EMPTY AUSTRALIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3115, 26 November 1913, Page 79

EMPTY AUSTRALIA.

By Elsie R. Masson.

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY. A BUSH RAILWAY.

IV. The first part of a journey out bush in the Northern Territory is generally taken in the train, as it might be in more civilised- countries. Yet this particular train is of peculiar interest, for it is the pioneer on what will one day be the great Australian overland route. It seems to have an especial personality of its own. It is a plucky, fussy, little train, full of selfimportance as it fitarte out twice a week on its journey of 147 miles to Pine Creek. Every Monday and Thursday, at 8 o’clock in the morning, it stands all ready at the station, where its departure is awaited by a cijowd of light-suited and helmeted whit© men, agitated Chinese clasping large blue umbrellas and shiny baskets, and black boys with parcels ” and letters for the country mail. The train gives an impatient shriek, which seems to say, “ Come along, come along!” There'll be the deuce to pay if I’m not in Pine Creek by halfpast 4 this afternoon.” The passengers swing on board, and the train trots out. Instead of remaining in the carriage it is far more pleasant to watch the scenery from the little platform in front, where the canvas water-bag swings. For the most part there are stretches of bush, lightly timbered with gum trees, fresh Leichardt pines, cycads, and red and yellow flowering kapok. In the wet season the country is a brilliant green, and swarms with kangaroo and wallaby; in the dry, the grass is Jong and golden, and animal life is scarcer. All through the hush stand the massive anthills, like rough-hewn turrets of red or gray clay. Sometimes there is an outcrop of the meridional kind, built with sharp flanges which always mysteriously point north and fiouth. Every now and then comes a patch of “ devil-devil ” country, sandy soil churned up by the rains in the wet season, and in the dry months nothing but ruts and tussocks, sparsely grassed and scattered over with a few clumps of pandanus. Next, the train stops for a drink at the Darwin River, a deep stream, overhung by palms and drooping paper-bark, with blue water-lilies floating on tile surface. The moving spirit of the train is “George.” George leaves Darwin a railway guard, in a regulation peaked cap, but before he is four miles out he changes his cap for an old felt hat, and becomes to the passengers one of themselves. Every now and then he pops a smiling face in at the door, waves a bottle of some soft drink, chilled in his freezer, and says cheerily*, “Like a drink?’ 5 He stops a moment to tell a yarn of the old days when the railway train was sowing Its wild oats, then, as it draws up before a solitary cottage belonging to a ganger, is off to unload timber from a truck, hand out letters and parcels, and exchange news with the ganger’s wife. There is one of these small cottages every 10 miles or so along the line, built of corrugated iron, with bougainvillea creeper covering the verandah, a few banana palms and pawpaw trees growing at the back, and a flock of white goats feeding near. It is no use asking for a name by which to cull these little stations. Even George fails here, and can only tell you that it is the Ten Mile, the Twenty-two and a-half Mile, or the Hundred and Four Mile. When it is suggested that it might be convenient to give them names, he answers cheerfully, “ What’s the good ? Everybody knows them.” Further on, the train passes the gangers themselves working on the line. Their mail is passed out, attached to a hoop of wire, and one shouts. “ George, tell Bill at the Eighty-eight I’ve got his knife all right.” “ Bight-oh!” ca’h George, who has already a dozen such messages to remember. The train soon passes another fine stream, the Adelaide River, who; e Widgee. a fat half-caste woman, provides boiling water for luncheon tea. an old Chinaman with a buffalo cart brines paw-paws and water melons to sell at the train, and a troop of blarks in bright rod turkey twill march swiftly along on the look out for tucker. The only township on the way is Brock’s Creek. In the old days, when the English Company was exploiting the mines of the Territory. Brock's Creek was a populated place. Owing to every reason but lack- of mineral the mines failed, and Brock's Creek lost its importance. Many of its buildings were carted away to bo set up elsewhere, leaving only a hotel, a school, one or two houses, and a Chinatown. Except for one enterprising couple, who are extracting ore from old sand heaps by the cyanide process, and a few patiently fossicking Chinese, the mining at Brock’s Creek is a thing of the past. But it • will not always be so. A Government drill has lately begun boring there, and who knows but before long Brock’s Creek may once again bo a lively mining township? In the meantime it is still of some importance, for a road leads out from there over a. ridge of blue hills bounding the horizon, out to the Daly River, where the Government Experimental Farm flourishes, and new settlers are taking up laud. After Brock's Creek the country becomes more hilly, and stony ridges scarred with deserted mines close in round the line. Tlie train, whose limit is 20 miles an hour, rattles on as if it were doing 50. and draws up alongside the platform at Pine Creek. Pine Creek has a hospital, o hotel, two stores and dwellings of white officials, such a« the Protector of Aboriginals and the Police Its iron buildings straggle along the foot of a lull, riddled with old mining shafts, and over the other side lie the brushwood roofs and drooping flagstaffo of Chinatown. Beyond it the overland telegraph leads on southwards into the alluring, empty, purple distance. As the traveller alights his imagination

flies forward to the time when Pine Creek will be an important station on the overland route, when the train will bear on board all the English mails from the south, and will have no time to dawdle on the way. Then it will be crowded with tourists taking the quickest route to the Old World, via Darwin and the East, only perfunctorily interested when they are told they are passing through the great Northern Territory, famous for its pastoral lands, its agriculture, its mining, and openly bored with the old pioneer who will force on them his reminiscences of the early days of the Northern Territory railway.