The Darling River
The Darling -- which is either a muddy gutter or a second Mississippi --is about six times as long as the distance, in a straight line, from its headto its mouth. The state of the river is vaguely but generally understoodto depend on some distant and foreign phenomena to which bushmen referin an off-hand tone of voice as "the Queenslan' rains",which seem to be held responsible, in a general way,for most of the out-back trouble.It takes less than a year to go up stream by boat to Walgett or Bourkein a dry season; but after the first three months the passengers generallygo ashore and walk. They get sick of being stuck in the same sort of place,in the same old way; they grow weary of seeing the same old "whaler"drop his swag on the bank opposite whenever the boat ties up for wood;they get tired of lending him tobacco, and listening to his ideas,which are limited in number and narrow in conception.It shortens the journey to get out and walk; but then you will haveto wait so long for your luggage -- unless you hump it with you.We heard of a man who determined to stick to a Darling boat and travelthe whole length of the river. He was a newspaper man. He startedon his voyage of discovery one Easter in flood-time, and a month laterthe captain got bushed between the Darling and South Australian border.The waters went away before he could find the river again,and left his boat in a scrub. They had a cargo of rations,and the crew stuck to the craft while the tucker lasted;when it gave out they rolled up their swags and went to look for a station,but didn't find one. The captain would study his watch and the sun,rig up dials and make out courses, and follow them without success.They ran short of water, and didn't smell any for weeks;they suffered terrible privations, and lost three of their number,NOT including the newspaper liar. There are even dark hintsconsidering the drawing of lots in connection with somethingtoo terrible to mention. They crossed a thirty-mile plain at last,and sighted a black gin. She led them to a boundary rider's hut,where they were taken in and provided with rations and rum.Later on a syndicate was formed to explore the country and recover the boat;but they found her thirty miles from the river and about eighteenfrom the nearest waterhole deep enough to float her, so they left her there.She's there still, or else the man that told us about itis the greatest liar Out Back.. . . . .Imagine the hull of a North Shore ferry boat, blunted a little at the endsand cut off about a foot below the water-line, and parallel to it,then you will have something shaped somewhat like the hullof a Darling mud-rooter. But the river boat is much stronger.The boat we were on was built and repaired above deckafter the different ideas of many bush carpenters, of whom the lastseemed by his work to have regarded the original plan with a contemptonly equalled by his disgust at the work of the last carpenter but one.The wheel was boxed in, mostly with round sapling-sticks fastened to the framewith bunches of nails and spikes of all shapes and sizes, most of them bent.The general result was decidedly picturesque in its irregularity,but dangerous to the mental welfare of any passenger who was foolish enoughto try to comprehend the design; for it seemed as though every carpenterhad taken the opportunity to work in a little abstract idea of his own.The way they "dock" a Darling River boat is beautiful for its simplicity.They choose a place where there are two stout trees aboutthe boat's length apart, and standing on a line parallel to the river.They fix pulley-blocks to the trees, lay sliding planks down into the water,fasten a rope to one end of the steamer, and take the other end throughthe block attached to the tree and thence back aboard a second steamer;then they carry a rope similarly from the other end through the blockon the second tree, and aboard a third boat. At a given signalone boat leaves for Wentworth, and the other starts for the Queensland border.The consequence is that craft number one climbs the bankamid the cheers of the local loafers, who congregate and watch the proceedingswith great interest and approval. The crew pitch tents, and set to workon the hull, which looks like a big, rough shallow box.. . . . .We once travelled on the Darling for a hundred miles or soon a boat called the `Mud Turtle' -- at least, that's what WE called her.She might reasonably have haunted the Mississippi fifty years ago.She didn't seem particular where she went, or whether she started againor stopped for good after getting stuck. Her machinery soundedlike a chapter of accidents and was always out of order, but she got alongall the same, provided the steersman kept her off the bank.Her skipper was a young man, who looked more like a drover than a sailor,and the crew bore a greater resemblance to the unemployedthan to any other body we know of, except that they lookeda little more independent. They seemed clannish, too,with an unemployed or free-labour sort of isolation. We have an ideathat they regarded our personal appearance with contempt.. . . . .Above Louth we picked up a "whaler", who came aboard forthe sake of society and tobacco. Not that he hoped to shorten his journey;he had no destination. He told us many reckless and unprincipled lies,and gave us a few ornamental facts. One of them took our fancy,and impressed us -- with its beautiful simplicity, I suppose. He said:"Some miles above where the Darlin' and the Warrygo runs inter each other,there's a billygong runnin' right across between the two rivers and makin'a sort of tryhangular hyland; 'n' I can tel'yer a funny thing about it."Here he paused to light his pipe. "Now," he continued, impressively,jerking the match overboard, "when the Darlin's up, and the Warrygo's LOW,the billygong runs from the Darlin' into the WARRYGO; AND,when the Warrygo's up 'n' the Darlin's down, the waters runsFROM the Warrygo 'n' inter the Darlin'."What could be more simple?The steamer was engaged to go up a billabong for a load of shearersfrom a shed which was cutting out; and first it was necessaryto tie up in the river and discharge the greater portion of the cargoin order that the boat might safely negotiate the shallow waters.A local fisherman, who volunteered to act as pilot, was taken aboard,and after he was outside about a pint of whisky he seemed to havethe greatest confidence in his ability to take us to hell, or anywhere else --at least, he said so. A man was sent ashore with blankets and tuckerto mind the wool, and we crossed the river, butted into the anabranch,and started out back. Only the Lord and the pilot know how we got there.We travelled over the bush, through its branches sometimes,and sometimes through grass and mud, and every now and thenwe struck something that felt and sounded like a collision.The boat slid down one hill, and "fetched" a stump at the bottomwith a force that made every mother's son bite his tongue or break a tooth.The shearers came aboard next morning, with their swagsand two cartloads of boiled mutton, bread, "brownie", and tea and sugar.They numbered about fifty, including the rouseabouts.This load of sin sank the steamer deeper into the mud;but the passengers crowded over to port, by request of the captain,and the crew poked the bank away with long poles. When we began to movethe shearers gave a howl like the yell of a legion of lost soulsescaping from down below. They gave three cheers for the rouseabouts' cook,who stayed behind; then they cursed the station with a mighty curse.They cleared a space on deck, had a jig, and afterwards a fightbetween the shearers' cook and his assistant. They gave a mighty bush whoopfor the Darling when the boat swung into that grand old gutter,and in the evening they had a general all-round time. We got back,and the crew had to reload the wool without assistance, for it borethe accursed brand of a "freedom-of-contract" shed.We slept, or tried to sleep, that night on the ridge of two wool baleslaid with the narrow sides up, having first been obliged to get ashoreand fight six rounds with a shearer for the privilege of roosting there.The live cinders from the firebox went up the chimney all night,and fell in showers on deck. Every now and again a sparkwould burn through the "Wagga rug" of a sleeping shearer,and he'd wake suddenly and get up and curse. It was no use shifting round,for the wind was all ways, and the boat steered north, south, east, and westto humour the river. Occasionally a low branch would rootthree or four passengers off their wool bales, and they'd get up and cursein chorus. The boat started two snags; and towards daylight struck a stump.The accent was on the stump. A wool bale went overboard,and took a swag and a dog with it; then the owner of the swag and dogand the crew of the boat had a swearing match between them. The swagman won.About daylight we stretched our cramped limbs, extricated one leg from betweenthe wool bales, and found that the steamer was just crayfishing awayfrom a mud island, where she had tied up for more wool. Some of the chapshad been ashore and boiled four or five buckets of tea and coffee.Shortly after the boat had settled down to work again an incident came along.A rouseabout rose late, and, while the others were at breakfast,got an idea into his head that a good "sloosh" would freshen him up;so he mooched round until he found a big wooden bucket with a rope to it.He carried the bucket aft of the wheel. The boat was butting up streamfor all she was worth, and the stream was running the other way, of course,and about a hundred times as fast as a train. The jackeroo gave the linea turn round his wrist; before anyone could see him in time to suppress him,he lifted the bucket, swung it to and fro, and dropped it cleverlyinto the water.This delayed us for nearly an hour. A couple of menjumped into the row boat immediately and cast her adrift.They picked up the jackeroo about a mile down the river, clinging to a snag,and when we hauled him aboard he looked like something the cat had dragged in,only bigger. We revived him with rum and got him on his feet;and then, when the captain and crew had done cursing him, he rubbed his head,went forward, and had a look at the paddle; then he rubbed his head again,thought, and remarked to his mates:"Wasn't it lucky I didn't dip that bucket FOR'ARD the wheel?"This remark struck us forcibly. We agreed that it was lucky -- for him;but the captain remarked that it was damned unlucky for the world,which, he explained, was over-populated with fools already.Getting on towards afternoon we found a barge loaded with wool and tied upto a tree in the wilderness. There was no sign of a man to be seen,nor any sign, except the barge, that a human being had ever been there.The captain took the craft in tow, towed it about ten miles up the stream,and left it in a less likely place than where it was before.Floating bottles began to be more frequent, and we knew by that same tokenthat we were nearing "Here's Luck!" -- Bourke, we mean. And this reminds us.When the Brewarrina people observe a more than ordinary number of bottlesfloating down the river, they guess that Walgett is on the spree;when the Louth chaps see an unbroken procession of dead marinesfor three or four days they know that Bourke's drunk. The poor,God-abandoned "whaler" sits in his hungry camp at sunset and watchesthe empty symbols of Hope go by, and feels more God-forgotten than ever-- and thirstier, if possible -- and gets a great, wide, thirsty,quaking, empty longing to be up where those bottles come from.If the townspeople knew how much misery they caused by their thoughtlessnessthey would drown their dead marines, or bury them, but on no accountallow them to go drifting down the river, and stirring up hellsin the bosoms of less fortunate fellow-creatures.There came a man from Adelaide to Bourke once, and he collectedall the empty bottles in town, stacked them by the river,and waited for a boat. What he wanted them for the legend sayeth not,but the people reckoned he had a "private still", or something of that sort,somewhere down the river, and were satisfied. What he came from Adelaide for,or whether he really did come from there, we do not know.All the Darling bunyips are supposed to come from Adelaide.Anyway, the man collected all the empty bottles he could lay his hands on,and piled them on the bank, where they made a good show.He waited for a boat to take his cargo, and, while waiting, he got drunk.That excited no comment. He stayed drunk for three weeks,but the townspeople saw nothing unusual in that. In order to becomean object of interest in their eyes, and in that line,he would have had to stay drunk for a year and fight three times a day-- oftener, if possible -- and lie in the road in the broiling heatbetween whiles, and be walked on by camels and Afghans and free-labourers,and be locked up every time he got sober enough to smash a policeman,and try to hang himself naked, and be finally squashed by a loaded wool team.But while he drank the Darling rose, for reasons best known to itself,and floated those bottles off. They strung out and started forthe Antarctic Ocean, with a big old wicker-worked demijohn in the lead.For the first week the down-river men took no notice; but after the bottleshad been drifting past with scarcely a break for a fortnight or so,they began to get interested. Several whalers watched the processionuntil they got the jimjams by force of imagination, and when their bodiesbegan to float down with the bottles, the down-river people got anxious.At last the Mayor of Wilcannia wired Bourke to know whether Dibbs or Parkeswas dead, or democracy triumphant, or if not, wherefore the jubilation?Many telegrams of a like nature were received during that week,and the true explanation was sent in reply to each. But it wasn't believed,and to this day Bourke has the name of being the most drunken townon the river.After dinner a humorous old hard case mysteriously took us aside and saidhe had a good yarn which we might be able to work up. We asked him how,but he winked a mighty cunning wink and said that he knew all about us.Then he asked us to listen. He said:"There was an old feller down the Murrumbidgee named Kelly.He was a bit gone here. One day Kelly was out lookin' for some sheep,when he got lost. It was gettin' dark. Bymeby there came an old crowin a tree overhead."`Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st! Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st!' sez the crow."`I know I am,' sez Kelly."`Fol-ler me, fol-ler me,' sez the crow."`Right y'are,' sez Kelly, with a jerk of his arm. `Go ahead.'"So the crow went on, and Kelly follered, an' bymeby he foundhe was on the right track."Sometime after Kelly was washin' sheep (this was when we useter washthe sheep instead of the wool). Kelly was standin' on the platformwith a crutch in his hand landin' the sheep, when there came a old crowin the tree overhead."`Kelly, I'm hun-gry! Kel-ley, I'm hun-ger-ry!' sez the crow."`Alright,' sez Kelly; `be up at the hut about dinner time'n' I'll sling you out something.'"`Drown -- a -- sheep! Drown -- a -- sheep, Kel-ley,' sez the crow."`Blanked if I do,' sez Kelly. `If I drown a sheep I'll haveto pay for it, be-God!'"`Then I won't find yer when yer lost agin,' sez the crow."`I'm damned if yer will,' says Kelly. `I'll take blanky good careI won't get lost again, to be found by a gory ole crow.'". . . . .There are a good many fishermen on the Darling. They camp along the banksin all sorts of tents, and move about in little box boatsthat will only float one man. The fisherman is never heavy.He is mostly a withered little old madman, with black claws,dirty rags (which he never changes), unkempt hair and beard,and a "ratty" expression. We cannot say that we ever saw him catch a fish,or even get a bite, and we certainly never saw him offer any for sale.He gets a dozen or so lines out into the stream, with the shore endfastened to pegs or roots on the bank, and passed over sticksabout four feet high, stuck in the mud; on the top of these stickshe hangs bullock bells, or substitutes -- jam tins with stones fastened insideto bits of string. Then he sits down and waits. If the cod pulls the linethe bell rings.The fisherman is a great authority on the river and fish,but has usually forgotten everything else, including his name.He chops firewood for the boats sometimes, but it isn't his profession --he's a fisherman. He is only sane on points concerning the river,though he has all the fisherman's eccentricities. Of course he is a liar.When he gets his camp fixed on one bank it strikes him he ought to beover on the other, or at a place up round the bend, so he shifts.Then he reckons he was a fool for not stopping where he was before.He never dies. He never gets older, or drier, or more withered looking,or dirtier, or loonier -- because he can't. We cannot imagine himas ever having been a boy, or even a youth. We cannot even try to imagine himas a baby. He is an animated mummy, who used to fish on the Nilethree thousand years ago, and catch nothing.. . . . .We forgot to mention that there are wonderfully few wrecks on the Darling.The river boats seldom go down -- their hulls are not built that way --and if one did go down it wouldn't sink far. But, once down,a boat is scarcely ever raised again; because, you see, the mud silts upround it and over it, and glues it, as it were, to the bottom of the river.Then the forty-foot alligators -- which come down with the "Queenslan' rains",we suppose -- root in the mud and fill their bellies withsodden flour and drowned deck-hands.They tried once to blow up a wreck with dynamite because it (the wreck)obstructed navigation; but they blew the bottom out of the river instead,and all the water went through. The Government have been boring for itever since. I saw some of the bores myself -- there is one at Coonamble.There is a yarn along the Darling about a cute Yankee who was invitedup to Bourke to report on a proposed scheme for locking the river.He arrived towards the end of a long and severe drought,and was met at the railway station by a deputation of representative bushmen,who invited him, in the first place, to accompany them to the principal pub --which he did. He had been observed to study the scenery a good dealwhile coming up in the train, but kept his conclusions to himself.On the way to the pub he had a look at the town, and it was noticedthat he tilted his hat forward very often, and scratched the back of his heada good deal, and pondered a lot; but he refrained from expressing an opinion-- even when invited to do so. He guessed that his opinionswouldn't do much good, anyway, and he calculated that they would keeptill he got back "over our way" -- by which it was reckonedhe meant the States.When they asked him what he'd have, he said to Watty the publican:"Wal, I reckon you can build me your national drink. I guess I'll try it."A long colonial was drawn for him, and he tried it. He seemedrather startled at first, then he looked curiously at the half-empty glass,set it down very softly on the bar, and leaned against the sameand fell into a reverie; from which he roused himself after a while,with a sorrowful jerk of his head."Ah, well," he said. "Show me this river of yourn."They led him to the Darling, and he had a look at it."Is this your river?" he asked."Yes," they replied, apprehensively.He tilted his hat forward till the brim nearly touched his nose,scratched the back of his long neck, shut one eye, and looked at the riverwith the other. Then, after spitting half a pint of tobacco juiceinto the stream, he turned sadly on his heel and led the way back to the pub.He invited the boys to "pisen themselves"; after they were servedhe ordered out the longest tumbler on the premises, poured a drop into itfrom nearly every bottle on the shelf, added a lump of ice,and drank slowly and steadily.Then he took pity on the impatient and anxious population, opened his mouth,and spake."Look here, fellows," he drawled, jerking his arm in the directionof the river, "I'll tell you what I'll dew. I'll bottlethat damned river of yourn in twenty-four hours!"Later on he mellowed a bit, under the influence of several drinkswhich were carefully and conscientiously "built" from plans and specificationssupplied by himself, and then, among other things, he said:"If that there river rises as high as you say it dew -- and if thiswas the States -- why, we'd have had the Great Eastern up heretwenty years ago" ---- or words to that effect.Then he added, reflectively:"When I come over here I calculated that I was goingto make things hum, but now I guess I'll have to change my prospectus.There's a lot of loose energy laying round over our way,but I guess that if I wanted to make things move in your countryI'd have to bring over the entire American nation -- also his wife and dawg.You've got the makings of a glorious nation over here,but you don't get up early enough!". . . . .The only national work performed by the blacks is on the Darling.They threw a dam of rocks across the river -- near Brewarrina, we think --to make a fish trap. It's there yet. But God only knowswhere they got the stones from, or how they carried them,for there isn't a pebble within forty miles.
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