Such Is Life by Joseph Furphy (children's books read aloud .TXT) 📕

their vast camp-meeting, which they by no means conducted on religious lines. For the easy profanity, unconscious obscenity, and august slang of the back country scented the air like myall; whilst the aggregate repertory of bonâ fide anecdote and reminiscence was something worth while. No young fellow in that great rendezvous dared to embellish his narrative in the slightest degree, on pain of being posted as a double-adjective blatherskite; for his audience was sure to include a couple of critical, cynical, iron-grey cyclopedias of everything Australian⁠—everything, at least, untainted by the spurious and blue-moulded civilisation of the littoral.

An evangelist, collecting money for the support of an Aboriginal mission, went fifty miles out of his way to give these unregenerate brethren a word of exhortation. This good man⁠—he probably never had a sovereign which he regarded as his own; and, rest his soul! he needs no money now⁠—this good man afterward told me, with tears of gratitude and sorrow in his eyes, that he got a fine collection in the Mia-mia, but no souls; and both clauses of his statement seemed to have the ring of truth.

Stewart sullenly avoided this gathering of the clans. He knew he wasn’t wanted there; and, as the paddock consisted chiefly of purchased land, he felt that the conventionalities were, in a sense, violated. But what could the people do? It was a miserable business altogether.

At last, moved by the report of the Mia-mia boundary rider, he drove slowly along the river frontage, and saw five miles of wagons, wagonettes, spring-carts, buggies, tents, women, children, dogs, cooking-utensils, and masculine laundry. He saw fellows patching tarpaulins, mending harness making yokes, platting whips, fishing, pig-hunting, reading Ouida, yarning round fires, or trying to invent some new form of gambling; but he only saw their backs, and they didn’t see him at all. He took a tour round the paddock, and found a racecourse duly laid out in a suitable place, with a few fellows training their bits of stuff for a coming event. Others were duck-shooting in the swamps, and others after turkeys on the plains, whilst a few diverted themselves by coursing rabbits on the sand-hills. And as for bullocks and horses⁠—why, they were as grasshoppers for multitude.

A closer examination brought to light his own sheep. Wild and shy, as paddocked merinos always are, these had withdrawn to the quietest places they could find, and were there making the best of a bad job. Stewart lost his temper, for once; and he that is without similar sin among the readers of this simple memoir is hereby authorised to cast the first stone.

He allowed the sun to go down upon his wrath. Next morning, he rallied up all his station hands; mustered the Mia-mia Paddock; distributed the sheep elsewhere over the run; and thus washed his hands of all responsibility touching the welfare of his guests.

Toward spring, he drove round the camps again, pausing here and there to give the trespassers a bit of his mind: “Now, boys; I must get you to shift. Lots of perishing teams not able to get down out of the back country till now, and all making for this paddock. Must leave a bit of grass for them when they come.” And more to the same effect. So the settlement gradually broke-up, and things returned to their normal monotony.

But not altogether so. Some of the nomads wanted land, and had means to back their desire. Rambling leisurely over the station paddocks, with the county map for reference, these people saw where the most eligible allotments were, and presently picked the eyes out of the run; in some cases, shifting straight from their camps to their selections. Such is life.

Saint Peter, I should imagine, had narrowly watched the squatter’s attitude when the Assyrian came down like a person flying from perdition. Afterward, he had noted with approval that the new selectors were treated with the same forbearance and benevolence they had formerly experienced as refugees. But not until he saw Stewart pounce on the incident of the mammoth surprise-party as a clinching argument against land-monopoly, did that austere janitor hang his keys on his thumb, to hunt-up, far back in his book, the page reserved in case of rich men. And still the metaphor of the camel and the needle’s eye stands unimpaired. The difficulties vanish only when you attain some conception of what the Kingdom of God is⁠—how much more to the purpose than pearly gates or jasper seas; how accordant with the Ormuzd in man; how premeditated in design; how indomitable in patience; and how needfully and inexorably guarded by the diminutive portal above referred to.

“Good morning, Collins.”

“Good morning, Mr. Stewart. An early stirrer, by the rood.”

“Yes; I have a (sheol) of a long stage before me today. Been travelling all night?”

“Only since about twelve. I camped yesterday in the Dead Man’s Bend, on Mondunbarra. I’ve been kept on the move since dinnertime, or so. Tell you how it came. I was lying in the shade of a tree, having a smoke, and thinking about one thing or another, when I heard someone calling from the other side of the river. It was Mosey Price; and he told me” etc., etc.

Stewart sighed, glanced toward the southeast, produced a cigar-case, took thence three cigars, handed one to me and another to Mungo Park lit the third himself, then smoked listlessly and mechanically.

“Good,” he remarked, throwing away the inch-long stump of his cigar, and gathering his reins. “What’s your name?” he continued, turning to the swagman.

“Bob Stirling,” replied the African explorer. “I worked on Kooltopa, many years ago, but I don’t suppose you remember me.”

“I’m not sure. However, I’ll find a nice comfortable week’s work for you, at all events. Collins, I give you credit. You should have gone into politics. You’d have made a d⁠⸺⁠d good diplomatist.”

“I’m glad you think so, Mr. Stewart. But the main body of the story has to come. You see, I was, in a sense, no farther forward