by Jim Haynes
The bushmen come in a mounted troop
And they scatter on hill and plain;
They follow the gullies and mulga ridge,
But their search will be in vain.
(There’s a creeping army of small black ants
That twist like a winding thread
Round and round and across the mound
Where the wind has buried the dead.)
When the rivers rise to the red soil’s edge
And the billabongs overflow,
The land turns green in a single night
Where the creeping waters go;
The wild swamp lilies bedeck the ground,
Like a golden mantle spread—
By the rich spring dress may the bush-birds guess
Where the wind has buried the dead.
Part 8
THE NIGHT WE
WATCHED FOR
WALLABIES
This is a collection of stories about ‘coming of age’ in the bush.
Mostly these stories have a positive feel to them, with the possible exception of the Miles Franklin story, which revolves around a bush girl coming to an honest realisation of her parents’ situation and how it has affected her life and her possibilities.
‘Old Heinrich and the Lambing Ewe’ is the story of a happy outcome in the face of impending doom, as a young farmer’s spirit is lifted when nature is blindly beneficent. This is a story in which farm life is accurately and beautifully observed. No writer has ever captured the behaviour of sheep dogs as well as E.O. Schlunke.
Frank Daniel’s well-told tale of two young men being inadvertently rewarded has a ring of authenticity, as does Henry Handel Richardson’s delightful tale of a teenage conversation on the delicate topic of sex and love. In each case the older character is merely a year or so ahead of the curious one in terms of experience. Both stories, so different in style, bring a smile of recognition.
‘The Night We Watched for Wallabies’ has the same ring of truth about it; here the gentle humour is derived from the mundane events of life on the selection. I think this story is Steele Rudd at his best.
‘PICKING LEMONS’
GRAHAM FREDRIKSEN
I rode my bike down to the creek
To pick some lemons for my Dad.
It’s just like playing hide-and-seek
When there are lemons to be had.
They hide up in the lemon tree—
With thorny branches everywhere.
They are too hard to get for me—
I think that I will leave them there.
I’ll tell my Dad if he should seek
To have some lemons on his shelf,
Then he should go down to the creek
To pick the lemons for himself.
THE NIGHT WE WATCHED
FOR WALLABIES
STEELE RUDD
IT HAD BEEN A bleak July day, and as night came on a bitter westerly howled through the trees. Cold! Wasn’t it cold! The pigs in the sty, hungry and half-fed (we wanted for ourselves the few pumpkins that had survived the drought), fought savagely with each other for shelter, and squealed all the time like—well, like pigs. The cows and calves left the place to seek shelter away in the mountains; while the draught horses, their hair standing up like barbed wire, leaned sadly over the fence and gazed up at the green lucerne. Joe went about shivering in an old coat of Dad’s with only one sleeve to it—a calf had fancied the other one day that Dad hung it on a post as a mark to go by while ploughing.
‘My! It’ll be a stinger tonight,’ Dad remarked to Mrs Brown—who sat, cold-looking, on the sofa—as he staggered inside with an immense log for the fire. A log! Nearer a whole tree! But wood was nothing in Dad’s eyes.
Mrs Brown had been at our place five or six days. Old Brown called occasionally to see her, so we knew they couldn’t have quarrelled. Sometimes she did a little housework, but more often she didn’t.
We talked it over together, but couldn’t make it out. Joe asked Mother, but she had no idea—so she said. We were full up, as Dave put it, of Mrs Brown, and wished her out of the place. She had taken to ordering us about, as though she had something to do with us.
After supper we sat round the fire—as near to it as we could without burning ourselves—Mrs Brown and all, and listened to the wind whistling outside. Ah, it was pleasant beside the fire listening to the wind! When Dad had warmed himself back and front he turned to us and said:
‘Now, boys, we must go directly and light some fires and keep those wallabies back.’
That was a shock to us, and we looked at him to see if he were really in earnest. He was, and as serious as a judge.
‘Tonight!’ Dave answered, surprisedly. ‘Why tonight any more than last night or the night before? Thought you had decided to let them rip?’
‘Yes, but we might as well keep them off a bit longer.’
‘But there’s no wheat there for them to get now. So what’s the good of watching them? There’s no sense in that.’
Dad was immovable.
‘Anyway,’ whined Joe, ‘I’m not going—not a night like this—not when I ain’t got boots.’
That vexed Dad. ‘Hold your tongue, sir!’ he said, ‘You’ll do as you’re told.’
But Dave hadn’t finished. ‘I’ve been following that harrow since sunrise this morning,’ he said, ‘and now you want me to go chasing wallabies about in the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else but to keep them from eating the ground. It’s always the way here, the more one does the more he’s wanted to do,’ and he commenced to cry.
Mrs Brown had something to say. She agreed with Dad and thought we ought to go, as the wheat might spring up again.
‘Pshah!’ Dave blurted out between his sobs, while we thought of telling her to shut her mouth.
Slowly and reluctantly we left that roaring fireside to accompany Dad that bitter night. It was a night!—dark as pitch, silent, forlorn and forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue. And just to keep wallabies from eating nothing! They had eaten all the wheat—every blade of it—and the grass as well. What they would start on next—ourselves or the cart harness—wasn’t quite clear.
We stumbled along in the dark one behind the other, with our hands stuffed into our trousers. Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe, bare-shinned and bootless, in the rear. Now and again he tramped on a Bathurst burr, and, in sitting down to extract the prickle, would receive a cluster of them elsewhere. When he escaped the burr it was only to knock his shin against a log or leave a toenail or two clinging to a stone. Joe howled, but the wind howled louder, and blew and blew.
Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:
‘To hell with everything! Whatever he wants bringing us out on a night like this, I’m damned if I know!’
Dad couldn’t see very well in the dark, and on this night couldn’t see at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that had fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne. And what a fright they both got! The old horse took it worse than Dad—who only tumbled down—for he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting every leg he had in the wires. How the brute struggled! We stood and listened to him. After kicking panels of the fence down and smashing every wire in it, he got loose and made off, taking most of it with him.
‘That’s one wallaby on the wheat, anyway,’ Dave muttered, and we giggled. We understood Dave; but Dad didn’t open his mouth.
We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked through the ‘wheat’ and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitary pair of ears—but from the row and scatter they made there were a million.
Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire. Joe went to sleep—how, I don’t know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but h
e never noticed them. Yet he seemed to be listening.
We mooched around from fire to fire, hour after hour, and when we wearied of heaving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and cursed the wind, and the winter, and the night birds alternately. It was a lonely, wretched occupation.
Now and again Dad would leave his fire to ask us if we could hear a noise. We couldn’t, except that of wallabies and mopokes. Then he would go back and listen again. He was restless, and, somehow, his heart wasn’t in the wallabies at all. Dave couldn’t make him out.
The night wore on. By and by there was a sharp rattle of wires, then a rustling noise, and Sal appeared in the glare of the fire. ‘Dad!’ she said. That was all. Without a word, Dad bounced up and went back to the house with her.
‘Something’s up!’ Dave said, and, half-anxious, half-afraid, we gazed into the fire and thought and thought. Then we stared, nervously, into the night, and listened for Dad’s return, but heard only the wind and the mopoke.
At dawn he appeared again, with a broad smile on his face, and told us that mother had got another baby—a fine little chap.
Then we knew why Mrs Brown had been staying at our place.
CRUTCHING THE RAMS
FRANK DANIEL
IN HIS EARLY TEENS my brother Jim was a ‘learner shearer’ and had been coming along quite promisingly working for the local shearing contractor.
My early ambition to become a shearer had, on the other hand, waned in the light of becoming interested in farm machinery and mechanical things.
One day Jim’s boss asked him to go out to a nearby station, owned by a former World War I officer, to crutch a hundred and eighty stud merino rams. Jim was told that he would have to find a mate to do the rouseabouting. He was also warned to be very careful with the rams and make sure he didn’t cut off any important bits.
Although I had no interest in sheep whatsoever, I was very proud of my brother having his first shed all to himself and I was really pleased when he asked me to go with him to help out.
The station’s shearing shed was built on a rise well above ground level, with room to pen sheep underneath.
There were twenty-five stands along one wall.
Jim carried his tools of trade in through the entrance door past the engine room and set himself up at stand number twenty-four. I’m not sure why he chose stand twenty-four. I think it was something to do with less noise from the engine room.
I carried our tucker box in and placed it at stand twenty-four. Jim swiftly laid the boot into it and sent it sliding back another three stands away from his work area.
‘There’s a place for that!’ he said. I couldn’t see any obvious ‘place’ so assumed stand number twenty-one must have been the spot he was talking about.
I was awestruck by the immense size of the building, and even more impressed by the bush carpentry skills that had gone into its construction. They built things to last in those days.
If I was awestruck at the size of the shearing shed, I was totally dumbstruck at the size of the rams that were rattling their feet on the grating of the catching pens.
They were monsters.
Up to that point I hadn’t given much thought to my actual duties. I was just prepared to do whatever was necessary—sweep away the crutchings, pen up a few more rams as needed.
I figured I should be able to handle that all right.
Then the station mechanic turned up. He said ‘Gidday’ to us and asked if I was ready to start the engine up. Too right I was. I was interested in that job, mechanical stuff! No worries about that, at all.
So off we went, twenty-four stands back along that big shed to the top of the steps that led down into the engine room—and there she was.
Bloody hell!
It was a monster. A two-cylinder Lister diesel engine standing over six foot high on a heavy concrete foundation. It had a flywheel about three-and-a-half feet in diameter, brass pipes and taps, other bits and pieces that I knew absolutely nothing about and of course there were heavy leather belts to drive the overhead shearing plant. There was a large tank of water connected to keep the engine running cool.
Jack, the mechanic, showed me how to start the engine.
‘First, you turn the fuel on,’ and he gave the tap a few turns, ‘then you lift this lever here to decompress the valves.’
So far so good.
Then he produced the crank handle. Blimey! It was as big as my leg. It was made of cast steel and it certainly looked heavy!
The old fellow gave the flywheel a few turns with the crank, giving me directions as he went.
‘You turn this . . . then you drop this valve lever down and she should go.’
She did.
It kept boppin’ and poppin’ and going on for a bit till it settled down.
The flywheel was hummin’ and drummin’ and the belts were slappin’ and clappin’ and the whole atmosphere was vibratin’ and shakin’.
It sounded like the army had arrived on the scene.
With raised voice he told me that I could ‘have a go now’ to get used to the starting procedure.
‘No thanks . . . she’ll be right,’ I shouted back. ‘I know what to do now. She’ll be right.’
He looked at me and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to turn it off.
There was no way in the world I was interested in cranking that big old engine.
I’d already had an ‘experience’ with a smaller Cooper’s three-horsepower engine at home, in our own shearing shed.
That engine of ours was shorter in height but longer. It was necessary to hold a decompression valve in the head of the engine with your left hand whilst you cranked the flywheel with your right hand. To do that required my arms to be outstretched as far as I could reach. While the cranking was in progress a magneto let out loud clacking noises and emitted strong sparks of electricity right in front of my face.
On the day I’d had the ‘experience’ I’d just reached full cranking speed when the crank handle slipped from the crankshaft. Having sufficient momentum, it turned one more revolution in my right hand and gave me a resounding crack in the side of the mouth, leaving one tooth missing.
I vowed I would not be cranking one of those cantankerous old machines ever again if it could be avoided.
‘You know what to do, do ya?’ asked Jack, with a frown.
I assured him that I was well and truly versed in what to do.
Jack then told me how to shut the engine down for smoko and how to set it up again for a restart. Then he went away happy that all was in order.
For the first two hours Jim struggled with the heavy merino rams. Jim only weighed about ten stone wringing wet and those rams would have been close to fourteen stone each.
They were as strong as bulls and, when they got a grip on the grated floor with their hooves, they were near impossible to turn over and drag from the pen. I gave Jim as much help as I could in that department, but it was really hard yakker.
Nine-thirty was smoko time and Jim said I could ‘go and turn that injin orf’ while he had a break.
So off I went. Twenty-four stands up that long shearing board. Ten steps down into the engine room and there she was. The flywheel hummin’ and drummin’, the belts were slappin’ and clappin’, the tappets were poppin’ and boppin’, the water was hissin’ an’ . . . . an’ . . . an’ . . . well the whole flamin’ show looked like it could go on forever.
‘Bugger it!’ I said aloud, eyeing off that big crank handle.
I left it running and went back to join Jim for a cuppa.
‘Ain’t you gonna turn it orf?’ he asked as I rummaged through our lunchbox looking for a plum-jam sandwich.
‘Nah! Dad says it does them good to have a bit of a run,’ I said knowingly.
So we left it at that; Jim didn’t seem too concerned.
Back we went to dragging those monster rams to the stand. Then I’d stand back and watch as Jim wrestled with each one and got them crutched
one at a time.
When lunchtime came Jim was really in need of a rest.
‘You better go and turn that injin orf this time!’
So off I went . . . twenty-four stands along that great shed to the top of the stairs at the engine room.
I peered down at that big old Lister.
The flywheel was still hummin’ and drummin’, the valves were still poppin’ and boppin’, the belts were still slappin’ and clappin’ and the water was still hissin’ an’ . . . hissin’ . . . an’ I could tell that it was still full of oil because it wasn’t making any funny noises, and that crank handle didn’t look any smaller.
So I let it run right through dinner, and again Jim didn’t seem terribly worried.
The third run for the day was a bit slower for Jim as he was getting knocked about a bit by those rams and I was about as handy as a pocket in a singlet as far as the sheep were concerned. I’d lost all interest in them about half an hour after we started that morning.
Three o’clock was smoko time again.
Jim didn’t even ask if I wanted to ‘turn that old injin orf’ this time. He just settled down for a cuppa and some cake as curiosity drew me along those twenty-four stands where I made another observation from the top of the ten stairs.
Same old story. The flywheel was still hummin’ and drummin’, the valves were still poppin’ and boppin’, the belts were still flappin’ and clappin’, the water was still hissin’ . . . and I could tell that it still had plenty of oil in the sump—so I left it alone.
About four-thirty we saw the last of the rams down the chute and into the paddock and Jim cleaned up his gear and I swept the board clean and tidied up the wool.
I made absolutely sure that no rams were left in the shed and then quite confidently I went twenty-four stands up that long shed, and ten steps down into the engine room.
The flywheel was still hummmin’ and drummin’, the belts were still flappin’, the valves were still poppin’, the belts still slappin’ and flappin’. There was a strong smell of oil and the water was still hissin’ away.
‘Now!’ I thought to myself as I went through the formalities of ‘turning that big injin orf.’
