BUSH SICKNESS

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 2

BUSH SICKNESS

A SUBTLE POISON [Written by M.E.S., for the ‘ Evening Star.’] It was, the stranger thought, the most beautiful if the most desolate of landscapes. The house stood at the very head of a great bush gully. Virgin forest closed it about, on every side steep hills rose, bush-crowned to the very summit. Only in front the prospect was open. Hero the river wound through green and fertile flats, on which a herd of dairy cows grazed contentedly, They looked extraordinarily out of place in all this terrible grandeur. They and this neat house had intruded rashly—and the house at least had learned its mistake. You could see that in the expression of its high windows that glittered like startled, widely-opened eyes, in the very way it stood tip-toe upon its high piles, always listening, always ready poised for flight, A tui perched in a tree at the gate, and in the backyard a bellbird chanted its four clear notes from the wood pile. Beautiful, certainly, thought the stranger, but there was something uncanny about it. Man was not meant to live thus in the very heart of the forest—or, if man, certainly not woman.

He shuddered at the memory of the pale, shadowy face in the bright living room; after one glance he had beat a hasty retreat. But the doctor had stayed for a long time. He could see an orderly dog rounding up the cows for their evening milking, and already the shadows of the tall bush trees were lengthening across the dusty road. At last the door opened, and the doctor came out alone. He turned on the threshold to say; “Not less than a month, then, on your peril. And preferably the sea.” A. minute later the heavy figure was climbing into the saddle. “ Come along,” he called to Lis friend. “ It’s 4 o’clock, and we’ve got to cross this blessed river seven times before we get to the road. Ah, I’m getting too old for this game. Think Til sell out and get a comfortable little practice somewhere in the suburbs.”

“ Not you,” scoffed the other as their horses slithered down the shingle bank into the treacherous ford below. “ You’d never be happy away from your precious backblocks. Well, what was the trouble? T. 8., from the poor woman’s face.” SYMPTOMS.

“Not a bit of it. Just a bad case of bush sickness—not fatal if taken in time. There, I’m puzzling you. You thought bush sickness only attacked animals, and those cows look healthy enough? Well, that’s often the way when it attacks human beings, the farm and the beasts flourish while tho people die._ Oh, I’ve lost more than one patient from bush sickness, just as surely as the farmers in the affected areas lose their stock. This farm is prosperous enough. It has these good flats, and the owner takes some fine cheques from his cows, even in these times. That’s his only excuse for living there. But even so, ho has no right to take a ■woman to such a spot.” “ Not a delicate woman, certainly, and one no longer young.” “Delicate? That woman was strong enough ten years ago. Young? She’s not a day ovef thirty. I can remember her a strong, healthy, laughing girl when she married.” “Then what is it?”

“ I call it bush sickness because it reminds me of the same disease in animals. _ You’ve seen the cattle in the bush-sick areas? They’ll pine away and die, standing knee-deep in feed. Well, this woman looks half-starved, but it’s not for food. It’s tho iron or the bush that’s entered into her soul. There she is, at the head of that gullylooking down at that shining snake of a river or up at those towering hills with the unchanging green of their trees. All day the murmur of tne water in her ears or the quiet of the forest in her heart. Do you wonder she has gone under to it?” “Loneliness you mean? I suppose she seldom sees a neighbour.” “ Not mere loneliness, although there is that, too. Her nearest neighbour is at the farm where we left the car and borrowed these horses. Six miles, but you cross and re-cross this wretched ford a dozen times. But her complaint is no mere nerve strain induced by loneliness. It’s physical as well as mental. I’ve seen many cases, and, though I don’t talk of it, not wishing to be described as a mental case myself, yet I’m absolutely convinced that the forest takes a subtle revenge on those who desecrate it. Its poison is slow, but very sure. It waits with agelong patience, but it wins in the end. The people who would carve their homes out of the ruin of the bush should do the job thoroughly. They shouldn’t leave their enemy standing at their back door, but should put a barricade of dead timber and rough pasture between themselves and that slumbering foe—or some day the giant will stir in his sleep,” The doctor smiled grimly as his horse pulled itself up the last steep bank on to the road. “I’m growing fanciful, you’ll say—an old man _ who has lived too long in the bush himself. I love it, I’ll admit, but I know it. Look for yourself.” The stranger looked. Far away up the gully the shadows were already closing round the white house and the bush was spreading enveloping arms. There was something ghostly about it. He shuddered and turned his horse to the clay road that led down the valley. “What a place to live in? How does he get his stuff out?” “ Packs his cream on horses fitted with a sort of cradle apiece, and packs his stores back. He’ll be packing a coffin in soon. Yes, I told him so today.” THE CURE. “ But is there any remedy for this bush sickness, as you call it? The poor wretch must live there and work his farm.” “ Yes, but he musn’t keep his wife there for three years at a stretch, without even a trip to the nearest settlement. Do you know that woman hasn’t seen a shop for three years; she’s never heard a talkie; she’s liasn’t smelt the tang of the, sea—she who was bred beside it—for three long summers. That sort pines away in this soft mountain air. That lovely gully is a vault to her.” “ And the cure?” “ A month away at once—preferably by the sea. Perhaps in a town. That’s the first step. She must have colour, change, movement. Tho next—the telephone. You laugh? Yes, it’s a curse in town, but a party line, with the chatter of a neighbour twelve miles away, will work wonders for her. Last not least, an occasional visitor. They’ll make work for her, hut they’ll help on the cure. Yes, with that to help me, I’ll beat the bush sickness yet.” The doctor shook his heavy horse to a reluctant canter; but, ere he left the valley, he turned and waved a defiant fist at the forest he loved so well and.fought so tirelessly.