The Call Of The South

The station was right on the bank of the river, but at a spot where neither game nor fish were at all plentiful; so long before sunrise on the following morning, under a bright moon and clear sky, we started, accompanied by a black boy, leading a pack horse, for the junction of the Kirk River with the Burdekin, where there was excellent fishing, and where also we were sure of getting teal and wood-duck.

A two hours’ easy ride along the grassy, open timbered high banks of the great river brought us to the junction. The Kirk, when running along its course, is a wide, sandy-bottomed stream, with here and there deep rocky pools, and its whole course is fringed with the everlasting and ever-green sheoaks. We unsaddled in a delightfully picturesque spot, near the meeting of the waters, and in a few minutes, whilst the billy was boiling for tea, C–and I were looking to our short bamboo rods and lines, and our guns. Then, after hobbling out the horses, and eating a breakfast of cold beef and damper, we started to walk through the high, dew-soaked grass to a deep, boulder-margined pool in which the waters of both rivers mingled.

The black boy who was leading when we emerged on the water side of the fringe of sheoaks, suddenly halted and silently pointed ahead—a magnificent specimen of the “gigantic” crane was stalking sedately through a shallow pool—his brilliant black and orange plumage and scarlet legs glistening in the rays of the early sun as he scanned the sandy bottom for fish. We had no desire to shoot such a noble creature; and let him take flight in his slow, laboured manner. And, for our reward, the next moment “Peter,” the black boy, brought down two out of three black duck, which came flying right for his gun from across the river.

Both rivers had long been low, and although the streams were running in the centre of the beds of each, there were countless isolated pools covered with blue-flowered water-lilies, in which teal and other water-birds were feeding. But for the time we gave them no heed.

From one of the pools we took our bait—small fish the size of white-bait, with big, staring eyes, and bodies of a transparent pink with silvery scales. They were easily caught by running one’s hand through the weedy edges, and in ten minutes we had secured a quart-pot full.

“Peter,” who regarded our rods with contempt, was the first to reach the boulders at the edge of the big pool, which in the centre had a fair current; at the sides, the water, although deep, was quiet. Squatting down on a rock, he cast in his baited hand-line, and in ten seconds he was nonchalantly pulling in a fine two pound bream. He leisurely unhooked it, dropped it into a small hole in the rocks, and then began to cut up a pipeful of tobacco, before rebaiting!

The water was literally alive with fish, feeding on the bottom. There were two kinds of bream—one a rather slow-moving fish, with large, dark brown scales, a perch-like mouth, and wide tail, and with the sides and belly a dull white; the other a very active game fellow, of a more graceful shape, with a small mouth, and very hard, bony gill plates. These latter fought splendidly, and their mouths being so strong they would often break the hooks and get away—as our rods were very primitive, without reels, and only had about twenty feet of line. Then there were the very handsome and beautifully marked fish, like an English grayling (some of which I had caught at Scan’s Creek); they took the hook freely. The largest I have ever seen would not weigh more than three-quarters of a pound, but their lack of size is compensated for by their extra delicate flavour. (In some of the North Queensland inland rivers I have seen the aborigines net these fish in hundreds in shallow pools.) Some bushmen persisted, so Gilfillan told me, in calling these fish “fresh water mullet,” or “speckled mullet”.

The first species of bream inhabit both clear and muddy water; but the second I have never seen caught anywhere but in clear or running water, when the river was low.

But undoubtedly the best eating fresh-water fish in the Burdekin and other Australian rivers is the cat-fish, or as some people call it, the Jew-fish. It is scaleless, and almost finless, with a dangerously barbed dorsal spine, which, if it inflicts a wound on the hand, causes days of intense suffering. Its flesh is delicate and firm, and with the exception of the vertebrae, has no long bones. Rarely caught (except when small) in clear water, it abounds when the water is muddy, and disturbed through floods, and when a river becomes a “banker,” cat-fish can always be caught where the water has reached its highest. They then come to feed literally upon the land—that is grass land, then under flood water. A fish bait they will not take—as a rule—but are fond of earthworms, frogs, crickets, or locusts, etc.

Another very beautiful but almost useless fish met with in the Upper Burdekin and its tributaries is the silvery bream, or as it is more generally called, the “bony” bream. They swim about in companies of some hundreds, and frequent the still water of deep pools, will not take a bait, and are only seen when the water is clear. Then it is a delightful sight for any one to lie upon the bank of some ti-tree-fringed creek or pool, when the sun illumines the water and reveals the bottom, and watch a school of these fish swimming closely and very slowly together, passing over submerged logs, roots of trees or rocks, their scales of pure silver gleaming in the sunlight as they make a simultaneous side movement. I tried every possible bait for these fish, but never succeeded in getting a bite, but have netted them frequently. Their flesh, though delicate, can hardly be eaten, owing to the thousands of tiny bones which run through it, interlacing in the most extraordinary manner. The blacks, however “make no bones” about devouring them.

By 11 A.M. we had caught all the fish our pack-bags could hold—bream, alleged grayling, and half a dozen “gars”—the latter a beautifully shaped fish like the sea-water garfish, but with a much flatter-sided body of shining silver with a green back, the tail and fins tipped with yellow.

We shot but few duck, but on our way home in the afternoon “Peter” and Gilfillan each got a fine plain turkey—shooting from the saddle—and almost as we reached the station slip-rails “Peter,” who had a wonderful eye, got a third just as it rose out of the long dry grass in the paddock.

And on the following day, when C–‘s guests arrived (and after we had congratulated ourselves upon having plenty for them to eat), they produced from their buggies eleven turkeys, seven wood-duck, and a string of “squatter” pigeons!

“Thought we’d better bring you some fresh tucker, old man,” said one of them to C–. “And we have brought you a case of Tennant’s ale.” “The world is very beautiful,” said C–, stroking his grey beard, and speaking in solemn tones, “and this is a thirsty day. Come in, boys. We’ll put the Tennant’s in the water-barrels to cool.”

The first occasion on which I ever saw and caught one of the beautiful fish herein described as grayling was on a day many months previous to our former party camping on Scarr’s Creek. We had camped on a creek running into the Herbert River, near the foot of a range of wild, jagged and distorted peaks and crags of granite. Then there were several other parties of prospectors camped near us, and, it being a Sunday, we were amusing ourselves in various ways. Some had gone shooting, others were washing clothes or bathing in the creek, and one of my mates (a Scotsman named Alick Longmuir) came fishing with me. Like Gilfillan, he was a quiet, somewhat taciturn man. He had been twenty-two years in Australia, sometimes mining, at others following his profession of surveyor. He had received his education in France and Germany, and not only spoke the languages of those countries fluently, but was well-read in their literature. Consequently we all stood in a certain awe of him as a man of parts; for besides being a scholar he was a splendid bushman and rider and had a great reputation as the best wrestler in Queensland. Even-tempered, good-natured and possessed of a fund of caustic humour, he was a great favourite with the diggers, and when he sometimes “broke loose” and went on a terrific “spree” (his only fault) he made matters remarkably lively, poured out his hard-earned money like water for a week or so—then stopped suddenly, pulled himself together in an extraordinary manner, and went about his work again as usual, with a face as solemn as that of an owl.

A little distance from the camp we made our way down through rugged, creeper-covered boulders to the creek, to a fairly open stretch of water which ran over its rocky bed into a series of small but deep pools. We baited our lines with small grey grasshoppers, and cast together.

“I wonder what we shall get here, Alick,” I began, and then came a tug and then the sweet, delightful thrill of a game fish making a run. There is nothing like it in all the world—the joy of it transcends the first kiss of young lovers.

I landed my fish—a gleaming shaft of mottled grey and silver with specks of iridescent blue on its head, back and sides, and as I grasped its quivering form and held it up to view my heart beat fast with delight.

“Ombre chevalier!” I murmured to myself.

Vanished the monotony of the Bush and the long, weary rides over the sun-baked plains and the sound of the pick and shovel on the gravel in the deep gullies amid the stark, desolate ranges, and I am standing in the doorway of a peaceful Mission House on a fair island in the far South Seas—standing with a string of fish in my hand, and before me dear old Père Grandseigne with his flowing beard of snowy white and his kindly blue eyes smiling into mine as he extends his brown sun-burnt hand.

“Ah, my dear young friend! and so thou hast brought me these fish—ombres chevaliers, we call them in France. Are they not beautiful! What do you call them in England?”

“I have never been in England, Father; so I cannot tell you. And never before have I seen fish like these. They are new to me.”

“Ah, indeed, my son,” and the old Marist smiles as he motions me to a seat, “new to you. So?… Here, on this island, my sainted colleague Channel, who gave up his life for Christ forty years ago under the clubs of the savages, fished, as thou hast fished in that same mountain stream; and his blood has sanctified its waters. For upon its bank, as he cast his line one eve he was slain by the poor savages to whom he had come bearing the love of Christ and salvation. After we have supped to-night, I shall tell thee the story.”

And after the Angelus bells had called, and as the cocos swayed and rustled to the night breeze and the surf beat upon the reef in Singâvi Bay, we sat together on the verandah of the quiet Mission House on the hill above, which the martyred Channel had named “Calvary,” and I listened to the old man’s story of his beloved comrade’s death.

As Longmuir and I lay on our blankets under the starlit sky of the far north of Queensland that night, and the horse-bells tinkled and our mates slept, we talked.

“Aye, lad,” he said, sleepily, “the auld padre gave them the Breton name—ombre chevalier. In Scotland and England—if ever ye hae the good luck to go there—ye will hear talk of graylin’. Aye, the bonny graylin’… an’ the purple heather… an’ the cry o’ the whaups.... Lad, ye hae much to see an’ hear yet, for all the cruising ye hae done.... Aye, the graylin’, an’ the white mantle o’ the mountain mist… an’ the voices o’ the night… Lad, it’s just gran’.”

Sleep, and then again the tinkle of the horse-bells at dawn.

CHAPTER XVIII ~ A RECLUSE OF THE BUSH

The bank of the tidal river was very, very quiet as I walked down to it through the tall spear grass and sat down upon the smooth, weather-worn bole of a great blackbutt tree, cast up by the river when in flood long years agone. Before me the water swirled and eddied and bubbled past on its way to mingle with the ocean waves, as they were sweeping in across the wide and shallow bar, two miles away.

The sun had dropped behind the rugged line of purple mountains to the west, and, as I watched by its after glow five black swans floating towards me upon the swiftly-flowing water, a footstep sounded near me, and a man with a gun and a bundle on his shoulder bade me “good-evening,” and then asked me if I had come from Port – (a little township five miles away).

Yes, I replied, I had.

“Is the steamer in from Sydney?”

“No. I heard that she is not expected in for a couple of days yet. There has been bad weather on the coast.”

The man uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and laying down his gun, sat beside me, pulled out and lit his pipe, and gazed meditatively across the darkening river. He was a tall, bearded fellow, and dressed in the usual style affected by the timber-getters and other bushmen of the district Presently he began to talk.

“Are you going back to Port – to-night, mister?” he asked, civilly.

“No,” and I pointed to my gun, bag, and billy can, “I have just come from there. I am waiting here till the tide is low enough for me to cross to the other side. I am going to the Warra Swamp for a couple of days’ shooting and fishing, and to-night I’ll camp over there in the wild apple scrub,” pointing to a dark line of timber on the opposite side.

“Do you mind my coming with you?”

“Certainly not—glad of your company. Where are you going?”

“Well, I was going to Port –, to sell these platypus skins to the skipper of the steamer; but I don’t want to loaf about the town for a couple o’ days for the sake of getting two pounds five shillings for fifteen skins. So I’ll get back to my humphy. It’s four miles the other side o’ Warra.”

“Then by all means come and camp with me tonight,” I said “I’ve plenty of tea and sugar and tucker, and after we get to the apple scrub over there we’ll have supper. Then in the morning we’ll make an early start It is only ten miles from there to Warra Swamp, and I’m in no hurry to get there.”

The stranger nodded, and then, seeking out a suitable tree, tied his bundle of skins to a high branch, so that it should be out of the reach of dingoes, and said they would be safe enough until his return on his way to the Port Half an hour later, the tide being low enough, we crossed the river, and under the bright light of myriad stars made our way along the spit of sand to the scrub. Here we lit our camp fire under the trees, boiled our billy of tea, and ate our cold beef and bread. Then we lay down upon the soft, sweet-smelling carpet of dead leaves, and yarned for a couple of hours before sleeping.

By the light of the fire I saw that my companion was a man of about forty years of age, although he looked much older, his long untrimmed brown beard and un-kept hair being thickly streaked with grey. He was quiet in manner and speech, and the latter was entirely free from the Great Australian Adjective. His story, as far as he told it to me, was a simple one, yet with an element of tragedy in it.

Fifteen years before, he and his brother had taken up a selection on the Brunswick River, near the Queensland border, and were doing fairly well. One day they felled a big gum tree to split for fencing rails. As it crashed towards the ground, it struck a dead limb of another great tree, which was sent flying towards where the brothers stood; it struck the elder one on the head, and killed him instantly. There were no neighbours nearer than thirty miles, so alone the survivor buried his brother. Then came two months of utter loneliness, and Joyce abandoned his selection to the bush, selling his few head of cattle and horses to his nearest neighbour for a small sum, keeping only one horse for himself. Then for two or three years he worked as a “hatter” (i.e., single-handed) in various tin-mining districts of the New England district.

One day during his many solitary prospecting trips, he came across a long-abandoned selection and house, near the Warra Swamp (I knew the spot well). He took a fancy to the place, and settled down there, and for many years had lived there all alone, quite content.

Sometimes he would obtain a few weeks’ work on the cattle stations in the district, when mustering and branding was going on, by which he would earn a few pounds, but he was always glad to get back to his lonely home again. He had made a little money also, he said, by trapping platypus, which were plentiful, and sometimes, too, he would prospect the head waters of the creeks, and get a little fine gold.

“I’m comfortable enough, you see,” he added; “lots to eat and drink, and putting by a little cash as well. Then I haven’t to depend upon the storekeepers at Port – for anything, except powder and shot, flour, salt, tea and sugar. There’s lots of game and fish all about me, and when I want a bit of fresh beef and some more to salt down, I can get it without breaking the law, or paying for it.”

“How is that?” I inquired.

“There are any amount of wild cattle running in the ranges—all clean-skins” (unbranded), “and no one claims them. One squatter once tried to get some of them down into his run in the open country—he might as well have tried to yard a mob of dingoes.”

“Then how do you manage to get a beast?”

“Easy enough. I have an old police rifle, and every three months or so, when my stock of beef is low, I saddle my old pack moke, and start off to the ranges. I know all the cattle tracks leading to the camping and drinking places, and generally manage to kill my beast at or near a waterhole. Then I cut off the best parts only, and leave the rest for the hawks and dingoes. I camp there for the night, and get back with my load of fresh beef the next day. Some I dry-salt, some I put in brine.”

Early in the morning we started on our ten miles’ tramp through the coastal scrub, or rather forest Our course led us away from the sea, and nearly parallel to the river, and I thoroughly enjoyed the walk, and my companion’s interesting talk. He had a wonderful knowledge of the bush, and of the habits of wild animals and birds, much of which he had acquired from the aborigines of the Brunswick River district As we were walking along, I inquired how he managed to get platypus without shooting them. He hesitated, and half smiled, and I at once apologised, and said I didn’t intend to be inquisitive. He nodded, and said no more; but he afterwards told me he caught them by netting sections of the river at night.

After we had made about five miles we came to the first crossing above the bar. This my acquaintance always used when he visited Port – (taking the track along the bank on the other side), for the bar was only crossable at especially low tides. Here, although the water was brackish, we saw swarms of “block-headed” mullet and grey bream swimming close in to the sandy bank, and, had we cared to do so, could have caught a bagful in a few minutes But we pushed on for another two miles, and on our way shot three “bronze wing” pigeons.

We reached the Warra Swamp at noon, and camped for dinner in a shady “bangalow” grove, so as not to disturb the ducks, whose delightful gabble and piping was plainly audible. We grilled our birds, and made our tea. Whilst we were having a smoke, a truly magnificent white-headed fish eagle lit on the top of a dead tree, three hundred yards away—a splendid shot for a rifle. It remained for some minutes, then rose and went off seaward. Joyce told me that the bird and its mate were very familiar to him for a year past, but that he “hadn’t the heart to take a shot at them”—for which he deserved to be commended.

Presently, seeing me cutting some young supplejack vines, my new acquaintance asked me their purpose. I told him that I meant to make a light raft out of dead timber to save me from swimming after any ducks that I might shoot, and that the supplejack was for lashing. Then, to my surprise and pleasure, he proposed that I should go on to his “humphy,” and camp there for the night, and he would return to the swamp with me in the morning, join me in a day’s shooting and fishing, and then come on with me to the township on the following day.

Gladly accepting his offer, two hours’ easy walking brought us to his home—a roughly-built slab shanty with a bark roof, enclosed in a good-sized paddock, in which his old pack horse, several goats and a cow and calf were feeding. At the side of the house was a small but well-tended vegetable garden, in which were also some huge water-melons—quite ripe, and just the very thing after our fourteen miles’ walk. One-half of the house and roof was covered with scarlet runner bean plants, all in full bearing, and altogether the exterior of the place was very pleasing. Before we reached the door two dogs, which were inside, began a terrific din—they knew their master’s step. The interior of the house—which was of two rooms—was clean and orderly, the walls of slabs being papered from top to bottom with pictures from illustrated papers, and the floor was of hardened clay. Two or three rough chairs, a bench and a table comprised the furniture, and yet the place had a home-like look.

My host asked me if I could “do” with a drink of bottled-beer; I suggested a slice of water-melon.

“Ah, you’re right But those outside are too hot. Here’s a cool one,” and going into the other room he produced a monster. It was delicious!

After a bathe in the creek near by, we had a hearty supper, and then sat outside yarning and smoking till turn-in time.

Soon after a sunrise breakfast, we started for the swamp, taking the old packhorse with us, my host leaving food and water for the dogs, who howled disconsolately as we went off.

At the swamp we had a glorious day’s sport, although there were altogether too many black snakes about for my taste. We camped there that night, and returned to the port next day with a heavy load of black duck, some “whistlers,” and a few brace of pigeons.

I bade farewell to my good-natured host with a feeling of regret Some years later, on my next visit to Australia, I heard that he had returned to his boyhood’s home—Gippsland in Victoria—and had married and settled down. He was one of the most contented men I ever met, and a good sportsman.

CHAPTER XIX ~ TE-BARI, THE OUTLAW

The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to west is incomparably beautiful—I have never seen anything to equal it anywhere in the Pacific Isles.

A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind—the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever.

A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days’ leave, intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system.

Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain—the destined future home of Stevenson—by six o’clock. After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono—soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging—I began the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious croo! croo! of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the imaginative Samoans.

Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. “Sui,” as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate taro as handsome “as a picture,” and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon his shoulders, and that it would be promptly removed therefrom if any of King Malietoa’s troops could catch him spying in flagrante delicto. Two years before, he had attached himself to me, and had made a voyage with me to the Caroline Islands, during which he had acquired an enormous vocabulary of sailors’ bad language. This gave him great local kudos.