Up and Down Australia by Arthur W. Upfield

Author:Arthur W. Upfield [Upfield, Arthur W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ETT Imprint
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Four Gold Bricks

Like a ribbon of white silk stretched across a rumpled green-black carpet, the twenty-feet-wide line cut through the bush goes endlessly on over the gigantic land-waves from the Southern Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Two feet west of centre is built the netted, barb-topped fence, along the east side of which is the track used by the patrolmen.

It is the great Number One Rabbit Fence in Western Australia, more than 1,100 miles long.

A few chains south of the peg marking the 128th mile north of the Perth-Kalgoorlie railway, a small, black leather portmanteau lay midway between the twin tracks of a motor vehicle. It was early one January morning. Three crows were watching the bag: one from a fence post; another from the edge of the track; and the third from the branch of a young sandalwood tree.

It was a well-made bag, strong despite its years of usage, and it lay on the track as though determined to lie there for ever.

The air was still and hot. Where the birds last drank only they themselves knew. Rule-straight, the netted and barb-topped fence maintained its exact position in the cut line, rising up a mile-long slope to the summit of the southern swell of land, continuing northward to disappear beneath the branches of mulgas, and to appear again beyond them, running up a long, two-mile slope to another land crest.

The position of the bag was lonely indeed. On the far side of the fence lies Earoo Station, its homestead eight miles distant through mulga forests and across saltbush flats. The southern wheat belts lie some seventy miles away, and the pastoral country forty miles to the north. Where the black bag lay was almost in the centre of a hundred-miles-wide belt of desert scrub.

The crow, perched on the fence post, began to gargle like a man being strangled. His comrade, settled beside the track, flew away into a mulga tree, the better to observe the coming from the south of two camels drawing tandem-wise a heavy hooded dray. The camels walked the sand-covered track with cat-like action and silence. The dray they drew made no more sound, save for an occasional thud when a wheel ran over a subterranean fortress built by white ants.

Once the camels stopped, and then the crows watched a man vault the fence and do something to it. When he regained the track side of the fence the camels came on again and the crows flew away with complaining caws.

Two hundred yards away, the leading camel saw the black bag. Her cat-like ears were pricked forward as much as they could be. Her big black eyes gleamed. Surely here was a grand excuse to bolt! Her swinging gait became slow and still slower. Knowing that something was amiss, the shaft camel strained his long neck to the off-side so that he, too, might enjoy and take advantage of any lucky diversion. Presently the leading camel declined to proceed further. From the rear of the dray appeared the section fence rider, Linton March.

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