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

by the scrub on Sunday Island. There was a boat at anchor in the channel about a mile distant, in which two men were fishing for their breakfast, for there was famine in the settlement, and the few pioneers left in it were kept alive on a diet of roast flathead. On the beach three boats were drawn up out of reach of the tide, and looking behind him Jack counted twelve huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few other articles, but there was nothing eatable to be seen in it. If there was any flour, tea, or sugar left, it was carefully concealed from any of the famishing settlers who might by chance peep in at the door. Outside the hut was a nine-pounder gun on wheels, which had been landed by the company for use in time of war; but until this day there had been no hostilities between the natives and the settlers. From time to time numbers of black faces had been seen among the scrub, but so far no spear had been thrown nor hostile gun fired. The members of the company were Turnbull, McLeod, Rankin, Brodribb, Hornden, and Orr. Soon after they landed they cleared a semi-circular piece of ground behind their tents, to prevent the blacks from sneaking up to them unseen. Near the beach stood two she-oak trees, marked, one with the letters M. M., 1 Feb., 1841, the other 2 Mar., 1841, and the initials of the members of the Port Albert Company. Behind the huts three hobbled horses were feeding, two of which had been brought by Jack Shay. A gaunt deerhound, with a shaggy coat, lame and lean, was lying in the sun. There was also an old cart in front of one of the huts, out of which two boys came and began to gather wood and to kindle a fire. They were ragged and hungry, and looked shyly at Jack Shay. One was Bill Clancy, and the other had been printer's devil to Hardy, of the 'Gazette', and was therefore known as Dick the Devil. They had been picked up in Melbourne by Captain Davy, who had brought them to Port Albert in his whaleboat. Their ambition had been for "a life on the ocean wave, and a home on the rolling deep," as heroic young pirates; but at present they lived on shore, and their home was George Scutt's old cart.

A man emerged from one of the huts carrying a candle-box, which he laid on the ground before the fire. Jack observed that the box was full of eggs, on the top of which lay two teaspoons. The man was Captain David, usually known as Davy. He said:

"I am going to ask you to breakfast, Jack; but you have been a long time coming, and provisions are scarce in these parts."

"Don't you make no trouble whatsomever about me," said Jack. "Many's the time I've hadshort rations, and I can take pot-luck with any man."

"You'll find pot-luck here is but poor luck," replied Davy. "I've got neither grub nor grog, no meat, no flour, no tea, no sugar- nothing but eggs; but, thank God, I've got plenty of them. There are five more boxes full of them in my hut, so we may as well set to at once."

Davy drew some hot ashes from the fire, and thrust the eggs into them, one by one. When they were sufficiently cooked, he handed one and a teaspoon to Jack and took another himself, saying, "We shall have to eat them just as they are; there is plenty of salt water, but I haven't even a pinch of salt."

"Why, Davy, there's plenty of salt right before your face. Did you never try ashes? Mix a spoonful with your egg this way, and you'll find you don't want no better salt."

"Right you are, Jack; it goes down grand," said Davy, after seasoning and eating one egg. Then to the boys, "Here you kids, take some eggs and roast 'em and salt 'em with ashes, and then take your sticks and try if you can knock down a few parrots or wattle birds for dinner. But don't you go far from the camp, and keep a sharp look-out for the blacks; for you can never trust 'em, and they might poke their spears through you."

"But, Davy," asked Jack, "where is the port and the shipping, and where are all the settlers? There don't seem to be many people stirring about here this morning."

"Port and shipping be blessed," said Davy; "and as for the settlers, there are only about half-a-dozen left, with these two boys and my wife, and Hannah Scutt. We don't keep no regular watch, and meal-times is of little use unless there's something to eat. I landed here from that whale-boat on the 30th of last May, and I have been waiting for you ever since. In a few weeks we had about a hundred and fifty people camped here. They came mostly in cutters from Melbourne, looking for work or looking for runs. They said men were working for half-a-crown a day without rations on the road between Liardet's beach and the town. But there was no work for them here; and, as their provisions soon ran short, they had to go away or starve. I stopped here, and have been starving most of the time. Some went back in the cutters and some overland.

"Brodribb and Hobson came here over the mountains with four Port Phillip blacks, and they decided to look for a better way by the coast. I landed them and their four blacks at the head of Corner Inlet. They were attacked by the Western Port blacks near the River Tarwin, but they frightened them away by firing their guns. The four Port Phillip blacks who were carrying the ammunition and provisions ran away too; and the two white men had nothing to eat for two or three days until they made Massey and Anderson's station on the Bass, where they found their runaway blacks.

"William Pearson and his party were the next who left the Port. They took the road over the mountains, and lived on monkey bears until they reached Massey and Anderson's.

"McClure, Scott, Montgomery, and several other men started next. They had very little of their provisions left when I landed them one morning at One Tree Hill there over the water. They were fourteen days tramping over the mountains, and were so starved that they ate their own dogs. They came back in a schooner, but I think some of them will never get over that journey. I tell you, Jack, it's hard to make a start in a new country with no money, no food, and no live stock, except Scott's old horse and that lame deerhound. Poor Ossian was a good dog, and used to run down an old man kangaroo for us, until one of them gave him a terrible rip with his claw, and he has been lame ever since. For eight weeks we were living on roast flat-head, and I grew tired of it, so on the 17th of last month I started down the inlet in my whaleboat, and went to Lady Bay to take in some firewood. I knew the mutton-birds would be coming to the islands on the 23rd or 24th, but I landed on one of them on the 19th, four or five days too soon, and began to look for something to eat. There were some pig-faces, but they were only in flower, no fruit on 'em. I could find nothing but penguin's eggs and I put some of those in a pot over the fire. But they would never get hard if I boiled them all day. There is something oily inside of them, and how it gets there I never could tell. You might as well try to live on rancid butter and nothing else. However, on November 23rd the mutton-birds began to come in thousands, and then I was soon living in clover. I had any quantity of hard-boiled eggs and roast fowl, for I could knock down the birds with a stick.

"But, Jack, what have you been doing since I met you the year before last? You had a train of pack bullocks and a mob of cattle, looking for a run about Mount Buninyong. Did you start a station there for Imlay?"

"No, I didn't. I found a piece of good country, but Pettit and the Coghills hunted me out of it, so Imlay sold the cattle, and went back to Twofold Bay. Then Charles Lynot offered me a job. He was taking a mob of cattle to Adelaide, but he heard there was no price for them there, so he took up a station at the Pyrenees, seventeen miles beyond Parson Irvine's run at the Amphitheatre. I was there about twelve months. My hut was not far from a deep waterhole, and the milking yard was about two hundred yards from the hut. The wild blacks were very troublesome; they killed three white men at Murdering Creek, and me and Francis, Clarke's manager, hunted them off the station two or three times. The blacks were more afraid of Francis than of anybody else, as besides his gun he always carried pistols, and they never could tell how many he had in his pockets. Cockatoo Bill's tribe drove away a lot of Parson Irvine's sheep, and broke a leg of each sheep to keep them from going back. The Parson and Francis went after them, and one of our stockmen named Walker, and another, a big fellow whose name I forget. They shot some of the blacks, but the sheep were spoiled.

"There was a tame blackfellow we called Alick, and two gins, living about our station, and he had a daughter we called picaninny Charlotte, ten or eleven years old, who was very quick and smart, and spoke English very well. One morning, when I was in the milking yard, she came to me and said, 'You look out. Cockatoo Bill got your axe under his rug-sitting among a lot of lubras. Chop you down when you bring up milk in buckets.'

"I had no gun with me, so I crept out of the yard, and sneaked through the scrub to get into the hut through the back door, keeping out of sight of Bill and the lubras, who were all sitting on the ground in front of the hut. We had plenty of arms, and I always kept my double-barrelled gun loaded, and hanging over the fireplace. I crept inside the hut, reached down for the gun, and peeped out of the front door, looking for Bill. The lubras began yabbering, and in an instant Bill dropped his rug and the axe, leaped over the heads of the women, and was off like a deer. I took a flying shot at him with both barrels. His lubra went about afterwards among the stations complaining that Jack Quart Pot shot Cockatoo Bill, and Parker (the Government Protector) made enquiries about him. I saw