DEATH OF THE "FIZZER,"

Otago Witness, Issue 2983, 17 May 1911, Page 79

DEATH OF THE "FIZZER,"

A NORTHERN TERRITORY MAILMAN. HEROIC LIFE AND DEATH. A telegram from Port Darwin conveys the news that Henry Peckham, "the Katherine mailman,' has been drowned at Campbell's Creek, in the Victoria River district, Northern Territory This scanty intelligence-was supplemented later by a Statement that the mailman met his death while attempting to cross the Victoria River in flood, and that the last words the one black "boy" by whom he was accompanied heard him say were, "Never mind me. If I drown, look after the mail bags." A heroic death terminating a heroic life; for Henry Peckham for 20 years and more, in the performance of his duty as mail-carrier, faced death almcst daily. He was known and esteemed by all dwellers in the lonely and trackless plains of the north. In Mrs Gunn's charming bock, "We of the Never Never," there is a striking character sketch of this bush postman, who was known far and wide in the vast expanse of the north as "The Fizzer."

"Every available day,' w'rites Mrs Gunn, "was needed for the work of mustering and branding; but there is one thing in the Never Never that refuses to t:tke secondarv place--the mailman; and at the end of the week we allfound, once again, that we had business at the homestead, for six weeks had slipped away since our last mail-day, and the Fizzer was due once more."

"The Fizzer was due at sundown, and for the Fizzer to be due meant that the Fizzer would arrive. The Fizzer is unlike every other type of man excepting a bush mailman. Hard, sinewy, dauntless, and enduring, he travels day after day, and month after month, practically alone—'on me Pat Malone' he calls it —with or without a black boy, according to circumstances, and, five trips out of his yearly eight, throwing dice with Death along his dry stages, and yet at all times as merry as a grig and as chirupy as a young grasshopper. With a light-hearted. 'So long, chaps,' he sets out from Katherine on his thou'S.and-mile ride, and with a cheery ' What ho ! chaps. Here we are a.zain!' rides in within five weeks with that journey behind him. "A thousand miles on horseback 'on me Pat into the Australian interior and out again, travelling twice over three long dry stages and several shorter ones, and keeping strictly within the Government time limit, would be a life-experience to the men who set that limit—if it wasn't a death-experience. ' Like to see one of 'em doing it 'emselves, 1 says the Fizzer. Yet never a day late, and rarely an,hour, he does it eight times a year with a ' So long, chaps!' and a 'Here we are again.' - " The authoress relates the circumstances of the Fizzer's arrival on the particular occasion which she chronicles. At sundown the Fizzer was due, and at sundown a puff of dust rose on the track, and the Fizzer rode out of the dust.

" 'News? Stocks of it,' he shouted. The Fizzer always shouted. ' The gay time 'we had at the Katherine. Here, steady wit hthat pack bag. It's breakables. How's the raisin market? Eh, lads,' Math many chuckles. The Fizzer smiled amicably after the figures retreating with their mail matter, and then went to bo entertained by Cheon. He expected nothing else. , He provided feasts alj along his route, and was prepared to stand aside while the bush-folk feasted. Perhaps in the silence that fell over the bush homes after his mail hags were opened, his own heart slipped away to dear ones who were waiting somewhere for news of our Fizzer. •

"At daybreak he was at it again, shouting among his horses as he culled his team of ' done-ups,' and soon after breakfast was at the head of the south track with all aboard. ' So long, chaps!' be called. ' See you again half-past 11 four weeks,''and by ""' half-past 11 four weeks' he would have carried his precious freight of letters to yearning, waiting men- and women hidden away in the heart of Australia, and be out again with 'inside' letters for the outside world. "At all seasons of the j'ear he calls the first 200 miles of his trip 'a kid's game..' 'Water somewhere nearly every day, and a decent camp most nights.' And although he speaks of the next 150 miles as being ' a bit off during the Dry,' he faces his 75 mile dry stage sitting loosely in the saddle with the same cheery, ' So long, chaps.' Five miles to ' get up pace'—a drink, and then that 75 miles of dry with .any 'temperature they can spare from other parts,' and not one drop, of water in all its length for the horses. Straight on top of that with the same horses and the same temperature, a run of 20 miles, mails dropped at Newcastle Waters and another run of 50 out, Powell's Creek dry or otherwise, according to circumstances. ' Takes a bit of fizzing to get into Powell before the fourth sundown,' the Fizzer says —for, forgetting that there can be no change of horses and leaving no time for a ' spell ' after the '75 miles' dry'—the time limit fox the 150 miles in a countrv where four miles an hour is good travelling on good roads, has been fixed at three and a-half days. ' Four they call it,' says the Fizer, ' forgetting I can't leave the water till midday. Takes a bit of fizzing all right' • and yet at Powell's Creek no one has yet discovered whether the Fizzer comes at sundown or the sun goes down when the Fizzer comes. ' A bit off,' he calls that stage; but at schoolboy shrug of the shoulders ; but at Renner's Springs, 20 miles farther on, the shoulders set square, and the man comes to the surface. The dice-throwing begins then, and the stakes are high—a man's life against a man's judgment. Some people speak of the Fizzer's luck, and say he'll pull through, if anyone can. It is luck, perhaps—<but not in the sense they mean—-

to have the keen judgment to kn'*v 'to an ounce what a horse has left in hii a; judgment to know when to stop and when to go on—for that is left to the Fizzei'-'s discretion ; and with that judgment the dauntless courage to go on Avith, and T7in through, every task attempted. " Sixteen days ia the time limit for the 500 miles, and yet the Fizzer is expected because the Fizzer is due. Perhaps one of the brightest thoughts for the Fizzer, as lie ' punches' along those desolate Downs, is the knowledge that a little before 11 o'clock in the rooming Anthony's will come out, and, standing with shaded eyes, will look through the quivering lieat away into the Downs for that tinv, moving speck. When the Fizzer is late there Death will have won the dice-throw-ing. ''

To-day the Fizzer k late, and Death is victorious.