From Chart House To Bush Hut Part 11

"Er--er--I want some wedding rings, please" (as if I were a Mormon).

"Certainly. Miss Blithers, attend to this gentleman, please."

Forward stepped a perky miss from the back of the store. It was early in the morning, and I was the only customer. Whether purposely or not I don't know, but she took me to the end counter, where a couple more girls were lying in wait for me, put down about a dozen trays of rings in front of me, and smiled. I blus.h.i.+ngly pulled out my marked size-card, and they smiled some more. Finally I chose one and a keeper; then--

"May I congratulate you?" smilingly.

"Oh, er--yes--er--thank you."

"Sydney?"

"Er--no; Melbourne."

"Indeed." Then very archly: "Now I'm sure she's dark." (I am gingery myself.)

Before I knew where I was I had hauled out her picture from my breast pocket and handed it over.

Instantly: "M-m-m-m! Cream Sicilian.... M-m! j.a.p. silk.... M-m! Ducky shoes ... love of a hat ...," and so forth. Finally the photograph was handed back.

"Yes; she does look a real good sort. We hope you'll be very happy."

My opinion of them at once rose ten beans. I bade them good-bye and left the shop, followed by their cheerful grins.

That night I boarded the boat for Melbourne, speculating most of the pa.s.sage as to whether She would be down to meet me, how She would look, and so on. It was nearly five years since we had bade good-bye to each other--for a few months! The familiar landmarks slipped by--Montague Island, Cook's Pigeon House, Mt. Imlay, Queenscliff, then Melbourne wharf at 11 p.m.

And She was there to meet me all right--with a chaperone (I suppose that's the correct term. Anyway, it was her aunt), who discreetly turned her back to our meeting, and, giddy old thing, ogled a big policeman, who was looking at us with a kind of amused tolerance as of one who had been all through that kind of thing long ago and got past it. We chartered a cab, and got the last train home by a hair's breadth.

The day was fixed for a fortnight ahead, and the time pa.s.sed in a whirlwind of visits and introductions to about half the population of that Melbourne suburb, I should think. Then there was the preliminary visit to the reverend gentleman who was to "pa.s.s the reef point."

I'll never forget that day. We had missed the train, and had to walk, say, three miles over some flat open country. I've been in Calcutta in the height of the South-West monsoon; in a place called Infernillo (anglice "little h.e.l.l"), a dreadful desert spot up the Gulf of California; in Santiago-da-Cuba in July--but never in my life have I felt such an unbearable scorching heat as on that awful walk in the hot North wind in Melbourne. The kindly old clergyman showed us his thermometer--109 degrees in a stone-walled room and the blinds drawn.

And they call it a h.e.l.l of a day up here in North Queensland when the mercury touches 85 degrees! Give a dog a bad name----

The momentous day came round in due course. The augury was excellent. A brilliant sun, cool breeze, and, as I stepped on to the verandah in the early morning, a flight of white seagulls wheeling round overhead. What better omen could the most superst.i.tious desire?

The ceremony was quickly over. I am burdened with four Christian names, and when the parson came to "I, Charles William Reginald," etc., he transposed the names, and there was a dreadful moment, while I hesitated, wondering whether I would be properly married if I alluded to myself as "William Charles." However, I courageously said I was Charles, the minister smiled, and we were soon spliced hard and fast. My best man had the ring ready at the right moment, and of course the blessed thing wouldn't go on, and I had to use brute force to get it on to its proper finger. Then the wedding breakfast, where doubtless, under the combined influence of love, lemonade and excitement, I made numerous speeches, and soared to heights of windy verbosity seldom heard outside Parliament House. Following that the usual photographer arranged us on the lawn and snapped us in the usual fas.h.i.+on; then, ho! for the station and Australian wharf, where lay the good s.h.i.+p "Canberra," which was to have the signal honour of bearing us North.

CHAPTER XXI.

STARTING HOUSEKEEPING.

Rapidly the splendid "Canberra" ploughed her way North. Fine weather attended us, making our trip a perfect honeymoon. The wretched confetti having completely given us away, the s.h.i.+p's personnel seemed to regard us with a sort of proprietary air of paternal amus.e.m.e.nt. In due course we reached Mackay, where there was a lop of a sea alongside, sufficient to keep the tenders rolling and b.u.mping, and prevented the side ladder from being lowered. The pa.s.sengers desirous of going ash.o.r.e had therefore to be gathered into the embrace of a cargo net six at a time and slung overboard on to the tender's deck per derrick, like so many bags of spuds. It was the funniest spectacle imaginable (to the onlooker) to see the sling load go down by the run on to the tender's deck, the contents to go sprawling like a spilt handful of peas. Of course it can't be helped, with the tender rising and falling four or five feet in the seaway.

In Townsville we had rather a nasty experience. Went for a motor boat picnic with a large party across the bay. Coming back late at night--dark, rainy and blowing fresh, with high following sea--one of the party went overboard. It was some time before he was missed, then we 'bout s.h.i.+p and headed into it, continuing until we had "all hands and the cook" bailing. Another ill.u.s.tration of the needle and haystack business, so we gave up, and finally got inside the Breakwater about 2 a.m. About half-way to the town wharf the engine gave a protesting cough, slowed and stopped. No petrol left aboard. So it was a fairly "close go."

We trans.h.i.+pped at Townsville into a dirty old tub belonging to another company and left about noon for Cairns. That night we slipped forrard on to the focsle head, and stood leaning on the stem head, watching her sharp cut.w.a.ter shearing along and admiring the play of phosph.o.r.escence in the backwash. A perfect night. The dim coast slipping past, the dull beat of the engines, the plunging hiss of the stem ploughing the watery furrow, and that strange tropical smell, coming on the faint land breeze, gave an air of romance to this part of our trip, and we were loath to go below and lose any of it.

We were roused out in the morning in time to see the twinkling lights of Cairns just paling to the first faint streaks of dawn. Then the landing, a hurried rush to the station, and by the time we had settled down we were half-way to the Range. The weather was beautifully fine, and the country round Atherton looked its best, giving a splendid first impression to a "newey." There happened to be a buckboard waiting at our station, which took us right out to Ellison's place, where Mrs. Ellison, who had been expecting us, gave us a hospitable welcome.

I found many changes round the place. A road, sixty feet wide, had been cut through the scrub right out to my selection, though a lot of side-cutting and bridge construction would still be necessary to make it navigable for a buckboard. Len, Terry, old Paddy and some others had enlisted for the war, and I frankly admit I felt a bit ashamed and sort of lonely when I heard of it. The wife and I had waited nearly twelve years for our taste of happiness, and if the authorities wanted me they knew where I was. Poor old Paddy had celebrated his departure by a glorious burst, and his final farewell to the crowd on the station was, "'Sall ri-ight, you shaps, b-but (hic!) y'all have er go whe-nen subscrichun (hic!) gess goin-nin."

There was a young fellow who had gone named Jimmy McKay. He had the place adjoining mine opposite end to Terry O'Gorman, and we decided to camp at his little iron shack till I got a bit better place erected on my own farm. So, a day or two after arrival, the wife and I carried our belongings over to Jim's little shack, along the muddy scrub tracks. It was the wife's first introduction to scrub life. Every few yards we had to stop while she picked the blood-thirsty little scrub leeches off herself, and she spent that night crying quietly, scratching scrub-itch and leech bites, and nursing the place on her arm where the cursed stinging tree had got her through the coat sleeve. Poor girl! She was dreadfully homesick, and the open fire and camp oven cookery had lowered her spirits some more. She stuck to it like a Briton though, and never said anything. Jim's humpy was a very depressing place, too, situate at the bottom of a hollow in the scrub. Only ten acres of a clearing, and the dense wall of standing timber glooming down on the house in a pessimistic fas.h.i.+on.

She soon shook down to it, however, and in a few days I started with a mate named Jack Redburn, who kindly volunteered to give me a hand, splitting out the stuff for a new house. Thus we started housekeeping together. Quite penniless, no income a.s.sured, and the future extremely uncertain. Rather funny to look back on, but grim enough at the time.

CHAPTER XXII.

STRUGGLING ALONG.

I used to set out at six every morning to go over to my place, where my mate, Jack Redburn, would be awaiting me, and we worked until dark putting up the house. He was a good bushman, and in ten days or so we had a really decent comfortable little house up. Eighteen by twelve it was, with a ten-by-ten kitchen attached, all rough lined and ceiled. It was a lonely time for the wife, and I often felt my way home in the dark to find her crouched alongside the smoky fire, starting at every sound from the scrub.

[Ill.u.s.tration: We had a really decent comfortable little house.]

She and I carried our stuff over to the new place, having to make a long detour through the scrub to avoid scrambling about in Jimmy's overgrown loggy clearing, but the end of March saw us comfortably installed. Mrs.

Ellison made us a present of a wee dolly stove she had used at first, so there were no more scorched ap.r.o.ns and smarting eyes for the wife, and the only fly in the ointment was how to make a bob or two. Though so early in the year, people were antic.i.p.ating a dry spell, as the Rainy Season had not, so far, been up to much, as the gra.s.s wasn't as plentiful as it should have been. On that account there wasn't much doing. My first move, after talking things over with older settlers, was to get some cows.

Two "purple patches" of advice:--

DAD VINCENT: "Lord _love_ yer, man! Of _course_ you've done the _right thing_! Look at _me_. Came up here with _no experience_, a _wife_ and thirteen _kids_. I've been _submerged_ half a dozen _times_, and _look_ at me now. Get some _cows_ and good _luck_ to you."

OLD PARDY: "So yeh've got married? Well, a man's a blanky lizard ef 'e can't knock out a blanky livin' in the bush. Git some blanky cows; and dairy!"

So I put the fear of a drought away from me. Such a thing had never happened before in the thirty years' history of the Tableland. Cows were fairly cheap. Therefore--borrow some more cash from the Agricultural Bank and buy cows. Good. I applied for 200 and got it without any trouble.

Then Bayton the bullocky offered to take some pine off my place at sixpence a hundred (two pounds odd in Sydney!) and give me the cutting.

I jumped at it, and he took about twelve thousand feet. This gave me enough money to get six coils of barb wire (it hadn't risen much up to then), and about 3 over to renew my credit with the storekeeper. That was the last money he got for twelve months; yet he never worried me. I was only one of scores on his books that year, but he always got more kicks that thanks, and of course was a profiteer.

I used the wire to fence my road line; then made a deal for sixteen cows, a bull and seven twelve-month heifers for my 200, and thought I was all sagalio. Four cows were milking, and the others were supposed to be in calf, but weren't. We made a bit of b.u.t.ter and sold it to some bachelor neighbours for about two months, and that paid the rent. Then the green gra.s.s disappeared, the cows went dry, and the two calves that had come with them died.

I a.s.sisted the maintenance man putting up a bridge near my place, and that paid for rates. A week or two cutting timber nearby for Hood and Bayton, and the half-yearly interest bill worried us no more; then their bullocks got too weak to work, so that source of income stopped too. And "Old Store's" account rendered kept on mounting up, although we lived on rice and beef-s.h.i.+ns, made a seventy-pound bag of sugar last six months, and a fifty-pound bag of flour eight weeks. A nightmare of a time!

So July came along, with some hard frosts. Now frost up here is invariably followed by rain within two days in a normal year, which causes the gra.s.s to get a spring on at once, as the days are always warm and bright. But in this infernal year there was no rain, so the gra.s.s got completely settled--above ground, that is. It sprang again in a night once the rain came at the end of the year. My cows were wandering out through Braun's paddock all over the country searching for a bit of green stuff, and I nearly tramped my legs off looking for them to keep them dipped and clear of ticks. Half the time I couldn't find them, so that with ticks and starvation the herd got down to ten.

August. Still no rain! Got a job brus.h.i.+ng for old Pardy, and had to walk four miles each way to work and back every day, so averaged about 30/- a week, which had to be h.o.a.rded over against bank interest at the end of the year. And the storekeeper's bill still rose!

October. Will it _ever_ rain again? Dismal tales from everyone of dying stock, bankruptcy and ruin. My remaining cows could hardly stagger, and their ribs stood out like the black notes on a piano. I managed to get them home, when they were too weak to play up, let them into my banana patch, and the twenty clumps kept them going for a week or two. They even pawed out and ate the roots. My bull got into a very rough paddock not far away, fell down a steep stony creek, broke a leg and died there.

The outlook was as hopeless as financial stability under Freetrade.

November came, and old Omar's "blue sullen vault of sky" glared remorselessly down on us for over a fortnight of the month. No rain--not even the distant muttering promise of coming thunder. Then, on the 20th November, about 2 p.m., there was a sudden long roll of thunder in the distance. Two cows had calved, and I had the poor, miserable, staggering wretches in the bails, trying to force down their necks a bit of watercress I had found in the creek over a mile away.

I whipped out of the shed.