The Book of the Bush - George Dunderdale (life books to read txt) 📗

would die. Strange plants, with pulpy leaves and brilliant flowers, send forth long green lines, having no visible beginning or end, which cling to the sand and weave over it a network of vegetation, binding together the billowy dunes.

The beach is broken in places by narrow channels, through which the tide rushes, and wanders in many currents among low mudbanks studded with shellfish-the feeding grounds of ducks, and gulls, and swans; and around a thousand islands whose soil has been woven together by the roots of the spiky mangrove, or stunted tea-tree. Upon the muddy flats, scarcely above the level of the water, the black swans build their great circular nests, with long grass and roots compacted with slime. Salt marshes and swamps, dotted with bunches of rough grass, stretch away behind the hummocks. Here, towards the end of the summer, the blacks used to reap their harvest of fat eels, which they drew forth from the soft mud under the roots of the tussocks.

The country between the sea and the mountains was the happy-hunting-ground of the natives before the arrival of the ill-omened white-fellow. The inlets teemed with flathead, mullet, perch, schnapper, oysters, and sharks, and also with innumerable water-fowl. The rivers yielded eels and blackfish. The sandy shores of the islands were honey-combed with the holes in which millions of mutton-birds deposited their eggs in the last days of November in each year. Along many tracks in the scrub the black wallabiesand paddy-melons hopped low. In the open glades among the great gum-trees marched the stately emu, and tall kangaroos, seven feet high, stood erect on their monstrous hind-legs, their little fore-paws hanging in front, and their small faces looking as innocent as sheep.

Every hollow gum-tree harboured two or more fat opossums, which, when roasted, made a rich and savoury meal. Parrots of the most brilliant plumage, like winged flowers, flew in flocks from tree to tree, so tame that you could kill them with a stick, and so beautiful that it seemed a sin to destroy them. Black cockatoos, screaming harshly the while, tore long strips of bark from the messmate, searching for the savoury grub. Bronzed-winged pigeons, gleaming in the sun, rose from the scrub, and flocks of white cockatoos, perched high on the bare limbs of the dead trees, seemed to have made them burst into miraculous bloom like Aaron's rod.

The great white pelican stood on one leg on a sand-bank, gazing along its huge beak at the receding tide, hour after hour, solemn and solitary, meditating on the mysteries of Nature.

But on the mountains both birds and beasts were scarce, as many a famishing white man has found to his sorrow. In the heat of summer the sea-breeze grows faint, and dies before it reaches the ranges. Long ropes of bark, curled with the hot sun, hang motionless from the black-butts and blue gums; a few birds may be seen sitting on the limbs of the trees, with their wings extended, their beaks open, panting for breath, unable to utter a sound from their parched throats.

"When all food fails then welcome haws" is a saying that does not apply to Australia, which yields no haws or fruit of any kind that can long sustain life. A starving man may try to allay the pangs of hunger with the wild raspberries, or with the cherries which wear their seeds outside, but the longer he eats them, the more hungry he grows. One resource of the lost white man, if he has a gun and ammunition, is the native bear, sometimes called monkey bear. Its flesh is strong and muscular, and its eucalyptic odour is stronger still. A dog will eat opossum with pleasure, but he must be very hungry before he will eat bear; and how lost to all delicacy of taste, and sense of refinement, must the epicure be who will make the attempt! The last quadruped on which a meal can be made is the dingo, and the last winged creature is the owl, whose scanty flesh is viler even than that of the hawk or carrion crow, and yet a white man has partaken of all these and survived. Some men have tried roasted snake, but I never heard of anyone who could keep it on his stomach. The blacks, with their keen scent, knew when a snake was near by the odour it emitted, but they avoided the reptile whether alive or dead.

Before any white man had made his abode in Gippsland, a schooner sailed from Sydney chartered by a new settler who had taken up a station in the Port Phillip district. His wife and family were on board, and he had shipped a large quantity of stores, suitable for commencing life in a new land. It was afterwards remembered that the deck of the vessel was encumbered with cargo of various kinds, including a bullock dray, and that the deck hamper would unfit her to encounter bad weather. As she did not arrive at Port Phillip within a reasonable time, a cutter was sent along the coast in search of her; and her long boat was found ashore near the Lakes Entrance, but nothing else belonging to her was ever seen.

When the report arose in 1843 that a white woman had been seen with the blacks, it was supposed that she was one of the passengers of the missing schooner, and parties of horsemen went out to search for her among the natives, but the only white woman ever found was a wooden one-the figure-head of a ship.

Some time afterwards, when Gippsland had been settled by white men, a tree was discovered on Woodside station near the beach, in the bark of which letters had been cut, and it was said they would correspond with the initials of the names of some of the passengers and crew of the lost schooner, and by their appearance they must have been carved many years previously. This tree was cut down, and the part of the trunk containing the letters was sawn off and sent to Melbourne. There is little doubt that the letters on the tree had been cut by one of the survivors of that ill-fated schooner, who had landed in the long boat near the Lakes, and had made their way along the Ninety-Mile beach to Woodside. They were far from the usual track of coasting vessels, and had little chance of attracting attention by signals or fires. Even if they had plenty of food, it was impossible for them to travel in safety through that unknown country to Port Phillip, crossing the inlets, creeks, and swamps, in daily danger of losing their lives by the spears of the wild natives. They must have wandered along the ninety-mile as far as they could go, and then, weary and worn out for want of food, reluctant to die the death of the unhonoured dead, one of them had carved the letters on the tree, as a last despairing message to their friends, before they were killed by the savages, or succumbed to starvation.

"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?"


GIPPSLAND PIONEERS.

AT THE OLD PORT.

Most of them were Highlanders, and the news of the discovery of Gippsland must often have been imparted in Gaelic, for many of the children of the mist could speak no English when they landed.

Year after year settlers had advanced farther from Sydney along the coastal ranges, until stations were occupied to the westward of Twofold Bay. In that rugged country, where no wheeled vehicle could travel, bullocks were trained to carry produce to the bay, and to bring back stores imported from Sydney. Each train was in charge of a white man, with several native drivers. But rumours of better lands towards the south were rife, and Captain Macalister, of the border police, equipped a party of men under McMillan to go in search of them. Armed and provisioned, they journeyed over the mountains, under the guidance of the faithful native Friday, and at length from the top of a new Mount Pisgah beheld a fair land, watered throughout as the Paradise of the Lord. Descending into the plains, McMillan selected a site for a station, left some of his men to build huts and stockyards, and returned to report his discovery to Macalister.

Slabs were split with which walls were erected, but before a roof was put on them the blacks suddenly appeared and began to throw their spears at the intruders; one spear of seasoned hardwood actually penetrated through a slab. The men, all but one, who shall be nameless, seized their guns and fired at the blacks, who soon disappeared. The white men also disappeared over the mountains; the rout was mutual.

But the country was too good to be occupied solely by savages, and when McMillan returned with reinforcements he made some arrangements, the exact particulars of which he would never disclose. He brought cattle to his run, and they quickly grew fat; but civilised man does not live by fat cattle alone, and a market had to be sought. Twofold Bay was too far away, and young Melbourne was somewhere beyond impassable mountains. McMillan built a small boat, which he launched on the river, and pulled down to the lakes in search of an outlet. He found it, but the current was so strong that it carried him out to sea. He had to land on the outer beach, and to drag his boat back over the sands to the inner waters.

He next rode westward with his man Friday to look for a port at Corner Inlet, and he blazed a track to the Albert River. Friday was an inland black. He gazed at the river, which was flowing towards the mountains, and said:

"What for stupid yallock* yan along a bulga**?"

[* Footnote: *Yallock, river. **Bulga, mountain.]

McMillan tried to explain the theory of the tides.

"One big yallock down there push him along, come back by-and-by." And Friday saw the water come back by-and-by.

They reached the mouth of the river on February 1st, 1841, saw a broad expense of salt water, and McMillan concluded that he had found a port for Gippsland.

Ten months afterwards Jack Shay arrived at the port. He had first come to Twofold Bay from Van Diemen's Land, and nothing was known about his former life. "That's nothing to nobody," he said. He was a bushman, rough and weather-beaten, with only one peculiarity. The quart pot which he slung to his belt would hold half a gallon of tea, while other pots only held a quart, and that was the reason why he was known all the way from Monaroo to Adelaide as "Jack of the Quart Pot."

He had arrived rather late on the previous evening, and this morning, as he sat on a log contemplating the scenery, his first conclusion was that the port was not flourishing. There was not a ship within sight. The mouth of the Albert River was visible on his right, and the inlet was spread out before him shining in the morning sun. About a mile away on the western shore was One Tree Hill. Towards the south were mud banks and mangrove islands, through which the channel zigzagged like a figure of eight, and then the view was closed