CHAPTER XV.

MORE IMPROVEMENTS--BULLOCKYS.

The weather had fined up and remained so for months. Beautiful warm sun, tempered by the cool breeze by day, and cold, sometimes frosty, nights. It was ideal weather for work; and Len and I worked well, ate well, slept well, and for the first time I started to throw off the effects of all that worry and nerve-strain I had undergone at sea.

Those glorious days! We would be off just after daybreak, red-nosed and shivering, clad in thick garments and heavy coats, with perhaps a frost on the grass. Ten minutes with the axe and off came the coat. Another ten, and the extra pair of pants followed suit, and by half-past eight the benignant sunshine reduced one to pants and shirt. How you could work! and when lunch-time came, eat!! It was good to be alive, life was rosy, and every lungful of the glorious crisp bush-scented air put fresh manhood into us.

Then the still more enchanting moonlit nights. Small print could be read with ease by the moonlight, and with the air so still the howl of a lonely dog three miles off came clear and distinct. From the hut we could see mile on mile of rolling scrub, sombre and still, and in the distance a long line of scrub-clad hills, clear cut against the star-strewn, ink-blue sky. The spirit of the romance of pioneering took possession of us. We were the only inhabitants of a new-found beautiful world; we were shipwrecked on an unspoiled pre-Adamite island; we were, well--just a couple of enthusiastic bush-lovers, with some ability to appreciate the beauty of old mother Nature.

Len was a good mate, and time passed on winged feet. On Sundays we tramped in for tucker and spent best part of the day at the open house his hospitable parents kept. We had whips of vegetables from my garden, until Braun in an unlucky hour gave Ellison permission to turn a few cows into his paddock. Now my cabbage garden was down on the creek at a place where several big trees had come down, the spaces between being filled up with smaller timber. This formed a barrier that I thought no mortal cow could ever get over. I didn't know cows.

At 8 p.m. one night three thousand beautiful cabbages and about a quarter of an acre of other green stuff formed a patch of cultivation to gladden the eye. At 7 a.m. next day I, newly-arisen, came to the door of the hut just in time to see the last of a line of ten dropsical, bloated cows see-saw over the impregnable logs out of a trampled muddy waste that had been a garden. I rushed down. Too late by hours. Absolutely nothing remained, save a few mangled stalks. Oh! my cabbages! that were to have paid the storekeeper's bill, rent, rates, and left a few pounds in hand. Gone! all gone! With murder in my heart and profanity on my lips, I chased the horrible wretches, who, grunting with distension and, I fondly hope, suffering pangs of indigestion, could hardly get up a slow trot. The tangled grass tripped me up, and I could only stand swearing impotently, and throw a few futile sticks at the brutes waddling heavily across the creek, where they lined up on the opposite bank, turned round and grinned--_grinned_ at me. Ever see a cow grin? Wait till they manage to crawl into your cultivation patch, or land a hefty kick home when you're putting the leg-rope on, and then you'll find out. I know now why the conventional devil has horns and hoofs. The monks of old who first pictured him kept cows. That's why.

I swore at them until my breath failed, while the light breeze gently waved the frosted grass against my bare legs and turned my nose blue, then scurried back to the house. Len laughed unfeelingly, told me to put a secure fence up, and grow some more. He gave me a hand with the fence on Sunday. We always put off play-time jobs like that till Sunday.

Terry O'Gorman had come back to his place by this time, doing a bit more falling, and it was quite like old times again, for, of course, the three of us camped together. Terry was great on springboard work. A springboard is a six-inch by one-inch board four feet long, with a horse-shoe bolted on one end point up. You cut a notch two inches deep in a tree, insert the board, and stand on it to chop, the point of the shoe being driven by your weight into the upper edge of the notch and holding firm. Terry would go up three "lifts" (twelve to fifteen feet) without nervousness. The advantage is that the higher you go the easier it is to chop, the grain of the wood being straighter. When the tree goes, you scuttle away as best you can. I have heard it described as chopping with one foot in the grave and other on a bit of orange peel; but it's not quite that bad.

About a month after we commenced falling I actually got a "divvy" out of my place. A local bullocky had an order for "some small Kauri pine," and some on my block were the handiest, so I got L5 for about 12,000 super feet (worth over L200 in Sydney, I suppose), and I thought myself lucky to get that.

Pardy, the bullocky, was a big, rough, dark-complexioned bloke, with a shambling walk, a rough tongue and a heavy hand. He absolutely didn't care a damn for anybody or anything. The only way we could get the timber out was across a steep gully with a little muddy ditch at the bottom. It was hard work for the bullocks to come up dragging the empty jinker, but going down! Pardy would snig his log to the brow, then--whish! The whip sent skin and hair flying, and the poor brutes took the descent at a canter, the log behind skidding from side to side, while Pardy would stand on the brink cracking that awful whip, yelling, "Go it! you ---- sons of ----! Head over turkey; I thot she wud," as they brought up all standing in the little creek, bullocks in an untidy mob, log broadside on, and the polers down. How on earth he didn't kill half his team every time, I don't know. The place is known as "Pardy's jump-up" to this day.

All sorts and conditions of bullockys! There was Pardy, sweating and swearing, and knocking his cattle to pieces, without enough breath left at night to cool his tea with, and yet not doing nearly as much as his rival Robin Hood, who, with a team of young steers and cunning old "stags" only, would haul a 20 per cent. bigger load to the railway an hour quicker than Pardy; never raising his voice; just talking quietly to his beasts, and never more than flicking the whip at them. He had their confidence! A striking example of what kindness and patience will do.

Jack Bayton was another one. He had a team of magnificent animals that could pull the guts out of any other on the road. He could haul some astonishing loads, but used to let the brutes just dodge along, while he admonished them with loving profanity. "Baldy! Baldy!! You ----! I'll teach y' ter go pokin' inter the scrub!" (Baldy was after shade and a spell.) Flick! would come the whip without force enough to kill a fly, and Baldy lazily resumed the track. Or perhaps Spot would stop and reach for a bunch of Commonwealth weed. "Ha! you Spot! ---- you, ye blanky ol' ----! I'll ---- well teach yer about wastin' time eatin' weeds." Spot looks back with a sleepy eye, shoves out, gets his weed, and walks on calmly chewing. A fat lot he cares about Jack, who affectionately apostrophises him. "Luk a' that now! Jevver see sich an ol' ----! Cunnin' as a ---- ---- rat, so he is." Jack thought the world of his team, and cripes! they could pull when they let themselves out. It was a treat to see his plodding team swaying up a long hill, without a pause, with 2500 of bulloak, perhaps, aboard. Very few would do it.

Tom Faringdon was another type again. Big, black, hairy as Esau, a bloodshot eye, bristly beard and a frightful temper. Doesn't take long for that sort of man to upset a team. Let his waggon get stuck, and then watch the circus. What ho! A frightful stream of language. Still stuck. Then the whip, till the fall was sticky with blood; then frantic rushes fore and aft alongside the team, digging into their ribs with the butt of the whip. His voice would be nearly gone by this time, and, with his Mephistophelian face and glaring eyes, he looked a perfect fiend. Next he uses the whip handle--smash! smash! smash! along the unfortunate shivering line, who, lowing with fright, don't know what to do. The handle breaks across a bullock's back. A frantic howl; down goes his hat, and he dances it madly into the mud, while his hands (like old "Dad Rudd's" when the horses went down the well) are raised, but not in prayer, to Heaven. Then, extremes meeting, he gets so mad that he becomes calm, and so finally gets the team clear--to repeat the whole process another half-dozen times before he reaches the station yard.

Well, good or bad, your slow, plodding bullocky is the true pioneer. Always first in the field, following the fresh cut tracks after timber in country that perhaps years after will be thrown open for selection--and his old tracks made the future main roads of the district. He has a rough, lonely life. Works hard, lives hard, ay! and sometimes has to die hard too. Collectively, a brave, hardy and useful member of the mighty Brotherhood of Labour.

Len and I went on chopping, the days passing pleasantly, the work interesting. Occasionally we attended a dance at the school house on Saturday nights (of which more hereafter), which was the only break. We had about thirty-five acres down, and then came----