bimerah — stonehenge — a hard struggle — jundah
when we arrived at bimerah, we had, roughly speaking, completed an in and out journey of 1,300 miles from normanton; therefore we felt not only entitled to, but thoroughly inclined for a spell. and a more comfortable and hospitable resting-place than bimerah could not possibly have been chosen in the whole length and breadth of the continent. long, cool, creeper-covered verandahs, in which to idle away warm mornings, an artistic drawing-room, a piano (hitherto an unknown luxury), good cooking, and last, but by no means least, female society. the lady of the house was an ideal hostess, and one cannot say too much in favour of the wife who follows her lord and master into such exile; for the country around bimerah is lonely and uninteresting to the last degree. endless mirage-covered plains, and stern forbidding mountains stretching away to the south-east, constitute the only view. the keynote to it all is desolation.
when we arrived the drought had laid her finger on bimerah with crushing results, and the cares and anxieties of the manager were endless. fortunately he was a man of philosophic temperament, who did his level best, and knew that no man could possibly do more. to add to his worries, however, shearing was in full progress, in a rough shed constructed of uprights and boughs, about a mile from the station house.
shearing brings together a strange collection of men, not only of shearers and rouseabouts (as the additional helpers are called), but of itinerant vagabonds generally. let me instance some. on the day following our arrival, just about sundown, three men make their appearance walking and leading a pack-horse. they say they are acrobats, and they style themselves the royal western queensland circus company.
in the evening they give an exhibition of their skill before the shearers in the stockyard, under the glare of blazing torches. though a poor enough exhibition, the enthusiasm it evokes is extraordinary. next morning they break camp, and disappear again over the plains towards the next station, thirty miles distant, to repeat the performance. and this life, they say, they have been leading for many years.
no sooner are they out of sight than another little band of wayfarers puts in an appearance. this one consists of a police trooper, a prisoner, and a black tracker. the prisoner rides between his two captors, and is securely handcuffed. on interrogating the officer in charge, he says he is taking him to longreach (distant about a hundred miles), for trial, having already brought him nearly a hundred, watching him continually, and sleeping handcuffed to him at night. they pull up near the stockyard for lunch, after which they requisition fresh horses, and again wind their dismal way across the plains. there is no false shame about the prisoner, he only appears sulky and says he wishes they’d give him ‘a bit better moke, and he’d give’em a run for their money, anyhow!’ but they have met his like before, and decline to furnish him with the necessary opportunity.
the great festival on an australian station is the arrival of the mail, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, as the case may be. at bimerah it arrives weekly, the mail-coach being a buckboard buggy drawn by five strong horses. anxiously is it looked for, and many are the surmises as to its fate if it does not run up to proper time! after the bags are opened, the entire station becomes a letter and paper reading community for hours.
but everything must come to an end, even a pleasant rest, and at length we are reluctantly compelled to bid our hospitable friends ‘goodbye,’ and once more take up our march. the ladies of the family set out the same morning, driving themselves, to attend a dance at a neighbouring station some fifty miles away. they think no more of the distance than an english lady would of paying an afternoon call in the next street.
leaving bimerah, our track lies along the foot of, and eventually across, the johnstone range, over open downs and dense mulga ridges, to a miserable little apology for a township, called stonehenge. the route is uninteresting to the last degree, and we notice with regret that, however much we may have enjoyed the hospitality of bimerah, cyclops and polyphemus do not show any signs of having benefited by it too.
how and why stonehenge received its name must ever remain a mystery. it is as like the real stonehenge as a log hut is like the tower of london, but at least i will do it the justice to say, that, next to boulia and windorah, it is the hottest and the least desirable township through which we had the misfortune to pass. it contains about ten houses, of which perhaps two are grog shanties, the balance being made up of a police hut, a couple of stores, a butcher’s and blacksmith’s shop, and two or three private dwellings.
though we were only there a few minutes, mr. pickwick found time to make himself objectionable to the dogs of the place, a number of whom clustered round the buggy and barked defiance at him as he sat on the top of the luggage. in a moment of mistaken enthusiasm he missed his footing and fell overboard, to dangle by his chain six inches, off the ground, the prey and derision of his enemies. when we rescued him, and set him back in his place, he sported flies with a melancholy air for hours afterwards. his pride had received a fall, as well as his body.
in spite of the blandishments of the inhabitants we were not to be persuaded to remain in stonehenge, but pushed on over another spur of the range, to our old friend the thompson river, in whose dry bed we were eventually obliged to camp, contenting ourselves with the thick pea-soup like water we were lucky enough to find in a solitary pool there.
it was a dreary spot, made up of dead timber, dried flood wreck, and polyganum. as usual mr. pickwick did not seem at all happy in his mind; the mosquitoes must have found out his map of asia, and bitten him there, for he moaned so diligently all night that we were compelled to argue with him at repeated intervals.
in addition to our other troubles ‘the bolivar’ was becoming a source of constant anxiety to us: the crack in her pole was spreading ominously, her wheels had to be continually taken off and soaked in water, while it was necessary to insert leather washers in the wheel boxes, on an average, once every day, to prevent her going completely to pieces.
when, next morning, we resumed our march, it was only to observe with alarm that our horses were not only more tucked up than ever, but that they were growing exceedingly leg-weary. indeed, considering the work they had accomplished, and the heat and the scanty food and water on which they had done it, it was not to be wondered at that they showed signs of failing. for this reason our progress was necessarily slow, while our minds were filled with the gravest apprehensions. the country was growing unmistakably poorer ahead. for miles and miles only parched earth met the eye, not a blade of grass could be discovered, and whenever creeks or waterholes were met with, nothing but a dry heat-cracked surface presented itself.
for five hours we toiled on in this hopeless fashion, as miserable as a pair of bandicoots. at the end of that time we had barely completed a distance of fourteen miles. then, seeing that our animals absolutely could go no further, we were compelled, whether we liked it or not, to call a halt; this meant a dry camp, or in other words a camp without water. grass as usual was woefully scanty, and next morning we were compelled for our animals’ sakes, as well as our own, to drive them on with blows and abuse in the hope of finding something better. however, towards midday things brightened up, for we struggled on as far as carella cattle station, to turn loose on the banks of a lovely sheet of water, nearly a mile long by fifty yards wide, round which a little grass, but very little, grew. our gratitude for the water, and the joy of the poor horses, can better be imagined than described. even mr. pickwick grew excited, and that fact may be set down as one of the most remarkable circumstances of the whole journey.
after a day’s rest we pushed on again, at a walking pace, reaching the township of jundali towards sundown, with our animals, this time, hopelessly knocked up.
jundah is another abominable hole, but it has one redeeming feature, it is situated on a splendid permanent waterhole of the thompson river; a waterhole many miles long, and of considerable depth. the township itself consists of a few wooden houses, two or three third-rate grog shanties, a couple of stores, and a commodious district police station. when we arrived, the heat, the flies, the sand, and the dust were in full possession. without losing time we hunted up the police station, and instituted inquiries as to the state of the country ahead. the report was not hopeful. the sergeant told us that, in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant, the district had never passed through such an awful season. in response to our questions as to which route he would advise us to pursue, he seemed most doubtful, but eventually recommended us to attempt the track via windorah to cooper’s creek, thence by innaminka into south australia. obtaining from his store a bag of coarse native hay, we returned to the township and purchased two half bushels of oats and bran, for which we paid the enormous price of twenty-five shillings. then, seeking a convenient spot on the river bank, we fixed up camp, watered and fed our exhausted horses, and deliberated as to our future movements.
we could not help seeing that to attempt anything further, with only our present enfeebled animals to depend upon, would be worse than madness, so we determined to lay out some of our now very much reduced capital on the purchase of two fresh steeds, if anything worth having in the equine way could be obtained in jundah, where everything was starving. at first, indeed, this did seem unlikely, but eventually we managed to get two sorry wrecks, in but little better condition than our own. we paid the extortionate sum asked for them, and led them down to the river bank, where we gave them a hearty feed of bran and oats, and camped them with messrs. cyclops and polyphemus, who did not regard them with any too much favour.
the waterhole, we were pleased to discover, teemed with fish, so, pressing into our service a tame black fellow from a camp hard by, we soon had two or three members of the finny tribe grilling on the embers. in spite of their insipid and muddy flavour we relished them immensely. hunger is a piquant sauce, and we had had nothing worth eating for two or three days past.
as we turned into our blankets, thick clouds were rising into the sky, thunder soon followed, and with it every sign of a wet night. this, we reflected dismally, would mean heavy tracks upon the morrow. however, we need not have worried ourselves, it was only a false alarm: in the morning all the clouds had disappeared.
with the first streaks of day we were on the road again, driving our new purchases, and dragging our faithful friends cyclops and polyphemus behind us.
as i have mentioned before, it was mr. pickwick’s custom to journey on the rolls of swags and stores, secured to the back of our seat by a short chain. when we had been travelling half an hour or so, i chanced to look round, and was surprised to find that he had disappeared. we searched among the packages, but not a sign of him could we discover, then his dangling chain caught our eyes, and on pulling it in, mr. pickwick appeared at the other end. he had been hanging for nearly half-an-hour, the weight of his body on the collar preventing him from singing out. beyond being a trifle more melancholy, however, he did not seem to mind it much, but spent the remainder of the morning sporting flies on his bald patch with his accustomed equanimity.
the track we followed could not be called, even by its most enthusiastic admirers, a good one; for this reason and on account of the heavy sand, and the hard pulling it entailed upon the horses, we were compelled to walk more than three parts of the day’s distance. this in itself was the reverse of inspiriting, but we had worse things in store for us. the new horses were not a success; they were as weak as kittens and as slow as crabs. the heat was terrible; our thermometer, at midday, totalled 112° in the shade. lovely mirages accompanied us; extensive visions of beautiful lakes, perfect in every way, even to the detail of wild fowl and overhanging trees. they certainly presented more agreeable pictures than the barren, burnt-up country through which we were, in reality, travelling. but though we ought to have been grateful, somehow we were not.
talking of mirages reminds me that i once heard a story of some sheep which followed an exquisite lake from queensland into western australia, trying to come up to it for a drink. the brother of the man who told me this was a superintendent in a sunday school, and held a responsible government position; like george washington, he boasted he had never told a lie!
our camp that night was a wretched one (it seems my lot to chronicle nothing but wretched camps); the new horses were inclined to stray, what water we had was bad, and added to these drawbacks the mosquitoes were most assiduous in their attentions. the mosquito is an egotistical insect who, not content with being aware of his own existence, wants everybody else to be aware of it too. (this definition is placed at the disposal of the scientific world for use in catalogues, and may be used free of charge by charitable institutions.)
shortly after five o’clock a.m. we broke camp and departed, driving our new purchases. the heat, as soon as the sun rose, was almost overpowering, and, as on the previous day, the route was villanously sandy, entailing the heaviest of heavy pulling. before our midday camp was reached, we were obliged to make a change in horses, the jundah animals being quite knocked up. we passed no travellers now, and, with the exception of the dead and dying stock in the waterholes, saw no animals whatsoever. nothing seemed to flourish in this region, save the black crow, who followed us through each day’s march, saying continually —
‘caw — caw! when’ll ye die? caw — caw! when’llyedie?’
once more we had a vile camp, once more grass was scarce, and once more we had to content ourselves with stagnant green filth in place of water. not a particle of food could our horses obtain with the exception of parched mulga leaves, and even to secure these we had to cut down a number of trees.
to chronicle such deprivations is dispiriting, let us therefore skip the next march, and simply say that by noon on the day following, a desolate collection of still more desolate habitations had appeared before us, and we knew that we were in sight of windorah.