23 April 1936

A GOOD NIGHT'S 'SPORT'

Sidelights On A Duck Shooting Expedition

Shortly after the opening of the season a friend of mine suggested a night's duck-shooting. I told him that I did not think it would be worth while, as I had already been out and found that there were practically no ducks about. 'That's all right,' he assured me. 'There isn't, as far as most people are concerned, but I know a wonderful place where hardly anyone has been. There's a swamp out near Hogg's Lake fairly moving with ducks. A chap that I know was out there the other night, and the ducks were so thick that they were fighting over the water.'

Nearly every shooter has heard tales like that; and it is a reflection on the strange psychology of duck-shooters in general that they will fall for such tales as regularly as the shooting sea son comes round. So it was that the following afternoon found three enthusiastic shooters bumping over a rough bush track in a disreputable baby car. Arriving in due course at the swamp, we found it quite devoid of any birds even remotely resembling ducks. Of course, we were not discouraged. Any shooter knows quite well that ducks never fly till after sunset. 'Where they fly from is, naturally enough, one of the most intriguing mysteries known to followers of the gun.

We chose a nice cosy spot to camp, and after collecting a quantity of ti tree wood, proceeded with that time honored custom of 'swinging the billy.' As is usual when the water has been boiled on a fire made from salt-water ti-tree, the tea entered into the spirit of things and took on a strange smoky taste, in some indefinable way linked with ti-tree fires and duck-shooting expeditions. After we had drunk a quantity of the black, evil-looking beverage, we washed the taste away with a bottle of liquid that my friend had brought along, just in case the radiator should run dry.

By the time we had finished a hasty meal, the sun was setting; so we cleaned our guns and proceeded to the swamp. As we forced our way through the undergrowth bordering the swamp, we were astonished to hear a low, rumbling sound emanating from a clump of bushes near the water's edge. We walked across and found two men, who, judging from the supply of ammunition arrayed in their cartridge belts, had heard all about the place where 'the ducks were fighting over the water.'

We exchanged the customary duck-shooter's greeting, 'Got anything yet?' and learned that, like ourselves, they had just arrived. After a few minutes' conversation we moved on in search of the most suitable place at which to wait. Two of us chose a likely looking spot, and proceeded to take cover in a clump of reeds, while the third man went a short distance further along. Just as we had got comfortably settled, the bushes parted, and three more shooters put in appearance. I would have been scarcely human had I refrained from commenting that the place that 'nobody knew about' seemed to be attracting a fair crowd. 'Marvellous, isn't it?' my friend said. 'But it must be good, or they wouldn't be rolling up like this. There'll probably be plenty for everyone, when they start to fly.'

It was just about then that the mosquitoes started to fly, and there were plenty for everyone. There is a belief among shooters that tobacco smoke will keep mosquitoes at bay. Personally, I have never been able to either prove or disprove the theory, because it is so difficult to tell just how bad the mosquitoes would be if you were not keeping them at bay. My friend and I put up a good showing, and so did the other shooters (forces had meanwhile been strengthened by another car load)— shooters, I mean, not mosquitoes. Every fifty yards round the swamp, miniature clouds of smoke arose and hung on the calm night air. Presently, the moon sailed up. casting great patches of shadow around the border of the placid pool. When one is slapping at mosquitoes, it often happens that he does not hear a duck 'pitch,' even though it may be quite close to him.

Suddenly, my friend grasped my sleeve. 'Look!'' he whispered. 'There's one.' He was right. Only about forty yards off, too. 'Give it to him,' I said. 'No. You shoot it,' he replied. It was no time for arguing. Raising my gun, I fired (both, barrels at once). Being precariously balanced on my toes, it was perhaps to be expected that I should fall backwards into three inches of muddy water; but a true duck shooter does not notice minor details at the time. 'You got him!' cried my friend. Not even waiting to remove my shoes, I rushed in to pick up my bird. But it was not a bird at all. It was only a shadow cast by the half-submerged stump of a ti-tree.

Ten minutes later, a shooter on our left fired and did the conventional rushing-in act. As he waded ashore, we called out to enquire what he had got. 'It was only a diver,' he said, sadly. 'Did you get it?' we asked. 'No,' he replied, even more sadly. 'It dived.'

There was not any more shooting that evening. There was nothing flying— apart from mosquitoes. They were not fighting over the water. They were fighting over the shooters. We wandered back to the camp and again 'swung the billy.' After washing the taste of more ti-tree flavored tea away with the contents of another bottle from the radiator supply, we felt much more cheerful. 'Probably they'll fly later, and we'll most likely get some shooting towards morning,' we told each other. We built up as good a fire as it is possible to make from ti-tree wood, and lay down beside it— at least, two of us did. Our friend sat up and played his banjo. Marvellous instrument a banjo. It brought the other shooters up, and they all sat round and sang themselves to sleep.

It was quarter-to-two when I woke up. I did not have a watch, but I knew that it was quarter-to-two because that is the time you always wake up when sleeping beside a ti-tree fire. The fire had just gone out, and the night had turned sold. The mosquitoes had also found our retreat. I tried to go to sleep again, but it was too cold; and anyway, there were the mosquitoes. I was just trying to persuade myself that it would be considerably less hardship to turn out and make up the fire than suffer my present discomforts, when the sleeper on my light sat up and started muttering things about life in general and duck shooting in particular. I waited till he had made up the fire, and then I sat up and agreed with everything he had said. We opened the only remaining bottle of radiator reserve, and then, one after another, all the sleepers round the fire sat up and started to yawn.

One man got up and starting walking about. In the darkness he trod on my friend's banjo. The banjo gave a queer, strangled sort of a sob, and my friend called the offending party a great, clumsy idiot. The culprit said that he did not see the damned thing there; and anyway, in his opinion, all banjoes ought to be walked on. Fearing trouble, I said I wondered if any ducks had arrived at the swamp, and suggested that we ought to go and have a look. 'Not worth while,' pointed out one of the others. 'If there were any about, you'd hear them flying.'

He had scarcely spoken, when half a-dozen shots reverberated on the calm night air. As a man, we hurried down to see what had happened. We found that a car load of new arrivals had bagged twenty teal. Cursing ourselves for our slowness, we grabbed our guns and spent the remainder of the night walking round the swamp. At the first streak of dawn, my friend and I returned to camp. Utterly exhausted, we threw ourselves down for a rest. A few minutes later, the third member of our party returned, and declaring that he had just heard a duck flying, suggested that he was going to have another look round the swamp. We were too worn out to be sarcastic.

Five minutes later, a quick double again brought us to our feet. Hastening down to see what had been 'bagged,' we found our friend wading ashore carrying a strange looking bird. 'Only a 'mussy' (musk duck) , he explained wearily. 'There were three of them. I thought they were black duck.' We did not say much. We were too weak. After our return, we found that we had all contracted that duck shooter's dilemma known as 'ti-tree itch.' We swore off duck shooting for life; but then, we did that last year and the year before, yes and the year before that, too. — A.H.B.

Life Stories Of South Australia (1936, April 23). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92343199

Aboriginal Ferocity

Some time last year a full-blooded aborigine, the adopted son of Joe Cooper, the famous Northern Territory buffalo hunter, created a sensation by diving off the Darwin jetty into a swarm of large sharks and disembowelling three of them. He was naked, and carried between his teeth a long, straight butcher's knife, shaped like a dagger, with a very fine point and as sharp as a razor. As the sharks came at him he dived under them and ripped open their bellies, inflicting wounds probably a foot long and four or five inches deep.

Some time later his mother was swimming in a sheltered bay on the Coburg Peninsula when she was attacked and fatally injured by a large shark, which inflicted ghastly wounds before it could be beaten off by other aborigines. Her son was away on a droving expedition a long way inland, and did not return to Darwin till some months later, and when told of his mother's death his grief was pitiful. He seemed to believe that he was responsible for his mother's death— that in killing his mother the sharks had had revenge for his exploit at the Darwin jetty.

Tommy, cooper's adopted son, is a wonderfully well-built man, tall and sinewy, with a powerful, broad chest, and bands of muscle standing out in his legs and arms like bands of steel. 'I must get that fellow,' he said to his foster-father as he sailed away in a small boat for the bay in the Coburg Peninsula. His only weapon was his razor-edged long knife.

He anchored his boat in the bay at the exact spot where his mother had been killed and waited patiently for the appearance of the killer. He had not long to wait. Sharks seem to know that boats at anchor invariably throw overboard scraps of foodstuff which are greedily devoured by them. A large fin appeared above the water, showing that a big shark was making for the boat. Standing on the deck, naked, with his knife in his mouth, the black boy dived into the water right under the shark, and with one powerful slash ripped open its belly. Violently lashing the water with its tail, with its entrails protruding and a trail of blood following in its wake, the shark swam out to sea, where it would be attacked by other sharks which would finish the gruesome job.

This performance was repeated until six big sharks had been disposed of, and the aboriginal thirst for revenge had been satisfied, the anchor was lifted and the boat returned to Darwin. Tommy told a Darwin press agent that he could have sunk his knife much deeper and killed the sharks right out, but he preferred to make them experience some of the agony which his mother had suffered before she succumbed to her injuries. Notwithstanding his State school education, and his fluent English, Tommy retains all the superstitions and beliefs of the aborigines, and nothing could convince him that the death of his mother was not an act of revenge on the part of the sharks. — J.A.P.

Aboriginal Ferocity (1936, April 23). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92343198

A Prank On The Anthropologists

A party of scientific investigators was camping down by the creek. It became a custom for them and the residents of the station to visit each other on alternate evenings and exchange news and views of the day. For city folk the University men were very fair bushmen, and conversation seldom languished. They often spoke to us of the most remarkable set of aboriginal rock carvings in Australia, at Muogamarra in New South Wales, which are on an out-of-the-way ridge in the Hawkesbury district, and apparently they were hoping to find something of the kind up our way.

Our boys reckoned privately that New South Wales would not have much on what South Australia had to show in this direction already, but apparently the scientists were prepared to admit themselves outclassed at the start without even trying. For a few days the boys were very mysterious and hard to find when wanted, but they were undoubtedly pleased with themselves.

Finally they went down to the University camp one evening, and announced that they had found the daddy of all aboriginal rock carvings. The eyes of the scientists lighted up as they took in the description of the sights that awaited them in the ridges of the back paddock next day.

We all set off at cockcrow, and a comparatively short ride brought us to a limestone ridge, literally teeming with carvings, of all sorts, sizes, shapes and descriptions. They were blackened and discolored as the rest of the limestone, and that must have been the reason I had missed seeing them at some time or other myself, for I had ridden over the ground often enough at different times. French chalk and cameras were going in one direction, tracing tissues somewhere else, and tongues loose everywhere in the twinkling of an eye. It was a find.

I poked round the edges; presently one of the elder investigators drew me aside with a twinkle in his eye. 'Look at this one,' he said. 'Do you think the blacks ever encountered bunyips of this shape?' I looked and saw something suspiciously like an elephant. What is more, the outline had unmistakable been spitlocked before the chisel had been applied. That settled it; no wild black ever saw a pickaxe before Cook's time.

The lads soon owned up to the prank they had played, and confessed that they had aged their work by pulling rough-edged stones over the chisel marks, and then burning a collection of branches, which calcined the stone and made it black enough to match the background.

That evening, both boys were heard to yell loudly and realistically on turning in, probably due to the effects of the prickly burrs of various descriptions which decorated the underside of their bottom sheets. They never sheeted home the blame successfully, but as a matter of fact I donated the materials for lining the sheets, and a couple of enthusiastic University men supplied the labor, they described it as a labor of love. — 'Warrigal.'

A Prank On The Antrophologists [sic] (1936, April 23). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92343197