17 June 1937

THE JOYS OF COUNTRY LIFE

How A City Business Man Was Cured Of Worrying

A well-known business man in the city came from a farming family, although he had left home as a young boy and was well out of touch with the life.

During the depression and afterwards he found the nervous strain of trying to keep his business off the rocks so great that he was threatened with a breakdown if he kept on at the same pressure. His doctor advised him to go away to the country for a fortnight's complete relaxation as a minimum, and longer if he could manage it. The businessman thought of his brother, who had often accepted his hospitality when he was down from the bush, and wrote up to the homestead announc \ing that he was coming to stay for a week or two.

At the station he was met by his brother in a sulky. 'Where's the car, Bill?' asked the Adelaide man. 'Sold it to pay the rates!' Bill told him.

They reached the farm without any adventures, and the following day Bill suggested a ride round the paddocks. The pair rode down to a creek that flowed through the property and along it until they came to a swampy patch. Stuck fast in the mud was a cow, which had contrived to wedge its fore-legs between the splintered halves of a fallen pine. The excursion promptly came to an end with a rush back to the homestead for ropes, tools and tackle. For over an hour the brothers labored to extract the beast from its predicament, finally dragging her clear with an expiring flutter of strength on their part. Both fore-legs were broken. Another journey back to house was necessary; this time for a weapon to dispatch the animal.

'There's fifteen quid up the spout, Jack,' Bill exclaimed as they rode off to explore the horse paddock. Before they had gone far. Bill was delighted to find that a draught mare had foaled, but his joy was tempered by the discovery that the mother was not in the best of condition after her ordeal. Being some thing of a vet., Bill labored with her and sent Jack home to secure a few odds and ends he needed to nurse the mare. Her condition gradually became more critical, so it was decided to drive her gently into the homestead while she could still walk, and treat her in the stockyard.

Next morning, however, the mare was dead and a couple of days later the foal pined away and followed. 'Another thirty-five quid gone west,' Bill lamented, 'not counting the stud fee.'

Jack had occasion to complain to Bill about the rats which were troubling him of a night as they scampered to and fro across the ceiling. Bill advised him not to take too much notice of the noise, as it was a bad year for rats, and the cats could not keep pace with them. Jack still felt dissatisfied, so he set every available trap in his bedroom, and found a few handfuls of wheat in the barn, which he shook up with powdered strychnine in a tin, and left as a bait for the brutes. The rats were a lot quieter that night, and Jack slept in until close to breakfast time the next morning.

Bill came in with an anxious face to waken him. At the sight of two or three dead rats on the floor, he looked less puzzled but as worried as before. He shook Jack by the shoulder. 'I say, Jack,' he demanded, 'did you bait a bit of wheat for the rats?' 'Yes,' answered his brother. 'Then you might have seen that it didn't go down between the cracks in the flooring boards!' Bill reproached him sadly. 'The fowls got in underneath the house after it just after daybreak, and there are only a couple of them left. My best pup got hold of a chicken and ate it, and he's out to it, too. I don't mind the fowls so much, but that dog would have fetched five or six quid, by the time he was properly broken in!'

Jack offered to make the damage good, but Bill refused to hear of any such thing, contending, as usual, that it was just another instance of cocky's luck. No further misadventure befell the brothers for two or three days, until bushfire threatened to come down across a ridge and burn the feed right out. A fire-break round the house was hurriedly burned, and then Jack and Bill set off to see if they could stem the flames before the fire came properly on to the property. They labored for hours, thirsty, singed and aching, but had the good fortune to check the fire long enough for a change of wind to carry it off in an other direction. They gladly returned to the house for a rest and a pipe.

Hardly had they settled down when a youngster came galloping bare-backed on a pony, and flung himself off at the sliprails. He ran up panting. 'Ryan's place is right in the track of the fire!' he gasped. 'Can you come over and give the neighbors a hand to try and save the house? Ryan's in town for the day!'

The two weary men saddled up, and set out for Ryan's place with the youngster. By the time they arrived, the flames had practically swept the property bare, and they joined their efforts to those of half-a-dozen willing bushmen, who were ploughing a break round the house, and trying to drench the woodwork as far as possible from the tank as a precaution against stray sparks setting the place alight. It did catch in two or three places, for the timber was baked as dry as tinder by the flames as fast as they threw the water on.

The critical stage, however, had passed by the time Ryan himself arrived post-haste from town, warned of the danger by a telephone call. 'I want to thank you all for your trouble,' he told the little band of volunteer fire-fighters, 'but I have some bad news. I was in seeing the bank today about loans and mortgage, but there's no hope of breaking square. The place is going to be sold up, so I'm afraid you've wasted your time as far as I'm concerned.'

More tired than ever, and thoroughly disgruntled with the turn events had taken, Bill and Jack set out home, mourning their wasted efforts, for banks were not exactly popular round the district at the time. As they came in the sliprails, Bill gave a gasp of dismay and galloped off to a fence that separated two of his paddocks. Caught fast in the wires was his best bull, which had turned right over in its struggles and broken its neck.

'Another,' Bill started to say. 'Don't!' interrupted Jack. 'Let's get to work and burn the thing!'

A few days later Jack was back in his office, working busily, when the telephone went. He picked up the receiver to find that his doctor was reminding him to pay a visit. 'I'm sorry, Doc,' Jack told him, 'but I forgot all about that appointment I made with you before I went away. I didn't have what you would call a wonderful holiday, but it's done me the world of good. I feel now that I'm fit for work. I think half the trouble was that every little thing that went wrong used to upset me, and get on my nerves! Now things can go wrong all day long and I hardly notice them.' — 'Greenhide.'

Best Soup He Ever Tasted

Two of us with our droving plants were once camped a few miles outside a small town in North-Western Queensland. As a fall of rain prevented us from moving on for at least a week, some of the men from both plants decided to spend a day or two in the township.

In due course they returned a little sick and sorry the alcohol sold in those days in the out back was rather potent. One of the men, evidently suffering the after-effects more so than the others, regaled himself on all the sauce available. All the sympathy the sufferer got from his mates was ridicule.

I had a bottle of brandy in my camp, and although the sufferer was employed by the other drover, I thought that I would relieve the pangs a bit and intended to give him a big nip before he turned in for the night. Late in the afternoon I was over yarning to the other drover and could not understand the mirth on the latter's face. Looking in the direction of what had apparently caused the amusement. I noticed the invalid dipping a pint pot into a beer bucket standing near the fire. Thinking that the bucket contained soup. I saw no reason for my friend's mirth, so I asked him what it was all about.

'Just listen,' he said. 'Heigh, Jerry, is that good soup?' called out the drover. 'My oath,' came the reply, as once again the pint pot was dipped in. 'Just the stuff to get a man right; come and have some,' Then came the reason of my friend's mirth. 'That's corn-beef water.' he called out, 'and the horse-tailer dipped about forty pairs of greenhide hobbles in it this morning.' 'Don't care if he washed in it,' called Jerry, as he again filled his pint. 'It's the best soup I've tasted for years.'

The amusement Jerry caused more than repaid me for the liberal nip of brandy I gave him that night. He said next morning that he felt better, and vowed that it was the corn-beef water flavored with greenhide that had put him right.— 'Drover.'

Aborigines Romantic Career

Few aborigines have had the romantic career of Moses Mack, who got his surname from one of the early pioneers of South-Western Queensland, who took him as a lad to Victoria. Moses, when I first encountered him loitering round a hotel in South western Queensland, some 25 years ago, was wearing an old football jersey.

'Heigh! Jacky,' called out a man near me, 'you play football?' I received a surprise when I heard the old aborigine answer, in quite a cultured voice. 'Not now, but at one time I used to have an occasional game.'

Shortly afterwards I heard a little of Moses Mack's history, and one day I put in a couple of interesting hours talking to him. Moses must have been quite young when his benefactor took him to Victoria, for he remembered little about the journey south. While with the Macks in Victoria, Moses received some education, so much so that he learnt to read and write, and he had his own banking account. Many times, Moses said, he accompanied his boss, the late Joseph Mack, of Berrybank, Lismore, to Melbourne. He became quite romantic as he told of writing cheques and getting them cashed without any trouble at the bank in Melbourne.

'How will you have it. Mister Mack?' Moses would say, in an affected voice, evidently taking off the bank teller. 'I was a big hit in those days,' he added.

After several years with the Macks, Moses left Berrybank, his intention being to return to Queensland; but, evidently running out of funds, he secured employment on a farm, owned by a widow. Moses must have been the big hit he said he was, for after he had been working for the widow for some months, the lady proposed that she and Moses should marry.

'Why didn't you marry her?' I asked Moses. 'No fear,' was the reply. 'I was under 30 then, and she was an old woman, nearly 80.'

Moses decided that things were a little too serious for him on the farm, so he sought fresh pastures. After leaving the farm, Moses had a varied career, until finally he became a black tracker in Queensland. Moses served with the police for many years, but as he grew older the urge was on him to get back to the country of his birth. Eventually, relieved from police work, Moses returned to the Farrer's Creek country, South western Queensland, and did the natural thing quite obviously. He took unto himself a lubra, and seemed quite content to end his days in the blacks' camp. As with most of his race, association with the whites for years could not save Moses from the inevitable. The call of Nature is too strong in the aborigines, and as they age, no matter what their upbringing, few can resist the urge to get back to their own people. Moses was no exception to the general rule. — 'Old-Timer.'

Rival Sausages

Many years ago in a South-Eastern town a storekeeper started a small bacon-factory in connection with his business, and to get rid of the cuttings and scraps of otherwise good meat, he turned them into sausages and other forms of delicatessen. Having hit upon a good recipe for seasoning, he soon commanded a good share of the trade in smallgoods.

One of the town's butchers, becoming somewhat perturbed at the loss of trade, set about making an effort to recover it. Adjoining his premises was a chemist, who was a regular customer for the new make of sausages One morning the butcher called the chemist to the dividing fence and displaying half a dozen of his latest make, said. 'Here, Mr. Pills, just you try these sausages and see if they ain't better than the other fellow's. I made 'em out of my own 'ead.'— Tanta Tyga.'