From Chart House To Bush Hut Part 12

Thank G.o.d! There, rapidly rising over the trees to the South-East, was a long bank of black cloud. The thunder grew louder, and a cold refres.h.i.+ng wind suddenly sprang into being. We could see and smell the grey drifting curtain of rain that spelt Resurrection! A faint pattering on the roof. Louder; louder yet! until it became a deafening roar that kept up for over an hour. Salvation! The drought had broken at last. I went out and bathed in the rain, absorbing it in every pore. I think it's the only time in my life I was delighted to be wet through. It was just in time to save my remaining cows.

I had left but seven cows, and six twenty-month heifers--say, 118 worth; but the debt of 200 to the bank still remained, and the storekeeper's 40 had to be remembered, and the--oh, but why recall such misery?

Apropos the drought. It wasn't really a drought at all. I remember once going from Sydney to Melbourne by train, and after Albury the whole country was literally bare as a board. Well, up here, at the worst time, there was knee-high dry gra.s.s somewhere in every paddock; but the fool cows, never having been used to anything but green feed, simply starved sooner than look at it. A few that did take to it here and there kept in fair nick throughout, but of course didn't give any milk. I'll bet there isn't a Victorian c.o.c.ky who would have thought it anything worse than just a bit of a dry spell. And, too, out of the hundreds of creeks running through the scrublands, I only saw one that had gone dry. I shall never forget the delicious smell of the wet earth after the first rainstorm, and that night, all over the paddocks, there was a paean of praise from countless millions of frogs. Now, where the d.i.c.kens do these blokes get to during a dry spell? We hadn't heard a croak for at least six months (or when the cows croaked they didn't do it audibly).

Next morning there was a faint green sheen all over the place, and in a week the gra.s.s was six inches high. The cows bogged in, their ribs disappeared, and four more calved. Thus about the middle of December I was a bloated capitalist, owning land and stock, with six cows milking and one more to come in, and reckoned it was high time to lend my support to the local b.u.t.ter factory and commence sending in cream.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JOYFUL EXPERIENCES OF COW-c.o.c.kYING.

So I went in to interview the factory people. I had to go to the expense of a new pair of boots for the occasion. I hadn't been wearing boots for months, but could hardly go in in bare feet. I had to take shares in the factory, and buy a separator--on terms; and right here is where I found for the first time a use for the chest full of blocks I had brought up to haul the scrub down with. I sold the lot to old Pardy for a fiver and paid for my boots, deposit on shares and separator, and exes. in town out of it. In due course the separator was brought out, in pieces on a pack horse the last mile or so, and erected in the split slab dairy.

What an event the first separating was! What though I forgot to clean the vaseline out of certain little holes and corners, and the cream wouldn't pa.s.s through; that, in my anxiety to avoid turning too slow, I went at eighty revolutions instead of sixty, and the final result hardly covered the bottom of a gallon billy. We owned property! stock!!

machinery!!! and we washed up the glistening new parts afterwards with pride and joy, which soon faded, by the way. And it rained, and kept on raining--probably to make up for the drought. The moisture poured in chilly streams through the rusty old iron roof of the bails, and sometimes I got nearly as much rainwater as milk. The roads speedily became bogs, and the creeks rose, and kept high for weeks. I was wet through morning, noon and night, and everything in the house got damp and mildewed. Boots looked, and smelt, like old bronze. Of course, we wouldn't have been so miserable had we possessed a good big house, good bails, yards, fences, and so forth; but these luxuries needed cash--which I hadn't got, so I had to put up with makes.h.i.+fts.

Braun was away somewhere and wouldn't fence his creek boundary. I couldn't. So behold! when I stepped out in the dismal, grey, misty dawn two cows would be in Braun's, one at Domino's Hill, two miles off one way, one in O'Gorman's, and the others playing hide-and-seek over about five hundred acres of overgrown, loggy paddock. The result was that I was often only starting to milk at 10.30 a.m. In the afternoon it was much the same. You would follow them up to see where they planted. Go back to the place at 4 p.m. No sign of them. After an hour's search you might come across them at the end of O'Brien's or Braun's or O'Gorman's or somewhere--but never the lot of them together. Finally I got hold of some plain wire and ran four wires along Braun's. Then other people's stray steers came along, walked through it wherever they pleased, as steers will, and kept me all my spare time patching up that makes.h.i.+ft.

But it kept the cows home, anyway.

Then carrying the cream. I had to take it down to a place opposite Liston's, three miles away. Had neither horse nor money to buy one.

Tried to carry a can down by myself once, but never again. Ever try to carry thirty pounds or so of liquid in a sixteen-pound can, all smooth and polished tinned steel? Try it and see how she goes. The weight keeps s.h.i.+fting, and one staggers round all over the shop, and staggering on a muddy road nearly knee deep, things happen. You soon find yourself plastered thick from head to foot. The wife volunteered to help, so we slung the cursed can on a stick and carried it on our shoulders that way. Tramp, tramp through the bog, puffing and panting in the steamy heat across two deep creeks and along slippery "sidlings," struggling down to Roden's, where we left the cans to be picked up by the carter sixteen hours later and taken into the train, which eventually took it to the factory, where the cream was almost invariably graded second-cla.s.s.

One day sticks in my memory. It had been intensely hot, and we got to Roden's late. There we heard a tale of woe. Mr. Roden was in hospital, and there was only Mrs. Roden and a kid to milk thirty cows. Of course I, like an a.s.s, offered to help, forgetful that I had my own to see to, and by the time I thought of my own affairs it was getting dusk and the delayed thunderstorm threatened. We hurried off, I with two empty cream cans slung, Chinaman fas.h.i.+on, on a stick across the shoulders, the wife with a billy containing a jewfish still alive, which Mrs. Roden had given her--a special luxury we hadn't tasted for a year. We had just got into the thick scrub when the storm burst on us. It speedily became pitch dark, and there we were, two miles from home, the rain pouring in buckets full, drenched and s.h.i.+vering, slowly picking our way among the innumerable roots and stumps by the lightning flashes' flickering glare, I in front, the wife behind hanging on to my belt. Every now and then I would feel a jerk, and a flop and smothered groan apprised me that the wife had fallen down again. Then a wail, "W-where's me fish?" and we would both be down on our knees in the mud feeling round for that precious fish until a lightning flash showed us where it was. Finally I slung the cans to one side and half-led, half-carried the poor girl home.

When we arrived at the brow of a short steep pinch leading down to our creek, we realised the impossibility of walking--just sat down in the mud and tobogganed down it. We reached home, covered with mud, drenched and exhausted, at 8 p.m. The cows weren't milked that night.

This was about the end of March. In the following October our first child was born. Of course we didn't know. Still, what might have happened! Well, just about this time I heard Hood had a horse for sale, so I went and saw him. He was an old steeplechaser, twenty years old, and very thin and ribby. He stood about six feet high at the shoulder.

I asked Hood what he had on him. "Thirty bob," said Hood.

"Done," said I, and dragged the moke home.

We called him Napoleon Bonaparte, and stood looking at him that evening, telling each other he wasn't too bad at all. The old, old saggy-kneed animal would look "n.o.ble" when he picked up a bit; he showed quality, didn't he now? in spite of his age--and so forth, until, our eyes meeting, we burst out laughing, with a simultaneous exclamation, "'On Our Selection' to the life."

We found the old chap would eat anything, being used to kids petting him; so we filled him up with odds and ends of porridge, cabbage stalks, bread, spud peelings, and so on, and, strange to say, he did pick up. He was a whale on separated milk, and got plenty of it. Anyway, the poor old fellow carried the cream (attached to his back by a weird contrivance of cornbags and rope) for two years, so he paid for himself.

Then he got sick and developed a booming cough--a very curfew, tolling the knell of Bona-parting.

I called in a bloke to look at him.

"Oh," says he: "it's on'y gripes. Give 'im a good 'earty kick in the guts. That'll settle 'im."

I didn't try the recipe, and poor old Boney settled himself that night--in the cowyard; and I had to cut him up and drag him away in sections for cremation.

What sickening shocks we did have that year, to be sure! Our first cheque was sixteen s.h.i.+lings for the month, after share-money and separator instalment were deducted. Then the long-suffering storekeeper stopped credit, and for a while we lived on what we could grow, with scrub turkey, and once or twice bandicoot. The latter weren't bad, in fact, very palatable; but they looked ratty. The Government remitted the year's rent, but bank interest and rates had to be met; and my biggest cheque for the year was 8. Oh, it was a daisy time! However, my cows had all had heifer calves; I brought them safely past weaning point, and got 4 a head for them on the top of a risen market that the week after was fallen to 2. This was one of the rare strokes of luck I have had, and paid two-thirds of Old Store's account, renewing credit.

In October a daughter was born to us, who, thanks to the dreadful climate (whites can't live up here, you know) hasn't had a day's sickness yet! In December my young heifers calved, and the cheques each month from the factory increased, so that I got clear of debt, and actually felt what having a few pounds in the bank was like. I managed to keep the 1917 crop of calves. It was a good year.

In 1918 things went swimmingly again, but a plague of caterpillars ate me out, and I lost half the youngsters, but still I crept ahead a bit financially. In June my son and heir made his appearance. Another miserably bright, bonny, rosy-cheeked victim of the climate. At the end of the year Hood had a look at my timber, and offered to cart logs to the mill, and haul the resulting sawn timber out again if I paid for cutting the logs up; he to charge cartage as a cash deposit to me on my standing timber. I jumped at the chance, for, lo! here was a new house for us. I could just manage to sc.r.a.pe enough cash together to pay for cutting at the mill. In February, 1919, I got the house up, paying for its erection with two young heifers.

Now we had indeed turned the corner, and could begin to believe that our struggling days were really behind us. A month or two later Hood, who had s.h.i.+fted out close to us, made a proposal to join forces: I to look after the cows, of which he had a decent herd; he to work his bullocks; all proceeds to be pooled and shared.

It has worked well, for he is a white man and a good mate. We have had a plague of caterpillars again, but got over it without serious loss, and it really looks as if we were at last firmly on our feet, with a prospect of a continued comfortable competence--thanks mainly to the unselfish self-denial and splendid management of that greatest of all blessings--a good wife. We aren't millionaires yet, but can't growl, and are infinitely better off than our town brethren, with all their picture palaces, handy shops and what not. Anyhow, the rosy cheeks of our two splendid kiddies would be enough to reconcile us to the, perhaps, somewhat lonely life. In spite of (perhaps because of) hard struggles and difficulties overcome anything but easily, neither of us feel inclined to quit even now that we could, and with the pa.s.sing of time the little home we have carved out of the scrub for ourselves becomes more homely and dearer to our hearts.

CHAPTER XXIV.

L'ENVOI.

In concluding an effort like the foregoing, it is, I believe, the usual thing for the author to tender a few words of good advice. A thankless job, perhaps, for a wise man doesn't want it and a fool won't take it.

However, in case any reader might be contemplating scratching a living out of the scrub, I offer him the following, free, gratis and for nothing:--

1. Decide on your district; think carefully before taking a block; get it; then hang on to it till all's blue, for blocks aren't so easy to get now-a-days, and the time is gone when a bloke could say, "'Ere! I'm chuckin' this, and goin' for a block closer in."

2. Get your scrub down as quickly as possible. Standing timber won't bring in a penny in a lifetime, and mill timber's a rotten reed to lean on for an income. Fifty acres of gra.s.s, well fenced, will, at agistment, bring in tucker and a bit over after the first year, even if you don't use it yourself.

3. Never go working alone in the scrub. Always try to have a mate with you, and never wear smooth-soled boots in the scrub, unless you want to go to hospital.

4. Don't be afraid of the State Agricultural Bank. It's cheap money, and they won't (since they can't) foreclose for twenty-one years, provided interest is paid when due. The bank's a.s.sistance enables you to stop on your block instead of going away to work. Go as far as they'll allow you for scrub-falling and buying cows, but not for house-building or other unproductive work. Let Strawberry pay for that. Leave private banks alone.

5. Get gra.s.s seed in at once after the burn, and don't sow all one kind, no matter how good a feed it is. Her Majesty Queen Cow likes a change, like ourselves.

6. Don't start dairying until you have a good fence round the place.

Then buy a few good cows and a _good_ bull. Be wary buying milkers from a dairyman. Better get springing heifers.

7. Here get married. Weigh well the advantages of a widow with, say, a couple of children able to milk. If she has a little cash, all the better. Then it won't matter if she's not beautiful and is ten years your senior.

8. If your early milking arrangements are rough, it'll be all right if you keep everything scrupulously clean. Slap the whitewash round. It's cheap, and, like a parson's coat, occasionally covers a mult.i.tude of sins.

9. Don't sell your young heifers when weaned if you can struggle along without doing so. Breeding up your own herd, you know what you've got.

Also your old originals won't live for ever.

10. Try and grow a bit of hand-feed for your cows as a stand-by, no matter how good a dairying district you're in.

11. Never lose your temper, no matter how rorty your cows may be. Cows are very sensitive, and respond to quiet treatment quicker than any other animal. If you go down to the bails in a temper, the cows know it, even if you're quiet with them. They get uneasy, and hang on to the milk. I learned this by experience.

12. Keep your heart up and battle along. Don't let set-backs break your spirit. The sticker gets there--like the postage stamp. But, make no mistake, you'll need a heart to tackle the scrub.

And that's the lot, blokes. h.e.l.lo! milking time. I must get away after the cows. I wish you luck. Well--hooray!

"SENEX."