We of the Never-Never by Aeneas Gunn

Author:Aeneas Gunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 1908-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

14

For over four months we had wrestled with luck for a house, only to find we had very little use for it for the time being, that is, until next Wet. It couldn’t be carried out-bush from camp to camp, and finding us at a loss for an answer, Dan suggested one himself.

“Of course,” he said, as he eyed the furnishings with interest, “it ’ud come in handy to pack the chain away in, while the dog was out enjoying itself”; and we left it at that. It came in handy to pack the chain away in while the dog was enjoying itself, for within twenty-four hours we were camped at the Bitter Springs, and two weeks passed before the homestead saw us again.

After our experience of “getting hold of Johnny”, Dan called it foolishness to wait for an expert, and the Dandy being away for the remainder of the stores, and the Quiet Stockman having his hands full to overflowing, the Maluka and Dan, with that adaptability peculiar to bushmen, set to work themselves at the yard, with fifteen or twenty boys as apprentices.

As most of the boys had their lubras with them, it was an immense camp, but exceedingly pretty. One small tent “fly” for a dressing-room for the missus, and the remainder of the accommodation—open-air and shady bough gundies, tiny, fresh, cool, green shade-houses here, there, and everywhere for the blacks; one set apart from the camp for a larder, and an immense one—all green waving boughs—for the missus to rest in during the heat of the day. “The Cottage”, Dan-called it.

Of course, Sool’em and Brown were with us, Little Tiddle’ums being in at the homestead on the sick list with a broken leg; and in addition to Sool’em and Brown an innumerable band of nigger dogs, Billy Muck being the adoring possessor of fourteen, including pups, which fanned out behind him as he moved hither and thither like the tail of a comet.

Our camp, being a stationary one, was, by comparison with our ordinary camps, a camp-de-luxe; for, apart from the tent-fly, in it were books, pillows, and a canvas lounge, as well as some of the flesh-pots of Egypt, in the shape of eggs, cakes, and vegetables sent out every few days by Cheon, to say nothing of scrub turkey, fish, and such things.

Dan had no objection to the eggs, cakes, or vegetables, but the pillows and canvas lounge tried him sorely. “Thought the chain was to be left behind in the kennel,” he said, and decided that the “next worst thing to being chained up” was “for a dog to have to drag a chain round when it was out for a run. Look at me!” he said, “never been chained up all me life, just because I never had enough permanent property to make a chain—never more than I could carry in one hand: a bluey, a change of duds, a mosquito net and a box of Cockle’s pills.”

We suggested that Cockle’s pills were hardly permanent property, but Dan showed that they were, with him.

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