Читать книгу Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush - G. Firth Scott - Страница 12

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Cudlip's Rest originally owed its existence to a small rush that set in on Boulder Creek in the early sixties, that period in Australian history when the gold fever was badly abroad, and men were leaving everything—hearth, home, kith, kin, and often life as well—to join in the mad scurry after the will-o'-the-wisp which they were pleased to call fortune. Boulder Creek, a small stream—when rain fell—full of big stones, and with here and there a patch of yellow sandy gravel lying in corners and crevices, wound its way through country which was equally rocky, but with just enough soil above the rock to sparsely nourish the gnarled, scraggy gums which waged with the spear-grass a constant struggle for existence.

The road to the west from Birralong crossed Boulder Creek, running along the summit of a dwarfed ridge, parallel with the valley of the stream, until it took a sudden turn downwards towards a spot where the stones were less numerous, and which was locally known as the Ford. Halfway down from the top of the ridge to the level of the creek, about an acre spread out flat on the left-hand side, and here Cudlip's Rest was built.

There was gold in the creek at the time, tradition said, and men trooped down to it from all parts, camping along the ridge, and climbing down with the dawn to the bed of the creek and digging where they could in the sandy gravel, or picking at the boulders and dollying the fragments in the hopes of discovering some of the gold which report said was to be found in the creek. As the sun went down at the end of each day, the men climbed back to their tents on the ridge, cursing their luck—or the want of it—to satisfy their hunger. Then they wandered with one accord to the flat where Cudlip's Rest was situated, and assisted in making the only "pile" which was ever amassed on the diggings of Boulder Creek.

Most of the men who first came out from civilization to make their piles on Boulder Creek wandered back again, their piles still to make—with that one exception; but the reputation of his success, though he never rocked a cradle nor bumped a dolly in the whole course of his stay on the field, hung about the place, growing in magnitude as the years passed on, and inspiring many a simple heart with that blind faith and patience necessary to spend one's life chipping at rocks well nigh innocent of pyrites, and sluicing gravel which sometimes carries a grain to the dish—for, after the first-comers had gone back to civilization, there were many who came to take their places.

With the departure of its founder, the Rest lost a good deal of its glory. The men who were camped along the ridge had no more money to spend, and only an occasional traveller, passing along the road from the east to the west, kept the place going as a solvent concern. Now and again some prospectors, who had heard tales round distant camp-fires of the hidden riches of Boulder Creek, journeyed down its course, scrambling over the rough, tumbled boulders, and venting their opinions in hot, scorching words as they remembered the tellers of the tales, till they saw on the flat, halfway up the ridge, the symbol of civilization in the form of Cudlip's Rest. Then the occupier for the time being had some chance of making a profit on the year's occupation; but otherwise, no one but a new chum would grant credit for drinks against such payment in kind as cut timber and split rails for a whole settlement of fossickers.

So the years went on, the men along the ridge dreaming of the leads and pockets they one day might discover, and the owner of Cudlip's Rest trying to persuade himself that there was a future in the field—until one day a whisper went abroad. It ran from tent to tent and from shaft to shaft, travelling up and down the gullies and the ridges by the creek; bringing men to the surface from the bottom of the holes they had been digging for months, and drawing them out of the drives and cross-cuts they had been developing for years, and making them stand with wide-open eyes gleaming in the sunlight, as they tried to reach back through the profitless years for the mislaid energy of youth. It travelled far and wide, wherever a man lived and toiled; and wherever it sounded, men's eyes grew bright, and hope came again to faces that had long since lost it, and to hearts that had long since grown numb.

No one knew who had spread it; no man heard another tell him that it was true; but in the air it quivered, and every man heard it, and left his work and his tent and his tools where they lay, whilst he hastened to Cudlip's Rest for further news of the rumour that had reached him as he laboured in his loneliness—that gold had been found; gold in payable, ay, in richly payable, quantities.

Like the remnants of a routed army they came upon the old hotel, some up the road, some down it, and others through the bush. A few had stopped to get their coats, but most of them wore nothing over their soil-and toil-stained shirts and moleskins. But as they came up to the house, and stamped on to the verandah and through into the long, bare room that once had been festive with many a merry gathering, they all had one expression on their faces and one inquiry on their tongues.

Round the bar, which stretched across the end of the room, they found four men standing, with pipes in their mouths and filled glasses in front of them, and only a glance was needed to reveal to every one as he entered that not one of the four was a new chum or a sundowner. They stood smoking in silence, like men who have known one another's society for many days, and had no need for words to express the enjoyment they felt in a smoke and a nip. Occasionally one would glance towards the door as man after man trudged into the room, toil-stained and unkempt, and stood covertly watching the four with hungry eyes.

Cudlip—all the keepers of the Rest took the name with the house—was behind the bar, glancing suspiciously from the new arrivals to the incoming residents.

"And you say it's payable?" he said at length; and every ear in the room was strained and every eye turned upon the silent four.

"You take your colonial," one of the four answered.

"And a poor man's field? Good alluvial?" Cudlip added.

The man who had answered before looked round at him.

"Ain't we going there?" he said.

The crowd round the door and along the walls of the room surged forward. Good alluvial and a poor man's field? And four men going there? The questions were in every mind and the answer as well. For years the gully-rakers round Boulder Creek had been living and longing to hear such things, and the hungry eyes grew more hungry and the faces more alert. If four, why not forty? Why not——

"Where's the lay?" one of the Creekers asked sharply and shortly; and the room was silent till the answer came.

"Over the ridge," the man answered, nodding towards the west.

"How far?" some one inquired.

"Twenty mile or so."

"And you've been there?"

"That's so."

"You and your mates?"

"Not the four of us."

"How do you know it's a boomer?"

The man looked round slowly on the still gathering crowd.

"I found it," he said.

For a moment every man in the room held his breath. They had had faith in the creek for years without seeing more than specks of gold—faith so great that they would all have scorned to leave their shafts and drives for the sake of fossicking neighbouring streams and gullies. But—payable alluvial and plenty of it only twenty miles away! They needed time to take that in all at once.

"I found it a month ago—I and some mates. I left them working on it while I went and proclaimed it and got our reward claims registered. Now we're safe we don't care who knows of it. There's men in hundreds coming out along the road behind us, though we have got two days' start. But what is that to us? There will be thousands soon—thousands all seeking our gold-field, for there's gold across the ridge, boys—gold for the lot of us."

The sun-dried walls and roof of the room shivered and cracked at the reverberation of the mighty shout that went up from the throats of the assembled men. The wild fever that had sent them roaming years and years before in search of the fortune of yellow metal they had never yet found, broke out in all its former vigour in their blood. There was gold only twenty miles away! Gold to be had for the digging; gold in sand and gravel that only needed washing and sluicing; gold that would give them all their youth back again, and enable them once more to journey to the homes they had left so long ago—it dazzled and maddened them, wiping out their disappointments and blotting out their miseries. All the furies of unmeasured imagination that had swept them off their mental balance when first they had sought the bubble fortune came again upon them anew, and in their shouting, capering frenzy they surged round the four strangers and round and over Cudlip's bar. What liquor there was to be seized was taken and swallowed before its owner could raise a protest; but a dozen promises to pay ten times over for every nobbler was made on all sides, and, like a wise man, Cudlip hesitated before he opposed overwhelming odds.

The shout with which the news was greeted spread far beyond the Rest—as far as the barren rocks and spear-grass covered patches of sandy soil over which the outlying fossickers were hurrying for corroboration of the news—and the sound of the mighty shout made their pulses tingle and their blood run free.

Only one thing could make the men of the Boulder Creek dirt-holes shout like that. Gold, more than specks and grains, had been found somewhere, and the outlying stragglers quickened their pace in their haste to reach the place before all the good fortune had gone round. When they reached the house there was a babel of sounds in the bar-room, for round the four strangers the entire population of the field was crowding, every man firing off his questions as fast as he could utter them, with no one answering him, and no one heeding him in the general noise and excitement. The four were trying to reach the door so as to get on the way to their El Dorado, but a solid wall of perspiring humanity surrounded them, through which they were helpless to make their escape.

The late arrivals, gathering a word here and there, managed to understand that there was a great field of alluvial discovered just over the ridge, and seeing that every one in the room was fairly well occupied for the time being, the idea found favour among them that it would be a useful application of the knowledge to start out at once and peg out a few claims ahead of the others. The man to whom the idea came whispered it to his neighbour, who happened to be the owner of the next hole to his on the Creek, and from whom he had, at times, borrowed some flour for his damper, when his stores had run out.

"Jim," he said, leaning his head forward and executing a portentous wink, "git."

Jim looked at him for a moment before he realized the significance of the tip.

"Good for you," he answered. "We'll best these——" and he used a mining term which signified the others.

The men nearest to him, all striving to catch something of what was going on, grasped the proposal by the tenor of his reply, and as the two left the room, so did the half-dozen who were nearest. Then the men who were nearest the half-dozen saw and understood and also moved, and the motion, once set going, spread and continued until the four were only attended by an equal number. The rest of the population of the field were disappearing through the bush.

"Here there, hold on," one of the remaining four exclaimed, as he started at a run for the door.

"Hell for leather," cried a second, as he set after the first.

"My——" the third began, but left the sentence unfinished as he also started.

The fourth said nothing. He had too much handicap to make up.

When they had all gone, the four strangers stood and looked at one another in silence.

"Better have another nip and then move on," the man who had had the conversation with Cudlip remarked.

The host, who had gone to the door to watch the last of the residents disappear, turned back at the mention of business.

"They've swallowed everything bar the bottles," he exclaimed.

"Then we'll move on without the nip," the man said quietly.

As they started towards the door Cudlip interposed before them.

"Say, Misters, before you go," he said. "It's all square about that there alloovial, I take it?"

"Square?" one of the men replied. "Well, you needn't believe it. It's twenty miles over the ridge to the west, the place I mean, but don't you go there. You'll make your pile here, if you stop."

Cudlip vouchsafed no reply, and the four passed out and round to the back of the house where they had left their horses. When they were out of earshot of the bar, two of them exchanged glances and grim smiles.

"What did I tell you?" one said. "There's no bigger fools in creation than a mob of gully-rakers."

"Keep your tongue quiet, Gleeson," the other replied. "They haven't all started yet. Besides——" he glanced towards their two companions, who were loosening the horses from the fence where they had been hitched.

"Oh, Peters is fly, and the youngster has grit," Gleeson said, adding in a louder tone to the others, "We'll walk all the way till we camp. You needn't tighten the girths for that."

They rode slowly until within an hour of sunset, when, after climbing a long steep ridge, they drew rein at a spot where a small, clear stream rippled across the track, and the timber, growing thick elsewhere, left an open space sloping down to the creek.

"This will do for the night; and I reckon the bush is thick enough round here to prevent our fire being seen by any of the mob behind," Gleeson observed, glancing round as his horse strained at the bridle to sniff the cool water at its feet.

"It's good enough," Peters replied, as, urging his horse across the creek and on to the open space, he swung himself from the saddle. "Now then, Tony, my lad," he added, turning to his nearest companion, "shake yourself up. You're off for the diggings now; no more cattle-duffing or wool-pressing for you. In a month's time you'll be going back with a pack-horse team loaded with nuggets to buy a station of your own, if you want one."

"Or going to Melbourne for a fly round," Tony answered with a laugh, as he followed the example, and swung from the saddle.

"Don't you do that, my lad," Peters observed seriously. "Never you leave the bush. A township is not bad once in a way, but a place like Melbourne—for a young chap like you, it's perdition, so far as your money goes," he continued.

"Stow your yarning till the pipes are lit," Gleeson called out; and Peters winked at Tony as, having hobbled his horse, he took off the saddle and bridle, and smacked it on the flank, exclaiming—

"Now, my beauty, don't spare the grass because it's Government property, and don't go far away."

The horses being unsaddled, the four men placed their swags and saddles together, and while one started a fire, another filled the smoke-begrimed billy at the stream, and set it to boil by the blazing twigs, another unrolled the "tucker-bags," and spread the contents of beef and damper on a blanket, and the fourth, Gleeson, sat on a log and filled his pipe.

"It isn't every one who finds a payable rush," Peters remarked solemnly, as he stood by the fire after his share of the work was done. "Tony, my lad, you will observe that; and consequently the man who finds the payable rush don't do no cooking at the camp."

"There's three for one man's work. What's the need of crowding?" Gleeson asked, as he came over to the fire to get a light for his pipe.

"None. Nor jawing either. He's all jaw," the fourth man, who was overhauling the tucker-bag, exclaimed, with a snarl in his voice.

"Now then, Samuel Walker, don't you make the sugar sour," Peters rejoined. "Your taste in——hullo!" he broke off, as the sound of a coo-ee away down the track came to his ears. "They're right on our heels. The whole mob will be here an hour after sunset."

"Of course they will. We ought to have stayed at the pub, or kept the find dark," Walker said.

"There's no pleasing you," Peters replied. "Our claims are pegged out by Government, so why should we grumble at others having a look in on their own."

"The billy's boiling," Tony interrupted.

"Then make the tea," Peters retorted, adding, as he watched the operation being carried out, "You've the makings of a digger about you, Tony, if you stick at it long enough."

As soon as the tea was ready, the four men gathered round the blanket on which Walker had spread the eatables, and set to on the meal with healthy appetites. As they sat eating, the sun went down, and fresh logs were thrown on the fire, lighting up the open space with a warm, bright light. They had finished, and were starting their pipes, when, on the other side of the creek where the firelight streamed across the track, the figures of two men with swags on their backs and diggers' picks and shovels over their shoulders, came in sight.

They greeted the camp with a shout, and splashed through the creek and up to the fire, where they threw down their swags and sat on them, like men who had tramped a long, wearying journey, and at the end of it preferred rest to either food or converse.

"Done a record, haven't you?" Gleeson asked, looking round at them.

"Don't know about a record, mate; but it's been a teaser coming up the ridge," one of the men answered.

"Many more behind?" Peters asked.

The men laughed.

"The whole of Boulder Creek," one answered.

"Don't you want a feed?" Gleeson asked.

"Don't mind if I do," each man answered, as he rose from his swag, and moved over to the place where the "tucker" was.

They were busily engaged—too busy to talk—in two minutes, and they kept at it steadily till the billy was empty and the beef and damper low.

"You can keep the billy going all night, if you're going to ask all them that's coming up the track if they want a feed," one of the two at length managed to say.

"That's why we shoved along," observed the other, meditatively, as he pulled an empty pipe out of his pocket, and pushed a finger in and out of the bowl.

"Tucker a bit scarce along the creek, eh?" Peters asked.

"Scarce?" the man replied, "Scarce ain't in it. It's as scarce as gold—or 'baccy;" and he put the stem of his pipe between his lips, and made a sound through it to indicate its emptiness.

"Do you smoke?" Peters asked innocently.

The man grinned. He would have replied freely and forcibly to the self-evident attempt to take a rise out of him but for the fact that he had just had one good meal, and breakfast-time was coming.

"Why don't you give him a fill?" Walker snapped out.

"My mate asks if you want a fill—of his plug," Peters said quietly.

"Oh, tea-leaves is good enough for me, if you ain't going to use them. I haven't had a smoke of tea-leaves for weeks; stores wouldn't run to it, and gum-leaves don't smoke cool. Thanks, young fellow, don't mind if I do," he broke off, as Tony reached out half a plug of tobacco towards him.

When he had filled his own pipe, he passed the plug to his mate, who helped himself before passing back to Tony the little that remained. Meanwhile the others were stowing away the remnants of the meal in the "tucker-bag," and they and the two new arrivals were only comfortably settled round the fire with their pipes going when another shout from beyond the creek announced the arrival of more travellers.

This time a dozen men straggled into the camp, but it was evident by the size of their swags that they were not quite so down on their luck as the first-comers.

They straggled up to the fire, each man with a brief crisp remark, and swung their swags from their shoulders, loosening their billy-cans, which they filled at the creek before setting them beside the fire to boil. Every man had his own store of provisions with him, and as they prepared their meal there was a constant buzz of conversation. Question after question was asked as to the quality of the gold at the new find; whether there was plenty of timber on the field; how about the supply of water, and the depth of the payable dirt. Gleeson, as the discoverer, was the man to whom most of the inquiries were addressed, and if he had not done much work in preparing camp, he had to do more than his share now, a fact upon which Peters was not slow to remark.

The cross-fire of questions would probably have lasted as long as Gleeson cared to furnish answers, but another delight was suddenly introduced by one of the new arrivals producing an accordion from his swag, and sounding a couple of chords. At once the attention of the men was taken off the topic of the new field; there was a want of alcohol in the camp wherewith to rouse their spirits to the full enjoyment of their new good fortune, but the melody of accordion and song made an excellent substitute.

"Good boy, Palmer Billy," one of the men cried as soon as he heard the sound. "Give us the good old Palmer stave."

There was a burst of approval from all the men as they came nearer the fire, forming themselves into a ring round the blazing pile, some sitting, some standing, some stretched out on the ground, but all smoking. Palmer Billy, a middle-aged man with a face lined and tanned by many a summer's sun, and without a spare ounce of flesh on his sinewy frame, stood a bit apart with the accordion in his hands, his hat pushed back, and his head on one side as he looked round the assembly. Palmer Billy was the musician and vocalist of Boulder Creek, without a rival, equal, or superior, albeit his musical prowess was limited to the five chords which the key arrangement of the accordion automatically provided for, and his vocal répertoire to one song, sung to the American melody of "Marching through Georgia," and celebrating the glories of the great Palmer Goldfield—whence came Palmer Billy's pseudonym. His voice was neither cultivated nor melodious—from a musical point of view; but it was loud, and of the peculiar penetrating timbre which is invaluable for the use of that language which alone serves in inducing a bullock team to pull well, or for sending the stanzas of a bush song hurtling round a camp fire.

As he raised his accordion to strike the preliminary canter of the five automatic chords, every voice was silenced, and all eyes were turned upon him, for Palmer Billy was always ready to oblige a camp with his vocal entertainment, though in return he demanded, on the part of his audience, silence (except when the chorus-time came) and attention. Failing either, or both, Palmer Billy yielded to the sense of outraged artistic sensibility and lapsed into silence himself, and when men are living a more or less lonely life a hundred miles from anywhere, they are inclined to look leniently upon the eccentricities of such genius as fate casts in their way.

Palmer Billy, casting his eye round the firelit circle of bearded and bronzed faces, and seeing every mouth closed and every eye fixed on his, was satisfied, and completed the five automatic chords. Then he lifted up his raucous, stridulating voice and sang, with the accentuation of an artistic drawl which no one but himself ever knew where it was likely to come, the opening verse of his song—

"Then roll the swag and blanket up,

And let us haste away

To the Golden Palmer, boys,

Where every one, they say,

Can get his ounce of gold, or

It may be more, a day,

In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."

At the conclusion of the last word, which the vocalist sang as "Par-her-mur," with a graceful little flourish on the "her," he swept his eye round his audience, swung the accordion up to the full extent of his arms over his left shoulder, and shouting, "Chorus, boys," opened his mouth and his chest in the full glory of his stridulating notes as he yelled, the others lustily joining—

"Hurrah! Hurrah! We'll sound the jubilee.

Hurrah! Hurrah! And we will merry be,

When we reach the diggings, boys,

There the nuggets see,

In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."

The force of the chorus pleased him, and his eyes twinkled; for even if every one of his audience had not caught the exact rhythm of the melody, there could be no question as to their endeavours being in earnest, and good soul-stirring noise, Palmer Billy, as a musician, maintained, was miles ahead of a mere ordinary tune.

"THEN ROLL THE SWAG AND BLANKET UP, AND LET US HASTE AWAY."ToList

[Page 56.]

The second verse afforded the opportunity, in Palmer Billy's mind, for the exercise of expressive pathos; and when the chorus after the first verse was given with a will, and the audience thus testified its capacity for appreciation, he was as generous with his expression as he was with his force. Two portentous sniffs and a whine were blended with the word he considered the most appropriate for pathetic accentuation, the word following being bawled in full vigour with a prolonged quiver in the voice by way of contrast. Thus with alternate sniffs, whines, and bawls, he sang—

"Kick at troubles when they come, boys,

The motto be for all;

And if you've missed the ladder

In climbing Fortune's wall,

Depend upon it, boys,

You'll recover from the fall,

In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."

The chorus was again taken up with an energy amounting to enthusiasm, and at the third verse, delivered with a declamatory power that carried moral conviction in every syllable, Palmer Billy introduced his special accomplishment by reversing the order in which he played the accompaniment of the five automatic chords. The declamation and the accompaniment always made the third verse a triumph.

"Then work with willing hands, boys,

Be steady, and be wise;

For no one need despair there,

If honestly he tries,

Perhaps to make a fortune,

At all events a rise,

In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."

The chorus was so lustily given that the soloist called for the audience to join him in the last verse, a most unusual compliment, and so well did they respond that the sound of their voices travelled far through the silent bush, farther than they intended, farther than they knew, as they yelled—