1852 - Mundy, G. C. Our Antipodes. [Vol. II.] - CHAPTER II. [Australia]

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CHAPTER II.

WE passed within twelve miles of Mount Sea View, whose elevation is about 6,000 feet, and from whence Oxley, the eminent surveyor, revived the despondent spirits of his exploring party, when bewildered among the mazes of the scrub, by a glimpse of the ocean at a distance of sixty miles. Although the road was all but impassable for horsemen, we overtook several bullock-drays laden with stores for the squatting districts, or met them on their way to the coast with loads of wool. One of them had been ten days in going twenty miles. As we neared them, the savage shouts of the drivers and the clang of their terrible whips echoed through the arcades of the forest. Soon our ears were saluted by the most brutal and blasphemous execrations ever lavished by human lips upon quadruped objects. As the Governor rode past one of the most excited and foul-mouthed of these fellows, we were diverted by his

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sudden mollification of tone and language to his beasts, --"God bless your heart, Diamond! Come up, will you?" And he accompanied his benediction with a flank of his wattle-stick whip that would have cut a crab-tree in two. This was an act of homage to social propriety hardly to be expected from the wildest of all savages, the Australian bullock-driver, a class that knows nothing of a Supreme Being, except to desecrate his Name by obscene and blasphemous oaths.

At Tobin's Hole we halted for an hour, finding some refreshments planted there for us by the Major, --for that is the colonial phrase, borrowed from the slang lingo of London burglars and thieves, for any article sent forward or left behind for future consumption in spots only indicated to those concerned, after the manner of the caches of the French Canadian trappers on the American prairies. To "spring" a plant is to discover and pillage it, --an art which is well understood and pretty often practised by the blacks, from whose keen eyes and quick instinct it is difficult to conceal the locality of a "plant." Horses and bullocks are sometimes driven off and "planted" in some secluded gully by ingenious persons, who will find and produce them when a good reward is advertised. In Sydney, moreover, good round sums of hard cash have been "planted" by pretended ruined tradesmen and men of business, who, after passing the Insolvent Court, contrive to exhume them again, and again to launch forth into life with handsome equipages and expensive establishments. Such is the meaning of the term, "a plant," singularly applicable to Botany Bay.

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At length, after many tedious and fatiguing miles of rapid descent, we came down upon the little settlement of the Messrs. Todd & Fenwick, --the first habitations of the great table-land of New England, --our billet for the night. Two slab cottages of four rooms each, with offices behind, farm huts around, and divided by a brook, constitute the station. These gentlemen, until lately partners, are at present separated, because one of them has taken a partner for life, as all squatters ought to do, --sole means of saving them from a lapse into partial or complete savagehood. A woman gives good and practical evidence of disinterested affection when she quits her mother's side in the city to follow a husband into the bush. Many a hardship, many an alarm, perhaps, will she have to undergo, many a lonesome hour to pass. If of a sentimental habit, she will meet many a rude reality, calculated to disenchant her of pastorals. The lady who gave rise to these remarks commenced her wedded bush-life with becoming spirit, if it be true that, the ceremony occurring early in the morning at Port Macquarie, the bride and bridegroom rode on horseback the same two stages just performed by ourselves, --that is, 100 miles in two days.

On our arrival to-day at the station, the bachelor was alone at home. On the return of our party, however, the married pair were present, and the lady presided with graceful tact and quietness over the humble but plentiful menage that had fallen to the lot of an old soldier's daughter. We were all well tired, wet to the skin, and were most grateful for the homely but hearty shelter, fireside, and fare here bestowed upon us.

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I never recollect being so sick of my saddle as I was this day. It was somewhat humiliating to an old staff-officer and sportsman to find himself in the predicament in which the worthy Samuel Pepys, F. R. S. must have been, when, after an unwonted equestrian journey, he remarks, "but I find that a coney-skin in my breeches does preserve me perfectly from galling."

Mr. T. told me that the worst feature of the squatter's life is the occasional ill-behaviour of the shepherds and other farm-servants. They usually break out together with one consent, have a regular drunken bout, and will not put a hand to work until they have had it out. If the master resolve to punish such infraction of engagement, he may have to ride one or two hundred miles for a warrant. Sometimes a hold is retained upon the men by keeping them considerably in arrears of pay. The Commissioner of Crown Lands for New England met us here, on the frontier of his district.

March 10th. --An early start for Salisbury Court, the residence of Mr. Marsh. There were seventeen horses in cavalcade including the pack-horses. These trotted along very quietly after a day's practice, sometimes indeed jostling their saddle-bags against the trees or each other, and sometimes stopping to graze; but never requiring to be led. We rode ten miles through undulating open woodland, affording excellent pasturage, to the prettily situated sheep station of Mr. Dens, where, after breakfast, Sir Charles and myself exchanged our hacks for a tandem. Thence to "Waterloo," a station of our friend the Major, where we lunched on roast mutton and potatoes, damper, champagne and hock, in the correctest of

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green glasses--Mr. -------, a Yorkshire gentleman, and a superintendent of our host's, doing the honours of the house.

Pursuing thence our onward march--the two gig-horses doing their thirty miles with perfect ease--we encountered, at the side of a waterhole, twelve miles from his residence, Mr. Marsh with his desert-transit-van, built on the principle of the Egyptian Overland carriages, and driven by him four in hand. It something resembles a large jaunting car on two wheels, rigged like a curricle as far as the wheelers are concerned, and holding six or eight inside. This vehicle seems particularly well suited to the flat roads, and sandy stony plains of Egypt. One might, after a trial such as we had this day, question its adaptation to the rough, rocky, and hilly tracts of the Australian squatting districts; but, certainly, no doubt of the kind appeared to haunt the mind or daunt the courage of its worthy owner, who, putting his team along at mail-coach pace, after an hour of galvanic exercise to our bones and joints, placed us down safe and sound at his hall door. Some of our party rode the whole distance of fifty-five miles this day on the same horses; --so much for the grass-fed hacks of New South Wales.

The country we passed through latterly did not give us a very favourable idea of the soil of New England, its vegetation, or its scenery. The timber is poor in size and tiresome of aspect. Being lightly wooded, it is however well calculated for stock farming.

Salisbury Court is a roomy one-storied house, solidly built of rough stone, and looking over a well-watered vale, just beyond which rises the Mountain Range, divi-

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ding the waters running towards the ocean from those running westward into the unknown interior. A couple of hundred yards from the more modern and more commodious dwelling stands the proprietor's original squatting cottage, "Old Sarum," now given up to the farming people. The present establishment affords evidence of affluence, good taste, and mental cultivation. An excellent library is not the least of luxuries in so lonely and distant a dwelling-place. Our host is one of the many gentlemen of superior condition and education, university men and others, practising bucolics in this country, who have gained for the squatters the title of the aristocracy of New South Wales. The healthiness of the climate of New England is attested by the rosy cheeks of the children, so unlike the pale and pasty little faces of Sydney. This part of the colony is a vast plateau, nearly as high above the sea as the summit of Snowdon in Wales. In spite of a nearer position to the tropic by several degrees, this elevation gives a much cooler climate than that of the metropolitan county.

We are now in the early autumn, yet the potato tops and other less vulgar annuals in the garden are nipped by the night frosts, which have just set in. The thermometer at 5 A. M. to-day stood at 40 deg. At Sydney it is ranging at a mean of 70 deg. A good blazing fire in the evening was really enjoyable.

Mr. Marsh and his amiable lady do not usually confine themselves to the bush for the entire round of the year. At the commencement of winter the transit-van is put in requisition, and the family migrates in a body to the milder and gayer habitat of Sydney. Their route on this

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excursion is not by the mountain track we have just traversed, but by a larger detour which, I have said before, strikes the coast at the mouth of the Hunter River. Thence there is steam to Sydney.

Mr. Marsh is, according to my interpretation of the term, the only true and exclusive squatter whose homestead I have visited in this country. Although bred to the law he practises no other occupation than squatting; has not an acre of purchased or granted land; is a lessee of the Crown and proprietor of live stock, and nothing else--a true grazier grandee of New South Wales! He does not wield a Government quill with one hand and his pastoral crook with the other; is not a member of the Executive, Legislative, or City councils--not a land-jobber, merchant, or commission agent. I cannot add, "pas meme Academicien," for he is a Cambridge man! I may put down Mr. Marsh's sheep at 50,000, I suppose. As for horned and horse stock I cannot make a guess at their amount. He employs about one hundred pair of hands, and his annual wages and rations cannot amount to less than 3,000l.

It is a singular fact, that up to the date of my quitting New South Wales the squatting interest, by far the most powerful and important in the colony, was unrepresented in the legislature, in so far that no members were returned for the unsettled districts. In the contemplated change of the Constitution, the privilege of legislative representation is to be extended to the squatters, and Mr. Marsh will probably be elected. Our host has a substantial roof over his head, and is surrounded with every possible domestic comfort; yet, if I mistake not,

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men of his cast of mind, education, and pristine habits, have always latent hopes--perhaps distinct aspirations-- beyond a life in the Australian bush--yearnings for enjoyments and associations only attainable in old countries. I shall be surprised and disappointed if at no very distant date I have not the pleasure of meeting this hospitable and intelligent gentleman in our mutual native land. Meanwhile may his "clip" never be less! He had a famous one this year (1846-7). It cannot have decreased since; for in 1851, when I quitted New South Wales, he was assessed, if I mistake not, for 90,000 sheep!

March 11th. --A drive round Salisbury Plains, part of Mr. Marsh's sheep-run, an undulating tract naturally clear of trees and scrub, and clothed with good grass. Both the pasturage and climate are admirably adapted to sheep-farming. They are suitable also for the breeding, but not for the feeding and fattening of horned stock, the winter nights being too severe for any animal not lanigerous. The herbage appeared to me to be inferior to that of Bathurst and Wellington; but, on the other hand, there is the inestimable treasure of a plentiful supply of water. We came upon several fine flocks-- one of them consisting of 3,000 sheep, a strong brigade under one commander and his staff, that is, a single shepherd with two or three collies. It is only in open ground, a condition very uncommon in Australian runs, that so large a charge can be entrusted to one individual. The saving in wages is of course immense. Small flocks, like little wars, don't pay! The pastor in question was a poet, we were told. I was favoured with the perusal of

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one of his last pastorals, and found it by no means original. Another shepherd, whom I met and questioned as to game in a distant part of the bush, could no more understand my plain English than if it had been so much Sanscrit. It seemed as though his rare communion with mankind had deprived him of half his mental faculties. Many of this class are or have been prisoners of the Crown. Old pickpockets, it is said, make first-rate shepherds.

I have heard it averred that tending flocks is an employment favourable to meditation. I much doubt whether the inward ruminations of these solitary philosophers are directed to any good end; and am not convinced that a retrospection of past rogueries does not produce in their stagnated minds more satisfaction than remorse. Wives and children are, I really believe, all that is required to humanize these exiles from human sympathies. As it is, they work for a while--if work it can be called, sitting on a log playing on the Jew's harp--and only hoard their pay in order to lavish it on some periodical and senseless debauch.

How strange must be the contrast presented to such men, whom the avenging hand of the law has plucked from out of the lanes, courts, and alleys of London, where from infancy to manhood their ears have been accustomed to the eternal roar of the great Babylon, and their eyes to the never ending rush of its thronged inhabitants-- how strange, I say, the change to the still calm solitude of the Australian bush!

Considering its great distance from the peopled settlements, the blacks have not lately been very troublesome

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in this district. On one occasion, however, our host's flocks suffered a serious foray, in which 2,000 sheep were driven off, one shepherd killed, and another, an old soldier, wounded. He, however, shot the savage who threw the spear, an act which put an end to these blackmail inroads. The farm-people, in the case mentioned, pursued the native foragers, and recovered a great portion of the sheep, but the wanton barbarians left hundreds killed on their track, merely taking the kidneys--epicurean rascals!

Salisbury Plains are, as their British namesake once was, a favourite resort of the bustard. In our drive to-day we saw several of these huge birds stalking in the distance, but we failed in some ill-conducted attempts to get within shot of them. It is nearly impossible to approach on foot this wary game, unless much favoured by the lay of the ground. Of snipe, quail, and wildfowl, there is plenty in this neighbourhood. In fact, the squire of Salisbury Court, who is fond of shooting and a good shot, has an excellent manor without the bother of keepers, shooting-licences, or other clogs to the sport. He need never fear being warned off a neighbour's preserve--for I suppose it is not too much to calculate that his domain extends over a million of acres.

On the following day I ascended on horseback the Dividing Range, as it is called. It cannot be more than 500 or 600 feet above the site of the house. From the summit, however, a most perfect panorama is obtained, the circle of the horizon complete--not a single peak or other intermediate obstruction breaking

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the entire round of vision--an accident of mountain scenery which is very uncommon. From the spot where I stood, the bare patch of Salisbury Plains, extensive though it be, was almost lost in the vast expanse of the bush below. The spine of the ridge was thickly carpeted with the wild raspberry, and an everlasting with a large stiff yellow flower.

March 13th. --Although we are here in autumn, one cannot give the season the poetical name of "the Fall," as it is always styled in America; for nothing falls from the gum-tree except the bark. It might be an English March clay, cold and bright and windy, so as to make basking in the sun a positive pleasure. Our party and the Crown-land Commissioner rode to Armidale, the township of the district, about seventeen miles, the only spot in New England, I suppose, where half-a-dozen houses are collected. Disdaining the road, which is indeed not very distinguishable, we struck right into the bush, steering by the sun as we might have done at sea, and had scarcely accomplished five miles, when Sir Charles's horse fell with him in full canter, and rolling heavily on his leg severely injured it; his Excellency, however, nothing daunted, mounted another hack, and with great pain and difficulty completed the remaining distance.

The town of Armidale consists of two inns, the Commissioner's house, two or three private stores established by and belonging to gentleman squatters, for the supply of their stations, of which inns and stores at least one of course appertains to the ubiquitous Major, two or three other slab and bark huts,

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and a sprouting church. It has the advantage of a large piece of naturally clear land, looking precisely like an English race-course framed in gum-trees; and boasts a fine chain of water-holes, which, after heavy rains, puts on the guise of a continuous stream.

The Governor received an address signed by "the clergy (man), magistracy and other inhabitants" of Armidale, after the presentation of which, we sat down with the pilgrim fathers of this Austral New England-- some twenty young gentlemen--to an excellent lunch, in which we discussed the wines of the Rhine and the Rhone, or very good imitations thereof, 16,000 miles from their birth-place--the last 200 miles of their journey having been performed on a bullock-dray.

Armidale, it is needless to say, did not much remind me of the capital of the American New England-- the flourishing Boston, where, some 226 years ago,

It can never, except by a miracle, approach in the most distant degree the prosperity of its Yankee prototype. The want of navigable rivers and the general dearth of water are obstacles, not to enumerate others in the road to wealth, which English industry and enterprise may modify, but can never wholly remove.

That the season of redundant convict labour was suffered to wane without any great attempt, by private individuals, to secure by artificial works a permanent supply of the priceless element, is not so surprising as at first sight might appear. In the earlier days of

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the colony, no settler or squatter located himself on spots subject to drought, because there was plenty of "water privilege" for the existing population. Later land-seekers had to content themselves and their stocks with very inferior runs, the refuse of their precursors.

From Armidale Sir Charles got back to Salisbury Court in a gig, the only wheel-carriage, I think, in the town; while a party of five proceeded ten or twelve miles further north, to visit the cattle-station of Captain O'Connell on the Gyra River. The rudiments of this gentleman's intended residence, --for he has not yet established himself in the bush, --are well situated on a slope dotted with huge granite crags, just above the bed of the stream, with a fine view of the mountain range over the tree-tops of "the wilds immeasurably spread" round this Ultima Thule of European location. Six of us dined very agreeably in the room that is to be some day the kitchen; and at night, although we saw the stars of heaven winking at us through the shingled roof, and felt the frosty breeze playing on our pillows, there were none of the creeping annoyances we had met with at some other of our temporary resting-places. In the morning we walked to see a natural curiosity called the Falls, a singular and tremendous fissure in the earth's crust, six or seven hundred feet deep, and of similar width. The country below looked like another world, designedly severed from the inhabited surface, as though it had never wholly been redeemed from Chaos. A thread of water, sometimes hoisted by the wind into the air, sometimes trickling like a tear down the wrinkled face of the

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precipice, seemed never to reach its foot. But when the sun rose higher in the heavens, the cascade was once more revealed in the shape of a tiny tortuous stream, wriggling its silvery way among the splendid rocks at the bottom of the gulph. It was on the verge of this awful chasm, as I was informed, that the Captain's overseer had a struggle for life or death with a native black, whom he surprised in the act of spearing cattle. The sable marauder was both fierce and athletic; but few men, black or white, could stand long before that stalwart Yorkshireman; and, after a breast to breast struggle of some moments, the Aboriginal was hurled over the falls, to feed the kites and warrigals below. The Englishman appeared to me the very beau ideal for a sketch of the Australian stockman of the better class. Upwards of six feet high, with thews proportionate, but light and active in his movements, his curled beard concealed every part of his handsome visage except a pair of quick dark eyes, an arched nose, and the tips of a pair of cheeks burnt into a permanent red-brown by the sun. A weather-stained cabbage hat, tweed jacket, woollen trowsers strapped down the legs with leather, hunting spurs, and the symbol of his trade, the short-handled, heavy-thonged stock-whip, completed this picturesque and business-like outward man and his outfit, to which may be added a good stout well-bred mare, that seemed to make light of fifteen stone. My friend the Captain has no sheep at Gyra, only horned cattle and horses.

I cannot clearly comprehend how money is to be

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made by cattle farming at so great a distance from a market. After being driven across the mountains we have lately traversed, I should say that very little suet would reach the sea-port on the backs of a herd-- however "fresh," as the graziers say, they might have been at starting.

March 14th. --Rode from Gyra to Salisbury Court, twenty-one miles; and the following day, having taken leave of our kind host and hostess, we performed, as before, in three days, the passage over the mountains to Lake Innes. This journey, no trifle for a sound man and light weight, was a serious undertaking for a gentleman of sixteen stone, very much under-mounted, and with an ankle and leg terribly swelled and contused. The second clay, accordingly, Sir Charles suffered extreme pain, for he had no choice but to perform the whole fifty miles in the saddle, and it took nearly twelve hours to accomplish this irksome task. Nor did his Excellency, his son, or myself, complete our journey without each tasting some of the bitters of Australian travel.

March 17th. --I had heard of "buck-jumping," as who has not in this country of ill-broken horses? but as it happened I had never seen, much less personally experienced, an instance of it. To-day I was fated to be an actor, or rather a patient in the process so styled. When about to start from "The Yarrows" at daybreak, I found a fresh horse told off for my use, a tall raw-boned brown, with a spine like a park paling, every vertebra visible. No sooner had I mounted than he rushed against the garden fence, before my right foot had found the stirrup, and tried to rub me off; and,

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finding that did not succeed, he gave a kick and a rear, and then getting his head down, commenced and sustained a series of jumps straight up and down, with his back hogged and his four feet collected together like the sign of the Golden Fleece. For about five minutes, very-long ones to me, this was kept up with great spirit, and not one of the half-dozen farming men around could or would get hold of the brute's head. A little more of this rude exercise would have fairly tired me into a tumble, when luckily for my bones one of the men seized the snaffle by a sudden spring, and the buck-jumper, with one entrechat of greater "force" than the rest, concluded the dance. I got from the speculators "kudos" for keeping what is sometimes vacated on such occasions, namely the saddle. The remains of a stout Cape buffalo-hide whip attest the revenge I took on the ribs of my raw-boned steed.

G. F. fared worse, for his horse, after carrying him quietly at first, suddenly became restive, ran among the trees, and finally struck him off by a blow on the face, leaving him stunned and bleeding on the ground. Neither did the already battered Governor escape further mishap; for, getting into a tandem to perform the last twelve miles of the journey, the wheeler fell over the root of a tree, and threw him fairly over the splash-board, adding more bruises to his already liberal share. The travellers, however, reached at sunset the hospitable roof of Lake Innes Cottage, where we recruited ourselves until the 22d. Brace's bagpipes were in good wind and condition; the same may be said of the eight or nine young ladies in the house, who took

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care that the Sydney gentlemen should not forget how to dance for want of practice. On that day our party, with a numerous cavalcade of the fair and the brave, quitted Lake Innes for Port Macquarie, where at eleven A. M. we embarked once more in the Maitland steamer, for Sydney.

The voyage was nowise remarkable; except that tale-telling, by way of killing time, having been suggested, the subjects thereof being restricted to occurrences that had personally happened to the narrators; and further, the lot having fallen on the lively and agreeable Mrs. ------- to tell the first tale; we were all charmed by the inimitably quaint manner in which she related "The Midshipman, a reminiscence of my school days."

"At ten years of age," began the fair story-teller, " I was placed by my parents at Mrs. -------'s seminary for young ladies, situated in a fashionable suburb of the metropolis. It was the first time I had ever left home. I pass over the ordinary incidents, all of them wretched enough, of a child's initiation into public life; for such indeed may be styled the step from the nursery to the boarding-school. Suffice it to say, that I found myself the junior of some eighteen or twenty pupils, none of whom I had ever seen before.

"Supper was over; and at nine o'clock I was conducted by the assistant to the bed-room, where seven others besides myself were to sleep. Accustomed to my home comforts and to a room, if not entirely unshared, at least only by my sisters, I was somewhat shocked by this gregarious arrangement; but I derived some consolation from finding that I had a fellow in misfortune, another

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fresh girl, as the phrase was, who had arrived only an hour after myself--a well-grown handsome young lady, of about fourteen, who at the supper table had appeared no less downcast than I--thereby, bringing upon herself the somewhat sarcastic notice of the other pupils. The governess, after ushering our party, whereof the 'fresh girl' made one, into the dormitory assigned to us, placed a candle on the table in the middle of the room, and said, 'Young ladies, twenty minutes are allowed you to prepare for bed. The pupil who arrived last at the establishment must then put out the light.'

"I had almost forgotten to say that the scholars slept in pairs, and that the 'fresh girl' had been allotted to me. The usual preparations for boarding-school going to bed--the day not being Saturday!--were completed pretty rapidly; when, suddenly, the new young lady, who was undressing behind the bed-curtains, giving a preliminary 'hem!' exclaimed, 'Young ladies, I find it is my duty to put out the light. This is really very awkward in my case--very awkward indeed. But before you proceed further in your night-toilettes I feel bound in honour to tell you that I am--hem!--that I am a Midshipman in disguise. My dress------- the long and the short of it is, young ladies, that I can't and won't go to the table to 'douse the glim!'

"Conceive, if you can," continued the fair narrator, "the effect of the startling announcement. Six of the girls rolled themselves, according to their several stages of dishabille, in curtains, counterpanes, or the nearest wrapper at hand. No one would move an inch from her refuge; no one, therefore, would or could put out

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the candle. As for me, I screamed out 'I will never sleep with a Midshipman!' and forthwith ensconced myself under the bed. Meanwhile, twenty minutes or half-an-hour elapsed. The mistress of the school appeared: 'Why,' demanded she, 'is the light not extinguished? why, young ladies, are you not in bed?' 'Ma'am,' exclaimed the eldest pupil, a girl of sixteen, all out of breath, 'Oh, Ma'am, there is a Midshipman in the room! the tall, new young lady, he is hiding behind the curtains!' 'And where is Miss J-------?' asked the mistress. 'Here, Ma'am,' whimpered I from under the bed, 'I won't sleep with a Midshipman, no, I won't!'"

The conclusion of this little and literally true story is simple enough. The Honourable Harriett ------, the newcomer, fancying that her schoolfellows seemed inclined to quiz the "Fresh girl;" (for girl, and fine girl, and good and clever girl, she was,) and acting upon the spur of a lively disposition, as well as upon a hint obligingly given her before she left home by her brother, a real Midshipman, had struck out this original method of proving to her sister students that nature had not made her to be the butt of an establishment for young ladies.