The Fizzer brings in great
piles of mail-matter, unweighed and unstamped, with many of the envelopes
bursting or,
At times, in place of an envelope, a request for one; and
"our officers," getting to work with their "courtesy," soon put all in
order, not disdaining even the licking of stamps or the patching or
renewing of envelopes. Letters and packets are weighed, stamped, and
repaired - often readdressed where addresses for South are blurred; stamps
are supplied for outgoing mail-matter and telegrams; postage-dues and
duties paid on all incoming letters and parcels - in fact, nothing is left
for us to do but to pay expenses incurred when the account is rendered at
the end of each six months. No doubt our Department would also read and
write our letters for us if we wished it, as it does, at times, for the
untutored.
Wherever it can, it helps the bush-folk, and they, in turn, doing what
they can to help it in self-imposed task, are ever ready to "find room
somewhere" in pack-bags or swags for mail-matter in need of transport
assistance - the general opinion being that "a man that refuses to carry a
man's mail to him 'ud be mean enough to steal bread out of a bird-cage."
In all the knowledge of the bush-folk, only one man had proved "mean
enough." A man who shall be known as the Outsider, for he was one of a
type who could never be one of the bush-folk, even though he lived
out-bush for generations: a man so walled in with self and selfishness
that, look where he would, he could see nothing grander or better than
his own miserable self, and knowing all a mail means to a bushman, he
could refuse to carry a neighbour's mail - even though his road lay
through that neighbour's run - because he had had a difference with him.
"Stealing bread from a caged bird wasn't in it!" the homestead agreed,
with unspeakable scorn; but the man was so reconciled to himself that the
scorn passed over him unnoticed. He even missed the contempt in the
Maluka's cutting "Perfectly!" when he hoped we understood him. (The
Outsider, by the way, spoke of the Never-Never as a land where you can
Never-Never gel a bally thing you want! the Outsider's wants being of the
flesh pots of Egypt). It goes without saying that the Maluka sent that
neighbour's mail to him without delay, even though it meant a four-days'
journey for a "boy" and station horses, for the bush-folk do what they
can to help each other and the Department in the matter of mails, as in
all else.
Fortunately, the Outsider always remained the only exception, and within
a day or two of the Fizzer's visit a traveller passed through going east
who happened to know that the "chap from Victoria Downs was just about
due at Hodgson going back west," and one letter went forward in his
pocket en route to its owner. But before the other could be claimed Cheon
had opened the last eighty-pound chest of tea, and the homestead fearing
the supply might not be equal to the demands of the Wet, the Dandy was
dispatched in all haste for an extra loading of stores. And all through
his absence, as before it, and before the Fizzer's visit, Dan and the
elements "kept things humming."
Daily the soakage yielded less and less water, and daily Billy Muck and
Cheon scrimmaged over its yield; for Billy's melons were promising to pay
a liberal dividend, and Cheon's garden was crying aloud for water. Every
day was filled with flies, and dust, and prickly heat, and daily and
hourly our hands waved unceasingly, as they beat back the multitude of
flies that daily and hourly assailed us - the flies and dust treated all
alike, but the prickly heat was more chivalrous, and refrained from
annoying a woman. "Her usual luck!" the men-folk said, utilising
verandah-posts or tree-trunks for scratching posts when not otherwise
engaged. Daily "things" and the elements hummed, and as they hummed Dan
and Jack came and went like Will-o'-the-Wisps - sometimes from the
south-east and sometimes from the north-east; and as they came and went,
the Maluka kept his hand on the helm; Happy Dick filled in odd times as
he alone knew how; a belated traveller or two passing out came in, and
went on, or remained; Brown of the Bulls sent on a drover ahead of the
mob to spy out the land, and the second letter left the rack, while all
who came in, or went on, or remained, during their stay at the homestead,
stood about the posts and uprights waving off flies, and rubbing and
wriggling against the posts like so many Uriah Heeps, as they laid plans,
gossiped, gave in reports, or "swopped yarns." The Territory is hardly an
earthly paradise just before the showers. Still, Cheon did all he could
to make things pleasanter, regaling all daily on hop-beer, and all who
came in were sure of a welcome from him - Dan invariably inspiring him
with that ever fresh little joke of his when announcing afternoon tea to
the quarters. "Cognac!" he would call, and also invariably, Dan made a
great show of expectant haste, and a corresponding show of
disappointment, when the teapot only was forthcoming.
But Cheon's little joke and the afternoon tea were only interludes in the
heat and thirst and dust. Daily things hummed faster and faster, and the
South-east Trades skirmished and fought with the North-west monsoon,
until the Willy-Willys, towering higher and higher sped across the plain
incessantly, and whirled, and spun and danced like storm witches, in, and
out and about the homestead enclosure, leaving its acres all dust, and
only dust, with the house, lightly festooned in creepers now, and set in
its deep-green luxuriant garden of melons, as a pleasant oasis in a
desert of glare and dust.
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