A Single Tree

by Don Watson

  At noon the clouds massed overhead. The air seemed to coagulate and clog the lungs. Then the rain burst on him. In half a minute he was wet through and the expanse of downland was blotted out. He filled his pannikin at the edge of the tarpaulin and for the first time in weeks tasted fresh water.

  Late that afternoon he was paddling in the dust again. The deluge had covered a patch not more than two miles square. Cabell drove the bullocks into a wide river bed, as dry as a bone. The wheels sank almost to the axle in sand. When they were near the far bank the leaders stopped and turned their heads upstream, and a shudder of uneasiness passed over the team, which from pulling well became suddenly intractable. Cabell looked round but saw nothing unusual. The river bed, strewn with logs and stones, divided down the midde by a small high island, twisted away to the ranges in the east. Not a cloud showed in the sky. The rolling, grassy countryside, dotted over with clumps of trees and peaceful in the setting sun, looked like nothing so much as a fine wide park where hunters might come riding at any moment in red coats, with winding horns and speckled hounds in pursuit of a deer. He was speculating on this thought when a commotion on the island attracted his attention. A flock of cockatoos rose and flew away screeching. Kangaroos bounced out, looked eastwards, and fled across the river to the high land on the bank. Their excitement infected Cabell. He got to work with his whip again and put the bullocks to the stiff incline of the bank. They resisted, as though paralysed, their heads lifted to the east, then began to pull like furies. In ten minutes they were at the top.

  Cabell stopped to wipe the sweat off his face and heard, faint at first but momently louder, a dull, distant roar. He looked anxiously round the skyline again, but at first could fix no definite direction for this strange noise. Then he saw from the commotion among the birds away towards the ranges that it came from the east. It was now so loud that it covered the noise of the bullocks, which were bellowing and rattling their chains. A cool stir passed through the air, and a few moments later a wall of yellow, foaming water, eighteen inches high, came splashing round the bend of the river, advancing with uncanny slowness across the dry sand. It divided at the island and in a few minutes joined forces again at the near end, with the precision of some military movement, which its deliberate progress intimidatingly resembled. The vanguard of surf took fifteen minutes or so to pass round the next bend and out of sight, leaving a stream of dirty water, crowded with leaves and logs that had lain in the sand since the river fell. The noise receded in the distance. The soft wash of the rising river and the cries of scared birds stirring the quiet nightfall.

  Cabell cursed aloud. “Heavy rain in the mountains,” he told himself. “Ten to one every blamed creek will be up tomorrow.”

  He was right. A terrific storm broke during the night and settled about daybreak into the perpendicular drench he knew so well. When he rose the island that had stood ten feet from the river bed the afternoon before was almost covered. Farther on he found things worse than he had expected. Creeks were not only up; they had spread far out from their banks and were treacherous with eddy and under­current. He climbed a tree and surveyed a country in flood. Water flowing upstream along the margin of the nearest pool told him that the creek was still rapidly rising. Fret and fume as much as he would, he had to be content with fixing the dray on the highest piece of ground in sight and settling himself underneath it.

  His patience lasted three weeks. They were spent in a space six feet by four feet six and about three feet high – under the dray. He built a windbreak and a fire at one end. The tarpaulin pulled down all round kept off the rain. Mosquitoes and sandflies came. The air was black with them. He made a comforter out of a square of his shirt and wrapped his neck up to his ears. Then he bandaged his hands, but they got under his trouser-legs and they bit through his shirt. He scratched and the bites swelled. He was never really dry. A miserable, hissing glow was all he could get out of the sodden wood, which he had to carry a mile from the nearest scrub. Tobacco ran out, then tea. He laboriously dried some used tea-leaves by rubbing them in a piece of the torn-up shirt and smoked these. Then he smoked gum-leaves till his whole system seemed saturated with eucalyptus and everything tasted and smelled of it. The black soil turned to mud, then to slime, then to quicksand, so that he sank to his calves at every step. By comparison the squelching ground under the cart was dry, but it was not getting any drier. He dug a channel to keep the water out, but that was the merest convention when the whole countryside was inches deep in flowing water. Even when he did manage to build a service­able dyke of mud, he was no better off. The water oozed up through the ground, came in as a kind of sweat on the air. He dragged half a hollow log under the dray and slept on that. Snakes, centipedes, wood-adders, scorpions came to share his camp.

  He kept himself calm for two weeks. By then he had counted the spokes of the wheels and the boards in the floor of the cart thousands of times, carved his name on both sides of the butt of his gun, sung all the songs he knew and recited all the poetry he remembered from his childhood, had gone over and over the personal history of every man, woman and child he had ever encountered till the very thought of them made him sick. An inspiration suggested that he should unravel his stockwhip and plait it again. This kept him busy for three days, but it was finished at last. Daily he sat for hours on end, staring at the fire and muttering strange, disconnected thoughts. In the beginning it annoyed him to catch himself talking aloud, a habit so typical of the dyed-in-the-wool bushman that he had carefully guarded against it; then he talked aloud without thinking, and noticed only when the sound of his voice stopped.

  It did not rain all the time. For a few hours every day there would be glimpses of sunshine which filled the air with steam. For one whole week little rain fell where Cabell was camped, but the ground got no harder, the river crept farther over the downs. There was no danger, not even of being drowned. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, except a thousand and one petty discomforts – and the vast boredom of waiting. Waiting!

  Landtakers (1934),

  Collins Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1991

  Xavier Pons

  1984

  Let us consider the theme of mateship, of which Lawson became the almost official singer. A number of historians have observed that it might hide latent homosexual tendencies redirected into socially acceptable attitudes. For Lawson’s heroes, mateship is far preferable to feminine companionship. They have for the most part unsatisfactory relationships with their wives or girl friends – quite a number have no women at all in their life – and only with their mates do they feel truly at ease. Mateship implies renouncing serious relationships with women: it is very exclusive, as demonstrated by the sketch “Meeting Old Mates”: after many years, Joe meets again his old mate Tom, who has settled down and is a married man. He is made welcome, but the presence of the family (women, mostly) is a nuisance and prevents the two mates from reminiscing freely about the good old days: “The old lady and sisters (or the wife) bore you pretty soon, and you wonder if they bore Tom; you almost fancy, from his looks, that they do.” And indeed, at the first opportunity Tom and Joe slip out and make for the nearest pub. Then they decide on another rendezvous, “and he’ll get there, if he gets divorced for it”. For the Lawsonian hero, it is not hard to choose between male and female company. The sketch’s conclusion is no less significant: “But, of course (and we almost forgot it), you might chance to fall in love with one of Tom’s sisters, in which case there would be another and a totally different story to tell.” Lawson dutifully includes the conventional romantic element. But his aside reveals how little it actually interests him – it is a distinctly remote eventuality for his characters.

  Furthermore, mates are very attentive to each other, in a delicate, almost feminine way. They form a real couple, and a third person’s intrusion leads to jealous reactions: Jim, for instance, resents his mate Bob’s friendly attitude towards Cooney, and barely restrains himself from making a scene. When they find th
emselves surrounded by people who, by their very presence, prevent them from communicating freely with one another, mates are apt to behave in the way of lovers, winking to each other, touching each other’s feet under the table, etc. Mateship is indeed a form of love, whose homosexual connotations cannot be overlooked, and its prominence in Lawson’s works is significant of the writer’s unconscious preoccupations.

  Out of Eden: Henry Lawson’s Life and Works – A Psychoanalytic View,

  Sirius Books, Sydney, 1984

  Ida Poore

  1916

  My first acquaintance with the Bush was made at Tuggeranong, near Queanbeyan, and as first impressions have a certain value owing to their freshness I will record them here. The impression above all others which the Englishman new to the Bush receives is one of stillness and space. The stillness is such that he can hear, or thinks he can hear, every revolution and pulsation of his own internal machinery; the space makes him feel as insignificant as a solitary midge in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Bushman’s heritage is one of wide horizons; of far-stretching landscapes uncut by macadamised roads, unscored by walls and hedges, unspoilt by cities; and over his head a high dome of clear air, unsullied by coal smoke and untainted by the exhalations and emanations too common in the well-thumbed, dog’s-eared little Mother-country . . .

  At Tuggeranong, the sensation of aloofness is almost disconcerting. We might have been dropped from an airship on to a spare planet among a folk so little given to speech that they might well be of another race than ours. Shearing is in full swing, and fifty men and boys – shearers, musterers, and rouseabouts – work, eat, and rest within a hundred yards of the homestead, and yet neither by day nor by night does any noise of shouting, singing, or angry voices reach our ears. The lonely still­ness of the Bush engenders in its sons an astonishing power, habit – call it what you will – of silence. Messengers ride into the yard, do their business, and go about their business, and we look on as though at a cinematographic display. In the shearing-shed only the whirring of the sixteen machines is to be heard. The sheep before their shearers are dumb; and but for the occasional call of ‘tar’ from a shearer who has drawn blood and summons the ‘tar-boy’ with his pot of antiseptic, the eight-hours day might pass undisturbed by the sound of a human voice.

  Recollections of an Admiral’s Wife, 1903–1916, Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1916

  Rosa Praed

  1885

  I often imagine myself back again in the verandah at Bungroopim. I can so easily fancy that it is spring time, and that I am sitting there enjoying the cool evening breeze which comes rustling through the garden trees, bringing the scent of orange blossoms and heliotrope. The verandah arches are twined with bougainvillea and young grapevines; and I look across the race-course where the Blacks have been clearing the dead gum-trees, to the winding line of creek, the darker bank of scrub, and beyond, to the mountains.

  The Blacks have not done their work yet, for there are a few skeleton trunks remaining; but they have gone away to gamble their earnings. On the other side of the creek you may see them surrounded by their dogs and piccaninnies, playing with a greasy, dirty pack of cards by the camp fires. They have left their traces on the plain, however, in the shape of old gunyahs and piled-up heaps of dry timber.

  An hour ago the scene was a glaring and busy one. The sun beat fiercely down upon a party of fencers engaged in patching up the garden palisade, and all round there were stir and traffic; but now the sun has dipped behind a distant peak, and, it perchance being Saturday, the men have gone home earlier than usual to their huts. Nature seems very gentle, and the station wonderfully peaceful. The hills look so close, and the world so far away. Roop’s Crag, which is indeed but a mile or two distant, stands out grave and majestic against a clear sky. Now it is suffused with a faint pink glow; in a few moments it will have changed from rose to purple, and all the far-off peaks will be glorious. I hear the cracking of a black boy’s stock whip, and the milkers lowing as they are driven to the yard, and the sheep’s bells are tinkling. And here is Peter the Kanaka, with his soft kind eyes, his ebony face and tow-coloured hair, which has been artificially lightened by lime-wash. “Missee Rachel, me want em rations,” he says; and I leave my hammock and go out with him to the store. Or perhaps Peter is in a state of virtuous indignation against an intrusive selector whom he had found a little while ago feeding his sheep in the Bungroopim paddock. “Missee, I tell him ‘You spose my master grow grass for your sheep? Round up dog now. Go ’long – quick – cut stick!’ ” Peter might certainly have convinced a philanthropical denunciator of the so-called slave traffic, that the kidnapped and oppressed Polynesian is quite capable of defending, not only himself, but his master also.

  We had several islanders at Bungroopim. No one asked, except in the Legislative Chambers, whether or not they had been forcibly abducted from their homes. They seemed happy and comfortable; and one or two begged that they might remain after the three years which constituted their term of slavery had expired. They were employed about the head station, never learning to ride, but fetching wood and water, and doing such domestic work as the soul of the Australian aboriginal abhors. I had an affection for each, but Peter was nearest my heart. Every Sunday he used to come to me for a button-hole bouquet. He was particular about the fit of his clothes, and one day brought for my acceptance a photograph of himself done by an itinerant artist, and proudly pointed to a watch and chain which had been lent to him for the occasion . . .

  Scorching sun, and the mountains and forest shrouded in a haze of smoke; the wind burning; a dull yellowish glare upon the huts and gardens; the grass brown; the ground gaping in deep fissures; the creek nearly dry; animals with parched tongues lolling out, dying beside the empty lagoon; the only flowers in bloom, yellow gladioli, pomegranate blossoms, bold brass-coloured bignonias and crimson hibiscus, throwing off heat, and offending eye and soul by their hot coarse colouring . . .

  At night the haze is lurid. Another greater bush fire is stealing to the fore, from the back of the hills. Roop's Crag is outlined against a glowing sky, which suggests that the moon has made a mistake and is rising here instead of behind the Woorara Mountains. Along these, great flaming scorpions are racing each other towards the inaccess­ible precipices; while below are innumerable points of light as though a mighty city had risen up suddenly by enchantment . . .

  Or is it a summer evening after a storm, and the earth is eloquent with the voices of many insects. The curlews are wailing in the scrub, and the swamp pheasant makes his gurgling noise by the lagoon. There is a delicious sense of moisture and refreshment in the atmosphere. The verbena throws off fragrance, and the datura at the end of the house is almost oppressively odorous. I am lying in the hammock. Near my feet is a slab wall, where the stag-horn ferns shoot out their antlers, and from the top of which the frogs flop heavily upon the boards. No one minds frogs in Australia; they are cool, and they are harmless, and chase away terrors of snakes and centipedes. Close to my head a ghostly-looking pillar of rinkasporum, which is a mass of white bloom. There is no moon, but the brilliance of the starlight causes every outline to stand forth clear against the horizon. One star is passing from behind Roop’s Crag. I think it is a pointer of the Southern Cross, for the Cross itself lies over the mountain; and nearer me, in central heavens, Orion’s belt turned upside down. I always wondered what it looked like in England. Someone is singing within . . . a plaintive English ballad, in which there is an illusion to Charles’s Wain and a winter’s eve. The words suggest the unknown – the far-away. Fog, snow – Charles’s Wain obscured! What have they to do with this voluptuous southern night, in which the soul cries for something of which it has never experienced the full taste – music, poetry, religion, something subtle yet comprehensive, something glorious yet melancholy – something the soul knows not what, it is only conscious that it longs and cries.

  Australian Life: Black and White (1885), Dodo Press, Gloucester, UK, 2008

  Rosa P
raed

  1902

  Words fail for painting the loneliness of the Australian bush. Mile after mile of primeval forest; interminable vistas of melancholy gum-trees; ravines, along the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level, untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there, broken by steep gully, stony ridge, or dried-up creek. All wild and utterly desolate; all the same monotonous grey colouring, except where the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold or a belt of scrub lies green, glossy and impenetrable. I know nothing so strange in its way, as to travel for days through endless gum forest. Surely there never was tree so weird as a very old gum, with its twisted trunk, the withes of grey moss which hang from its branches, and the queer protuberances upon its limbs in which wild bees hive . . . Then, see the odd, expectant way in which the tree will slant along the side of a ridge, and the human look of its dead arms, when it is one that has been ‘rung’ or blasted by lightning. There is nothing pretty about a gum-tree. It seems to belong to antediluvian nature.

  My Australian Girlhood: Sketches and Impressions of Bush Life,

  T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1902

  Katharine Susannah Prichard

  1926

  Sunshine, where it pierced the trees, quivered in brilliant restless patches over dry leaves on the ground, ruddy and green rosettes of sundew, figured by the tall stalks of winged white flowers, fading rose and mauve, and the mustard yellow primroses of hibbertia.

  Through the smoke which went up from Deb’s fire Red saw them, and across the leaves and Tom Colburn lying stretched beside the dead tree. He might have been a branch of it, in his worn white moleskins and washed-out shirt.