Bush Studies

by Barbara Baynton

  He ripped off another sheet of bark, and smashed away a batten that broke his swing. Encircling a rafter with his hooked arm, he lay flat, his feet pressing another just over the bunk, because only there would the dog hold his ground. One blow well directed got home. He planted his feet firmly, and made another with such tremendous force that his support snapped. He let go the axe and it fell on the door. He gripped with his hand the rafter nearest, but strain as he would he could not balance his body. He hung over the door, and the dog sprang at him and dragged him down. In bitten agony, he dropped on the door that instantly up-ended.

  It was daylight, and in that light the power of those open eyes set in that bald head, fixed on the billy beside the dead fireplace, was mightier than the dog. His unmaimed hand had the strength of both. He lifted the door and shielded himself with it as he backed out.

  But that was not all the dog wanted. At the doorway he waited to see that the fleeing man had no further designs on the sheep.

  It was time they were feeding. Though the hurdles were down, even from the doorway, the dog was their master. He waited for commands from his, and barked them back till noon.

  Several times that day the ewe and lamb came in, looked without speculation at the figure on the bunk, then moved to the dead fireplace. But though the water in the billy was cold, the dog would not allow either to touch it. That was for tea when his master awoke.

  There was another circumstance. Those blowflies were welcome to the uncovered mutton. Throughout that day he gave them undisputed right, but they had to be content with it.

  Next day the ewe and lamb came again. The lamb bunted several irresponsive objects—never its dam’s udder—baaing listlessly. Though the first day the ewe had looked at the bunk, and baaed, she was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn. Around that dried dish outside the lamb sniffed, baaing faintly. Adroitly the ewe led the way to the creek, and the lamb followed. From the bank the lamb looked at her, then faced round to the hut, and, baaing disconsolately, trotted a few paces back. From the water’s edge the mother ewe called. The lamb looked at her vacantly, and without interest descended. The ewe bent and drank sparingly, meaningly. The lamb sniffed the water, and, unsatisfied, complained. The hut was hidden, but it turned that way. Again the ewe leisurely drank. This time the lamb’s lips touched the water, but did not drink. Into its mouth raised to bleat a few drops fell. Hastily the mother’s head went to the water. She did not drink, but the lamb did. Higher up, where the creek was dry, they crossed to tender grass in the billabong, then joined the flock for the first time.

  Through the thicker mist that afternoon a white tilted cart sailed joltingly, taking its bearings from the various landmarks rather than from the undefined track. It rounded the scrub, and the woman, with her baby, kept watch for the first glimpse of her home beyond the creek. She told her husband that there was no smoke from the nearer shepherd’s hut, but despite his uneasiness he tried to persuade her that the mist absorbed it.

  It was past sundown, yet the straggling unguarded sheep were running in mobs to and from the creek. Both saw the broken roof of the hut, and the man, stopping the horse some distance away, gave the woman the reins and bade her wait. He entered the hut through the broken doorway, but immediately came out to assure himself that his wife had not moved.

  The sight inside of that broken-ribbed dog’s fight with those buzzing horrors, and the reproach in his wild eyes, was a memory that the man was not willing she should share.

  BILLY SKYWONKIE*

  THE line was unfenced, so with due regard to the possibility of the drought-dulled sheep attempting to chew it, the train crept cautiously along, stopping occasionally, without warning, to clear it from the listless starving brutes. In the carriage nearest the cattle-vans, some drovers and scrub-cutters were playing euchre, and spasmodically chorusing the shrill music from an uncertain concertina. When the train stopped, the player thrust his head from the carriage window. From one nearer the engine, a commercial traveller remonstrated with the guard, concerning the snail’s pace and the many unnecessary halts.

  “Take yer time, ole die-’ard,” yelled the drover to the guard. “Whips er time—don’t bust yerself fer no one. Wot’s orl the worl’ to a man w’en his wife’s a widder.” He laughed noisily and waved his hat at the seething bagman. “Go an’ ’ave a snooze. I’ll wake yer up ther day after termorrer.”

  He craned his neck to see into the nearest cattle-van. Four were down, he told his mates, who remarked, with blasphemous emphasis, that they would probably lose half before getting them to the scrub country.

  The listening woman passenger, in a carriage between the drover and the bagman, heard a thud soon after in the cattle-truck, and added another to the list of the fallen.

  Before dawn that day the train had stopped at a siding to truck them, and she had watched with painful interest these drought-tamed brutes being driven into the crowded vans. The tireless, greedy sun had swiftly followed the grey dawn, and in the light that even now seemed old and worn, the desolation of the barren shelterless plains, that the night had hidden, appalled her. She realized the sufferings of the emaciated cattle. It was barely noon, yet she had twice emptied the water bottle “shogging” in the iron bracket.

  The train dragged its weary length again, and she closed her eyes from the monotony of the dead plain. Suddenly the engine cleared its throat in shrill welcome to two iron tanks, hoisted twenty feet and blazing like evil eyes from a vanished face.

  Beside them it squatted on its hunkers, placed a blackened thumb on its pipe, and hissed through its closed teeth like a snared wild-cat, while gulping yards of water. The green slimy odour penetrated to the cattle. The lustiest of these stamped feebly, clashing their horns and bellowing a hollow request.

  A long-bearded bushman was standing on the few slabs that formed a siding, with a stockwhip coiled like a snake on his arm. The woman passenger asked him the name of the place.

  “This is ther Never-Never—ther lars’ place Gord made,” answered one of the drovers who were crowding the windows.

  “Better’n ther ’ell ’ole yous come from, any’ow,” defended the bushman. “Breakin’ ther ’earts, an’ dyin’ from suerside, cos they lef’ it,” he added derisively, pointing to the cattle.

  In patriotic anger he passed to the guard-van without answering her question, though she looked anxiously after him. At various intervals during the many halts of the train, she had heard some of the obscene jokes, and with it in motion, snatches of lewd songs from the drovers’ carriage. But the language used by this bushman to the guard, as he helped to remove a ton of fencing-wire topping his new saddle, made her draw back her head. Near the siding was a spring cart, and she presently saw him throw his flattened saddle into it and drive off. There was no one else in sight, and in nervous fear she asked the bagman if this was Gooriabba siding. It was nine miles further, he told her.

  The engine lifted its thumb from its pipe. “Well—well—to—be—sure; well—well—to—be—sure,” it puffed, as if in shocked remembrance of its being hours late for its appointment there.

  She saw no one on the next siding, but a buggy waited near the sliprails. It must be for her. According to Sydney arrangements she was to be met here, and driven out twelve miles. A drover inquired as the train left her standing by her portmanteau, “Are yer travellin’ on yer lonesome, or on’y goin’ somew’ere!” and another flung a twist of paper towards her, brawling unmusically, that it was “A flowwer from me angel mother’s ger-rave.”

  She went towards the buggy, but as she neared it the driver got in and made to drive off. She ran and called, for when he went she would be alone with the bush all round her, and only the sound of the hoarse croaking of the frogs from the swamp near, and the raucous “I’ll—’ave—’is—eye—out”, of the crows.

  Yes, he was from Gooriabba Station, and had come to meet a young “piece” from Sydney, who had not come.

  She was ghastly with bilious sickness�
�the result of an over-fed brain and an under-fed liver. Her face flushed muddily. “Was it a housekeeper?”

  He was the rouseabout, wearing his best clothes with awful unusualness. The coat was too long in the sleeve, and wrinkled across the back with his bush slouch. There was that wonderful margin of loose shirt between waistcoat and trousers, which all swagger bushies affect. Subordinate to nothing decorative was the flaring silk handkerchief, drawn into a sailor’s knot round his neck.

  He got out and fixed the winkers, then put his hands as far as he could reach into his pockets—from the position of his trousers he could not possibly reach bottom. It was apparently some unknown law that suspended them. He thrust forward his lower jaw, elevated his pipe, and squirted a little tobacco juice towards his foot that was tracing semicircles in the dust. “Damned if I know,” he said with a snort, “but there’ll be a ’ell of a row somew’ere.”

  She noticed that the discoloured teeth his bush grin showed so plainly, were worn in the centre, and met at both sides with the pipe between the front. Worn stepping-stones, her mind insisted.

  She looked away towards the horizon where the smoke of the hidden train showed faintly against a clear sky, and as he was silent, she seemed to herself to be intently listening to the croak of the frogs and the threat of the crows. She knew that, from under the brim of the hat he wore over his eyes, he was looking at her sideways.

  Suddenly he withdrew his hands and said again, “Damned if I know. S’pose it’s all right! Got any traps? Get up then an’ ’ole the Neddy while I get it.” They drove a mile or so in silence; his pipe was still in his mouth though not alight.

  She spoke once only. “What a lot of frogs seem to be in that lake!”

  He laughed. “That’s ther Nine Mile Dam!” He laughed again after a little—an intelligent, complacent laugh.

  “It used ter be swarmin’ with teal in a good season, but Gord A’mighty knows w’en it’s ever goin’ ter rain any more! I dunno!” This was an important admission, for he was a great weather prophet. “Lake!” he sniggered and looked sideways at his companion. “Thet’s wot thet there bloke, the painter doodle, called it. An’ ’e goes ter’ dror it, an’ ’e sez wot ’e ’ll give me five bob if I’ll run up ther horses, an’ keep ’em so’s ’e ken put ’em in ther picshure. An’ ’e drors ther Dam an’ ther trees, puts in thet there ole dead un, an’ ’e puts in ther ’orses right clost against ther water w’ere the frogs is. ’E puts them in too, an’ damned if ’e don’t dror ther ’orses drinkin’ ther water with ther frogs, an’ ther frogs’ spit on it! Likely yarn ther ’orses ud drink ther water with ther blanky frogs’ spit on it! Fat lot they know about ther bush! Blarsted nannies!”

  Presently he inquired as to the place where they kept pictures in Sydney, and she told him, the Art Gallery.

  “Well some of these days I’m goin’ down ter Sydney,” he continued, “an’ I’ll collar thet one ’cos it’s a good likerness of ther ’orses—you’d know their ’ide on a gum-tree—an’ that mean mongrel never paid me ther five bob.”

  Between his closed teeth he hissed a bush tune for some miles, but ceased to look at the sky, and remarked, “No sign er rain! No lambin’ this season; soon as they’re dropt we’ll ’ave ter knock ’em all on ther ’ead!” He shouted an oath of hatred at the crows following after the tottering sheep that made in a straggling line for the water. “Look at ’em!” he said. “Scoffin’ out ther eyes!” He pointed to where the crows hovered over the bogged sheep. “They putty well lives on eyes! ‘Blanky bush Chinkies!’ I call ’em. No one carn’t tell ’em apart!”

  There was silence again, except for a remark that he could spit all the blanky rain they had had in the last nine months.

  Away to the left along a side track his eyes travelled searchingly, as they came to a gate. He stood in the buggy and looked again.

  “Promised ther ‘Konk’ t’ leave ’im ’ave furst squint at yer,” he muttered, “if ’e was ’ere t’ open ther gate! But I’m not goin’ t’ blanky well wait orl day!” He reluctantly got out and opened the gate, and he had just taken his seat when a “Coo-ee” sounded from his right, heralded by a dusty pillar. He snorted resentfully. “’Ere ’e is; jes’ as I got out an’ done it!”

  The Konk cantered to them, his horse’s hoofs padded by the dust-cushioned earth. The driver drew back, so as not to impede the newcomer’s view. After a moment or two, the Konk, preferring closer quarters, brought his horse round to the left. Unsophisticated bush wonder in the man’s face met the sophisticated in the girl’s.

  Never had she seen anything so grotesquely monkeyish. And the nose of this little hairy horror, as he slewed his neck to look into her face, blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective. She experienced a strange desire to extend her hand. When surprise lessened, her mettle saved her from the impulse to cover her face with both hands, to baffle him.

  At last the silence was broken by the driver drawing a match along his leg, and lighting his pipe. The hairy creature safely arranged a pair of emu eggs, slung with bush skill round his neck.

  “Ain’t yer goin’ to part?” enquired the driver, indicating his companion as the recipient.

  “Wot are yer givin’ us; wot do yer take me fur?” said the Konk indignantly, drawing down his knotted veil.

  “Well, give ’em ter me fer Lizer.”

  “Will yer ’ave ’em now, or wait till yer get ’em?”

  “Goin’ ter sit on ’em yerself?” sneered the driver.

  “Yes, an’ I’ll give yer ther first egg ther cock lays,” laughed the Konk.

  He turned his horse’s head back to the gate. “I say, Billy Skywonkie! Wot price Sally Ah Too, eh?” he asked, his gorilla mouth agape.

  Billy Skywonkie uncrossed his legs, took out the whip. He tilted his pipe and shook his head as he prepared to drive, to show that he understood to a fraction the price of Sally Ah Too. The aptness of the question took the sting out of his having had to open the gate. He gave a farewell jerk.

  “Goin’ ter wash yer neck?” shouted the man with the nose, from the gate.

  “Not if I know it.”

  The Konk received the intimation incredulously. “Stinkin’ Roger!” he yelled. In bush parlance this was equal to emphatic disbelief.

  This was a seemingly final parting, and both started, but suddenly the Konk wheeled round.

  “Oh, Billy!” he shouted.

  Billy stayed his horse and turned expectantly.

  “W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?”

  The driver’s face darkened. “Your blanky jealersey ’ll get yer down, an’ worry yer yet,” he snarled, and slashing his horse he drove rapidly away.

  “Mickey ther Konk,” he presently remarked to his companion, as he stroked his nose.

  This explained her earlier desire to extend her hand. If the Konk had been a horse she would have stroked his nose.

  “Mob er sheep can camp in the shadder of it,” he said.

  Boundless scope for shadows on that sun-smitten treeless plain!

  “Make a good plough-shere,” he continued, “easy plough a cultivation paddock with it!”

  At the next gate he seemed in a mind and body conflict. There were two tracks; he drove along one for a few hundred yards. Then stopping, he turned, and finding the Konk out of sight, abruptly drove across to the other. He continually drew his whip along the horse’s back, and haste seemed the object of the movement, though he did not flog the beast.

  After a few miles on the new track, a blob glittered dazzlingly through the glare, like a fallen star. It was the iron roof of the wine shanty—the Saturday night and Sunday resort of shearers and rouseabouts for twenty miles around. Most of its spirits was made on the premises from bush recipes, of which bluestone and tobacco were the chief ingredients. Every drop had the reputation of “bitin’ orl ther way down”.

  A sapling studded with broken horse-shoes seemed to connect two lonely crow stone trees. Under their scanty shade groups of dejected f
owls stood with beaks agape. Though the buggy wheels almost reached them, they were motionless but for quivering gills. The ground both sides of the shanty was decorated with tightly-pegged kangaroo-skins. A dog, apathetically blind and dumb, lay on the veranda, lifeless save for eyelids blinking in antagonism to the besieging flies.

  “Jerry can’t be far off,” said Billy Skywonkie, recognizing the dog. He stood up in the buggy. “By cripes, there ’e is—goosed already, an’ ’e on’y got ’is cheque lars’ night.”

  On the chimney side of the shanty a man lay in agitated sleep beside his rifle and swag. There had been a little shade on that side in the morning, and he had been sober enough to select it, and lay his head on his swag. He had emptied the bottle lying at his feet since then. His swag had been thoroughly “gone through”, and also his singlet and trouser-pockets. The fumes from the shanty grog baffled the flies. But the scorching sun was conquering; the man groaned, and his hands began to search for his burning head.

  Billy Skywonkie explained to his companion that it was “thet fool, Jerry ther kangaroo-shooter, bluein’ ’is cheque fer skins”. He took the water bag under the buggy, and poured the contents into the open mouth and over the face of the “dosed” man, and raised him into a sitting posture. Jerry fought this friendliness vigorously, and, staggering to his feet, picked up his rifle, and took drunken aim at his rescuer, then at the terrified woman in the buggy.

  The rouseabout laughed unconcernedly. “’E thinks we’re blanky kangaroos,” he said to her. “Jerry, ole cock, yer couldn’t ’it a woolshed! Yer been taking ther sun!”

  He took the rifle and pushed the subdued Jerry into the chimney corner.