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CHAPTER ONE
I Remember, I Remember
"Boo, hoo! Ow, ow; Oh! Oh! Me'll die. Boo, hoo. The pain, the pain! Boo, hoo!"
"Come, come, now. Daddy's little mate isn't going to turn Turk like that, is she? I'll put some fat out of the dinner bag on it, and tie it up in my hanky. Don't cry anymore now. Hush, you must not cry! You'll make old Dart buck if you kick up a row like that."
That is my first recollection of life. I was barely three. I can remember the majestic gum trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on their straight white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked stream, which disappeared beneath a steep, scrubby hill on our left. It was an hour past noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant part of the run, where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left home early in the dewy morning, carrying me in front of him on a little brown pillow which my mother had made for the purpose. We had put the lumps of rock salt in the troughs on the other side of the creek. The stringybark roof of the salt shed which protected the troughs from rain peeped out picturesquely from the musk and peppercorn shrubs by which it was densely surrounded, and was visible from where we lunched. I refilled the quart pot in which we had boiled our tea with water from the creek, Father doused our fire out with it, and then tied the quart to the D of his saddle with a piece of green hide. The green-hide bags in which the salt had been carried were hanging on the hooks of the pack saddle which encumbered the bay pack horse. Father's saddle and the brown pillow were on Dart, the big gray horse on which he generally carried me, and we were on the point of making tracks for home.
Preparatory to starting, Father was muzzling the dogs which had just finished what lunch we had left. This process, to which the dogs strongly objected, was rendered necessary by a cogent reason. Father had brought his strychnine flask with him that day, and in hopes of causing the death of a few dingoes, had put strong doses of its contents in several dead beasts which we had come across.
Whilst the dogs were being muzzled, I busied myself in plucking ferns and flowers. This disturbed a big black snake which was curled at the butt of a tree fern.
"Bitey! bitey!" I yelled, and Father came to my rescue, dispatching the reptile with his stock whip. He had been smoking, and dropped his pipe on the ferns. I picked it up, and the glowing embers which fell from it burnt my dirty little fat fists. Hence the noise with which my story commences.
In all probability it was the burning of my fingers which so indelibly impressed the incident on my infantile mind. My father was accustomed to take me with him, but that is the only jaunt at that date which I remember, and that is all I remember of it. We were twelve miles from home, but how we reached there I do not know.
My father was a swell in those days—held Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East, and Bin Bin West, which three stations totaled close to 200,000 acres. Father was admitted into swelldom merely by right of his position. His pedigree included nothing beyond a grandfather. My mother, however, was a full-fledged aristocrat. She was one of the Bossiers of Caddagat, who numbered among their ancestry one of the depraved old pirates who pillaged England with William the Conqueror.
"Dick" Melvyn was as renowned for hospitality as joviality, and our comfortable, wide-verandaed, irregularly built slab house in its sheltered nook amid the Timlinbilly Ranges was ever full to overflowing. Doctors, lawyers, squatters, commercial travelers, bankers, journalists, tourists, and men of all kinds and classes crowded our well-spread board; but seldom a female face, except Mother's, was to be seen there, Bruggabrong being a very out-of-the-way place.
I was both the terror and the amusement of the station. Old boundary riders and drovers inquire after me with interest to this day.
I knew everyone's business, and was ever in danger of publishing it at an inopportune moment.
In flowery language, selected from slang used by the station hands, and long words picked up from our visitors, I propounded unanswerable questions which brought blushes to the cheeks of even tough old wine-bibbers.
Nothing would induce me to show more respect to an appraiser of the runs than to a boundary rider, or to a clergyman than a drover. I am the same to this day. My organ of veneration must be flatter than a pancake, because to venerate a person simply for his position I never did or will. To me the Prince of Wales will be no more than a shearer, unless when I meet him he displays some personality apart from his princeship—otherwise he can go hang.
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Published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Group (USA)
Inc.
First published in Scotland by William Blackwood and Sons
1901
This edition with an introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert published
in Penguin Books 2007
Introduction copyright ©
Sandra M. Gilbert, 2007