We of the Never Never

J >> Jeanie Mrs. Aeneas Gunn >> We of the Never Never

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Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair
toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out
on the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had
ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing
with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred
would be added to the two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back
in a few weeks, at one year old, compares favourably with one
of the Fizzer's trips. But it is thus the bush develops her Fizzers.

After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt,
preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit
to the Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy Dick's
bullocks and a great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan
proved a strong ally; and besides, as the musterers were in
and Happy Dick due to arrive by midday, Cheon's hands were full
with other matters.

There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard
for the Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all
comers, in addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for
fifteen black boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white
folk. Cheon had his own peculiar form of welcome for his many
favourites, regaling each one of them with delicacies to their
particular liking, each and every time they came in.

Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. "Good-day!
Real glad to see you!" was his usual greeting. Sure of his own
welcome wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened
to welcome all men into his fellowship. "Real glad to see you,"
he would say, with a ready smile of comradeship; and it always
seemed as though he had added: "I hope you'll make yourself at home
while with me." In some mysterious way, Happy Dick was at all times
the host giving liberally of the best he had to his fellow-men.

He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. "Born in it,
I think," he would say. "Don't quite remember," adding with his
ever-varying smile, "Remember when it was born, anyway."

When the "Overland Telegraph" was built across the Australian
continent from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide,
was cut for it through bush and scrub and dense forests, along
the backbone of Australia, and in this avenue the line party was
"born" and bred--a party of axemen and mechanics under the orders
of a foreman, whose duty it is to keep the "Territory section"
of the line in repair, and this avenue free from the scrub
and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.

In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon
hundreds of miles, carpeted with feathery grasses and shooting
scrubs, and walled in on either side with dense, towering forest or
lighter and more scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter
loneliness, zigzagging from horizon to horizons beyond, and
guarding those two sensitive wires at its centre, as they run along
their single line of slender galvanised posts, from the great bush
that never ceases in its efforts to close in on them and engu]f them.
A great broad highway, waiting in its loneliness for the generations
to come, with somewhere in its length the line party camp,
and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance traveller
or two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and grazing
along behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag
across its shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred
miles of solitude, here and there a horseman riding, and here and there
a footman trudging on, each unconscious of the others.

From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days,
with those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever
running on before them and as they travel, now and then they touch
a post for company--shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then
a post for company, and daily realising the company and comfort
those posts and wires can be. Here at least is something in touch
with the world something vibrating with the lives and actions of men,
and an ever-present friend in dire necessity. With those wires
above him, any day a traveller can cry for help to the Territory,
if he call while he yet has strength to climb one of those friendly
posts and cut that quivering wire--for help that will come speedily,
for the cutting of the telegraph wire is as the ringing of an alarm-bell
throughout the Territory. In all haste the break is located, and food,
water, and every human help that suggests itself sent out from
the nearest telegraph station. There is no official delay--
there rarely is in the Territory--for by some marvellous good fortune,
there everything belongs to the Department in which it finds itself.

Just as Happy Dick is one of the pillars of the line party, so
the line party is one of the pillars of the line itself. Up and down
this great avenue, year in year out it creeps along, cutting scrub
and repairing as it goes, and moving cumbrous main camps from
time to time, with its waggon loads of stores, tents, furnishings,
flocks of milking goats, its fowls, its gramophone, and Chinese
cook. Month after month it creeps on, until, reaching the end
of the section, it turns round to creep out again.

Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years
Happy Dick had seen to its peace and comfort. Nothing ever
ruffled him. "All in the game" was his nearest approach to
a complaint, as he pegged away at his work, in between whiles going
to the nearest station for killers, carting water in tanks out to
"dry stage camps," and doing any other work that found itself undone.
Dick's position was as elastic as his smile.

He considered himself an authority on three things only:
the line party, dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including
his dog Peter and his cheque-book, he left to the discretion
of his fellow-men.

Peter--a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few
sizes larger than a fox-terrier--could be kept in order
with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick;
but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off
of hands, failed to keep order in the cheque-book.

The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds
of miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays
all salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin,
and therefore when Happy Dick found himself the backbone
of the line party, he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book.
At first he was inclined to look upon it as a poor substitute
for hard cash; but after the foreman had explained its mysteries,
and taught him to sign his name in magic tracery, he became more than
reconciled to it and drew cheques blithely, until one for five pounds
was returned to a creditor: no funds--and in due course returned
to Happy Dick.

"No good ? " he said to the creditor, looking critically at the piece
of paper in his hands. "Must have been writ wrong. Well, you've
only yourself to blame, seeing you wrote it"; then added magnanimously,
mistaking the creditor's scorn: " Never mind, write yourself out
another. I don't mind signing 'em."

The foreman and the creditor spent several hours trying to explain
banking principles, but Dick "couldn't see it." "There's stacks
of 'em left!" he persisted, showing his book of fluttering bank
cheques. Finally, in despair, the foreman took the cheque-book
into custody, and Dick found himself poor once more.

But it was only for a little while. In an evil hour he discovered
that a cheque from another man's book answered all purposes if it
bore that magic tracery, and Happy Dick was never solvent again.
Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep
pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one,
excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his
account from day to day, it was like taking a ticket in a lottery
to accept a cheque from Happy Dick.

"Real glad to see you," Happy Dick said in hearty greeting to us
all as he dismounted, and we waited to be entertained. Happy Dick
had his favourite places and people, and the Elsey community stood
high in his favour. "Can't beat the Elsey for a good dog-fight
and a good game of cribbage," he said, every time he came in
or left us, and that from Happy Dick was high praise. At times
he added: "Nor for a square meal neither," thereby inciting Cheon
to further triumphs for his approval.

As usual, Happy Dick "played" the Quarters cribbage and related
a good dog-fight--"Peter's latest "--and, as usual before he left us,
his pockets were bulging with tobacco--the highest stakes
used in the Quarters--and Peter and Brown had furnished him
with materials for a still newer dog-fight recital. As usual, he rode
off with his killers, assuring all that he would "be along again
soon," and, as usual, Peter and Brown were tattered and hors-de-combat,
but both still aggressive. Peter's death lunge was the death lunge
of Brown, and both dogs knew that lunge too well to let the other
"get in."

As usual, Happy Dick had hunted through the store, and taken
anything he "really needed," paying, of course, by cheque;
but when he came to sign that cheque, after the Maluka had written it,
he entered the dining-room for the first time since its completion.

With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes
as they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table,
and before he left the homestead he expressed his approval
in the Quarters:

"Got everything up to the knocker, haven't they ?" he said.
"Often heard toffs decorated their tables with rags in hobble rings,
but never believed it before."

Happy Dick gone, Cheon turned his attention to the health of the missus;
but Dan, persuading the Maluka that "all she needed was a breath of fresh
air," we went bush on a tour of inspection.

CHAPTER XVI

Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four
hours Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that
appealed to him as an antidote to an outbush course of beef
and damper. Then a man rode into our lives who was to teach us
the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word mate--a sturdy,
thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and deep lines about his firm
strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged tension.

"Me mate's sick; got a touch of fever," he said simply dismounting
near the verandah. "I've left him camped back there at the Warlochs";
and as the Maluka prepared remedies--making up the famous Gulf
mixture--the man with grateful thanks, found room in his pockets
and saddle-pouch for eggs, milk, and brandy, confident that
"these'll soon put him right," adding, with the tense lines deepening
about his mouth as he touched on what had brought them there: "He's
been real bad, ma'am. I've had a bit of a job to get him as far
as this." In the days to come we were to learn, little by little,
that the "bit of a job" had meant keeping a sick man in his saddle
for the greater part of the fifty-mile dry stage, with forty miles
of "bad going" on top of that, and fighting for him every inch
of the way that terrible symptom of malaria--that longing to
"chuck it," and lie down and die.

Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever
only too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts
of the homestead could do, when the Maluka came out with the medicines
he advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested
sufficiently. "You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old
station buck-board across," he said, and the man began fumbling
uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about
"giving trouble"; but when the Maluka--afraid that a man's life
might be the forfeit of another man's shrinking fear of causing
trouble--added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon
as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered:
"If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me mate's dead-set
against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn't mind not
coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this seven
years. The boss 'll understand."

The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone,
to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full
of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting
him. "You see, that's why he wouldn't come on," the mate said.
"He couldn't bear the thought of a woman doing things for him ";
and the Maluka explained that the missus understood all that.
That lesson had been easily learned; for again and again men had
come in "down with a touch of fever," whose temperatures went up
at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always
the actual nursing was left to the Maluka or the Dandy, the woman
seeing to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only
an occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories
later on.

But in vain the Maluka explained and entreated: the sick man was
"all right where he was." His mate was worth "ten women fussing
round," he insisted, ignoring the Maluka's explanations. Had he not
lugged him through the worst pinch already?" and then he played
his trump card: "He'll stick to me till I peg out," he said--
"nothing's too tough for him "; and as he lay back, the mate
deciding "arguing'll only do for him," dismissed the Maluka with
many thanks, refusing all offers of nursing help with a quiet
"He'd rather have me," but accepting gratefully broths and milk
and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish. "Nothing ever
knocks me out," he reiterated, and dragged on through sleepless
days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in
the knowledge that "he'd rather have me", and when there came
that deep word of praise from his stricken comrade: "A good
mate's harder to find than a good wife," his gentle, protecting
devotion increased tenfold.

Bushmen are instinctively protective. There is no other word
that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness
and helplessness. Knowing how hard the fight is out-bush for even
the strong and enduring all their magnificent strength and courage
stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it. A lame
dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women any
woman in need or sickness--each and all call forth this protectiveness;
but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness
like the helplessness of a strong man stricken down in
his strength.

Understanding this also, we stood aside, and rejoicing as the sick
man, benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have
his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily,
and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch
by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without
coercion, was the only chance for his life.

But there was a woman there; and as the mate went back to his pleading
the woman did what the world may consider a strange thing--but
a man's life depended on it--she sent a message out to the sick
man, to say that if he would come to the homestead she would not
go to him until he asked her.

He pondered over the message for a day, sceptical of a woman's word--
surely some woman had left that legacy in his heart--but eventually
decided he wouldn't risk it. Then the chief of the telegraph
coming in--a man widely experienced in fever--and urging one more
attempt, the Dandy volunteered to help us in our extremity, and,
driving across to the Warlochs in the chief's buggy worked one
of his miracles; he spent only a few minutes alone with the man
(and the Dandy alone knows now what passed), but within an hour
the sick traveller was resting quietly between clean sheets
in the Dandy's bed. There were times when the links in the chain
seemed all blessing.

Waking warm and refreshed, the sick man faced the battle of life
once more, and the chief taking command, and the man quietly and
hopefully obeying orders, the woman found her promise easy to
keep; but the mate's hardest task had come, the task of waiting
with folded hands. With the same quiet steadfastness he braced
himself for this task and when, after weary hours, the chief
pronounced "all well" and turned to him with an encouraging
"I think he'll pull through now, my man," the sturdy shoulders
that had borne so much drooped and quivered beneath the kindly
words, and with dimming eyes he gave in at last to the Maluka's
persuasions, and lay down and slept, sure of the Dandy's promise
to wake him at dawn.

At midnight the Maluka left the Quarters, and going back just
before the dawn to relieve the Dandy, found the sick man Iying
quietly-restful, with one arm thrown hghtly across his brow. He
had spoken in his sleep a short while before the Dandy said as the
Maluka bent over him with a cup of warm milk, but the cup was
returned to the table untasted. Many travellers had come into our
lies and passed on with a bright nod of farewell; but at the first
stirring of the dawn, without one word of farewell, this traveller
had passed on and left us; left us, and the faithful mate of those
seven strong young years and those last few days of weariness.
"Unexpected heart failure," our chief said, as the Dandy went to
fulfil his promise to the sleeping mate. He promised to waken him
at the dawn, and leaving that awakening in the Dandy's hands, as
we thought of that lonely Warloch camp our one great thankfulness
was that when the awakening came the man was not to be alone
there with his dead comrade. The bush can be cruel at times, and
yet, although she may leave us alone with our beloved dead, her
very cruelty bungs with it a fierce, consoling pain; for out-bush
our dead are all our own.

Beyond those seven faithful years the mate could tell us but little
of his comrade's life. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong,
with a mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew.
"He was always a reticent chap," he reiterated. "He never wanted
any one but me about him," and the unspoken request was understood.
He was his mate, and no one but himself must render the last services.

Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should
be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering
a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle nse beyond the slip rails,
and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves
already there. Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually
his burden lost its overwhelming weight, for the greater part
of it had somehow skipped on to the Dandy's shoulders--those brave,
unflinching shoulders, that carried other men's burdens so naturally
and so willingly that their burdens always seemed the Dandy's own.
The Dandy may have had that power of finding "something decent"
in every one he met, but in the Dandy all men found the help
they needed most.

Quietly and unassumingly, the Dandy put all in order and then,
soon after midday, with brilliant sunshine ali about us, we stood
by an open grave in the shade of the drooping glory of a crimson
flowering bauhenia. Some scenes live undimmed in our memories
for a lifetime--scenes where we have seemed onlookers rather
than actors seeing every detail with minute exactness--and that
scene with its mingling of glorious beauty, human pathos, and soft,
subdued sound, will bye, I think, in the memory of most of us
for many years to come:

"In the midst of life we are in death," the Maluka read, standing
among that drooping crimson splendour and at his feet lay the
open grave, preaching silently its great lesson of Life and Death,
with, beside it, the still quiet form of the traveller whose last
weary journey had ended; around it, bareheaded and all in white,
a little band of bush-folk, silent and reverent and awed; above
it, that crimson glory, and all around and about it, soft sun-flecked
bush, murmuring sounds, flooding sunshine, and deep azure blue
distances. Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout
it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its
sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy
of soft greygreen, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside
that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last
resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet
blossoms into it and about it. Here and there a dog lay, stretched
out in the shade, sniffing in idle curiosity at the blossoms as they
fell, well satisfied with what life had to give just then; while at
their master s feet lay the traveller who was to leave such haunting
memories behind him: William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with
somewhere there a mother going qmetly about her work, wondering
vaguely perhaps where her laddie was that day.

Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her,
it comforted her in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood
beside that grave mourmng for her boy in her name.

Quietly the Maluka read on to the end; and then in the hush
that followed the mate stooped, and, with deep lines hardening
rigidly, picked up a spade. There was no mistaking his purpose;
but as he straightened himself the Dandy's hand was on the spade
and the Maluka was speaking. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to
drive the missus back to the house right away," he was saying,
"I think she has had almost more than she can stand.

The man looked hesitatingly at him. "If you'll be good enough,"
the Maluka added, "I should not leave here myself till all is
completed."

Unerringly the Maluka had read his man: no hint of his strength
failing, but a favour asked, and with it a service for a woman.

The stern set lines about the man's mouth quivered for a moment,
then set again as he sacrificed his wishes to a woman's need,
and relinquishing the spade, turned away; and as we drove down
to the house in the chief's buggy--the buggy that a few minutes
before had borne our sick traveller along that last stage of his
earthly journey--he said gently, almost apologetically: "I should
have reckoned on this knocking you out a bit, missus." Always others,
never self, with the bush-folk.

Then, this service rendered for the man who had done what he could
for his comrade, his strong, unflinching heart turned back to
its labour of love, and, all else being done, found relief for
itself in softening and smoothing the rough outline of the newly
piled mound, and as the man toiled, Mother Nature went on with
her work, silently and sweetly healing the scar on her bosom,
hiding her pain from the world, as she shrouded in starry crimson
the burial place of her brave, enduring son--a service to be
renewed from day to day until the mosses and grasses grew
again.

But there were still other services for the mate to render and as
the bush-folk stood aside, none daring to trespass here, a rough
wooden railing rose about the grave. Then the man packed his
comrade's swag for the last time, and that done, came to the Maluka,
as we stood under the house verandah, and held out two sovereigns
in his open palm. The man was yet a stranger to the ways
of the Never-Never.

"I'll have to ask for tick for meself for awhile," he said "But
if that won't pay for all me mate's had there's another where they
came from. He was always independent and would never take
charity."

The hard lines about his mouth were very marked just then,
and the outstretched hand seemed fiercely defiant but the Maluka
reading in it only a man's proud care for a comrade's honour,
put it gently aside, saying: "We give no charity here;
only hospitality to our guests. Surely no man would refuse that."

They speak of a woman's delicate tact. But daily the bushman
put the woman to shame, while she stood dumb or stammering.
The Maluka had touched the one chord in the man's heart that was
not strained to breaking point, and instantly the fingers closed
over the sovereigns, and the defiant hand fell to his side,
as with a husky "Not from your sort, boss," he turned
sharply on his heel; and as he walked away a hand was brushed
hastily across the weary eyes.

With that brushing of the hand the inevitable reaction began,
and for a little while we feared we would have another sick traveller
on our hand. But only for a little while. After a day or two
of rest and care his strength came back, but his thoughts were
ever of those seven years of steadfast comradeship. Simply
and earnestly he spoke of them and of that mother, all unconscious
of the heartbreak that was speeding only too surely to her.
Poor mother! And yet those other two nameless graves on that little
rise deep in the heart of the bush bear witness that other mothers
have even deeper sorrows to bear. Their sons are gone from them,
and they, knowing nothing of it, wait patiently through the long
silent years for the word that can never come to them.

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