The Call Of The South by George Lewis Becke (rocket ebook reader .TXT) 📖

cold, and so we were pleased to come across a well-sheltered little pocket, a few hundred yards from the creek, which at this part of its course ran very swiftly between high, broken walls of granite. Timber was abundant, and as we intended to thoroughly prospect the creek up to its head, we decided to camp at the pocket for two or three weeks, and put up a bark hut, instead of shivering at night under a tent without a fire. The first day we spent in stripping bark, piled it up, and then weighted it down heavily with logs. During the next few days, whilst my mates were building the hut, I had to scour the country in search of game, for our supply of meat had run out, and although there were plenty of cattle running in the vicinity, we did not care to shoot a beast, although we were pretty sure that C------, the owner of the nearest cattle station, would cheerfully have given us permission to do so had we been able to have communicated with him. But as his station was forty miles away, and all our horses were in poor condition from overwork, we had to content ourselves with a chance kangaroo, rock wallaby, and such birds as we could shoot, which latter were few and far between. The country was very rough, and although the granite ranges and boulder-covered spurs held plenty of fat rock wallabies, it was heart-breaking work to get within shot. Still, we managed to turn in at nights feeling satisfied with our supper, for we always managed to shoot something, and fortunately had plenty of flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco, and were very hopeful that we should get on to "something good" by careful prospecting.

On the day that we arrived at the pocket, I went down the steep bank of the creek to get water, and was highly pleased to see that it contained fish. At the foot of a waterfall there was a deep pool, and in it I saw numbers of fish, very like grayling, in fact some Queenslanders call them grayling. Hurrying back to the camp with the water, I got out my fishing tackle (last used in the Burdekin River for bream), and then arose the question of bait. Taking my gun I was starting off to look for a bird of some sort, when one of my mates told me that a bit of wallaby was as good as anything, and cut me off a piece from the ham of one I had shot the previous day. The flesh was of a very dark red hue, and looked right enough, and as I had often caught fish in both the Upper and Lower Burdekin with raw beef, I was very hopeful of getting a nice change of diet for our supper.

I was not disappointed, for the fish literally jumped at the bait, and I had a delightful half-hour, catching enough in that time to provide us with breakfast as well as supper. None of my catch were over half a pound, many not half that weight, but hungry men are not particular about the size of fish. My mates were pleased enough, and whilst we were enjoying our supper before a blazing fire--for night was coming on--we heard a loud coo-e-e from down the creek, and presently C------, the owner of the cattle station, and two of his stockmen with a black boy, rode up and joined us. They had come to muster cattle in the ranges at the head of the creek, and had come to our "pocket" to camp for the night. C------ told us that we need never have hesitated about killing a beast. "It is to my interest to give prospecting parties all the beef they want," he said; "a payable gold-field about here would suit me very well--the more diggers that come, the more cattle I can sell, instead of sending them to Charters Towers and Townsville. So, when you run short of meat, knock over a beast. I won't grumble. I'll round up the first mob we come across to-morrow, and get you one and bring it here for you to kill, as your horses are knocked up."

The night turned out very cold, and although we were in a sheltered place, the wind was blowing half a gale, and so keen that we felt it through our blankets. However it soon died away, and we were just going comfortably to sleep, when a dingo began to howl near us, and was quickly answered by another somewhere down the creek. Although there were but two of them, they howled enough for a whole pack, and the detestable creatures kept us awake for the greater part of the night. As there was a cattle camp quite near, in a sandalwood scrub, and the cattle were very wild, we did not like to alarm them by firing a shot or two, which would have scared them as well as the dingoes. The latter, C------ told us, were a great nuisance in this part of the run, would not take a poisoned bait, and had an unpleasant trick of biting off the tails of very young calves, especially if the mother was separated with her calf from a mob of cattle.

At daylight I rose to boil a billy of tea. My feet were icy cold, and I saw that there had been a black frost in the night I also discovered that my string of fish for breakfast was gone. I had hung them up to a low branch not thirty yards from where I had slept. C------'s black boy told me with a grin that the dogs had taken them, and showed me the tracks of three or four through the frosty grass. _He_ had slept like a pig all night, and all the dingoes in Australia would not awaken a black fellow with a full stomach of beef, damper and tea. C------ laughed at my chagrin, and told me that native dogs, when game is scarce, will catch fish if they are hungry, and can get nothing else. He had once seen, he told me, two native dogs acting in a very curious manner in a waterhole on the Etheridge River. There had been a rather long drought, and for miles the bed of the river was dry, except for intermittent waterholes. These were all full of fish, many of which had died, owing to the water in the shallower pools becoming too hot for them to exist Dismounting, he laid himself down on the bank, and soon saw that the dogs were catching fish, which they chased to the edge of the pool, seized them and carried them up on the sand to devour. They made a full meal; then the pair trotted across the river bed, and lay down under a Leichhardt tree to sleep it off. The Etheridge and Gilbert Rivers aboriginals also assured C------ that their own dogs--bred from dingoes--were very keen on catching fish, and sometimes were badly wounded in their mouths by the serrated spur or back fin of catfish. C------ and his party went off after breakfast, and returned in the afternoon with a small mob of cattle, and my mates, picking out an eighteen months' old heifer, shot her, and set to work, and we soon had the animal skinned, cleaned and hung up, ready for cutting up and salting early on the following morning. We carefully burnt the offal, hide and head, on account of the dingoes, and finished up a good day's work by a necessary bathe in the clear, but too cold water of the creek. We turned in early, tired out, and scarcely had we rolled ourselves in our blankets when a dismal howl made us "say things," and in half an hour all the dingoes in North Queensland seemed to have gathered around the camp to distract us. The noise they made was something diabolical, coming from both sides of the creek, and from the ranges. In reality there were not more than five or six at the outside, but any one would imagine that there were droves of them. Not liking to discharge our guns on account of C------'s mustering, we could only curse our tormentors throughout the night. On the following evening, however, knowing that C------ had finished mustering in our vicinity, we hung a leg bone of the heifer from the branch of a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where we could see it plainly by daylight from our bank--about sixty yards distant Again we had a harrowing night, but stood it without firing a shot, though one brute came within a few yards of our camp fire, attracted by the smell of the salted meat, but he was off before any one of us could cover him. However, in the morning we were rewarded.

Creeping to the bank of the creek at daylight we looked across, and saw three dogs sitting under the leg bone, which was purposely slung out of reach. We fired together, and the biggest of the three dropped--the other two vanished like a streak of lightning. The one we killed was a male and had a good coat--a rather unusual thing for a dingo, as the skin is often covered with sores. From that time, till we broke up camp, we were not often troubled by their howling near us--a gun shot would quickly silence their dismally infernal howls.

During July we got a little gold fifteen miles from the head of the creek, but not enough to pay us for our time and labour. However, it was a fine healthy occupation, and our little bark hut in the lonely ranges was a very comfortable home, especially during wet weather, and on cold nights. A good many birds came about towards the end of the month, and we twice rode to the Burdekin and had a couple of days with the bream, filling our pack bags with fish, which cured well with salt in the dry air. Although Scarr's creek was full of "grayling" they were too small for salting; but were delicious eating when fried. During our stay we got enough opossum skins to make a fine eight-feet square rug. Then early one morning we said good-bye to the pocket, and mounting our horses set our faces towards Cleveland Bay, where, with many regrets, I had to part with my mates who were going to try the Gulf country with other parties of diggers. They tried hard to induce me to go with them, but letters had come to me from old comrades in Samoa and the Caroline Islands, tempting me to return. And, of course, they did not tempt in vain; for to us old hands who have toiled by reef and palm the isles of the southern seas are for ever calling as the East called to Kipling's soldier man. But another six months passed before I left North Queensland and once more found myself sailing out of Sydney Heads on board one of my old ships and in my old berth as supercargo, though, alas! with a strange skipper who knew not Joseph, and with whom I and every one else on board was in constant friction. However, that is another story.

After bidding my mates farewell I returned to the Charters Towers district and picked up a new mate--an old and experienced digger who had found some patches of alluvial gold on the head waters of a tributary of the Burdekin River and was returning there. My new mate was named Gilfillan. He was a hardworking, blue-eyed Scotsman and had had many and strange experiences in all parts of the world--had been one of the civilian fighters in the Indian Mutiny, fur-seal hunting on the Pribiloff Islands in an American