CHAPTER XXI.

STARTING HOUSEKEEPING.

Rapidly the splendid "Canberra" ploughed her way North. Fine weather attended us, making our trip a perfect honeymoon. The wretched confetti having completely given us away, the ship's personnel seemed to regard us with a sort of proprietary air of paternal amusement. In due course we reached Mackay, where there was a lop of a sea alongside, sufficient to keep the tenders rolling and bumping, and prevented the side ladder from being lowered. The passengers desirous of going ashore had therefore to be gathered into the embrace of a cargo net six at a time and slung overboard on to the tender's deck per derrick, like so many bags of spuds. It was the funniest spectacle imaginable (to the onlooker) to see the sling load go down by the run on to the tender's deck, the contents to go sprawling like a spilt handful of peas. Of course it can't be helped, with the tender rising and falling four or five feet in the seaway.

In Townsville we had rather a nasty experience. Went for a motor boat picnic with a large party across the bay. Coming back late at night--dark, rainy and blowing fresh, with high following sea--one of the party went overboard. It was some time before he was missed, then we 'bout ship and headed into it, continuing until we had "all hands and the cook" bailing. Another illustration of the needle and haystack business, so we gave up, and finally got inside the Breakwater about 2 a.m. About half-way to the town wharf the engine gave a protesting cough, slowed and stopped. No petrol left aboard. So it was a fairly "close go."

We transhipped at Townsville into a dirty old tub belonging to another company and left about noon for Cairns. That night we slipped forrard on to the focsle head, and stood leaning on the stem head, watching her sharp cutwater shearing along and admiring the play of phosphorescence in the backwash. A perfect night. The dim coast slipping past, the dull beat of the engines, the plunging hiss of the stem ploughing the watery furrow, and that strange tropical smell, coming on the faint land breeze, gave an air of romance to this part of our trip, and we were loath to go below and lose any of it.

We were roused out in the morning in time to see the twinkling lights of Cairns just paling to the first faint streaks of dawn. Then the landing, a hurried rush to the station, and by the time we had settled down we were half-way to the Range. The weather was beautifully fine, and the country round Atherton looked its best, giving a splendid first impression to a "newey." There happened to be a buckboard waiting at our station, which took us right out to Ellison's place, where Mrs. Ellison, who had been expecting us, gave us a hospitable welcome.

I found many changes round the place. A road, sixty feet wide, had been cut through the scrub right out to my selection, though a lot of side-cutting and bridge construction would still be necessary to make it navigable for a buckboard. Len, Terry, old Paddy and some others had enlisted for the war, and I frankly admit I felt a bit ashamed and sort of lonely when I heard of it. The wife and I had waited nearly twelve years for our taste of happiness, and if the authorities wanted me they knew where I was. Poor old Paddy had celebrated his departure by a glorious burst, and his final farewell to the crowd on the station was, "'Sall ri-ight, you shaps, b-but (hic!) y'all have er go whe-nen subscrichun (hic!) gess goin-nin."

There was a young fellow who had gone named Jimmy McKay. He had the place adjoining mine opposite end to Terry O'Gorman, and we decided to camp at his little iron shack till I got a bit better place erected on my own farm. So, a day or two after arrival, the wife and I carried our belongings over to Jim's little shack, along the muddy scrub tracks. It was the wife's first introduction to scrub life. Every few yards we had to stop while she picked the blood-thirsty little scrub leeches off herself, and she spent that night crying quietly, scratching scrub-itch and leech bites, and nursing the place on her arm where the cursed stinging tree had got her through the coat sleeve. Poor girl! She was dreadfully homesick, and the open fire and camp oven cookery had lowered her spirits some more. She stuck to it like a Briton though, and never said anything. Jim's humpy was a very depressing place, too, situate at the bottom of a hollow in the scrub. Only ten acres of a clearing, and the dense wall of standing timber glooming down on the house in a pessimistic fashion.

She soon shook down to it, however, and in a few days I started with a mate named Jack Redburn, who kindly volunteered to give me a hand, splitting out the stuff for a new house. Thus we started housekeeping together. Quite penniless, no income assured, and the future extremely uncertain. Rather funny to look back on, but grim enough at the time.