The Confessions of a Beachcomber Part 5

1904 94.41 inches.

1905 89.06 "

First nine months of 1906 134.70 "

Of the latter total, 56 inches occurred in February, two days (6th and 18th), accounting for 22.95 inches--more than half the average rainfall of the State of Queensland.

An ill.u.s.tration--homely but graphic--of climatic differences may be given. During the first five months of 1904 the rainfall of Dunk Island amounted to 75.15 inches, the lowest monthly record being May (5.30 inches) and the highest March (29.05 inches). At the end of May on the Burdekin Delta--150 miles to the south--the sugarcane was beginning to be affected by the hot, dry weather, and irrigation was about to be resorted to. Here in January it became necessary to repair the roof of the boat-shed, and to keep the ridge covering of paper-bark in position, two long saplings were tied parallel with the ridge pole. At the end of May these saplings were taken down in order that the whole of the thatch might be renovated, when it was found that both had started to grow, several of the shoots being 8 and 10 inches long. While sugarcane was languishing for lack of moisture, 150 miles away down the coast, a roughly-cut sapling exposed on the roof of a building found the conditions for the beginning of a new existence so favourable and stimulative that it had budded as freely as Aaron's rod. "Through the scent of water it had budded and brought forth boughs like a plant."

Nearly as much misapprehension prevails in the Southern States of the Commonwealth as to the characteristics of North Queensland as seems to prevail among the good old folks "at home" as to Australia generally. If the few facts presented excite even mild surprise, they will not be altogether out of place in these pages.

Dunk Island has a mean temperature of about 69 deg.; January is the hottest month with a mean of 87 deg, and July the coolest, mean 57 deg.

Taking the official readings of Cardwell (20 miles to the south), I find the greatest extremes on record occurred in one year, when the highest temperature was 103.3 deg. and the lowest 36.2 deg. At Geraldton (25 miles to the north) the extremes were 96 deg. and 43.4 deg.

Rainfall and temperature, the proportion of clear to cloudy skies, calms, the direction, strength and the duration of winds, do not wholly comprehend distinctive climatic features. There are other conditions of more or less character and note, some hard to define, yet ever present.

Here the air is warm and soothing, seldom is it crisp and never really bracing. Hot dry winds are unknown, but in the height of the wet season--which coincides with the dry season of the Southern States--the moisture-laden air may be likened to the vapour of a steam bath. While the rain thunders on the roof at the rate of an inch per hour, inside the house it may be perspiringly hot. After a fortnight's rain the damp saturates everything. Neglected boots and shoes grow a rich crop of mould, guns demand constant attention to prevent rust, and clothes packed tight in chests of drawers smell and feel damp. But the atmosphere is so wholesome that ordinary precautions for the prevention of sickness are generally neglected without any fear of ill consequence.

However sharply defined by reason of the personal discomfort it inflicts, this steamy feature of the wet season is no more a general characteristic than the hot winds are of Victoria. Warm as the rains are, they bring to the air coolness and refreshment. Clear, calm, bright days, days of even and not high temperature, and of pure delight, dovetail with the hot and steamy ones. The prolifigacy of vegetation is a perpetual marvel; the loveliness of the land, the ineffable purity of the sky, the glorious tints of the sea--green and gold at sunrise, silvery blue at noon, purple pink and lilac during the all too brief twilight, a perpetual feast.

For six months it may be said the prevailing wind is the south-east, followed by gentle breezes from the east and north-east. North-easters begin in September and are intermittent until the beginning of the wet season. The south-east monsoons are regular and consistent; the north-east, which precede the rainy monsoon, fitful and wayward, never continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west.

North-easters are a p.r.o.nounced feature. They work up by diurnal and easy grades from gentleness to strength, thunder coming as a climax.

After a succession of calm days and days of gentle breezes from the east-south-east and east, the north-easter begins softly, and daily gathers courage and a.s.sumption, to find in the course of a week or two its haughty spirit subdued by thunder and rain showers. Calms prevail for a few days. Easterly breezes come, to give way to the north-east again, and so the programme is repeated with variations which none may foresee, and which set at naught the lengthiest experience.

At last, at Christmas or the New Year, the rains come with a boisterous beginning. A north-easter accompanied by thunder lasted a whole July afternoon. It was as strange as a crop of mangoes would have been at that time of year.

During the cool season--a generous half of the year--dews are common--not the trivial barely perceptible moisture called dew in some parts, but most ungentle dew, which saturates everything and drips from the under sides of verandahs as the sun warms the air; dew which bows the gra.s.s with its weight, soaks through your dungarees to the hips, and soddens your thick bluchers, until you feel and appear as though you had waded through a swamp; dew which releases the prisoned odour of flowers irresponsive to the heat of the sun, which keeps the night cool and sweet, which with the first gleam of the sun makes the air soft and spicy and buoyant, and inspires thankfulness for the joy of life.

Are we not all apt to fall into the error of estimating the character of a country by its extravagances rather than its average and general qualities?

North Queensland has the reputation of being the home of malaria and the special sport of any cyclone that may have mischief in view. Being tropical, we have malaria, but it is of no more serious consequence than any one of the ills to which human flesh is heir in temperate climes. It does not exact such a toll of suffering and death as influenza, nor as typhoid used to do in crowded cities; nor is it as common as rheumatism in damp and bl.u.s.tering New Zealand, where the thermometer ranges from 100 deg. in the shade to 24 deg. of frost. Malaria touches us lightly, and it is chosen as a bugbear with which to scare people away. A southern critic, honestly pitiful of our ill state, urges that the experiment of destroying those mosquitoes which disseminate the germ of malaria, by sealing up lagoons and swamps with kerosene, is worthy the attention of town and country residents in tropical Queensland, "where attacks of malaria are felt every summer." Mere idle words of pernicious consequence. Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation,"

has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the renown of an annual attack! In that case the writer ought to have had twenty-five attacks, and thousands of others, l.u.s.ty and toneful fellows, forty and forty-five attacks. With as much claim upon reason might one say that because of the sudden jerks of their climate (40 deg.

of difference within twelve hours) all Victorians have to make three changes of raiment every day in order to avoid ill consequences; or that every man, woman and child in merry England has had instead of expects or dreads or hopes to have appendicitis, since King Edward the Peacemaker suffered, and renown came upon that disorder.

Malaria is fleeing before civilisation. It cannot--at any rate in North Queensland--long endure the presence of the white man.

Unfeigned pity is bestowed upon the denizens of North Queensland on account of the pains and penalties and discomforts alleged to be the sentence of all who dare select it as home. We who know can but smile and wait; and ever call call to mind pleasant and happy experiences, everlasting truths and "the falsehood of extremes."

Even in the matter of cyclones--often quoted as one of its detriments--North Queensland has nothing to hide. At intervals Nature does indulge in a reckless and violent outburst, but not more frequently here than in other parts of the world. Year after year the seasons are pa.s.sive and pleasant, and in every respect considerate of humanity and encouraging to humanity's undertakings. Then, abandoning for a few hours her orderly and kindly ways, Nature runs amok, raving and shrieking. Her transient irresponsibleness and mischievousness are then cited as everyday, persistent vices. Not so. Nature is rational even in her most pa.s.sionate moments. Vegetation, rank and gross as in an unweeded garden, requires vigorous lopping and pruning. These twenty-year-interval storms comb out superfluous leaves and branches, cut out dead wood, send to the ground decayed and weakly shoots, and scrub and cleanse trunks and branches of parasitic growths. All is done boldly, yet with such skill that in a few weeks losses are hidden under ma.s.ses of clean, insectless, healthy, bright foliage. The soil has received a luxurious top-dressing.

Trees and plants respond to the stimulus with magical vigour, for lazy, slumbering forces have been roused into efforts so splendid that the realism of tropical vegetation is to be appreciated only after Nature has swept and sweetened her garden.

A more vivid and more idealised medium than the poor one which with diffidence I employ were essential if entertainment alone were sought in these pages; but even faint and imperfect etching of one Australian scene, little known even to Australians, may in some degree tend to enlightenment.

Many have told of the thin forests of Queensland, the open plains, and the interminable downs whereon the mirage plays with the fancies of wayfarers; and of the dust, heat and sweat of cattle stations. Has not the "Never Never Country" inspired many a traveller and more than one poet? It is well to realise that we have such bountiful land, and to be proud of the men capable of investing its vastness, monotony and prosaic wealth with poetic imagery. Is it not also wise to remember now aagain that Queensland possesses two types of tropical climate, accentuated by boundaries having far great significance than those which divide tropical from temperate Australia, and worlds apart in their distinctions? Is not the land of the banana, the palm and the cedar, ent.i.tled to recognition, as well as the land of the gidyea, the boree, and the bottle-tree? Who has yet said or sung of the mystery of the half-lit jungles of our coast, in contrast to the vivid boldness of the sun-sought, shadeless western plains; of our green, moist mountains, seamed with gloomy ravines, the sources of perennial streams; of the vast fertile lowlands in which the republic of vegetation is as an unruly, ungoverned mob, clamouring for topmost places in unrestrained excess of energy; of still lagoons, where the sacred pink lotus and the blue and white water-lily are rivals in grace of form, in tint and in perfume?

If I am successful in convincing that North Queensland is neither a burning fiery furnace nor yet a sweltering steamy swamp; that the country is not completely saturated with malaria; that there are vast areas which no drought can tinge with grey or brown, where there are never-failing streams, where cool fresh water trickles among the shale and shattered coral on the beaches, where sweet-voiced birds sport and resplendent b.u.t.terflies flicker, then these writings will have been to some purpose.

ISLAND FAUNA

While the bird life of our island is plentiful and varied, mammalian is insignificant in number. The echidna, two species of rats, a flying fox (PTEROPUS FUNEREUS) and two bats, comprise the list. Although across a narrow channel marsupials are plentiful, there is no representative of that typical Australian order here, and the Dunk Island blacks have no legends of the existence of either kangaroos, wallabies, kangaroo rats or bandicoots in times past. But there are circ.u.mstantial details extant, that the island of Timana was an outpost of the wallaby until quite a recent date. A gin (the last female native of Dunk Island) who died in 1900 was wont to tell of the final battue at Timana, and the feast that followed, in which she took part as a child. This island, which has an area of about 20 acres, bears a resemblance to a jockey's cap--the sand spit towards the setting sun forming the peak, a precipice covered with scrub and jungle, the back. Here, long ago, a great gathering from the neighbouring islands and the mainland took place. Early in the morning all formed up in line on the sand spit. Diverging, but maintaining order, men, gins, piccaninnies, shouting, yelling, and screaming, and clashing nulla-nullas (throwing-sticks), supported by barking and yelping dogs swept the timid wallabies up through the tangle of jungle, until like the Gaderene swine they ran, or rather hopped, down a steep place into the sea, or fell on fatal rocks laid bare by the ebb-tide. Those who partook of the last of the wallabies have gone the way of all flesh, and the incident is instructive only as an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which animals may suddenly disappear from confined localities, leaving no relic of previous existence. Considering the bulk of Dunk Island (3 1/2 square miles), and recognising the rule that islands are necessarily poorer in species than continents, it is yet remarkable that no evidence of marsupials is to be found, and that the oldest blacks maintain that none of the type ever existed here.

Though the drawings in caves depict lizards, echidna, turtle and men, there is no representation of kangaroo or wallaby. It is highly probable that if such had been common, the black artists would have chosen them as subjects, since nearly all their studies are from Nature.

The largest and heaviest four-footed creature now existent on Dunk Island is the so-called porcupine (spiny ant-eater or echidna). An animal which possesses some of the features of the hedgehog of old England, and resembles in others that distinctly Australian paradox, the platypus, which has a mouth which it cannot open--a mere tube through which the tongue is thrust, which in the production of its young combines the hatching of an egg as of a bird, with the suckling of a mammal, and which also has some of the characteristics of a reptile, cannot fail to be an interesting object to every student of the marvels of Nature. When disturbed, the echidna resolves itself into a ball, tucking its long snout between its forelegs, and packing its barely perceptible tail close between the hind ones, presenting an array of menacing p.r.i.c.kles whencesoever attacked. While in this ball-like posture, the animal, as chance affords, digs with its short strong legs and steel-like claws, tearing asunder roots, and casting aside stones, and the ease and rapidity with which it disappears in soft soil are astonishing. The horrific array of p.r.i.c.kles presented as it digs an undignified retreat, and the tenacity with which it holds the ground, have given rise to the fiction that no dog is capable of killing an echidna. No ordinary dog is.

He must be cunning, daring, brave, insensible to pain, and resourceful.

Then the feat is quite ordinary. Indeed, once the trick is learned, the trouble is to keep the dog from attacking its innocent, useful and most retiring enemy. The echidna has the ill-luck to possess certain subtle qualities, which excite terrific enthusiasm for its destruction on the part of the dog. Either there is an hereditary feud between the dog and the echidna, which the former is bound in honour to push to the last extremity, or else the dog regards the p.r.i.c.kly creature as a perpetual affront, or specially created to provide opportunities for displaying fanatic hatred and hostility. No dog of healthy instinct is able to pa.s.s an echidna without some sort of an attempt upon its life. The long tubular nose of the echidna is the vital spot. This is guarded with such shrewdness and determination as to be impregnable. But the dog which pursues the proper tactics, and is wily and patient, sooner or later-regardless of the alleged poisonous spur--seizes one of the hind legs, and the conflict quickly comes to an end.

By the blacks the echidna, which is known as "Coombee-yan," is placed on the very top of the list of those dainties which the crafty old men reserve for themselves under awe-inspiring penalties.

Next in size to the echidna is the white-tipped rat (UROMYS HIRSUTIS?), water-loving, nocturnal in its habits, fierce and destructive. A collateral circ.u.mstance revealed absolute proof of its existence, which had previously depended upon vague statements of the blacks. Cutting firewood in the forest one morning, I came across a carpet snake, 12 feet long, laid out and asleep in a series of easy curves, with the sun revealing unexpected beauty in the tints and in the patterns of the skin.

Midway of its length was a tell-tale bulge, and before the axe shortened it by a head, I was convinced that here was a serpent that had waylaid and surprised or beguiled a fowl. Post-mortem examination, however, proved once more the unreliability of uncorroborated circ.u.mstantial evidence. The snake had done good and friendly service instead of ill, for it had swallowed a white-tailed rat--the only specimen that I have seen on the island.

Next comes the little frugivorous rat of russet brown, with a glint of gold on its fur tips. A delicate, graceful creature, nice in its habits, with a plaintive call like the cheep of a chicken; preferring ripe bananas and pine-apple, but consenting to nibble at other fruits, as well as grain. The mother carries her young crouched on her haunches, clinging to her fur apparently with teeth as well as claws, and she manages to scuttle along fairly fast, in spite of her enc.u.mbrances. The first that I saw bearing away her family to a place of refuge was deemed to be troubled with some hideous deformity aft, but inspection at close quarters showed how she had converted herself into a novel perambulator.

I am told that no other rodent has been observed to carry its young in this fashion. Perhaps the habit has been acquired as a result of insular peculiarities, the animal, unconscious of the way of its kind on the mainland, having invented a style of its own, "ages ahead of the fashion."

Mr C. W. de Vis, M.A., of the Queensland Museum, who has considerately examined specimens of this rat, p.r.o.nounces it to be extraordinary, in that it combines types of three genera--the teeth of the mus, the mammae of the mastacomys and the scales on the tail of the genus UROMYS. In the bestowal of a name he has favoured the latter genus. The animal has been introduced to the scientific world under the t.i.tle UROMYS BANFIELDI, by Mr de Vis, who, referring to it as "eccentric," says, "The female first sent to us as an example of the species had no young with her, nor were her mammae much in evidence; consequently, the advent of a specimen caught in the act of carrying young was awaited with interest. Fortune at length favoured our correspondent with an opportunity of placing the correctness of his observation beyond question. (A mother with a pair of infants attached to the teats was chloroformed and sent to Brisbane). On arrival, the young were found detached. The conical corrugated nipples are, compared with the size of the animal, very long; one, especially, 20 mm. in length, calls to mind a marsupial teat."

By the examination of adult specimens the age at which the young disa.s.sociate themselves from the mother has been ascertained. Long after the time of life at which other species of rats are nibbling an independent way through the world, U. BANFIELDI clings resolutely to its parent, obtaining from her its sole sustenance. Not until the "infant" is nearly half the size of the mother does it begin to earn its living and trust to its own means of locomotion.

The presence of the echidna in three colours--black, grey, and straw--and two species of rats emphasises the absence of marsupials, unaccountable unless on the theory of extermination by the original inhabitants in the remote past.

CHAPTER III

BIRDS AND THEIR RIGHTS

"As the sweet voice of a bird, Heard by the lander in a lonely isle Moves him to think what kind of bird it is, That sings so delicately clear, and make Conjecture of the plumage and the form."

Frankly it must be admitted that the idea of retiring to an island was not spontaneous. It was evolved from a sentimental regard for the welfare of bird and plant life. Having pondered upon the destructive instinct which prevails in mankind, having seen that, though the offences which man commits against the laws of Nature are promptly detected and a.s.suredly punished, they are yet repeated over and over again, and having more pity for the victims of man's heartlessness and folly than regard for the consequences which man suffers in the blows that Nature inflicts as she recoils, the inevitable conclusion was that moral suasion was of little purpose--that there must be more of example than precept. In this particular case how speedy and effective has been the result will be seen later on. Man destroys birds for sport, or in mere wantonness, and the increasing myriads of insect hosts lay such toll upon his crops and the fruit of the earth which by the exercise of high intelligence and n.o.ble perseverance he has improved and made plentiful, that the national loss is to be counted by hundreds of thousands. In this, as in all other interferences with natural laws, we blunder unless we reckon

"With that Fixed arithmic of the universe, Which meteth good for good, ill for ill, Measure for measure."

There may be a sort of satisfaction in the reflection, that for, perhaps, every insectivorous bird wantonly killed, some proportion of its weight in silver has to be paid indirectly by the country. But the satisfaction is of no avail to the dead bird nor to the species, unless the taxpayer feels the smart and becomes indignant. We want to save the lives of the birds, and the silver, then to moralise; not kill the bird and be compelled to spend the silver in destroying insects that the bird would have delighted to consume, and moralise upon the destructiveness of some hitherto insignificant bug or beetle, which has suddenly developed into a national calamity.

So it was resolved, as other phases of island life matured, that one of the first ordinances to be proclaimed would be that forbidding interference with birds. That ordinance prevails. Our sea-girt hermitage is a sanctuary for all manner of birds, save those of murderous and cannibalistic instincts. We give all a hearty welcome and make friends of them if possible. During the eight years of our occupancy many shy creatures have become quite bold and familiar; though I am fain to admit, with disappointment, that but slight increases in the species represented have been noticed. Four strange species of terns, which are wont to lay on the bare reef patches of the Barrier, now visit Purtaboi regularly every season, depositing their eggs among those of two other species, which in spite of disturbance by the blacks, year after year refused to abandon the spot. Possibly the fact that a haven of refuge has been established has not been widely promulgated among our friends. Those who are with us or visit us have peace and security, and are for the most part friendly and trustful.

Man--the late-comer, the last work, the perfect form--is not always kindly disposed towards the lower orders, though the dominion he exercises over them is absolute. Were not the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the very fish of the sea, given over to his arbitrary authority? Here the interest in birds is mainly protective. The printed law of the land says in ponderous paragraphs all duly numbered and subdivided, that it is unlawful to kill many Queensland birds; and the pains and penalties for disregard thereof, are they not set out in terrifying array? But who cares? Take, for an example, the lovely Gouldian finch. The law makes it an offence to kill the birds, or to take their eggs, or to have them in possession dead or alive. Yet trappers go out into the habitation of the bird and snare them by the thousand. Fifty thousand pairs have been sent away in a single season. Not one tenth of those which twitter so faintly and yet so sweetly to their tiny loves of their own land and their erstwhile freedom, ever live to be gloated over, because of their fatal gift of beauty, in London or on the Continent.

A CENSUS

While this census ignores several birds of the island as to the ident.i.ty of which doubt exists in the mind of the compiler, it acknowledges the presence of all permanent residents familiar to him, as well as casual visitors, and those which stay for a few hours or days, as the case may be, for rest or refreshment during migratory flights. Chastened by the half-averted face of irresponsive science, the glowing desire to inflate the list gave way to the crisper sort of satisfaction which is like the joy that cometh in the morning.

BIRDS OF PREY

White Goshawk ASTUR (LEUCOSPIZA) NOVAE HOLLANDIAE.