Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 12

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The rain ceased at sundown but the air remained thunderously hot and moist. At bed-time a strange ground wind arose that roared like the sea all night long in the tree-tops without causing any destruction. The world of Up Above was wrapped in a dense white robe and at daybreak there came a gentle but saturating drizzle. Men and horses melted into it, hoof-beats magnified on the hollow basaltic ridges. Occasionally the mist turned golden but the sun was defeated all day.

Next morning the men all disappeared at daybreak again, leaving no one but Bernice and the Cook in camp. Bernice lay pensively watching the beauty of the rising sun dispersing the veils in the valleys till nearly eight o'clock, when a buzzing and droning made her fear an attack by bees. She called the Cook to her assistance. He bashed about the general room with his hardy tea-towel which at its inauguration had been clean, and closed the doors and windows.

"They ain't bees, miss. Blowflies, that's what they are. Beastly rotten stinkin' cows—I'm blamed if I can ever make out why they was created. Cripes! with the sun on top of a muggy day like this, an' the sheep wringin' wet, there'll be some fun, I reckon."

This prediction was verified at sundown when the men returned. Comparing notes welded the report. In all the paddocks from Whiskey Creek to Fossickers' Range, and Wild Horse Plain to Eagle Hill and Whipstick to Goonara, the sheep had been struck.

After dinner Labosseer awakened the telephone and compared notes around the immediate world from Peppercorn to Kosciusko, calling Adaminaby, Jindabyne, and as far afield as Currangorambla, Yarrangobilly and Kiandra. The storm had been patchy, he learnt. Certain tracts, though adjoining, were still thirsty, while towards the head of the rivers two inches had fallen. Some were immune from flies so far.

Then he called Gundagai to know if there had been rain Down Below to match the good fall Up Above. His triumph in his grass being burnt in readiness in a measure outweighed the plague of flies.

"Nothing but a scud Down Below," he said, turning to Burberry. Then back to the mouthpiece. "More than an inch here, and we had just burnt off about a thousand acres. It will respond marvellously now. If it dries up quickly we can soon handle those sheep that have been struck. I've often seen the fly in them one day, and gone the next, at this time of year. Yes, the rain is wonderful. It is to be hoped there will be a good fall Down Below before long."

There were further heavy showers during the night, and morning broke muggily. The men were off at the first streak of light armed with quart pots, tucker bags and oilskin coats and each carrying a pair of shears in a sheath, a pot of fly-dressing slung in twine or calico or protruding from saddle-bag, and attended by every dog on the place. It was a big day for all concerned, and a heavy thunder-shower during the afternoon put matters farther on the wrong side of the fence.

"I never saw such a mess," Black Peter reported of Eagle Hill and the Ram Paddock.

"Those old ewes I have on Whiskey Plain are struck on the shoulders, late-shorn and all as they are," interposed Burberry.

"Yes," added Poole. "Some of my lots already have streaks worked right down under the belly."

"It's the same on Fossickers'," chimed in the Dude, "and Beardy reckons it's worse on Wild Horse Plain."

"I know, I saw it myself on Black Plain and Whipstick and Block Twenty-five," said the Boss.

That evening the telephone was in use from six o'clock till bedtime. Sylvester S. Labosseer was the doyen of practical pastoralists on the snow leases. Son of Simon Labosseer, a splendid young Dutchman of good family, who in the fifties had established a home and family at Eueurunda not so many leagues from Gyang Gyang, he had been born on the Monaro plateau, where the family had remained till the mother had removed them downstairs to Coolooluk, upon the passing of her husband in his early middle age. Sylvester therefore knew the country in and out and round about, and many sought his advice or urged others to seek it.

Half a dozen times that evening he gave comfort to those unacquainted with the region. "Yes," he was heard to admit, "the flies are the one drawback of this country. It may be useless to try to treat your sheep individually. If these showers continue it looks like dipping. Though I want to avoid that myself, for if it keeps on raining it sometimes takes the poison down to the skin and results in a heavy percentage of losses, or in the wool coming off."

Again it was, "Yes. I use one-in-twenty for swabs. One-in-fifteen is too strong. It might bring the wool off. I'm treating my own in the open. I have no dipping plant here, for one thing. Treating them in the open doesn't cut the sheep up so much, but you can't be expected to manage if you are new to this country, and of course I have a wonderful dog to hold the sheep. Never saw anything like him, though he's an old dog now...Don't mention it. It's no trouble at all. I'm very glad to tell you anything I can. I'd go over and see what I could do only I'm in the same plight myself. We're at it hard while ever there's daylight."

That year, Up Above and all the rough ranges, by which it was reached like stairs, were literally infested with jumbucks driven up by the drought Down Below. From Coonamble and Connabarabran, and Narrabi and Hay and Junee and Wagga and Narrandera and Coota and such places they came to the haven and heaven at the head of the Murrumbidgee and Snowy. Sylvester Labosseer that season had charge of a hundred thousand head or more on combined leases under the supervision of Gyang Gyang station. He was manned lightly too, not at all for emergency. Others were in like situation and without Labosseer's experience.

A generation ago Labosseer, who had retained his inborn love of the area, had secured large tracts of the snow country through improvement and other leases at an upset price after there had been no bids at auction. That was in the pre-fencing days when men depended on the natural boundaries of water-courses and watersheds. Before the telephone and motor-car the country had been infested with duffers and dingoes, hard to work, at the end of everywhere and peopled only by two or three dozen intrepid settlers. Neither had stock been so valuable then, and Labosseer's acquaintances prophesied that he had secured a white elephant, but the very breath of those plains gave him joy.

They were worth what he had paid in aesthetic pleasure. He had a whole school of creeks of his own, which he adored. Among them, as a houri in a harem, his favourite was Dinnertime, veiled in perfumed heaths, and which had received its name because he loved to eat his midday snack on its banks, filling his quart pot from its crystal fountain to make his tea. When introducing the runs to visitors, if they expressed thirst he invariably advised them to wait till reaching this stream. Then he would dismount and present a pannikin of the peerless fluid: "There, the water from this creek is colder and tastes better than any on Monaro, and that is saying a good deal." A connoisseur in water was Sylvester Simon Labosseer, as those in vintage areas may be in wines. He liked, in this connection, to tell the story of an English jackeroo he once had, who returned at sundown complaining of thirst. "When the blooming ass had ridden all day amid the best water in the whole world he said, 'I didn't have a tumbler or anything to drink out of.' What do you think of that for infernal foolishness?" Labosseer would supply his own comment: "It makes me think there must be something wrong with education in those old places."

Labosseer had ringbarked thousands of acres and fenced against dogs. In time, stock had increased in value, the duffers and murderers had died out, the dingoes decrease. All that was left of the homes of the hardy original settlers were a few Kentish cherry, hawthorn, elder- or gooseberry-bushes amid the scrub, or a mound of stones where chimneys had held roaring fires of logs to keep them warm o' snowy nights.

Since the post-war boom in wool, and the consequent overstocking Down Below, there was brisk competition as relief country for the limited area, so well fenced and ringbarked and workable as it had been made by pioneer foresight. Labosseer was no longer considered a fool for his prudence. He was decried as a monopolist who hogged an area as big as an English county while other poor devils had their tongues hanging out for relief country.