Rolf Boldrewood
In Bad Company and other stories
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 again
She 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.
WALKS ABROAD
Only a month to midsummer – A.D. 1883 – when on this verge of the great north-western plain-ocean we fall across a section of the railway to Bourke in course of construction. Nature is here hard beset by Art. What a mighty avenue has the contractor's army cut through the primeval forest! The close-ranked trees taper, apparently, to nothingness until the horizon is reached. In the twelve miles that your sight reaches, there is not the smallest curve – no departure from the mathematically straight line. If you could see a hundred and twenty miles, you would find none greater than is visible now; for this avenue is something over that length, and is said by railway men to be one of the longest 'pieces of straight' in the world.
The still incompleted work is even now being ministered to with the strong, skilled hands of hundreds of men. All the same, the inspecting overseer is a necessary personage in the interests of the State. He it is who descries 'a bit of slumming,' however minute; who arrests progress, lest bolts be driven instead of screwed; who compels 'packing' and other minute but important details upon which the safety of the travelling public depends.
How efficiently is man aided by his humbler fellow-creatures, whom, for all that, he does by no means adequately respect or pity. See those two noble horses on their way to be hooked-on to a line of trucks! They are grand specimens of the Australian Clydesdale – immense creatures, highly fed, well groomed, and, it would appear, well trained.
They have no blinkers, and from the easy way in which, unled, they step along the edge of the embankment, where there is but a foot-wide path, lounging through the navvies without pausing or knocking against anybody, they seem fully to comprehend the peculiarities of railway life. They are attached by chains hooked to the axles of two of the six trucks, weighing some fifty or sixty tons, which require to be moved. Once in motion, of course, the draught is light, but the incline is against them, and the dead pull required to start the great weight is no joke. At the word they go into their collars with a will, the near horse, a magnificent dark bay, almost on his knees, and making the earth and metal fly at the side of the rails in his tremendous struggle to move the load. He strains every muscle in his powerful frame gallantly, unflinchingly, as if his life depended upon the task being performed and all at a word; he is neither touched nor guided.
He knew his duty a dead sure thing,
And went for it then and there.
His comrade lacks apparently the same high tone of feeling, for his efforts are stimulated by an unjustifiable expression on the part of the driver, and a bang on the ribs with a stout wattle. The line of trucks moves, however; then glides easily along the rails. When the end of the 'tip' is reached both horses stop, are released, walk forward a few paces, and stand ready for the next feat of strength and handiness. This happens to be pay-day on the line, which agreeable performance takes place monthly. The manner of personal remuneration I observe to be this: the paymaster and his assistant, with portentous, ruled pay-sheets, take their seats in a trench. The executive official carries a black leather bag, out of which he produces a number of sealed envelopes variously endorsed.
Different sections are visited, and the men are called up one by one. Small delay is there in handing over the indispensable cash. 91. William Jones, £9: 12s.; 90. Thomas Robinson, £9: 4s., one day; 89. John Smith, £8: 16s., two days. Smith acquiesces with a nod, signifying that he is aware that the two days during which he was, let us say, indisposed after the last pay-day have been recorded against him, and the wage deducted. There is no question apparently as to accuracy of account. The envelopes are stuffed into trouser-pockets, mostly without being opened. A few only inspect their contents, and gaze for a second upon the crisp bank-notes and handful of silver. Some of the sums thus paid are not small – gangers and other minor officials receiving as much as twelve and thirteen shillings a day; the ordinary pick and shovel men, eight. Overtime is paid for extra, which swells the amount received. One payment for fencing subcontractors exceeded eighty pounds. Sixteen hundred pounds, all in cash, came out of the superintendent's wallet that day.
I noticed the men for the most part to be under thirty, many of them almost boyish in appearance. They were cleanly in person, well dressed and neat for the work they have to do, well fed, and not uncomfortably lodged considering the mildness of the climate. One and all they show grand 'condition,' as is evidenced by the spread of shoulder, the development of muscle, with the lightness of flank observable in all. As to nationality they are pretty evenly divided; the majority are British, but an increasing proportion of native-born Australians is observable, I am told. With regard to pre-eminence in strength and staying power the home-bred English navvy chiefly bears the palm, though I also hear that the 'ringer' in the pick and shovel brigade is a Hawkesbury man, of Cornish parents, a total abstainer, and an exemplary workman.
With such a monthly outflow of hard cash over a restricted area, it may be imagined what a trade is driven by boarding-house keepers and owners of small stores. The single men take their meals at these rude restaurants, paying from 18s. to £1 per week. The married men live in tents or roughly-constructed huts in the 'camps' nearest to their work.
I fear me that on the day following pay-day, and perhaps some others, there is gambling and often hard drinking. The money earned by strenuous labour and strict self-denial during the month is often dissipated in forty-eight hours. The boarding-house keepers are popularly accused, rightly or wrongly, of illegally selling spirits. Doubtless in many instances they do so, to the injury of public morals and the impoverishment of the families of those who are unable to resist the temptation. A heavy penalty is always enforced when proof is afforded to the satisfaction of justice; but reliable evidence of this peculiar infraction of the law is difficult to obtain, the men generally combining to shield the culprits and outswear the informer.
A few miles rearward is the terminus of this iron road that is stretching so swiftly across the 'lone Chorasmian waste.' Here converge caravans from the inmost deserts. Hence depart waggon-trains bearing merchandise in many different directions. What a medley of all the necessaries, luxuries, and superfluities of that unresting, insatiable toiler, man! They lie strewed upon the platform, or heaped in huge mounds and pyramids under the lofty goods sheds. Tea and sugar, flour and grain, hay and corn, chaff and bran, machines of a dark and doubtful character connected with dam-making and well-sinking; coils of wire, cans of nails, hogsheads of spirits, casks of wine, tar, paint, oil, clothing, books, rope, tools, windlasses, drums of winding gear, waggons, carts, and buggies all new and redolent of paint and varnish; also timber and woolpacks, and, as the auctioneer says, hundreds of articles too numerous to mention. What a good customer Mr. Squatter is, to be sure, while there is even the hope of grass, for to him are most of these miscellaneous values consigned, and by him or through him will they be paid for.
We are now outside of agriculture. The farmer, as such, has no abiding-place here. That broad, dusty trail leads, among other destinations, to the 'Never Never' country, where ploughs are not, and the husbandman is as impossible as the dodo.
Perhaps we are a little hasty in assuming that everything we see at the compendious depôt is pastorally requisitioned. That waggon that creaks wailingly as it slowly approaches, with ten horses, heavy laden though apparently empty, proclaims yet another important industry. Look into the bottom and you will see it covered with dark red bricks, a little different in shape from the ordinary article. On a closer view they have a metallic tinge. They are ingots of copper, of which some hundreds of tons come weekly from the three mines which send their output here. As for pastoral products, the line of high-piled, wool-loaded waggons is almost continuous. As they arrive they are swiftly unloaded into trucks, and sent along a special side-line reserved for their use. Flocks of fat sheep and droves of beeves, wildly staring and paralysed by the first blast of the steam-whistle, arrive, weary and wayworn. At break of day they are beguiled into trucks, and within six-and-thirty hours have their first (and last) sight of the metropolis.
In the meantime herds of team-horses, bell-adorned, make ceaseless, not inharmonious jangling; sunburnt, bearded teamsters, drovers, shepherds, mingled with navvies, travellers, trim officials, tradesfolk, and the usual horde of camp-followers, male and female, give one the idea of an annual fair held upon the border of an ancient kingdom before civilisation had rubbed the edges from humanity's coinage, and obliterated so much that was characteristic in the process.
I stood on the spot an hour before daybreak on the following morn. Hushed and voiceless was the great industrial host. Around and afar stretched the waste, broadly open to the moonbeams, which softened the harsh outline of forest thicket and arid plain. The stars, that mysterious array of the greater and the lesser lights of heaven, burned in the cloudless azure – each planet flashing and scintillating, each tiny point of light 'a patine of pure gold.' The low croon of the wild-fowl, as they swam and splashed in the river-reach, was the only sound that caught the ear. Glimmering watch-fires illumined the scattered encampment. For the moment one felt regretful that the grandeur of Night and Silence should be invaded by the vulgar turmoil of the coming day.
One of the aids to picturesque effect, though not generally regarded as artistic treatment, is the clearing and formation of roads through a highland district. Such a region is occasionally reached by me, and never traversed without admiration. The ways are surrounded by wooded hills, some of considerable altitude, on the sides and summits of which are high piled
rocks, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.
But here the road-clearing, rarely supplemented by engineering disfigurement, produces the effect of a winding, thickly-grown avenue. On either side stand in close order the frenelas, casuarinas, and eucalypts of the forest primeval, with an occasional kurrajong or a red-foliaged, drought-slain callitris, 'like to a copper beech among the greens.' The floor of this forest-way is greenly carpeted with the thick-growing spring verdure, a stray tiny streamlet perhaps crossing at intervals, while leaflets of the severed saplings are bursting through in pink or dark-red bunches. In the far distance rises a dark-blue range, towering over the dim green ocean of forest, and marking the contrast sharply between the land of hill and dale and the monotonous levels of the lower country.
With all the capriciousness of Australian seasons the springtime of this year has shown a disposition to linger – waving back with grateful showers and dew-cooled nights and mornings the too impatient summer. Still is the grass brightly green of hue, the flower unfaded. The plague of dust has been stayed again and again by the welcome rainfall. There has never been more than one day when the winds have risen to a wintry bleakness. But who recks of so trifling a discomfort from such a cause, and will not King Sol be avenged upon us ere Christmastide be passed – ere the short, breezeless nights of January are ended?
What contrasts and discrepancies Dame Nature sanctions hereabouts in the formation of her feathered families! That soaring eagle, so far above us heavenward, in the blue empyrean, how true a monarch among birds is he! Now he stoops, circling lower and yet lower still, with moveless outstretched pinion and searching gaze that blenches not before the sun's fiercest rays. The tiny blue-throated wren perches fearlessly near, and hops with delicate feet from stone to stone amid the sheltering ferns. That downy white-breasted diver, a ball of feathers in the clear pool of the mountain streamlet, now with a ripple become invisible – the devoted pelican, with sword-like beak and pouch of portentous dimensions. Lo! there sits he with his fellows by the edge of a shallowing anabranch, or revels with them in the evil days of drought upon the dying fish which in hundreds are cast upon the shore. As I tread the homeward path, the skylark springs upward from the waving grass; trilling his simple lay, he mounts higher and yet higher, no unworthy congener, though inferior as a songster to his British namesake. In the adjacent leafless trees is a flight of gaunt, dark-hued, sickle-beaked birds. Travellers and pilgrims they, relatives of earth's oldest, most sacred bird races. Behold a company of the ibis from far far wilds. Their presence here is ominous and boding. They are popularly supposed to migrate coastwards only when the great lakes of the interior begin to fail. This, however, is not an unfailing test of a dry season, as in long-dead summers I have had occasion to note. They are not too dignified, in despite of their quasi-sacred hierophantic traditions, to eat grasshoppers. As these enemies alike of farmers and squatters are now despoiling every green thing, let us hope that the ibis contingent may have appetites proportioned to the length of their bills and the duration of their journey. A white variety of the species is occasionally noted, but he is rare in comparison with the darker kind.
By the creek bank, in the early morn, the well-remembered note of the kingfisher, so closely associated with our youth, sounds close and clear. Yonder he sits upon the dead limb of the overhanging tree – greenish blue, purple-breasted as of yore. Stonelike he plunges into the deep pool, reappearing with a small fish or allied water-dweller. More beautiful is his relative the lesser kingfisher, metallic in sheen, with crimson breast – flashing like a feathered gem through the river shades, or burning like a flame spot against the mouldering log on which he sits. Of palest fawn colour, with long black filament at the back of his head, that graceful heron, the 'nankeen bird' of the colonist, is also of the company; the white-necked, dark-blue crane, and that black-robed river pirate the cormorant. While on the bird question, surely none are more delicately bright, more exquisitely neat of plumage and flawless of tone, than the Columba tribe. Ancient of birth are they as 'the doves from the rocks,' and principally for their conjugal fidelity have been honoured, by the choice of Mr. Darwin, as exemplars in working out experiments connected with the origin of species. In western wanderings I find five varieties of the pigeon proper. The beautiful bronze-wing, the squatter, and the crested pigeon. Besides these, two varieties of the dove are among the most exquisitely lovely of feathered creatures. Both are very small – one scarcely larger than a sparrow. The 'bronze-wing' is too well known to need description. The 'squatter pigeon' is a plainer likeness, with a spot of white on either cheek, and, as its name implies, is unwilling to fly up, being struck down occasionally with the whip or a short throwing stick in the act of rising. The crested pigeon, the most graceful and attractive of the family, is from its tameness and extreme cleanliness of habit most suitable for the aviary. In colouring, the breast is a delicate slate-grey tinged with faintest pink as it rises towards the wing muscles, the front wings barred with dark, pencilled cross-lines, the larger feathers of the extremities a burnished green, and the last row having feathers of a vivid dark pink or crimson. A crest and elongated pointed tail give character and piquancy to the whole appearance. As they fly up, a whirring noise, not unlike that of the partridge, is heard. When the male bird swells his chest and lowers his wings in defiance or ostentation, he produces a sound not unlike that of his long-civilised congener. They will lay and hatch in captivity, and I observed in an aviary one of the females sitting on her eggs complacently in a herring tin.
