by Jim Haynes
The crows were flying back. Otto pounded with his heels until he could feel the compulsive effort of the horse’s strong muscles with each bound. He began to shout when he was still two hundred yards away, but now he didn’t feel so desperately savage with them. He remembered his father saying, ‘Old Heinrich’s the best man with lambing ewes I ever saw.’
The crows departed reluctantly, and fortunately they hadn’t had time to do further damage. Old Heinrich arrived, climbed creakily out of the sulky and stood looking, making some clucking noises with his tongue. The dogs, who had enjoyed themselves chasing the crows away, now returned and made an enthusiastic rush at the men, past the sheep’s nose.
The ewe made a desperate plunge, got to its feet and, because it was starting to dry, managed to run off, though rather erratically. Otto chased it but soon realised that he couldn’t catch it without what would be a cruelly gruelling race to the ewe in its present condition. He stopped and looked at Heinrich.
Old Heinrich looked aside and rubbed a hand over his face, embarrassed. He didn’t know how to behave in the face of his young employer’s dreadful faux pas.
‘What will we do now?’ asked Otto. ‘We can’t let her run around like that.’
Old Heinrich made an ‘ah-rrr’ noise in his throat and seemed all at sea. Obviously when he attended to the sheep no distressed ewe was ever sent flying in a panic. But the dogs were sure they knew what to do. Their forepaws were on Otto’s thighs and they looked into his face, trying to make him understand. Then they made little runs in the direction of the ewe, only waiting for a word of consent.
Otto said to Heinrich, ‘I believe it would be best to let the dogs catch her. Better than letting her stagger about like that.’
The dogs tore off without waiting for more. Otto gave a yell and a whistle, but they pretended not to hear him. They headed off the ewe and, because she wouldn’t turn, they got annoyed and tackled her. One grabbed her by the dewlap and the other got a grip on the wool at her flank. She soon toppled and the dogs stood over her, half pleased and half surprised that it had happened so easily.
Otto came up at a run, scolding the dogs whenever one gave a tentative tug at her wool. Heinrich followed, with long strides to make the pace, because he couldn’t move his limbs quickly.
Otto sent the dogs away and Heinrich knelt beside the ewe.
‘We’ll hafter get his legs out,’ he said.
‘Our veterinary lecturer,’ Otto commented, ‘said you had to push the head back first.’
Heinrich stopped and a look of acute distress came across his face.
‘I always used to just get the legs out,’ he confessed, now utterly at a loss, because he was a very humble old fellow.
‘You do it your way,’ Otto encouraged him. ‘Dad always said there wasn’t a better man with lambing ewes than you.’
Heinrich turned to the ewe to hide a slow delighted smile, hesitated a moment and half turned back again, then made up his mind and put his hands on the sheep with a sure, confident touch. In a couple of minutes he was pulling gently on the lamb’s forelegs and it came away easily.
The ewe gave a great sigh of relief and lay quietly, breathing quickly and deeply, its flanks rising and falling so much that the fleece opened up and closed with each breath.
‘Nice work, Heinrich,’ said Otto. ‘It’s a pity the lamb’s dead, though.’
He picked up the lamb with his hand under its chest and it hung limply down each side of his hand like a wet dish rag. Old Heinrich looked at it with his wrinkled face puckered up but said nothing.
Then, suddenly, the lamb’s legs began to squirm; it stiffened its body and drew in a deep breath, then it gave a sneeze, shook its head and opened its eyes.
Otto and Heinrich looked at each other. And both smiled with wonder and pleasure. Otto set the lamb on its legs and it stood there, swaying precariously, with its head hanging low.
‘My word, that was marvellous!’ Otto exclaimed. ‘Coming to life in my hand like that!’
And old Heinrich grinned away to himself, not saying a word to indicate that he’d known all along that there was a good chance of its being alive.
They stood there for a while, the old man and the young, listening to the ewe’s heavy breathing, watching the lamb moving its head slowly, searchingly, from side to side and edging gradually towards the ewe, though it clearly didn’t understand how it contrived to walk, impelled by the strong instinct of the young animal seeking its mother.
Presently the ewe’s breathing eased. It began to roll its eyes round at the men and the dogs and the horses. It made a sudden attempt to rise, but Heinrich caught it by the wool.
‘A, steady there,’ he said, and the ewe lay down again. He turned to Otto.
‘When they’ve had trouble like this, they’ll often run for their lives and leave the lamb and never come back.’ He added after a moment, ‘She’s been so scared.’
He picked up the lamb and put it where the ewe would see it, but the ewe threw itself about in alarm and tried to get up and run.
‘It’ll want a lot of watching,’ he said.
So they stayed there under the pleasant autumn sun while an aeroplane changed from a tiny spot in the south to roar over them and dwindle to a speck in the north. Heinrich stood the ewe on her legs and held her while she swayed. Whenever he let go she tried to leap away. Otto put the lamb in front of her again but she backed away from it, even though it smelt confidently at her and gave the first feeble little wag of its tail.
Old Heinrich said ‘ah-rrr’ a couple of times, then remarked apologetically, ‘All these people and horses and dogs around it.’
So Otto said, ‘I’ll go and look over the Kurrajong and Trungley paddocks. I’ll leave her to you and call back to see how you get on.’
He jumped on his horse and the dogs raced after him, delighted that all the tedious hanging around was over.
* * *
When Otto returned half an hour later old Heinrich was working at the fence again. He rode over towards the ewe and stopped at the top of the rise as soon as she came into view.
She stood up sturdily now, sniffing at the lamb, which was nuzzling speculatively along her flank, giving little forward butts now and then, in the grip of another strong instinct that was leading it blindly to its mother’s udder.
When the ewe saw Otto she became stiff with hostility. She held up her head, walked protectively in front of her lamb and stamped with her front feet.
Otto chuckled to himself. His dogs arrived and looked about wonderingly, standing on their hind legs to get a better view.
Then Otto was off at a gallop, pulling hard on the rein against the strong curve of his horse’s neck. He felt extraordinarily uplifted, far more than the mere saving of a ewe and its lamb justified. As he bounded along through the breaking wheat stubble, with the horse’s hooves dubbing soundlessly in the soil and his dogs following cunningly in the wake the horse had cleared, he felt that somehow this morning he had caught more than a glimpse of the grandeur of life. He saw old Heinrich looking across at him and he waved an arm in cheerful greeting.
Old Heinrich stared after him for a long time, wondering if he was supposed to do something.
‘SUCCESS’
JAMES LISTER CUTH BERTSON
The apple on the topmost tree
That ripens rosy red
Is ever fairer when we see
It hanging overhead.
But when, with many a weary fall,
At length we grasp the prize,
The longed-for treasure loses all
Its beauty in our eyes.
Ah! Could we know our happiness
Is not in what we gain,
But in the struggle and the stress,
The effort to attain.
The patient heart, the steady toil,
Not one triumphant feat,
Alone can lift us from the soil,
And make life’s labour sweet.
Part 9
HOTEL
The bush was, and probably still is, inhabited by many lost souls.
In the earliest days of European settlement convict shepherds were forced to live a solitary life in an alien environment, existing on the standard shepherds’ monthly rations of ‘ten-ten-two-and-a-quarter’. Ten pounds of meat, ten of flour, two of sugar and a quarter pound of tea became the standard ration for boundary riders and other station employees working in isolation away from the company of others.
Often the ration-cart driver was the only living soul these men would talk to in a month.
There are, however, many who endure the isolated life in the bush by choice, for reasons often known only to themselves, like the old man in ‘A Letter from Colleen’. The bush can be a refuge from many things.
Isolation is not the only form of loneliness experienced by those who live in the bush. Distance from major cities has always led to a lack of amenities, communication and services in rural Australia. This still exists to an extent today, but was far worse in Lawson’s day, as the poignant story of the bushman in ‘Going Blind’ relates.
The passing of time makes us all ‘lost souls’ and the wonderful Brian James story ‘Bring Your Fiddle, Joe’, in which a single, seemingly inconsequential life is endowed with respect, dignity and sadness, is a moving and nostalgic tribute to the old values that existed in small-town communities between the wars.
Small-town rivalries and squabbles are part of the sub-plots of both ‘A Letter from Colleen’ and ‘Bring Your Fiddle, Joe’ but the full-blown consequences of small-town small-mindedness and partisanship are the main subject of another beautifully observed story from Brian James, ‘The Hagney Affair’.
This section concludes, appropriately, with several of Lawson’s stock characters daydreaming and yarning about the perfect resting place for the ‘lost souls’ of the bush. Of course, as we expect from Lawson, the champion of lost souls and lost causes, mateship features heavily in the fabian dream of a place where ‘lost souls’ might be at peace.
‘AFTER MANY YEARS’
HENRY KENDALL
(EXCERPT)
The song that once I dreamed about, the tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without the love of wind and wing—
The perfect verses to the tune of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon, remain unwritten yet.
It is too late to write them now; the ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow as in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again; but, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain, I think I hear its words.
I think I hear the echo still of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill and sunset fires the cones.
But only in the hours supreme with songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream, this echo comes to me.
There is a river in the range I love to think about:
Perhaps the searching feet of change have never found it out.
Ah! Oftentimes I used to look upon its banks and long
To steal the beauty of that brook and put it in a song.
* * *
Ah! Let me hope that in that place the old familiar things,
To which I turn a wistful face, have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still that, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill, one spot secure from change!
No longer doth the earth reveal her gracious green and gold:
I sit where youth was once and feel that I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things is wearing all away:
Like one who halts with tired wings, I rest and muse today.
* * *
But in the night, and when the rain the troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again the river in the hills.
And when the day is very near, and birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear the song I cannot sing.
‘BRING YOUR FIDDLE,
JOE’
‘BRIAN JAMES’
(JOHN TIERNEY)
‘BRING YOUR FIDDLE, JOE! You won’t forget your fiddle?’ they used to say through many a year, just as if Joe would come and not bring his fiddle.
‘Tuesday night, Joe, down at Mason’s barn! Great turnout! Bring your fiddle, Joe!’
And Joe’s answer was an invariable formula, ‘I’ll be there at seven o’clock, sharp.’
Or it may have been a ‘hop’ at The Gap, or a ‘shivoo’ at Riley’s, or a ‘ball’ in the new School of Arts at Round Swamp. But it was all one, Joe and his fiddle must be there. And at seven o’clock sharp Joe would tie up the quietest and fattest and most contented of mokes to a tree or a stump or a fence, as the case may be, and shuffle into the barn, or shed, or ‘big room’, or hall, or whatever it was, fiddle in an old green baize bag under his arm, and he’d smile in his quiet, shy fashion and say, ‘Goodnight Mr Mason, and are you well? Goodnight Mrs Mason, and are you well? Goodnight, Sid. Goodnight, Tom, and are you all well?’
And everyone was all well and pleased to see Joe, and said, ‘You brought the fiddle, Joe?’
Joe Wilmot lived at Two Rocks. At least, on the very vague boundaries of Two Rocks. Some people reckoned he really belonged to Kilmarnock. It didn’t matter so much, no doubt, and Joe didn’t mind much, only there are people who are fussy about such matters and they were stout in their claim that Joe lived in Kilmarnock. Anyway, he lived on the farm where he had been born and reared. His father and mother had died long ago, and the rest of the family had gone far and wide. Joe just lived there alone and didn’t do much with the farm, although it had kept a big family in the old days.
No one seemed to know how old Joe might be. ‘Strike me, now that you mention it, I don’t rightly know how old Joe is.’ That was Flip Riley. As Flip knew practically everything, it seemed to indicate that Joe’s age was one of the mysteries—like the terrible ‘yahoo’ at Barney’s Elbow, or the red light that was seen at times over Sandy McLean’s grave.
Flip would ponder deeply, and pucker his forehead, and squint with the efforts of memory, and say at last, ‘But, dammitall, I ought to know! Let me see: Old Perry Wilmot died fifteen years ago, or was it sixteen? Anyhow, the year I got twelve quid for the bullocks, and Joe was the fourth boy, not counting the two older ones that died, and there was two boys and two girls younger than Joe, not counting the baby girl who died on Palm Sunday, though I don’t think the Wilmots worried much about Palm Sunday. And there you are, I’m damned if I can tell you exactly how old Joe ought to be.’
Joe didn’t have any age, in a way of speaking. He had always looked the same, and it was hard to imagine him looking any different. His big head was covered with a thick, sandy thatch that no one had ever seen properly trimmed; his face was leathery and durable and set with a rusty moustache that curved right over his mouth and could be sucked without undue stress when Joe was so inclined; very blue eyes with brows that drooped and looked like small models of his moustache; big ears with tussocks growing out of them. His head always seemed to be leaning over his right shoulder, his legs were slightly bandy, and he walked with a stoop. His clothes were always baggy, even his ‘going out’ suit. And his clothes looked like Joe. If you saw Joe’s coat among a thousand others you could pick it out every time. His boots, always polished for dances, had the toes turned up as though they were surprised at something, and between the toes and laces were hills and hollows like the folds of fat on an over-nourished baby.
Joe was not really a farmer, and you could hardly call Joe’s place a farm anymore. His heart wasn’t in farming. He was a better carpenter. He liked carpentering. Not that he was an expert either, in the city sense of the term, but a town carpenter would have been maddened if he had to work with timber Joe mostly had to use; round stuff—cypress p
oles—for rafters, battens adzed out of similar poles, and where square timber was needed, Joe trued it up as good as any mill could ever do.
Joe could put up a house fit for anyone—unless perhaps for a squatter or an uppity sort. There are some houses still standing that Joe built—good solid houses, too, though perhaps a little shy of architectural adornments. People liked to have Joe building for them, that is, if they weren’t in a hurry. He was very slow, but he did a good job, and he was cheap. He liked working for people in his ‘go-easy’, independent fashion, yarning as much of the day as he worked, and puffing solemnly at his crooked-stemmed briar, and smelling thoughtfully at a curly-adzed chip now and then as he yarned. It was all no good for his farm, of course, and neighbours’ cows got in and ate out the orchard till the only trees left were long stems with bunches of leaves on top of them; and the wheat paddocks were covered with briar bushes, giving a pattern much like a slice of pudding with plenty of raisins in it.
Still, a man can’t be everything, and Joe was a public character and rendering an important public service. Not that public service went to Joe’s head at all, as it often does with public characters whose service is much less than his. He was not a bit conceited, though he was proud enough, with the humble pride of a true giver. Hardly a week went by but he was reminded, ‘Bring your fiddle, Joe.’
Sometimes Joe went to two dances in a week, and had he been so minded he might have made a lot of money. He never asked for money for his playing, and he always looked surprised when it was mentioned after a dance. No one was foolish enough to ask beforehand, ‘What do you want for it?’ Just as no one would have been rude enough to ask after the dance, ‘What’s the damage, Joe?’
What Joe would have said or done can only be conjectured, but it is pretty certain he wouldn’t have fiddled there again.
No, it was a far more delicate matter, and far more delicately handled. If it was at Round Swamp, where Curly Jack Ryan was M.C., Joe would see the crowd getting ready in a most indeterminate fashion to depart, for the crispy smell of dawn would be in the air outside. Curly would say, ‘Well, Joe, it’s been a great night.’ And Joe, with the music of his fiddle still softly in him, would look dreamily pleased.
