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We of the Never Never

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




Naturally I felt impatient at the delay, but was told by the Creek
that "there was no hurry!" "To-morrow's still untouched," Mac explained.
"This is the Land of Plenty of Time; Plenty of Time and Wait a While.
You'll be doing a bit of waiting before you've done with it."

"If this rain goes on, she'll be doing a bit of waiting at the Fergusson;
unless she learns the horse's-tail trick," the Creek put in.
On inquiry, it proved that the "horse's-tail trick" meant swimming a horse
through the flood, and hanging on to its tail until it fought a way across;
and I felt I would prefer "waiting a bit."

The rain did go on, and, roaring over the roof, made conversation difficult.
The bushmen called it a "bit of a storm"; but every square inch
of the heavens seemed occupied by lightning and thunder-bolts.

"Nothing to what we can do sometimes," every one agreed. "WE do things
in style up here--often run half-a-dozen storms at once. You see,
when you are weather-bound, you might as well have something worth
looking at."

The storm lasted nearly three hours, and when it cleared Mac went
over to the Telegraph, where some confidential chatting
must have taken place, for when he returned he told us that the Dandy
was starting out for the homestead next day to "fix things up a bit."
The Head Stockman however, waited back for orders.

The morning dawned bright and clear, and Mac advised "making a dash
for the Fergusson." "We might just get through before this rain
comes down the valley," he said.

The Creek was most enthusiastic with its help, bustling about
with packbags and surcingles, and generally " mixing things."

When the time came to say good-bye it showed signs of breaking down;
but mastering its grief with a mightily audible effort, it wished us
"good luck," and stood watching as we rode out of the little settlement.

Every time we looked back it raised its hat, and as we rode at the head
of our orderly little cavalcade of pack horses, with Jackeroo
the black "boy" bringing up the rear, we flattered ourselves
on the dignity of our departure. Mac called it "style," and the Maluka
was hoping that the Creek was properly impressed, when Flash,
unexpectedly heading off for his late home, an exciting scrimmage ensued
and the procession was broken into fragments.

The Creek flew to the rescue, and, when order was finally restored,
the woman who had defied the Sanguine Scot and his telegrams, entered
the forest that fringes the Never-Never, sitting meekly upon a led horse.



CHAPTER III


Bush chivalry demanding that a woman's discomfiture should be ignored,
Mac kept his eyes on the horizon for the first quarter of a mile,
and talked volubly of the prospects of the Wet and the resources
of the Territory; but when Flash was released, and after a short tussle
settled down into a free, swinging amble, he offered congratulations
in his own wimsical way.

"He's like the rest of us," he said, with a sly, sidelong look at
the Maluka, "perfectly reconciled to his fate."

Although it was only sixty-five miles to the Katherine it took us
exactly three days to travel the distance. Mac called it a "tip-top
record for the Wet," and the Maluka agreed with him; for in the
Territory it is not the number of miles that counts, but what
is met with in those miles.

During the first afternoon we met so many amiable-looking watercourses,
that the Sanguine Scot grew more and hopeful about crossing
the Fergusson that night. "We'll just do it if we push on," he said,
after a critical look at the Cullen, then little more than a sweet,
shady stream. "Our luck's dead in. She's only just moving.
Yesterday's rain hasn't come down the valleys yet."

We pushed on in the moonlight; but when we reached the Fergusson,
two hours later, we found our luck was "dead out," for "she" was up
and running a banker.

Mac's hopes sank below zero. "Now we've done it," he said ruefuUy,
looking down at the swirling torrent, "It's a case of 'wait-a-while'
after all."

But the Maluka's hopes always died hard. "There's still the Government
yacht, "he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above
high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it,
as it lay deeply sunk in the muddy bank.

It was an immense affair, weighing over half a ton, and provided
by a thoughtful Government for the transit of travellers "stuck up"
by the river when in flood. An army of roughriders might have
launched it, but as bushmen generally travel in single file,
it lay a silent reproach to the wisdom of Governments.

Some jester had chalked on its sides "H.M.S. Immovable"; and after
tugging valiantly at it for nearly half an hour, the Maluka and Mac
and Jackeroo proved the truth of the bushman's irony.

There was no choice but a camp on the wrong side of the river,
and after "dratting things" in general, and the Cullen in particular,
Mac bowed to the inevitable and began to unpack the team, stacking
packbags aud saddles up on the rocks off the wet grass.

By the time the biUy was boiling he was trying hard to be cheerful,
but without much success. "Oh, well," he said, as we settled down
round the fire, "this is the Land of Plenty of Time, that's one comfort.
Another whole week starts next Sunday"; then relapsing altogether
he added gloomily; " We'll be spending it here, too, by the look
of things."

"Unless the missus feels equal to the horse's-tail trick"
the Maluka suggested.

The missus felt equal to anything BUT the tail trick and said so;
and conversation flagged for a while as each tried to hit upon
some way out of the difficulty.

Suddenly Mac gsve his thigh a prodigious slap. "I've struck it!"
he shouted, and pointing to a thick wire rope just visible
in the moonlight as it stretched across the river from flood bank
to flood bank, added hesitatingly: "We send mail-bags--and--valuables
over on that when the river's up."

It was impossible to mistake his meaning, or the Maluka's exclamation
of relief, or tbat neither man doubted for moment tbat the woman
was willing to be flung across deep, swirling river on a swaying wire;
and as many a man has appeared brave because he has lacked the courage
to own to his cowardice, so I said airily that "anything better
than going back," and found the men exchanging glances.

"No one's going back," the Maluka said quietly: and then I learned
that the Wet does not "do things by half." Once they began to move
the flood waters must have come down the valleys in tidal waves,"
the Maluka explained. "The Cullen we've just left will probably be
a roaring torrent by now."

"We're stuck between two rivers: that's what's happened," Mac added
savagely. "Might have guessed that miserable little Cullen was up
to her old sneaking ways." And to explain Mac's former "dratting,"
the Maluka said: "It's a way the rivers have up here. They entice
travellers over with smiles and promises, and before they can get back,
call down the flood waters and shut them in."

"I'm glad I thought of the wire," Mac added cheerfnlly, and slipped
into reminiscences of the Wet, drawing the Maluka also into experiences.
And as they drifted from one experience to another, forced camps
for days on stony outcrops in the midst of seas of water were touched on
lightly as hardly worth mentioning; while "eating yourelf out of tucker,
and getting down to water-rats and bandicoots," compared favourably
with a day or two spent in trees or on stockyard fences. As for
crossing a river on a stout wire rope! After the first few
reminiscences, and an incident or two in connection with "doing
the horse's-tail trick," that appeared an exceedingly safe and pleasant
way of overcoming the difficulty, and it became very evident
why women do not travel "during the Wet."

It was a singularly beautiful night, shimmering with warm tropical
moonlight, and hoarse with the shouting of frogs and the roar
of the river--a night that demandod attention; and, gradually
losing interest in hair-breadth escapes from drowning, Mac joined
in the song of the frogs.

"Quar-r-rt pot! Quar-r-rt pot!" he sang in hoarse, strident minims,
mimicking to perfection the shouts of the leaders, leaning with them
on the "quar-r-rt" in harsh gutturals, and spitting out the "pot"
in short, deep staccatos. Quicker and quicker the song ran,
as the full chorus of frogs joined in. From minims to crotchets,
and from crotchets to quavers it flowed, and Mac, running with it,
gurgled with a new refrain at the quavers. "More-water, more-water,
hot-water, hot-water," he sang rapidly in tireless reiteration,
until he seemed the leader and the frogs the followers, singing
the words he put into their mouths. Lower and lower the chorus sank,
but just before it died away, an old buU-frog started every one
afresh with a slow, booming "quar-r-rt pot!" and Mac stopped for breath.
"Now you know the song of the frogs," he laughed. "We'll teach you
all the songs of the Never-Never in time; listen!" and listening,
it was hard to believe that this was our one-time telegraphing
bush-whacker. Dropping his voice to a soft, sobbing moan, as a pheasant
called from the shadows, he lamented with it for "Puss! Puss! Puss!
Puss! Poor Puss! Poor Puss!"

The sonnd roused a dove iu the branches above us, and as she stirred
in her sleep and cooed softlv, Mac murmured drowsily: "Move-over-dear,
Move-over dear"; and the dove, taking up the refrain, crooned it
again and again to its mate.

The words of the songs were not Mac's. They belong to the lore
of the bushmen; but he saug or crooned them with such perfect
mimicry of tone or cadence, that never again was it possible
to hear these songs of the Never-Never without associating
the words with the songs.

The night was full of sonnds, and one by one Mac caught them up,
and the bush appeared to echo him; and leaning half drowsily,
against the pack-saddles and swags, we listened until we slipped
into one of those quiet reveries that come so naturally to bush-folk.
Shnt in on all sides by bush and tall timber, with the rushing
river as sentinel, we seemed in a world all our own--a tiny human world,
with a camp fire for its hub; and as we dreamed on, half conscious
of the moonlight and shoutings, the deep inner beauty of the night
stole upon us. A mystical, elusive beauty. difficult to define,
that lay underneath and around, and within the moonlight--a beauty
of deep nestling shadows, crooning whispers, and soft rustling movement.

For a while we dreamed on, and then tbe Maluka broke the silence.
"The wizard of the Never-Never has not forgotten how to weave
his spells while I've been south," he said. "It won't be long
before he has the missus in his toils. The false veneer
of civilisation is peeling off at a great rate."

I roused as from a trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance
at me, as I sat curled up against a swag. "You're right," he laughed;
"there's not a trace of the towney left." And rising to "see about
fixing up camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus!
Once caught, you'll never get free again. We're all tethered goats
here. Every time we make up our minds to clear out, something
pulls us back with a jerk."

"Tethered goats!" Mac called us, and the world must apply the simile
as it thinks fit. The wizard of the Never-Never weaves his spells,
until hardships, and dangers, and privations, seem all that make
life worth living; and then holds us "tethered goats"; and every
time the town calls us with promises of gaiety, and comfort, and
security, "something pulls us back with a jerk" to our beloved bush.

There was no sign of rain; and as bushmen only pitch tent when a deluge
is expected, our camp was very simple: just camp sleeping mosquito-nets,
with calico tops and cheese net for curtains--hanging by cords
between stout stakes driven into the ground. "Mosquito pegs," the bushmen
call these stakes.

Jackeroo, the unpoetical, was even then sound asleep in his net;
and in ten minutes everything was "fixed up." In another ten minutes
we had also "turned in," and soon after I was sound asleep,
rolled up in a "bluey," and had to be wakened at dawn.

"The river's still rising," Mac announced by way of good-morning.
"We'll have to bustle up and get across, or the water'll be over
the wire, and then we'll be done for."

Bustle as we would, however "getting across" was a tedious business.
It took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before
the horses could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then ouly
after old Roper had been partly dragged and partly hauled
through the back-wash by the amphibious Jackeroo.

Another half-hour slipped by in sending the horses' hobbles across
on the pulley tbat ran on the wire, and in the hobbling out of the
horses. Then, with Jackeroo on one side of the river, and the Maluka
and Mac on the other, swags, saddles, pachbags, and camp baggage
went over one by one; and it was well past mid-day before all was
finished.

Then my turn came. A surcingle--one of the long thick straps that
keep all firm on a pack-horse--was buckled through the pulley,
and the Maluka crossed first, just to test its safety. It was safe
enough; but as he was dragged throngh the water most of the way,
the pleasantness of "getting across" on the wire proved a myth.

Mac shortened the strap, and then sat me in it, like a child in a swing.
"Your lighter weight will run clear of the water," he said, with his
usual optimism. "It's only a matter of holding on and keeping cool";
and as the Maluka began to haul he added final instructions. "Hang
on like grim death, and keep cool, whatever happens," he said.

I promised to obey, and aU went well until I reached mid-stream.
Then, the wire beginning to sag threateningly towards the water,
Mac flung his whole weight on to his end of it, and, to his horror,
I shot up into the air like a sky-rocket.

"Hang on! Keep cool! " Mac yelled, in a frenzy of apprehension,
as he swung on his end of the wire. Jackeroo becme convulsed
with laughter, but the Maluka pulled hard, and I was soon on
the right side of the river, declaring that I preferred experiences
when they were over. Later Mac accounted for his terror with another
unconscious flash of humour. "You never can count on a woman
keeping cool when the unexpected happens," he said.

We offered to haul him over. "It's ouly a matter of holding on
and keeping cool," we said; but he preferred to swim.

"It's a pity you didn't think of telegraphing this performance,"
I shouted across the floods; but, in his relief, Mac was equal
to the occasion.

"I'm glad I didn't," he shouted back gallantly, with a sweeping
flourish of his hat; "it might have blocked you coming." The bushman
was learning a new accomplishment.

As his clothes were to come across on the wire, I was given a hint
to "make myself scarce"; so retired over the bank, and helped Jackeroo
with the dinner camp--an arrangement that exactly suited his ideas
of the eternal fitness of things.

During the morning he had expressed great disapproval that a woman
should be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow,
big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained
that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the
Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man of sound
common sense.

By the time the men-folk appeared, he had decided that with a little
management I would be quite an ornament to society. "Missus bin help
ME all right," he told the Sanguine Scot, with comical self-satisfaction.

Mac roared with delight, and the passage of the Fergusson having swept
away the last lingering tonch of restraint he called to the Maluka;
"Jackeroo reckons he's tamed the shrew for us." Mac had been a reader
of Shakespeare in his time.

All afternoon we were supposed to be "making a dash" for the Edith,
a river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing
about our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot,
and the flies maddening in their persistence. The horses developed
puffs, and when we were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain
we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks
usually are "during the Wet," and for four hours we laboured on,
slipping and slithering over the greasy track, varying the monotony
now and then with a floundering scramble through a boggy creek crossing.
Our appearance was about as dashing as our pace; and draggled,
wet through, and perspiring, and out of conceit with primitive
travelling--having spent the afternoon combining a minimum rate
of travelling with a maximum of discomfort--we arrived at the Edith
an hour after sundown to find her a wide eddying stream.

"Won't be more than a ducking," Mac said cheerfully. "Couldn't be
much wetter than we are," and the Maluka taking the reins from
my hands, we rode into the stream Mac keeping behind, "to pick her
up in case she floats off," he said, thinking he was putting courage
into me.

It wasn't as bad as it looked; and after a little stumbling and plunging
and drifting the horses were clambering out up the opposite bank,
and by next sundown--after scrambling throngh a few more rivers--
we found ourselves looking down at the flooded Katherine, flowing
below in the vaUey of a rocky gorge.

Sixty-five miles in three days, against sixty miles an hour
of the express trains of the world. "Speed's the thing," cries
the world, and speeds on, gaining little but speed; and we bush-folk
travel our sixty miles and gain all that is worth gaining--
excepting speed.

"Hand-over-hand this time,!" Mac said, looking up at the telegraph
wire that stretched far overhead." There's no pulley here.
Hand-over-hand, or the horse's-tail trick.

But Mine Host of the "Pub" had seen us, and running down the opposite
side of the gorge, launched a boat at the river's brink; then pulling
up-stream for a hundred yards or so in the backwash, faced about,
and raced down and across the swift-flowing current with long,
sweeping strokes; and as we rode down the steep winding track
to meet him, Mac became jocolar, and reminding us that the gauntlet
of the Katherine had yet to be run, also reminded us that
the sympathies of the Katherine were with the stockmen; adding
with a chuckle, as Mine Host bore down upon us. "You don't even
represent business here; no woman ever does."

Then the boat grounded, and Mine Host sprang ashore --another burly
six-foot bushman--and greeted us with a flashing smile and a laughing
"There's not much of her left." And then, stepping with quiet unconcern
into over two feet of water, pushed the boat against a jutting ledge
for my convenience. "Wet feet don't count," he laughed with another
of his flashing smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled
in an aside, "Didn't I tell you a woman doesn't represent business here?"



CHAPTER IV


The swim being beyond the horses, they were left hobbled out on
the north banks, to wait for the river to fall, and after another
swift race down and across stream, Mine Host landed every one
safely on the south side of the flood, and soon we were clambering
up the steep track that led from the river to the "Pub."

Coming up from the river, the Katherine Settlement appeared to
consist solely of the "Pub" and its accompanying store; but beyond
the "Pub," which, by the way, seemed to be hanging on to its own
verandah posts for support, we found an elongated, three-roomed
building, nestling under deep verandahs, and half-hidden beneath
a grove of lofty scarlet flowering ponchianas.

"The Cottage is always set apart for distinguished visitors,"
Mine Host said, bidding us welcome with another smile, but never
a hint that he was placing his own private quarters at our disposal.
Like all bushmen, he could be delicately reticent when conferring
a favour; but a forgotten razor-strop betrayed him later on.

In the meantime we discovered the remainder of the Settlement
from the Cottage verandahs, spying out the Police Station as it
lurked in ambush just round the first bend in a winding bush track--
apparently keeping one eye on the "Pub"; and then we caught a gleam
of white roofs away beyond further bends in the track, where
the Overland Telegraph "Department" stood on a little rise, aloof
from the "Pub" and the Police, shut away from the world, yet attending
to its affairs, and, incidentally, to those of the bush-folk:
a tiny Settlement, with a tiny permanent population of four men
and two women--women who found their own homes all-sufficient,
and rarely left them, although the men-folk were here, there,
and everywhere.

All around and within the Settlement was bush: and beyond the bush,
stretching away and away on every side of it, those hundreds
of thousands of square miles that constitute the Never-Never--
miles sending out and absorbing again from day to day the floating
population of the Katherine.

Before supper the Telegraph Department and the Police Station
called on the Cottage to present compliments. Then the Wag came
with his welcome. "Didn't expect you to-day," he drawled,
with unmistakable double meaning in his drawl. "You're come sooner
than we expected. Must have had luck with the rivers "; and Mac
became enthusiastic. "Luck!" he cried. "Luck! She's got the luck
of the Auld Yin himself --skinned through everything by the skin
of our teeth. No one else'll get through those rivers under a week."
And they didn't.

Remembering the telegrams, the Wag shot a swift quizzing glance
at him; but it took more than a glance to disconcert Mac once
his mind was made up, and he met it unmoved, and entered into a
vivid description of the "passage of the Fergusson," which
filled in our time until supper.

After supper the Cottage returned the calls, and then, rain coming
down in torrents, the Telegraph, the Police, the Cottage and the "Pub"
retired to rest, wondering what the morrow would bring forth.

The morrow brought forth more rain, and the certainty that, as
the river was still rising, the swim would be beyond the horses
for several days yet; and because of this uncertainty, the Katherine
bestirred itself to honour its tethered guests.

The Telegraph and the Police Station issued invitations for dinner,
and the "Pub" that had already issued a hint that "the boys could
refrain from knocking down cheques as long as a woman was staying
in the place" now issued an edict limiting the number of daily drinks per man.

The invitations were accepted with pleasure, and the edict was
attended to with a murmur of approval in which, however, there
was one dissenting voice: a little bearded bushman "thought
the Katherine was overdoing it a bit," and suggested as an amendment
that "drunks could make themselves scarce when she's about."
But Mine Host easily silenced him by offering to "see what the missus
thought about it."

Then for a day the Katherine "took its bearings," and keen,
scrutinising glances summed up the Unknown Woman, looking her through
and through until she was no longer an Unknown Woman, while the Maluka
looked on interested. He knew the bush-folk well, and that their
instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever
niche in their lives they thought fit to place her. And as she slipped
into a niche built up of strong, staunch comradeship, the black
community considered that they, too, had fathomed the missus; and it
became history in the camp that the Maluka had stolen her from
a powerful Chief of the Whites, and, deeming it wise to disappear
with her until the affair had blown over, had put many flooded rivers
between him and his pursuers. "Would any woman have flung herself
across rivers on wires, speeding on without rest or pause,
unless afraid of pursuit?" the camp asked in committee,
and the most sceptical were silenced.

Then followed other days full of pleasant intercourse; for once
sure of its welcome, bushmen are lavish with their friendship.
And as we roamed about the tiny Settlement, the Wag and others
vied with the Maluka, Mine Host, and Mac in "making things pleasant
for the missus": relating experiences for her entertainment;
showing all there was to be shown, and obeying the edict with cheerful,
unquestioning chivalry.

Neither the Head Stockman nor the little bushman, however, had made
any offers of friendship, Dan having gone out to the station
immediately after interviewing the Maluka, while the little bushman
spent most of his time getting out of the way of the missus whenever
she appeared on his horizon.

"A Tam-o-Shanter fleeing from the furies of a too fertile imagination,"
the Maluka laughed after a particularly comical dash to cover.

Poor Tam! Those days must live in his memory like a hideous nightmare!
I, of course, knew nothing of the edict at the time--for bushmen
do not advertise their chivalry--and wandered round the straggling
Settlement vaguely surprised at its sobriety, and turning up in such
unexpected places that the little bushman was constantly on the verge
of apoplexy.

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