Bush Studies by Barbara Baynton

Author:Barbara Baynton [Baynton, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction classic
ISBN: 9781921961779
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

BILLY SKYWONKIE*

THE line was unfenced, so with due regard to the possibility of the drought-dulled sheep attempting to chew it, the train crept cautiously along, stopping occasionally, without warning, to clear it from the listless starving brutes. In the carriage nearest the cattle-vans, some drovers and scrub-cutters were playing euchre, and spasmodically chorusing the shrill music from an uncertain concertina. When the train stopped, the player thrust his head from the carriage window. From one nearer the engine, a commercial traveller remonstrated with the guard, concerning the snail’s pace and the many unnecessary halts.

“Take yer time, ole die-’ard,” yelled the drover to the guard. “Whips er time—don’t bust yerself fer no one. Wot’s orl the worl’ to a man w’en his wife’s a widder.” He laughed noisily and waved his hat at the seething bagman. “Go an’ ’ave a snooze. I’ll wake yer up ther day after termorrer.”

He craned his neck to see into the nearest cattle-van. Four were down, he told his mates, who remarked, with blasphemous emphasis, that they would probably lose half before getting them to the scrub country.

The listening woman passenger, in a carriage between the drover and the bagman, heard a thud soon after in the cattle-truck, and added another to the list of the fallen.

Before dawn that day the train had stopped at a siding to truck them, and she had watched with painful interest these drought-tamed brutes being driven into the crowded vans. The tireless, greedy sun had swiftly followed the grey dawn, and in the light that even now seemed old and worn, the desolation of the barren shelterless plains, that the night had hidden, appalled her. She realized the sufferings of the emaciated cattle. It was barely noon, yet she had twice emptied the water bottle “shogging” in the iron bracket.

The train dragged its weary length again, and she closed her eyes from the monotony of the dead plain. Suddenly the engine cleared its throat in shrill welcome to two iron tanks, hoisted twenty feet and blazing like evil eyes from a vanished face.

Beside them it squatted on its hunkers, placed a blackened thumb on its pipe, and hissed through its closed teeth like a snared wild-cat, while gulping yards of water. The green slimy odour penetrated to the cattle. The lustiest of these stamped feebly, clashing their horns and bellowing a hollow request.

A long-bearded bushman was standing on the few slabs that formed a siding, with a stockwhip coiled like a snake on his arm. The woman passenger asked him the name of the place.

“This is ther Never-Never—ther lars’ place Gord made,” answered one of the drovers who were crowding the windows.

“Better’n ther ’ell ’ole yous come from, any’ow,” defended the bushman. “Breakin’ ther ’earts, an’ dyin’ from suerside, cos they lef’ it,” he added derisively, pointing to the cattle.

In patriotic anger he passed to the guard-van without answering her question, though she looked anxiously after him. At various intervals during the many halts of the train, she had heard

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