A Single Tree Read online

  Mother fled, screaming. She ran inside and called the children. Sal assisted her. They trooped in like wallabies – all but Joe. He was away earning money. He was getting a shilling a week from Maloney for chasing cockatoos from the corn.

  They closed and barricaded the doors, and Sal took down the gun, which Mother made her hide beneath the bed. They sat listening, anxiously and intently. The wind began to rise. A lump of soot fell from the chimney into the fireplace – where there was no fire. Mother shuddered. Some more fell. Mother jumped to her feet. So did Sal. They looked at each other in dismay. The children began to cry. The chain for hanging the kettle on started swinging to and fro. Mother’s knees gave way. The chain continued swinging. A pair of bare legs came down into the fireplace – they were curled round the chain. Mother collapsed. Sal screamed, and ran to the door, but couldn’t open it. The legs left the chain and dangled in the air. Sal called “Murder!”

  Her cry was answered. It was Joe, who had been over at Maloney’s making his fortune. He came to the rescue. He dropped out of the chimney and shook himself. Sal stared at him. He was calm and covered from head to foot with soot and dirt. He looked round and said, “Thought yuz could keep me out, did’n’y’?” Sal could only look at him. “I saw yuz all run in,” he was saying, when Sal thought of Mother, and sprang to her. Sal shook her, and slapped her, and threw water on her till she sat up and stared about. Then Joe stared.

  Dad came in for dinner – which, of course, wasn’t ready. Mother began to cry, and asked him what he meant by keeping a madman on the place, and told him she knew he wanted to have them all murdered. Dad didn’t understand. Sal explained. Then he went out and told the man, “Clear!” The man simply said, “No.”

  “Go on, now!” Dad said, pointing to the rails. The man smiled at the wood-heap as he worked. Dad waited. “Ain’t y’ going?” he repeated.

  “Leave me alone when I’m chopping wood for the missus,” the man answered, then smiled and muttered to himself. Dad left him alone and went inside wondering.

  Next day Mother and Dad were talking at the barn. Mother, bare-headed, was holding some eggs in her apron. Dad was leaning on a hoe.

  “I am afraid of him,” Mother said; “it’s not right you should keep him about the place. No one’s safe with such a man. Some day he’ll take it in his head to kill us all, and then —”

  “Tut, tut, woman, poor old Jack! He’s harmless as a baby.”

  “All right,” (sullenly) “you’ll see!”

  Dad laughed and went away with the hoe on his shoulder to cut burr.

  Middle of summer. Dad and Dave in the paddock mowing lucerne. Jack sinking post-holes for a milking-yard close to the house. Joe at intervals stealing behind him to prick him with straws through a rent in the rear of his patched moleskins. Little Bill – in readiness to run – standing off, enjoying the sport.

  Inside the house sat Mother and Sal, sewing and talking of Maloney’s new baby.

  “Dear me,” said Mother, “it’s the tiniest mite of a thing I ever saw; why, bless me, anyone of y’ at its age would have made three of —”

  “Mind, Mother!” Sal shrieked, jumping up on the sofa. Mother screamed and mounted the table. Both gasped for breath, and leaning cautiously over peeped down at a big black snake which had glided in at the front door. Then, pale and scared-looking, they stared across at each other. The snake crawled over to the safe and drank up some milk which had been spilt on the floor. Mother saw its full length and groaned. The snake wriggled to the leg of the table.

  “Look out!” cried Sal, gathering up her skirts and dancing about on the sofa.

  Mother squealed hysterically.

  Joe appeared. He laughed.

  “You wretch!” Mother yelled. “Run! – Run, and fetch your father!”

  Joe went and brought Jack.

  “Oh-h, my God!” – Mother moaned, as Jack stood at the door, staring strangely at her. “Kill it! – why don’t he kill it?”

  Jack didn’t move, but talked to himself. Mother shuddered.

  The reptile crawled to the bedroom door. Then for the first time the man’s eyes rested upon it. It glided into the bedroom, and Mother and Sal ran off for Dad.

  Jack fixed his eyes on the snake and continued muttering to himself. Several times it made an attempt to mount the dressing-table. Finally it succeeded. Suddenly Jack’s demeanour changed. He threw off his ragged hat and talked wildly. A fearful expression filled his ugly features. His voice altered.

  “You’re the Devil!” he said; “The Devil! THE DEVIL! The missus brought you – ah-h-h!”

  The snake’s head passed behind the looking-glass. Jack drew nearer, clenching his fists and gesticulating. As he did he came full before the looking-glass and saw, perhaps for the first time in his life, his own image. An unearthly howl came from him. “Me father!” he shouted, and bolted from the house.

  Dad came in with the long-handled shovel, swung it about the room, and smashed pieces off the cradle, and tore the bed-curtains down, and made a great noise altogether. Finally, he killed the snake and put it on the fire; and Joe and the cat watched it wriggle on the hot coals.

  On Our Selection, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1899

  James Dawson

  1881

  At the periodical great meetings trading is carried on by the exchange of articles peculiar to different parts of the country. A favourite place of meeting for the purpose of barter is a hill called Noorat, near Terang. In that locality the forest kangaroos are plentiful, and the skins of the young ones found there are considered superior to all others for making rugs. The Aborigines from the Geelong district bring the best stones for making axes, and a kind of wattle gum cele­brated for its adhesiveness. This Geelong gum is so useful in fixing the handles of stone axes and the splinters of flint in spears, and for cementing the joints of bark buckets, that is carried in large lumps all over the Western District. Greenstone for axes is obtained also from a quarry on Spring Creek, near Goodwood; and sandstone for grinding them is called from the Spring Creek near Lake Boloke. Obsidian or volcanic glass, for scraping and polishing weapons, is found near Dunkeld. The Wimmera country supplies the maleen saplings, found in the mallee scrub, for making spears. The Cape Otway forest supplies the wood for the abundant spears and the grass-tree stalks for forming the butt piece of the light spear, and for producing fire; also a red clay, found on the sea coast, which is used as a paint, being first burned and mixed with water and lain on with the brush formed of the cone of the banksia while in flower by cutting off its long stamens and pestils. Marine shells . . . and freshwater mussel shells, are also the articles of exchange.

  Prehistory of Australia, John Mulvaney & Johan Kamminga (eds.),

  Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999

  R. L. Dawson

  1938

  In 1887 my brother had a quantity of hoop pine in log at the Back Creek awaiting a flood to carry it to deep and tidal water in Leycester’s Creek, an arm of the Richmond. There is risk in trusting to flood waters to carry pine, for if the logs lie on the ground for many months insect borers attack and destroy them. Red Cedar, on the contrary, may lie for years either inside or outside of its native brushes and take little harm because of its superior durability.

  In the case of which I write moderate rainfall brought down sufficient water to float timber, and the Armstrongs, of Disputed Plains, having pine “at grass” on the same creek, decided to join forces with my brother and rush the two lots down as quickly as possible. All went well for the first day, when the rain ceased and the water began to fall with still several miles to go and certain shallows to pass. Wanting help, my brother rode to Bentley and asked me to come at once and assist. Accordingly we rode a few miles towards Lismore and reached the scene of operations at dusk. No time was lost in telling me what to do and how to act, as the gang was in a desperate hurry to get the timber over a low level bridge and the shallows while there was water enough to float it. Running timber down a winding cree
k with brushwood clad banks necessitates much axe, lever, and handspike work, and it is one thing doing this by day and quite another at night, but the sky had cleared and, in spite of the brush, the stars peeped through spaces here and there and, reflected in the water, gave a glimmer of light sufficient to enable us to place our axe blows with a fair amount of precision even when the obstructions to be cut away could barely be seen. The experienced men were in the van of the rushing logs, their job being to cut and prise away fallen trees, ranches, and undergrowth likely to cause a jam. When it did occur it was desperate and high-pressure work to find and release the key log(s), and thus break a jam. A dangerous task requiring quickness and smartness to avoid the furious burst and charge of the front logs driven by the battering ram of the stream, combined with the mass of timber behind.

  Being inexperienced I was most of the time with the “tailers”, our job being to find, clear, and roll back into the stream stray little lots or single logs which tried to take short cuts across the many bends of the creek and got held up by undergrowth or stranded high and dry. This involved a good deal of crossing and recrossing the creek, not so easy as it sounds, almost the only means being by way of the floating pine itself.

  Stepping in darkness, often encumbered by axe and handspike, from dancing log to dancing log is a risky business, and sometimes resulted in a souse into the muddy water below, with the possibility of being impaled upon some snag as one sank or bumped on the head by the rocking timbers above as one rose to the surface, the handspike abandoned, but clinging to the indispensable acts at all hazards. No accidents happened and by about 11 p.m. our strenuous toil was rewarded by having the bulk of the timber over the low level bridge and beyond the shallows, so one of the party was told off to make a fire and boiled the billy, and it was not long before a welcome cooee called us for a brief rest and refreshments.

  Since then I have attended many midnight suppers, but none stands out so clear and sharp in my memory as that one beside the waters of the Back Creek. The glare of the fire lit up the circle of bushmen, big men all, some leaning against adjacent trees, others crouching around the blaze, each with damper and beef in one hand and a pot of steaming tea in the other. Their thin, dripping, and clinging garments revealed to the full the splendour of their figures with their brawny limbs and swelling muscles. Beyond the arc of light from the fire the brush was in inky darkness and no sound was heard save the swish of the stream and occasional bump, bump as stray logs, still afloat, hit one another in their passage down it.

  Most of the party decided to stick to the work all night to reach tidal water and thus avoid any chance of the timber grounding, but I rode home and joined the gang again at sunrise next day just as the boom across Leycester’s Creek was reached. Here the task of sorting the logs and forming them into rafts was begun, and for this boat, manned by two or three men, and several good swimmers were used. The swimmers did the sorting by noting the owners’ brands, which had been punched on the log ends by branding hammers, and by pushing the logs roughly into line, parallel with one another, where the boatmen straightened them up with a boathook, drove a “dog” into the centre of each and reeved through the “dogs” a stout hempen rope. A timber rafting dog is a flat pointed piece of iron with a ring welded to it at the top. Rafts of cedar and pine were a familiar sight on the Richmond from the early days in the ’forties down to the ’nineties.

  Richmond River Historical Society’s Journal, Vol. 1, 1938

  David Denholm

  1979

  Actually, we do not have to perform any statistical calculations to establish that after about 1840 in New South Wales, and later in the other colonies, there was a large surplus of horses. Settlers’ journals, diaries and letters constantly betray this in the casual, off-hand choice of the handiest horse for a day’s work – in some places there really were eight horses to every stockman, waiting for him to choose one for the day. Except to thoroughbreds and other purebreds, the same casual, off-hand attitude to horses governed the way people treated them. Gentlemen and stockmen often prided themselves on the distances they rode in a day, or two days, or a week, or a fortnight. But unless they were riding their really well-bred – and expensive – favourites, they often covered their great distances by riding their horses to breaking point, whereat, the rider just as casually found another horse and continued on his work or journey, leaving behind him a trail of horses in a state of physiological shock. Broken in with a maximum of physical force, worked and ridden in this manner, not pre-conditioned by feed and exercise to meet the stress of the work, and casually turned out or abandoned instead of being ‘let down’ again over some days, the horse aged prematurely. In late Colonial Australia the axiom developed that a horse was ‘finished’ at eight years of age: after that, he was old, which, after those eight years of casual brutality, he certainly was. Yet this is the age when many modern competition horses begin their international careers. Some are much older: Coronation went to the Olympic Games at the age of sixteen.

  Even gentlemen could be rough to a horse. One of the roughest was Terence Aubrey Murray, Esquire, 6ft 4in tall and about seventeen stone in weight. In 1841, he climbed off a ‘caved in’ horse and recorded in his diary that he had ridden the animal 468 miles in the twelve days since he had bought it. He then mounted another horse, and rode on.

  Thirty years after Murray died, Australian troops going to the Boer War in the last days of Colonial Australia shocked British army officers with their attitude to horses. Looking back to that Boer War some years later, one British general was to write that:

  In the old days the Australian contingents used up their horses as if each man had only to go out on the veldt and round up or select, from some friendly corps, another. Today a Light Horse Regiment would make its mounts last twice the time; in the near future I believe they will readily come to understand the priceless value of a good and fit charger in peace and war.

  This is the fundamental reason that statistics of distances ridden do not mean very much unless, as in the case of Murray, there is other evidence to allow us to gauge what really happened. For under all the exclusiveness and elegance of carriages and side-saddles and mounting-blocks and riding to hounds and sweeping down the Snowy River there lurked the specific and the casual brutalities. The fact remains that the greater part of mankind did not own a saddle horse, being content – if wealthy enough – to travel by carriage or by coach, and if not wealthy enough, to walk.

  The Colonial Australians, Penguin,

  Melbourne, 1979

  Arthur Dewhurst

  1877

  Sunday

  A lovely morning bright and cool. As the river must be crossed at Dubbledah about 8 miles away and the ford may have washed out or altered since the late freshes, my friends insist on giving me a boy for escort who rides ahead, opens the various gates and finally sees me safe and sound across the river Namoi. The steam was pretty deep. Another two inches would have run into my trap so after all the guide was useful, trying the depth on horseback. And now once more alone I drive along, thinking of days gone by where with a jolly party of young fellows, I surveyed the road under my horses feet some 15 years ago and the changes and chances of this mortal life since then! How some have died, some have missed the little narrow path, while others are passing rich, or “comfortably off”, and I, the father of them all passing the very track we run with all the bound and joyousness of health and youth. Yes, memory is active as we bowl along. Here is Dubbledah and Highams but, with doors pulled down and windows smashed. A smouldering fire inside proclaims the fact a tramp has spent the night here, and whether the premises are burnt or not, what matters it to him. Higham was one of the characters of the old days. He went by the synonym of Yellow Dick, was ostensibly a bullock driver and carrier on the roads, but professionally one of the ablest horse and cattle stealers in the land. In altering or defacing brands and marks, changing the colour of beasts hides, and keeping the harness cask full of prime fat beef
he had practically no compeer. The Scottish border thieves were babes to him!

  I once more see him as he was, tall and thin, lazily leaning against his stockyard fence vacantly looking out or on the ground as if he took no interest in any thing in life and hear the echo of his drawling, whining voice wishing “good morning” or “good evening” as all the “old hands” did to everyone they saw some 30 years ago! He’s dead!

  And now we reach Gulligal lagoon, once a thriving prosperous little place, now boasting a cottage and a flock of goats. And this place has a but the little horses want a drink, so I pull up take off the harness and let them do down to the lagoon while I refresh with a good feed of meat and bread followed by cake and wine.

  Being alone, thought takes the place of speech; the scene this place presented 27 years ago passes before me. Its inhabitants were few in these early days. Old Sam Stead the driver, hale and hearty; Russell, the carrier, deep in the river bend. Johnston the postmaster grey with age but with a quick and sparkling eye and shuffling gait. His daughters, great big romping girls – himself – on State occasions, such as the delivery of the Mail, as starched and staid as a Presbyterian of the old Kirk should be – his wife subject at times to spirits over proof! Then Humphrey the publican, nicknamed the Jack of Clubs, a smart dapper little chap handicapped with a tremendous red haired wife, whose Inn, well kept, was a comfortable camp after the 17 miles dusty road from Gunnedah and Panton the mad brained parsons son who kept the public pound and by his eccentricities with fire arms, frightened the people everywhere about. His house was a combination both of fussy and neat. It had an earthen floor and the walls dividing the compartments were of calico and bark. A little cheery woman was his wife, brimful of kindness to her own, and every stranger, rich or poor, who passed her door. She had 3 little children, only one living now. And year by year with patient resignation watched her extraordinary mate get more desperately mad till he was taken from the world and Gulligal. Some of these people still live not many miles away, the rest are “gone before” but Gulligal is Dead! The diversion of the North Western road some years ago left it quite out of sight, and one by one the people left and houses tumbled into ruin or decay. Here I met Doppin the general manager of Melville plains – John Lloyd, Marshall and hosts of good fellows who if alive would know the place no more.