Darwin of necessity (Palmerston, by the
way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians). Darwin with its one train,
its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public buildings,
its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers' walk, its two or three empty,
wide, grass-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed, iron-built
bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins - a
development of the white-ant pest - and lastly, its great sea, where ships
wander without tracks or made ways! Hardly a typical town, but the best
in the Territory.
The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping,
and as we slipped into fashions the traveller guests became interested.
"Haven't seen so many women together for years," one of them said.
"Reminds me of when I was a nipper," and the other traveller "reckoned"
he had struck it lucky for once. "Three on 'em at once," he chuckled
with indescribable relish. "They reckon it never rains but it pours."
And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a
homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.
But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all
impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked,
and to the railway, where the iron monster ran.
Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair
toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the
world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a
couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and
before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the
two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back in a few weeks, at one
year old, compares favourably with one of the Fizzer's trips. But it is
thus the bush develops her Fizzers.
After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt,
preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit to the
Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy Dick's bullocks and a
great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan proved a strong ally; and
besides, as the musterers were in and Happy Dick due to arrive by midday,
Cheon's hands were full with other matters.
There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the
Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all comers, in
addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black
boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his
own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one
of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time
they came in.
Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. "Good-day! Real
glad to see you!" was his usual greeting. Sure of his own welcome
wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome all
men into his fellowship. "Real glad to see you," he would say, with a
ready smile of comradeship; and it always seemed as though he had added:
"I hope you'll make yourself at home while with me." In some mysterious
way, Happy Dick was at all times the host giving liberally of the best he
had to his fellow-men.
He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. "Born in it, I think," he
would say. "Don't quite remember," adding with his ever-varying smile,
"Remember when it was born, anyway."
When the "Overland Telegraph" was built across the Australian continent
from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide, was cut for it
through bush and scrub and dense forests, along the backbone of
Australia, and in this avenue the line party was "born" and bred - a party
of axemen and mechanics under the orders of a foreman, whose duty it is
to keep the "Territory section" of the line in repair, and this avenue
free from the scrub and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.
In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon hundreds
of miles, carpeted with feathery grasses and shooting scrubs, and walled
in on either side with dense, towering forest or lighter and more
scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter loneliness, zigzagging
from horizon to horizons beyond, and guarding those two sensitive wires
at its centre, as they run along their single line of slender galvanised
posts, from the great bush that never ceases in its efforts to close in
on them and engulf them. A great broad highway, waiting in its loneliness
for the generations to come, with somewhere in its length the line party
camp, and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance traveller or
two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and grazing along
behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag across its
shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred miles of solitude,
here and there a horseman riding, and here and there a footman trudging
on, each unconscious of the others.
From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days, with
those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever running on
before them and as they travel, now and then they touch a post for
company - shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then a post for
company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and
wires can be. Here at least is something in touch with the world
something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an
ever-present friend in dire necessity.
