THE STORY OF NEEBYNE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2410, 10 May 1900, Page 63

THE STORY OF NEEBYNE.

By John Arthur Barry.

(Author of "Steve Brown's Bunyip," "In the Great Beep/ "A Son of the. Sea," etc.)

" You're good to the blacks," I said to my friend, as I watched a mob of them getting rations lrom the storekeeper of Neebyne Downs Station. "Better than my neighbours," replied Roland Farrer, laughing. "And especially to one of 'em, eh, old girl?" and as he spoke 'he patted a hideously ugly grey-haired gin on the head. She was sitting on the verandah, decently clad, and smoking a short black pipe, whilst she watched her wild and nearly naked compatriots as they stood around reciving their doles of tobacco, flour, sugar, and meat.

"My word," replied the old creature; looking up at him with the eyes of a faithful dog, " you cobon budgeree (very good) ; mine bin all right long time now. All alonga me," and she pointed with unaffected pride to the others, " you gib it that pfeller pelenty tucker '( " "That's fo, old girl," laughed Fairer. "If it wasn't for you I'd see 'em fuither first. You're tiiair good genius, and, they know it. , Only fancy, iTorton,'' he continued, as we strolled up to the house, -' if it- hadn't 'been for that old sbrivelled-up lump of black humanity, I should probably y hi humping my swag to-day in place ofbeing owner of one of tlie "finc&t stations in Cooksland. All right ; I'll tell you t,lic yara after 'Tanner. There goes the lirst bsll, meaning a wash and clean shirt. Oyer ab Cooroobin yonder, my 'brooher Jack's place, they dress lor diiiner. But this being' a 'bachelor's diggings we don't keep \t up. No fun in midsummer, I can tell you, with the glass far above the nineties." Dinner finished, my host and I went out on to, the broad verandah iuid l't our cigars. Before v? in the~-ruddy afterglow lay, mile upon mile, the park-like expanse of famous Xeebyne Downs carrying its 250,000 sheep and 10,000 head 01' cattle. A property worth a pound a head all round if it was -worth v penny. And what connection th?re couM 03 between it ard an old -black gin puzzicd* me not a little. Tall arid lithe, his f.liarply-cub features browned to the hue of a cotiee bean, broad-chested, narrow-flanked, my ho«t struck me ?s b2ing the 'beau-ioeal of an Australian squatter as he rat back in his chair and stretched out his long l?gs, and for a while gazed in silence over the bread acres that spread towards the pathway of the sun.

"It "nas in the early seventies," he began at last, •' that the bod time came to Xeebyhc — a time the like of which you travelling En^lisLinen can form only a faint idea. For nearly two yeav<s there hod been little or no lain ; grass- wr.s a thing of the past, also Water ; and, worst of all^ our overdraft- wasn't big enough to make ib worth the bank's while to finance' i~.s. So it foreclosed, and 'by "d^ing so killed the poor old dad. ' I was 18 then ; Jack, my brother, a year younger ; and thera wo were,v<vith about a fiver between us, told to clear oil the place that over a scors of • years ago our lather had pioneered and settled, upon which we had bsen,born and wkei-e both father and mother weie bii'-ie. l . Hard luck, wasn't It V And the hardest part of it v, as that, young as we botii werwe knew that, given one or two good teasons and a little working- capital, we could easily have cleared of? the debt.

" Well, the chap they &ent up to take charge offered us a. horse each to carry us away. But we -were too pror.d to accept anything, and. roiling up our swacs, we just cleared out from the old 'homestead to seek what fortune might have in &tore for us

"Friends, did you say? Oh, yes, lots who'd have given its a job of boundaryriding or overseeing But our stomachs were too high for charity of that kind, and our hearts hot with a sense of injustice.' Young and foolish, of course. But, still, wait -till you hear the end and you'll say " that after all we miphl have fared worse than trust to Providence, or late, or luck, call it what you will, that eventually came to ns ia the" shape of poor old Gnan yo^chr. But at first those who _ have the handling of such matters rubbed it., info us properly. To begin with, I donft think we'd tramped more than a couple of miles past the 'Neebyne boundary fence when the rain,' after its long speli, started at last and fell steady for" a week.

"And in the old shepherd's hut in which we held - taken reiuge, drenched, hungry, and footsore, both Jack ar.d I, grown men as we rated ourselves, cried our hearts oxo, with grief and rage as we listened to the ro?r of the water on the iron roof and thought of our lost birthright and all that "the rain would have meant to us a week earlier, when we could have borrowed £5000 so easily on the strength of it.

" When the weather cleared we tramped doggedly on towards the coast, saying little to each other, but thinking, I knew well, of the ,-ilready green paddocks and full tanks and waterholes on the old station we should nevdt see more, .jsr< 1 whose every acre we had galloped over <is children. At lasc we reached Port Endeavour. And, my word, I can tell you that 200-mile tramp took most of the stuffing out of us, accustomed as we were to the saddle from our earliest days.

" Often previously we had been in the capital with our father, driving down foi'V-In-ha-nd, v/ith the black boys leading spare horses, and entering the place in style. Now, smothered in mud and dust, a couple of wretched scarecrows, we slunk past the big hotel where we had always put up on such occasions, and took refuge at a. boarding house on the water&ide in Sailor Town.

"We had no settled plan except, perhaps^ to get as far as possible away from Cooksland and all persons who knew us.

"Be this as it may, nobody could have been more &m prised than we were to presently find ourselves at sea, and bound for ■Tchio, in New Caledonia, to load nickel ore. Men, it appears, had been scarce in tiis' J2pxt> v/hen we landed there and jy.it

up at the boarding house, and the rascally crimp who. kept it, seeing his chance, shangaied -us in ■ the most approved style. Indeed, we never recovered from the effects of the drugged drink until the coast laymany miles behind us, and the mates, v/ith oaths and threats, were xousing us out of our bunks to get aloft and shorten sail.

" She was a Norwegian barque, called tLe Ellen, of Stavanger, and all the English on board was so broken. that we had a world of trouble in convincing her people that we were not sailors. Once, however, they took the thing in, and realised they had been done by the rascally crimp, they proved not bad fellows at all. And, as we were young and strong and willing, they apiDeared to come to the conclusion that they might be able to make some use of us presently.

"Nor, indeed, were we ill-plea&cd. Neither Jack and I was sick ; and although a sea voyage was about the last thing that could hive occurred to «', we were at least clear of the land that Kjti so failed us in the time of our utmost need."

Hers Farrer paused to light a fresh j«eigar and fill his glass and mine from the j decanter on the table between us. A- full j red moon had risen cvev the rolling downs, and was staring at us with great round, j hot face. A gentle breeze was rustling in the • shady brigalows ' that grew close up to tLe g.ll den fence, bringing to us tlir j scent oi gum blossoms from "the creek, j whose long line of timbsr seemed to brush j i.b.3 moon s lewev limb with shadowy I plumes. The ' night was full ox sound-, j Somewhere in rlie distance a solitary civ. 1j lew screamed vehemently : nearer at hand ! the little bird that buslnneu call the " shepherd's companion " piped in a low clcav note with tuneful irsi&tency, " sweet little i creature ; pretty, sweat, little creature." There was a sound oi bells, Loo, in tlie &r, and of lolling water, the first fruni the j browsing bullock* of some teamster comped i away on the. distant travelling stock route, the last from the artesian bore that near by lifted its liquid cone to fall in rhytlimic gushings and gurglings before sweeping through miles of trenches to water thirsty paddocks far away. The soil warm air «as full of business, subdued and harmonious, but incessant, on this cypica! spring j nighc in far inland Australia.

'•Well.'' continued my friend, "I believe we should eventually have made sailors, Jack and I, for we were- active as cats, quick to pick up the work ; and buck a& she might," the Ellen couldn't make us lose our feet either alow or aloft.

" But the Fates- had other views 'for us. | A vreek out a north-east gale arose, and j b'ew its back on to the coast ; and alI though we did our hem to make herdway i against it, we found ourselves slowly but • sorely "osing ground every tack we made. | You see, the Ellen was in .ballast, "and, ' flying light, showed a side like a house \to the wind. So we had no chance, and, presently, one night "ha went bodily ashore on a little beach situated, as T discovered long afterwards, just this side of Caps (Jatd&lroplie, on the Carpentaria border. * Jack and I kept closo together vrh.cn she struck, and seeing she was going to pieces like a bandbox, we agreed to "jump and swim for "it. There was a deuce ol a sea running, but although considerably knocked about, we both gob ashore, or. rather, were flung theie, arriving within a few minutes of each other. It all seemed simple enough, ar.d we were astonished to find that only four besides ourselves of the crew of 13 had managed to do likewise. The balance came to us during the night — corpses amongst the "wreckage. At daylight we buried them. Nobody had the remotest idea of where we were. Save for the spot, wo came ashore at, the coa&t was a dismal, rook-bound mass of cliffs, bordered with thick scrub. We were almoii naked, braisad, and hungry. Ths rain poured in torrents ; and we hr.d no meoiis of lighting a fire. " The four Norwegians mode up their minds to follow the coastline. True to our interests, Jack raid I struck inland, vowing as we shook hands with our mates never to trouble salt waver any more. '"As it happened, fo we heard months later, there was a cattle oul-stilion only a few miles along ; so, whilst they were in comparative comfort and shelter, we were tramping through the thick tropical scrub and getting worried almost to death by leeches arc! stinging tree?'.

'" All at once in a deep gully we saw smoke, and making our way towards it we cams across an old black gin lying apparently dead in a, bit of a wurley construct. -id of a few bought and pieces of baric. In front of tlio wretched attempt at shelter, nearly extinguished by tLe rain, smouldered a few live stick?. At first we thought that ;he £'in was gone. Her head seemed to be smashed, and her face was covered with clotted blood. But after carefully washing it and bandaging the wound with o bit of one of our shirts, and warming her at the fire we had made, the old girl revived and sat up and began to cry and ■ chatter a little.

" Familiar with, the blacks from infancy, able even to make ourselves partly understood in more than one of their dialects, we soon discovered that for some trivial fault her lord and master had stretched her out with a blow of his waddy, and, leaving her for dead, had gone off with, (tin Gurgling Stream) was her name, she told us, as the three of us squatted over the fire, a most curious tiio, and, without a doubt, a savagely hungry one. " Luckily the gin had a tomahawk, and with it Jack and I went off to see whether we couldn't find a 'possum in some of the hollow trees around. But we were unsuccessful in getting anything but a few miserable native • chcirlcs and -suchlike rubbish. Gnan, however, lo our astonishment, had also been. x fossicking, and hud killed a big carpet snake, which, roa&ted on the coals, made us each a good meal. I have had many a swell feed since then," lauglied Farrer, as h" reached fox* a fresh cigar, " both in Paris and in London, but nothing to equal that grill of old Gnan's.

"Of course, when a bu.'-hn:an's belly is full, tlie next, tiling is a smoke. AnJ, even

here Gnan was not to be beaten. Fumbling about in her dillybag she produced a stumpy black clay and a bit of twist tobacco, and, taking it in turn, we passed the pipa around, despite the weather, in great peace and comfort. '" Often have I thought since of what a curious party we must have looked' sitting at the big fiie in the rain, Jack and I bareheaded and barefooted, clad in the merest rags, and marked plentifully with bruises and scrt'tchss , received whilst coming through the sun, old Gnan wrapped in a mang}" pfcin cloak, her wizened leathery face surmounted with our bandages and .1 lot of red clay that she had daubed uvor them', and thiough which the tips oi lieswool stuck up in the most comical fashion as she squatted there and chatted to us in a mixture of Irdeous 'pidgin' English md native talk.

" She wanted to know where wa were going. But as we hadn't the slightest notion ourselves, we couldn't tell ner. The only thing that seemed quite clear to the paii of us was that, so far as the sea was concerned, our career was at an end. We wpi'q both quite agreed as to that, nor did our future trouble u.-s much no>i that we had loat jKTe&byr.e. As ej:penen'j°-i br.vh.mer!, ye knew that we , could get work on wfflj station nl fencing or bullockpur.ching, or hoisebreakiiig, and that the c was little ia L 11.3 mvnagcmsut of sheep an. l catv'e ilia- v. ouid conic ami^ to us. BtsL our work niu^t lie far distant from the r > ] i hofjie and the district where our lather's name had- ones been so familiar and carried Fac/i woic.ln. iluch tf which we gravely expounded 10 U:e old gin s.i wo sat in the warm tropical drizzle tLat filtered down through ihe thick foliage overhead. I don't Mjppe>2 islij underbtuocUariy <-f it. buu she grunted appreciatively at intervals, and when, the absurdity of tli3 thing striking us, v. c burst into a roar of laughter, she joined f-o heartily tliai the tears ran down tier wrinkled cheeks.

" All a t oace .Jack, who had been idly rummaging in the old girl's dillybag, mad"c oi vegetable fibre pliiiecl into sennit, cx-claim-d, '] say, Koley. isn't this gold?' folding up, as lie spoke, a little bit of quartz shot thick v. lUI dull yellow particles. "Wish I had a ton of it,' I replied, a-fter -i c^-cd look, for I Ind seen specimens often before. ' I wonder where tiie old lady picked it up, and whether there's more there . '

'" When we asked her, Gnan pointed about gouth-weso and gave us to understand that she had found it on a hill, and that there was more there, ' cdbon big pfeller gibber sit down all-a-same yonder.' Which, translated, meant that there were lots of big stones of the same kind as the bit we had. Pressed further, &he declared that it was a good month's journey to the place. Oae day, a long time ago, it .seemed she had followed a wounded wallaby to the top of a big scrubby hill, and there had seen plenty of the scuff . Further, if we wished, she would Khow us the place, because, being officially de?d, if s-.he returned to her tribe -her husband, having by this time taken another wife, would bs very careful lo put more v.e:cht into his waddy at the next attempt. 'J'herefoie she, as it were, being unattached, had' lots of time on her hands.

"" Well, you see, knowing the blacks, and that they weie all apt to say vsha'u vhey thought would pler&e you, we were pretty doubtful. Still, it was a chance, and it might turn up trumps. And if it did ! Ho. eventually, we decidsd to ■put or.r trust in Gnan ; and next morning we started on our trip. And such a trip 1 Actually, we never knew where we \vh~ere, for Gnan resolutely avoided even the slightest settlement there was in those days in the shape of a few scattered cattle stations. Consequently wo had to work jolly hard for our tucker. Bub Gnan was a grand old foriger, and where we should otherwise have starved, she often kept the larder full. White grubs out oi the ironbark 'tree?. Lit and tender ; iguanas, snakes, ■possum's, duck and emu eggs, native yams, and now and again, but very rarely, a kangaroo that we had crippled and run down formed our main, provisions. But there were dnys upon which we went very hungry indeed. And when I look back at that journey through some of what was then the wildest country in Australia, and think of the two "boys and the old gin, three savages together, it seem* like a nightmare, although o'j the time I don't think we minded it very much.

" By-and-bye Gnan herded towards the west, and v\ c began io get into thickly timbered ranges ; and presently Jack gave expression to a feeling that had been creeping into my mind for the last few days". '" Hang me, Roley," said he, " if 1 don't think the old lody's making towards our ! own district. A pretty lark it. would be ! if she'd only led us this dance to bring us ! out at Neebyne !

" However, it was no iise jibbing now ; and with failing hopes v>e continued to follow Gnan's tortuous course, until one night we camped at the foot of a tall scrubby hill, .and she complacently informed \is we had reached our destination.

" Kexb morning v v e Lcrambled up through the thick brush, Gnan leading, until we reached the .summit, which was a little more open, and completely covered with a quprtz reef cf the sort that miners call a ' blow.'

" Very often the&c are c buck ' or barren. But Gnan's was not of that kind, for as soon as we began to fo&.sick around we saw gold everywhere through it ; ay, and lying in some places in the shape of almost pure slugs, w^.ii scarcely any stone about them. It was a real treasure house. For a while, however, we scarcely realised what had befallen us, or that this thing meant Neebyne, and perhaps more than Nee'byne. As for Gnan, &he was quite unmoved, and when presently Jack caught her round the waist" and began to dance Avildly, whilst I executed a fandango on my own account, the old girl squealed with fright, imagining we had gone stark, raving mod. And — well — I think that's the yarn. You passed the place yestcdny on " "What!" I exclaimed. " JS"ou the great Mount Mero* nila&i!"

" The same," replied Farrer. " ~%o\\ know, of course, that the whole hill has turned out more or less rich from top to bottom. Jack and I sold some shares j only lately for £150,000. But the most I curious part of the business to me has al- !

ways been thai, Ihe .place wasn't above 40 'miles from Neebyne on a patch of country quite worthless for pa&toral purposes, and that had therefore never been taken up. Yon can understand now ,why I've a kind of sneaking ieg«rd for the blacks, can't you?" — Australasian Pastora lists' Review.