From Chart House to Bush Hut

Title: From Chart House to Bush Hut

Author: C. W. Bryde

Release date: June 6, 2011 [eBook #36340]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36340

Credits: E-text prepared by Nick Wall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

E-text prepared by Nick Wall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana)

Transcriber's Note:

Printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained.

The Dreary Monotony of Grey Sea and Greyer Sky.

From Chart House to Bush Hut

Being the Record of a Sailor's 7 years in the Queensland Bush

By

C. W. BRYDE

H. H. CHAMPION Australasian Authors' Agency Melbourne

DEDICATION.

To those sturdy battlers, among whom I have lived for seven years, I doff my hat in respect; and dedicate My Book

PREFACE.

The idea in mind is to present, as far as possible, a true picture of life in the Scrub, as I had experienced it. With this end in view, I have neither glossed over the difficulties and disabilities, nor enlarged on the advantages, of selection life in the Scrublands. I have tried to make the book a fairly reliable and interesting guide to anyone thinking of tackling the life. With what success I leave the reader to determine.

THE AUTHOR.

"Up North."

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CONTENTS.

From Chart House to Bush Hut

CHAPTER I.

The Newcastle (N.S.W.)-Chile Coal Run.

The trans-Pacific run is the most god-forsaken, monotonous trade in the world, I think. Our steamer was fairly fast for a tramp, and we were twenty-four days on the Eastbound trip and twenty-seven back to Newcastle—coal one way and ballast back. Not a solitary sail nor point of land to break the dreary monotony of grey sea and greyer sky, clear across to Valparaiso—5000 miles. Following the Great Circle track, you get down to 53 degrees or 54 degrees south latitude. In winter it's cold—blowing a gale pretty well all the time—and your ship's like a half-tide rock. In summer pretty much the same conditions prevail, with fog added. Occasionally there is a day when it's not blowing—then it rains. And there's ice to be looked out for at this time of the year, too, which is an added pleasantry.

Sweeping up on the Great Circle for Valparaiso, you close in gradually with the Chilean coast, the first land sighted being usually the rocky highlands round Curramilla Point, the high sierras of the Andes being obscured by mist most times. Occasionally one gets a glimpse of noble Aconcagua, the mighty 26,000 ft. Andean giant. I shall never forget my first sight of it. It was about six p.m., and we were then about 260 miles from the mountain. The sun was setting. All at once there appeared on the starboard bow a huge irregular truncated cone in the heavens, enlarged by refraction to an incredible size. It was a deep rose red, and every crevasse, ledge and spur was pencilled with distinctness. Talk about awe-inspiring grandeur and beauty! Every man-jack in the ship turned out to gaze and gaze while it slowly faded; and then, suddenly, puff! like a candle blown out, it was gone.

On arriving at Valparaiso you moor to buoys, in about thirty fathoms of water. Instantly a horde of coaley pirates, who look (and smell) as if they never washed, swarms aboard and starts to cast adrift all your carefully prepared cargo gear, and alter it to suit themselves. You try and explain that "thisee ropee no boyno' ere," and are thereupon informed "Usted no sabe nada, pilote," or something like that, so you give way. Big lighters bump all the paint off alongside. Work goes on night and day, and in less than a week the coal is all out, and away you wallow to sea again. No chance of going ashore. Officers and engineers have to be here, there, and everywhere, for the lumpers pinch worse than—well! worse than the mate of a ship moored near a Government dockyard, and that's

saying something. They make a trade, too, out of bringing aboard bottles of the awful muck the lower class Chileño delights in, such as casash, potato caña, etc., one glass of which makes a man see snakes for a week. I really think some sailors would guzzle kerosene out of a whisky bottle. Anyhow, you're glad to get to sea for a rest.

Then the long dreary run of 7000 miles back "along the parallel" starts! nothing to see, nothing to break the awful monotony, till you strike the Australian coast again—Newcastle, for more coal.

You arrive on Wednesday night. "Sure of a Sunday this time!" you think. Vain hope! A boat comes alongside about 11 p.m. (Ship at anchor in the stream.)

"Ready for fumigation, mister?"

"Oh! ——," you think, but don't say, for the officials can make things extremely unpleasant for you if they like. So its "Turn out, men, and get the stuff aboard." Five barrels of sulphur, and about four hundred little tin dishes to put it in. Ladle the sulphur in, each dish half-full, and pass it below. A lick of methylated spirits in each, a match, and the choking blue reek rises. On hatches! and batten well down; plug the ventilators—and then damn well go and camp on a stage slung over the bows, for nowhere else will you escape the caustic fumes. Sleep? I like to hear you! We've been getting cargo gear ready at sea this day, and we'll be all day to-morrow again, and no sleep this blessed night. Can you wonder at the men going on the drunk? My personal sympathy is with them, but I daren't show it, or I'd lose my job, get no reference from the skipper likely, and be ruined.

We spend the night coughing, choking and cursing, and about 8 a.m. (Thursday) orders come to go alongside in the Basin. We go—and it's pandemonium let loose. The muffled roar of coal dropping in tons, clang of trimmers' shovels, hoarse shouts, stamping and crashings, with an occasional spasmodic clattering winch by way of variety.

All hands are on the beer ashore, and won't show up till Saturday at earliest. That leaves three officers and two apprentice boys to handle the ship, shift back and forth every half-hour or so, take stores aboard, put on 'tweendeck beams and hatches as required, and attend to the multifarious jobs connected with being in port. There isn't an earthly chance of going ashore further than the fruit shop over the way, especially for the mate, who has to be there all the time.

Finally the truth slowly comes home to you that you will be finished on Saturday night—8000 tons of cargo and bunkers in three days. At 7 p.m. on Saturday down comes the Navigation Department's inspector, with his hydrometer, to watch you finish. 8.30, and she's nearly down. You watch the marks closely, the inspector, grimly impassive, giving you no assistance.

"Can I put another truck in, sir?" I ask.

"You're loading her, mister, not me," is his discouraging reply.

You test the water with your hydrometer. Ah! Brackish. She'll stand it. So. Another? H'm! Something in the inspector's eye warns you, so you say "No" reluctantly to the impatient head-stevedore, for you're due for a wigging if this cargo's a waggon short of last voyage's.

"Um!" says Mr. Inspector musingly. "If you'd put that aboard, mister, I'd have made you dig it out again." Helpful!

I had that sort of thing to put up with from the same man seven voyages running. I used to pass watches at sea comforting myself with dreams of punching his head, and trying to think of some way of upsetting him. No go! All the annoying power possible was his.

At 9.30 the head stevedore reports the cargo all trimmed down. Tide's at 11.0. Right! You go to turn out all hands and find them dead-oh. After much shaking, you manage to get four more or less fit for duty, albeit soreheaded and groggy on their pins, so you make a start getting hatch-beams on. Fore and main hatch iron-work is in place, when the skipper and pilot hurry aboard.

"Single up, Mr. Senex."

"Ay, ay, sir!" (Sotto voce: "God's curse to this infernal life.") Then, with a roar, "Break off there, and stand-by fore and aft."

Just singled up, when a sound like a mill wheel is heard, and Brown's old "Bungaree" comes alongside and makes fast.

"Let go fore and aft!" and away we go with a dismal shriek from the steam whistle, which, with water in the pipe, makes a snarling sound aptly expressive of our own feelings.

There's a lop of a sea outside the breakwaters, and the five derricks we still have up sway dangerously—to say nothing of the funnel, the guys of which are yet adrift. However, we drop anchor outside and all hands spend the night very pleasantly till nearly daybreak, securing gear, sorting out hatch covers and getting them on, setting up back stays, and so on.

A short spell of broken sleep, then, at 8.30 a.m. on this restful Sunday we finish clearing up the decks and wash down. Skipper comes aboard at noon, with all his papers in order. A hurried lunch, last letters handed to the agents' clerk; farewell! Up anchor, and so away again to sea—for a rest!

Thus it goes on, voyage after voyage the same. I had nine trips to Valparaiso and back, and it nearly broke both health and heart before I managed to cut the bonds and free myself from such slavery. The owners gave me £10 a month as mate and no overtime for any of us, till we kicked like hell and threatened to go on strike; then we got 1/- an hour! and were looked on as mutinous.

A nightmare of a life. And though things are better now, I believe, than they were in my day, still it's past and done with for me, thank God!

CHAPTER II.

One Night in Port Jackson.

Eight bells, noon. Our steamer, twenty-six days out from Talcahuano, lurched and rolled under the rapidly expiring influence of the snorting sou'-easter which had dogged us all the way across the Pacific. Ahead, clear-cut and blue in the rainwashed atmosphere, a stretch of the New South Wales coast. A point on the port bow, a little white finger pointing upward.

Sydney! The very thought of the place warmed our hearts with visions of the rest, beer, girls, picture palaces, newspapers and so forth, according to the particular bent of the individual seaman.

Magic name! The growling A.B.'s grew suddenly good-tempered, and evinced a certain alacrity in obeying orders from which nearly four weeks' bad weather had divorced them. Occasionally they even smiled. The skipper grew cheerful, and the mate (me) ceased his everlasting faultfinding, and cracked a mild joke with the men now and again—which called forth its due meed of obsequious merriment. Once he even said, "It's going to be a fine evening after all, Mac," to an engineer, who nearly fell over his doorstep with the shock of being addressed with courtesy for the first time in a month.

Heavily our old hooker wallows along, and we raise the land fast.

"Anchors all ready, Mr. Senex?" from the skipper.

"All clear, sir."

"Right! See everything ready for the pilot."

"Ay, ay, sir!"

A half-hour passes, and South Head is close aboard, the surf breaking high. Another few minutes and the "Captain Cook" slides in a piratical fashion from behind a rock and makes for us. After some difficulty, for we are light ship and rolling heavily, the pilot hops aboard.

"You're to go up to Woolwich, Cap'n. The dry dock's all ready for you. Full ahead, please. Port a bit," and we make for Watson's Bay. A little manœuvring, then—"Stand by your anchor.... Let go!" and away goes the mudhook with a roar and a cloud of rust-dust.

In another few minutes a smart launch comes alongside, and the port medical officer mounts the side-ladder, slowly and majestically, as befits his official dignity. He's a broth of a boy all right—the biggest man I ever saw, I think. He looked about eight feet, and built in proportion. His boots would have made a London policeman green with envy, and he had a fist like a boxing-glove. Big as he was the suit he had on that day was too large, and hung on him like a purser's shirt on a handspike. A sport though, he took the rather audibly expressed surprise his appearance created in the mustered lines of the crew in good part, and proceeded to examine us for smallpox symptoms. A pause. Then the captain—"Where's the second engineer? Mr. Senex, I thought you had seen——"

"ALL right, sir. I'll go and rouse him up," and away I went.

Diving down the engineroom ladder, I find Mr. Crafter frantically tugging with a spanner at a refractory nut.

"Doctor's waiting, Crafter."

"Blast the doctor!"

"Right-o, old chap," I answered; "but the skipper sent me——"

"Tellim t' goter'ell!!" (Here the nut gave suddenly, and he sat down—hard.)

From the safe altitude of the first grating, I said sweetly, "All right, old man; I'll give him your message. Er—did it hurt?" and raced up the ladder just in time to miss the flying spanner.

Crafter came up, sweating and purple-faced, grumbling about disturbing men at important repair jobs, was pronounced free from small-pox, and instantly returned to his labours.

Medical and Customs inspection were over by 4.30 p.m., when we got under weigh, and proceeded up the harbour. Its beauties were even more enticing than usual to our sea-pickled eyes, as we slowly passed point after point, finally bringing up alongside the wharf at Woolwich Dock at tea-time. By this it was nearly calm, just a faint breeze wrinkling the placid water, and the sky cloudless. The daylight gradually merged, through dusk, into the soft radiance of a glorious full moon.

I leaned on the rail, drinking in the calm, peaceful beauty of the night. Across the water the innumerable lights and subdued hum of the city, the coloured lights of the moving shipping here and there, and the white reflection of South Head in the distance, the broad path of moonlit water, broken every now and then by a brilliant firefly of a ferry boat streaking across it. Nearer at hand, rocky, brush-covered points, romantic and inviting. Above all, and pervading everything, the subtle perfume of the faint breeze—a scent of flowers, hay, gum leaves, and warm rich earth, the very breath of the Goddess of Health. I don't know how long I stopped there, dreaming and thinking of the contrast between this haven of peace and the last month of turmoil, before I woke to the fact that I was dog-tired and had better turn in. Couldn't sleep, though. An hour or so of restless tossing about, and I was out again—the night more beautiful than ever. There was another form leaning on the gangway, pyjama'd, like myself.

"Hello, Crafter—that you? Isn't this just A1 at Lloyd's?"

"By jingo, Senex, you've said it. A chap ought to be shot for sleepin' on a night like this. What say we clear out and go up country, eh?" (with a laugh).

"Dunno about that; but are you game for a stroll ashore?" I asked.

"Right you are!" And away we went.

We met nobody. There was no Caliban of a John Hop to point out the impropriety of our appearance on a public road in pyjamas and carpet slippers, and we walked on up Hunter's Hill way, Lane Cove glimmering through the trees on one side and the sweet-scented brush on the other. We fairly bathed in the beautiful night, plucked handfuls of gum leaves and buried our noses in them. We wandered on until the declining moon warned us it was time to get back. We reached the ship again about 3 a.m., and had no difficulty in getting to sleep this time.

That glorious night! It will live in my memory, for then and there was born the idea—not so long afterwards acted on—to say good-bye to the sea life and crowded old England, and make a home for myself in this wide, free young land. I have never regretted doing so.

I have had seven years of the hardest kind of pioneering, in a heavy scrub district, and am not so very well off, financially, now; yet, if I knew I was to have another similar period on top of this, and I could have a good competence living in any other country in the world by asking for it to-morrow, I'd choose Australia and the pioneering without a second's hesitation. And that's what I think about it!

CHAPTER III.

Good-Bye to the Sea.

Again we were approaching the Australian coast. On this trip from Valparaiso we had experienced fine weather, for a wonder, and made (for us) a record run of twenty-five days. The weather had been beautifully fine.

A faint breeze right ahead brought us a heart-quickening perfume—that smell of the land which even the most desert place seems to possess, and which only the "deep-waterman" knows how to appreciate to the full. Your landlubber's nose couldn't detect it. As I climbed to the bridge after tea, and took a good long sniff of it, I determined that this would be my last trip. To the devil with ploughing the raging main! It would be ploughing the flowering earth after this, I thought.

Out of the South-East a long, low swell came slowly sliding, telling of wind to come, which we would just escape, and making our old hooker roll regularly and not at all unpleasantly. Silence; broken only by the quick muffled beat of the propeller, or the musical tattoo of a fireman's shovel below, indicative to the trimmer that more coal is wanted in the stokehold; or by a sudden laugh or burst of rough song from the fo'c'sles. I strolled back and forth on the bridge, thinking how sick of the sea I was, and scheming how the devil to break my iniquitous three years' agreement without going to the length of deserting.

Slowly dusk settled down, and the brilliant colours of the sunset faded out. No land yet. Heigh-ho! Well, 'twon't be long now, and please the pigs, I won't leave it again once I get my hoofs on to it. Suddenly the captain's voice broke in on my reverie.

"If you don't sight Sugarloaf by eight bells, Mr. Senex, pass the word to the third mate to keep a bright lookout, and let me know when he sees it."

"Ay, ay, sir!"

More reverie, leaning on the rail gazing ahead. Now, if I'd a farm, I'd put in ten acres of spuds, and get so many tons, etc., etc., and there'd be a couple of cows to milk, of course, and the girl 'ud be in the house singin' away ... and I'd get a good night's sleep instead of this cursed turning out every time old Fuz-buz wants you ... and I'd have a few quid in the bank likely; different to this tenner-a-month job, and——

Seven bells! "All's wel-l-l-," in musical cadence from the crow's nest. Right!

A few minutes later, and a momentary faint glow on the rapidly darkening horizon attracted my attention.

"Ha! Revolving light. That's her."

I sent down to the captain, who came up at once and took a squint through the night glasses. "All right. Sugarloaf. How's her head?"

"S. 69 degrees W., sir."

He takes a bearing and pops below. A moment later—"Steer 72 degrees, Mr. Senex."

"Seventy-two degrees it is, sir," and course altered accordingly.

Sometime in the wee small hours beyond twelve I am roused out by the sudden stoppage of the ship's steady heart-beat, and find we are off Newcastle, burning a blue light for the pilot, who comes out to us in a few minutes, and we are soon anchored off the Dyke, pending medical inspection later in the morning. On this occasion the fumigation launch, with its cargo of brimstone and crew of attendant imps, left us in peace for the time being. We got it before noon though, as usual good and hearty, and ate our lunch with streaming eyes and rasped throats in, literally, a hell of an atmosphere.

When we went alongside to our usual berth in the afternoon we were informed cheerfully by the stevedore, as we were used to being informed, that we "would be away by Sunday."

"Not I, if I can help it," thinks I to myself. "How to get out of this damn ship without leaving my money behind?"