WAYSIDE NOTES.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2645, 9 August 1871, Page 2

WAYSIDE NOTES.

(By our Specia' Exporter out on a Holiday.) How is Brauigau ? I was at his rush. Did yon ever hear of “ Brauigan’s Bush ”? Well. I’ve been there. I know you gave me no instructions to dp so, and will not pay my-expenses—but still I went. Poor Branigau, he gave it publicity. The weight of doing so must be enough. Xokomai on the brain. 1 had it a week afterwards. 1 went from Kingston to Athol. 1 wo houses, one of them a hotel, and a-blacksmiths shop, that’s Athol—that’s all. I went to the bar of the public house—" of course,” you’ll say —and asked for some Athol brose. Would you believe it? No such thing to be hail in Athol. Sol took the whiskey without the' honey, fed my horse, enquired the road, and rode over to Nokomai. Your ‘ ‘ special ” nearly lost his life. The Mataura was high. We had to,swim ; but got safely out. I had one consolatory thought when in danger of drowning. Poor Jack Falstafl’, you’ll remember, had node. Swollen by water, his carcase would have been “ a mountain of misery.” The symmetry of mine would have been improved. I should have made a handsome corpse. I was glad to gat to mine host Whittaker’s, and havp a jolly feed. Countrymen, we fraternised. Of all beasts, I hate a cosmopolitan; His sympathies are all so ground down ,by the world’s grind-stone that he tells you he likes a nigger as well as his brother, aud his brother like the Evil One. When you meet a man who says lie is a cosmopolite, be sure he cares for no one but himself, Las abjured all ties of home and kindred, and most probably dares not return where Lis antecedents are known. 1 thought ! had once found an exception to the rule on tho Devil’s i W# lived together, a? miners bale time; ' l ' One morning I woke

artlsled him. He had levanted and y l|ofte away with him to ride. I njevhtf i e0& horse or rider more, and my away my long last lingering hll?iߣ 4^; 6osmop > ity. Nokomai is about eight miles from Athol some ah ere to the east. I wonder how they ever found it out—the prospectors and Branigan I mean. There is a road to it across the hills—yet the inhabitants say they want and were promised a better one. Do you know any place that does not want a better road. Nokomites talk of some L2OO being placed on' the estimates, and misappreprinted, and all the details..of .which I heard but heeded not. Like an Indian prince or a goldfields township, the Nokamites have a grievance, a rpad grievance. Look to^it, 1 have said my say. The matter is out of my hands now. They have, another small item of dissatisfaction. They cannot get any more water on their goldfields; so are debarred from participating in the L 300.000 grant • blit they have-a large aUuvial'auriferous Hat that wants drainage or) something or other of that sort, on which they would like to spend the portion-of Olagp’a share of the grant that would be allocated to them wore increased watersupply necessary. I told them, as you would nave’done,'Tnat'they ought to be very thankful that they had any road at all; that water supply was not intended for those who haid abundance, but to supply those places where a great scarcity prevailed; and. that grinds made for a special purpose could only be employed for the object intended. - Then the Mongol element came to the front. ’Twaa the morning after my arjiyal, ; and some three or four of us were staling in mine host’s Whittaker’s, drinking brftndy pawnee, when John Chinaman came into buy p, pig—a dead one, I mean. He bought the pork and paid for it. More than yoi.r reporter ; did tor his oawuee, and then I found that Chinese storekeepers were rife in Nokomai, and supplied nearly all the wants of their countrymen. When John dealt with the dominant race and paid cash, he was a welcome customer. ' Now he traded “in and in” he ; was considered an interloper. Many years ago, when going with a hor e and dray and three mates, from Bendigo to the Ovens, it was my good fortune to cro. s M‘Gaire’s punt on the Goulbourii iliver without paying any toll. The circumstanc s were as follow : —tome fifty or ...sixty Chin. • men anived ; at the ferry sithultcpiecnisly with ourselves. They wera’putjj«a;pss|first, and charged a 'shilling a liead lOrcrdSsing, When wo were over, on asking what we hud to, pay, I was. told nothing. “You se, mate, I charged those^L=r-d...Chinamen a shilling a piece, when, a penny is tbe proper fare ; so you can come over on the cheap. Come in, boys, aud have.a drink.” Pcrh;qs •John, has found that storekeepers, as well as ferrymen, in tha days of the past have taken advantage of their ignorance, and, have grpwn wary thereby. ' Nokomai is a steepy hol’ow. Two hundred and fifty souls, all told. Women the e Work in claims with their husbands, and se mto tli rive and fatten by so doing. They have no doctor, no lawyer, no policeman I think —at least I saw none—up church, no cha.el, no parson, no pries in all NokomaV The children look well and healthy, fir whi hj a new schoolroom has been built—an intelligent schoolmaster they already possess—and my conviction of his intelligence was confirmed by seeing that he hr 4 a double bedstead erected in order to comply with the behests of our “ domestic era.’? Life must drag wearily on in Nokomai to rn unquiet spirit. Inactivity aud deserted houses seem its salient characteristics. I co.ikl endure Taranaki and even Picton aftip Nokomai. I saw three public houses in tl e .township ; unless my memory plays me fake [ saw only two in Picton. Shut in by hillp ? cut off from the world, what can people do hut play bagatelle, drink whiskey, a id beget children. Got the road made to Nokomai—from somewhere, I don’t know where. I have some more Nokomai notes,, but can make nothing of them. They look like brandy pawnee. I send then on to you—do what you like with tljem. -ilfey are iqore like phonographic signs than legiti atp alphabetical characters ; pnliaps they are, hut I cannot read phonography, t remember nothing more till I got to the “Jolly Waggoners.”

have you ever,' my even-tempered employer, attached ideas to localities from their designation ? Have you never shadowed forth a woman’s image from her Christian name ? Does not Fanny a rosebud indicate, Priscilla a staid old maid, Susan'a scullerj’ maid, and so oil, ad lib. ? 1 trow you have. Could there be a more seductive sign to a belated travellerth m thatbf the “jolly Waggoners’ ’v It made ra e dream of bright foaming tan - kards of ale, of hale ruddy men, in white smock frocks, flourishing long whips '; of Uctk, well-fed horses, anil wains laden .with grain, of a tempting odour of hkihaqdeggg exhaling from the open door, of days long -gone when-1 stood ’neath a-hedge row, and admired the scene, little thinking of becoming a newspaper hack! Well, I got to the Jolly Waggoners. ’Tis twenty-live, miles from Kingston; and the sooner it is pulled down the better. The landlord was about to leave the house ; so I’ll say no more, only that of all the hotels and accommodation houses I ever met with in no small amount of colonial experience, this was the most singular. I called it “ Wiild-whistle House” m half an hour’s trial. I met a philosophic pedlar or hawker at this place, and drank sherry and hot water with him, while wo pulled down a portion of the outhouses to keep the fire burning. He had liyed t\yq years alone on . D’Urville’s IsJanj. H«\y could he help moralising—especially - at 1 a.m. I paid my bill; and left the Jolly Waggoners the text morning, wondering at its misnomer, but rejoiced to see nevertheless something unique in its way I thould imagine even for Southland. I was mistaken I saw something, worse, afterwards. Dirt everywhere ; no accommodation ; no place to sit down ; empty boxes for chairs ; rough slabs for a table ; mud knee-deep all round the house ; and was told the landlord was going to leave because the ensuing license fee is -L2O. How such miserable hovels as I have seen since I have been in Southland could obtain licenses, T cannot imagine. Some serious blame must attach somewhere. I saw in one hotel pjgs and children playing together in the Ijar—both equally clean. , , Weather-bound two days at a roadsid&mn, I saw, for the first time in my life;‘the process called' ‘* lambing down’*'carried on with great skill and judgment; The dupe—a shepherd j ust paid-off from a station—arrived, and cashed his cheque,. some'.L2s. Whiskey followed as an inevitable consequence—a shout Tor all-hfvu.Js- ..(The landlord repeats the,dose; sheepey follows jsqitti;a isfeady and' dispatched ; cards' 'ate asked for* 1 by sheepsy ; he challenges anyone to play; aU

decline ; he forces the landlord to do so; many more whiskeys follow; the landlord fights shy of the grog ; sheepey .doubles hh stake ; looses, of course j doubles again, and again, with like result; goes muddled to bed ; and finds in the morning he is LlO minus. Well, sheepey pulls a long face, has a nip, gets his breakfast, talks of where hr is going ; but still sticks to the bar, hi ext night sheepey looses nearly all he has, and goes muddled again to bed. Your correspondent left the next morning before sheepey was astir; but the end can easily be imagined. Another night, and ad will have gone. A day’s loafing round the bar, or two, and sheepey shoulders his swag, and goes to look for another berth. lam no moralist j but is this right under a “ domestic policy . Can nothing be.done to prevent this absorption of the earnings of settlers’servants by lazy publicans ? How does it infnngc on the general welfare of the country. I a\c givi n you matter for a leader here, bee you make good use of it.