Inveterate smoker and a profuse spitter
upon floors; partly because - well to be quite honest - because a good
application of carbolic soap would have done no harm; and partly because
she appeared to have a passion for exceedingly scanty garments, her
favourite costume being a skirt made from the upper half of a fifty-pound
calico flour bag. Her blouses had, apparently, been all mislaid. Nellie,
unconscious of my real objections, daily and doggedly put herself on the
staff, and was daily and doggedly dismissed. But as she generally
managed to do the very thing that most needed doing, before I could find
her to dismiss, Dan was offering ten to one on Nellie by Easter time.
"Another moon'll see her on the staff," he prophesied, as we prepared to
go out-bush for Easter.
The Easter moon had come in dry and cool, and at its full the Wet lifted,
as our traveller had foretold. Only a bushman's personal observation,
remember, this lifting of the Wet with the full of the Easter moon, not a
scientific statement; but by an insight peculiarly their own, bushmen
come at more facts than most men.
Sam did his best with Bunday, serving hot rolls with mysterious markings
on them for breakfast, and by midday he had the homestead to himself, the
Maluka and I being camped at Bitter Springs and every one else being
elsewhere. Our business was yard-inspection, with Goggle-Eye as general
factotum. We, of course, had ridden out, but Goggle-Eye had preferred to
walk. "Me all day knock up longa horse," he explained striding
comfortably along beside us.
Several exciting hours were spent with boxes of wax matches, burning the
rank grass back from the yard at the springs (at Goggle-Eye's suggestion
the missus had been pressed into the service); and then we rode through
the rank grass along the river, scattering matches as we went like sparks
from an engine. As soon as the rank grass seeds it must be burnt off,
before the soil loses its moisture, to ensure a second shorter spring,
and everywhere we went now clouds of dense smoke rose behind us.
That walk about with the Maluka and "Gadgerrie" lived like a red-letter
day in old Goggle-Eye's memory; for did he not himself strike a dozen
full boxes of matches?
Dan was away beyond the northern boundary, going through the cattle,
judging the probable duration of "outside waters" for that year, burning
off too as he rode. The Quiet Stockman was away beyond the southern
boundary, rounding up wanderers and stragglers among the horses, and the
station was face to face with the year's work, making preparations for
the year's mustering and branding - for with the lifting of the Wet
everything in the Never-Never begins to move.
"After the Wet" rivers go down, the north-west monsoon giving place to
the south-east Trades; bogs dry up everywhere, opening all roads;
travellers pass through the stations from all points of the
compass - cattle buyers, drovers, station-owners, telegraph people - all
bent on business, and all glad to get moving after the long compulsory
inaction of the Wet; and lastly that great yearly cumbrous event takes
place: the starting of the "waggons," with their year's stores for
Inside.
The first batch of travellers had little news for us. They had heard
that the teams were loading up, and couldn't say for certain, and,
finding them unsatisfactory, we looked forward to the coming of the
"Fizzer," our mailman, who was almost due.
Eight mails a year was our allowance, with an extra one now and then
through the courtesy of travellers. Eight mails a year against eight
hundred for the townsfolk. Was it any wonder that we all found we had
business at the homestead when the Fizzer was due there?
When he came this trip he was, as usual, brimming over with news:
personal items, public gossip, and the news that the horse teams had got
most of their loading on, and that the Macs were getting their bullocks
under way. Two horse waggons and a dray for far "inside," and three
bullock waggons for the nearer distances, comprised the "waggons" that
year. The teamsters were Englishmen; but the bullock-punchers were three
"Macs" - an Irishman, a Highlander, and the Sanguine Scot.
Six waggons, and about six months' hard travelling, in and out, to
provide a year's stores for three cattle stations and two telegraph
stations. It is not surprising that the freight per ton was what it
was - twenty-two pounds per ton for the Elsey, and upwards of forty pounds
for "inside." It is this freight that makes the grocery bill such a big
item on stations out-bush, where several tons of stores are considered
by no means a large order.
Close on the heels of the Fizzer came other travellers, with the news
that the horse teams had got going and the Macs had "pulled out" to the
Four Mile. "Your trunks'll be along in no time now, missus," one of them
said. "They've got 'em all aboard."
The Dandy did some rapid calculations: "Ten miles a day on good roads,"
he said: "one hundred and seventy miles. Tens into that seventeen days.
Give 'em a week over for unforeseen emergencies, and call it four weeks."
It sounded quite cheerful and near at hand, but a belated thunderstorm or
two, and consequent bogs, nearly doubled the four weeks.
Almost every day we heard news of the teams from the now constant stream
of travellers; and by the time the timber was all sawn and carted to the
house to fulfil the many promises there, they were at the Katherine.
But if the teams were at the Katherine, so were the teamsters, and so was
the Pub; and when teamsters and a pub get together it generally takes
time to separate them, when that pub is the last for over a thousand
miles.
