CHAPTER XXII.

STRUGGLING ALONG.

I used to set out at six every morning to go over to my place, where my mate, Jack Redburn, would be awaiting me, and we worked until dark putting up the house. He was a good bushman, and in ten days or so we had a really decent comfortable little house up. Eighteen by twelve it was, with a ten-by-ten kitchen attached, all rough lined and ceiled. It was a lonely time for the wife, and I often felt my way home in the dark to find her crouched alongside the smoky fire, starting at every sound from the scrub.

She and I carried our stuff over to the new place, having to make a long detour through the scrub to avoid scrambling about in Jimmy's overgrown loggy clearing, but the end of March saw us comfortably installed. Mrs. Ellison made us a present of a wee dolly stove she had used at first, so there were no more scorched aprons and smarting eyes for the wife, and the only fly in the ointment was how to make a bob or two. Though so early in the year, people were anticipating a dry spell, as the Rainy Season had not, so far, been up to much, as the grass wasn't as plentiful as it should have been. On that account there wasn't much doing. My first move, after talking things over with older settlers, was to get some cows.

Two "purple patches" of advice:--

DAD VINCENT: "Lord _love_ yer, man! Of _course_ you've done the _right thing_! Look at _me_. Came up here with _no experience_, a _wife_ and thirteen _kids_. I've been _submerged_ half a dozen _times_, and _look_ at me now. Get some _cows_ and good _luck_ to you."

OLD PARDY: "So yeh've got married? Well, a man's a blanky lizard ef 'e can't knock out a blanky livin' in the bush. Git some blanky cows; and dairy!"

So I put the fear of a drought away from me. Such a thing had never happened before in the thirty years' history of the Tableland. Cows were fairly cheap. Therefore--borrow some more cash from the Agricultural Bank and buy cows. Good. I applied for L200 and got it without any trouble.

Then Bayton the bullocky offered to take some pine off my place at sixpence a hundred (two pounds odd in Sydney!) and give me the cutting. I jumped at it, and he took about twelve thousand feet. This gave me enough money to get six coils of barb wire (it hadn't risen much up to then), and about L3 over to renew my credit with the storekeeper. That was the last money he got for twelve months; yet he never worried me. I was only one of scores on his books that year, but he always got more kicks that thanks, and of course was a profiteer.

I used the wire to fence my road line; then made a deal for sixteen cows, a bull and seven twelve-month heifers for my L200, and thought I was all sagalio. Four cows were milking, and the others were supposed to be in calf, but weren't. We made a bit of butter and sold it to some bachelor neighbours for about two months, and that paid the rent. Then the green grass disappeared, the cows went dry, and the two calves that had come with them died.

I assisted the maintenance man putting up a bridge near my place, and that paid for rates. A week or two cutting timber nearby for Hood and Bayton, and the half-yearly interest bill worried us no more; then their bullocks got too weak to work, so that source of income stopped too. And "Old Store's" account rendered kept on mounting up, although we lived on rice and beef-shins, made a seventy-pound bag of sugar last six months, and a fifty-pound bag of flour eight weeks. A nightmare of a time!

So July came along, with some hard frosts. Now frost up here is invariably followed by rain within two days in a normal year, which causes the grass to get a spring on at once, as the days are always warm and bright. But in this infernal year there was no rain, so the grass got completely settled--above ground, that is. It sprang again in a night once the rain came at the end of the year. My cows were wandering out through Braun's paddock all over the country searching for a bit of green stuff, and I nearly tramped my legs off looking for them to keep them dipped and clear of ticks. Half the time I couldn't find them, so that with ticks and starvation the herd got down to ten.

August. Still no rain! Got a job brushing for old Pardy, and had to walk four miles each way to work and back every day, so averaged about 30/- a week, which had to be hoarded over against bank interest at the end of the year. And the storekeeper's bill still rose!

October. Will it _ever_ rain again? Dismal tales from everyone of dying stock, bankruptcy and ruin. My remaining cows could hardly stagger, and their ribs stood out like the black notes on a piano. I managed to get them home, when they were too weak to play up, let them into my banana patch, and the twenty clumps kept them going for a week or two. They even pawed out and ate the roots. My bull got into a very rough paddock not far away, fell down a steep stony creek, broke a leg and died there. The outlook was as hopeless as financial stability under Freetrade.

November came, and old Omar's "blue sullen vault of sky" glared remorselessly down on us for over a fortnight of the month. No rain--not even the distant muttering promise of coming thunder. Then, on the 20th November, about 2 p.m., there was a sudden long roll of thunder in the distance. Two cows had calved, and I had the poor, miserable, staggering wretches in the bails, trying to force down their necks a bit of watercress I had found in the creek over a mile away.

I whipped out of the shed.

Thank God! There, rapidly rising over the trees to the South-East, was a long bank of black cloud. The thunder grew louder, and a cold refreshing wind suddenly sprang into being. We could see and smell the grey drifting curtain of rain that spelt Resurrection! A faint pattering on the roof. Louder; louder yet! until it became a deafening roar that kept up for over an hour. Salvation! The drought had broken at last. I went out and bathed in the rain, absorbing it in every pore. I think it's the only time in my life I was delighted to be wet through. It was just in time to save my remaining cows.

I had left but seven cows, and six twenty-month heifers--say, L118 worth; but the debt of L200 to the bank still remained, and the storekeeper's L40 had to be remembered, and the--oh, but why recall such misery?

Apropos the drought. It wasn't really a drought at all. I remember once going from Sydney to Melbourne by train, and after Albury the whole country was literally bare as a board. Well, up here, at the worst time, there was knee-high dry grass somewhere in every paddock; but the fool cows, never having been used to anything but green feed, simply starved sooner than look at it. A few that did take to it here and there kept in fair nick throughout, but of course didn't give any milk. I'll bet there isn't a Victorian cocky who would have thought it anything worse than just a bit of a dry spell. And, too, out of the hundreds of creeks running through the scrublands, I only saw one that had gone dry. I shall never forget the delicious smell of the wet earth after the first rainstorm, and that night, all over the paddocks, there was a paean of praise from countless millions of frogs. Now, where the dickens do these blokes get to during a dry spell? We hadn't heard a croak for at least six months (or when the cows croaked they didn't do it audibly).

Next morning there was a faint green sheen all over the place, and in a week the grass was six inches high. The cows bogged in, their ribs disappeared, and four more calved. Thus about the middle of December I was a bloated capitalist, owning land and stock, with six cows milking and one more to come in, and reckoned it was high time to lend my support to the local butter factory and commence sending in cream.