From Chart House To Bush Hut Part 1

From Chart House to Bush Hut.

by Charles W. L. Bryde.

PREFACE.

The idea in mind is to present, as far as possible, a true picture of life in the Scrub, as I had experienced it. With this end in view, I have neither glossed over the difficulties and disabilities, nor enlarged on the advantages, of selection life in the Scrublands. I have tried to make the book a fairly reliable and interesting guide to anyone thinking of tackling the life. With what success I leave the reader to determine.

THE AUTHOR.

"Up North."

CHAPTER I.

THE NEWCASTLE (N.S.W.)-CHILE COAL RUN.

The trans-Pacific run is the most G.o.d-forsaken, monotonous trade in the world, I think. Our steamer was fairly fast for a tramp, and we were twenty-four days on the Eastbound trip and twenty-seven back to Newcastle--coal one way and ballast back. Not a solitary sail nor point of land to break the dreary monotony of grey sea and greyer sky, clear across to Valparaiso--5000 miles. Following the Great Circle track, you get down to 53 degrees or 54 degrees south lat.i.tude. In winter it's cold--blowing a gale pretty well all the time--and your ship's like a half-tide rock. In summer pretty much the same conditions prevail, with fog added. Occasionally there is a day when it's not blowing--then it rains. And there's ice to be looked out for at this time of the year, too, which is an added pleasantry.

Sweeping up on the Great Circle for Valparaiso, you close in gradually with the Chilean coast, the first land sighted being usually the rocky highlands round Curramilla Point, the high sierras of the Andes being obscured by mist most times. Occasionally one gets a glimpse of n.o.ble Aconcagua, the mighty 26,000 ft. Andean giant. I shall never forget my first sight of it. It was about six p.m., and we were then about 260 miles from the mountain. The sun was setting. All at once there appeared on the starboard bow a huge irregular truncated cone in the heavens, enlarged by refraction to an incredible size. It was a deep rose red, and every creva.s.se, ledge and spur was pencilled with distinctness. Talk about awe-inspiring grandeur and beauty! Every man-jack in the ship turned out to gaze and gaze while it slowly faded; and then, suddenly, puff! like a candle blown out, it was gone.

On arriving at Valparaiso you moor to buoys, in about thirty fathoms of water. Instantly a horde of coaley pirates, who look (and smell) as if they never washed, swarms aboard and starts to cast adrift all your carefully prepared cargo gear, and alter it to suit themselves. You try and explain that "thisee ropee no boyno' ere," and are thereupon informed "Usted no sabe nada, pilote," or something like that, so you give way. Big lighters b.u.mp all the paint off alongside. Work goes on night and day, and in less than a week the coal is all out, and away you wallow to sea again. No chance of going ash.o.r.e. Officers and engineers have to be here, there, and everywhere, for the lumpers pinch worse than--well! worse than the mate of a ship moored near a Government dockyard, and _that's_ saying something. They make a trade, too, out of bringing aboard bottles of the awful muck the lower cla.s.s Chileno delights in, such as casash, potato cana, etc., one gla.s.s of which makes a man see snakes for a week. I really think some sailors would guzzle kerosene out of a whisky bottle. Anyhow, you're glad to get to sea for a rest.

Then the long dreary run of 7000 miles back "along the parallel" starts!

nothing to see, nothing to break the awful monotony, till you strike the Australian coast again--Newcastle, for more coal.

You arrive on Wednesday night. "Sure of a Sunday this time!" you think.

Vain hope! A boat comes alongside about 11 p.m. (Ship at anchor in the stream.)

"Ready for fumigation, mister?"

"Oh! ----," you think, but don't say, for the officials can make things extremely unpleasant for you if they like. So its "Turn out, men, and get the stuff aboard." Five barrels of sulphur, and about four hundred little tin dishes to put it in. Ladle the sulphur in, each dish half-full, and pa.s.s it below. A lick of methylated spirits in each, a match, and the choking blue reek rises. On hatches! and batten well down; plug the ventilators--and then d.a.m.n well go and camp on a stage slung over the bows, for nowhere else will you escape the caustic fumes.

Sleep? I like to hear you! We've been getting cargo gear ready at sea this day, and we'll be all day to-morrow again, and no sleep this blessed night. Can you wonder at the men going on the drunk? My personal sympathy is with them, but I daren't show it, or I'd lose my job, get no reference from the skipper likely, and be ruined.

We spend the night coughing, choking and cursing, and about 8 a.m.

(Thursday) orders come to go alongside in the Basin. We go--and it's pandemonium let loose. The m.u.f.fled roar of coal dropping in tons, clang of trimmers' shovels, hoa.r.s.e shouts, stamping and crashings, with an occasional spasmodic clattering winch by way of variety.

All hands are on the beer ash.o.r.e, and won't show up till Sat.u.r.day at earliest. That leaves three officers and two apprentice boys to handle the ship, shift back and forth every half-hour or so, take stores aboard, put on 'tweendeck beams and hatches as required, and attend to the multifarious jobs connected with being in port. There isn't an earthly chance of going ash.o.r.e further than the fruit shop over the way, especially for the mate, who has to be there all the time.

Finally the truth slowly comes home to you that you will be finished on Sat.u.r.day night--8000 tons of cargo and bunkers in three days. At 7 p.m.

on Sat.u.r.day down comes the Navigation Department's inspector, with his hydrometer, to watch you finish. 8.30, and she's nearly down. You watch the marks closely, the inspector, grimly impa.s.sive, giving you no a.s.sistance.

"Can I put another truck in, sir?" I ask.

"You're loading her, mister, not me," is his discouraging reply.

You test the water with your hydrometer. Ah! Brackish. She'll stand it.

So. Another? H'm! Something in the inspector's eye warns you, so you say "No" reluctantly to the impatient head-stevedore, for you're due for a wigging if this cargo's a waggon short of last voyage's.

"Um!" says Mr. Inspector musingly. "If you'd put that aboard, mister, I'd have made you dig it out again." Helpful!

I had that sort of thing to put up with from the same man seven voyages running. I used to pa.s.s watches at sea comforting myself with dreams of punching his head, and trying to think of some way of upsetting him. No go! All the annoying power possible was his.

At 9.30 the head stevedore reports the cargo all trimmed down. Tide's at 11.0. Right! You go to turn out all hands and find them dead-oh. After much shaking, you manage to get four more or less fit for duty, albeit soreheaded and groggy on their pins, so you make a start getting hatch-beams on. Fore and main hatch iron-work is in place, when the skipper and pilot hurry aboard.

"Single up, Mr. Senex."

"Ay, ay, sir!" (Sotto voce: "G.o.d's curse to this infernal life.") Then, with a roar, "Break off there, and stand-by fore and aft."

Just singled up, when a sound like a mill wheel is heard, and Brown's old "Bungaree" comes alongside and makes fast.

"Let go fore and aft!" and away we go with a dismal shriek from the steam whistle, which, with water in the pipe, makes a snarling sound aptly expressive of our own feelings.

There's a lop of a sea outside the breakwaters, and the five derricks we still have up sway dangerously--to say nothing of the funnel, the guys of which are yet adrift. However, we drop anchor outside and all hands spend the night very pleasantly till nearly daybreak, securing gear, sorting out hatch covers and getting them on, setting up back stays, and so on.

A short spell of broken sleep, then, at 8.30 a.m. on this restful Sunday we finish clearing up the decks and wash down. Skipper comes aboard at noon, with all his papers in order. A hurried lunch, last letters handed to the agents' clerk; farewell! Up anchor, and so away again to sea--for a rest!

Thus it goes on, voyage after voyage the same. I had nine trips to Valparaiso and back, and it nearly broke both health and heart before I managed to cut the bonds and free myself from such slavery. The owners gave me 10 a month as mate and no overtime for any of us, till we kicked like h.e.l.l and threatened to go on strike; then we got 1/- an hour! and were looked on as mutinous.

A nightmare of a life. And though things are better now, I believe, than they were in my day, still it's past and done with for me, thank G.o.d!

CHAPTER II.

ONE NIGHT IN PORT JACKSON.

Eight bells, noon. Our steamer, twenty-six days out from Talcahuano, lurched and rolled under the rapidly expiring influence of the snorting sou'-easter which had dogged us all the way across the Pacific. Ahead, clear-cut and blue in the rainwashed atmosphere, a stretch of the New South Wales coast. A point on the port bow, a little white finger pointing upward.

Sydney! The very thought of the place warmed our hearts with visions of the rest, beer, girls, picture palaces, newspapers and so forth, according to the particular bent of the individual seaman.

Magic name! The growling A.B.'s grew suddenly good-tempered, and evinced a certain alacrity in obeying orders from which nearly four weeks' bad weather had divorced them. Occasionally they even smiled. The skipper grew cheerful, and the mate (me) ceased his everlasting faultfinding, and cracked a mild joke with the men now and again--which called forth its due meed of obsequious merriment. Once he even said, "It's going to be a fine evening after all, Mac," to an engineer, who nearly fell over his doorstep with the shock of being addressed with courtesy for the first time in a month.

Heavily our old hooker wallows along, and we raise the land fast.

"Anchors all ready, Mr. Senex?" from the skipper.

"All clear, sir."

"Right! See everything ready for the pilot."