The Great Plains — A Mail Change — The Killarney Hotel — Sesbania — Oondooroo — Winton — Westlands — Boundary-rider’s Tent — Bimerah
TOWARDS midday, half our journey done, we stopped to change horses at a small hut built of sacking and kerosene tins, and standing quite by itself in what seemed the centre of this interminable plain. Here we obtained lunch — roast turkey, damper, and tea, all as wretched as the hovel in which it was served. The individual who kept the place, and who was dignified by the title of groom, had been in the employ of the Coaching Company for four years; during the whole of that time he had seen no town, large or small, or had had any intercourse whatsoever with any people other than the coach passengers and the few wayfarers who chanced to pass his door. His sole occupation was to look after the company’s horses, and to have a team ready for the up and down mail every week. In the intervals, he watched the mirages and talked to the wild turkeys on the plain.
As soon as the meal was eaten we started again, and rolled along in the same monotonous fashion until evening. The afternoon seemed as if it would never come to an end, but at length night fell, stars began to twinkle, and the evening wind sighed drearily through the long grass. Within the coach, the approach of night was even more desolate than the glare of day. We had exhausted our topics of conversation and abuse, so there was nothing for it but to stare at the dwindling landscape in silence. Away to the left, beside a creek bend, a camp fire burned brightly; beyond that nothing but the evening star cheered the dull expanse of plain. At nine o’clock, sick to death of travelling, we pulled up for the night at a miserable three-roomed grog shanty, dignified by the name of the Killarney Hotel. Here I had understood a buggy from Sesbania Station would await me; but as none had arrived I foresaw that I should be compelled to pass the night where I was. For several reasons this was unfortunate.
Thinking I should require but little money, and being anxious to leave the Long’un as much as possible for the purchase of the buggy, I had only brought a few shillings with me. My lunch had cost me half-a-crown, and my bed would swamp another; as practically they were gone, I had no more, and I wanted supper badly. But you can’t sleep, sup, and then decline to pay. So, in spite of my ravenous hunger (for a coach ride across Queensland plains produces an appetite if it does nothing else) I was compelled to go without. Feigning to be unwell, I retired to bed, whence I listened to the clattering of plates, and sniffed the appetising smells percolating from the adjoining room, in a perfect agony of hunger. Surely, I thought, meat had never smelt so nice before. By the time the meal was over I could have eaten my boots, but I consoled myself with the reflection that I should certainly be at the Station by breakfast time, and then I would make ample amends for my present discomfort.
Next morning at daylight, the coach went on its way without me. Breakfast time arrived and still no buggy hove in sight. Oh! with what agony I watched the treeless horizon of that plain for a vehicle. The landlady stepped out and informed me that breakfast was on the table. Bless her heart, I knew it was, better than she. Once again I was compelled to feign indisposition. The situation was becoming critical; I had taken in the last hole of my waist strap, and what else to do to alleviate my hunger I knew not. I was too proud to confess that I had no money. Perhaps it was just as well they kept no poultry, for assuredly, if they had, I should have lured an old rooster behind the hay-stack and eaten him alive. Suddenly a brilliant idea flashed across my brain. I remembered that in my bag I had half a bottle of Eno’s Fruit Salts. The thought was heaven; I rushed in, seized the bottle and took a strong dose. The gas was as good as a meal, and for a time the cravings of hunger were, to a certain extent, alleviated. But it was small use, for half an hour later I was hungrier than ever.
So the miserable morning wore on. Lunch time found me still gazing across that burnt up plain for the buggy that never appeared. But if a vehicle did not come, the midday meal did, and again the same dismal farce had to be enacted. Once more I took a dose of Eno’s Fruit Salts, and once more I found temporary relief. Then, just as I was on the point of going to the landlady and confessing everything, the buggy rattled up to the door and I was saved. But it was touch and go; there was only one more dose left, and what would have happened then, I dare not contemplate. Two hours later I was seated in a cool dining room shaded by a creeper-covered verandah, making such a meal as surely mortal man never saw before. Cold mutton, pickles, salad, home-made bread, cheese, and English beer. Ye gods! it was a luncheon fit to set before a king!
Space will not allow me to recount all the pleasures of my stay at hospitable Sesbania, but the routine of one day may well be taken as typical of the rest. The house itself is a long low building with a broad verandah running all round it; the rooms, diningroom, bedrooms, and office, open on to this, and the verandah again on to the garden and tennis lawn. A hundred yards behind the house are the men’s kitchens and quarters, with the machinery sheds, and store. To the right of the quarters stands the stock yard, and beyond that, and on all sides, stretches the interminable plain.
The breakfast bell rings at six o’clock every morning, with the exception of Sunday, which is a lazy day. As soon as the meal is finished a general move is made to the stock yard, where the day’s supply of horses are in waiting. Every man secures his own animal and departs to his work, returning, unless detained, about half-past four in the afternoon. Then an hour’s sharp tennis (for these Queenslanders are never tired) prepares the body for the evening bath, or bogie as it is usually called, after which comes dinner.
When the evening meal is eaten, lounge chairs are dragged on to the tennis court, pipes are soon in full blast, conversation ensues, and bedtime occurs about ten o’clock. It is a hospitable station owned by hospitable men.
Sesbania covers an area of 1,550 square miles, carries 195,000 sheep, 175 cattle, and 250 horses. It is principally clothed with Mitchell, Blue, and Flinders grass; the soil is clay, and the timber mainly Coolibar in the creeks and Whitewood on the ridges. The breed of sheep is Merino, that of the cattle Durham; and the amount of wool sent off from the Station yearly averages 450 tons greasy.
According to statements made to me, and for the truth of the majority of which I can vouch with a clear conscience, the principal drawbacks to life in these parts are droughts, bush fires, strikes, travellers want of useful timber, and plagues of caterpillars, rats, locusts, and cats.
Regarding the four last a curious story is told. I am not going to say whether I believe it or not. You must form your own ideas about that. I simply give the story as it was told to me.
Not very long ago, after an exceptionally hard season, heavy rain fell, and grass began to grow where, formerly, grass there was none. Hardly had it made its appearance above ground, before a plague of caterpillars overran the country (when I say a plague I do not mean that they came by ones or twos, but by millions, covering the whole face of the earth); and when they had departed into the mysterious north-west, not a vestige of green remained. More rain fell, and again the plucky grass shot up. It was not more than just visible when a plague of locusts came, and eat it down again. Finally, the locusts disappeared into the north-west, just as the caterpillars had done before them. The squatter, marvelling, looked on and wondered if his troubles were going to end here.
Once more rain fell, and once more the grass sprang up. This time it was permitted to attain a decent height. But things were not to go smoothly after all. One morning a boundary rider killed a sneaking grey rat near his hut, and before evening he had killed half a dozen. Within two days they were to be seen all over the plains in millions, devouring the roots of the grass as if they had been starved for weeks. It was a case of —
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins.
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens.
They infested the head station, they overran the house and store, they eat the saddles and harness, they played on the tables, devoured books, clothes, and boots with equal impartiality, and finally disappeared into the north-west as mysteriously as they arrived.
Now comes the marvellous part of the story. Hardly were they gone before cats put in an appearance; tortoiseshells, tabbies, blacks, browns, and greys; everyone twice as big as decent respectable mousers ought to be, and everyone bent on catching up those rats. They stayed about a week, then into the north-west they too vanished, leaving the squatter amazed and frightened, as to what might next appear. When I heard this story I thought to myself the plagues of Egypt would have to be original to command attention in Western Queensland. But to return to my log-book.
After a few days, the Long’un put in an appearance with our purchase, the most wretched old scarecrow of a buggy mortal man ever saw. Our worthy friends Cyclops and Polyphemus were in the traces, and the venerable Mr. Pickwick, more cringingly apologetic than ever, was in attendance on the luggage at the back. Looking at the whole concern I was irresistibly reminded of Rudyard
Kipling’s ‘Ballad of the Bolivar,’ whereupon we christened her ‘The Bolivar!’ at once. She was such a wreck that we ‘felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she’d break,’ every time she moved.
After a day or two’s tinkering up, and constant anxiety about the dishing of her wheels, we said goodbye to our kind friends the Messrs. Bostock, and struck south-east across the plains for Manuka and Oondooroo. The latter is a wonderful property, and quite the show place of the district. Here some 250,000 sheep are yearly shorn by machinery (Wolseley patent), while, most astonishing of all, telephones, with the idea of centralising bush fires, and thus saving both horseflesh and men’s time, have been erected all over the run. At certain seasons of the year, bush fires started by travellers or by natural combustion are very prevalent. If one hasn’t to work at them or to lose by them, they are gorgeous sights, sometimes extending as much as thirty miles, with flames, in a good grass season, rising into the air to the height of sixty feet. They carry everything before them, and woe betide the unfortunate carrier, drover, or traveller who may happen to be in the front of one.
These carriers are queer folk, and the outcome of a queerer civilisation. Their business in life is to convey stores, etc., by means of bullock or horse waggons, between the civilised east and the stations in the far west. As a rule they are brought up to the work from earliest childhood, know no home save their enormous waggons, and no companions save their teams, from the day of their birth to the day of their death. When a carrier takes to himself a spouse, she invariably accompanies him on his wanderings, and when the children are born, they are trained and brought up to it in like manner.
Let me picture to you a Queensland carrier, his enormous waggon filled with station stores or wool and drawn by perhaps twenty stalwart bullocks, creeping across these treeless plains. The carrier himself rides on a pony beside the team, his wife and children being snugly perched on the summit of the load. In a coop under the waggon are the family poultry, a cattle dog runs beside it, and a flock of goats, following in the wake, completes the party. As soon as they halt for the night the bullocks are outspanned, the wife fixes up camp, the poultry are released, and the goats come bleating up to be milked. So day in, day out; year in, year out; from waterhole to waterhole, these lonely folk travel the country, careless of the outside world, their only roof the heavens, and their only interest the price of loading, their families, and their teams.
Talking of carriers and telephones reminds me of an amusing incident which occurred during our stay at Oondooroo.
The wool shed, where carriers waiting for loading usually camp, is situated seven miles from the head station,, but is connected with it by telephone to the manager’s office. On one occasion a carrier made his appearance at the caretaker’s quarters, and requested with great fertility of language to be told why he was not permitted to depasture his bullocks in the usual paddocks. Before he entered the room the caretaker had been holding converse with the squatter through the telephone, and only turned from it to ascertain the bullocky’s business. Having received his answer, that gentleman stated his intention of wiping the dirt with that squatter, of banging him up and down creation till his own mother wouldn’t know him; then mounting his horse, he set off for the head station to argue matters there, never dreaming that the squatter had overheard the whole conversation through the instrument.
The carrier met no one on the way, and as he had never seen or heard of either a telegraph or a telephone, his surprise may be imagined when he was met at the office door by the owner, with the remark, ‘So you’re the man who’s going to wipe the dirt with me, to bang me up and down creation till my own mother wouldn’t know me, eh? Well, what d’you want?’ There never was anybody so dumb-foundered as that bullocky; he couldn’t understand it at all. When he found out how he’d been tricked, it is said he went out and hired two men and a boy to kick him.
Oondooroo is owned by Messrs. Ramsay Brothers & Hodgson, and covers an area of 663,680 acres. As I have said already, it carries about 250,000 sheep, also 1 50 cattle, and 540 well bred horses. The grasses and timbers are similar to those of Sesbania. The owners are splendid fellows — better it would be impossible to find — and hospitable to the last degree.
And really, the hospitality shown by owners of stations to passing travellers is little short of marvellous. Hardly a night passes without some stranger being the station’s guest. No questions are asked, he simply rides or drives up to the door, says his name is — we’ll say Brown, and that he comes from Hughenden and is going to Winton. If he looks anything like a gentleman he is immediately told to turn his horses loose into the paddock, and is invited into the house himself. Otherwise he goes to the men’s hut, where the living is perhaps rougher, but the welcome is just the same. Next day he passes on his way again, unless he prefers to spell a day or two, in which case “he is cordially invited to remain and make himself at home for as long as. he pleases. It is a wonder............