Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  The solution lies in breeding stronger sheep. More powerful pigs. Given the right physique, look what a saving in freights would be effected if farm produce could swim to the London market.

  There’s something wrong with the backs of our sheep. The knees of our pigs are not all that they should be. We ought to look into the backs and knees of our sheep and pigs. In the meantime, you leave our emus alone.

  TALL TIMBER

  C.J. DENNIS

  A snake that fastened on a man’s leg in Burnie, Tasmania, was much disgusted to find that the leg was a wooden one.

  That sort o’ reminds me of the old days (said Bill)

  In the bush at Toolangi, at Switherton’s mill—

  A sor-mill, you know—an’ the sawyer we ’ad

  Was old ’Oppy McClintock, a wooden-legged lad.

  ’E was walkin’ one day for to tighten a peg,

  When a tiger snake grabs at ’is old timber leg;

  An’ there it ’angs on, till I fetched it a crack,

  But old ’Oppy jist grins as ’e starts to walk back.

  An’ then somethink ’appens. We seen ’Oppy stop,

  As ’e stumbles a bit, an’ looks down at ’is prop

  With a dead funny look. Then ’e lets out a yell:

  ’Ere, boys! Take it off me! It’s startin’ to swell!

  Well, we unstraps ’is leg, an’ it swole an’ it swole.

  Snake pisen? Too right! ’Twas a twenny-foot pole

  In less than five minutes! Believe it or not.

  An’ as thick—it’s as true as I stand on this spot!

  We was ’eavin it out, when the boss starts to roar:

  ’Ere! Why waste good wood? Shove it on to the sor!

  So we sors it in two, down the middle, an’ then,

  Them there slabs swole an’ swole; so we sors ’em agen.

  An’ we sors, an’ we sors; an’ it swole, an’ it swole,

  Till the end of the day, when the tally, all tole,

  Was two thousan’ foot super. You doubt it? (said Bill)

  You ask any ole ’and up at Switherton’s mill!

  I’M NOT LOST

  My favourite yarn in the Dad and Dave genre is the one about the city motorist whose shiny car pulls up on a back road where Dave is leaning on the gatepost gazing across the paddocks.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ say the car driver, ‘where can I get petrol around here?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ says Dave.

  ‘Well, does this road lead to Toowoomba?’

  ‘I dunno,’ says Dave slowly.

  ‘Well, what town does this road lead to?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ says Dave, ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Well, if I go back to that fork in the road down the hill, and take the other road, where will that take me?’ asks the frustrated city slicker.

  ‘I dunno,’ says Dave after a pause.

  ‘You don’t know much, do you?’ says the frustrated driver, sarcastically.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ agrees Dave, ‘but I’m not lost!’

  JH

  THE BOASTER AND THE OUTLAW

  ANONYMOUS

  He had come to Numerella in the drought of ’98,

  When the plains were but a lonely sea of sand,

  And the philanthropic super, taking pity on his state,

  Had given him a start as ‘extra hand’.

  Jimmy really was a wonder; all night long he’d sit and boast

  Of all the marvellous feats he’d seen and done:

  How he’d won the axeman’s trophy at the show at Bundaberg,

  And killed an Indian hawker just for fun;

  How he’d rung the board at Blackall, beating Howe by thirty sheep,

  How he’d broken outlaw horses in the night,

  And in seven rounds at Gympie put O’Sullivan to sleep

  With a blow on which he had the patent right.

  Now we had a horse, an outlaw born on Numerella run,

  No fiercer horse had ever stretched the reins.

  He’d thrown every man who’d tried him and the station breaker, Dunn,

  Said he was the toughest outlaw on the plains.

  The boss came strolling down one day, we’d planned the joke of course;

  ‘I’ve letters here must catch the mail,’ he said,

  ‘You better take ’em, Jimmy, you can ride the chestnut horse,

  But mind him or he’ll have you on your head.’

  So Jim threw on the saddle, and the colt stood like a sheep,

  For a moment there we thought our joke would fail.

  But Jim was scarcely seated when the chestnut gave a leap

  Like a demon and he cleared the upper rail.

  Down the track went horse and rider, and we opened wide our eyes,

  For Jim just seemed to be content to sit,

  And he hit him with his stockwhip every time that he would rise,

  And dig his heels in every time he hit!

  We rushed for horse and bridle; down the track we followed fast,

  For to see our outlaw thrashed was something new,

  But when we neared the timberline where we had seen them last,

  Both man and horse had disappeared from view.

  So we searched for horse and rider, but our searching was in vain,

  Though we searched that outback country everywhere,

  From the cattle camps on Kyder to the farms on Little Plain,

  But all our searches ended in despair.

  The days turned into weeks but still no tidings came to hand,

  We had given Jimmy up and thought him lost,

  Till a traveller going eastward found some hoof prints in the sand,

  Showing plainly where a horse had lately crossed.

  On a piece of rugged country, way out back of Ondaloo,

  Hemmed in by rugged hills and gorges deep,

  We found that outlaw bucking still for all he ever knew,

  And Jimmy there astride him—sound asleep!

  A SNAKE YARN

  W.T. GOODGE

  ‘You talk of snakes,’ said Jack the Rat,

  ‘But, blow me, one hot summer,

  I seen a thing that knocked me flat—

  Fourteen foot long, or more than that,

  It was a reg’lar hummer!

  Lay right along a sort of bog,

  Just like a log!

  ‘The ugly thing was lyin’ there

  And not a sign o’ movin’,

  Give any man a nasty scare;

  Seen nothin’ like it anywhere

  Since I first started drovin’.

  And yet it didn’t scare my dog.

  Looked like a log!

  ‘I had to cross that bog, yer see,

  And bluey I was humpin’;

  But wonderin’ what that thing could be

  A-layin’ there in front o’ me

  I didn’t feel like jumpin’.

  Yet, though I shivered like a frog,

  It seemed a log!

  ‘I takes a leap and lands right on

  The back of that there whopper!’

  He stopped. We waited. Then Big Mac

  Remarked, ‘Well, then, what happened, Jack?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Jack, and drained his grog.

  ‘It was a log!’

  AUSSIE ICONS

  Here is a bunch of yarns about some of our iconic Aussie events, buildings, sayings and phrases . . . and characters, both real and imaginary.

  A few of these yarns explain how some of our typical Aussie phrases came about, like ‘Blind Freddy could see that’ and ‘beyond the black stump’. The truth about these things is more interesting than anything you could make up.

  The stories behind some of our Aussie institutions, like Qantas, Cobb & Co and the Melbourne Cup are fascinating and very often not at all what you would expect.

  The yarns that were most fun to write in this section, and the ones that tend to interest me the most, are those that concer
n some of our legendary real Aussies. I find that when a person becomes ‘larger than life’ the public image tends to overshadow the real person.

  We all think of Banjo Paterson as the great poet who wrote our most famous song, but very few Australians would know he enlisted in World War I at the age of fifty-one, or that he played in the first ever New South Wales polo team. For that matter, few Australians would know that Charles Kingsford-Smith was the first person ever rescued from the surf using a life-saving reel—at Bondi, when he was just ten years old.

  The standard history of these icons is well-known, so I have tried to find interesting or little-known aspects of their stories that are ‘good yarns’. We all love insights into the real people behind the legends and I have tried to make the yarns about characters like Melba, Banjo, Slim Dusty, Kingsford-Smith and others reveal something of their real lives, which are often more extraordinary than you could possibly imagine.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  Great Navigator, Poor Yarn Spinner

  James Cook was a very good captain and a great navigator but generally his storytelling left a lot to be desired.

  Admittedly, he was mostly writing a ship’s log or official letters, not trying to entertain anybody. Still, his matter-of-fact expression always leaves me feeling he was a rather cold-blooded type with a very stiff upper lip.

  Cook rarely lets us see any emotion. There is hardly any figurative language in his narratives; the ship’s log is mostly about weather and position.

  Sir Joseph Banks is even worse. His journals are quite dull reading and full of scientific references and facts.

  The only person on the Endeavour who made any attempt to record his feelings was the artist Sydney Parkinson, who sadly died after the ship left Batavia and never made it home.

  I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s look at a typical day, almost 250 years ago, through the eyes of the captain, the naturalist and the artist.

  It’s 2 October 1769 and the Endeavour is in the Pacific approaching New Zealand.

  Cook says,

  Little wind. At 3 PM hoisted out a Boat to try the current but found none, saw several Grampusses. AM. Had a Boat in the water, and Mr Banks shot an Albetross which measur’d 10 feet 8 inches from the tip of one wing to the other; he likewise shot two Birds that were very much like ducks . . . we first saw these Birds in the Latitude of 48 degrees South.

  Joseph Banks writes,

  Calm: I go in the boat and take up Dagysa rostrata, Serena, polyedra, Beroe incrassata, coarctata, medusa vitrea, Phyllodoce velella, with several other things which are all put in spirits. See a seal but cannot come near him to shoot. Shoot Diomedea exulans, Procellaria velox, pallipes, Latirostris, longipes and Nectris fuliginosa.

  The artist Sydney Parkinson observes in his diary,

  On the 2nd, the sea was as smooth as the Thames, and the weather fair and clear. Mr. Banks went out in a little boat, and diverted himself in shooting of Shearwaters, with one white Albatross, that measured, from the tip of one wing to the other, ten feet, seven inches; and also picked up a great many weeds of various kinds.

  At least Sydney Parkinson had some flair in his writing, even if the marine plants were all just ‘weeds’ to him, ‘weeds’ that he had to draw and paint.

  When you get different versions of any yarn, the exact truth is hard to find; Cook and Parkinson don’t even agree on how big the dead albatross was!

  I hate to pick on such a famous and iconic figure as James Cook, but just look at how mundane are his accounts of two momentous and historically significant events—finding the east coast of Australia and arriving at Botany Bay:

  THURSDAY, 19th April 1770.

  Fresh Gales at South-South-West and Cloudy Squally weather, with a large Southerly Sea; at 1 AM brought too and sounded, but had no ground with 130 fathoms of line. At 5, set the Topsails close reef’d, and at 6, saw land extending from North-East to West, distance 5 or 6 Leagues, having 80 fathoms, fine sandy bottom.

  ‘Saw land . . . fine sandy bottom’! This is the birth of our nation! There is no pride, no sense of achievement or triumph, not even any patriotic platitudes or thanks to the Almighty. He simply gives the latitude and longitude of the first landmark sighted and then says, ‘I have named it Point Hicks; because Lieutenant Hicks was the first who discover’d this Land.’

  It’s hardly riveting stuff is it? He has just discovered the east coast of the Great South Land and the best he can manage is ‘saw land’. It’s the same when he arrives at Botany Bay. After trying to land at Jervis Bay and being stopped from doing so by adverse winds, he again tried to land near Bulli but the surf was too strong, so he returned to the ship:

  At this time it fell Calm, and we were not above a Mile and a half from the Shore, in 11 fathoms, and within some breakers that lay to the Southward of us; but luckily a light breeze came off from the Land, which carried us out of danger, and with which we stood to the Northward. At daylight in the morning we discover’d a Bay, which appeared to be tollerably well shelter’d from all winds, into which I resolved to go with the Ship, and with this View sent the Master in the Pinnace to sound the Entrance.

  Sunday, 29th. In the P.M. wind Southerly and Clear weather, with which we stood into the bay and Anchored under the South shore about 2 miles within the Entrance in 5 fathoms.

  When they set foot on shore Cook doesn’t mention it, he’s too busy observing the Aborigines and worrying about their weapons. He had already fired a warning shot at a group on shore who made threatening gestures with spears.

  One of them took up a stone and threw at us, which caused my firing a Second Musquet, loaded with small Shott . . . Immediately after this we landed, which we had no sooner done than they throw’d 2 darts at us; this obliged me to fire a third shott . . .

  So, in that magic moment, the first British foot on Australian soil (well eastern Australian soil, anyway), all the famous captain was thinking about was firing his musket at the locals.

  Joseph Banks’ account is even less exciting. He describes the momentous event like this: ‘In the mean time we had landed on the rock.’

  There is a much better version of Cook’s party first landing on Australian soil. It’s one I was told as a kid at school and again by my mum when we visited the place at Kurnell where it all happened.

  It’s a well-known story that involves Isaac Smith, who was the son of Cook’s wife Elizabeth’s cousin Charles.

  Isaac was a midshipman on the Endeavour and was in the first boat ashore at Botany Bay. According to the family legend, Cook said, ‘Jump out, Isaac,’ and thus the boy became the first European to set foot on the Great South Land’s east coast. But the story does not appear in any of the journals written at the time. Indeed, Cook himself never mentions it.

  Given that he was busy taking pot shots at seemingly aggressive natives on the shore it would seem that telling a member of your wife’s family, ‘You go first!’ might not be the sort of thing you would want the in-laws to know!

  Isaac sailed with Cook again on his second voyage and was the first man to make charts of the southern parts of South America. He was commander of the 36-gun frigate HMS Perseverance at the Battle of Tellicherry against the French in 1791 and retired, due to having contracted hepatitis, as Rear-Admiral in 1807. Isaac was obviously like a younger brother to Cook’s widow Elizabeth and, as all her six children died young, they shared a house when he retired. Isaac died in 1831 at the age of seventy-eight and Elizabeth Cook died four years later in 1835, aged ninety-three.

  The story of Isaac being the first European to set foot on eastern Australia was related years after Elizabeth’s death by her second cousin Canon Frederick Bennett, who said the story was a ‘family legend’.

  It’s not like a respectable clergyman to pass on mere hearsay, surely!

  Anyway, it’s a lot better than, ‘In the mean time we had landed on the rock.’

  JH

  CAPTAIN COOK

  JIM HAYNES

  Th
ere once was a captain named Cook,

  Sailed south just to have a quick look,

  There he found a land,

  Stuck a flag in the sand—

  That’s how native title got took.

  MATHEW FLINDERS – THE MAN WHO NAMED AUSTRALIA

  Matthew Flinders should have been a country doctor—a physician like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, in and around the village of Donington, Lincolnshire, where he was born in 1774.

  Educated at Donington Parish School and Horbling Grammar School, he learned Latin, Greek, Classics and Mathematics; but he dreamed of joining the navy.

  His cousin was governess to the daughter of Captain Thomas Pasley of the Royal Navy and, at just fourteen years of age, Flinders persuaded his cousin to introduce him to the captain.

  Flinders joined the navy as an officer’s servant at fifteen and served on Captain Pasley’s vessels, HMS Scipio and Bellerophon. In 1791, aged seventeen, he joined the Providence as a midshipman on William Bligh’s second voyage of exploration and sailed to the Pacific Ocean, Asia and the West Indies.

  Three years later, Flinders was back on the Bellerophon, this time as an aide-de-camp to Pasley, who had been promoted to rear admiral. On 1 June 1794, the warship, known to her less-than-classically-educated crew as the Billy Ruffian, was involved in the famous Battle of Ushant, afterwards known as ‘the Glorious First of June’.

  Young twenty-year-old Matthew Flinders sat calmly on the deck of the Bellerophon throughout the battle, observing and making notes. As chaos reigned around him and the Bellerophon took broadside after broadside from the French warships Eole and America in a pitched gunnery battle, he prepared what was to become the most accurate account of the famous battle, a report that ran to forty foolscap pages.

  Rear-Admiral Pasley lost a leg to a cannonball in the battle, as his protégé sat on deck making notes. This left Flinders free to move on to another stage of his naval career. He joined the HMS Reliance and sailed to New South Wales with ship’s surgeon George Bass and John Hunter, who was returning to the colony to be the new governor. Bass and Flinders explored the coasts and rivers of New South Wales and circumnavigated Tasmania. Flinders also explored the coast of Queensland and was eventually commissioned to chart the coast of Australia.