Thursday Island — Cape York — Albany Pass — Light Ships-Cooktown — Port Douglas
ON our return to Port Kennedy we were again thrown upon our own resources. — We could get no work, to beg we were ashamed, and owing to our limited education we had not even sufficient ability to thieve with any likelihood of success. It began to grow upon us that the pleasant expectations we had formed regarding Thursday Island and the pearl fishery were not going to be realised. We waited and waited, like Mr. Micawber, ‘for something to turn up,’ but beyond an occasional day’s work among the shipping we were without employment of any kind whatsoever. We began even to envy the lot of the prisoners in the gaol. They were at least certain of a meal.
If ever I want to have a good old lazy time, untrammelled by the thoughts, cares, and anxieties. inseparable from that mysterious occupation known as getting one’s living, I shall commit an offence and get consigned for three months to Thursday Island Gaol. It was my good fortune, one morning, to see two prisoners engaged whitewashing the Post-office fence, and I am prepared to assert that never since have I seen anything so lazy and comfortable, as their method of carrying out that particular occupation. To show their position in the social scale they had ‘Thursday Island’ printed in large letters across their backs, and from the placid and contented fashion of their labour, I gathered something of what a similar sentence to theirs must mean.
Allow your fancy, gentle reader, to picture for you a lovely morning, a bright blue sky flecked with white clouds, a merry sea dancing in the sunlight, tropical foliage throwing an inviting shade, a comfortable seat on the ground beneath such shade, a line of unwhitewashed fence, a fascinating brush, a bucket of mixture, and nothing in the world to do but to lay it gently on. All this with the certainty of meal times, an expansive conscience, no prying warders, and unlimited opportunities of obtaining liquor. I would rather, and I assert it unhesitatingly, far rather be a prisoner for a week in humble little Thursday Island Gaol, than work out a sentence of ten years, or even more, in statelier Portland. That is just one of my peculiarities. I am of a contented, rather than a grasping disposition.
The proprietress of our hotel is a tender-hearted lady. Besides her own family she possesses another and extensive one by adoption. This includes a Mauritian nigger and his wife, a sweet little half-caste girl of six, a collection of Binghis (aboriginals), a Japanese cook, a monkey, a spaniel puppy, and a pelican. The monkey is of a savage disposition, and resides, for the most part, under the house, where he is popularly supposed by the youth of the neighbourhood to represent the devil. The spaniel puppy is bumptious and irreverent, while the pelican combines the dignity of a bank manager with the sustained confidence of a newly — appointed policeman. When the monkey uses the puppy’s woolly coat as a game preserve we smile, but when the puppy, grossly insulted, bites the monkey’s tail, and retreats to be swallowed by the pelican, we laugh outright. Having nothing better to occupy our minds, we find pleasure in these simple things, and when one is ‘hard up’ (I dislike the term, but am compelled to use it) strange things present themselves in the character of amusements.
A totally irrelevant incident suggests itself here. Not many years ago I was permitted the friendship of a man who came from England to Australia, on fortune-making thoughts intent. He was long, lean, lanky, and lazy, and he spent the money his sorely tried parent had given him to start afresh with, in riotous living. As his capital departed, so his state deserted him, and before he had been two months in the colony he had migrated from hotel to boarding-house, and from boarding-house to common lodging-house, until at last he came to sleeping wherever his fancy prompted. This generally took the form of railway arches and public gardens.
One day — and this is the incident I desire to relate — I was hurrying along to keep an appointment, when I felt my shoulder touched; turning, I confronted a thin, haggard, out-at-elbowed individual, whom I recognised as my once too stylish friend.
‘Come down this alley,’ he said, softly, ‘and I’ll impart to you some curious information.’
In the seclusion of this by-path he solemnly lifted his right foot, and allowed me to see that the sole of his boot was almost entirely gone. In its place appeared some discoloured substance, looking suspiciously like dirty blotting-paper. I asked what it was.
‘Cardboard,’ he whispered, mysteriously; ‘that’s what I want to tell you. I have made a peculiar discovery. You must know that for the last week I have spent my time going round insurance offices begging for old almanacs. The clerks swear a bit, but they generally give’em to me, and then I take’em home, cut’em up, and use’em as you see here! Some almanacs last me two days — some only an hour or two! And — hush — (in a whisper) — ‘my boy, you may take it from me that the difference in the stability of the cardboard is a sure guarantee of the stability of the office, Sound cardboard, sound business; cheap and nasty cardboard, cheap and nasty business. In the words of the Scriptures, “ By their cardboards ye shall know them!”’ Then he borrowed a trifle and slunk away. When I was hard up myself, and my boots looked thin, I remembered that strange little bit of experience.
Day by day, in spite of the most rigid economy, our reserve fund grew smaller and smaller. We had long denied ourselves everything but absolute necessities, discarded smoking, and given up extraneous refreshments of any kind whatsoever. Yet the money seemed positively to melt away. One dreadful morning we found ourselves reduced to a shilling and two pence halfpenny, the whole of which we promptly turned into coppers. It is a strange but solemn fact, that fourteen pence halfpenny in coppers looks a great deal more than one and two pence half-penny in the other way.
Do what we would to distract our thoughts, our poverty at last became such a waking nightmare that we hardly dared look each other in the face. Then one glorious morning a letter arrived from Adelaide, and, enormous relief, it contained funds. It was only just in time; another day would have found us desperate. We trembled when we broke the seal, we gasped when we broached the contents, and we could have wept when we cashed the order.
That night we held a council of war, and determined, as it was no use remaining where we were, to set sail for the mainland, on the chance that fortune would be kinder to us there. It was at this period that the thought first struck us of endeavouring to cross the Australian Continent from north to south. There was a desperate air about it that consorted well with our position, and it would have gone hard with I any cripple, or confirmed paralytic, who might have laughed at our resolve. With this in view, we decided to sail at once for Normanton, but for sufficiently good reasons were eventually persuaded to try the other route down the Eastern Coast to Townsville, visiting Cooktown, Cairns, and Port Douglas on our way. Accordingly, the following Saturday afternoon, from the deck of one of the Australian United Steam Navigation Company’s boats, we bade Thursday Island, its Queen, and its multifarious and interesting population ‘goodbye!’ and started off.
So dangerous is the coast from Thursday Island to Cooktown reckoned, that it is compulsory for every steamer proceeding between these ports to carry a certificated pilot. Our pilot, besides proving himself as hale and hearty an old seadog as ever drank a glass of grog at any one else’s expense, was a most interesting and obliging individual. By his courtesy and that of the captain, we were permitted a good insight into the difficulties of the navigation.
Leaving Thursday Island, an almost due easterly course was steered. In so doing we passed the Queensland Leper Station, where hopelessness must reign, if it reigns anywhere on earth; sighted the Adolphus group, scene of the wreck of the unfortunate ‘Quetta’; and at sundown entered the Albany Pass.
This pass, four miles in length, and in some places nearly 500 yards in width, separates Albany Island from the mainland, and is a place of exceeding beauty. On one hand rises a tropical island covered with undergrowth of every hue. through the wealth of which look out cliffs of bold outline, the whole girt with saffron sands upon which tiny wavelets ripple with ceaseless music. On the other hand, across the ribbon of blue sea, rise high forest-clad hills, which again seem to soften off almost imperceptibly into the azure sky. On an eminence overlooking the pass, stands the lonely but picturesque residence of Mr. Jardine, the pioneer of Somerset and Thursday Island, whose cattle station extends for many miles along this bleak and dangerous coast. As a mark of respect, which has become customary since Mr. Jardine’s humanity to the survivors of the unfortunate ‘Quetta,’ we dip our ensign as we steam by.
Ere we are out of the pass, the sun is down: a strange weird sunset, lighting up the rugged cliffs ashore, and lending an air of ghostly mystery to a cluster of tall red ant-hills near the beach.
As the sun disappears, a vast number of flying foxes cross from an island to the mainland, in such a cloud as almost to obscure the heavens. And so close to the shore are we steaming that the melancholy cry of a bird comes off to us quite distinctly.
After the evening meal has been partaken of, the pilot, whose duty now commences, invites me to visit the bridge with him, an invitation I am not slow to accept. The sea is as smooth as a millpond, rising and falling like the breast of a sleeping child; but only a few miles to port we know that the Great Barrier Reef is thundering ominously, able at a moment’s notice to rend in pieces the largest ship afloat.
Rising like a gigantic coral wall from the uttermost depths of the sea, this reef stretches for more than a thousand miles along an already sufficiently dangerous coast. Inside, the water is usually smooth, but outside, the great Pacific gales break upon the rocks with murderous violence, and woe betide the unfortunate vessel that finds herself upon those cruel teeth. Fabulous must be the wealth of the ships of which this treacherous reef has been the ruin.
Taking the pilot at his word, I determine to spend the entire night on the bridge, in order to see all that is to be seen of the intricate navigation hereabouts. And what a picture I have before me!
The western sky, as the sunset fades, gradually fills with a wonderful afterglow. The sea is flecked with the most delicate salmon and pink streaks, which again gradually merge themselves into the deepest of French greys as the darkness thickens.
Sometimes we are close in shore., sometimes a long way out; but never for a moment is the voyage without interest and variety.
Presently a few stars begin to twinkle dimly, the side lights appear, the look-out stations himself forrard, while the sound of a piano, with a warm glow of lamp-light, comes from the saloon aft. Pulling on a thick coat, the pilot falls to pacing the bridge, remarking that it is n............