THERE HAD BEEN THREE YEARS of drought, more or less severe, over that portion of South Australia where Curriewildie Station was situated; and what with the stock dying off in thousands for want of food and water, and the damage done to fences and such buildings as an outlying station boasts by bush fires, the revenue returns sent in by the manager to the owner were not exhilarating reading. She, poor old lady, was a resident in England, and had been so during the ten years which had elapsed since her husband, the original owner of the station, had died. There had been some heavy amounts sent home before the drought set in, and that, perhaps, was the reason why she took it into her head that we who were employed on the property were robbing her. Anyway, that is what we thought, when one day, without a word of warning, a young, fresh-faced Englishman arrived at the head station with all the necessary documentary evidence to prove to us—that is, Tom Smiles, the manager, and myself, the overseer—that he had been sent out by Mrs. Halliday to take immediate possession from us and send us about our business.
I was having a camp, as we term it in Australia—siesta, I believe is the proper word, and with my altered position, from that of a hardworking and not too well paid overseer to a millionaire, it behoves me to be careful and guard against too free a use of the bush vernacular. But that is rather anticipating, for at present, so far as this story is concerned, I am still the hard-working, ill-paid station overseer.
I was having a camp, as I have said, one afternoon in my own quarters—a slab hut, with a canvas ‘stretcher’ as the chief article of furniture—when Smiles disturbed me by bursting into the place.
“Halwood! Here, wake up!” he exclaimed, shaking me by the shoulder.
“All right,” I answered. “What is wrong now?”
“Wrong? Why, everything’s wrong,” he answered excitedly.
I looked at him quietly as the thought flashed through my mind, had sober, steady-going old Smiles broken out and gone for the rum keg?—got a touch of the sun, as we should put it?
“You’re sacked,” he added.
It was undoubtedly a case of the sun, I thought, and to humour him I said, “All right. I suppose I can finish my camp before making tracks?”
“You’re sacked,” he yelled. “D’ye hear? Sacked! You, me, and the whole gang. Sacked straight off the jigger.”
My reply was not perfectly polite, so I will not repeat it. Suffice it to say that it was expressive.
“Yes, young fellow; we’re sacked for robbing and cheating that—” he referred to our late esteemed employeress, but he did not use her usual name.
I was too mystified to understand quite the drift of his conversation and told him so. Then he became more explicit, and after telling me about the young Englishman’s arrival and the purport of his mission, he dragged me out of the hut and over to his quarters. There I found the rosy-cheeked young Englishman standing at the door, perspiring like a carcass in a boiling-down vat, and staring across the desolate stretch of drought-stricken country in front of him.
“Here’s the overseer. I’ve told him, but you had better do it over again,” Smiles said angrily to the new chum, as he pushed past him through the doorway.
“Smiles says I’m sacked,” I exclaimed, none too pleasantly.
“Well, I would like to—eh, that is—” he began hesitatingly.
“See here, boss,” I said, interrupting him; “we play square in these parts. Smiles says I’m sacked for collaring the dibs the station hasn’t earned. If that’s so, give it a name.”
“I should like to explain,” he said, and, as I stood silent, he did explain the whole situation to me as politely as he could. But I was in no mood for politeness. Like old Smiles, the insinuations brought my blood up. After struggling and fighting like heroes and working like draught horses—yackering, we termed it—for three solid years for a paltry pound a week and rations, and saving every shred of wool we could from the drought and the fires, it was rather rough to be accused of swindling.
Looking back at it now, I must own it was not very just to the new chum; but we were mad at the time and cared for nothing save our own wounded feelings. What men there were on the place—there were only a cook and a solitary shepherd—we told, and they, rather glad, I fancy, to get away from the place, marched up to the new chum and handed in their checks on the moment. He tried his best to square matters up, but it was no good, and before the sun went down the four of us had our swags rolled up and were a mile or so away from him. Bushmen are more or less nomads, and it does not take them very long to pack and clear, as they put it. The new chum must have had a rosy time of it as his first taste of Colonial experience, for it was decidedly rough upon him; but, to lapse once more into the expressive vernacular, “our troubles about a blooming jackeroo!”
Three days later and I was by myself riding westward, for I had heard of the new finds of gold out in Western Australia—Westralia, we call it—and fancied working my way over and trying my luck. There was a township a few days’ ride ahead, and I was steering for it, so as to get a pack horse and such things as I should need for the journey, and perhaps a mate, if a decent one were to be found. It was nearing sunset, and I interrupted my thoughts, of what a pile I might make if I struck it rich, to look around for a good place to camp for the night.
I espied a thin wisp of smoke on my right, and riding towards it I saw the gleam of a fire, with a man alongside boiling his billy (which, I may explain, is a tin pail used in the bush for many purposes, not the least of which in importance is the making of the national beverage—tea).
He saw me, and with the free hospitality of the country called out an invitation to join him.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I answered, and thus begun a mateship that in the course of the next few months was to yield to each of us a fairly big experience of adventure, and, what was more acceptable to me, a good round sum in cash.
