Читать книгу A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip - Edward S Sorenson - Страница 7

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From The Corner to Broken Hill, from Yulpunga to Bourke this great triangle, the Cinderella of the State, is the home of the duststorm, the place where the monsoon revels in all its might and glory. Samples of real estate are blown up from these western plains, and distributed over the continent, and rained into two oceans. Red sand that has been swept up hereabouts and from farther out, after being borne a thousand miles overland, has fallen on ships many leagues away from land. The country is mostly flat, thinly grassed in dry summers, and the loose surface soil is torn away and lifted to form the immeasurable clouds that wreck havoc and misery where they rain, leaving the ground scarred and swept as though it had been washed by a strong flood.

Sometimes the storms are gathering for days, and you see the sky overcast with a muggy or reddish glare, and secretly dread the coming blast. Yet as it appears here, it is a magnificent sight. The enormous banks of dust come whirling and whizzing across the country, like rolling folds upon folds of storm clouds bowling over the landscape and seeming to touch the very heavens in the mighty wall that obscures everything. Before this wall the air is quite clear; there are no leaders, whiffs or puffs to indicate that the splendid, convulsive columns are formed of dust. It is at times appalling in its magnitude and fearful grandeur. Suddenly your world is plunged into darkness; you see nothing; feel only the sting of the driving sand against your hands and face. Your nostrils and eyes are filled; you are blinded and suffocated, and tears stream from your eyes. Your horse turns from the blast, and cattle turn and drive you before them. You are helpless; you can only lie down flat, in a deep gully if possible, and let it sweep over you. It is gone in a few minutes.

Three of us were one afternoon holding a mob of sheep on a plain when a dust storm came on to us. It was not a very heavy one, but blinding. We continued to ride round what we supposed to be the sheep, shouting at intervals, and thanking our stars that they were giving so little trouble. When the storm had passed we found that we had two old, partially-blind ewes; the mob had disappeared into the timber two miles across the plain.

On another occasion we were caught near an excavated tank. The latter was deep, and had but little water in it. The cloud looked like a colossal mountain being removed bodily, reaching as far as we could see east and west, its top lost in limitless space. As it swept towards us, in countless spinning folds like living monsters gambolling and rolling over each other, we left our horses, and rushed down into the tank, where we lay under a rain of sand until the desert demon had passed.

The now-defunct "Sturt Recorder," of Milparinka, gave the experience of a couple of men in that same storm. "For half an hour it was darker than the darkest night," said one. "I was holding a grey horse by the bit, and could not see him. After he got away from me I lay flat down on the batter of a tank, and tried several times to see my hand only a few inches from my face, but could discern nothing." The other man related: "My mate and I took shelter in a tent, and lit a candle, but for a minute or two we could not even see the light, and for some time, were unable to see each other, notwithstanding the candle was still burning.'

Almost anywhere west of Broken Hill you would find trees standing on the ends of their roots, the soil having been swept from under them. Here and there you saw a few inches of the tops of a fence that had been buried, and the boundary rider told you that there was a second fence under it, and sometimes another under that, the three fences having been erected one on top of the other, and successively buried by drifting sand. On many runs men were following fences with shovels, occasionally with teams and scoops, all through the summer, breaking up the hard banks and scattering the stuff through the wires, so that the wind would carry it on. It was remarkable, considering the penetrating propensity of this fine sand, that a single wire a foot or even two feet off the ground would cause a bank of sand to gather till the wire was covered. Netting fences were buried very quickly.

In other places, instead of fences being buried, we found the ground cut away from under the posts till they toppled over. I have seen a couple of chains of fencing lying flat at a stretch, from 18 to 20 inches of earth being carried away to get under the posts. Where the ground was very hard the earth round the uprights had been whisked out by strong winds, leaving them toppling in all directions. It was rather a difficult task to erect a permanent fence in such localities.

Ploughs and scoops had to be used round some of the houses to prevent the doors and windows being blocked up. Sand brakes were built at tanks, wells and troughs, and some of the homesteads were walled in. A strong wire fence was first run round, then brush or cane-grass was woven among the wires so as to form a substantial wall eight or ten feet high. It was far cheaper in the long run to thus fortify your house against the besieging dry storms than to be eternally removing the sandhills they dropped down at your doors. At Morney Plains Q. L. a new drafting yard that cost £500 was entirely buried at the end of 1901. That was the sultry year we left the north west .

Conaulpie Downs, near the Queensland border, was a typical western homestead. It had a retaining wall on the northern side, and clumps of trees to protect it on the other sides. It was a fairly substantial wooden building with iron roof, the ceiling and walls being lined with hessian, and papered. After a big storm nothing in those rooms could be seen for dust. It could be gathered in handfuls off tables and beds, and shaken in showers from curtains. One visitation during my stay there was so severe that men had to shovel the dust off the floors into barrows and wheel it away. During the same summer the ceilings of two rooms broke down with the weight of dust that had collected above them.

In other houses one noticed bulges in the canvas ceilings, showing where little hillocks of sand had gathered on top. Where the ceilings were painted or whitewashed, sewn-up slits in the canvas were noticeable, showing where a knife had been thrust in to run off the sand. Wooden ceilings gathered sufficient weight in time to render them dangerous if not relieved of the pressure. No building was free from the penetrating dust. It got into every crevice and corner. Wherever air could enter it carried the nuisance with it. Imagine then the cleaning up after a big blow—and big blows happened along frequently through the summer.

I rode up to a tank one day immediately after a storm, and found about a hundred rabbits groping blindly about near the water. They had been caught there while drinking, and were unable to get away. They blinked helplessly at me, their eyes being dammed up with a circular ridge of wet sand, moistened with their own tears. In the same way sheep were blinded, and before they could recover, ravens pounced on them, clinging to their necks, and pecked their eyes out. I have seen stockmen, boundary-riders and travellers wash their horses' eyes with water from their canvas bags, and when no water was at hand they wiped the animals' eyes with their handkerchiefs.

The maps showed numerous watercourses over this area, but like a good many of the lakes shown in other parts, they were merely depressions in the landscape. A heavy fall of rain would cause a roaring flood in any of them. Often the water spread over the flat country in an unbroken sheet for 30 miles or more; but in a week it had all vanished. The winding dark lines of timber looming across the plains looked promising, but a man might perish of thirst following the courses in search of a pothole. There was plenty of water underground, but a reservoir that had to be tapped with a boring plant wasn't much good to a thirsty traveller

"Looking for thunderstorms" was a common phrase out west. Stockmen rode out day after day (when weather conditions had been favourable), looking for tracks of wet storms, and following them across the runs. When any holes or tanks on a storm's course had received a few days' supply sheep were at once shifted on to them, only to be removed on to the track of another storm, perhaps many miles away, a week later. The tracks of these storms, were often not more than half a mile wide, and it was one of the most tantalising experiences of western squatting to see storm after storm cross the parched runs and miss every hole and tank upon them, while filling a long chain of claypans between. These claypans next day presented the surface of miniature lakes, and a couple of days after, the bare depressions showed hard and white under a blistering sun. An alluring mirage hovered over each one, like a body of water, until the horseman drew near; then it lifted, to appear again at the next.

Cattle, viewed through the everlasting haze of the plains, looked like giraffes, elongated monstrosities that seemed to hover on a shadowy surface several feet above the earth. Sheep assumed the proportions of oxen, and the whole atmosphere appeared to be filled with films of dancing, shimmering silk. Distances were hard to gauge; horsemen disappeared at no great distance on open plains. You saw something coming towards you, but until quite close you could not tell whether it was a footman or a camel, an emu or a bullock team; for all objects seemed to float, sometimes to within speaking distance, till the haze flitted beyond them when they resumed their normal shape and dimensions.

Almost the only natural hole of water that had any claim to permanency in the extreme north-west was that known as Depot Glen, in Evelyn Creek. It was also called Sturts' Waterhole. Fish were fairly plentiful in this water, consequently it was a great camping ground of the aborigines. This was the place that Captain Sturt had the good fortune to strike in the summer of 1844, when the whole country was sun-scorched, barren and gaping, and where Surveyor Poole, the second in command, left his bones. Sheltering the grave was a tree bearing the inscription, "J.P., 1845," which was cut by a member of the party. A pyramidal headstone, erected by Mr. Lang, of Mount Poole, also marked the resting-place of the first white man buried in that corner of the State. The place where Sturt had his underground dwelling was shown by an indentation a few yards from it. Rocky Glen, half a mile away, was a beautiful spot. Mount Poole was marked on the summit by a pyramidal cairn, which was built by the explorers.

Sturt had expected to find here a vast inland sea, and the remains of the boat he brought with him to sail across it were still treasured at the homestead. Had he crossed Mount Poole in the rainy season, and seen in place of the endless stony plains an expanse of brown water extending away to the horizon, he would have thought for awhile that he had really found the sea; he would have sailed upon it, only to find the water disappear from under him in a few hours. Nevertheless, scientific men who examined the country were convinced that a turbulent, permanent sea once actually existed there, Sturt was only a thousand years or so too late with his boat.

Delalah and Yantarn counties have several small lakes, as Gultamuleha, Balwarry, Yantara, and the Salt Lake ; while Bulloo Lake, the largest in that region, is only a short distance from the latter. It is the headquarters and the great breeding-place of the western waterfowl. Boulka Lake and Cobham Lake look well on the map, dotted right in the north-west comer of New South Wales, where a lake is a greater desidera than a gold mine. The "Corner" is an auriferous field, which has borne a goodly population of dryblowers and fossickers for many decades; with a lasting wet lake ever throwing white caps to the shimmering haze, little Tibooburra and Milparinka might blossom info fine cities.

I had heard a lot of talk of Cobham Lake. To people along the western border of Queensland, hundreds of miles away, the name was as familiar as Broken Hill. Naturally I expected to find something special in the way of lakes. I was disappointed. The lake was there, but it had no water in it.

The oldest inhabitant said it was the first time it had ever been known to go dry. He said it sorrowfully, bitterly, seeming to regard it as an old friend who had gone back on him. He had so long crowed over his fellow-patriarchs of Depot Glen; he had often said: "Pooh! Look at Cobham!" when the other fossils had praised his own pond, that he felt disgraced and humiliated. His dignity was injured; his pride was wounded; his prestige was ruined; his spirit was broken. Cobham had fallen from its grand eminence to a second-rate waterhole. It might rise to greater magnificence than ever in the next wet season, but it could never recover its good name. It wasn't permanent. Depot Glen had beaten it; and henceforth for all time Depot Glen was the boss waterhole. Worse than that, the ancient resident of the place wrote to inquire how the fish were biting in his claypan. he wished he had died before such ignominy had come upon him.