lost in the bush—the drought—we find dead comrades together—horse and rider

it was my luck to be on the lonely track humping the swag when a great drought swept its burning wave across the whole of australia. on the borders of queensland i had been with two more english emigrants working on a selector’s ranch at “sunrise creek.” dorrell was the boss’s name and he had a splendid stock of sheep and many acres of land under cultivation. he proved a fine man to us lads and treated us as though we were his own sons. i taught his daughter to play the violin and he was so proud when she was first able to play “home, sweet home” that he smacked me on the back and gave me a week’s holiday. but life in a selector’s homestead is extremely monotonous, and after staying there six months i bade them all farewell, and with a kindred spirit started off to tramp to maranoa with the idea of getting across to queensland and into more lively surroundings.

modern sheep-shearers

it was on that tramp that the great drought struck the country; forests that were green shrivelled to grey and then to brown, as the fiery blast from the white hot sun day after day crept over the sky as we tramped along. the wind blew like the hot blasts from some volcano; the swamps and creeks 311and pools soon became baked and cracked shallows, wherein the very frogs stuck in the dry ooze, died and stank. while we passed by, half dead ourselves, searching for water, overhead across the cloudless blue passed swarms of parrots. as my comrade and i staggered along we heard the dismal mutterings of those birds as they sped away overhead and faded away leaving a greater loneliness after they disappeared, tiny specks on the southern skyline. to the south-west of us rose some hills, and at nightfall we came across a pool of water at the bottom of a deep gully. it was hot-fevered stuff, but we knelt side by side and drank it as on the scorched blue gums the carrion crows wept, and yet, with that same hope that springs eternally in the human breast, sharpened up their beaks with the forlorn hope that we might yet die and our rotting carcasses supply them with food. by the swamp we slept that night, and once more at daybreak started off. over us on the eucalyptus trees the carrion crows had slept and over our heads they croaked and flapped lazily along, following us, and often they would stay by the trackless track to feed on the dead birds in the mulga-scrub, birds that had fallen from their perch during the night, dead through the want of water. for miles and miles the bush lay around us, nothing but a leafless, waterless drought-stricken ocean, and often as the migrating birds passed over, some would half fall from the blazing sky and settle on the tree-tops to die, just the same as swallows do far out at sea as the stragglers fly to 312the rigging of the lonely ship, and fall dead on the deck during the night through hunger.

my comrade was english, and was a splendid friend; he was three or four years older than i, and when we sat down together and shared out the food we had in our swag, we would almost quarrel because he would deny himself and give me the largest share. he was uneducated, but that did not matter. god had amply repaid him in the making for all that his education might lack when he was a man, and twelve months after, when i read in a newspaper that i had been drowned at sea on the schooner alice that was lost with all hands, i felt terribly upset. i had given him one of my “very good” discharges so that he could secure a berth; he got the berth, and my name being on his discharge he had to sail under my name, and died bearing my name. many beautiful things were said of me when my old acquaintances also read the account, and thought it was i who was drowned; but when the truth came out, and i appeared and was once more known to be living in common flesh, i became commonplace, and the beautiful things that only survive in the memory for those who are dead, faded and my sins once more awoke and peeped through my good reputation like the slit-mouths of those frogs that protrude among the pure white lilies of a crystal lake. but i must return to that tramp across those drought-stricken plains.

i think it was three weeks before we reached civilisation again, though we were not more than two hundred miles from warrego. i sprained my 313ankle while crossing a gully, and found it a terrible job to get along, but ned shipley, my comrade, made me lean on his shoulder as he staggered along with the swag, which was nearly empty. we had thrown all the blankets away and kept just one small rug to wrap our little remaining food in. several times i gave in and told him to go on and take care of himself, but he was not made that way and simply lifted me up and dragged me along. just when we were both nearly roasted up to dried skin and bone and despairing, we came across a deep cleft in a gully, and in its shaded glooms we found dozens of juicy prickly pears growing on the huge boughs. i lay at full length on my back utterly exhausted as ned knocked the prickles off the rind with his boots and placed the crimson fruit in my parched mouth. that night was the first night that we really slept soundly, and when we awoke the sun had already fired the eastern sky with blood-red streaks. as we lay on our backs under the tall dried-up blood-wood trees, we saw the flocks of cockatoos and migrating spoonbills pass in hurrying fleets across the sky. all was hushed on the slopes around us, excepting for the chanting noise of the locusts and the surviving tree-frogs. i remember well that particular morning; the long sleep had considerably refreshed us both, and my comrade even started to sing and i to dream of home and england. i lay by his side and i seemed to realise with a deeper intensity all that had happened. and as the scent of the parched sea-scrub blew in whiffs 314around my nostrils, and my chum stood up and gazed dreamily across the plains with his hand arched over his sky-blue eyes, i felt the atmosphere of wild romance come over me. notwithstanding all the misery of that tramp and my helplessness, the spirit of adventure seemed to thrill me with a strange happiness. even now after all the years i can still see the rolling plains around us, our homeless camp under the blood-wood trees, and the big bird that fluttered just overhead, with crimson underwings and one of its legs hanging down as though it was broken, as it gave a lonely wail and passed away. on we tramped that day and towards nightfall, by the side of a dried-up creek, we both stood and gazed on one of the saddest sights of loneliness and helplessness that i ever saw or may ever see again. there by a dead stunted palm on the desert lay the skeleton of a horse; the bones were bleached white and so was the relic of humanity beside it, and as we both gazed on that sad sight, we instinctively drew closer to each other.

the last lone ride i live it again,

lost, alone on the drought-swept plain,

the grey-green gone from the scattered scrub;

the frogs stink, dead in the dry creek mud;

away in the sky on southward flight,

far specking the waste of blinding light,

the parrots are curling their glittering wings,

soft-croaking their dismal mutterings;

by the small hot sun in fleets they pass

where the wide sky flames like molten glass,

on crawls the horse o’er the trackless track,

the rider scorched on its blistered back!

315a castaway on wide, waveless seas.

miles, miles away rise gaunt gum-trees,

like derelicts old, with sailless mast,

cast on the rocks by the drought’s hot blast

the sun dies down—on the dim skyline

faint-twinkles once like a goblet of wine

held over that dead world’s hazy rim,

and the lost man’s eyes far gaze aswim

as the tide of dark rolls over him!

there’s hope! for a tiny cloud doth rise,

toils slowly across the noiseless skies,

creeps down to a speck on the other side,

to leave him alone on the desert wide;

’tis night—overhead the bright stars creep.

he lies with his one friend down to sleep:—

and the months and the years have since rolled by,

and the horse and the master still there lie;

where those sad eyes of hope peered thro’

the green shoot peeped—a bush flower blew,

for we found them there, yes, side by side—

two skeletons white—just as they died.

our hearts were heavy as on we went,

for his thin bone arm was softly bent—

curled round the neck of his big comrade

there, telling us how two friends had laid

their tired heads under the drought-swept sky.

and still out there the white bones lie.[9]

9. reproduced from the author’s bush songs and oversea voices.

it was a long time before the first influence left on our minds by that sight passed away. as darkness crept over the cloudless skies and the bright australian stars flashed out, we lay together behind some large boulders and dead scrubwood as nervous as two children, and often my heart leapt as the jewel-like eyes of the big lizards darted up the dead 316scrub and grass twigs by our heads, as they slipped and squeaked and scampered away. we were only about three or four hundred yards from that spot, and as night wore on and moonrise burst out over the trackless plains, the wind-blown shadows seemed to move to and fro by the steeps and gullies, as though the ghosts of dead men crept from their unknown graves and wailed while the hot night wind cried through the leafless gum clumps. i almost feared to see my tired-out chum’s face in repose, as he lay by me fast asleep, with his mouth open, breathing out god’s sad music of humanity as with each breath his chest heaved up and down, while the moonbeams on his unshaved thin face sea-sawed with his snores.

it was with intense relief that, when still staggering along three days after, we stumbled across a track and following it for some miles came to a homestead, and almost fell down by the verandah as we knocked at the door. the old irishwoman almost wept over us and ran about with her pots muttering and saying, “sure and begorra the poor bhoys have suffered.” the dear soul kept pushing broths from her stockpot down our throats with a long wooden spoon till at last i had to beg of her to desist, otherwise i am sure i should have brought the whole gift up again. her husband was also very kind to us and they gave up their own bed for us to sleep in that night. in two days we were almost fit again. i had devoted all my spare time to bathing my ankle and the swelling soon went 317down, and when riley rode off, bound in his shaky old bush cart for a place called indrapilly, he took us with him, for though we were welcome to stay there at his homestead, we had had quite enough of the bush and both of us longed to get to the town again. here i will end this short narrative of my experience with that true comrade of mine in the australian bush and the lonely tramp across solitudes where many men in times gone by have gone and passed away for ever; for often the traveller comes across bleached bones in those wastes, and sometimes lonely graves, with the name cut in the bark of a tree just by or on some roughly extemporised cross.

in the never-never land they sleep,

where the parrots o’er them fly,

winged-flowers across some sombre steep

and monumental sky.

fenced by stretched skylines far around

where thro’ the bushman creeps,

finds some lone long-forgotten mound

upon the nameless steeps;

ay, by its cross may dreaming stand

then, swag upon his back,

fade far across the scrub and sand

out on the lonely track.

for two or three months my chum and i stuck together and secured employment on the farm stations near toowoomba and then tramped on again. with several pounds saved up we eventually arrived at port bowen and from there went by boat to brisbane, and then i bade him good-bye, for 318he secured a berth on a ship bound for new zealand and the next i heard of him was from a newspaper report that he was drowned, as i have previously told you. i stayed for about two months in brisbane and made an attempt to get into the theatre orchestra again, but could not manage it; i secured several concert engagements, however, as i was then an expert violinist and could play by heart several of spohr’s concertos and the tricky variations of paganini’s “carnaval de venice.”

about this time the rumours of great gold finds were being discussed, believed and doubted in all of the australian cities, and i got hold of a newspaper article which had evidently been written by some imaginative journalist. had the account of the discoveries and immense fortunes that were picked up day by day been believed by the author of that story he would have been a terrible ass to have sat there writing articles for a provincial paper, wasting valuable time when fortunes were awaiting men who cared to take the trouble to get them by strolling through the bush north of perth. anyway i believed a good deal that he wrote, and got the gold fever, which was raving pretty strongly all over, like an echo of “the roaring fifties,” when gold was first discovered by hargraves. the exiled convicts of those days in sydney threw their shovels and crowbars down on to the government land allotted to them, went across country, made fortunes and returned to sydney and melbourne prosperous men, elevated from the convicts’ chains 319to the peaks of fame, their pedigrees forgotten, the past swallowed up for ever. their late enemies became their firmest friends, as it was, is now and ever shall be, world without end, to those who have plenty of gold; and so by one stroke of fortune men from the condemned cell who had grinned through prison bars attained to velvet comfort and applause, became notable officials, ay, and rose to be judges on the bench, and so by the irony of fate often got their own back! but i must not digress and go so far back, as that time is now history and all happened long before i emigrated from my sleep in eternity into the realms of time to creep across the “never-never land” on my futile search for gold to help me to keep comfortable and warm.