Читать книгу A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip - Edward S Sorenson - Страница 3
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CHAPTER I.
An Early Start— A Milkmaid of the Interior—A Digger's Home.
At certain seasons our several Governments combine to run excursion trains from Broken Hill to Sydney (and vice-versa), via Adelaide and Melbourne. I sampled the excursion at the time the Duke of York was visiting Australia. A lot of people were going east then to see Royalty. I had no appointment with him myself; in fact, I wasn't going down to see the Duke at all—nor even the Duchess. The prolonged drought of that period, with its heat and flies and thirst and duststorms, was getting monotonous, and the cheap excursion decided me that I wanted a change of climate.
Being at Tibooburra, 200 miles from the railway station, I had to start early to catch the express. I started three weeks before hand. This was to allow time to recover from the awful coach trip before beginning the long train journey.
It was not a mere holiday trip with me; I was going for good. There was nothing about Tibooburra to hold the affections of one who had known the regions of great forests and perennial streams. It was a small town, with only one street; but there were three hotels in it, and it seemed to do a fairly good business for a far inland town that was surrounded with endless miles of emptiness. It was a picturesque little spot, in what the coastal people call the Land of Sunset, noticeable particularly for the numerous huge cone-shaped piles of stones or gibbers around it, and for the immense flocks of goats that dotted the immediate landscape.
Turn where you would, Billy and Nanny and the kids were always in evidence. They mooched through the street, and they slept on the footpath, indifferent to passers-by. On a dark night the passer-by sometimes passed over a prostrate form into the mud. They could be seen like mere specks on the distant flat, and posed in all manner of attitudes on the rocky hillsides, with one here and there silhouetted against the sky line, standing like a living statue on the topmost rock of a lofty pinnacle. It was the home of the goat; for there were no other animals to be seen, excepting an odd horse and a stray dog here and there. The sparse herbage and the rugged nature of the local pasture did not support cows. Goat milk, goat meat and even goat butter were common items in the family bill of fare.
Here the milkmaid was a familiar figure in the street. Where nearly everybody who had time to attend to the animals kept goats, there was only room for one in the dairying business. She was about 16, the main support of a widowed mother. She did her round on foot, carrying a quart measure and a billycan; but a bare-legged boy accompanied her with a home-made goat-cart, on which the bulk of the milk was carried. Her principal customers were the hotels and stores; and there were a few houses outside the "main street" which the little milk-cart visited regularly, rattling over the broken ground and among the rock heaps on a narrow track of its own. She was truly a picture of the great, dry, central region, this little milkmaid. Her turn out brought a smile from visitors; but nobody else seemed to notice anything unusual about it. Casual customers met the milk cart with their jugs, and toddlers looked for a noggin when she came along.
At milking time you saw her and the mother and two small boys in the midst of a flock, going busily from one goat to another with their cans. They milked them anywhere in the yard, and when the work was over the herd was turned loose among the gibbers. Now and again one was kept back to be killed for meat, a task in which the girl was again the chief actor. Mustering the flock was an interesting process. They mingled with a thousand other goats, most of which bore a very striking resemblance to each other to a stranger. There would be a score of juveniles goat-hunting at once, running along the narrow valleys, climbing up and down the piled-up rocks, searching every nook, and roaming over the broken flats, calling their pets, and drafting them out of the mixed mobs. They all had names for their goats; and they all knew them individually. The little dairymaid owned about 300. In her little world the goat was not only the family sustenance, but took the place of the cow in all the other homes of the neighbourhood.
I carried away with me one other vivid picture of that place, the home of a digger's wife; for here I picked up John Jovius Muggs, a shrewd battler, who was also going "down below." He was some distant relation of hers; and he called me over to help to recover a poddy foal that had slipped into an old shaft.
The dwelling, like many another around it, was a patchwork structure, built into an indentation in a huge pile of rocks. In this position it had to conform somewhat to the natural outline of the limited site. It was neither square, oblong, nor round, and the visitor had no idea of its dimensions until he got inside. You had to stoop to enter, but inside you could straighten yourself out and admire the craftsmanship of the architect. The walls were partly of immovable rock and partly of hessian; the floor was a mixture of soft granite and natural cement; and in front, some distance from the verandah, was a high wind-break of cane grass. The kitchen was in a wide angle, at the side, the spacious fireplace being also in part built by nature, and in part by the digger with rough stones and pug.
Nearly all the furniture was home-made. Packing-cases were transformed into tables, easy chairs, chests of drawers, cupboards, dressers, shelves and beds. The sofa or lounge, covered with cretonne, was fashioned of the same rough material, padded with horsehair. The cooking was done much in the same way as in a camp or a bushman's hut; but there was no floor-scrubbing and no window cleaning.
Sometimes in the afternoon the woman visited a neighbour's place, planted among other piles of rocks, and invisible until you got near it. Sometimes she took the children along the little flats and gullies, prospecting in the alluvial. In these rambles, especially after rain, they picked up many specks of gold, and sometimes discovered a payable claim for the old man. At night "mother" sat at the table, blowing the black sand from the gold that "father" had obtained during the day, before bottling it and putting it away for Saturday.
A little, oblong-shaped hole near the house showed the source of their water supply. It was only a few feet deep, and the water in it looked only enough to last a day or two. But it never gave out. Close by each of the neighbours' places was a similar soakage. Besides being used for household purposes, the water was run in little channels through a cultivated plot; in another angle of the rock-heap, which supplied them with vegetables and fruit. The rock-heap was their own little mountain, over which their goats climbed and browsed, and in the nooks and corners of which their fowls scratched and planted their nests. It was a home suited to the hot, dusty, western clime, where people live under different conditions from those of other parts of the State. It was the typical digger's home in the region known as Mount Browne.
When I was called over by Mr. Muggs, the woman was assisting to hoist the foal from the shaft, which was about 12ft. deep. A tripod and blocking tackle were fixed up over it; and having fastened a rope round the foal, we hauled it up. Then, while the woman and I hung on to the rope, Mr. Muggs got behind the foal to shove it clear of the shaft. He had no sooner put his hands against it than the suspended animal struggled violently, and kicked him backwards into the shaft. We couldn't run to his assistance, or to inquire if he had sustained any damage. We had to hang on all we could; and meanwhile Mr. Muggs watched the struggling beast from below, dreading every moment that we would let it drop on top of him.
Luckily, the digger came home for his lunch, and in a moment or two we were relieved of the poddy. Then we hauled up Mr. Muggs, who was mainly suffering from the terror that had hung over him; after which we had just time to get lunch before boarding the coach for the long road.
