The Best Australian Bush Stories

by Jim Haynes

  ‘You forget the scandal that may arise,’ said the Reverend Mr Simmondsen.

  ‘Lord, man! Who cares about what is done out here? Nobody will ever hear of it.’

  Davis was wrong. Everybody did hear of it. The Reverend Mr Simmondsen received indignant letters from his Bishop, his churchwardens, the Reverend Mr Wriggle, the Western Australian Missionary, several missionary societies, and, last and worst, a letter of eternal farewell from the young lady to whom he was engaged.

  Fortunately he inherited some money at the time; so he did the best thing possible—threw up the church, went into squatting, and is now one of the most popular men in the district.

  ‘THE PARSON AND

  THE PRELATE’

  ‘CREEVE ROE’

  (VICTOR DALEY)

  I saw a parson on a bike—

  A parody on things—

  His coat-tails flapped behind him like

  A pair of caudal wings.

  His coat was of the shiny green,

  His hat was rusty brown;

  He was a weird, wild sight, I ween,

  Careering through the town.

  What perched him on a wheel at all,

  And made him race and rip?

  Had he, perchance, a sudden call

  To some rich rectorship?

  He’d no such call; he raced and ran

  To kneel and pray beside

  The bedside of a dying man,

  Who poor as Peter died.

  I saw a prelate, plump and fine,

  Who gleamed with sanctity;

  He was the finest-groomed divine

  That you could wish to see.

  His smile was bland; his air was grand;

  His coat was black, and shone

  As did the tents of Kedar and

  The robes of Solomon.

  And in a carriage fine and fair

  He lounged in lordly ease—

  It was a carriage and a pair—

  And nursed his gaitered knees.

  And whither went he, and went for,

  With all this pomp and show?

  He went to see the governor,

  And that is all I know.

  But in a vision of the night,

  When deep dreams come to men,

  I saw a strange and curious sight—

  The prelate once again.

  He sat ungaitered, and undone,

  A picture of dismay—

  His carriage was too broad to run

  Along the Narrow Way!

  But, with his coat-tails flapping like

  Black caudal wings in wrath,

  I saw the parson on the bike

  Sprint up the Shining Path.

  Part 7

  THE CONQUERING

  BUSH

  Isolation, loneliness, drought, despair, melancholy and madness—the bush has always been a cruel and hostile environment for European settlers.

  All the stories here are sad ones.

  The Aboriginal legend of the coming of bush fires, however, has a different tone to the European tales; the sadness in the legend has a sacrificial element—suffering and tragedy on an epic scale provide a gift for the land and its people.

  Henry Lawson was, of course, the poet laureate of desperation and despair in the bush. The saving graces in his more bleak stories are stoicism and the enduring power of the human spirit. These are well demonstrated here in ‘The Drover’s Wife’ while the horror observed in the very short story, ‘Rats’, is leavened with a kind of black humour.

  The more melodramatic styles of Edward Dyson and Royal Bridges add a different perspective to the study of suffering in the bush, whereas the very quirky, almost whimsical, approach to ‘bush madness’ in Adam McCay’s story, ‘An Error In Administration’, has a very modern feel.

  There is also a difference in style in the two poems which top and tail this section. Jim Grahame’s stark, Victorian tone is more obviously dramatic than the gentler, haunting approach of that great Western Australian writer Jack Sorensen.

  This collection of stories might be rather harrowing if read all in one go. Perhaps the reader might like to roam to less lugubrious sections of the anthology in between.

  ‘SPINIFEX’

  JACK SORENSEN

  It doesn’t seem like forty years, but time has hastened on,

  Since I came down the river and selected ‘Avillon’.

  Then I was young, now I am old, my hair has long been grey;

  And here among the spinifex I’ve passed my life away.

  They say I’m not the man I was, well, that might easy be,

  This life among the spinifex has not agreed with me.

  The time I brought the wire up to fence the ‘Twenty-mile’,

  I’d thought I’d have a holiday and stay in Perth awhile;

  But I was pleased to hurry back for I’m ashamed to say

  I was stepping over spinifex along the pavement way.

  They say I walk a trifle queer; I do without a doubt;

  I’m stepping over spinifex when there is none about.

  Today a little land wind sets the spinifex asway,

  And blue with haze the Lost-Star Range seems vague and far away,

  The desert gums are white with bloom, galahs are on the wing,

  And in the thicket by the creek the sleepy bellbirds sing.

  No dreamer I, my temperament is restless like the sea;

  But riding through the spinifex contentment comes to me.

  I never was a pious man; the prayers I’ve said are few,

  In building up a station I’ve found other things to do.

  But, when I come to judgment, in my own defence I’ll say,

  ‘I pioneered the country round the Lost-Star Ranges way.’

  I know I have but little faith. Its loss was caused no doubt,

  Through watching young stock perish, in the hellish years of

  drought.

  Now does the silver spinifex reach to the hazy range,

  And men will live, and men will die, but this will never change.

  The big Ashburton hurries down flood waters to the sea;

  And hills, and skies, and spinifex, bound in the world to me.

  They say I talk a trifle queer, there’s truth in what they say:

  It’s living in the spinifex that makes a man that way.

  THE FIRST BUSH FIRE

  C.W. PECK

  THERE WAS A TIME when the Australian bush was different from what it is today. Trees were bigger and their wood softer. There were more and bigger and brighter flowers. And the land—especially the mountains—was far more densely clothed with verdure. But some change came, and it was not good for the land.

  Seeds failed to germinate, and where fertile tracts had been now desert appeared. Somewhere away in the south, perhaps away over in Victoria, there lived a great chief. His people were very numerous, for he had imposed his will upon other tribes since he was first made leader, and he had succeeded in welding them all together into one harmonious group. They revered him and all sorts of presents were laid by them at his feet.

  Yet he never shirked work, and he took a place amongst the hunters just the same as if he were not a great leader. He must have come as far north as the Burragorang—if, indeed, he had not come further—for the Hunter River people have a story just like this.

  Living in a valley between two mountains was a very small tribe of unusually docile people. They were an offshoot of that tribe who owned the country at the head of Cox’s River. The powerful chief heard of them, and he determined to find out what they were like and add them to his growing tribe. So he set out by stealth.

  Wrapping himself about with a wombat skin he came to their camping place. He was a very big man and he could not well conceal himself in so small a skin as that of a wombat—even the biggest of them. Therefore when he was within sight of the camp he hid behind a rock.

  He saw that the tribe were very busy just at the time cooking game by heating
stones and placing them one after another around and upon the carcasses. The handling of the stones was made easy by the wrapping of waratah stems about the fingers.

  This practice of wrapping of waratah stems to make a person immune from burns was so believed in by the first Australians that, when white people arrived and settled, they came to the first blacksmiths that they saw and offered them the twigs, indicating that if they would wear them no flying sparks could injure them.

  Now amongst the people was one maiden of exceptional beauty. Some say that the reason for these people separating themselves from all others was that many years before a beautiful woman wished her pretty baby to be called Krubi, the waratah, and there was another Krubi, who was not yet old. So the mother gathered her children about her and went away, and the family increased and increased, and always there were those quite beautiful enough to be called by the coveted name of Krubi—the beautiful red waratah.

  Anyhow, when the great chief saw this maiden he lost all his cunning, so entrancing was she, and jumping up without reserve he ran towards the people. They started up in fear and scattered in many directions. He called to them not to fear him, but they did not understand his speech. The beautiful maiden soon found that the stranger pursued her, and her alone. She was very fleet of foot and very cunning, and by dodging and crouching she eluded him. Sometimes she was so close and so still, standing beside a tree, that he ran past her, and only by not hearing her crashing through the bushes and stamping on the twigs and leaves did he know that he had gone too far. No sooner did he turn than she bounded off again.

  There was a stream clattering down a gully and falling over boulders and ledges into pure cold pools, and towards that stream the girl now ran. She knew of some footholds close to a waterfall, and, indeed, sometimes even behind it, that led to a very large and deep pool, and outstripping the now panting man she reached it. Never hesitating she clambered and swung herself down, and reaching the bottom she swung over the last ledge and slipped into the water.

  Her pursuer reached the top of the fall, and believing that his quarry could not have gone down there he retraced his steps. He went right back to the camping place and found it, of course, silent and deserted. So he returned to the people he had left and told nothing of where he had been and what he had seen.

  As often as he could he went back, and though sometimes he saw some of the people, never did he catch sight of the girl. He went so often that the others grew not to fear him. They guessed his desire, and they aided the girl at all times to hide from him.

  One day he spied on the people from a hilltop; they were unaware of the fact that he could see them from a neighbouring ridge. They had grown so careless that they did not think of pitching their mia-mias where no one could see them from a distance, and he caught a sight of the maiden of his desires. But she saw him and once more she had to run as if for her life.

  He did not hurry after her. Instead he got two dry sticks, and sharpening one on a stone he placed the flatter of the two on the earth before him, and putting the point of the other on it he rubbed and twisted it round and back between his palms until he had caused a fire to glow. He had dry ferns and grass ready, and placing them on the glowing spot he gently blew until the flame burst out. He added more fuel until he had a big blaze. The wind blew in the direction of the little tribe, and soon a great roaring fire was leaping and leaping and shooting out curling masses of consuming flame.

  The girl saw it coming. The tribe saw it also. Away they all ran, bounding and crashing, but the fire came faster. It overtook some of them and they perished. On the blackened cleared ground the now wicked chief followed. But he could not go fast. The smouldering sticks and rubbish were still hot. There were no waratahs growing just here for the waratah does not grow as profusely as the gums, but in patches far apart. Hot as he was and suffering burns as he was still, he examined every body he came across, but they were none of them the one he sought.

  At last he came to two little heaps of clay. What was this? These heaps told to him a story. They were fresh. They were composed of the clay that the tribal doctor used to make the mystic markings, and the tribal priest used for the same purpose when he wished to invoke the aid of a Great Spirit. Who had used it? Not once had he seen anyone who looked like one who had been initiated into the doubly-hidden mysteries of the rite that gave power to invoke the Spirit. Surely the girl had not seen that corroboree. If she had, then not only could he never capture her, but he was himself lost.

  And lost he surely was. For on looking behind him he found that almost as the fallen seeds of the trees were being consumed by fast or slow smouldering, they were bursting with new life, and plants were springing up in such profusion as to block his view. In what direction had he come? Which way would he turn to go back? The smoke was so dense that he could not see the sun. The trees that lay over from the prevailing winds and gave some idea of direction were burning, and their small branches were gone.

  Surely, he thought, this is the work of the maiden and she knew more than any woman was allowed to know. He wandered on and on, the bush growing denser. He stayed sometimes to pick up something to eat, for burned and roasted game lay in his path, and succulent roots were cooked. He wandered for many days quite lost.

  The girl had visited at night the tribe from which her family was an offshoot, and had come across the corroboree that taught her how to paint herself, and this she had done, and the charm was hers.

  A new camping place was chosen by the few who escaped that terrible fire, and the year rolled away. The young plants flowered and their seeds fell, but the next year no new plants came up. This was noticed and talked about by all the people. Even on the river where a few of her people were now living no seeds sent out the little plumule nor their little radicle, and no new plants grew to grace the world with fresh flowers, nor to produce the roots nor fruits for food.

  Again the maiden thought of beseeching the Spirit. She went back to the old ground all alone and she found the clay. She painted herself and awaited results. She heard the Spirit and she talked with it. Then she noticed that just before her a little smoke wreath curled up into the air. Then a flame burst, and in a very little while a fierce bush fire was raging. The girl was satisfied that a fire was what was needed and she sent word to the river to say that all would soon be well with the world. That the seeds would germinate and new plants would grow up and flower and all would be good as before.

  Since that time bush fires do not need any mystic markings or special communing with spirits by special people. Limbs of trees rub themselves hot on dry days and make flame. The hot sun shining on the mica in the rocks set fire to the tiny mosses that are dried there.

  And so without human agency the fires come that are necessary to make our Australian seeds burst into the life of a new and growing plant.

  THE DROVER’S WIFE

  HENRY LAWSON

  THE TWO-ROOMED HOUSE IS built of round timber, slabs, and stringybark, and floored with split slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, verandah included.

  Bush all around, bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilisation—a shanty on the main road.

  The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.

  Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the house. Suddenly one of them yells: ‘Snake! Mother, here’s a snake!’

  The gaunt, sun-browned bushwoman dashes from the kitchen, snatches her baby from the ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Here! Gone into the wood heap!’ yells the eldest boy—a sharp-faced urchin of eleven. ‘Stop there, Mother! I’ll have him. Stand b
ack! I’ll have the beggar!’

  ‘Tommy, come here, or you’ll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!’

  The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himself. Then he yells, triumphantly:

  ‘There it goes—under the house!’ and darts away with club uplifted. At the same time the big, black, yellow-eyed dog-of-all-breeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks his chain and rushes after that snake. He is a moment late, however, and his nose reaches the crack in the slabs just as the end of its tail disappears. Almost at the same moment the boy’s club comes down and skins the aforesaid nose. Alligator takes small notice of this, and proceeds to undermine the building; but he is subdued after a struggle and chained up. They cannot afford to lose him.

  The drover’s wife makes the children stand together near the dog-house while she watches for the snake. She gets two small dishes of milk and sets them down near the wall to tempt it to come out; but an hour goes by and it does not show itself.

  It is near sunset, and a thunderstorm is coming. The children must be brought inside. She will not take them into the house, for she knows the snake is there, and may at any moment come up through a crack in the rough slab floor; so she carries several armfuls of firewood into the kitchen, and then takes the children there. The kitchen has no floor, or, rather, an earthen one, called a ‘ground floor’ in this part of the bush. There is a large, roughly made table in the centre of the place. She brings the children in, and makes them get on this table. They are two boys and two girls—mere babies. She gives them some supper, and then, before it gets dark, she goes into the house, and snatches up some pillows and bedclothes, expecting to see or lay her hand on the snake any minute. She makes a bed on the kitchen table for the children, and sits down beside it to watch all night.