Читать книгу The Golden Nineties - Henry Lawson - Страница 4

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“They take things easy in Fremantle,” said the captain of the S.S. Paroo.

We were to have left Albany on Monday morning, having stayed over Sunday, for they don’t work on the wharf there on that day for intercolonial steamers; but the Bullara, which had lain off Fremantle for the last ten days or so, without seeing a chance of getting safely alongside the pier, came alongside the Albany jetty at daylight with a bashed bulwark and thirty tons of Fremantle cargo for us to take back and try our luck with. The Bullara evidently hadn’t been taking things easy at Fremantle. She had had a rough voyage of it round her anchor, for upwards of a fortnight, in the vicinity of the doubtful breakwater, which was being built, to enable steamers to lie alongside the pier in reasonable weather, to tempt ocean liners to make that their first port of call — instead of Albany — and for the alleged benefit of the country and of future generations.

We had made quite a long voyage from Sydney. We stayed one night in Melbourne, where the writer had a week’s business to do, and a small army of friends to see, and three days at Port Adelaide, where he had no business, and didn’t know anybody. But the captain, officers, and crew had head office, homes, wives, and sweethearts there. They had only debts in Melbourne, perhaps. The principal industry of Melbourne at that time (in ’95-’96) was debts.

Adelaide has, I think, the most Australian Zoological Gardens in the world. The most noticeable thing in Port Adelaide seemed to be the train running through the main street, with the stoker ringing a bullock bell (at least, it sounded like one) in front to scare off furniture vans, etc. It suggested the ridiculous idea that the South Australian railway system was about to be put up for sale by auction, and would presently be going, going, gone!

By the delay in Adelaide we missed the last heavy gale; and I was very sorry for it, and greatly disappointed. The glass kept going down, and the wind and the sea getting up all the way from Melbourne, and I felt more hopeful every time the joker of the ship’s company remarked cheerfully that the glass was still falling, and we saw, and felt, that the elements were rising. We bobbed a bit at anchor near the Semaphore that night, but got up the river and away from the sea weather early next morning; and, when we came out again, on the third day, there was only the usual greasy, unsatisfactory swell.

I like to go through a good “old man” gale. I like to see and feel the ship roll over and stand on end and gambol and take an interest in life and enjoy herself generally. “Oh, for the sweep of the wild, wet weather!” It’s grand! It’s glorious. It breaks the flat monotony of the voyage, and rouses the enthusiasm of the passengers who don’t get sea-sick. And the sick ones get properly sick, and dead to the world, and can be stowed away somewhere below, out of sight and earshot, and cease to be such prevalent, depressing, half-alive nuisances.

This reminds me of a previous voyage across the Bight in a French liner. We had a good rough time, and, one nice awful night, an anchor broke loose somewhere aft — or forward — it was hard to tell which was which down in the cabin where we were — and sounded like a Chinese war. We thought we had made a dent in the coast that time. They stopped the engines, or slowed down, and closed the scuttles (we were in the steerage) to prevent us from rushing on deck and endangering our lives, and getting in the way of the sailors, in order to gratify our morbid curiosity — the modern craving for sensationalism. There were cursing and praying, and urgent appeals for information in seventeen languages: French, German, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, English, Irish, Scottish, modern Greek and modern Australian. A fat, middle-aged Frenchwoman lugged her box out from the women’s cabin, fastened two life-belts round it, and a third one round herself, mounted the box, took a good grip of the straps, and held on, while the stout old trunk travelled up and down, and across the cabin, and fetched up against things, and started again. We climbed on stools and tables, and into bunks, and sought, in all the languages, to persuade her that human lives and our shins were of more importance than her blessed old port-rubbish; but she continued, perforce, in wild career until she went through the match-board side of the temporary bar — trunk and all. The good-natured Swiss stewards interfered at this point, extricated her from amongst the broken bottles, and stowed her away somewhere — still attached to her property.

At least I’m not sure I remember all that. The “joker’s” yarns, and things he remembers, get mixed up sometimes with one’s mental notes.

Albany hasn’t changed much since 1889-90, when the new town was built. There were one or two old families popularly supposed to exist there then, but they kept to themselves. It should be interesting to study the effects of nearly half a century of utter loneliness and isolation upon their temperaments. There were a few common white aborigines, who were supposed to have been, and doubtless were, more or less, the slaves of the one or two first families in the days before the advent of the first steam engine (a portable vertical, connected with a brickyard, which arrived somewhere in the mid-eighties, and caused a sensation amongst the natives, black and white), and have been ever since for aught we know. The seeker after information, local, historical, genealogical, or otherwise, was met with growling monosyllables, ominous in tone, and warning frowns, which may have been intended for his good. For the rest Albany was a camp of T’othersiders and new-chums — tradesmen, labourers, and clerks; the train was running to Perth then, and things were going ahead in the building line in Albany. Road-makers — and the Lord knows where those roads were made to, or why they were made — went out into the wilderness, lived on kangaroo when rations gave out before the contract was completed — and made cheques. Nice, soft, juicy new-chums, poor devils! went into the bush, fencing, clearing, running wire for contractors, and cooking for camps; and shed their skins, like snakes, because of the heat and the mosquitoes; and broke their hearts — and went mad, some of them — because of the terrible loneliness and the Past; and died, and were buried or not, as it happened. Or they fought out their own salvation, and got away East — never dreaming that, a year or so hence — as counter-jumpers, clerks, etc., in eastern cities — they might be scraping, and scheming, and stinting all the day, for the price of a steerage ticket to the Golden West, and lying awake, think, think, thinking over it till the small hours, to fall asleep and dream that they had got it in a lump sum. We were lonely T’othersiders then, and the first families didn’t seem aware of our existence, and we clung together — never dreaming that in two or three years we would rush the country in thousands and swamp out the sandgroping element as completely as if it had taken to the outer wilderness and committed suicide. But I mean to do the sandgropers justice later on.

Chinese, imported on terms of agreement similar to those for the alleged breach of which unfortunate Afghans were gaoled lately at Bourke, cooked, gardened, etc., on the few small sheep stations, and were assisted with the shearing by the local blacks. The Chinese and the blacks (this from personal experience and observation) were treated with greater consideration than the casual white — if he were shown any consideration at all. But King Billy, I am glad to believe, is more or less privileged and kindly thought of all over settled Australia; and — well, John Chinaman’s patience is an unknown quantity, and hath sudden and unexpected endings; the station super., knowing this, riding out into the wilds at sunrise, and leaving his wife alone in the lonely homestead all day, is haunted by the thought of the Chinese cook in connection with the carving knife. The Chinese cook and the carving knife are too handy to each other in lonely places to make it worth while showing one’s superiority over the cook on every possible occasion.

Alleged aboriginal names end in “up”, along the line from Albany; there are “Marbleup”, “Kendinup”, and — there’s a place called “Chokerup”. The bush round there looks just the place for it. By the way, speaking of black names, the blacks round King George’s Sound use the words “boomerang”, “nulla nulla”, “bawl!”, “budgeree”, etc., and new-chums — and most T’othersiders, I believe — think they are speaking from their own language; whereas those terms were brought by the whites from the East, and the blacks themselves, no doubt, take them as English words. They, of course, have a different dialect from that of the aborigines of old Eastern Australia.

There was a blackfellow at Kendinup, who could speak French, and, what is more than can be said of many English people who profess to read and speak it, he could understand it. He had been aboard a French whaler for a couple of years.

Fancy King Billy as a Jack Tar — two years before the mast!

This blackfellow’s history must have been a strange and interesting one; but personal histories, in old West Australia, which may have been strange and interesting ones, were generally veiled in obscurity, as dark as Billy Rex himself — or the history of that dark country. The French blackfellow was, perhaps, the finest specimen of his race that I had seen. He stated that he had had enough of civilisation — he craved for no more of it. He preferred to live as his fathers had lived, and eat ’possum when there was no kangaroo nor fish, nor wild fowl, and wear a ’possum skin rug for an overcoat, and a blanket in cold weather — and crouch under a wretched mi-mi (a break-wind of three strips of bark and a bough) in the cold and rain of winter, rather than camp comfortably in a galvanised iron hut, with a brick fireplace and a load of wood supplied. He wore only the ’possum-skin rug when I saw him; he opened the homestead gate for me with the air of a kingly courtier of ye olden tyme, bowed me through Frenchily, or, rather, like a Spaniard — and standing erect as the king himself, with his right hand extended before him, palm upwards, he cadged sixpence, and a pipe o’ tobacco.

There are many fine-looking half-caste girls, they say, living wild with the blacks in the outer bush. It is said that the best-looking and most intelligent are crosses between the blacks and Chinese. I happened to know one of the latter (civilised). Her strange and wonderful beauty might have made a sensation on any stage, and money for the popular and enterprising manager.

These girls were seldom or never brought into the stations, or near camps, when the tribe came down from the north or east, into Albany or the nearer bush, for the shearing, or with native weapons, skins, precious wood, etc.; the girls were left somewhere out of reach of civilisation. The ugly gins came in, though, and, arranging their kangaroo tails, rugs, or native weapons (manufactured specially for sale to the new-chums, and thus, indirectly, for export) to the best advantage on doorstep or threshold of camp or hut, they’d squat on their hams, get out their pipes, and be prepared to wait patiently and silently for a day or so, or until such time as the spirit moved you to buy — or kick them out of that. The blacks seem to believe that the spirit moves as slowly in us as it does in their own dusky bosoms — judge us from themselves, in fact, just the same as we judge one another. I’ve noticed the same thing with the Maoris, and suppose it’s the same with native races all over the world. I learned to sit, for an hour, if need be, in a cow-like but, on my part at least, unembarrassed silence, with a row of Maoris, who I knew had some, to them, important communication to make, or wanted to buy something of me.

Things are arranged, out at the ends of those roads from King George’s Sound, and in connection with the native women, in various ways, which could not, very well, be set down here. Contracting parties take, or used to take, out parcels of old clothes and damaged tobacco as “presents” to natives’ roosters.

As late as ’90 — or was it the end of ’89? — there were, in connection with the spearing of an explorer bushman, and after considerable bush hardship, difficulty and danger, captured and brought into Albany the remnant of a tribe of mongrel, dwarfish blacks, whose appearance gave rise to considerable curiosity, even amongst the local “sandgropers”, and was thought to be sufficiently important and interesting to be paragraphed in the local newspaper, for the stories of the existence of such a tribe of blacks had, up till then, been regarded as fairy tales. And these didn’t come from the interior either; but from a waste of sandy, spiky, scrubby country near the west coast. Shows how much we know about our own country, and what a wide field De Rougemont had.

There was a blackfellow in Albany who used to make his rude weapons of wood and stone at a carpenter’s bench, and with such tools as he could cadge or borrow — including files and a grindstone. When the English or French mailboat was signalled he’d gather the remnants of his tribe, and retire to the scrub to make up — and, maybe, hold a dress rehearsal. Thusly, the first sight that greeted the wide eyes and open mouths of eager new-chums — come ashore for an hour’s run, and racing up the jetty to see whose foot would be the first on Australian soil — would be a dusky warrior chief in all his native glory. A ’possum rug on his shoulders, a fearsome and wonderful arrangement (that would have put any fashion of Paris hats in the shade) of sticks, reeds, grass, clay and whitewash on his head, and his noble, savage lineaments “picked out” to an alarming extent with whiting and red raddle and ochre (cadged from one of the house painters). Standing erect, motionless and silent, seemingly impassive as the Sphinx; boomerang, stone tomahawk, etc., in left hand, spear (grounded) in right, and the remnant of his tribe (“Mrs Williams” — ugliest gin in the known West, Old Sally, and Dirty Dick) grouped at his feet. Describe a circle of new-chums and tourists — some dressed in the latest London fashion — the majority with open eyes, and mouths and ears stretched to the limit — and awe, or respect, if anything, in their expressions — and one or two saloon passengers, or “jokers”, who saw through the thing at the first glance, and are enjoying the show from behind, as well as in front — and willing to pay for the extra fun — all of which noted by and well known to William Rex, who, if the spirit moved him, and he thought it safe and judicious, from a business point of view — would acknowledge or recognise the superior intelligence of the aforesaid keen observers amongst his possible patrons by solemnly, slowly, yet momentarily closing down the whitewashed lid of the awful bloodshot optic that was on their side. That wink “doubled-up” many an observant humourist — to the surprise of more sober fellow-passengers, who couldn’t see what there was to laugh at. The gins offered rugs and weapons for sale with one hand — holding the other, all the time, rigidly extended, the wrist resting on a drawn-up knee — never for a moment drawing in the black and yellow begging claw — and they, or Dirty Dick — or, perchance, a hireling half-caste (in the character of a slave), if such suited the passengers’ fancies, or imaginations — answered questions and interpreted when absolutely necessary from a business point of view. It was understood, or supposed to be understood, to be beneath the dignity of the dusky chief to hold converse directly with the pale-faced strangers, whose fathers had slain his warriors, and laid waste his hunting-grounds. To the white natives the scene was commonplace, of course, and passed unnoticed, and unchuckled at; but the elaborate simplicity of it all was very restful and comforting to me. Billy himself could see and enjoy the humour of it — after he had carefully secured the “gate” from the gins; otherwise, he regarded the whole thing from a strictly business point of view, as hinted above. There seems sometimes a touch of Scotch in King Billy. I was his first victim, but later on, when I got to know him — and he me — he said he’d get me a genuine stone tomahawk, such as the blacks used, by means of a blackfellow who was going north-west to join a party of blacks, who were in touch with a tribe of the interior — so I shouted for him now and then. But — well, I left before the weapon had time to be passed south, and so I remain undecided as to whether there is or is not a touch of Irish in King William, also.

I have invented — or altered — the names for the Last of Their Race. Mrs Williams may be living yet — and she made determined attempts to get out a summons for “damfamation” of character against a friend of mine, who, innocently, and at the suggestion of a better-informed, but totally unprincipled brother humorist, addressed her as “Miss” Williams. She subsequently tried to settle the matter out of court, too, with a billet of hardwood. Take the ugliest Chinaman (and there are some fairly plain ones) in Lower George Street, give him a coat of lampblack mixed with turpentine — or black lead (never mind the polish), and you’ll have a fair idea of Mrs Williams, who was so enthusiastic concerning her fair fame. But there I’m not trying to score a point at the expense of my black countrymen. This “ad.”, if I know anything of human nature — and King Billy still runs his little “silver coin” show — will bring him extra sixpences — and good luck to him! the lowest and most degraded, most cheerful, humorous, and by me at least, and least of his subjects, mostly kindly-thought-of of monarchs.