16 August 1934

RECOMPENSE THAT CAME TOO LATE 

Woman's Sacrifice That Proved In Vain

In a large, cheerless house near a range of beautiful hills in South Australia, a tired old woman, now nearing 80 years of age, lives alone. The spaciousness of the rooms and the hall and the beautiful furniture therein mean nothing to her now. The doors of all the rooms except the large kitchen and one bedroom are kept locked. 

Few who see the tiny, bent figure pottering round her bit of garden near the back door know that the gaunt, gloomy locking house behind her is in reality a monument to the memory of the stubbornness and misguided notions of her late husband. 

Years ago when Mary Dawson (call her that) first came to the district with her young husband, it was virgin land. They built a tiny mud hut of two rooms and there with the towering gums and the wild life of the scrub around them they started to make a home for themselves. Mary Dawson worked side by side with her husband, even helping to fell trees and grub stumps and, as they gradually got a herd together, she toiled early and late milking cows, feeding pigs, and carrying heavy buckets of water from the well for the stock. 

As the babies arrived they were put in an old cradle and, whatever the weather, taken to the milking yards or wherever their mother was working. 

As time went by, if they prospered, Mary Dawson was not aware of the fact, for her husband, a dour Scots man, believed in not allowing his left hand, or his wife, or anyone else, to know what his right hand did. The house remained the same as when they started, except that two small rooms had been added as the family grew. 

Mary toiled on uncomplainingly until her children began to grow up, then she timidly suggested that they should build a decent house for the children's sake. 'The old place has been good enough for us, so it is good enough for them,' was her husband's answer. 

Mary also pointed out that she would like to give the boys and girls a good education and thus give them the chance of a good start in life. This also was met with a surly reply that Dawson did not intend to spend his hard-earned savings on making a lot of 'softies' of his children. Mary did not like to remind him that much of the money had been earned by her, and that she had an equal right to say what should be done with it.

One by one, the five children, growing tired of their father's iron rule, and hating the funny little house in which they were forced to live, while new, modern houses were springing up all around them, left home to carve out a niche for themselves elsewhere. 

Growing old and bitter, Mary had ceased to hope for anything from life but toil and the little old shanty on the hill, when one day, out of the blue sky, as it were, her husband asked: 'Weel, wummin, would ye like a new hoose?' 

Bitterly she replied, 'I wanted that years ago for the children's sake; now I don't care.' 

'Weel,' old Dawson told her gleefully, 'we are going to have a new hoose, lass. Look down the drive; there comes the first load of stone to build it.' 

Sure enough, toiling up the hill came a bullock waggon loaded with stone and building material. True to his policy of keeping his intentions to himself and of doing things his own way, old Dawson refused to give the contract for the building to a contractor, but employed a mason by the day and superintended the building of the house himself. Stone by stone was put down under his direction, and the mason himself did not know from wall to wall what the house was meant to be like. 

At last it was finished— a huge, stone pile, the finest and most imposing house in the district. Not contented with that, the old man went to town and purchased elaborate furniture for all the rooms, which were never used in his life time, for a few short months afterwards he died. 

When his will was read it was discovered that his wife had been left a small income, barely sufficient for her needs, on condition she remained in the new house. At her death every thing was to be sold, and the proceeds, with the money in the bank (which was considerable), was to be divided among the family, now scattered in many parts of Australia. 

So now, nearing the end of a hard life, a little old woman lives alone in a big stone house. Shut away from the world, in the chilly evenings, she pulls her chair close to the kitchen stove, and her mind goes back over the years to the time when her children were about her. She sighs, then finds comfort in the thought that soon she will pass on, and at last her loved ones will reap the benefit of their mother's long years of sacrifice and toil.— M. E. Maitland.

Lucky Let-Off 

'They that go down to the sea in ships' are not the only people who run great risks. Even the prosaic life of the farmer, is, at times, fraught with danger to life and limb. What tragic stories could be told of maiming and death from misadventure which have occurred on the State's wheat farms! 

Here is a typical case which exemplifies the risk run by any wheat-grower. The subject of the story is a hale and hearty farmer in the prime of life today, living nearly 200 miles north of Adelaide. 

A few years ago he was taking off his crop with a stripper-harvester. His team of five horses were being worked tandem fashion, with three in the lead. The crop was choking badly in the comb, and at intervals it was necessary to leave the driver's seat and get down to clear the accumulation of straw which could not be removed by the choke-cutter. 

On one of these occasions he noticed that a young mare — the offsider behind— had rubbed her winkers over one ear while the chokers were being cleared. Walking between the two rear horses he straightened the winkers, and then for good luck gave the mare a resounding smack on the ribs. 

The effect was electrical. The mare jumped forward and struck the offside leader, and the whole team were off before the unlucky farmer had time to think. Instinctively he grasped the first thing within reach, which happened to be the top of the mare's harness, and swinging himself around, caught at the collar or harness of the near-side horse. 

The machine, being out of gear, was of course, running light, and his feelings may be better imagined than described, as the team, now in full canter, swung around in an arc with their master ignominiously hanging by both hands. His main thought was what would happen if he lost his hold and fell in front of the steering and crown wheels. 

Fortunately, when he did fall, the team was going to the right in a sharp circular direction, and the wheels missed him by inches. The crown wheel struck a stone, releasing the rack, and the comb ran down and stuck in the ground, which had the effect of pulling the team up short. 

Thus, what might have been another farm tragedy ended with only a few bruises and slight damage to the machine. But how near death he had been the farmer is not likely ever to forget.— 'Ekwah.'

No News

It is seldom that a newspaper admits that it has no news to offer its readers, but the 'Register' did in the early days of South Australia— on March 20, 1844. 

Ninety years ago, without cable, telegraph, or even regular shipping services, the task of producing a bi-weekly newspaper was no easy one. The 'Register' in this particular issue headed its editorial, 'Dearth of News,' and in the ensuing paragraph tells how isolated south Australia was from the rest of the world. 

'We are now nearly six months with out any direct news from England, and nearly two without anything of importance from the neighboring colonies,' it states. 'Of news from England, direct, we have no immediate prospect, no vessel, as far as we can learn, having been positively loaded, but the Emma, Hawk and Dorset may be considered as nearly due. 

'The absence of news has, of course, considerable influence upon our mercantile and trading operations, and it is some consolation to think that it will not be long continued.' 

Despite this admission, the price of the paper was not reduced— it remained at 6d. for its four pages.

— C.V.H. 

Bush Dentistry

I am often surprised when reading outback stories of the early days, to see how seldom any mention is made of one of the greatest of all hardships —violent toothache, when the nearest doctor or dentist was many days' journey away. 

It is a thing which can drive a human being to the verge of insanity with pain and lack of sleep, and I have seen dreadful expedients adopted to relieve the torture. 

The most awful of the lot was to burn alum on a red-hot penny, forming a corrosive akin to caustic soda. This was packed into the hollow tooth, and it would slowly eat away the tooth and some times part of the jawbone as well. No man ever used it twice, for if ever a 'cure' was worse than the complaint, it was this one. 

Next in order of frightfulness was to heat a needle point and kill the nerve in the hollow tooth by a quick jab from the red-hot needle It was also one which nobody was willing to try again in a lifetime. 

Having seen both these 'cures' tried on others, I chose to ride nearly 80 miles to a dentist when one of my own teeth became abscessed. I shall never forget that ride. My face was so swollen that one eye was completely closed. Every stride of my horse felt like a violent blow on the head, and, luckily for me. I fainted while waiting for the dentist. It spared me the awful agony of having a bad tooth extracted in cold blood, for there were no local anaesthetics in those days. 

Extractions with fencing pliers, with steel skewers bent like a button hook, or strong silk thread were fairly common, but the strangest extraction, and incidentally the best piece of outback blacksmithing I ever saw, took place on one of my prospecting trips in Western Australia. 

One of our party developed a raging toothache, which soon became so bad that something had to be done. We carried a pair of small bellows and a tiny anvil, with which a little forge was rigged whenever picks and drills wanted sharpening, and the blacksmith of the party set this up and began to make a pair of forceps. For hour after hour, on a day of blazing heat, he patiently tapped away on the anvil, then came back to the camp with a beautifully made pair of forceps. 

The sick man was lying on his blankets at the time, but as soon as he caught sight of them he gave a cry of terror, and bolted. He was too weak and ill to run far, however, and he was easily overtaken. "Let's get this job over as quick as we can," said the blacksmith, and we spreadeagled the sufferer on his back. While we held his arms and legs the blacksmith sat on his stomach, with a foot in each armpit, made him open his mouth, seized the tooth, an upper molar with the forceps, and gave a wrenching twist. An awful shriek burst from the victim as he parted company with the tooth, but within 24 hours he was nearly well again. 

But I had seen enough of this sort of thing. I was already carrying a scalpel, surgical scissors, needles, and gut for dealing with wounds, as well as a bottle of antiseptic, and on my next visit to Perth I bought a couple of pairs of forceps, a hypodermic syringe, and some local anaesthetic then still a new thing. A dentist gave me instructions how to use them when I explained things to him, and I was afterwards able to save a lot of suffering among people outback, chiefly children. 

A few years ago I received a letter from a woman in Western Australia who had seen my name mentioned in a Perth paper, and who wrote to me to remind me of the fact that she had never forgotten how I had relieved her of an aching tooth when she was a child. This led me to mention it to a dentist, and he, after hearing the facts, informed me that there was nothing in the laws of South Australia it the time to prevent me setting up in practice as a dentist, as I could produce proof that I had extracted teeth prior to 1900 for a fee — even if the latter took the form of having a drink at the expense of a grateful patient! All the nurses of the Australian Inland Missions are able to extract teeth nowadays, as Idriess mentions in 'Flynn of the Inland.' What a lot of suffering they must save the people of the outback. — 'Fossicker.'