Such Is Life

by Tom Collins

  We could see Price’s teams stopped, half a mile away; one of the loads appearing low, and canted over to the off side; bogged, evidently. Dixon’s wagon was close in front of us; Willoughby was zealously flogging himself, and occasionally we could hear Dixon’s voice in encouragement and counsel.

  The place where Price’s wagon was stuck was not a creek, but merely a narrow belt of treacherous ground. Mosey hadn’t gone down six inches, but Price had happened on a bad place, and his wagon had found the bottom. All Mosey’s team, except the polers, had been hooked on, but with no result beyond the breaking of a well-worn chain.

  “Ain’t got puddin’ enough, Thompson,” said Mosey, as my companions stopped their teams and went on to survey the place. “The (adv.) thunderin’ ole morepoke he goes crawlin’ into the rottenest place he could fine. You shove your team in nex’ the polers, an’ I’ll hook our lot on in front. Your chains’ll stan’ to fetch (sheol) out by the (adj.) roots. Please the pigs, we’ll git out o’ sight afore that ole (overseer) comes.”

  Thompson did as desired; and the first pull brought the wagon on to solid ground. Meanwhile Dixon and Willoughby had taken their team through, and were hurrying along. Cooper, growling maledictions on everything connected with Port Phillip—roads in particular—had selected his route, and started his team. Thompson hooked on to his own wagon, and crossed safely, but with very little to spare.

  “Touch-and-go,” he remarked to me; “another bale would have anchored her. Ah! Cooper’s in it, with all his cleverness.”

  Cooper was in it. The two-ton Hawkesbury, with seven-and-a-half tons of load, was down to the axle-beds; and the Cornstalk was endeavouring, by means of extracts from the sermons of Knox’s soundest followers, to do something like justice to the contingency. Thompson sighed, glanced toward the ram-paddock, and hooked his team in front of Cooper’s. Mosey, who had been mending his broken chain with wire, now came over with Price.

  “We’ll give you a lend of our whips,” said he with cheap complaisance. “Take the leaders yerself, Thompson. Stiddy now, till I give the word, or we’ll be fetching the (adj.) handle out of her. Now—pop it on-to ’em!”

  Then thirty-six picked bullocks planted their feet and prised, and a hundred and seventy feet of bar chain stretched tense and rigid from the leaders’ yoke to the pole-cap. The wagon crept forward. A low grumble, more a growl than a bellow, passed from beast to beast along the team—sure indication that the wagon wouldn’t stop again if it could be taken through. The off front wheel rose slowly on harder ground; the off hind wheel rose in its turn; both near wheels ploughed deeper beneath the top-heavy weight of thirty-eight bales—

  “She’s over!” thundered Cooper. “Keep her goin’—it’s her on’y chance!”

  Then the heavy pine whipsticks bent like bulrushes in the drivers’ skilful hands, while a spray of dissevered hair, and sometimes a line of springing blood, followed each detonation—the libretto being in keeping. A few yards forward still, while both off wheels rose to the surface, and both near wheels sank till the naves burrowed in the ground; then the wagon swung heavily over on its near side.

  “Good-bye, John,” said Cooper, with fine immobility. “Three-man job, by rights. Will you give us a hand, Collins?” For Price and Mosey were silently returning to their teams.

  “Certainly, I will.”

  “Well, it’s a half-day’s contract. I’ll git some breakfast ready, while you (fellows) unloosens the ropes.”

  Thompson and I released the bullocks from the pole, unfastened the ropes, and brought the wagon down to its wheels again. Then Cooper summoned us to breakfast.

  “You’ll jist take sort o’ pot-luck, Collins,” he remarked. “I should ’a’ baked some soda bread an’ boiled some meat last night, on’y for bein’ too busy doin’ nothing. Laziness is catchin’. That’s why I hate a lot o’ fellers campin’ together; it’s nothing but yarn, yarn; an’ your wagon ain’t greazed, an’ your tarpolin ain’t looked to; an’ nothin’ done but yarn, yarn; an’ you floggin’ in your own mind at not gittin’ ahead o’ your work. That’s where women’s got the purchase on us (fellows). When a lot o’ women gits together, one o’ them reads out something religious, an’ the rest all wires in at sewin’, or knittin’, or some (adj.) thing. They can’t suffer to be idle, nor to see anybody else idle—women can’t.” Cooper was an observer. It was pleasant to hear him philosophise.

  The work of reloading was made severe and tedious by the lack of any better skids than the poles of the two wagons—was, indeed, made impossible under the circumstances, but for Cooper’s enormous and well-saved strength. Our toil was enlivened, however, by an argument as to the esoteric cause of the capsize. Cooper maintained that nothing better could have been hoped for, after leaving Kenilworth shed on a Friday; Thompson, untrammelled by such superstition, contended that the misadventure was solely due to travelling on Sunday; whilst I held it to be merely a proof that Cooper, in spite of his sins, wasn’t deserted yet. Each of us supported his argument by a wealth of illustrative cases, and thus fortified his own stubborn opinion to his own perfect satisfaction. Then, descending to more tangible things, we discussed Cleopatra. Here we were unanimous in deciding that the horse had, as yet, disclosed only two faults, and these not the faults of the Irishman’s horse in the weary yarn. One of them, we concluded, was to buck like a demon on being first mounted, and the other was to grope backward for the person who went to catch him after delivery of loading.

  In the meantime, four horsemen, with three pack-horses, went by; then two horse teams, loaded outward; then Stewart, of Kooltopa, paused to give a few words of sympathy as he drove past; then far ahead, we saw two wool teams, evidently from Boolka, converging slowly toward the main track; then more wool came in sight from the pine-ridge, five or six miles behind. By this time, it was after mid-day; and Cooper, having tied the last levers, looked round before descending from the load.

  “Somebody on a grey horse comin’ along the track from the ram-paddick, an’ another (fellow) on a brown horse comin’ across the plain,” he remarked. “Wonder if one o’ them’s Martin—an’ he’s rose a horse at the station?”

  “I was thinking about to-night,” replied Thompson. “I’ d forgot Martin. Duffing soon comes under the what-you-may-call-him.”

  “Statute of Limitations?” I suggested.

  “Yes. Come and have a drink of tea, and a bit of Cooper’s pastry. His cookery doesn’t fatten, but it fills up.”

  “O you (adj.) liar,” gently protested the Cornstalk, as he seated himself on the ground beside the tucker-box. “Is this Martin?”—for the man on the grey horse was approaching at a canter.

  “No,” I replied; “he’s a stranger to me.”

  “But that’s Martin on the brown horse,” said Thompson, with rising vexation. “Keep him on a string, Tom, if you can. Don’t let him drive us into a lie about last night, for, after all, I’ll be hanged if I’m man enough to tell him the truth, nor won’t be for the next fortnight or three weeks.”

  By this time, the man on the grey horse was passing us. In response to Thompson’s invitation, he stopped and dismounted.

  “Jist help yourself, an’ your friends’ll like you the better, as the sayin’ is,” said Cooper, handing him a pannikin.

  “Thanks. I’ll do so; I didn’t have; any breakfast this morning,” replied the stranger, picking up a johnny-cake (which liberal shepherds give a grosser name), and eating it with relish, while the interior lamina of dough spued out from between the charred crusts under the pressure of his strong teeth. “Been having a little mishap?”

  “Yes; nothing broke, though.”

  “How long since my lads passed? I see their tracks on the road.”

  “About three hours,” replied Thompson. “Did you meet an old man and a young fellow, with wool—grey horse behind one of the wagons? Good day, Mr. Martin. Have a drink of tea?”

  “Yes, I met them,” replied the stranger. “Old Price’s teams, I think—Go
od day, Martin—six or seven miles from here; Dixon travelling behind, with another fellow driving his team—long-lost brother, apparently.”

  “Where did you fellows have your bullocks last night?” demanded Martin, his eye resting on the sun-cracked stucco which covered three-fourths of Damper’s colossal personality.

  “And did you see a dark chestnut horse; bang tail; star and snip; white hind feet; saddle and bridle on?” I asked. “I ran across Moriarty this morning,” I continued, turning politely to Martin; “and he told me he was after a horse of that description; but he was in a hurry”

  “Dark chestnut horse; bang tail; star and snip; white hind feet; JR near shoulder; like 2 in circle off thigh,” said the stranger reflectively. “Yes; I saw the horse this morning, but the owner has got him again—red-headed young fellow; tweed pants, strapped with moleskin. I met him at the Nalrooka boundary shortly after sunrise—thirty miles from here, I should say. I was speaking to him. He told me the horse had slung him and got away last night, and he had found him by good luck before daylight this morning. He came down on his hand, poor beggar; it’s swelled like a boxing-glove. But he’s taking it out of the horse.”

  Now, in the Riverina of that period, it was considered much more disgraceful to be had by a scoundrel than to commit a felony yourself; therefore Martin, partly grasping the situation, assumed an oblivious, and even drowsy, air.

  “Did the young fellow say where he was going?” I asked, pitying Martin’s dilemma, and admiring his greatness of soul, for I had more than once been there myself.

  “No; he only wanted to borrow a pipe of tobacco; but after we parted I saw him strike out across the plain to the right.”

  Martin yawned, turned his horse, and rode slowly toward the selection. Very slowly, so that the stranger might overtake him soon. Come weal, come woe, he wouldn’t trail his honour in the dust before three cynical onlookers.

  “Well, I’ll push on,” said the stranger, setting down his pannikin. “I want to pull my chaps, and I’m thinking about my horse. I say”—glancing after Martin, and lowering his voice—“you fellows have a devil of a bad show for to-night.”

  “You’re right,” replied Thompson.

  “Tell you what you’ll do: Camp at the balahs, and they’ll think you’re on for the ration-paddock; then, between the two lights, just scoot for the Dead Horse Swamp.”

  “Never any grass there,” said Thompson.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” replied the stranger. “They ’ve been putting down a tank in the middle of the swamp this winter; and the contractor had about a dozen young fellows, every one of them with a horse and a dog, kicking up (sheol)’s delight. There hasn’t been a smell of a sheep within coo-ee of the swamp for the last three months; and the paddock was mustered for shearing just before the contractor left. It’s into your hand for to-night. Well, I must”—

  “I beg your pardon,” said Thompson hesitatingly—“Are you coming direct from Hay?”

  “Well, I left on Saturday morning.”

  “The mailman was telling me,” continued Thompson wistfully, “that Permewan and Wright had three ton of dynamite for Broken Hill. Do you know is it gone yet?”

  “Not when I left,” replied the Encyclopedia Australiensis. “They’re offering eighty, and I’ve no doubt they’ll spring to a hundred. Extra-hazardous tack; and there’s not a blade of grass once you pass the Merowie. Good day, boys.” And, nodding to us collectively, he departed.

  “Steve,” said I; “are you a man to go fooling with high explosives—considering the thing that’s on you?”

  “Well,” replied Thompson doggedly, “it’s come to this with me, that I must make a spoon or spoil a horn; and if that infernal thing would only keep off till I got the stuff delivered, I’d be right. My bullocks are fit for any track in Australia.”

  “Let’s git down to Hay fust,” interposed Cooper; “then you can do as you like; but I’ll be wantin’ a way-bill that’ll take me safe out o’ Port Phillip. Say, Collins; I’ll buy that new saddle off o’ you. Mine’s all in splinters, for my horse he’s a beggar to roll.”

  “I’d hardly feel justified in selling it,” I replied. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll sell you my own saddle cheap—say, three notes—and give you Bum’s bridle in.”

  Cooper agreed to the proposal. Then, as Pup had been eating about ten pounds of salt mutton, stolen from the bullock drivers’ stores, I enticed him to take a good drink of water, knowing he would need it before the day was over. It was absolutely imperative that I should go thirty miles, and then, if possible, camp alone. So I shook hands with the outlaws, and started; leading Bunyip till he should become accustomed to his new companion.

  If the unmannerly reader wishes to know why I was bound to a stage of exactly thirty miles, I have no objection to state that, knowing the geography of Riverina as well as if I had laid out the whole territory myself, I was aware of a sandhill composed of material unstable as water; an unfavourable place for a bucking horse, and a favourable place for a man to dismount head foremost, if the worst came; and that sandhill was my destination.

  CHAPTER II

  WHEN I undertook the pleasant task of writing out these reminiscences, I engaged, you will remember, to amplify the record of one week; judging that a rigidly faithful analysis of that sample would disclose the approximate percentage of happiness, virtue, &c., in Life. But whilst writing the annotations on Sept. 9th (which, by the way, gratuitously overlap on the following day), I saw an alpine difficulty looming ahead. At the Blowhard sandhill, on the night of the 10th, I camped with a party of six sons of Belial, bound for Deniliquin, with 3,000 Boolka wethers off the shears. Now, anyone who has listened for four hours to the conversation of a group of sheep drovers, named, respectively, Splodger, Rabbit, Parson, Bottler, Dingo, and Hairy-toothed Ike, will agree with me as to the impossibility of getting the dialogue of such dramatis personœ into anything like printable form. The bullock drivers were bad enough, but these fellows are out of the question.

  Then it occurred to me that a wider scope of observation might give, in perhaps fewer pages, a fairer estimate of that ageless enigma, the true solution of which forms our all-embracing and only responsibility. I therefore concluded to skip one calendar month, dipping again into my old diary at Oct. 9th in the same year, namely, ’83.

  After this, I shall pick out of each consecutive month the 9th day for amplification and comment, keeping not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. This will prospect the gutter of Life (gutter is good) at different points; in other words, it will give us a range of seven months instead of seven days.

  The thread of narrative being thus purposely broken, no one of these short and simple analyses can have any connection with another—a point on which I congratulate the judicious reader and the no less judicious writer; for the former is thereby tacitly warned against any expectation of plot or denouement, and so secured against disappointment, whilst the latter is relieved from the (to him) impossible task of investing prosaic people with romance, and a generally hap-hazard economy with poetical justice. Go to, then.

  TUES. OCT. 9. Goolumbulla. To Rory’s.

  This record transports you (saving reverence of our ‘birth stain’) something more than a hundred miles northward from the scene sketched in Chap. I, thus unveiling a territory blank on the map, and similarly qualified in the ordinary conversation of its inhabitants.

  The Willandra Billabong, which in moderately wet seasons relieves the Middle Lachlan of some superfluous water, and in epoch-marking flood-times reluctantly debouches into the Lower Darling, divides the country between those rivers into two unequal parts. Roughly speaking—the black-soil plains (which are chiefly light red) lie to the south of this almost imperceptible depression, whilst on the north—sometimes close by, sometimes out of sight, and sometimes thirty miles away—the irregular scrub-frontier denotes an abrupt change of soil, though the uniform level is maintained.

  Here you enter up
on a region presenting to the rarely clouded sky an unbroken foliage-surface, with isothermal zones rigidly marked by their indigenous growths. A tract of country until yesterday bare of surface water for lack of occupation, and lacking occupation for dearth of surface water. Which goes to show that regularity of rainfall is not ensured by copious growth of timber.

  However, a hundred miles back in that leafy solitude,—just where the line of water conservation, creeping northward from the Lachlan, here and there touched the line creeping southward from the Darling,—I was standing in the veranda of the barracks, on Goolumbulla station, when the narangies’ pagan henchman announced, “Blikfit leddy, all li.”

  During the meal, Jack Ward, the senior narangy, made some remark implying that certain cattle, on a certain occasion, had scented water from a fabulous distance. Whereupon Andrews, the storekeeper, interrogated deponent with some severity, driving him down, down, to three hundred yards’ range, where he made a final stand. But the two junior narangies supported Ward in the endowment of cattle with the faculty in question; and, as a matter of course, each young fellow supplemented his limited experience by a number of instances, all alike distinguished by that want of proper hang which makes the judicious grieve.

  A practical knowledge of the subject, founded on irrefragable proofs, led me to side with Andrews; and it was thus that I came to quote a case in point, with all the advantage of local reference. It will be necessary to lay the facts before you:—

  In Feb. ’81—two years and eight months before the date of this record—I had drawn up to Goolumbulla homestead with six tons of wire. The manager, Mr. Spanker, in his fine, off-hand way, asked me to just dump it down carelessly in five or six places over the run, as the contractor would be using it at once. He would pay me for the extra mileage; and Dan O’Connell would show me where to sling it off. I objected to the mileage arrangement, inasmuch as carting over raw ground was a very different thing from travelling on a track. I wanted £1 a day for the extra time—a fair current rate, and easily counted. Mr Spanker, in reply, had no objection to paying by the day; but, as my account came to £42, and as it had taken me twelve weeks to do the two hundred and thirty miles from Hay, and as the contractor had been cursing me steadily for the last four weeks—well, if I asked him anything about it, he thought that ten shillings came nearer the mark, and was almost as easily counted. Finally, with that pliancy of temper which keeps me down in the world, I assented to these terms; whereupon Spanker, with characteristic perversity, called it fifteen.