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While the Billy Boils

H >> Henry Lawson >> While the Billy Boils



Produced by Geoffrey Cowling




[Transcriber's note: In 'A Day on a Selection' a speech is attributed
to "Tom"--in first edition as well as recent ones--which clearly
belongs to "Corney" alias "neighbour". This has been noted in
loc.]





While the Billy Boils

by Henry Lawson


CONTENTS


First Series


An Old Mate of Your Father's

Settling on the Land

Enter Mitchell

Stiffner and Jim (Thirdly, Bill)

When the Sun Went Down

The Man who Forgot

Hungerford

A Camp-fire Yarn

His Country--After All

A Day on a Selection

That There Dog of Mine

Going Blind

Arvie Aspinall's Alarm Clock

Stragglers

The Union Buries its Dead

On the Edge of a Plain

In a Dry Season

He's Come Back

Another of Mitchell's Plans

Steelman

Drifted Back

Remailed

Mitchell Doesn't Believe in the Sack

Shooting the Moon

His Father's Mate

An Echo from the Old Bark School

The Shearing of the Cook's Dog

"Dossing Out" and "Camping"

Across the Straits

Some Day

Brummy Usen



Second Series


The Drover's Wife

Steelman's Pupil

An Unfinished Love Story

Board and Residence

His Colonial Oath

A Visit of Condolence

In a Wet Season

"Rats"

Mitchell: A Character Sketch

The Bush Undertaker

Our Pipes

Coming Across

The Story of Malachi

Two Dogs and a Fence

Jones's Alley

Bogg of Geebung

She Wouldn't Speak

The Geological Spieler

Macquarie's Mate

Baldy Thompson

For Auld Lang Syne





First Series


AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S


You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were
sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on
us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An
old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny." And he would pat
our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls--as the case may have
been--and that we had our father's nose but our mother's eyes, or the
other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its
mother, and then added, for father's benefit: "But yet he's like you,
Tom." It did seem strange to the children to hear him address the
old man by his Christian name---considering that the mother always
referred to him as "Father." She called the old mate Mr So-and-so,
and father called him Bill, or something to that effect.

Occasionally the old mate would come dressed in the latest city
fashion, and at other times in a new suit of reach-me-downs, and yet
again he would turn up in clean white moleskins, washed tweed coat,
Crimean shirt, blucher boots, soft felt hat, with a fresh-looking
speckled handkerchief round his neck. But his face was mostly round
and brown and jolly, his hands were always horny, and his beard grey.
Sometimes he might have seemed strange and uncouth to us at first, but
the old man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or
did--they understood each other so well--and we would soon take to
this relic of our father's past, who would have fruit or lollies for
us--strange that he always remembered them--and would surreptitiously
slip "shilluns" into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories
about the old days, "when me an' yer father was on the diggin's, an'
you wasn't thought of, my boy."

Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the forenoon or
after dinner he and father would take a walk amongst the deserted
shafts of Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old
ground, and talk of past diggers' mistakes, and second bottoms, and
feelers, and dips, and leads--also outcrops--and absently pick up
pieces of quartz and slate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in
an abstracted manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some
old lead they had worked on: "Hogan's party was here on one side of
us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting good gold and so
was Hogan, and now, why the blanky blank weren't we on gold?" And
the mate would always agree that there was "gold in them ridges and
gullies yet, if a man only had the money behind him to git at it."
And then perhaps the guv'nor would show him a spot where he intended
to put down a shaft some day--the old man was always thinking of
putting down a shaft. And these two old fifty-niners would mooch
round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break clay
lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of
shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to "look for his father
and Mr So-and-so, and tell 'em to come to their dinner."

And again--mostly in the fresh of the morning--they would hang about
the fences on the selection and review the live stock: five dusty
skeletons of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece
of equine scenery--which, by the way, the old mate always praised.
But the selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections--it was
far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or
perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's
Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten
reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim
would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of
sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged,
half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation
would be pointed with many Golden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks,
Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies. And so they'd
yarn till the youngster came to tell them that "Mother sez the
breakfus is gettin' cold," and then the old mate would rouse himself
and stretch and say, "Well, we mustn't keep the missus waitin',
Tom!"

And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the
edge of the veranda--that is, in warm weather--and yarn about
Ballarat and Bendigo--of the days when we spoke of being on a place
oftener than at it: _on_ Ballarat, _on_ Gulgong, _on_ Lambing Flat,
on _Creswick_--and they would use the definite article before the
names, as: "on The Turon; The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian
Lead." Then again they'd yarn of old mates, such as Tom Brook, Jack
Henright, and poor Martin Ratcliffe--who was killed in his golden
hole--and of other men whom they didn't seem to have known much
about, and who went by the names of "Adelaide Adolphus," "Corney
George," and other names which might have been more or less
applicable.

And sometimes they'd get talking, low and mysterious like, about "Th'
Eureka Stockade;" and if we didn't understand and asked questions,
"what was the Eureka Stockade?" or "what did they do it for?"
father'd say: "Now, run away, sonny, and don't bother; me and Mr
So-and-so want to talk." Father had the mark of a hole on his leg,
which he said he got through a gun accident when a boy, and a scar on
his side, that we saw when he was in swimming with us; he said he got
that in an accident in a quartz-crushing machine. Mr So-and-so had a
big scar on the side of his forehead that was caused by a pick
accidentally slipping out of a loop in the rope, and falling down a
shaft where he was working. But how was it they talked low, and their
eyes brightened up, and they didn't look at each other, but away over
sunset, and had to get up and walk about, and take a stroll in the
cool of the evening when they talked about Eureka?

And, again they'd talk lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps
mother would be passing the wood-heap and catch a word, and asked:

"Who was she, Tom?"

And Tom--father--would say:

"Oh, you didn't know her, Mary; she belonged to a family Bill knew at
home."

And Bill would look solemn till mother had gone, and then they would
smile a quiet smile, and stretch and say, "Ah, well!" and start
something else.

They had yarns for the fireside, too, some of those old mates of our
father's, and one of them would often tell how a girl--a queen of the
diggings--was married, and had her wedding-ring made out of the gold
of that field; and how the diggers weighed their gold with the new
wedding-ring--for luck--by hanging the ring on the hook of the scales
and attaching their chamois-leather gold bags to it (whereupon she
boasted that four hundred ounces of the precious metal passed through
her wedding-ring); and how they lowered the young bride, blindfolded,
down a golden hole in a big bucket, and got her to point out the drive
from which the gold came that her ring was made out of. The point of
this story seems to have been lost--or else we forget it--but it was
characteristic. Had the girl been lowered down a duffer, and asked to
point out the way to the gold, and had she done so successfully, there
would have been some sense in it.

And they would talk of King, and Maggie Oliver, and G. V. Brooke, and
others, and remember how the diggers went five miles out to meet the
coach that brought the girl actress, and took the horses out and
brought her in in triumph, and worshipped her, and sent her off in
glory, and threw nuggets into her lap. And how she stood upon the
box-seat and tore her sailor hat to pieces, and threw the fragments
amongst the crowd; and how the diggers fought for the bits and thrust
them inside their shirt bosoms; and how she broke down and cried, and
could in her turn have worshipped those men--loved them, every one.
They were boys all, and gentlemen all. There were college men,
artists, poets, musicians, journalists--Bohemians all. Men from all
the lands and one. They understood art--and poverty was dead.

And perhaps the old mate would say slyly, but with a sad, quiet smile:

"Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom?"

Those old mates had each three pasts behind them. The two they told
each other when they became mates, and the one they had shared.

And when the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man
would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the
fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps.

Those old mates of our father's are
getting few and far between, and only happen along once in a way to
keep the old man's memory fresh, as it were. We met one to-day, and
had a yarn with him, and afterwards we got thinking, and somehow began
to wonder whether those ancient friends of ours were, or were not,
better and kinder to their mates than we of the rising generation are
to our fathers; and the doubt is painfully on the wrong side.




SETTLING ON THE LAND


The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about
getting the people on the land, and button-holes you in the street
with a little scheme of his own. He generally does not know what he
is talking about.

There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land
once, and sometimes you can get him to talk about it. He did very
well at his trade in the city, years ago, until he began to think that
he could do better up-country. Then he arranged with his sweetheart
to be true to him and wait whilst he went west and made a home. She
drops out of the story at this point.

He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the
arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries; but they
didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up
within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and
started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does. He found the
biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of
ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started
without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice
from men who knew less about farming than he did. He found a soft
place between two roots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow,
irregular hole, and burrowed down till he reached a level where the
tap-root was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite
as hard as flint: then he found that he hadn't room to swing the axe,
so he heaved out another ton or two of earth--and rested. Next day he
sank a shaft on the other side of the gum; and after tea, over a pipe,
it struck him that it would be a good idea to burn the tree out, and
so use up the logs and lighter rubbish lying round. So he widened the
excavation, rolled in some logs, and set fire to them--with no better
result than to scorch the roots.

Tom persevered. He put the trace harness on his horse, drew in all
the logs within half a mile, and piled them on the windward side of
that gum; and during the night the fire found a soft place, and the
tree burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a
squatter's boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to
occupy the selector's attention; which it did, for a week. He waited
till the hole cooled, and then he went to work with pick, shovel, and
axe: and even now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as
are published in the agricultural weeklies, for getting out stumps
without graft. He thought he would be able to get some posts and
rails out of that tree, but found reason to think that a cast-iron
column would split sooner--and straighter. He traced some of the
surface roots to the other side of the selection, and broke most of
his trace-chains trying to get them out by horse-power--for they had
other roots going down from underneath. He cleared a patch in the
course of time and for several seasons he broke more ploughshares than
he could pay for.

Meanwhile the squatter was not idle. Tom's tent was robbed several
times, and his hut burnt down twice. Then he was charged with
killing some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his
own use, but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion
between the squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics and
religion.

Tom ploughed and sowed wheat, but nothing came up to speak of--the
ground was too poor; so he carted stable manure six miles from the
nearest town, manured the land, sowed another crop, and prayed for
rain. It came. It raised a flood which washed the crop clean off the
selection, together with several acres of manure, and a considerable
portion of the original surface soil; and the water brought down
enough sand to make a beach, and spread it over the field to a depth
of six inches. The flood also took half a mile of fencing from along
the creek-bank, and landed it in a bend, three miles down, on a dummy
selection, where it was confiscated.

Tom didn't give up--he was energetic. He cleared another piece of
ground on the siding, and sowed more wheat; it had the rust in it, or
the smut--and averaged three shillings per bushel. Then he sowed
lucerne and oats, and bought a few cows: he had an idea of starting a
dairy. First, the cows' eyes got bad, and he sought the advice of a
German cocky, and acted upon it; he blew powdered alum through paper
tubes into the bad eyes, and got some of it snorted and butted back
into his own. He cured the cows' eyes and got the sandy blight in his
own, and for a week or so be couldn't tell one end of a cow from the
other, but sat in a dark corner of the hut and groaned, and soaked his
glued eyelashes in warm water. Germany stuck to him and nursed him,
and saw him through.

Then the milkers got bad udders, and Tom took his life in his hands
whenever he milked them. He got them all right presently--and butter
fell to fourpence a pound. He and the aforesaid cocky made
arrangements to send their butter to a better market; and then the
cows contracted a disease which was known in those parts as "plooro
permoanyer," but generally referred to as "th' ploorer."

Again Tom sought advice, acting upon which he slit the cows' ears, cut
their tails half off to bleed them, and poured pints of "pain
killer" into them through their nostrils; but they wouldn't make an
effort, except, perhaps, to rise and poke the selector when he tried
to tempt their appetites with slices of immature pumpkin. They died
peacefully and persistently, until all were gone save a certain
dangerous, barren, slab-sided luny bovine with white eyes and much
agility in jumping fences, who was known locally as Queen Elizabeth.

Tom shot Queen Elizabeth, and turned his attention to agriculture
again. Then his plough horses took bad with some thing the Teuton
called "der shtranguls." He submitted them to a course of treatment
in accordance with Jacob's advice--and they died.

Even then Tom didn't give in--there was grit in that man. He borrowed
a broken-down dray-horse in return for its keep, coupled it with his
own old riding hack, and started to finish ploughing. The team wasn't
a success. Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he
stumbled forward, he jerked the lighter horse back into the plough,
and something would break. Then Tom would blaspheme till he was
refreshed, mend up things with wire and bits of clothes-line, fill his
pockets with stones to throw at the team, and start again. Finally he
hired a dummy's child to drive the horses. The brat did his best he
tugged at the head of the team, prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it,
cut a sapling, got up his enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light
horse whenever the other showed signs of moving--but he never
succeeded in starting both horses at one and the same time. Moreover
the youth was cheeky, and the selector's temper had been soured: he
cursed the boy along with the horses, the plough, the selection, the
squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed Australia. The boy cursed
back, was chastised, and immediately went home and brought his father.

Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog and this precipitated
things. The dummy would have gone under had his wife not arrived on
the scene with the eldest son and the rest of the family. They all
fell foul of Tom. The woman was the worst. The selector's dog chawed
the other and came to his master's rescue just in time---or Tom
Hopkins would never have lived to become the inmate of a lunatic
asylum.

Next year there
happened to be good grass on Tom's selection and nowhere else, and he
thought it wouldn't be a bad idea--to get a few poor sheep, and fatten
them up for market: sheep were selling for about seven-and-sixpence a
dozen at that time. Tom got a hundred or two, but the squatter had a
man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs to set on the
sheep directly they put their noses through the fence (Tom's was
not a sheep fence). The dogs chased the sheep across the selection
and into the run again on the other side, where another man waited
ready to pound them.

Tom's dog did his best; but he fell sick while chawing up the fourth
capitalistic canine, and subsequently died. The dummies had robbed
that cur with poison before starting it across--that was the only way
they could get at Tom's dog.

Tom thought that two might play at the game, and he tried; but his
nephew, who happened to be up from the city on a visit, was arrested
at the instigation of the squatter for alleged sheep-stealing, and
sentenced to two years' hard; during which time the selector himself
got six months for assaulting the squatter with intent to do him
grievous bodily harm-which, indeed, he more than attempted, if a
broken nose, a fractured jaw, and the loss of most of the squatters'
teeth amounted to anything. The squatter by this time had made peace
with the other local Justice, and had become his father-in-law.

When Tom came out there was little left for him to live for; but he
took a job of fencing, got a few pounds together, and prepared to
settle on the land some more. He got a "missus" and a few cows
during the next year; the missus robbed him and ran away with the
dummy, and the cows died in the drought, or were impounded by the
squatter while on their way to water. Then Tom rented an orchard up
the creek, and a hailstorm destroyed all the fruit. Germany happened
to be represented at the time, Jacob having sought shelter at Tom's
but on his way home from town. Tom stood leaning against the door
post with the hail beating on him through it all. His eyes were very
bright and very dry, and every breath was a choking sob. Jacob let
him stand there, and sat inside with a dreamy expression on his hard
face, thinking of childhood and fatherland, perhaps. When it was over
he led Tom to a stool and said, "You waits there, Tom. I must go
home for somedings. You sits there still and waits twenty minutes;"
then he got on his horse and rode off muttering to himself; "Dot man
moost gry, dot man moost gry." He was back inside of twenty minutes
with a bottle of wine and a cornet under his overcoat. He poured the
wine into two pint-pots, made Tom drink, drank himself, and then took
his cornet, stood up at the door, and played a German march into the
rain after the retreating storm. The hail had passed over his
vineyard and he was a ruined man too. Tom did "gry" and was all
right. He was a bit disheartened, but he did another job of fencing,
and was just beginning to think about "puttin' in a few vines an'
fruit-trees" when the government surveyors--whom he'd forgotten all
about--had a resurrection and came and surveyed, and found that the
real selection was located amongst some barren ridges across the
creek. Tom reckoned it was lucky he didn't plant the orchard, and he
set about shifting his home and fences to the new site. But the
squatter interfered at this point, entered into possession of the farm
and all on it, and took action against the selector for
trespass--laying the damages at L2500.

Tom was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Parramatta next year, and
the squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined
by the drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool-ring. The two
became very friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the
feasibility--or otherwise--of blowing open the flood-gates of Heaven
in a dry season with dynamite.

Tom was discharged a few years since. He knocks about certain suburbs
a good deal. He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly in
connection with a dray and a lantern. He says his one great regret is
that he wasn't found to be of unsound mind before he went up-country.



ENTER MITCHELL


The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a
lot of ordinary passengers and one swagman.

He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He
had red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and--what often goes
with such things--the expression of a born comedian. He was dressed
in a ragged, well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a
calico back, a pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held
up by a plaited greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair
of well-worn, fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with
age, and with no brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of. He
swung a swag on to the platform, shouldered it, pulled out a billy and
water-bag, and then went to a dog-box in the brake van.

Five minutes later he
appeared on the edge of the cab platform, with an anxious-looking
cattle-dog crouching against his legs, and one end of the chain in his
hand. He eased down the swag against a post, turned his face to the
city, tilted his hat forward, and scratched the well-developed back of
his head with a little finger. He seemed undecided what track to
take.

"Cab, Sir!"

The swagman turned slowly and regarded cabby with a quiet grin.

"Now, do I look as if I want a cab?"

"Well, why not? No harm, anyway--I thought you might want a cab."

Swaggy scratched his head, reflectively.

"Well," he said, "you're the first man that has thought so these
ten years. What do I want with a cab?"

"To go where you're going, of course."

"Do I look knocked up?"

"I didn't say you did."

"And I didn't say you said I did....Now, I've been on the track this
five years. I've tramped two thousan' miles since last Chris'mas, and
I don't see why I can't tramp the last mile. Do you think my old dog
wants a cab?"

The dog shivered and whimpered; he seemed to want to get away from the
crowd.

"But then, you see, you ain't going to carry that swag through the
streets, are you?" asked the cabman.

"Why not? Who'll stop me! There ain't no law agin it, I b'lieve?"

"But then, you see, it don't look well, you know."

"Ah! I thought we'd get to it at last."

The traveller up-ended his bluey against his knee, gave it an
affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly
at the cabman.

"Now, look here!" he said, sternly and impressively, "can you see
anything wrong with that old swag o' mine?"

It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with
blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the
end. The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner; it
might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of
clothes-line and greenhide--but otherwise there was nothing the matter
with it, as swags go.

"I've humped that old swag for years," continued the bushman; "I've
carried that old swag thousands of miles--as that old dog knows--an'
no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog,
neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag,
for a cabby or anyone else? Do you think I'm going to study anybody's
feelings? No one ever studied mine! I'm in two minds to summon you
for using insulting language towards me!"

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