Consternation fell upon us when Saturday morning came, and we were informed that there was small chance of completing the passage that day. This meant being stranded in a strange township, at some possibly low public-house, on Sunday, when the coach of our last stage would not be running, and the breaking of an engagement that was considered of immense importance.
"What shall we do?" we asked ourselves, and the question was overheard by fellow-passengers, anxious, as everybody was, to help us.
"It's a pity you can't cut across," said one. "From here to W—— is no distance as the crow flies."
Compared with the bow-loop we were making, it was no distance—a few hours' drive, with normal roads and weather; and just then the steamer stopped to take in cargo from a lonely shed, near which we perceived a cart, a grazing horse, and a man, evidently belonging to each other, and on the right (Victorian) side of the stream.
"Would it be possible," one of us suggested, "to hire that cart and cut across?"
G. went to try, while I leaned over the boat's rail and anxiously watched the negotiations. They were successful, and we hurriedly collected our wraps and bags, our heavy luggage was put ashore, and the steamer passed on and vanished round the next bend of the river, which was all bends, leaving us on the bank—in the real Bush for the first time, and delighted with the situation. The man with the cart had guaranteed to get us home before nightfall.
We climbed over our boxes, which filled the body of the vehicle, settled ourselves upon them as comfortably as their angles permitted, and started merrily on our way. It was the morning of the day, of the season, of the Australian year, of our two lives; and I could never lose the memory of my sensations in that vernal hour. I can sniff now the delicious air, rain-washed to more than even its accustomed purity, the scents of gum and wattle and fresh-springing grass, the atmosphere of untainted Nature and the free wilds. I can see the vast flocks of screaming cockatoos and parrots of all colours that darted about our path—how wonderful and romantic I thought them! And what years it is since the wild parrot has shown himself to me in any number or variety! Like the once ubiquitous 'possum, he seems a vanishing race—at any rate, in this state. I suppose they still have sanctuary in the larger and less settled ones. I hope so.
However, we were not far on this promising journey when troubles began. The rain returned, and settled to a solid downpour, that increased to a deluge as the day wore on. The Bush track became softer and softer, stickier and stickier, the dreadful bogs of its deeper parts more and more difficult of negotiation by the poor overweighted, willing horse, whose strength, as we soon saw, was unequal to the task before him. He got on fairly well until after the noonday halt, when he was rubbed down and fed—when we also were fed by a poor selector's wife at whose hut (in the absence of hotels) we solicited food, and who gave us all she had, bread and cream, as much as we could eat, and then refused to take a penny for it. But starting again, with rain heavier than before, the poor beast's struggles to do his hopeless best became more than I could bear. When I had seen him scramble through three or four bogs that sucked him down like quicksands, and it seemed that he must burst his heart in the effort to get out of them, I stopped the cart and said I would walk. My weight might not be much, but such as it was he should be relieved of it. G. also walked, but as he was needed to help the driver I left him and was soon far ahead, intending to give this negative aid to the expedition as long as I could find my way.
I had been told to "follow the track," and I followed it for miles. The Bush was drowned in rain, so that I had to jump pools, and climb logs and branches, and get round swamps, in such a way that I felt it every minute more impossible to retrace my steps. I carried an umbrella, but I was wet to the skin. I was quite composed, however, except for my distress on account of the poor horse, whose master's voice and whip I could hear in the distance behind me from time to time; and I was not at all alarmed. I had prepared myself for the savageness of a savage country. I imagined that this was the sort of thing I should have to get accustomed to. Now and then I sat down to recover breath and to wring my sopping skirts, and to wait for the sound of the cart advancing, after the frequent silences that betokened bogs.
By the way, I hear nothing nowadays of those bogs which, in their various forms, made our winter drives so exciting—the "glue-pots," the "rotten grounds," the "spue-holes," worst of all, indicated by a little bubble-up of clayey mud that you could cover with a handkerchief, but which, if a horse stepped on it, would take his leg to the knee, or to any depth that it would go without breaking. "Made" roads and drainage-works seem to have done away with them this long time, for the other day I met a resident of the locality who did not know, until I told him, what a spue-hole was.
At last it was all silence. I waited for the cart, and it did not come. I called—there was no answer. At the end of an hour—it may have been two or three hours—the situation was the same. What had happened was that the horse was at last in a bog that he could not get out of, and that bog was miles away. I could not go back to see what had happened. I did not know where I was. I conjectured that I had turned off the track somewhere, and that my husband was travelling away from me; that I was lost in the Bush, where I might never be found again—where I should have to spend the night alone, at any rate, in the horrible solitude and darkness and the drenching rain.
Appropriately, in this extremity, and just as dusk was closing in, I heard a splashing and a crashing, and my knight appeared—one of those fine, burly, bearded squatter-men who were not only the backbone of their young country, but everything else that was sound and strong. He drew rein in amazement; I rose from my log and stood before him in the deepest confusion. Finally I explained my plight, and in two minutes all trouble was over. Bidding me stay where I was for a short time longer, he galloped away, and presently returned in a buggy loaded with rugs and wraps, and bore me off to his house somewhere near, telling me that he would return again for my husband, and had sent men to the rescue of the cart and horse, now so buried in the bog that not much more than his head and neck were visible.
Ah, those dear Bush-houses—so homely, so cosy, so hospitable, so picturesque—and now so rare! At least a dozen present themselves to my mind when I try to recall a perfect type, and this one amongst the first, although I never was in it after that night. They were always a nest of buildings that had grown one at a time, the house-father having been his own architect, with no design but to make his family comfortable, and to increase their comfort as his means allowed. And this must have been the golden prime of the squatter class in Victoria, for the free selector had but lately been let loose upon his lands, and the consequent ruin that he prognosticated had not visibly touched him. In the early stages of home-making, his home-life had been rough enough; but there was no roughness in it now, although there was plenty of work, and although the refinements about him were all in keeping with his hardy manliness, his simplicity, and sincerity of character. I used to be much struck by the contrast of his cherished "imported" furniture with its homely setting—the cheval glass and the mahogany wardrobe on the perhaps bare, dark-grey hardwood floor—incongruities of that sort, which somehow always seemed in taste. Never have I known greater luxury of toilet appointments than in some of those hut-like dwellings. In the humblest of them the bed stood always ready for the casual guest, a clean brush and comb on the dressing-table, and easy house-slippers under it. And then the paper-covered canvas walls used to belly out and in with the wind that puffed behind them; opossums used to get in under the roof and run over the canvas ceilings, which sagged under their weight, showing the impression of their little feet and of the round of their bodies where they sat down.
The country-houses become more and more Europeanised, year by year. The inward ordering matches the outward architecture, and, although Australian hospitality has survived the homes that were its birthplaces, one hesitates to present one's self as an