It was my luck to be on the lonely track humping the swag when a great drought swept its burning wave across the whole of Australia. On the borders of Queensland I had been with two more English emigrants2 working on a selector’s ranch3 at “Sunrise Creek4.” Dorrell was the boss’s name and he had a splendid stock of sheep and many acres of land under cultivation5. He proved a fine man to us lads and treated us as though we were his own sons. I taught his daughter to play the violin and he was so proud when she was first able to play “Home, Sweet Home” that he smacked6 me on the back and gave me a week’s holiday. But life in a selector’s homestead is extremely monotonous7, and after staying there six months I bade them all farewell, and with a kindred spirit started off to tramp to Maranoa with the idea of getting across to Queensland and into more lively surroundings.
Modern Sheep-shearers
It was on that tramp that the great drought struck the country; forests that were green shrivelled to grey and then to brown, as the fiery8 blast from the white hot sun day after day crept over the sky as we tramped along. The wind blew like the hot blasts from some volcano; the swamps and creeks9 311and pools soon became baked and cracked shallows, wherein the very frogs stuck in the dry ooze10, died and stank11. While we passed by, half dead ourselves, searching for water, overhead across the cloudless blue passed swarms13 of parrots. As my comrade and I staggered along we heard the dismal14 mutterings of those birds as they sped away overhead and faded away leaving a greater loneliness after they disappeared, tiny specks16 on the Southern skyline. To the south-west of us rose some hills, and at nightfall we came across a pool of water at the bottom of a deep gully. It was hot-fevered stuff, but we knelt side by side and drank it as on the scorched17 blue gums the carrion18 crows wept, and yet, with that same hope that springs eternally in the human breast, sharpened up their beaks19 with the forlorn hope that we might yet die and our rotting carcasses supply them with food. By the swamp we slept that night, and once more at daybreak started off. Over us on the eucalyptus20 trees the carrion crows had slept and over our heads they croaked21 and flapped lazily along, following us, and often they would stay by the trackless track to feed on the dead birds in the mulga-scrub, birds that had fallen from their perch22 during the night, dead through the want of water. For miles and miles the bush lay around us, nothing but a leafless, waterless drought-stricken ocean, and often as the migrating birds passed over, some would half fall from the blazing sky and settle on the tree-tops to die, just the same as swallows do far out at sea as the stragglers fly to 312the rigging of the lonely ship, and fall dead on the deck during the night through hunger.
My comrade was English, and was a splendid friend; he was three or four years older than I, and when we sat down together and shared out the food we had in our swag, we would almost quarrel because he would deny himself and give me the largest share. He was uneducated, but that did not matter. God had amply repaid him in the making for all that his education might lack when he was a man, and twelve months after, when I read in a newspaper that I had been drowned at sea on the schooner23 Alice that was lost with all hands, I felt terribly upset. I had given him one of my “Very good” discharges so that he could secure a berth24; he got the berth, and my name being on his discharge he had to sail under my name, and died bearing my name. Many beautiful things were said of me when my old acquaintances also read the account, and thought it was I who was drowned; but when the truth came out, and I appeared and was once more known to be living in common flesh, I became commonplace, and the beautiful things that only survive in the memory for those who are dead, faded and my sins once more awoke and peeped through my good reputation like the slit-mouths of those frogs that protrude25 among the pure white lilies of a crystal lake. But I must return to that tramp across those drought-stricken plains.
I think it was three weeks before we reached civilisation26 again, though we were not more than two hundred miles from Warrego. I sprained27 my 313ankle while crossing a gully, and found it a terrible job to get along, but Ned Shipley, my comrade, made me lean on his shoulder as he staggered along with the swag, which was nearly empty. We had thrown all the blankets away and kept just one small rug to wrap our little remaining food in. Several times I gave in and told him to go on and take care of himself, but he was not made that way and simply lifted me up and dragged me along. Just when we were both nearly roasted up to dried skin and bone and despairing, we came across a deep cleft28 in a gully, and in its shaded glooms we found dozens of juicy prickly pears growing on the huge boughs29. I lay at full length on my back utterly30 exhausted31 as Ned knocked the prickles off the rind with his boots and placed the crimson32 fruit in my parched34 mouth. That night was the first night that we really slept soundly, and when we awoke the sun had already fired the eastern sky with blood-red streaks35. As we lay on our backs under the tall dried-up blood-wood trees, we saw the flocks of cockatoos and migrating spoonbills pass in hurrying fleets across the sky. All was hushed on the slopes around us, excepting for the chanting noise of the locusts36 and the surviving tree-frogs. I remember well that particular morning; the long sleep had considerably37 refreshed us both, and my comrade even started to sing and I to dream of home and England. I lay by his side and I seemed to realise with a deeper intensity38 all that had happened. And as the scent39 of the parched sea-scrub blew in whiffs 314around my nostrils40, and my chum stood up and gazed dreamily across the plains with his hand arched over his sky-blue eyes, I felt the atmosphere of wild romance come over me. Notwithstanding all the misery41 of that tramp and my helplessness, the spirit of adventure seemed to thrill me with a strange happiness. Even now after all the years I can still see the rolling plains around us, our homeless camp under the blood-wood trees, and the big bird that fluttered just overhead, with crimson underwings and one of its legs hanging down as though it was broken, as it gave a lonely wail42 and passed away. On we tramped that day and towards nightfall, by the side of a dried-up creek, we both stood and gazed on one of the saddest sights of loneliness and helplessness that I ever saw or may ever see again. There by a dead stunted43 palm on the desert lay the skeleton of a horse; the bones were bleached44 white and so was the relic45 of humanity beside it, and as we both gazed on that sad sight, we instinctively46 drew closer to each other.
Lost, alone on the drought-swept plain,
Away in the sky on southward flight,
Far specking the waste of blinding light,
The parrots are curling their glittering wings,
Soft-croaking their dismal mutterings;
By the small hot sun in fleets they pass
Where the wide sky flames like molten glass,
On crawls the horse o’er the trackless track,
315A castaway on wide, waveless seas.
Miles, miles away rise gaunt gum-trees,
Like derelicts old, with sailless mast,
Cast on the rocks by the drought’s hot blast
The sun dies down—on the dim skyline
And the lost man’s eyes far gaze aswim
As the tide of dark rolls over him!
There’s hope! for a tiny cloud doth rise,
To leave him alone on the desert wide;
’Tis night—overhead the bright stars creep.
He lies with his one friend down to sleep:—
And the months and the years have since rolled by,
And the horse and the master still there lie;
Where those sad eyes of hope peered thro’
The green shoot peeped—a bush flower blew,
For we found them there, yes, side by side—
Two skeletons white—just as they died.
Our hearts were heavy as on we went,
For his thin bone arm was softly bent—
Curled round the neck of his big comrade
There, telling us how two friends had laid
Their tired heads under the drought-swept sky.
And still out there the white bones lie.[9]
9. Reproduced from the author’s Bush Songs and Oversea Voices.
It was a long time before the first influence left on our minds by that sight passed away. As darkness crept over the cloudless skies and the bright Australian stars flashed out, we lay together behind some large boulders53 and dead scrubwood as nervous as two children, and often my heart leapt as the jewel-like eyes of the big lizards54 darted55 up the dead 316scrub and grass twigs56 by our heads, as they slipped and squeaked57 and scampered58 away. We were only about three or four hundred yards from that spot, and as night wore on and moonrise burst out over the trackless plains, the wind-blown shadows seemed to move to and fro by the steeps and gullies, as though the ghosts of dead men crept from their unknown graves and wailed59 while the hot night wind cried through the leafless gum clumps60. I almost feared to see my tired-out chum’s face in repose61, as he lay by me fast asleep, with his mouth open, breathing out God’s sad music of humanity as with each breath his chest heaved up and down, while the moonbeams on his unshaved thin face sea-sawed with his snores.
It was with intense relief that, when still staggering along three days after, we stumbled across a track and following it for some miles came to a homestead, and almost fell down by the verandah as we knocked at the door. The old Irishwoman almost wept over us and ran about with her pots muttering and saying, “Sure and begorra the poor bhoys have suffered.” The dear soul kept pushing broths62 from her stockpot down our throats with a long wooden spoon till at last I had to beg of her to desist, otherwise I am sure I should have brought the whole gift up again. Her husband was also very kind to us and they gave up their own bed for us to sleep in that night. In two days we were almost fit again. I had devoted63 all my spare time to bathing my ankle and the swelling64 soon went 317down, and when Riley rode off, bound in his shaky old bush cart for a place called Indrapilly, he took us with him, for though we were welcome to stay there at his homestead, we had had quite enough of the bush and both of us longed to get to the town again. Here I will end this short narrative65 of my experience with that true comrade of mine in the Australian bush and the lonely tramp across solitudes66 where many men in times gone by have gone and passed away for ever; for often the traveller comes across bleached bones in those wastes, and sometimes lonely graves, with the name cut in the bark of a tree just by or on some roughly extemporised cross.
In the never-never land they sleep,
Where the parrots o’er them fly,
Winged-flowers across some sombre steep
And monumental sky.
Fenced by stretched skylines far around
Where thro’ the bushman creeps,
Upon the nameless steeps;
Ay, by its cross may dreaming stand
Then, swag upon his back,
Fade far across the scrub and sand
Out on the lonely track.
For two or three months my chum and I stuck together and secured employment on the farm stations near Toowoomba and then tramped on again. With several pounds saved up we eventually arrived at Port Bowen and from there went by boat to Brisbane, and then I bade him good-bye, for 318he secured a berth on a ship bound for New Zealand and the next I heard of him was from a newspaper report that he was drowned, as I have previously68 told you. I stayed for about two months in Brisbane and made an attempt to get into the theatre orchestra again, but could not manage it; I secured several concert engagements, however, as I was then an expert violinist and could play by heart several of Spohr’s concertos69 and the tricky70 variations of Paganini’s “Carnaval de Venice.”
About this time the rumours71 of great gold finds were being discussed, believed and doubted in all of the Australian cities, and I got hold of a newspaper article which had evidently been written by some imaginative journalist. Had the account of the discoveries and immense fortunes that were picked up day by day been believed by the author of that story he would have been a terrible ass12 to have sat there writing articles for a provincial72 paper, wasting valuable time when fortunes were awaiting men who cared to take the trouble to get them by strolling through the bush north of Perth. Anyway I believed a good deal that he wrote, and got the gold fever, which was raving73 pretty strongly all over, like an echo of “the roaring fifties,” when gold was first discovered by Hargraves. The exiled convicts of those days in Sydney threw their shovels74 and crowbars down on to the Government land allotted75 to them, went across country, made fortunes and returned to Sydney and Melbourne prosperous men, elevated from the convicts’ chains 319to the peaks of fame, their pedigrees forgotten, the past swallowed up for ever. Their late enemies became their firmest friends, as it was, is now and ever shall be, world without end, to those who have plenty of gold; and so by one stroke of fortune men from the condemned76 cell who had grinned through prison bars attained77 to velvet78 comfort and applause, became notable officials, ay, and rose to be judges on the Bench, and so by the irony79 of fate often got their own back! But I must not digress and go so far back, as that time is now history and all happened long before I emigrated from my sleep in eternity80 into the realms of time to creep across the “Never-never land” on my futile81 search for gold to help me to keep comfortable and warm.
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1
lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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emigrants
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| n.（从本国移往他国的）移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
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3
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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10
ooze
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| n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露 | |
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11
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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12
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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13
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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14
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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15
speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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16
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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17
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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18
carrion
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| n.腐肉 | |
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19
beaks
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| n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 )；鹰钩嘴；尖鼻子；掌权者 | |
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20
eucalyptus
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| n.桉树，桉属植物 | |
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21
croaked
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的过去式和过去分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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22
perch
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| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
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23
schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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24
berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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25
protrude
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| v.使突出，伸出，突出 | |
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26
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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27
sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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28
cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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29
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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30
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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31
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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32
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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33
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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34
parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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35
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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36
locusts
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| n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 )；贪吃的人；破坏者；槐树 | |
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37
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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38
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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39
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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40
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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41
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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42
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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43
stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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44
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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45
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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46
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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47
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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48
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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49
blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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50
goblet
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| n.高脚酒杯 | |
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51
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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52
toils
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| 网 | |
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53
boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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54
lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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55
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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56
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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57
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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58
scampered
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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61
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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62
broths
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| n.肉汤( broth的名词复数 )；厨师多了烧坏汤；人多手杂反坏事；人多添乱 | |
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63
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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64
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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65
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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66
solitudes
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| n.独居( solitude的名词复数 )；孤独；荒僻的地方；人迹罕至的地方 | |
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67
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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68
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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69
concertos
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| n. [音]协奏曲 | |
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70
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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71
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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72
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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73
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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74
shovels
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| n.铲子( shovel的名词复数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份v.铲子( shovel的第三人称单数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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75
allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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77
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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78
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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79
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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80
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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81
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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