Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Oh no! The homestead is just about as populous as ours. Ann has a companion of her own age living with her ever since her mother died. She has a housekeeper as a further safeguard against the inquisition of Mrs. Grundy. A manager–his name is Leeson–lives in a bungalow quite near the Government House. But Ann is boss. A very efficient woman is Ann.”

  “You seem to be on quite familiar terms with her, and she with you,” Ethel murmured. “Accepting the fact that you have known each other since early childhood, do you not now think it were better to address each other more formally?”

  “Maybe,” Mayne answered doubtfully. “I never thought about it. I have always called her Ann, and she has always called me Frank. Feng and she and I have always made up what shall I say?–a triple alliance. Does such familiarity annoy you?”

  “Dear me, no! But it does strike me as unusual. Perhaps it is coming among a people so very democratic which overemphasizes a custom to an Englishwoman. As your wife, and as one having known Miss Shelley only a few days, you must excuse what must appear to you an unwarrantable objection. Oh, look!”

  They were passing through a thick belt of pines, when two emus appeared as from the ground and raced along the track ahead of them. The diversion gladdened Ethel Mayne, for the subject of their conversation had reached a point when it were better for the seeds it contained to take root in her husband’s mind.

  Mayne increased the car’s speed. Ethel watched the flying legs of the two birds, and wondered why neither used its wings, not knowing that an emu’s wings never develop. On being lifted up, Little Frankie clapped his gloved hands and viewed the race with wide, sparkling eyes.

  The speedometer needle quickly fell to thirty miles an hour. Mayne held the car at thirty-five miles an hour for ten minutes.

  Gradually the machine lessened the distance. A short burst at forty miles an hour brought the car to within two yards of the fern-like tail feathers, when now the giant striding feet flung dust and sand against the wind-screen. Still faster sped the car. The speedometer needle hovered a fraction over forty-three miles an hour before Frank Mayne saw that he had conquered the speed of the fastest running creature on earth.

  The birds were becoming winded. Their beaks gaped wide, whilst from side to side they moved their heads to eye the monster purring behind them. Now Mayne slowly slackened speed, ever slower until they were travelling no faster than fifteen miles an hour. Yet over a further mile the silly birds ran before suddenly diving into the bordering scrub and disappearing from sight.

  “My! Can’t they run!” Ethel exclaimed, thrilled out of her cold reserve.

  “Without doubt,” her husband agreed. “I have estimated that thirty-six miles an hour is about the top speed of the average bird. Of course their speed is based on their physical condition. Only once have I driven an emu over forty-six miles to the hour, but when they are in poor condition their speed drops to about ten.”

  “Can one eat them?”

  “They are rather rank and oily,” he said, chuckling. “The blacks are very fond of them, however, whilst the emu oil possesses exceptional penetrating qualities.”

  Ethel became avid for information about emus. Purposefully she kept her husband’s mind from recurring to what she had said about Ann Shelley.

  4

  Quite suddenly the road debouched on a small plain, on whose further side could be seen the several white tents and the fire-smoke of the lamb-markers’ camp, with the yards a short quarter of a mile apart, from which slowly drifted a slanting column of dust. Whilst they crossed the plain Ethel discerned the figures of men at the base of the dust column, and the white-clad figure of the cook near his fire. A minute later they were stopped but a few yards from the camp, when Slim Jim sauntered towards them.

  At this red-faced giant of a man Ethel looked with interest, noting the livid mark down one cheek which gave his face the appearance of a split tomato. His bare arms were weather-stained and hairy. Only when he stood close to her husband did he remove the blackened clay pipe from between the few remaining teeth in his mouth. Without touching his forelock, he said:

  “Good day-ee, Mr. Mayne I Good day-ee, marm! Hallo, younkers! By gosh, you’re the dead image of Old Man Mayne!”

  For Slim Jim this was studied politeness. Unabashed by the leaping haughtiness in Ethel’s eyes, the lamb-markers’ cook proceeded without the fear of the angels:

  “He’s a beaut, for sure. Old Man Mayne would have been proud of him, marm. ’E’s got the old bloke’s mouth and eyes. I’ll bet when ’e grows up he’ll let out a laugh just like Old Man Mayne’s roar. Are you stopping for a cup-er-tea?”

  Frank Mayne looked at his wife. He said:

  “I must have a word with MacDougall. We’ll be here half an hour at least. If you care to accept Jim’s invitation, by all means do so.”

  How her husband’s familiar reference to this common, brutal-looking man did sting! She was about icily to refuse, when she recalled the cook’s reference to Old Man Mayne, which denoted that he was not a newcomer to the district. Suddenly she smiled.

  “I think I would like a cup of tea, Jim,” she said in quite a friendly tone. “The baby will perhaps drink a cup of milk. Frank, find the milk thermos, please.”

  Oh, why wouldn’t her husband see the absurdity of his Christian name almost coupled with that of this ruffian grinning at her and her child? But Mayne, having secured the flask, handed it to Slim Jim, smiled at her, nodded casually at Slim Jim, and as casually left them, strolling away toward the sheep-yards.

  Carrying the thermos flask, Slim Jim gallantly conducted his guest to the long table beneath the tarpaulin roof, where he reached for a packing-case, which he placed in position, dusted, and bowed her on with ludicrous politeness. From this open-air dining-room Ethel surveyed the camp with interest: the tents, the water-cart, the huge iron ovens, and the large open fireplace over which hung petrol-tin buckets and large billy-cans, and in her heart approving the outward cleanliness of the cook.

  She became seated at the table, with Little Frankie on her lap, whilst Slim Jim produced what was almost unheard of in a lamb-markers’ camp, a china cup and saucer. Little Frankie drank his milk from an enamelled pint pannikin, and seized on a slab of sponge-cake, as the eternal child will do to denote that at home it seldom gets anything to eat.

  “We bin lucky, marm,’“ Slim Jim remarked, leering at her in pouring tea from a billy-can. “The musterers brought home nine emu eggs yesterday.”

  “Are emu eggs suitable for cooking purposes?”

  “You bet, marm! One emu egg is equal to a dozen hen eggs. When you make your next bread batter, beat in a dozen hen eggs or one emu egg. You’ll be surprised how it will improve the bread.”

  Suppressing a shudder, Ethel Mayne lightly said that she would accept the advice, adding:

  “Are you an Australian?”

  “No, marm. I come from Pommyland. I bin in this country twenty-seven years,” replied Slim Jim, seating himself at the opposite side of the table.

  “Pommyland? Where is that?”

  Slim Jim revealed astonishment at her ignorance. He searched for his pipe, remembered the importance of his guest, rubbed his hands on his spotless apron.

  “Why, Hengland, marm. The Orstralians call all Englishmen Pommies. It’s a way they ’ave.”

  “Pommy! What a peculiar name! What does it mean?”

  “Bless yer, marm, I don’t know,” Slim Jim candidly admitted.

  “You don’t know the meaning of an Australian expression after having been in the country for twenty-seven years?” Ethel exclaimed in calm, cold surprise, so cold and disapproving that the cook thought he had undone all the good impression he had been so careful to make. Almost he gasped.

  “That’s a fact, marm,” he said. “Wotever it does mean, it’s got two meanings. If a bloke calls you a Pommy and you know he’s chiacking you, you take no notice; if a bloke calls you a Pommy and you see that ’e is serious, well, you bash ’im on the
nose.”

  “I see,” Ethel said slowly, although she didn’t. “What does ‘chiacking’ mean?”

  “Oh, that means kidding–er, you know, teasing.”

  “Oh, I shall have to memorize these quaint Australian words.” She added further milk to Little Frankie’s pannikin, and dusted the crumbs from the front of his jacket. Quite abruptly she looked straight at Slim Jim’s winking eyes, and he now appeared as a victim of an examining inquisitor.

  “I suppose you know everyone in this locality. Have you ever worked on Tin Tin Station?”

  “Plenty of times, marm. Old Baldy–I mean Mr. Leeson–is a good boss. So’s Miss Shelley. If a bloke is sacked by Mr. Leeson an’ ’e ain’t just ready to leave, Miss Shelley will put ’im on again if she’s asked proper. Anyway, a bloke ’as to be pretty tired for old B–Mr. Leeson–to put ’im orf.”

  Now sure of his ground, Slim Jim warbled on, unconscious that Mrs. Mayne was taking particular note of what he said.

  “Yes, Tin Tin is a good place. Old Shelley retired years ago, having made tons of oof”–Ethel did not know the meaning of the word “oof”, but refrained from interrupting–”but I reckon the bush got ’im ’ard and fast, ’cos ’e had to come back from Adelaide to shuffle orf on Tin Tin. The bush ’as got Miss Ann too. I was diggin’ up the garden one day, and she told me ’erself she wouldn’t leave Tin Tin for all the tea in China. I can’t say nothink against that, ’cos I’ve bin roaming up and down the Gutter for twenty-six years, and never bin orf it–and never will.”

  “What other stations have you worked on?”

  “Me? Lots, on and orf, as the saying is. Durlop, up Burke way, was a good place before the War. Albemarle, above Menindee, ain’t bad either.”

  “Have you ever worked for Mr. Cameron?”

  “Yes, marm. For three days.”

  Slim Jim had reached thin ice, and knew it.

  “Only three days! That is quite a short period, isn’t it? Why did you leave?”

  “Me and Mr. Cameron ’ad a kind of disagreement.” Slim Jim stated, actually flushing. He knew he could never dare explain to this “’aughty tart” how he had inadvertently discovered Alldyce Cameron flagrantly flirting with one of the Thuringah maids, and in consequence had been paid off the following morning with a bribe of five pounds silence money.

  He said: “Yes, me and ’im ’ad a nargument. ’E spoke kind of sharp, and my tongue ain’t slow of a cold morning. Anyway, there’s always plenty of work for a cook, marm.”

  “Yes, I suppose there is,” Ethel concurred, wondering why the man lied. It was unfortunate that her husband returned just then.

  5

  Again speeding westward, they passed two huts built near a tall windmill set over a well, Mayne explaining that the two stockmen usually camped there were now at the lamb-marking camp. Beyond this place, known as White Well, they left the mulga country and entered on a great stretch of rolling plain country covered with tussock-grass, which appeared blackened as though by fire, the new shoots not sufficiently conspicuous to tinge the expanse with green.

  Red sand-dunes appeared far to the north, among them a windmill and hut, and a huge surface dam known as Karl’s Dam. To the south a line of black-looking mulga marked the horizon. The wind tore at Ethel’s hat and whipped her cheeks to colour. Her mind was awed by the vastness of space about them, but she felt no thrill when her husband told her that just north of the mulga belt was the south boundary fence, and that far beyond the northern sand-dunes lay the north boundary fence.

  Up and down over the gentle swells of the ground the car sped at an even forty-five miles an hour. The low, dark smudge of westward scrub so very slowly grew into sharp relief that it seemed as if they hardly moved at all. Beyond the scrub belt the land rose into a range of low hills, blue-black in colour at the foot of the azure sky.

  Twelve miles, and they had crossed the plain. Now the car approached a camp called Mulga Flat and, as White Well, deserted.

  The iron structure of the hut appeared to the woman as the work of a crazy man whose materials were battered iron sheets, hessian bagging, and bare poles. Miles still, whilst steadily the track lifted them up to the summits of the rock-strewn, mulga-coated hills. And then abruptly, when they swung round a spur, Mayne stopped the car and sat silent whilst his wife looked out over the western limits of Atlas.

  Nestling in a gully almost directly below were clustered the iron-roofed buildings comprising the Atlas out-station called Forest Hill. The large, stone-built building with the single wide veranda was the home of Angus MacDougall and his wife. Beyond that gully the hills were lower than the point of the track at which they were halted, and beyond those lower hills, stretching to the horizon, lay a vast, flat, grey sea of salt-bush. From north to south stretched the salt-bush plain; north-west to the foot of the gigantic blue rocks lying along the horizon as rocks towering above the sea, rocks that were the distant Barrier Range, among which the enormously rich lead mines of Broken Hill were situated; west and south-west to the clear-cut horizon, as distinct and as even as the horizon of an ocean. Somewhere out on that vast salt-bush-covered plain, running north and south, was the west boundary of Atlas.

  It was very pretty, Ethel thought, but rather uninteresting. A river or two, and a cathedral surrounded by oaks and elms, would have added beauty to the scene. She was rather hungry, and said so.

  Frank Mayne could have sat an hour gazing out on that mighty panorama, he who was thrilled by the magic of those almost limitless spaces; the waves of dark green in the foreground, the even sweep of grey beyond, and the brilliant azure of the sky. They were sixty-three miles from home and still on his own land.

  “Shall we have lunch here, or shall we go on and get Mrs. MacDougall to give us lunch?” he asked, conscious of a tinge of disappointment at the obvious failure of his wife to appreciate what he felt.

  “We will have it here, please. I don’t think I want to meet your overseer’s wife to-day, Frank.”

  “Very well,” he answered, with his habitual deference to his wife’s wishes.

  So it was they picknicked within sight of Forest Hill, and later, when Mayne turned the car for the homeward run by different tracks, he pondered the words he would say to excuse their not calling on Mrs. MacDougall, who assuredly would have seen the car and wondered why, when so near, he had not called and presented her to the new mistress of Atlas.

  Almost against her will, Ethel Mayne absorbed a little of the vastness of Atlas, coming to understand the extent of an Australian sheep-run. Yet long before sundown she was wishing she were at her new home, and wondering which of her dozen gowns she would wear at dinner that night. At sunset they were crossing the river flats, and she roused sufficiently to ask her husband the meaning of the word “Pommy”.

  Mayne chuckled and smiled at her sheepishly.

  “It is difficult to decide the origin of the word,” he said slowly, and she knew he was choosing his words carefully. “Some say it is derived from the word ‘Pomegranate’, applied to new-chums on account of the freshness of their complexions. Of latter years it is not nearly so much used by Australians, and much more used by English people themselves.”

  “Is it not used in a derogatory sense?”

  “Sometimes, but only by those Australians whose parents did not originate from the British Isles. For centuries people have traduced poor old England and her sons. In some respects, some of us are ridiculously narrow-minded.”

  They had travelled about one hundred and forty miles that day without ever touching a boundary fence of Atlas.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE SHEARING

  I

  SHEARING officially began on the last Friday in July. Actually, work in connection with the shearing started on Atlas the previous Monday; started and proceeded strictly governed by routine perfected over many years. With Angus MacDougall, Frank Mayne toured the run and inspected the flocks and the paddocks, as might a corps general inspect his troops accompanied by
his chief of staff. It was quickly seen that the grass and herbage brought up by the June rain was retarded in growth, first by the frosts, and secondly by the lack of further rain. MacDougall of the hatchet face, the ham-like hands and the bow legs, stated that despite the lack of feed growth the sheep were gaining wonderfully in condition, and that the lambs were rapidly gaining strength. Yet to Frank Mayne these preshearing conditions were far from satisfactory.

  “lf it doesn’t rain in August we shall have to start scrub-cutting,” he said whilst they ate a cut lunch by the track-side. “This season has me bluffed. Do you think we are in for a bad drought?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say until we see what September brings us in the way of rain,” replied that quiet, almost taciturn Australian Scot. “Pity it can’t rain to-day. An inch now would give us whips of feed all summer. The small men are feeling the dry pinch already.”

  “I wish it would rain, Mac. We’ve still got those nine thousand wethers, last year’s hoggets. I was hoping the market would harden, but it won’t if it doesn’t rain next month. And now, having marked seventeen thousand lambs, we are in a bad position to face a dry summer. We’re carrying too much stock.”

  MacDougall refilled their pannikins with tea from the billy-can before replying.

  “Well, it’s no use jumping before we reach the hurdles. If it rains good and hard next month, Atlas will do well out of them wethers and we can cull the flocks heavily for fats. Remember, nineteen-twenty-two was like this year, and that year we had a wet spring, and knee-high grass all through to the following winter.”

  “That is so.” Mayne lit his pipe with unconscious carelessness.

  He was beginning to dread the possibility of having to apply to his wool brokers for an advance–a position he would be obliged to accept if he could not dispose of his surplus stock.

  The first decade of this century had given a bitter lesson to the squatters on the major fault of overstocking their holdings. During those years, and before, the majority of stations had carried flocks in almost every paddock on the runs, so that when drought gripped the country there was no reserve of land, which meant reserve of grass and herbage, and fearful losses were incurred, Old Man Mayne having once lost sixty thousand sheep over a period of eighteen months.