The Book of the Bush Part 20

"Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe."

it was so sweet that, while telling me about it sixty years afterwards, he smiled and smacked his lips, renewing as it were the delight of its delicious taste.

He always avoided, as much as possible, the danger of dying of hard work, so he is living yet, and is eighty-six years old. Whenever I see him he gives me his blessing, and says he never worked for any man he liked so well. A great philosopher says, in order to be happy it is necessary to be beloved, but in order to be beloved we must know how to please, and we can only please by ministering to the happiness of others. I ministered to the old convict's happiness by letting him work so lazily, and so I was beloved and happy.

He had formerly been an a.s.signed servant to Mr. Gellibrand, Attorney-General of Tasmania, before that gentleman went with Mr.

Hesse on that voyage to Australia Felix from which he never returned.

Some portions of a skeleton were found on the banks of a river, which were supposed to belong to the lost explorer, and that river, and Mount Gellibrand, on which he and Hesse parted company, were named after him.

There was a blackfellow living for many years afterwards in the Colac district who was said to have killed and eaten the lost white man; the first settlers therefore call him Gellibrand, as they considered he had made out a good claim to the name by devouring the flesh.

This blackfellow's face was made up of hollows and protuberances ugly beyond all aboriginal ugliness. I was present at an interview between him and senior-constable Hooley, who nearly rivalled the savage in lack of beauty. Hooley had been a soldier in the Fifth Fusiliers, and had been convicted of the crime of manslaughter, having killed a coloured man near Port Louis, in the Mauritius. He was sentenced to penal servitude for the offence, and had pa.s.sed two years of his time in Tasmania. This incident had produced in his mind an interest in blackfellows generally, and on seeing Gellibrand outside the Colac courthouse, he walked up to him, and looked him steadily in the face, without saying a word or moving a muscle of his countenance. I never saw a more lovely pair. The black fellow returned the gaze unflinchingly, his deep-set eyes fixed fiercely on those of the Irishman, his nostrils dilated, and his frowning forehead wrinkled and hard, as if cast in iron. The two men looked like two wild beasts preparing for a deadly fight. At length, Hooley moved his face nearer to that of the savage, until their noses almost met, and between his teeth he slowly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: "You eat white man?

You eat me? Eh?" Then the deep frown on Gellibrand's face began slowly to relax, his thick lips parted by degrees, and displayed, ready for business, his sharp and shining teeth, white as snow and hard as steel. A smile, which might be likened to that of a humorous tiger, spread over his s.p.a.cious features, and so the interview ended without a fight. I was very much disappointed, as I hoped the two man-slayers were going to eat each other for the public good, and I was ready to back both of them without fear, favour, or affection.

There is no doubt that the blacks ate human flesh, not as an article of regular diet, but occasionally, when the fortune of war, or accident, favoured them with a supply. When Mr. Hugh Murray set out from Geelong to look for country to the westward, he took with him several natives belonging to the Barrabool tribe. When they arrived near Lake Colac they found the banks of the Barongarook Creek covered with scrub, and on approaching the spot where the bridge now spans the watercourse, they saw a blackfellow with his lubra and a little boy, running towards the scrub. The Barrabool blacks gave chase, and the little boy was caught by one of them before he could find shelter, and was instantly killed with a club. That night the picaninny was roasted at the camp fire, and eaten.

And yet these blacks had human feelings and affections. I once saw a tribe travelling from one part of the district to another in search of food, as was their custom. One of the men was dying of consumption, and was too weak to follow the rest. He looked like a living skeleton, but he was not left behind to die. He was sitting on the shoulders of his brother, his hands grasping for support the hair on the head, and his wasted legs dangling in front of the other's ribs. These people were sometimes hunted as if they were wolves, but two brother wolves would not have been so kind to each other.

Before the white men came the blacks never buried their dead; they had no spades and could not dig graves. Sometimes their dead were dropped into the hollow trunks of trees, and sometimes they were burned. There was once a knoll on the banks of the Barongarook Creek, below the court-house, the soil of which looked black and rich. When I was trenching the ground near my house for vines and fruit trees, making another garden of paradise in lieu of the one I had lost, I obtained cart loads of bones from the slaughter yards and other places, and placed them in trenches; and in order to fertilize one corner of the garden, I spread over it several loads of the rich-looking black loam taken from the knoll near the creek. After a few years the vines and trees yielded great quant.i.ties of grapes and fruit, and I made wine from my vineyard. But the land on which I had spread the black loam was almost barren, and yet I had seen fragments of bones mixed with it, and amongst them a lower jaw with perfect teeth, most likely the jaw of a young lubra. On mentioning the circ.u.mstance to one of the early settlers, he said my loam had been taken from the spot on which the blacks used to burn their dead.

Soon after he arrived at Colac he saw there a solitary blackfellow crouching before a fire in which bones were visible. So, pointing to them, he asked what was in the fire, and the blackfellow replied with one word "lubra." He was consuming the remains of his dead wife, and large tears were coursing down his cheeks. Day and night he sat there until the bones had been nearly all burned and covered with ashes. This accounted for the fragments of bones in my black loam; why it was not fertile, I know, but I don't know how to express the reason well.

While the trenching of my vineyard was going on, Billy Nicholls looked over the fence, and gave his opinion about it. He held his pipe between his thumb and forefinger, and stopped smoking in stupid astonishment. He said--"That ground is ruined, never will grow nothing no more; all the good soil is buried; nothing but gravel and stuff on top; born fool."

Old Billy was a bullock driver, my neighbour and enemy, and lived, with his numerous progeny, in a hut in the paddock next to mine. In the rainy seasons the water flowed through my ground on to his, and he had dug a drain which led the water past his hut, instead of allowing it to go by the natural fall across his paddock. The floods washed his drain into a deep gully near his hut, which was sometimes nearly surrounded with the roaring waters. He then tried to dam the water back on to my ground, but I made a gap in his dam with a long-handled shovel, and let the flood go through. Nature and the shovel were too much for Billy. He came out of his hut, and stood watching the torrent, holding his dirty old pipe a few inches from his mouth, and uttered a loud soliloquy:--"Here I am--on a miserable island--fenced in with water--going to be washed away --by that Lord Donahoo, son of a barber's clerk--wants to drown me and my kids--don't he--I'll break his head wi' a paling--blowed if I don't." He then put his pipe in his mouth, and gazed in silence on the rushing waters.

I planted my ground with vines of fourteen different varieties, but, in a few years, finding that the climate was unsuitable for most of them, I reduced the number to about five. These yielded an unfailing abundance of grapes every year, and as there was no profitable market, I made wine. I pruned and disbudded the vines myself, and also crushed and pressed the grapes. The digging and hoeing of the ground cost about 10 pounds each year. When the wine had been in the casks about twelve months I bottled it; in two years more it was fit for consumption, and I was very proud of the article. But I cannot boast that I ever made much profit out of it--that is, in cash-- as I found that the public taste for wine required to be educated, and it took so long to do it that I had to drink most of the wine myself. The best testimony to its excellence is the fact that I am still alive.

The colonial taste for good liquor was spoiled from the very beginning, first by black strap and rum, condensed from the steam of h.e.l.l, then by Old Tom and British brandy, fortified with tobacco-- this liquor was the nectar with which the ambrosial station hands were lambed down by the publicans--and in these latter days by colonial beer, the washiest drink a nation was ever drenched with.

the origin of bad beer dates from the repeal of the sugar duty in England; before that time beer was brewed from malt and hops, and that we had "jolly good ale and old," and sour pie.

A great festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks.

All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the most extensive of squatters to the oldest of old hands. The blackfellows were there, too--what was left of them. Billy Leura walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand. Sissy, six years old, was present; she inspected the blackfellow and the ducks, and listened. Leura said he wanted to sell me the ducks, but not for money; he would take old clothes for them. He was wearing nothing but a shirt and trousers, both badly out of repair, and was anxious to adorn his person with gay attire on the morrow. So I traded off a pair of old cords and took the ducks.

Next day we had two guests, a Miss Sheppard, from Geelong, and another lady, and as my house was near the lake, we did our picnicking inside. We put on as much style as possible to suit the occasion, including, of course, my best native wine, and the two ducks roasted. Sissy sat at the table next to Miss Sheppard, and felt it her duty to lead the conversation in the best society style.

She said:

"You see dose two ducks, Miss Sheppard?"

"Yes, dear; very fine ones."

"Well, papa bought 'em from a black man yesterday. De man said dey was black ducks, but dey was'nt black, dey was brown. De fedders are in de yard, and dey are brown fedders."

"Yes, I know, dear; they call them black ducks, but they are brown-- dark brown."

"Well, you see, de blackfellow want to sell de ducks to papa, but papa has no money, so he went into de house and bring out a pair of his old lowsers, and de blackfellow give him de ducks for de lowsers, and dems de ducks you see."

"Yes, dear; I see," said Miss Sheppard, blushing terribly.

We all blushed.

"You naughty girl," said mamma; "hold your tongue, or I'll send you to the kitchen."

"But mamma, you know its quite true," said Sissy. "Didn't I show you de black man just now, Miss Sheppard, when he was going to de lake?

I said dere's de blackfellow, and he's got papa's lowsers on, didn't I now?"

The times seemed prosperous with us, but it was only a deceptive gleam of sunshine before the coming storm of adversity. I built an addition to my dwelling; and when it was completed I employed a paperhanger from London named Taylor, to beautify the old rooms. He was of a talkative disposition; when he had n.o.body else to listen he talked to himself, and when he was tired of that he began singing.

The weather was hot, and the heat, together with his talking and singing, made him thirsty; so one day he complained to me that his work was very dry. I saw at once an opportunity of obtaining an independent and reliable judgment on the quality of my wine; so I went for a bottle, drew the cork, and offered him a tumblerful, telling him it was wine which I had made from my own grapes. As Taylor was a native of London, the greatest city in the world, he must have had a wide experience in many things, was certain to know the difference between good and bad liquor, and I was anxious to obtain a favourable verdict on my Australian product. He held up the gla.s.s to the light, and eyed the contents critically; then he tasted a small quant.i.ty, and paused awhile to feel the effect. He then took another taste, and remarked, "It's sourish." He put the tumbler to his mouth a third time, and emptied it quickly. Then he placed one hand on his stomach, said "Oh, my," and ran away to the water tap outside to rinse his mouth and get rid of the unpleasant flavour.

His verdict was adverse, and very unflattering.

Next day, while I was inspecting his work, he gave me to understand that he felt dry again. I asked him what he would like, a drink of water or a cup of tea? He said, "Well, I think I'll just try another gla.s.s of that wine of yours." He seemed very irrational in the matter of drink, but I fetched another bottle. This time he emptied the first tumbler without hesitation, regardless of consequences. He puckered his lips and curled his nose, and said it was rather sourish; but in hot weather it was not so bad as cold water, and was safer for the stomach. He then drew the back of his hand across his mouth, looked at the paper which he had been putting on the wall, and said, "I don't like that pattern a bit; too many crosses on it."

"Indeed," I said, "I never observed the crosses before, but I don't see any harm in them. Why don't you like them?"

"Oh, it looks too like the Catholics, don't you see? too popish. I hate them crosses."

"Really," I replied. "I am sorry to hear that. I am a Catholic myself."

"Oh, lor! Are you, indeed? I always thought you were a Scotchman."

Taylor finished that bottle of wine during the afternoon, and next day he wanted another. He wanted more every day, until he rose to be a three-bottle man. He became reconciled to the crosses on the wall-paper, forgave me for not being a Scotchman, and I believe the run of my cellar would have made him a sincere convert to popery-- as long as the wine lasted.

Soon after this memorable incident, the Minister and Secretary made an official pleasure excursion through the Western District. They visited the court and inspected it, and me, and the books, and the furniture. They found everything correct, and were afterwards so sociable that I expected they would, on returning to Melbourne, speedily promote me, probably to the Bench. But they forgot me, and promoted themselves instead. I have seen them since sitting nearly as high as Haman in those expensive Law courts in Lonsdale Street, while I was a despicable jury-man serving the Crown for ten shillings a day. That is the way of this world; the wicked are well-paid and exalted, while the virtuous are ill-paid and trodden down. At a week's notice I was ordered to leave my Garden of Eden, and I let it to a tenant, the very child of the Evil One. He pruned the vines with goats and fed his cattle on the fruit trees. Then he wrote to inquire why the vines bore no grapes and the fruit trees no fruit, and wanted me to lower the rent, to repair the vineyard and the house, and to move the front gate to the corner of the fence. That man deserved nothing but death, and he died.

In the summer of 1853, the last survivor of the Barrabool tribe came to Colac, and joined the remnant of the Colac blacks, but one night he was killed by them at their camp, near the site of the present hospital. A shallow hole was dug about forty or fifty yards from the south-east corner of the allotment on which the Presbyterian manse was built, and the Colac tribe buried his body there, and stuck branches of trees around his grave. About six months afterwards a Government officer, the head of a department, arrived at Colac, and I rode with him about the township and neighbouring country showing him the antiquities and the monuments, among others the mausoleum of the last of the Barrabools. The leaves had by this time fallen from the dead branches around the sepulchre, and the small twigs on them were decaying. The cattle and goats would soon tread them down and scatter them, and the very site of the grave would soon be unknown.

The officer was a man of culture and of scientific tendencies, and he asked me to dig up the skull of the murdered blackfellow, and sent it to his address in Melbourne. He was desirous of exercising his culture on it, and wished to ascertain whether the skull was bracchy-cephalous, dolichophalous, or polycephalous. I think that was the way he expressed it. I said there was very likely a hole in it, and it would be spoiled; but he said the hole would make no difference. I would do almost anything for science and money, but he did not offer me any, and I did not think a six months' mummy was old enough to steal; it was too fresh. If that scientist would borrow a spade and dig up the corpse himself, I would go away to a sufficient distance and close my eyes and nose until he had deposited the relic in his carpet bag. But I was too conscientious to be accessory to the crime of body-s.n.a.t.c.hing, and he had not courage enough to do the foul deed. That land is now fenced in, and people dwell there. The bones of the last of the Barrabools still rest under somebody's house, or fertilise a few feet of a garden plot.

ON THE NINETY-MILE.

A HOME BY A REMOTER SEA.

The Ninety-Mile, washed by the Pacific, is the sea sh.o.r.e of Gippsland. It has been formed by the mills of two oceans, which for countless ages have been slowly grinding into meal the rocks on the southern coast of Australia; and every swirling tide and howling gale has helped to build up the beach. The hot winds of summer scorch the dry sand, and spin it into smooth, conical hills. Amongst these, low shrubs with grey-green leaves take root, and thrive and flourish under the salt sea spray where other trees would die. Strange plants, with pulpy leaves and brilliant flowers, send forth long green lines, having no visible beginning or end, which cling to the sand and weave over it a network of vegetation, binding together the billowy dunes.

The beach is broken in places by narrow channels, through which the tide rushes, and wanders in many currents among low mudbanks studded with sh.e.l.lfish--the feeding grounds of ducks, and gulls, and swans; and around a thousand islands whose soil has been woven together by the roots of the spiky mangrove, or stunted tea-tree. Upon the muddy flats, scarcely above the level of the water, the black swans build their great circular nests, with long gra.s.s and roots compacted with slime. Salt marshes and swamps, dotted with bunches of rough gra.s.s, stretch away behind the hummocks. Here, towards the end of the summer, the blacks used to reap their harvest of fat eels, which they drew forth from the soft mud under the roots of the tussocks.

The country between the sea and the mountains was the happy-hunting-ground of the natives before the arrival of the ill-omened white-fellow. The inlets teemed with flathead, mullet, perch, schnapper, oysters, and sharks, and also with innumerable water-fowl. The rivers yielded eels and blackfish. The sandy sh.o.r.es of the islands were honey-combed with the holes in which millions of mutton-birds deposited their eggs in the last days of November in each year. Along many tracks in the scrub the black wallabiesand paddy-melons hopped low. In the open glades among the great gum-trees marched the stately emu, and tall kangaroos, seven feet high, stood erect on their monstrous hind-legs, their little fore-paws hanging in front, and their small faces looking as innocent as sheep.

Every hollow gum-tree harboured two or more fat opossums, which, when roasted, made a rich and savoury meal. Parrots of the most brilliant plumage, like winged flowers, flew in flocks from tree to tree, so tame that you could kill them with a stick, and so beautiful that it seemed a sin to destroy them. Black c.o.c.katoos, screaming harshly the while, tore long strips of bark from the messmate, searching for the savoury grub. Bronzed-winged pigeons, gleaming in the sun, rose from the scrub, and flocks of white c.o.c.katoos, perched high on the bare limbs of the dead trees, seemed to have made them burst into miraculous bloom like Aaron's rod.

The great white pelican stood on one leg on a sand-bank, gazing along its huge beak at the receding tide, hour after hour, solemn and solitary, meditating on the mysteries of Nature.

But on the mountains both birds and beasts were scarce, as many a famishing white man has found to his sorrow. In the heat of summer the sea-breeze grows faint, and dies before it reaches the ranges.

Long ropes of bark, curled with the hot sun, hang motionless from the black-b.u.t.ts and blue gums; a few birds may be seen sitting on the limbs of the trees, with their wings extended, their beaks open, panting for breath, unable to utter a sound from their parched throats.

"When all food fails then welcome haws" is a saying that does not apply to Australia, which yields no haws or fruit of any kind that can long sustain life. A starving man may try to allay the pangs of hunger with the wild raspberries, or with the cherries which wear their seeds outside, but the longer he eats them, the more hungry he grows. One resource of the lost white man, if he has a gun and ammunition, is the native bear, sometimes called monkey bear. Its flesh is strong and muscular, and its eucalyptic odour is stronger still. A dog will eat opossum with pleasure, but he must be very hungry before he will eat bear; and how lost to all delicacy of taste, and sense of refinement, must the epicure be who will make the attempt! The last quadruped on which a meal can be made is the dingo, and the last winged creature is the owl, whose scanty flesh is viler even than that of the hawk or carrion crow, and yet a white man has partaken of all these and survived. Some men have tried roasted snake, but I never heard of anyone who could keep it on his stomach.

The blacks, with their keen scent, knew when a snake was near by the odour it emitted, but they avoided the reptile whether alive or dead.

Before any white man had made his abode in Gippsland, a schooner sailed from Sydney chartered by a new settler who had taken up a station in the Port Phillip district. His wife and family were on board, and he had shipped a large quant.i.ty of stores, suitable for commencing life in a new land. It was afterwards remembered that the deck of the vessel was enc.u.mbered with cargo of various kinds, including a bullock dray, and that the deck hamper would unfit her to encounter bad weather. As she did not arrive at Port Phillip within a reasonable time, a cutter was sent along the coast in search of her; and her long boat was found ash.o.r.e near the Lakes Entrance, but nothing else belonging to her was ever seen.