Outback Penguin

by Stuart Kells

  Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

  Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;

  Or, as Ovid said: Ante oculos errant domus.

  My home, the city, and the image of well-known places pass before my eyes; and each different event follows in its turn.

  And, farther on, I shall reach ‘terra firma’ as I pass underneath the tall arch and pillar at the Somerset side of the bridge. I shall turn and look back and read the Latin inscription on the pillar – the actual words I am doubtful of but the translation is: ‘The suspended way scarcely fits’ – and I shall think of why that inscription was placed there and marvel again at the wonders of engineering. I shall walk on until I reach Leigh Woods and only hope that it is in the springtime that I make this walk for then, when I come upon the carpets of primroses and bluebells, I shall take a deep breath to fill my lungs with their sweet odour and I shall thank God for all his mercies.

  As every day (as the Romans say) Spes vitae cum sole redit, so every day do I think of you, my England. ‘The hope of life returns with the Sun.’

  In many ways, the more I write the more I want to write. I have not mentioned many things I meant to, or mean to, tell you. The opinions of Miss Rowlands of English people in England, and of England itself, are well worth a couple of pages. So is what I term Mr Rowland’s religion, his views of life, and his opinions of England and its inhabitants.

  Sunday, 4 October 1925

  When I finished writing yesterday it was practically dark, so if you can’t read the last few lines put it down to the light (or want of it). Dinner is just about ready so I shall be unable to say much now. I think there is a motor drive on this afternoon so it may be this evening before I have a chance of doing any writing. But as I am very anxious to nearly (if not quite) fill up this book before sending it home I shall have to take every opportunity I can of scribbling a few lines.

  I don’t think I shall ever settle down here. I had the same feeling at Moorook. At Renmark, in a few weeks, I was quite happy and was contented to stay there for many years. I also settled down at ‘Millamolong’. But here, I can’t explain quite what the feeling is but I am unsettled. Perhaps the kids have something to do with it. This morning I tried to have a ‘lay in’ (I am sleeping on the verandah now that my room is being used as a shearer’s dining room) but the kids would give me no peace. One of them tried to rub my face with a banana skin while another banged away at me with a stick. One pulled the clothes off the bed while the other was trying to hit my face. They are the most mischievous children I have ever seen. Nothing in my room is safe, they look at everything, pull anything they can to pieces, ransack all my belongings.

  Also there is no room in the house for anything. I have to keep all my books in my trunk or else the brats would tear them all up. It’s no good telling them not to do anything for their answer is always, ‘But I want to’. I did not go for a motor drive this afternoon for several reasons. One, I wanted to do some writing; another, I want to be as far away from the children as possible; and a third, that I wanted to try a new rifle that Mr Brown has just bought. It is a .32 Repeating Winchester and cost £8. I had a shot at a rabbit and blew its head off.

  All the furniture in my room, save the bed, I made myself and I term the style ‘The Late Kerosene Period’ as it is all made out of kerosene cases.

  Tuesday, 6 October 1925

  If, in the whole course of my life, I was ever sure of any fact it is that, at the present time, I am most terribly home sick. At this very moment I would do any mortal thing to get home. (Interval here while I go and drive some sheep into the shed.) I’ve had a fairly long day today. Up at 5.30am, started to milk when Mr Brown came along and said, as the weather looked very doubtful, he thought it best to fill up the shed with sheep. I caught my horse and went after the sheep – this took me until 8.30am. Then breakfast, milking, chopping wood, separating and all the other odd jobs in the shearing shed till dinner. Again after dinner and finished my odd jobs about 6.30pm, then tea and I finished wiping up at 7.50pm. Then I wrote three lines before being interrupted to go and drive some sheep. Coming back from the shed, Mr Brown said that if it does not rain within the next few weeks I shall be getting my ‘walking ticket’. If so, and I can possibly get a few pounds together, I am coming home. Too right I am.

  Yesterday was ‘Eight Hour Day’ and I had a holiday. We all went for a picnic to Tyburn. This is rather a pretty place. Coming along a road which winds through the scrub, or bush, you suddenly find yourself in a natural basin in the middle of the hills. The ground you are on is quite level, and the Castlereagh River idly twists and turns through a small belt of trees which cover a portion of the bottom of this natural basin. In every direction, save the way you naturally look, the sides of this basin are covered with trees and the slope is very gradual. But in front of you is Timor Rock, which rears its precipitous heights right above the gradual slopes. (I feel too tired for writing any description, leave alone descriptive writing, but this is just jotting down notes.) Halfway up the rock is the ‘Bottle Rock’ which somewhat resembles a bottle standing on its neck. The neck is quite plain, even if the bottle is not. Just above this is a rocky plateau and, overlooking this, the towering heights of the rock, small pinnacles, smooth slides and narrow crevices.

  I climbed three-quarters of the way up, and then came across a smooth and perpendicular rock which it was impossible to scale. Coming down, I found myself in a very awkward position and then thought what a silly thing it is to climb up mountains. You risk your life in going up and if you reach the summit safely you again risk it in descending. When I reached the picnic ground I stretched myself out on the ground and sent up a blessing to Heaven for the originator of Eight Hour Day.

  Thursday, 8 October 1925

  I am beginning to cool down a bit now but I am still rather ‘ratty’. I went up for the mail this morning and there was a notice for me saying that at the post office a registered letter was awaiting me. This was somewhat cheerful news and I began to speculate on how much money I was about to receive. Mrs Brown went into town this afternoon and she procured this letter for me. I read it at tea time. It was from the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, Adelaide, and informed me that if I did not pay him an amount of about £5 within twenty-one days I should be summoned and that, under some act or other, if this was not paid my goods and chattels would be sold, irrespective of where they rested. This was cheerful news, all right, as I haven’t got any money at all. Not counting a pair of boots I bought and the freight on my luggage, I haven’t spent one pound during the last two months. My financial condition can certainly be termed a crisis. I landed in Australia about three years ago with ‘x’ pounds and after three solid years of fairly hard work I now owe ‘x’ pounds. (‘X’, of course, in each case represents the same number.) Not very much, but when it’s a minus quantity it is quite enough. There is no doubt I have, during these years, made a mess of life and a couple of days ago I was informed that it is quite likely that I shall soon be presented with my walking ticket.

  PICTURE SECTION 2

  Richard and John enjoying a sail in the boat built by John. Bristol, late 1920s.

  Betty and Richard Lane visiting Renmark on their honeymoon, July 1948.

  What a cheerful position. In a strange country, few friends, in debt and shortly expecting to be out of a job. What can a man do? This is the country to make a fortune in. Of that there is no possible doubt.

  Saturday, 10 October 1925

  Still no rain, so I am getting nearer and nearer the end of my stay here. If I leave I want to come home, but how this is to be managed it is somewhat hard at the present time to see. It is just possible that the shipping strike now in progress in Australia will be the means of my coming home. At present things are at a deadlock but I think it possible that, in a few weeks, the shipping companies will advertise for men to man their boats. Most likely the government will have to guarantee to protect them from the strikers. If this
happens, and at about the same time I get the sack, I might apply for a job. Why not? I think it is the only chance I have got of reaching home unless I can get hold of £50.

  We finished shearing on Thursday night and the shearers left on Friday morning. Shearing is not a job I’d like to take on. A dirty, greasy, messy job. On a small station they have to sleep in any old shed, or even tent, that is erected for them and they are shifting the whole time. I like a more settled and comfortable life.

  Really, I am a bit of an idealist but what my ideals are I don’t feel like writing just now. I have my working togs on and I feel very dirty. The weather is hot and muggy, the room I am writing in has no ceiling and no furniture (save kerosene boxes) so I don’t think the time is ripe to write about my ideals. I will wait until I get back home.

  I have learnt a little more Australian slang from the shearers: ‘greasy leg’ – shearer; ‘blue-tongue’ – roustabout; and a ‘brownie gorger’ is a person (usually a shearer or roustabout) who eats a lot of brownie cake.

  So, you remember the old yarn about the person who invented draughts or chess? How, when asked what reward he would like, replied that he would like one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board and double it for every other square and, in the end, it was discovered there was not enough rice in the country to make up the required quantity. I told somebody about this last night and they would not believe me, so we worked it out, then counted the grains of rice in an ounce, found how many grains to a ton, then worked out how many tons of rice the inventor of the game wanted for his reward. How many do you think? Working it out roughly and allowing 50,000,000 grains of rice to a ton, the answer is somewhere in the region of 500,000,000,000 tons. I can vouch for the accuracy of this figure as I worked it out myself.

  The mountains about here are nothing startling, but they are better than nothing. I like mountains and I like the sea but plains I am not so fond of, they come a bad third. The two things that impress me most are mountains and the sea, and where these together are I would forever be. The depth and vastness of one, and the height and solidity of the other, tend to raise one’s thoughts above the level of ordinary, everyday affairs and inspire one to think of other lands, other people, other lives, other religions, other planets and all sorts of other things. Away from the busy cities and the crowded places we seem to get nearer to life, through the medium of nature.

  We think of the life we lead and try to compare it to a life hereafter and no comparison can be made, for one is an actual state – the state of living or being alive – and of the other we can only guess. We can certainly all have our own ideas of life after death but there is nothing very definite to go on. Many people say that Heaven is but a state, not a place; you do not go to a place called Heaven but you can be in a state of heavenly bliss. But many other people say that there actually is a place, Heaven. What caused me to write about this, I cannot say. Just the way I have of rambling on, I suppose. I once wrote something about ‘faith, hope and charity’ and I think that, had I the time, I could make up a sermon on this; but don’t get the wind-up for I am not thinking of doing so just now.

  Although I am not particularly anxious for it, my thoughts for the next few minutes must be turned on those miserable quadrupeds – cows.

  Sunday, 11 October 1925

  Still do the pangs of home sickness gnaw away at my innermost self, my very being quivers at the onslaught of this terrible malady. I feel like the swan of whom Kipling wrote in the ‘Long Trail’:

  And I’d sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll Of a black Bilbao tramp,

  Last Sunday I wrote ‘I don’t think I shall ever settle down here’ and every day I am more sure of the truth of this statement. My room was used three weeks as the shearers’ dining room, now it reverts back to me. But I cannot keep the kids out and everything they see they want to look at and try to pull to pieces. Also this room is full of lumber, has no ceiling, and there are holes in the roof and cracks and holes in all the walls (which are made entirely of rough planks of wood), no curtains over the window and an old piece of linoleum covering half the floor, the room alone is enough to make me long for home.

  Everybody has gone for a picnic to ‘Morock’ so I am enjoying a few minutes peace. It is dinner time, but I am too fed up with life to want to eat anything. Nobody loves me and if there were any worms in the garden I’d go and eat them.

  The other day I had an interesting conversation with an Australian on Australia. He reckoned that it would never be a great country. Except for a few coastal rivers, there is only one river in the whole of the continent – the Murray. All the other rivers run into it. There is no denying that it is badly off for rivers. This is due to an insufficiency of rain which, in its turn, is caused by a shortage of mountains. There is only one range of mountains worth talking about and this runs north and south on the east coast with a few spurs jotting out westward, such as the Canobolas and the Warrumbungles. The country is too subject to droughts.

  To make matters a little more pleasant I have a rotten cold, all complete with headache. I do feel cheerful. I wander from one room to another. In this room I scribble few lines, then I go into the sitting room and read for a few minutes, and I occasionally go into the kitchen either for some bread and jam or else a cup of water. I feel

  Now drooping, woeful man, like one forlorn, Crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

  Thursday, 15 October 1925

  Monday was one of the worst days I have experienced during the last twenty years of my existence. To begin with, I had a rotten cold, splitting headache etc. The fact of it being Monday was not too cheerful and the weather was simply ‘terrific’. A hot north wind blowing, it was close and stuffy all day and at times almost suffocating. Mr Brown suggested that I should lie down during the afternoon but this would have finished me off as indoors, especially my room, it was hard to work, to even breathe. So during the afternoon we marked Mr Roy Brown’s lambs. His yards are the worst I have ever seen and the lambs themselves were absolutely covered with burrs (Bathurst burrs), so my arms were scratched and full of portions of burrs in quite a short time. The weather got worse and worse. My headache got worse and I developed a terrific thirst, but no drink was available. The hot wind, sand and dust, aided by my cold, made my eyes sore and they ran when we finished soon after 5pm. The wind was so strong that I could not keep my hat on. Soon after we arrived back at the house, we observed the roof of one of the sheds flapping up and down in the wind; most of it came off but we managed to place some logs on the remaining portion and so save it. Mr Brown wanted to see some sheep on the Hill paddock, so he rode away. Shortly after, I noticed a bush fire on the same paddock so I saddled up my horse again and galloped over to help Mr Brown extinguish it. But I found that he had started it as he wanted to get rid of some dead grass. We returned for tea and immediately afterwards rode up there again, as he thought it might spread in the wrong direction and do some damage.

  As rotten as I felt I could not help but admire the fantastic beauty of some of the trees as they were swaying about, illuminated by the burning grass which roared and raced along, and by the sparks which kept showering forth from the tops of dead, hollow trees which had caught alight. These, of course, being nothing more or less than natural wood chimneys. Out of the light of the fire it was pitch dark and it was hard to see where we were going. We returned about 8.30pm and I went to bed where I tossed and turned until the late hours of the morning, perspiring and inwardly searing all the time. Tuesday morning was fairly stuffy, but later on in the day it became cold and when I went to bed I had three blankets, two rugs (one doubled) and all the available coats and overcoats I could find on my bed. Yet when I retired I was actually shivering and this continued for a long time. In this weather it is almost impossible to have a cold but very easy to catch one. Yesterday I went with Mr Brown to ‘Morock’ and today I have been boundary riding, inspecting and repairing fences after the storm as many trees fell on
the fences and broke the wires. I knocked off at 6.40pm and now it is about time to think of retiring. I am still wanting to come home. I am afraid that an opinion I formed some considerably long time ago is correct and that is that, in sheep, money makes money but without any it is extremely hard to get anywhere. If you took up brown lands, for which you pay practically nothing, you have to fence it with rabbit-proof netting, kill the trees and stock it, and these few items cannot be done for nothing.

  So I think I’ll come home and be a ‘pen pusher’, there is not enough encouragement for the man on the land here. Mr Brown told me yesterday that he has spent £X,000 in the last four years on his properties, X being a word of four letters commencing with ‘f’ and ending with ‘e’. And this property he obtained through the repatriation scheme. He says he cannot afford to build a new house, or even improve this one, and this is really only a humpy. He mentioned the case of his brother’s children. There are five sons. Three of them went jackarooing but, in a couple of years, had to turn it in and go into offices as without sufficient capital it was useless trying to make a start. Managing a station, Mr Brown reckons, is about the worst paid of all jobs, the manager of an average station getting between £150–£250 a year plus keep and all the kicks from everyone connected with the station. Mr Brown definitely stated that he would not advise anyone to go on the land.