Outback Penguin

by Stuart Kells

  Thursday, 10 September 1925

  Mr Brown is, at present, away at his other property, ‘Morock’, where shearing operations commenced last Tuesday. He left here on Monday and will not be back until Saturday. He gave me a lot of odd jobs to do. This is somewhat the type of instructions I get: ‘You know where the axe is, and you will find a spade and crowbar behind the tool shed. Go and chop some trees down, up by the front gate will do. Cut some bars, not more than twelve feet long. Bring them down here in the trolley, you know where that is and the horses are in the hill paddock. With the wood you cut make a sheep race, from here to here, about four feet wide and gates at each end. Take down this fence and gate to make room for the race and put them back so that the gate will close on the race.’

  Sunday, 13 September 1925

  Now that I am on the ‘reporting’ business I will copy out the report that I wrote when Mr Brown was at ‘Morock’. He returned yesterday. I drove out to fetch him. Unfortunately, I was not able to make a complete report as there was ‘much talking’ going on while I was trying to write it and I can only write when conditions are reasonably quiet. The unfinished report only describes what happened on the first day. Here goes:

  A kind of a report

  By

  Dick Lane

  And it came to pass that a short time after the master had returned from Sydneian, the city of the harbourites, he journeyed forth into the land of Moorook, the country of the Sheepites, and he left in charge of his properties near Canamancan, the country of the Spotites (the people here are always ‘spotting’ – drinking), one Dick Lane who herewith starts to make his report.

  My dear and honoured master,

  After you had departed from my sight my heart felt heavy within me for I knew that, in your absence, I should become chief floor scrubber and in my sorrow I caught hold of many posts and gates and flung them to the ground, as you had commanded. After this and sundry other jobs, I had an early meal and journeyed forth on my horse to that portion of the station where straight trees grow. I smote these with an axe until the going down of the sun, when I hied me back to the yard of the horses. On arriving here I was much perturbed for, at midday, I had placed several in an enclosure for in the evening I wanted to obtain some milk for the bottle of thy offspring Lloyd (the youngest ‘squawker’). But when I arrived in the vicinity of the calf enclosure I observed that the calves were no longer there, but they were grazing nearby. O Master, I hate to tell you but I feel duty bound to do so; these wretched animals had scorned the new building that thou erected for them and had trampled it to the ground. ‘Faking’ it up, I drove the ungrateful beasts back to it and then proceeded to milk one of the cows. This over, I noticed that the cursed sons and daughters of the cows were again endeavouring to escape from their allotted enclosure.

  I thought to myself that if they could be kept there until it was dark, they would then no longer try to escape. In order to keep them quiet I threw in to them one measure of lucerne, this had the desired effect. After having feasted, I laid me down and slept and remembered nothing until that invention of the devil, the alarm clock, roused me from my slumbers and reminded me that the hour had come for me to rise. In the morning, beside four hours of odd jobs I gathered together many ewes and lambs for Mr Roy Brown to inspect. Sargeant and I did all the mustering for the dog, ‘Brownie’, is absolutely useless. During the morning I learnt that sheep have no brains, they lack even common sense, initiative they have none.

  This is as far as I got with the report and it’s so feeble that perhaps it’s best I did not write any more.

  I often wish that I could write well and forcibly, well enough to earn my living at it. Sometimes I don’t like writing at all, this is when I am writing letters to people I owe money to – my tailor, for instance. You may smile at this but it is absolutely true. I owe my tailor quite a lot. However, I usually enjoy writing when I am in the right mood. I enjoy it immensely. I could go on for hours, but what I write is of no interest to anyone save yourselves. I am now writing home, if only I could write something that would interest anyone who did not know me, I would start tomorrow, no, today.

  Truth or fiction, it would all be the same to me. In fact, a little blending of the two would, I think, suit me best of all. Fictitious characters and actual surroundings. This blend, I believe, is fairly common. All the same, I would not object to writing about actual people, persons I know and have known.

  Some people credit me with having a vivid imagination, I wonder if I have? Is a vivid imagination a talent? If it is, am I making good use of it? No. But if it is not a talent, can I be blamed for not making use of it? Please excuse these ramblings, but these are just idle thoughts that wander through my mind. ‘Idle thoughts of an idle fellow.’

  Talking and writing are very much allied. Talking is expressing one’s thoughts and opinions by the power of speech; writing is expressing the same things on paper by the medium of the pen. So sometimes I feel like talking. If I were well primed with ‘Dutch Courage’ I think I could face an audience and clearly explain to them that Australia is not what they imagine it to be.

  I have travelled over more of Australia than a good many Australians. I have visited four capitals (state capitals): Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. I know the Murray Valley fairly well; the Blue Mountains also have I seen. From what I have seen of Australia, I sometimes feel certain I could interest people in it by power of speech. Is it possible that one day I may have the courage to attempt to interest my fellow countrymen in Australia by means of that instrument which is even more powerful than the sword, the pen? Talking of travelling in Australia reminds me that I covered over 1,700 miles from Renmark to Coonabarabran, from one job to the next. One day I can see myself giving a lecture at the Colston Hall on ‘Australia’, perhaps! And – perhaps not.

  But let me not proceed any further with this nonsense. The best way of doing this will be to – ‘shut up’.

  Saturday, 19 September 1925

  At the present moment I feel very contented with life. Everybody, in fact everything. I have had a fairly hard week’s work – some people would call it very hard – and now, Saturday afternoon about 4.30pm, I am sitting on the edge of my bed engaged in the most pleasant occupation of writing to those who are most, most dear of all people in the world to me. Shearing commenced on Thursday – a very dirty job – and every evening I have had a warm bath, but this afternoon I went into the bathroom with the sole intention of having a good time. After shaving and washing my hair I got into the bath, which was over half full of real hot water, and lazed. To a person who has had a fairly strenuous and also fairly dirty time what is finer than to lie down in a bath of warm water and laze, and think, not to worry about anything, just to splash the water occasionally, turn over occasionally, to hear the soothing sound of running water, to watch the steam arising from the surface of the water and idly drifting upwards to the ceiling, then to sit up and vigorously play about with the soap and then to lie back again, the water covering you. When you turn the tap off, everything seems silent for a moment then, upon one’s ears, comes the sound of the wind whistling through the tall trees, and there you are lying in the bath.

  One day I must rewrite this and entitle it ‘In praise of a hot bath’. I leisurely dried myself, lit a cigarette, donned clean clothes – I don’t mind how shabby they are as long as they are clean – and then strolled into my room, picked up my pen and this is the result. Now I must go and do some odd jobs. So for this page and a half of idle scribbling you must thank, or blame, a hot bath.

  Saturday, 26 September 1925

  Last Saturday afternoon I was very contented with life. This afternoon I am rather ‘fed up’ with things in general. The cause of this is not hard to find. Yesterday I received my luggage, which had been sent on from Adelaide (freight £2.6.8) and this afternoon I have been looking through it, reading occasional letters, glancing at odd papers, cuttings, photos etc., and now I find myself most terribly ‘home
sick’. I have been afflicted more with this complaint during the last few months than I ever was in either 1922–1923 or 1924. Oh, to be home again, away from squawking kids, ‘make shift’ houses, cows, sheep, shearing and everything else that is annoying me at the present time. Oh, to meet some intelligent people again. Nearly everybody around here is badly educated and not overburdened with intelligence, their only topics of conversation being sheep and the weather. About books they know nothing and, what’s worse, they don’t want to know anything. I don’t want to boast, far from it, but I don’t think I am exaggerating when I state that I am better educated and better informed than the average man in this district. It is not to myself that I owe it but to Father and Mother. In the Psalms I remember something about ‘I’d rather be a door keeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of the ungodly’. Although it is hard to put in words, I feel that I’d rather be the least among the educated than the highest of the uneducated. When one’s life and works are connected with well-educated people the tendency is to improve oneself, but when one’s life and works are among the uneducated it is hard to try to improve oneself and it is very easy to slip down to their level. The standard of education was higher in Renmark than it is here.

  Here, if by some mistake a person reads a book they immediately forget all about it. The love of poetry is unknown. Poetry is not considered fit for men to read. If you want to read there are plenty of good books such as The Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W., The Blowfly Pest, Sheep Dipping, Lice in Sheep, The Farmer’s Handbook. But poetry, all that sort of stuff, is ‘slush’.

  Dickens: ‘Oh, I think I started a book by him once but it was too long winded’, or else ‘Never heard of the cove. What did he do, anyway?’. Scott: ‘He’s the bloke wot discovered the North Pole, ain’t he?’ and so on. It is not funny but sad. It’s this that makes me want to come home.

  The Rowlands are well educated, but they are not a family in a thousand but a family in ten thousand. When I opened up my trunk and looked at my books I nearly wept with joy, they seem the only real friends I have up here. Good books, fine pictures, faithful friends. Can one have too many of them? Old wood, old friends, old wine and old authors are best. Thank goodness that I have some old books, for they certainly are real friends to me. As the French say: Un livre est un ami qui ne trompe jamais. A book is a friend that never deceives us.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper says ‘A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever’. I must be something the man of whom Crabbe wrote: ‘His delight was all in books; to read them or to write. Women and men he strove alike to shun, and hurried homeward when his tasks were done.’ That is what I should now like to do, ‘hurry homeward’.

  ‘That place that does contain my books, the best companion is to me a glorious court where hourly I converse with the old sages and philosophers’ – Fletcher.

  The only bookcase is in my room, where are stored numerous old copies of Agricultural Gazettes and about a dozen books on military training.

  Now, alas, I must away to do numerous odd jobs but before I close let me say that – interval – owing to the aforementioned odd jobs I was interrupted in my writing, but what I was going to say is that although this book is mainly ‘for the family’ it may be passed on to a few friends so this message may, to a certain extent, be ‘broadcasted’.

  I have been very lucky in receiving letters. In the last couple of days I have had four: one from home; one from Auntie Annie; the third from Mr T.H. Rowlands; and the last from Mr A.B. Withers. The latter is still in a bad way. Currants, which were about the only fruit worth growing when I left Renmark and which cost about £27 a ton to produce, are now fetching £30 on the London market. Also, Murray Turner is still worrying him about the Moon car. Alas, the poor ill-fated car service.

  Bob Clifton, who I have before mentioned in these pages, visited ‘Millamolong’ last week and he saw Mr Brown last night when in Coonabarabran. He gave him a couple of parcels for me which turned out to be a couple of packets of Turf cigarettes from Miss Rowlands and some more Minties from Miss Smyth. I suppose this must be a thanks offering because I am not there.

  I have before me one of the books that arrived yesterday in my luggage, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. This is one of the dearest of my old friends, there are charms on every page.

  And so I wander on through the book, getting more and more homesick every page, yet I enjoy it. It is a pleasure, and is not an Englishman credited with taking his pleasures seriously?

  When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

  I all alone beweep my outcast state,

  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

  And look upon myself and curse my fate,

  As, at the present moment, I am engaged in ‘cursing my fate’, I think this is a fit ending.

  Sunday, 27 September 1925

  I have had very little spare time lately. Last Saturday week in the afternoon, as you may remember, I had a bath. In the evening I went to the pictures. On Sunday morning I helped to clear out the shearing shed, fix the wool press, turn out a shed for the shearers to sleep in and make a couple of beds for them. In the afternoon I had to muster sheep ready for shearing; this took me until tea time. As I was tired I went to bed early. Shearing properly commenced last Monday and all through the week I was exceptionally busy, rising at 5.30am, lighting the fire and milking three cows before breakfast at 7 o’clock. Morning tea is served at 9.30am, dinner at 12 noon, afternoon tea at 3pm, and tea for the shearers at 6 o’clock. We have our tea when we finish our odd jobs. Every evening I retired early. Last Saturday afternoon, besides doing a little writing, I helped to muster some sheep which took several hours. Today I also have not been idle. This morning I fixed up a shelter around a lucerne stack to keep the fowls out, repaired a fence with barbed wire, repaired a wire mattress with tie wire and put a fresh hinge on a gate. This afternoon I went with Mr Brown to his other property, ‘Morock’. In charge of this place is one who is designated ‘Father Time’ and he looks it, a real old bushman and he lives in a house – Ye gods, yes, a house – with his wife and one idiot son. I’m told that I shall have to be there for occasional weeks to work. Two rooms in the house, about ten feet by six feet; I shall have to sleep either in the open or in an ancient shed. In the evening this family play ‘Ludo’ or such like games and I shall be expected to join in with them – that’s something to look forward to. ‘Morock’ is about twenty-five miles from here.

  I met a predecessor some few days ago. His name is Arthur Atkinson and he is very popular in Coonabarabran. I was not particularly struck on him myself, one reason being that he uses a lot of unnecessary slang – the pictures are always the ‘flicks’ and dances invariably ‘hops’. He also has one French idiom which he uses on an average of four times an hour and I have yet to hear him use it on an appropriate occasion. It is faux pas.

  Mr Brown reckons that I spend at least two thirds of my spare time writing in this book, and I am beginning to think that I should be thought better of if I did not write quite so much. It ‘isn’t done’ in this district. Mrs Brown told me that she thought it would do me more good if I were to read the Farmer’s Handbook instead of doing so much writing. The Farmer’s Handbook is no ‘friend’ of mine whereas this book is and I am sure that after a hard day’s work I need friendship more than I do knowledge contained in a book which is written entirely as a reference book. It is hard to explain exactly what I mean, but I think that you will be able to read in between the lines and so understand what is meant.

  This is certainly a book in which I jot things down in brief or roughly outline certain occurrences; sometimes as soon as I have written something I think of means by which it could be improved.

  Saturday, 3 October 1925

  For the third consecutive Saturday afternoon I settle myself down to scribble a few lines. My chirography, by the way, is my only claim to genius. I have not thought of anything special to write about so I shall just
ramble on. To begin with, when I write the story which I outlined a few weeks ago I have now decided that when Allen Williams visits ‘Millamolong’ he is to go one morning to collect the mail and, as he is not too good at riding, the horse bolts and jumps gates, fences and anything else I can think of – I ought to be able to give rather a good account of this, after the experience I have had.

  I am still very homesick and the only way that I can cheer myself up is to imagine that I shall be coming home in a few months. I think of all the lovely walks I am going to have. One day I am going to walk to Leigh Woods by way of the Suspension Bridge. Halfway over the bridge I am going to stop and admire the view. Above me, the sky, with most likely a few clouds floating about. Below me, the Avon, most likely more mud visible than water. To the left, a few warehouses and, in the distance, sundry will be clearly visible. On my right will be the Avon Gorge. Leigh Woods and Nightingale Valley will be about half right. How lovely it will be to see all the fine English trees again. The deep Gorge, the left side of it covered with trees which will be all shades of green and the tallest of which will, undoubtedly, be swaying in the wind. And on the other side, from the Observatory and Sea Wall downwards, I shall see mostly rock with occasional shrubs growing in inaccessible and in some cases precipitous places. Far, far away will be Australia with all its memories of Moorook, Renmark, Adelaide, Sydney, ‘Millamolong’, Coonabarabran and all the many other places I have visited. Far away will be the hot north winds, the mallee scrub, the salt bush plains, the Murray and the Castlereagh. But the most important factor, the fact that will give me more pleasure than anything else, will be the knowledge and fact that I am home.