Chapter 9 – A Tourist
“Come on Alfred, we need to get started on this tour you promised me. I will accept your suggestion that we start by going to the area you went to first when you came over with your Pa and Charlton.”
Alfred was a bit taken a back, he thought they were to have a leisurely few days at his house. Joe went on to explain, that he was only in Australia for a limited time, and he had some work to do whilst he was there. That was not the whole truth. Joe was looking rather drawn, and at times rather quiet, but at this stage he had not confided in Alfred, as to what the real cause of his concern.
“What do we need to take with us?” asked Joe replied Alfred.
“Nothing much, the weather will be fine, it will be too hot too, so we don’t need much. These days there are places to stop at, hotels or shack that are used as escape from turbulent weather”.
Joe was familiar with some of Australia’s cities, cities where business was done, but for Alfred these were the places he disliked. He was a bushman, a man who was at home in wide open spaces with the love of nature’s own natural noises.
There had always been eating stations along the routes to the mines. They could go and see them, and possibly eat there also. Part of Alfred’s work involved making bridges over streams, cutting the scrub and making roads for the prospectors. He named mountains, streams and gullies, which had no Aborigine name, usually called after men in his party or prominent men in Government. He had climbed the highest mountains in the Victorian Alpine chain, and this was where his favourite story occurred. He was stranded on an icy slope with the gold washing dish in his hands. When he slipped and shot down the hill, only to climb back up again.
Much as he would like to have done, Alfred just would not take Joe to such extreme places, as the rides could be rough and very dangerous. Although he was aware of the dangers he had faced in this wild country, he accepted the risks, and using caution, he had been able to survive without serious mishaps.
Joe would have been interested in such areas, Alfred knew, but he could not take the risk, instead he would take him on the lower slopes of Flinders. Yes I will, Alfred decided himself without discussion, I think it will be very different from anything he has seen before, so he will get some sense of the adventurous thrills I have experienced.
“When we came out with Pa in 1851-84, he wanted all his home comforts” said Alfred. “Did I tell you he brought out his rocking chair from England? At night he lay out his carpet, I don’t know why, then he slept in the chair, placed on the carpet. Possibly he thought it would keep the creepy crawlies away. We used to put up a sort of awning, which helped keep the insects at bay, but it did not keep out the dogs. Charlton kept his yeast, which he had made from scratch, hanging in a jar off one of the guide ropes”.
“Did everyone have set ups like that?” Joe asked. “No, they had more sense. Charlton brought his dog Prince with him, so he had to be fed too.” “What did you give him to eat?” enquired Joe
“Charlton became very good catching possums. They live in hollow trees, at least the ones Charlton caught did. They are nocturnal animals, and made a good meal for Prince. They have lovely fur too, which is very soft and warm, so we skinned them, used some and sold others. Their fur can be spun like wool, and knitted. They are edible for us too, but we found other things nicer to eat. Sometimes we bought food from a store, or fished for our food, and even killed kangaroos to eat. A bit big though, and if it were very hot, the carcass got very smelly. Prince did not object though.”
Actually Charlton had proved to be a very good bushman, as well as being able to support them with food from the wild. Charlton experimented and so learnt and managed, to catch possums, not the easiest creature to catch, for his dog Prince to eat. He went out at night, and found a possum living in a hollow tree, then he had to entice him out, with Prince’s help, and Prince had a meal. They would have eaten possums themselves if need be. Charlton was also a good bread maker too, producing his own yeast, as people had done for centuries past, but and all three of them worked in the gold fields together.
They had sailed on the “Kent”, which had just returned from Peru with a cargo of guano. Alfred had become disillusioned with Elizabeth Fry’s son, who had also been brought up a Quaker, and who had chartered this ship. He did not like what he had seen in the office. Alfred felt that he could teach the people in this office a thing or two. My employers would never have allowed me or anyone else they employed to work in this way he thought. It was however, a better ship than most carrying passengers at that time.
They witnessed one ship being towed by five rowing boats full of passengers! The Kent had been inadequately cleaned so smelt like a chicken house, which was to cause more discomfort for the passengers than normal.
Guano does not carry a pleasant aroma, but at least it was sound
“On some of our journeys in Australia, we had included my cousin Teddy”. Alfred explained. “Charlton and Teddy got on so well together; they behaved like any other young boys playing together, when Pa had nothing else for them to do. They were expected to pull their weight in the digging game.”
“This area has these very deep gullies, wonderful to run up and down, but they can flood very rapidly, and it can come so fast, you can easily get stuck halfway up the sides, and get washed away. Father used to get very cross because other diggers with their poor quality horses, just could not get the carts out of the ruts or gullies, so they took our horses, leaving them too tired to bring our own carts out of such predicaments. In the end, he flatly refused to let anyone else use our horses. You know, that is not like him, he would normally have gone out of his way to help people. He told us these men should have given more forethought to what was required, but had taken the attitude, that it was their right, to help themselves to anything someone else had, should they feel they needed it. It is countermand to stealing! I think these were the type of people who did rob others of the gold they had worked so hard to obtain. Pa was right. They were thieves.”
“At times the boys could be a liability,” continued Alfred, as they rode through this familiar route. “They were like any young boy would be. They would disappear, even if it were just hide and seek, we didn’t know where they had gone, and in such an unusual and hostile environment, they could so easily get lost, and then where would we look?”
“There was another time when one of them got himself in an awkward situation. He got too close to a camp of villains. The men, three of them, had stolen a large nugget of gold from one of the camps, and the men were discussing how they would turn it into money, or how to divide nugget up between them. They were nervous and jittery. Which ever if the boys it was, became very frightened when he realized what they were doing. He appreciated, that if he was found out to be watching them, he would end up dead!”
“Charlton had kept a detailed notebook, which Pa turned into a book, called “A Boy’s Adventure in the Wilds of Australia”. This book is full of information about the flora and fauna of the area, which goes to show what Charlton’s interests really were. He wrote his notebook, not just because Pa did. He thought it was the thing one ought to do in such circumstances. Pa did the same and as you would expect, he wrote his book of the experiences he had had too in “Land, Labour and Gold”.
Then with a sigh, Alfred started complaining about his father.
“Pa had no right to do that. Charlton’s book contained the things he had discovered, his feelings for the place. He was the one who found out how to live out of the bush,, and then when they get home, Pa takes it off him, to write “A Boy’s Adventure in the Wilds of Australia”. I bet Charlton did not have the nerve to stand up against him, which he should have done. “
“We are too used to obeying. You would have escaped that feeling of freedom, when you no longer had your father around?”
“Don’t say things like that. I really did love my father, he was mine, he was special. I was just getting to the age when we could