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Cootamundra Herald (NSW), Saturday 11 April 1891, page 3

The Travellers’ Hut

Snug, Tidy Little Shanty

An Australian ‘Institution’

A furlong or two from the cluster of low wooden buildings which are the component parts of the home-station, you will discover generally—invariably, in the more remote regions of the bush—a snug, tidy little shanty, existing solely for the convenience of tramps and vagabonds. It is known generically as “The Travellers’ Hut,” and it is free to the world and his mate—free as the shelter of the nearest gum-tree. The galvanised-iron roof harbors for the night—and for nothing—any Tom, Dick or Harry of the bush; that is what it is there for. The rough bunks, which are arranged round the walls on the plan of a ship’s forecastle are ready each night for the poor men, beggarmen, knave. Rich gentlemen, it is true, and gentlemen who are not rich find a welcome as ready (but less rough) in the homestead itself; for even in the bush there are classes and masses; and the travellers’ hut is for the masses.

Any cutthroat may make himself comfortable there, even though his pockets be empty (and pockets usually are empty in the bush). For there is not only a travellers’ hut at almost every back-block station, there are “travellers’ rations” too. You look in at the station-store, and ask for them as a matter of course, and receive a handful of tea, another of sugar, and a pannikin of flour. Travellers’ rations used to include a portion of meat as well: but that was found too expensive in the long run and at most stations the meat seems to be permanently “off.” The bill of fare, however, remains sufficiently good, seeing that it is to be had for nothing. Indeed the travellers’ hut is practically the bushman’s hotel, without the damage, not to say the danger, the hotel being strictly a temperance one. And it is certainly a monument, if an obscure one, to that hospitality which is linked so pleasantly and so very generally with the name of Australia.

As sundown rarely fails to bring some “swagman” to the station—some tramp with his cylinder of blankets upon his back, and a comfortable night at the travellers’ hut in his mind’s eye—it will be imagined that the young gentleman in charge of the stores whose business it is to supply the travellers with their rations, has through his hands some queer customers. They are, indeed, a motley procession. The majority, perhaps, are genuine hands enough—men who will jump at work if you have any to offer—men who tramp on from station to station until they get work. But at best it is a bare majority. With a large proportion of “swaggies” work is the last thing wanted. The number of men who spend their days in loafing from travellers’ hut to travellers’ hut, consistently refusing work wherever it offers is indeed extraordinary. It is the habit of these gentry to “camp” in the scrub within a mile of the homestead until sundown—it is not safe to turn up at a station much before sundown, you might get sent on to the next—and then to crawl in with every sign of exhaustion and distress. They are the typical “sundowners,” than which (malgre the rabbit) there is no greater pest in the “back blocks.” And the sundowners are the boys to appetite the cheerful travellers’ rations. Their prevalence makes it a mistake to order your travellers’ hut too cosily. If you do, you will find it is your hut they go choosing to get sore feet in, or sprained ankles, or something—there would be no getting rid of them.

The sundowner is a great judge of travellers’ huts, as well as an assiduous patron; but he is a common place creature at worst. There are more extraordinary visitors than the sundowner. For example one that is only too frequent—there is the tramp who was a gentleman once in the old country, and has not yet quite shed his gentility. He is revealed very often by his reserve, and it is never easy to suit him with a “billet;” he wants solitude and a camp to himself somewhere out on the “run”—boundary riding or whim-driving for choice. He is an interesting young man enough, either his speech or his looks are certain to betray him, and to excite the curiosity of the station ladies. Their eye for the romance of the bush has been sharpened, no doubt, by the rough and tender lines of their own bush poet: —

Out there on the station, among the lads,

I get on pretty well;

It’s only when I get down into town

That I feel this life such a hell!

Booted and bearded, and burnt to a brick,

I loaf along the street;

I watch the ladies tripping by,

And I watch their dainty feet,

I watch them here and there

With a bitter feeling of pain,

Ah! what wouldn’t I give to feel

A lady’s hand again!

Then there is the drinking man. Most bushmen are drinking men when they have a cheque in their pockets; but many a penniless outcast will never think of passing without angling for alcohol. The fly most in favour with this wily fisherman is toothache or neuralgia. He will rush up to the homestead about bedtime in mortal agony, very likely howling with pain. “Brandy” is the only word he seems able to articulate; but if this be denied him he is generally able to groan for painkiller. It is possible to get most successfully intoxicated on painkiller; the means are not ideal, but the end is all that can be desired—at lest, so they say. But the toothache trick, like all other really creditable frauds, has grown stale through vulgar usage. It is now, one regrets to think, almost as obsolete as the snake bite dodge, which, in its time, met with startling success. This was quite the most charming take-in in the world. One burst into the station in a wild frenzy—snakebitten. The sufferer’s one chance for life lying (as is well known) in swift intoxication—“a drunk of really a noble glass” (to quote one of Mr. Hardy’s rustics) would thus be compassed by a self inflicted knife prick and a little clever acting. But, though the acting was often done to the life, the dodge was done to death—so much so, that even genuine cases came to be treated with suspicion and disbelief, in spite of what were often too literally their “dying oaths.” But no doubt there are new, and equally crafty, stratagems known to the thirsty swagmen of to-day.

But the travellers’ hut has been known to shelter far stranger men than these; men with wild, restless eyes, and fearful, hunted expressions. Some night or other some such slinks in, and speaks to no one but the phantoms of his dreams, if he dares sleep —he is more likely to he awake in his bunk all night, listening and quaking at every sound. First thing in morning he is gone, mysteriously, and no one quite knows in what direction. Then a brace of mounted policemen draw rein at the station, put questions, and gallop on. And a few nights later the three come leisurely back together—the wild-looking man “with gyves upon his wrists,” and his bright eyes dulled with the heaviness of despair; and there is nothing to keep him awake and trembling now, when they all pass the night together in the travellers’ hut; for it is no good his lying awake to watch the barrel of the Government revolver that covers him all night long, nor, with the feeling of the rope already round his neck is there anything more for him to start up and shudder about, poor soul. So the storekeeper may serve travellers’ rations to a red-handed murderer any evening almost. There is never any knowing.

Queer things, indeed must be heard by the log walls of the travellers’ hut, if walls have ears. Dark caverns of life have been lit up, no doubt by the tongues of flame leaping up that great square chimney; romance of every hue has slumbered in these rough-hewn, worm-eaten bunks. But the romance of bush life is not quite what it was in the gold digging, bushranging, rosy fifties. Moreover, the travellers’ hut, like most other privileges, has been abused a good deal. If it is beginning to disappear in consequence, the deserving portion of the tramp community have only those vile sundowners to thank whose doing it is. I do not say that it is disappearing; but most squatters would rather burn their travellers’ huts to the ground than have their homesteads infested with noxious loafers; and some, in fact, have done so.