Читать книгу A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip - Edward S Sorenson - Страница 10

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One heard a lady passenger remark on the loneliness of the aspect as the coach passed some hut or Cottage standing back from the little-frequented road. "If I had to live in a place like that I'd die," she declared.

The loneliness didn't trouble the settler much, though the want of communion with other women made it a little hard for his wife. Still the country bred woman found the noisy city much more distasteful. There are people who cannot be happy away from the bustle of city streets; there are others who can find happiness only in the quiet of the bush. So the lone cottage is not always planted where it is because the people cannot afford to live in closer contact with their kind. City people, judging their country cousins by their own ideals, waste a lot of sympathy in this respect.

Sydney women, despite all the comforts and conveniences that surrounded them, and the beauty and delights of their environment, found no end of things to grumble about and to worry over. The thorn in the rosy path of Mrs. Potts Point was the difficulty of getting good and reliable and inexpensive servants to do her work for her. It was a worry to ring up the registry office every week or two, and to find the maid not quite up to the high standard of proficiency required when she arrived, and when the house was temporarily maidless, to have to get one's own dinner—though it could be purchased ready cooked, to make the family bed, and look after the intrusive baby.

While, the mental eye dwelt on this good lady, fuming impatiently at her telephone, our moving picture show, the mail couch, introduced Madame Merino, who was preeminent among the women of the west. Her husband was a squatter; she was therefore comparatively free to have what she liked, provided the finances were healthy, which depended on the seasons. Yet she was going down for a change of sea air for the first time in five years.

"At last!" she said smilingly to the driver as she met the coach, and the driver understood. The expression was eloquent. She had promised herself that trip year after year, and "at last" she was under weigh.

There were some, she told you, who made an annual pilgrimage for the Show or the Melbourne Cup, and there were others who never left the west. Those lived anywhere from 10 to 50 miles from a small town; and once in a couple of moons or so they drove in for a short visit.

The town was little different from the squattage. You saw a few more people: you saw an occasional dog fight, when the outside dog met the town dog; you heard the scant news of the countryside; you could "Come and have a drink," but the only other attractions were the grass fed races and a ball once or twice a year, when the little town woke up for a couple of days and a couple of nights.

Madame Merino lived 200 miles from a railway terminus. The house was built of wood and iron, with papered walls and ceilings. There were stables and yards and huts scattered about; but away from the homestead there were no habitations for many miles. Except in the morning and evening, when there were men bustling around, the place seemed in sleep. Now and again drovers went by, and teams passed along the distant road. Occasionally there were visitors, who arrived at any hour between daylight and midnight. They might be a neighbouring squatter and his family, who require board and lodgings at a moments notice; and not infrequently they dropped in when she had no help. and was up to her eyes in work. There were no regular "at home" days there; people called when it suited them. Swagmen called between times, and in the absence of the boss these sought "the missus" for rations.

She had a "maid and general" and a man cook. Sometimes she had a governess or lady's help as well. Her nearest supply depot was the town, 10 miles away, which supplied an odd demand at long intervals. As a rule, she had to write to Broken Hill, or to Adelaide, or Sydney. The first named was the cheapest for passage money had to be guaranteed both ways. The single coach fare from Broken Hill was £6. The usual term of engagement was six months. If the servant left before that she had to pay the return fare out of her own pocket. With a 200 mile coach journey to face, and a 10 mile drive, in a buggy in addition, to be "bottled in the bush" for months, girls who had been used to a town life were very chary of taking such a situation.

Mrs. Potts Point had the privilege of inspecting and catechizing her maid before engaging her; but Madame Merino knew nothing about hers until she arrived at the door with her trunk and hatbox. Generally speaking, she was a good girl; the industrious sort, who had a savings bank account, and who knew that the best place to swell that account was the backblock squattage, where wages were higher, opportunities of spending almost nil, and dress requirements considerably diminished. Many put in a whole year without drawing a penny of their wages. Another attraction was the scarcity of marriageable women.

"I prefer plain girls," said Madame, "for when I get a good looking one I know the moment she arrives that I am spending £12 to provide somebody with a wife. And she has to be uncommonly plain if some lovelorn swain doesn't fall down and worship her before her half year is up."

Then marriageable woman remained scarce, for the dull-greyness of the general outlook more than counterbalanced the advantages. This, too, left the way open for the domestic who was unable to keep town places; and no matter how incompetent or now lazy she was, she couldn't be sacked except on payment of six months' wages and her fare both ways. It was no use quarrelling with a maid of that sort; she could hit back with impunity: so Madame Merino had to put up with whims and caprices and a lack of capacity that Mrs. Potts Point would not tolerate for a day.

In the old days the aboriginal woman helped to smooth many a rugged path. She made life in lonely places easier and more pleasant to the white women. Only those who had to rely on her industry and bush knowledge know how important a part she played, once she was properly civilised, in the settlement of the hinterlands. Some there were who did not care to have blacks about the place; others would not employ an aborigine, as it frequently meant a camp following that required something like a boarding-house to feed. But there were a great many places, apart from squattage homesteads, that always had a blacks' camp in the vicinity; and everybody who desired, rich and poor alike, had aboriginal servants.

The aboriginal servant was cheap—except to feed. She carried away in her dilly-bag all she could get. She was never selfish; if she belonged to a camp in the neighbourhood she remembered everybody in it when there was tucker about. As a set-off against this, she was useful in obtaining wild game, fish and honey for her white mistress. For 5s a week and meals, supplemented with any old clothes—whether a frock or a pair of trousers didn't matter to her—and a bit of tobacco, she would do anything required of her. But she was a rigid stickler for the eight hour principle. She could not be persuaded to get up early—except to go to the races. She arrived at the kitchen about breakfast time, and required her breakfast—partaken of at the woodheap—before she commenced work; then she liked to get back to camp before dark. Always she returned with a miscellaneous collection of titbits in her vade mecum, the dilly-bag.

She did the washing and scrubbing; she looked after the younger children, being a gentle and attentive nurse; and she carried water, balancing the bucket on her head; and she carried wood also, which she picked up with her toes. Finally she chopped up the sticks with her tomahawk, a task which she always sat down to. She was handy in running messages, hunting up the horses and cows, and finding stolen nests in grass and scrub when eggs were wanted. She instructed the white women in bushcraft, especially in turning to use whatever nature had provided in the locality. Often she was her mistress' only female companion, and a comradeship existed between them that was hardly understandable among later generations.

To any good girl, Madame Merino was comrade and friend. She told of a time when she reached home with one just after a duststorm. They had experienced the blinding fury of it on the road, which was misery enough in one dose; but the sight that met her at the homestead filled her with dismay. Men were in the room with barrows and shovels, cleaning out the sand. Mistress and maid worked till midnight, dusting and sweeping; and at daylight they started again, washing and scrubbing. When they had got all nicely clean along came another duststorm, and everything was smothered again. They sat down and cried, but the experience cemented a friendship that was never forgotten.

It was a dry summer. In the midst of it the water gave out at the homestead, and they shifted to an excavated tank 10 miles away. Here they had a hessian hut, tents and bough shed, experiencing much of the normal conditions under which the poorer class have to live; their water carried in buckets or in an iron tank; their fire in the open, baking done in a camp-oven, all structures and fittings rough and temporary; no fruit nor vegetables, no milk or butter.

Not far away was a selector's hut. The selector was weatherbound down country with a team, waiting for rain to get home. His wife and daughters were drawing water and cutting scrub for stock. In the evening they met for friendly gossip; these hard working women and Madame Merino and her girls; and they talked of the country life they had known in other parts, in the great, fruitful regions of the east and the north and the south.

In the homes of her city friends the gas stove, the water laid on, the fixed tubs and copper, with a tap over each, particularly appealed to Madame Merino. She had stood so often over the washtub herself; that tub that has to be carried away and emptied, and filled with the aid of buckets. There were conveniences for cooking that were unknown in the west, though the west had double the cooking to do. There all the baking was done at home. She did most of her own sewing also. Yet, when she looked around her, she considered herself fortunate in the possession of a sewing machine. Her neighbours of the tank did all their sewing by hand, making their own wearing apparel, sheets and pillow-slips, and the men's shirts. Much of their furniture was made out of packing-cases, draped with cretonne. There wasn't much in their home, but the collection represented a prodigious amount of home-work.

They did not complain, these patient women of the west, though they lived under hard conditions, buffering the torments of flies and ants and dust and heat through the long summers, with no trains or trams to run them away at week-ends—or month ends or year-ends—to the seaside or to the mountains. Theirs was a combination of the simple life and the strenuous life, but it had its compensations. With the passing of the summer day they drifted into Elysium; and the east, with its more humid climate, could show nothing comparable to the starry brilliance of the western night.