The Book of the Bush Part 26

Mother Murden came to the door with a tumbler in her hand, containing a morning nip for Neddy, "to kill the worm," as the Latins say; but the worm was dead already. The merry-makers stood around; the men looked serious and the ladies shivered. They said the air felt chilly, so they bade one another good morning and hurried home.

It is hard to say why one sinner is taken and the other left.

Joshua's time did not arrive until many years afterwards, when we had acquitted him at the General Sessions; but that is another story.

HOW GOVERNMENT CAME TO GIPPSLAND.

At this time there was no visible government in Gippsland. The authorities in Sydney and Melbourne must have heard of the existence of the country and of its settlement, but they were content for a time with the receipt of the money paid into the Treasury for depasturing licenses and for a.s.sessments on stock.

In 1840 the Land Fund received in New South Wales amounted to 316,000 pounds; in 1841 it was only 90,000 pounds; and in 1842 Sir George Gipps, in his address to the Council severely reprimanded the colonists for the reckless spirit of speculation and overtrading in which they had indulged during the two preceding years. This general reprimand had a more particular application to Mr. Benjamin Boyd, the champion boomer of those days.

Labourers out of employment were numerous, and contractors were informed by 'Gazette' notice that the services of one hundred prisoners were available for purposes of public utility, such as making roads, dams, breakwaters, harbours, bridges, watchhouses, and police buildings. a.s.signees of convicts were warned that if they wished to return them to the custody of the Government, they must pay the expense of their conveyance to Sydney, otherwise all their servants would be withdrawn, and they would become ineligible as a.s.signees of prisoners in future.

Between the first of July, 1840, and the first of November, 1841, 26,556 bounty immigrants had been received in Sydney. The bounty orders were suspended in the autumn of the latter year, but in 1842 Lord Stanley was of opinion that the colony could beneficially receive ten thousand more immigrants during the current year.

Many married labourers could find no work in Sydney, and in November, 1843, the Government requested persons sending wool-drays to the city to take families to inland districts gratis.

A regular stream of half-pay officers also poured into the colony, and made Sir George's life a burden. They all wanted billets, and if he made the mistake of appointing a civilian to some office, Captain Smith, with war in his eye and fury in his heart, demanded an interview at once. He said:

"I see by this morning's 'Gazette' that some fellow of the name of Jones has been made a police superintendent, and here am I, an imperial officer, used to command and discipline, left out in the cold, while that counter-jumper steps over my head. I can't understand your policy, Sir George. What will my friends of the club in London say, when they hear of it, but that the service is going to the dogs?"

So Captain Smith obtained his appointment as superintendent of police, and with a free sergeant and six convict constables, taken, as it were, out of bond, was turned loose in the bush. He had been for twenty years in the preventive service, but had never captured a prize more valuable than a bottle of whisky. He knew nothing whatever about horses, and rode like a beer barrel, but he nevertheless lectured his troopers about their horses and accoutrements. The sergeant was an old stockrider, and he one day so far forgot the rules of discipline as to indulge in a mutinous smile, and say:

"Well, captain, you may know something about a ship, but I'll be blowed if you know anything about a horse."

That observation was not entered in any report, but the sergeant was fined 2 pounds for "insolence and insubordination." The sum of 60,899 pounds was voted for police services in 1844, and Captain Smith was paid out of it. All the revenue went to Sydney, and very little of it found its way to Melbourne, so that Mr. Latrobe's Government was sometimes deprived of the necessaries of life.

Alberton was gazetted as a place for holding Courts of Petty Sessions, and Messrs. John Reeve and John King were appointed Justices of the Peace for the new district.

Then Michael Shannon met James Reading on the Port Albert Road, robbed him of two orders for money and a certificate of freedom, and made his way to Melbourne. There he was arrested, and remanded by the bench to the new court at Alberton. But there was no court there, no lock-up, and no police; and Mr. Latrobe, with tears in his eyes, said he had no cash whatever to spend on Michael Shannon.

The public journals denounced Gippsland, and said it was full of irregularities. Therefore, on September 13th, 1843, Charles J. Tyers was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the district. He endeavoured to make his way overland to the scene of his future labours, but the mountains were discharging the acc.u.mulated waters of the winter and spring rainfall, every watercourse was full, and the marshes were impa.s.sable.

The commissioner waited, and then made a fresh start with six men and four baggage horses. Midway between Dandenong and the Bunyip he pa.s.sed the hut of Big Mat, a new settler from Melbourne, and obtained from him some information about the best route to follow. It began to rain heavily, and it was difficult to ford the swollen creeks before arriving at the Big Hill. At Shady Creek there was nothing for the horses to eat, and beyond it the ground became treacherous and full of crabholes. At the Moe the backwater was found to be fully a quarter of a mile wide, enc.u.mbered with dead logs and scrub, and no safe place for crossing the creek could be found. During the night the famishing horses tore open with their teeth the packages containing the provisions, and before morning all that was left of the flour, tea, and sugar was trodden into the muddy soil and hopelessly lost; not an ounce of food could be collected. There was no game to be seen; every bird and beast seemed to have fled from the desolate ranges. Mr. Tyers had been for many years a naval instructor on board a man-of-war, understood navigation and surveying, and, it is to be presumed, knew the distance he had travelled and the course to be followed in returning to Port Philip; but there were valleys filled with impenetrable scrub, creeks often too deep to ford, and boundless mora.s.ses, so that the journey was made crooked with continual deviations. If a black boy like McMillan's Friday had accompanied the expedition, his native instinct would, at such a time, have been worth all the science in the world.

The seven men, breakfastless, turned their backs to Gippsland. The horses were already weak and nearly useless, so they and all the tents and camp equipage were abandoned. Each man carried nothing but his gun and ammunition. All day long they plodded wearily through the bush--wading the streams, climbing over the logs, and pushing their way through the scrub. Only two or three small birds were shot, which did not give, when roasted, a mouthful to each man.

At night a large fire was made, and the hungry travellers lay around it. Next morning they renewed their journey, Mr. Tyers keeping the men from straggling as much as he could, and cheering them with the hope of soon arriving at some station. No game was shot all that day; no man had a morsel of food; the guns and ammunition seemed heavy and useless, and one by one they were dropped. It rained at intervals, the clothing became soaked and heavy, and some of the men threw away their coats. A large fire was again made at night, but no one could sleep, shivering with cold and hunger.

Next morning one man refused to go any further, saying he might as well die where he was. He was a convict accustomed to life in the bush, and Mr. Tyers was surprised that he should be the first man to give way to despair, and partly by force and partly by persuasion he was induced to proceed. About midday smoke was seen in the distance, and the hope of soon obtaining food put new life into the wayfarers.

But they soon made a long straggling line of march; the strongest in the front, the weakest in the rear.

The smoke issued from the chimney of the hut occupied by Big Mat. He was away looking after his cattle, but his wife Norah was inside, busy with her household duties, while the baby was asleep in the corner. There was a small garden planted with vegetables in front of the hut, and Norah, happening to look out of the window during the afternoon, saw a strange man pulling off the pea pods and devouring them. The strange man was Mr. Tyers. Some other men were also coming near.

"They are bushrangers," she said running to the door and bolting it, "and they'll rob the hut and maybe they'll murder me and the baby."

That last thought made her fierce. She seized an old Tower musket, which was always kept loaded ready for use, and watched the men through the window. They came into the garden one after another, and at once began s.n.a.t.c.hing the peas and eating them. There was something fearfully wild and strange in the demeanour of the men, but Norah observed that they appeared to have no firearms and very little clothing. They never spoke, and seemed to take no notice of anything but the peas.

"The Lord preserve us," said Norah, "I wish Mat would come."

Her prayer was heard, for Mat came riding up to the garden fence with two cattle dogs, which began barking at the strangers. Mat said:

"h.e.l.lo, you coves, is it robbing my garden ye are?"

Mr. Tyers looked towards Mat and spoke, but his voice was weak, his mouth full of peas, and Mat could not tell what he was saying. He dismounted, hung the bridle on to a post, and came into the garden.

He looked at the men, and soon guessed what was the matter with them; he had often seen their complaint in Ireland.

"Poor craythurs," he said, "it's hungry ye are, and hunger's a killing disorder. Stop ating they pays to wonst, or they'll kill ye, and come into the house, and we'll give ye something better."

The men muttered, but kept s.n.a.t.c.hing off the peas. Norah had unbolted the door, and was standing with the musket in her hand.

"Take away the gun, Norah, and put the big billy on the fire, and we'll give 'em something warm. The craythurs are starving. I suppose they are runaway prisoners, and small blame to 'em for that same, but we can't let 'em die of hunger."

The strangers had become quite idiotic, and wou'd not leave the peas, until Mat lost all patience, bundled them one by one by main force into his hut, and shut the door.

He had taken the pledge from Father Mathew before he left Ireland, and had kept it faithfully; but he was not strait-laced. He had a gallon of rum in the hut, to be used in case of snake-bite and in other emergencies, and he now gave each man a little rum and water, and a small piece of damper.

Rum was a curse to the convicts, immigrants, and natives. Its average price was then about 4s. 3d. per gallon. The daily ration of a soldier consisted of one pound of bread, one pound of fresh meat, and one-seventh of a quart of rum. But on this day, to Mr. Tyers and his men, the liquor was a perfect blessing. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the slabs.

"You don't know me, Mat?"

"Know ye, is it? Sure I never clapped eyes on ye before, that I know of. Are ye runaway Government men? Tell the truth, now, for I am not the man to turn informer agin misfortunate craythurs like yourselves."

"My name is Tyers. I pa.s.sed this way, you may remember, not very long ago."

"What! Mr. Tyers, the commissioner? Sure I didn't know you from Adam. So ye never went to Gippsland at all?"

"Our horses got at the provisions and spoiled them; so we had to come back, and we have had nothing to eat for three days. There is one man somewhere behind yet; I am afraid he will lie down and die. Do you think you could find him?"

"For the love of mercy, I'll try, anyway. Norah, dear, take care of the poor fellows while I go and look for the other man; and mind, only to give 'em a little food and drink at a time, or they'll kill their wake stomachs with greediness; and see you all do just as Norah tells you while I'm away, for you are no better than childer."

Mat galloped away to look for the last man, while his wife watched over the welfare of her guests. She said:

"The Lord save us, and be betune us and harm, but when I seen you in the garden I thought ye were bushrangers, and I took up the ould gun to shoot ye."

Mat soon found the last man, put him on his horse, and brought him to the hut. Next morning he yoked his bullocks, put all his guests into the dray, and started for Dandenong. On December 23rd, 1843, Mr.

Tyers and his men arrived in Melbourne, and he reported to Mr.

Latrobe the failure of his second attempt to reach Gippsland.

While the commissioner and his men were vainly endeavouring to reach the new country, seven other men were suffering famine and extreme hardships to get away from it. They had arrived at the Old Port by sea, having been engaged to strip bark by Mr. P. W. Walsh, usually known in Melbourne as Paddy Walsh. He had been chief constable in Launceston. Many years before Batman or Fawkner landed in Port Philip, parties of whalers were sent each year to strip wattle bark at Western Port. Griffiths and Co. had found the business profitable, and Paddy Walsh came to the conclusion that there was money to be made out of bark in Gippsland. He therefore engaged seven men and shipped them by schooner, writing to a storekeeper at the Old Port to receive the bark, ship it to Melbourne, and supply the strippers with the requisite stores.

The seven men landed at the Old Port and talked to the pioneers.

They listened to their dismal accounts of starvation on roast flathead and mutton-birds' eggs, of the ferocity of the blacks, of the murder of Macalister, of the misfortunes of Glengarry. The nine-pounder gun still stood at the corner of the company's store, pointed towards the scrub, a silent warning to the new men of the dangers in store for them. They took their guns and went about the bush looking for wattle trees, but they could not find in any place a sufficient quant.i.ty to make the business profitable. There was no regular employment to be had, but fortunately the schooner 'Scotia', chartered by John King, went ash.o.r.e in a gale, and four of the barkers, all Irishmen obtained a few days' work in taking out her mud ballast. But no permanent livelihood could be expected from shipwrecks, and the seven strippers resolved, if possible, to return to Melbourne. They wanted to see Paddy Walsh once more, but they had no money, and the storekeeper refused to pay their fare by sea.

After much negotiation, they obtained a week's rations, and gave all the tools they had brought with them to Captain Davy in payment for his trouble in landing them at One Tree Hill. They were informed that Brodribb and Hobson had made Western Port in four days on foot, and of course they could do the same. Four of the men were named Crow, Sparrow, Fox, and Macnamara; of the other three two were Englishmen, Smith and Brown; the third, a native of London, named Spiller, installed himself in the office of captain on account of his superior knowledge. He guaranteed to lead the party in a straight line to Western Port. He said he could box the compa.s.s; he had not one about him, but that made no difference. He would lay out their course every morning; they had to travel westward; the sun rose in the east, everybody knew as much as that; so all he had to do was to turn his back to the rising sun, and march straight on to Western Port which was situated in the west. The men agreed that Spiller's theory was a very good one; they could not think of any objection to it.

Each man carried his blanket and rations, his gun and ammunition.

Every morning Spiller pointed out the course to be taken and led the way. From time to time, with a look of extreme wisdom, he took observations of the position of the sun, and studied the direction of his own shadow on the ground. For five days the men followed him with great confidence, and then they found that their rations were all consumed, and there was no sign of Western Port or any settlement. They began to grumble, and to mistrust their captain; they said he must have been leading them astray, otherwise they would have seen some sign of the country being inhabited, and they formed a plan for putting Spiller's knowledge of inland navigation to the test.