CHAPTER XIV BURCHETT OF "THE GUMS"

This was the well-known name of an exceedingly choice run close to Nareeb Nareeb, on Muston's Creek, and at an early period in the occupation of the Messrs. Charles, Henry, and Fred Burchett. The name was allotted by Charles, who said that as the old country places were christened "The Oaks," "The Ashes," "The Beeches," and so on, he thought it befitting that an Australian homestead should be known as "The Gums." So mote it be; and I fancy Mr. Ross, the present owner, has by no means changed the name.

Charles Burchett was a humourist of the first water, and as such delighted in by his numerous friends. The district was hardly ever without the excitement of "Burchett's last." He had a serious, tentative, doubtful way of bringing out his good things, which heightened the effect.

"The Gums," like Dunmore, boasted a better library than ordinary, and there was set on foot the Mount Rouse Book Club, which, founded on a moderate subscription, and compelling members to send round the books at monthly intervals, provided mental food for a goodly number of friends and neighbours.

Charles Burchett and his brother Fred were both somewhat deaf. Whether or not the slight infirmity concentrated the reflective powers, certain it is that they resembled each other closely in being exceptionally original and amusing in conversation.

Occasionally Mr. Charles Burchett's difficulty in hearing led to diverting cross purposes, as in the case of his celebrated interview with the bushrangers. He and a friend, it is related, some time in the early days, met with two men, one of whom carried a gun. They addressed themselves to his companion, who appeared to be, from the expression of his countenance, much interested in their remarks.

Mr. Burchett looked at them with an inquiring air. "What do they want, Scott?" he said, in his resonant, high-pitched voice, accentuating always the last word of the sentence. "Do they want work?"

None of them could help laughing, it is said; but the man with the gun, observing the gentleman place his hand to his ear, raised the gun sharply to a level with his breast, by way of explaining matters.

Again Mr. Burchett looked up with a grave and meditative expression. Then he addressed the spoiler—"I say, take away that gun, it might go off." Even the hardened old hand was not proof against this characteristic jest; he put down his gun in order to laugh in comfort. However, it was explained that business was business. So having relieved Mr. Burchett and his friend of their horses and loose cash, the robbers departed. But they behaved with civility, and a ten-mile walk was the worst of the affair. The horses were afterwards found at no great distance from the spot, and returned to their owners.

Unfortunately, as it happened, the fraternal triumvirate at "The Gums" held diverse opinions as to the stock upon which to stake the fortunes of the firm. Henry Burchett was gifted with a strongly arithmetical turn, in consequence of which he was generally alluded to by Charles as "my brother Cocker." A calculation of the average value of the wool-clip led him doubtless to decide—with considerable accuracy, as events proved—in favour of sheep. Charles and Fred preferred cattle. In the end Charles sold his share of run and stock, and commenced a business in Melbourne. Having made a pilgrimage to Riverina, riding one wiry hackney the whole way there and back, without apparent distress to man or beast, Henry posed as the apostle of a new faith on his return, after beholding, near Deniliquin, what he then decided to be the true home of the merino sheep, and purchasing for a small price a certain run on the Billabong, since tolerably well known to wool-buyers as "Coree." He bought sheep with which to stock it, and removed those still at "The Gums." He it was who first placed a dam across the uncertain watercourse of the Billabong, and thus aided the inception of the great system of water-storage now so universal. It was a primitive time enough on the Billabong, one may be sure. The late Mr. Sylvanus Daniel was a man in authority at Deniliquin, then known as one of "The Royal Bank" stations. Some of his good stories the wayfarer from Port Fairy brought back with him, so that the fame of that gentleman's hospitality and genial temperament reached the colony of Victoria years before he migrated to the north-western district of New South Wales.

Henry Burchett retained his share in "The Gums" after his purchase of Coree, but, wishing to concentrate his investments, he—unfortunately for his partner and himself—decided to realise on the Port Fairy property. The sale of "The Gums" accordingly took place. It was, of course, before the gold—only one year I think. The price of a first-class, well-improved, fattening run, with a good herd of 1500 cattle thereon, was—what does any one think?—£2 per head! Yes, at this melancholy price did "The Gums" pass into the hands of Mr. Henry Gottreaux, a gentleman lately arrived in the colony, formerly in the Austrian service. He was a brother of William Gottreaux, of Lilaree; he had, therefore, the advantage of the advice of an experienced colonist.

Mr. Gottreaux did not look, to our eyes, the "man for Galway"; or likely to make much out of a cattle run in those hard-riding, hard-living days. Tall and soldierly-looking, with a big moustache, he had a bluff, German-baron sort of air. He was portly withal, and, though a cavalry man, not up to much in the "cutting-out" or cattle-muster line. The first thing to which he devoted his energies was the building of a spacious, wide-verandahed brick cottage, dooming the snug old slab homestead, where we had all spent so many pleasant hours, to do duty as barracks and out-offices. After this he inquired of one of the visitors, who, after our custom, had come to help at the muster, whether it would not be easy to transmit his share of the profits to a friend in England, who had an interest—as a sleeping partner—in the station.

The man whom he addressed smiled inwardly, and sardonically replied, "Very easy." We thought this a good joke when it was handed over to us a week after. But Mr. Gottreaux was right, and we were all wrong, proving how difficult it was to decide in such matters unless all the factors of the sum are in view. In the first place, the new proprietor was a man of brains and method, culture and knowledge of the world. He did not scurry about in the camp on the stock-horse of the period—it was not his métier; but he paid and controlled a good stock-rider who did. He lived comfortably, preferring, reasonably, to dine at ease after the business of the day was concluded. But he kept his accounts correctly, and provided that the balance should be on the right side. The seasons were favourable; they are rarely otherwise in the pleasant west country, to the green pastures of which fate had guided the "bold Uhlan." And then—trump card of all—the Gold Magician played shortly afterwards. He threw down an ace—waved his wand. The cattle which our friend purchased at £2, with right of run added, became worth £10 per head. So he had profits to remit to his partner after all, by no means of small annual amount either.

Terenallum was in early days the property of Messrs. Lang and Elms, who considered it a fairly paying sheep run, though bare of timber and rather desolate of aspect. Disadvantageously for the firm, as it turned out, Mr. Elms, the resident partner, was tempted by what was then thought to be a high price—12s. per head or so, with about one-third of the stock it afterwards carried—to sell to Mr. Russell of The Leigh. He invested in a presumably richer country between The Grange and the Eumeralla, and, I should think, never ceased to regret the exchange. The new runs were chiefly cattle country, being well-grassed forest, not over dry in winter, and therefore in those days looked upon as liable to foot-rot. The eastern subdivision, called "Lyne," was at no great distance from Mr. Cox's Werrongourt station. This transaction illustrates the errors of judgment so often made by pioneer squatters, men of exceeding shrewdness and energy notwithstanding. So George Wyndham Elms sold Terenallum, now proverbially one of the most valuable sheep properties west of the Barwon, and purchased a run which must have paid indifferent interest on capital for long afterwards. Yet the seller was sufficiently experienced, could work with both hands and head, had confronted all the regulation pioneer troubles—bad shepherds, blacks, low wool, everything—had shepherded on a pinch, and slept in a watch-box. Then, when all was well and a fortune coming to meet him, he was fated to ruin everything for the sake of change. Mais, telle est la vie.

Lyne and the other station were good enough, fairly watered, splendidly grassed, and so on; but the cautious critics said they would never make up for Terenallum. And they didn't.

The original cattle had been neglected, it would appear. Among them was a large proportion of bullocks which declined with fiendish obstinacy to fatten. They would do anything but go off to the butcher. They oppressed the rest of the herd, showed a bad example, and paid nothing. They were what are known by the stock-riders as "ragers" or "pig-meaters." Fierce of aspect, and active as buffaloes, they appear with regularity at each muster, but are never permitted the chance of road-adventure with any buyer of fat cattle. The price offered for them is generally so small that in many instances the owner ceases to form plans for their conversion into cash, and, if easy-going, permits them to eat grass and demoralise the herd indefinitely. The run was now worked with fair results for a year or two, but it soon became apparent that it was not likely to return the same sort of dividends which were so satisfactory each year at Terenallum. This probably tended towards discussion between the partners. However that might have been, a division of the runs took place. Mr. Lang retained Lyne, with the herd of cattle depastured thereon, while Mr. Elms removed to that portion of the area which lay nearer to the town of Hamilton. Upon this he built a new homestead, and proceeded to convert it into a sheep station.

Mr. Lang had visited England more than once during the partnership, and so loosened his hold upon matters colonial. It has generally happened, within my experience at least, that a squatter who permitted himself to behold "the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them," rarely settled down into a contented colonist upon returning to Australia. So Mr. Lang put Lyne into the market. It was sold to Captain Stanley Carr, a retired military officer, who had passed years at a German court, and held property in Silesia. There, it seems, he had acquired a taste for high-class merinoes. He had been tempted to visit Australia, probably as a larger field for investment, bringing with him some good sheep of the type then prevailing, and fashionable in the country of his adoption. These were sent to Lyne, where they were only moderately praised by the sheepholders of the district, being acknowledged to be fine as to quality of fleece, but considered small and delicate of frame.

Captain Stanley Carr, by birth Scoto-Irish, was a genial and polished personage, not altogether averse to the privilege accorded to travellers, but most amusing and agreeable. He bought, as did Mr. Gottreaux, "before the gold." The price he paid was therefore moderate, leaving a large margin for profit in the rising markets which were imminent, and of which he shortly experienced the advantage. Residing for a few months at Lyne, he made himself popular with his neighbours, who were nothing loath to visit and entertain a courtier, a man of the world, and a raconteur at once so experienced and original. He justified the shrewd outlook upon events which had caused him to become an investor in the first instance, by prophesying an extraordinary development of Australian prosperity which was to be rapid and astonishing. The soil, the climate, the extent of the waste lands of the Crown, all excited his admiration. The captain's pre-auriferous predictions have since received curiously close fulfilment.

Our gallant pastoral comrade had some knowledge of sheep-farming. For the management of a mixed herd of cattle, after the Australian fashion, he was as unfitted as the confidential German shepherd of his priceless Silesian ewes to "run" a South American saladero. Wisely, therefore, he took the neighbours into his confidence, requesting the advice which was cheerfully given. He was, in the first instance, by them adjured to cull the herd severely—to that end to eliminate without delay all the bovine "larrikins" (the word had not then been coined, but an analogous social remedy may yet in future ages be legally applicable) by boiling them down. There happened to be at Port Fairy in that brooding year just before the gold—and what embryo events were not then ripening in the womb of fate!—a regularly-appointed saladero. How much more concise is the expression than "a boiling-down establishment where salting beef for exportation is also carried on," and yet foolish utilitarians see no advantage in schoolboys learning Greek and Latin. But this savours of digression. Such an institution was then in full working order, organised for the reduction of the "dangerous classes" of the bovine neighbourhood into tallow and corned beef. It was managed by Mr. M'Cracken, and (of course) subsidised by Mr. William Rutledge. "Unto this last" the Lyne larrikins were by a consensus of notables forthwith relegated.

CHAPTER XV WORK AND PLAY

The captain's first cattle-muster was fixed for a certain day. I had the honour of being invited specially to superintend the classing and drafting of the bullocks, retaining the presumably marketable, and condemning the irreconcilables. I was happy to accede, but a slight difficulty stood in the way. The night preceding the muster had been devoted to the coming ball at Dunmore, an anxiously-anticipated festivity, to which all Port Fairy was bidden, and from which no loyal Western man could be absent if alive. Certainly not the writer, Terpsichore's not least ardent votary. The difficulty was to combine drafting and dancing with a conscientious attention to both. "Minorca lies in the middle sea." Lyne is half-way between Dunmore and Hamilton—over twenty miles anyhow. The drafting would commence at sunrise—the dancing would continue till daylight. Such trivial discrepancies were negotiable, however,

The ball was in its way perfect, "with music, moonlight, love, and flowers," probably in the usual proportions. Daylight found the revellers still unsated; but an hour before the first tremulous dawn wavelet rippled over the pale sky-line I had doffed the canonicals, slipped on boots and breeches, mounted my favourite hackney—"The Gaucha" to wit—and was stretching out along the track to Eumeralla at the rate of twelve miles an hour.

The summer morn was refreshingly cool, the first hour's ride delicious; then an increasing drowsiness made itself felt, and ere long I would have given all the world to lie down under a tree and sleep till noon. But the inclination was sternly repressed, and less than another hour's ride brought the creek in view, below the blackwood-crowned slopes of Lyne, one of the loveliest spots in all the West. The position of the stock-yard was denoted from afar by the great cloud of dust which rose pillar-like to the clear sky, while the "roaring" of the restless, excited cattle had been audible long before the dust-cloud was visible.

It was a lovely, clear, summer morning; yet, as I rode onward, the sentence of Holy Writ kept ceaseless iteration through my brain as curiously apposite, while ever and anon through the green forest echoed the deep-resounding lowing of the imprisoned herd—"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever." As I rode up to the yard a score of stock-horses stood under the trees. The ocean of unbroken greenery that lay to the eastward was flame-tinted by the rising sun, but, early as was the hour, work had begun. Joe Twist of Werrongourt, and Mackay of Eumeralla, were at the drafting gates; the cattle were running through. I was just in time to enter upon my duty as classifier, at which arduous and delicate task I continued till noon. A half-hour for the mid-day meal, a few minutes' grace while pipes are lighted, then through the long, dusty hours of the hot afternoon the laborious, exciting work is ceaselessly carried on. Strangers and pilgrims, calves and clear-skins, are separated at the same time. The sun declines, dips lower still, and lower. The day is done, and a highly respectable amount of necessary work has been performed. The liberated herd streams back in a score of droves to familiar pastures. Two hundred and twenty "boilers" are safe in the small yard, the which will be started for their last drive on the following morning. The stock-riders are accommodated on the station. Some ride home—those who had no calves or stray cattle on their minds; the rest remain, ready to give a hand with the boiling-down draft next day. I partake of Captain Carr's hospitality, warmly thanked for my exertions. Do I not doze off almost before the evening's meal is concluded? I beg to be excused on the ground of fatigue, and depart incontinently for bed thereafter. Do I turn round until sunrise next morning? I trow not.

But I was soon in the saddle then, and away with the drove referred to. What a rush they made when the gate was opened!—what a pace they went for the first mile or two! I can see Joe Twist now on his favourite stock-horse—a steed that even his master cared not to ride without his permission—going like a Comanchee Indian, the merest trifle less than racing speed, parallel with a tossing forest of horns, his bridle-hand low, his stock-whip raised threateningly, the eager horse's head now on the ground, now raised higher than a nervous rider would choose. Was there another man "steadying the lead" on the opposite side, right well mounted also, gallant in the pride of youthful horsemanship and the full inspiration of "God's glorious oxygen"? It may have been so. Ah me! those were pleasant days. Would they might return! Even as I write,

It may not have been wholly in the interests of an Australian merino principality that our shores were honoured by the captain's company and capital. With him—and to a certain extent, it was understood, indebted to his guardianship—came a Prince of Augustenburg, who had not then succeeded to his present exalted position. This royal personage was apparently not deeply interested in the pastoral life of Australia, and remained to the last unconcerned about the weights and fineness of fleece of merino sheep. Providence had arranged his destiny so as to be unaffected by the wool market, or even by the prevalence of dry seasons. He also spoke English indifferently, and, thus handicapped, preferred the sylvan shades of Toorak and the tempered solitude of a club smoking-room to the primeval waste. His more mercurial senior meanwhile utilised his colonial experience to some purpose, as the sequel will show.

Possibly a strict provincial life at Lyne became monotonous after the "boilers" had realised some 30s. per head. The Ballarat diggers would have eaten them gaily at £7 or £8 each a year or two after, but we did not forecast that and a few other unimportant changes. After the calves were branded, after the German shepherd had with paternal care cured the Silesians of foot-rot—(how different from the demeanour of Australian Corydon puffing at his foul pipe, and double-blanking the sheep, with everybody connected with the place, from the ration-carrier upwards, as he pares the offending hoof)—after these, and divers other engrossing duties, had helped to hurry along the stream of Time, the captain delegated such and the like, permanently, to Mr. J. R. Nowlan, a gentleman who dwelt hard by, constituting him his managing partner. He then betook himself with his Prince back to Europe, via Panama, a route then coming into fashion with Australian home-returning voyagers. The travellers—including, I think, Messrs. Lang and Winter—had nearly completed their foreign tour in an abrupt and melancholy fashion. While crossing the Chagres river (I will not certify as to the name, but, if doubtful on the point, communicate with Baron Lesseps, Captain Mayne Reid, and Mr. Frederick Boyle) their light bark sprang a leak. They were partly canoe-wrecked, and left by their boatman upon a sandbank in the mid-stream of a big, rapid river, swarming with alligators. The river was rising, which tended to limit their period of security. In this strait, a small dug-out was seen approaching from the farther bank. The Indian paddler explained by pantomime that he could take but two. That was self-evident. One passenger even suggested risk. Then arose a generous contention. To the Prince was unanimously yielded the pas. The second place the captain was prayed to take. "No," said the gallant veteran; "you fellows have all the world before you. I have had my innings, and a deuced good one too. Moi qui parle! Get in, either of you; I'm dashed if I do." The time was rapidly growing shorter; the sandbank contracting its area. The boatman gesticulated. The alligators, presumably, were expectant. It was no time for overstrained ceremony. One of the squatters stepped in, and the frail craft swirled into the eddying current. It returned in time, and the Greytown Herald missed a sensational paragraph.

That was in other respects an exciting trip. Mr. Lang found himself, when at Panama, relegated to a huge dormitory, crowded like a sixpenny boarding-house. Comforting himself with the reflection that it was but for a night, he invoked Somnus, all vainly. The groans of a sick man on the next couch forbade repose. "What's the matter with him?" he inquired at length of his nearest "strange bedfellow." "Only Isthmus fever," was the answer. My friend shuddered, knowing how the railway labourers were even then being decimated.

"And why is the bed between you and me vacant?" he went on to inquire. "They buried a cholera patient out of it this morning. You don't happen to have a cigar, do you?"

It was too late to retreat. The streets were none too safe. But it may well be believed that the ex-owner of Lyne wished himself back among the blackwood trees, or even in the stock-yard, were the day ever so dusty, and what delicately constituted persons term oppressive. And when the red sun aroused him from the troubled slumber which ended the night's unrest, he naturally doubted whether cholera or "the fever" would first lay upon him a fatal grasp.

Mr. Nowlan, an experienced manager, after Captain Carr's departure "worked" Lyne pretty vigorously, selling the original herd as they became fit for market, and putting on store cattle to the full carrying capacity of the run. The gold discovery of course transmuted profits magically. At the first onset of the revolution, cattle stations reaped most of the benefit, so much less labour being required than on sheep stations. Within a few years not only had large profits been realised for the partnership, but the value of the property had quintupled. An estate of freehold land had been purchased at Melton, near Melbourne, from the profits of fat stock. A thousand head of cattle more than the station had been purchased with were now depastured. At the post-auriferous prices then obtaining, Lyne, with 3000 head of cattle, was a very different property from that which Captain Carr had originally purchased.

At this stage a plenipotentiary from Captain Carr arrived in the person of Baron von Loesecke, a jolly, blue-eyed, fair-bearded Teuton, who had married his only daughter and heiress. He prudently concluded to sell. Lyne and the Melton property were accordingly, "on a future day, of which," etc., put up to auction by, I think, Messrs. Kaye and Butchart.

The Baron used to remind us at the Melbourne Club a good deal of Monsieur le Comte de Florac, in the character of his sentiments and the quality of his English. He was good-natured, effusive, polite, though ready to resent any criticism which he did not interpret as friendly. "Do you think he intended himself to be satirical for me?" he once inquired, with earnestness; "if I thought so, I would challenge him on the instant." The challenge did not come off, and it need hardly be said that no offence was intended to a guest and a foreigner. The day of sale came off, and as we walked up from the Club the Baron requested a friend to bid for him the amount of the reserve price, which had been fixed, I think, at £6 or £5 : 15s. per head. The run was, if anything, overstocked. As a number of stores had been recently put on, it was thought a fair price. Whatever it was, owing to a misconception, he went £500 higher than he had been instructed to do. The bidding was not very brisk towards the end, the sale trembled on the balance for a minute or two, then the purchaser came forward and made a further advance. The station was knocked down to him. The Baron rushed up to his friend and shook his hand enthusiastically; "You have made for me £500," he said, "but I did hold my breath till the next offaire arrive." Mr. Nowlan, as well as the captain, his heirs and assigns, must have realised handsomely from the proceeds of Lyne. Purchased for less than £4000, it fetched nearly £20,000, not reckoning intervening profits and the Melton freehold. It afforded one more illustration of the strangely-assorted luck which apparently besets colonial investments, the occasional success of outsiders, not less than the hard measure too often dealt out to pioneers.

I am not aware whether the last purchaser of Lyne found the scale of profits perennial. I doubt it, inasmuch as Duffy's Act followed, bringing darker days for the squatter. Fortune did not favour the original owners either. Cheery and full of pluck to the last, George Elms sailed for Fiji, as after an interval did his old comrade Lang—pleasant, ever-courteous "Allan-a-Dale." It was the fashionable "rush" for a while. They lie at rest under the whispering palm. Perhaps, ere the last slumber, the murmur of the surges had lulled to sleep all bitter memories of the wild southland in which their early manhood was passed.