 'wattle-and-daub' infancy? – in two hours of extremely easy travelling, relieved by conversation and light literature, we see 'Macedon' on the board of the railway station, and find ourselves at the village so named, built on the actual mountain slope. Piles of timber of every variety, size, and shape, which can be reft from the Eucalyptus obliqua or amygdalina, show that the ancient trade of the mountain foresters has not diminished. The chief difference I suppose to be that the splitters and sawyers are no longer compelled to lead a lonely, half-savage life, bringing the timber laboriously to Melbourne by bullock dray, and, one may well believe, indulging in a 'sdupendous and derrible shpree' after so rare a feat. They now forward their lumber by rail, live like Christians, go to church on Sundays, and read The Argus daily for literary solace.

We relinquish here the aid of steam, and trust to less scientific means of locomotion. We are in the country in the sweet, true sense of the word – component portions of a company of wisely-judging town-dwellers, who by their choice of this elevated habitat have secured a weekly supply of purest mountain air, unfettered rural life, and transcendent scenery. Various vehicles are awaiting the home-returning contingent. Buggies and sociables, dog-carts, pony-carriages, and phaetons with handsome, well-matched pairs – the reins of the prize equipage in the latter division being artistically handled by a lady. Our party and luggage are swiftly deposited, a start is made along the rather steep incline – the lady with the brown horses giving us all the go-by after a while. Half an hour brings us to our destination. We leave the winding, gravelly road; turning westwards, a lodge gate admits us through the thick-ranked screen of forest trees. Conversation has somehow flagged. What is this? We have all in a moment quitted the outer world, with its still, rude furnishing – tree stumps, road metal, wood piles, and bullock teams – and entered into – shall I say it straight out? – an earthly paradise!

Prudence here nudges me. 'Come now, don't overdo it; you're really too imaginative.' Well, there may be just the least soupçon of idealism, Prudence dear. I never was there, or if in a former state of existence, have forgotten details; but if aught mundane can furnish a partial presentment of Eve's favourite nook in that lost glory of our race, surely it is the dream-garden which now opens before our wondering vision.

On the lip of the forest hollow, taking studied advantage of every point of natural conformation, has been created a many-acred, garden landscape, absolutely perfect in growth, harmony, and sustained beauty of composition. The natural advantages, it must be admitted, are great, perhaps unequalled. 'The dark wall of the forest,' but partially invaded, forms a highly effective background to the cultured loveliness and delicate floral brilliancy which it overshadows. On either side, the sheltering primeval groves make effectual barrier against the withering north wind of summer, the winter's southern sea-blasts.

Cooler air and a lowered heat-register are consequent upon the altitude, when on the plain below, plant and animal nature alike suffer from the unpitying sun. Here rarely frost is seen or rude gales blow. Proudly and secure may the dwellers on Darraweit Heights look from their mountain home, across the unbroken stretch of plain and grassy down, relieved but by copses, around farm-steadings and cornfields, where the harvest sheaves are now standing in thick rows. In the dim distance are the gleaming waters of the Bay. That cluster of far-seen lights, when the shades of night have fallen, denotes the position of the metropolis. Can that misty, pale-blue apparition be a mountain-range – the austere outline of the Australian Alps? Westward lie the broad plains which stretch in unbroken level, well-nigh to the coast, two hundred miles from Melbourne. Around are companion heights and forest peaks. Still regal as of yore, though his woods have been rifled and his solitudes invaded, Macedon rears his majestic summit. The house – roomy, broad verandahed, luxuriously comfortable, more commodious than many a pretentious mansion – overlooks the 'pleasaunce,' to use the old Norman-French nomenclature, here so curiously appropriate. Grounds of pleasure they, in every sense of the word. More spacious than a garden, less extensive than a chase, the reclaimed wild is unique in form and design as in floral loveliness. It combines the colour-glories of the garden proper with the freedom, the 'fine, fresh, careless rapture,' of a mountain park.

Now for a closer description. We confess to have hung off, involuntarily, in despair of giving even a fairly accurate sketch of this adorable creation. What then does it comprise? Nearly all things that man has lacked since the primal fall. A collection of longed-for luxuries, for which the o'ertaxed heart of world-wise, world-wearied man so often sighs in vain. An abode of rest where, from morn till dewy eve, the eye lights on nought but 'things of beauty,' which are 'a joy for ever'; the ear is invaded by no sound but those of Nature's harmonies. Here, if anywhere on earth, may the soul be attuned to heavenly thoughts; here may this fallen nature of ours be purged from all save ennobling ideas, so truly Eden-like are the surroundings. Rare flowering shrubs developed by soil and irrigation into forest trees; masses of choice flowers, exhibiting in this our fiercest summer month a freshness and purity of bloom as astonishing as exquisitely beautiful.

The natural features of the locale have doubtless been exhaustively considered. Yet few horticultural artists would have seized so unerringly upon the difficult compromise between Art and Nature which has here been achieved. The winding walks through the mimic forests are lonely and sequestered as those of an enchanted wood. The sultry heat of the day's last lingering hour is effectually banished. The musical trickle and splash of the tiny waterfalls is in your ear as, book in hand, or lost in the rare luxury of an undisturbed day-dream, you saunter on. Half-hidden recesses appear, where great fronds of foreign ferns show strangely in the 'dim religious light' – 'beautiful silence all around, save wood bird to wood bird calling.' Out of the sad, sordid, struggling world, far from its maddening discords and despair-tragedies, your soul seems to recognise a purer, more sublimated mental atmosphere, nearer in every sense to the empyrean, and freed from the lower needs of this house of clay. A half-sigh of regret tells of fair visions fled, even though you emerge on the lower, wider lawns gay with ribbon-borders and yet brighter flower-fantasies in newer unfolding beauty.

For lo! in this region of glamour and the long-lost kingdom of the sorcerer, the wandering knight has fallen upon a fresh enchantment. Proudest of all the engineering triumphs, the prize must be accorded to the lakelet which glitters in the lower grounds. How the calm water sleeps beneath the heavy foliage of the farther shore! How the shadows reflect the tracery of the willow tresses, the feathery shafts of the bamboo clump! How freshly green the bordering turf! There is even an island and a wooded promontory. More than all – or do my eyes deceive me? – a shallop, light as that in which

The maiden paused as if againShe thought to catch the distant strain;With head upraised and look intent,And eye and ear attentive bent.

By my halidome! stands she not therein – the 'Ladye of the Lake' herself, – fair as her prototype, though modernly arrayed, gracefully poising her light oar. With a smile that might lure an archangel she beckons us to embark with her on this magical mirrored water, under the charmed shadows of the golden summer eve.

Surely all this is a dream. It cannot be but illusion. We shall wake on the morrow, or next week at the farthest, to feel again the hot dust-blast as we ride across the desert plain at midnight, to mark the red moon glaring wrathfully upon the pale-hued, ghostly myall tree, that sighs despair amid the death-stricken waste.

Even so. Yet let us dream on and be happy, if but for a little space. Glide smoothly, O bark; shine tenderly, O stars, soft glimmering through the o'erhanging, rustling leafage; fan this sun-bronzed cheek, O whispering breeze, this careworn brow, till each fevered pulse be cooled. Short is our mortal span at most. How weary distant the ever-lengthening goal! But wherever Fate may guide, however stern the fray, how faint soe'er our footsteps in the onward march, this fair remembrance shall have power to refresh and reanimate our soul.

Yet another joy ere the evening, bright with songs and music, with cheerful converse and pleasant reminiscence, comes to an end. We sit amid the happy household group on the broad verandah-balcony, inhaling the cool night air, and watching the wondrous effects of light and shade produced by the late arisen moon. Masses of shrubbery stand picturesquely gloomed against the moonlit lawns; odours of invisible flowers pervade the still, pure atmosphere. Opaque as to their lower bulk, the turreted tree-tops stand in clearest illumination to their most delicate leafage against the cloudless firmament. There is no wind or any faintest breeze to stir the tenderest leaflet. All nature is so still that the tinkling murmur of the tiny rivulets, which thread the lawns and flower-beds, falls distinctly on the ear. In faint but rhythmic cadence they drip and ripple, gurgle and splash, the summer night through. The flowers in the near foreground alone border on individuality. Rose clusters and a few lily spikes are recognisable. Unlike their human kalotypes, they await the dawn to recommence their fascination. And then, in calmest contemplation, or enjoyment of low-toned interchange of thought, ends the restful, happy day. On the lower levels, in the country towns and around the metropolis, as we were subsequently assured, it was felt to be sultry and oppressively heated, while on these happy heights of Darraweit – the Simla of Victoria – the air was at once cool and fragrant, subtly exhilarating as the magic draught which renews the joys of youth.