Australian Tales and Adventures.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2053, 8 April 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Australian Tales and Adventures.

'UK

LOST IN THE BUSH. —— By Buuyip.

" Yo gentlemen of England who live at homo at case ; 0 1 little do you think upon tho dangers of the seas."

11 Old Sony: 1

Of the number of unfortunate men who perish miserably utter undergoing unutterable torments caused through ihir-l, no estimate can possibly be made; but there r.»c few old resident!) of many years in the irrge pastoral districts of South Australia. New South Wales and Queensland, but can give their testimony to knowing of one or more human bodies having been discovered bleaching on the plains or lying in the scrub in their immediate district. The class to which the bulk of these unfortunate men belong is the nomad, in bush parlance. “ Sivngir.rn,” men who have no fixed homo, but travel swa - ; on back, bdly-can in hand from stitb-.n to station in search of temporary work, f..ry.--ut professional ewagnian ran ly remains long in the one employ—although reca io.ially stockmen, shepherds, and rcguinv station employees meet their death in the manner I will describe. This latter clara, when »,b, ent from the station an undue time without a sufficient reason arc invariably searched for with the result of someth).cs lindioo d ■■ min time (o save their lives ; but with the r-.-.ag. man, who has no heme, be arrives ot a -latioa in the evening, stays all night receiving iood and shelter, aod departs in the morning, name and destination perhaps alike unknown to the owners of, and employees on the station. If he perishes he is not missed, if his body is found, in nitre oases out of ten no means ot identifloation arc presentable. A magisterial inquiry is held; it a J.P. is residing near, a hole is dug end a name'es.t gravo is filled, the only record of which w ill be found in the book of the nearest Police Station, where it will probably be entered, “ a body, name unknown.”

Doting my long residence in the out districts of New South Wales, and Queensland, I have been present at, and have assisted in bnrying no less than five men, and as each had its own mournful surroundings they ore indelibly stamped on my memory. By a singular coincidence the first man had been my father’s butler when we lived in Sydney in 1836. He was an assigned servant from the Crown, as were most men servants in the colony in those days. When we left Sydney for England in 1836, he was transferred to a squatter who had a large station on the Cagtlereagh, where ho became, in course of time, stockman, married, and when I arrived from England again, in 18U, lie Lai several children. In the year following. I went out to the Castlereagh and was living at a station on the Barwan river, os the upper part ■ f the Darling was called, belonging to the same gentleman for whom Harry was stockman. One time, visiting his station to msi 't at branding calves hie wife and children wo. c in great distress at hji r > not returning heme a’ter anabsencoof two days. He had rtv'edoff with a blaokhoy in the back part of the run, where according to the boy's account, they separated, each going in a diif.-rc-nt direction after cattle. The boy returned :.r myht with what he had collected, and put them in tbc yard; but as her luisband-did not return, the wife was not uneimy. as it was nothing uncommon, if it was late in the day, an.i an. tb.er station was nearer, for the stockman to yard his cattle at his next neighbour’,i, but as he did not return by ten or cloven o'clock on (he day I came, she scot the blacsfccy to the next station to see if bo bad been tit; re. Nothing had been seen of him, so the stockman and his blackboys started off out back to look for him or follow his tiacks, which is the first thing sought for by a black-follow. They were found at the twelve mile cattle camp and followed as if Harry had been tunning the tracks of cattle still farther out. They came to where he had camped lor the night, and where his horse had been hobbled cut. There was a little water in a hole in the creek. After running his tracks some miles his horse was found with his leg broken. Harry bad taken the saddle and bridle off him, and bang them on a tree and started in the direction of hie home on foot, which the poor fellow was destined never to reach alive. He waa found within five miles of his but, with hj#Mnnikin clutched in bis hand, and the EMMA torn up with his death struggles. Us UHjborished from thirst almost within JUf of his wife and children. As there a magistrate nor police station three hundred miles of tbo station at the out cattle stations being solely

managed by a stockman and hntkeeper, 1 started out with some blacks and a pack horse and with the assistance of " Yellow Frank’’ our next neighbour, (I never knew his surname) we brought poor Harry home, where, after we and bis wile had performed the last rad rites cf preparing him for burial we dug his grave and there rcor Harry sleeps. Word was at once sent to bis employers who lived at Mudpee. who had the widow and children removed to the head station where they were comfortably provided for; the widow being employed as cook at the bouse. The day after the burial a blatkboy was sent cut to shoot the horse with the broken leg, but poor wretch, he was past the necessity for execution, being found dead where he was last seen. Many years later I was out in fome back country from the lower Murrumbidpee visiting an out (beep station, when within a mile of the hut, I met the shepherd running toward me. sad on coming up with him was informed he had juat then found the body of a man. I accompanied him to a box creek dry for many months. The box creeks in that part never do hold water except in heavy floods when they receive the overflow boa the large rivers. There lying open tin broOfloCHi beck was the body of • t>B am4MHttiMtMtoabitt, moleskin could find no papers or meani of identification,"held a bosh inquest, put him into a bush coffin i.e. iheet of box bark, read the burial service over him cot of a prayer book l brought out from the station, and bwried him. Uo had evidently been dead lor some months, and in his shall, where his IwilW had been, a bush rat had made its nest.

" To what base uses may w* come ailast." Poor wretch 1 to die lomly, nameless to the world, with no one to wniwi| bis death agonies or give him a panttinjHi.fi •oltf which would have saved his HMbftad ol the same time be was within a ttWfy tbs shepherd's hut, to which I two days before removed the ehMHHkA where there was a permanent water n*M*k Have any of my readers been iu for want of water ? I have, and " Dives ” wajfj not tar wrong in describing it as one of the torments of hell in his appeal to father Abraham for a cup of cold water to cool his tongue. I was once lost on the plains the north side of the Darling, and when found by the blacks who were looking for me, my tongue was so swollen that I could not epeak or close'my teeth. Visions of water danced before my eyes but when the blackboy poured a little water into my mouth from the canvas bag he carried on his saddle, my tongue instantly went down to its natural state. But I was very weak, my horse, was gone and I am sure sundown would have been the last of my existerjee, for I could not stand or sit up, but after a good drink and a bite or two of bread sopped in water, I was able to stand. The next morning I was able to ride home to tho station o;i the Darling. Yet strange to say I had no fcr.r of death. As one gets gradually weaker, the’r physical and mental energies fail and “ death ( teals on like a thief in the night "and ail is over before you have time to think about it. In 18021 found a dead man in tho Msilee scrub on tbs Mutiny near the junction with the Murrumbtidgee. Ha poor follow had peristud from thirst, but had gone mad before bis death. He had walked backward ail forward between t 'o trees and had cut a furrow like a cattle track. He presented a horrible appearance, cdUiug crouched up at the 'out of a tree, his head resting on. bid bands and he must have been dead for a mouth or mure. Cb-o to him was a bundle of bonks, among which was a biblc, hut these were fn disfigured and knocked aboutthat although there were tracea of writing on the fly leaf of tome of them, we could not make anything cut of it. I sent notice to the police at IHlrar a’d ,‘a magisterial inquiry waa'heldr.nd he was buried in the scrub where he lay, the rumple record in lira po.ico register “name unknown." The last case 1 knowofooourrc’toa yourg Scotchman who bad been in my employ on Hie lower Macquarie river, New South W»!.•«. !?<• had been (shepherding. but hearing that higher wage’, were going nn the War re go lc’l me and start-.d for Dourke. It was summer time, and the di'r.oca from liourke to Cunnaraulla about 7d mile 0 , was r.t that time without a dron of water, yet this young man started to walk the distance accompanied by his dog, carrying a billy can of water. Ho was found by the roadside about half-way, dead, his poor dog lying dead also beside him. Ha was identified by the cheque I had paid him for his wages which he still had upon him. How many more human beings lie scattered over the plains and scrubs of Australia will never be known. It is a horrible death, in too many instances intensified by the sight ol the crows and dingoes waiting patiently for your demise, which they seem to instinctively expect, and it must be anything but soothing to one’s feelings to hear bis funeral oration cawed cut of a tree, by] a crow, obove his bead, while the refrain is taken up by the native dogs. Yet with all these little drawbacks a life in the bush has charms for young men such as perhaps no other except the sea poeses.-ea, and 1 can re-echo the late Adam Lindsay Gordon’s lines:

" I’ve had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, “ And life is short—the longest life a span ; “ 1 care not now to tarry lor the corn or for the cil, ■' Or for the wine that m&keth glad the heat! ot man “For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain “ Tls somewhat lato to trouble. This L I. no .v—----1 should live tbo same life over, if 1 had to live again “And tbc chances are I go where most men go.

The Secret, of Success - dii. , a gn at ■a ... - .1 I.M. ■ „ a M tb-vl a 1,, I . 11., ha ;n •: in : bat a small -It v, 1 t . w . I. » ab. ■■ !1 .■ vii i\, a oxpi-.-t : . ’ through that •• !s' • •a' .f, vi. i (be boy, chccT* I .t ;. I -■ .ait. fOl !■-' rin • almost every 'o.b:■ t ; -an. Ha bard task is bei a . i ~ k ; i I;. 11 i m.-t keep thinkin-’ 1 1 •-> ■ ( Iio".- hard it is, but go at if, an i .'i' ■by iittb.* it will grow smaller and Tilt love of truth- as such, is good, but w’u n ;r iiindiicck-t by thoughtlessness or Dv r < x.nicd by vanity, and either seises on iacH i small value, or gathers them chielly Ilia - . n. vj boat of its grasp and apprehension, its wotk may become dell ot offensive. Via let m not therefore blame the inherent lovo el [acts, but the incautiousuess of their sHudioo, ttnj impirtincnce of their statement.

“ A n.l another year '—will tell another yov'e . tor}. HmT you like to think of that s.om /'imi:--, ’ Tb.-t th-3 story isn’t done ever.’ That there is always more to tell, on and on? And .hat moans mote to do. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right si ill, you sco. why, the Lord might as wall shut up the book.

Dost thou low lib I Then «ul( not time, (or time it ItoaMtltol life u rude ot *