The Call Of The South by George Lewis Becke (i read book .TXT) 📕

schooner, and shooting buffaloes for their hides in the Northern Territory of South Australia, where he had twice been speared by the blacks.

On reaching the head waters of the creek on which Gilfillan had washed out nearly a hundred ounces of gold some months previously, we found to our disgust over fifty diggers in possession of the ground, which they had practically worked out--some one had discovered Gilfillan's old workings and the place was at once "rushed". My mate took matters very philosophically--did not even swear--and we decided to make for the Don River in the Port Denison district, where, it was rumoured, some rich patches of alluvial gold had just been discovered.

We both had good horses and a pack horse, and as C------'s station lay on our route and I had a standing invitation to pay him a visit (given to me when he had met our party at Scares Creek), I suggested that we should go there and spell for a few days. So there we went and C------ made us heartily welcome; and he also told us that the new rush on the Don River had turned out a "rank duffer," and that we would only be wearing ourselves and our horse-flesh out by going there. He pressed us to stay for a week at least, and as we now had no fixed plans for the future we were glad to do so. He was expecting a party of visitors from Charters Towers, and as he wanted to give them something additional to the usual fare of beef and mutton, in the way of fish and game, he asked us to join him for a day's fishing in the Burdekin River.

The station was right on the bank of the river, but at a spot where neither game nor fish were at all plentiful; so long before sunrise on the following morning, under a bright moon and clear sky, we started, accompanied by a black boy, leading a pack horse, for the junction of the Kirk River with the Burdekin, where there was excellent fishing, and where also we were sure of getting teal and wood-duck.

A two hours' easy ride along the grassy, open timbered high banks of the great river brought us to the junction. The Kirk, when running along its course, is a wide, sandy-bottomed stream, with here and there deep rocky pools, and its whole course is fringed with the everlasting and ever-green sheoaks. We unsaddled in a delightfully picturesque spot, near the meeting of the waters, and in a few minutes, whilst the billy was boiling for tea, C------and I were looking to our short bamboo rods and lines, and our guns. Then, after hobbling out the horses, and eating a breakfast of cold beef and damper, we started to walk through the high, dew-soaked grass to a deep, boulder-margined pool in which the waters of both rivers mingled.

The black boy who was leading when we emerged on the water side of the fringe of sheoaks, suddenly halted and silently pointed ahead--a magnificent specimen of the "gigantic" crane was stalking sedately through a shallow pool--his brilliant black and orange plumage and scarlet legs glistening in the rays of the early sun as he scanned the sandy bottom for fish. We had no desire to shoot such a noble creature; and let him take flight in his slow, laboured manner. And, for our reward, the next moment "Peter," the black boy, brought down two out of three black duck, which came flying right for his gun from across the river.

Both rivers had long been low, and although the streams were running in the centre of the beds of each, there were countless isolated pools covered with blue-flowered water-lilies, in which teal and other water-birds were feeding. But for the time we gave them no heed.

From one of the pools we took our bait--small fish the size of white-bait, with big, staring eyes, and bodies of a transparent pink with silvery scales. They were easily caught by running one's hand through the weedy edges, and in ten minutes we had secured a quart-pot full.

"Peter," who regarded our rods with contempt, was the first to reach the boulders at the edge of the big pool, which in the centre had a fair current; at the sides, the water, although deep, was quiet. Squatting down on a rock, he cast in his baited hand-line, and in ten seconds he was nonchalantly pulling in a fine two pound bream. He leisurely unhooked it, dropped it into a small hole in the rocks, and then began to cut up a pipeful of tobacco, before rebaiting!

The water was literally alive with fish, feeding on the bottom. There were two kinds of bream--one a rather slow-moving fish, with large, dark brown scales, a perch-like mouth, and wide tail, and with the sides and belly a dull white; the other a very active game fellow, of a more graceful shape, with a small mouth, and very hard, bony gill plates. These latter fought splendidly, and their mouths being so strong they would often break the hooks and get away--as our rods were very primitive, without reels, and only had about twenty feet of line. Then there were the very handsome and beautifully marked fish, like an English grayling (some of which I had caught at Scan's Creek); they took the hook freely. The largest I have ever seen would not weigh more than three-quarters of a pound, but their lack of size is compensated for by their extra delicate flavour. (In some of the North Queensland inland rivers I have seen the aborigines net these fish in hundreds in shallow pools.) Some bushmen persisted, so Gilfillan told me, in calling these fish "fresh water mullet," or "speckled mullet".

The first species of bream inhabit both clear and muddy water; but the second I have never seen caught anywhere but in clear or running water, when the river was low.

But undoubtedly the best eating fresh-water fish in the Burdekin and other Australian rivers is the cat-fish, or as some people call it, the Jew-fish. It is scaleless, and almost finless, with a dangerously barbed dorsal spine, which, if it inflicts a wound on the hand, causes days of intense suffering. Its flesh is delicate and firm, and with the exception of the vertebrae, has no long bones. Rarely caught (except when small) in clear water, it abounds when the water is muddy, and disturbed through floods, and when a river becomes a "banker," cat-fish can always be caught where the water has reached its highest. They then come to feed literally upon the land--that is grass land, then under flood water. A fish bait they will not take--as a rule--but are fond of earthworms, frogs, crickets, or locusts, etc.

Another very beautiful but almost useless fish met with in the Upper Burdekin and its tributaries is the silvery bream, or as it is more generally called, the "bony" bream. They swim about in companies of some hundreds, and frequent the still water of deep pools, will not take a bait, and are only seen when the water is clear. Then it is a delightful sight for any one to lie upon the bank of some ti-tree-fringed creek or pool, when the sun illumines the water and reveals the bottom, and watch a school of these fish swimming closely and very slowly together, passing over submerged logs, roots of trees or rocks, their scales of pure silver gleaming in the sunlight as they make a simultaneous side movement. I tried every possible bait for these fish, but never succeeded in getting a bite, but have netted them frequently. Their flesh, though delicate, can hardly be eaten, owing to the thousands of tiny bones which run through it, interlacing in the most extraordinary manner. The blacks, however "make no bones" about devouring them.

By 11 A.M. we had caught all the fish our pack-bags could hold--bream, alleged grayling, and half a dozen "gars"--the latter a beautifully shaped fish like the sea-water garfish, but with a much flatter-sided body of shining silver with a green back, the tail and fins tipped with yellow.

We shot but few duck, but on our way home in the afternoon "Peter" and Gilfillan each got a fine plain turkey--shooting from the saddle--and almost as we reached the station slip-rails "Peter," who had a wonderful eye, got a third just as it rose out of the long dry grass in the paddock.

And on the following day, when C------'s guests arrived (and after we had congratulated ourselves upon having plenty for them to eat), they produced from their buggies eleven turkeys, seven wood-duck, and a string of "squatter" pigeons!

"Thought we'd better bring you some fresh tucker, old man," said one of them to C-----. "And we have brought you a case of Tennant's ale." "The world is very beautiful," said C------, stroking his grey beard, and speaking in solemn tones, "and this is a thirsty day. Come in, boys. We'll put the Tennant's in the water-barrels to cool."

*****


The first occasion on which I ever saw and caught one of the beautiful fish herein described as grayling was on a day many months previous to our former party camping on Scarr's Creek. We had camped on a creek running into the Herbert River, near the foot of a range of wild, jagged and distorted peaks and crags of granite. Then there were several other parties of prospectors camped near us, and, it being a Sunday, we were amusing ourselves in various ways. Some had gone shooting, others were washing clothes or bathing in the creek, and one of my mates (a Scotsman named Alick Longmuir) came fishing with me. Like Gilfillan, he was a quiet, somewhat taciturn man. He had been twenty-two years in Australia, sometimes mining, at others following his profession of surveyor. He had received his education in France and Germany, and not only spoke the languages of those countries fluently, but was well-read in their literature. Consequently we all stood in a certain awe of him as a man of parts; for besides being a scholar he was a splendid bushman and rider and had a great reputation as the best wrestler in Queensland. Even-tempered, good-natured and possessed of a fund of caustic humour, he was a great favourite with the diggers, and when he sometimes "broke loose" and went on a terrific "spree" (his only fault) he made matters remarkably lively, poured out his hard-earned money like water for a week or so--then stopped suddenly, pulled himself together in an extraordinary manner, and went about his work again as usual, with a face as solemn as that of an owl.

A little distance from the camp we made our way down through rugged, creeper-covered boulders to the creek, to a fairly open stretch of water which ran over its rocky bed into a series of small but deep pools. We baited our lines with small grey grasshoppers, and cast together.

"I wonder what we shall get here, Alick," I began, and then came a tug and then the sweet, delightful thrill of a game fish making a run. There is nothing like it in all the world--the joy of it transcends the first kiss of young lovers.

I landed my fish--a gleaming shaft of mottled grey and silver with specks of iridescent blue on its head, back and sides, and as I grasped its quivering form and held it up to view my heart beat fast with delight.

"_Ombre chevalier!_" I murmured to myself.

Vanished the monotony of the Bush and the long, weary rides over the sun-baked plains and the sound of the pick and shovel on the gravel in the