The Best Australian Bush Stories Read online

  We stacked our gear, camping equipment, medical kit and the cages near the wharf and went koala hunting.

  The trees on Kudulana are all very small and spindly and we had no trouble locating the koalas. There were only twelve, and they were in a grove of eucalypts around a large deep pool surrounded by ferns. They were all nestled in forked branches at the tops of the trees. But the trees were only three or four metres high, so the koalas were well within reach of our long-handled nets.

  All Mary Anne and I had to do was get them loose, catch them in our nets, then transfer them to the wooden-slatted cages. In theory.

  The koalas, furry balls with their heads tucked into their stomachs, didn’t seem remotely interested in our presence.

  ‘OK, we’ll try that fellow first,’ said Mary Anne briskly, pointing to a largish koala nestling in a fork not much higher than I could reach. ‘You frighten him and I’ll catch him.’

  She raised her net so that the mouth was just under the koala and stood poised, waiting to see which way the koala would jump. I held my net ready as a backup.

  The koala seemed to be asleep, and I wondered for the first time just how one went about startling such a lethargic creature.

  ‘Should I poke it with my net?’ I asked Mary Anne.

  ‘No, that’ll just make it hang on. Shout.’

  I had no idea in what terms one shouted at koalas, but I did my best.

  ‘Boo!’ I cried.

  The koala didn’t stir.

  ‘Boo! Boo!’ I shouted, as loudly as I could.

  The koala opened one eye. Surprisingly, it was bloodshot. It looked at me for a long level moment, then wearily closed its eye again.

  ‘It doesn’t startle easily,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Mary Anne. ‘Try shaking the tree.’

  I laid down my net, grasped the tree which was very slender, no more than a sapling, really—and shook it violently.

  The koala opened both its red-rimmed eyes and looked down on me malevolently. Then it applied a defensive device common to most arboreal marsupials. My hair, beard, face and shoulders were drenched with foully acrid fluid.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Mary Anne, ‘I should have warned you about that.’

  I did my best with a handkerchief while the koala, apparently satisfied with its work, closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

  ‘Why don’t we push the bloody thing off the branch with our nets and catch it on the ground?’ I said when I was more or less dry, but still smelling vile.

  ‘You can’t dislodge a koala once it’s got a hold on something. They’ve got a grip of iron.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do? Nothing short of a bomb is going to startle that creature.’

  Mary Anne thought. ‘Could you climb that tree?’

  I looked at the tree. It wasn’t very big, but it would hold my weight and the koala wasn’t far up.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then go up and shout in its ear. Don’t touch it. It’ll probably jump when you get near.’

  With considerable effort I hauled myself to the base of the branch in which the koala was snuggling. I wasn’t much more than my own height above the ground, and I could have reached out and touched the koala, which was not far from my head. I kept my head carefully away from the little beast.

  ‘Boo!’ I shouted.

  The koala took no notice. I edged closer along the branch.

  The branch broke. Branch, koala and I dropped abruptly into the thick ferns below.

  The koala landed on its back. I landed spread-eagled on the koala. The koala was out of sight beneath my considerable bulk, but I knew it was there because it was growling and snorting and trying to dig its way to freedom through my yielding flesh.

  It was an extraordinary experience down in those ferns, winded, able to see nothing but fern fronds, half-stunned so that I couldn’t coordinate myself, with that hard-muscled, surprisingly large fur-covered length of malevolence trying to disembowel me.

  Where the hell was Mary Anne?

  In fact she was running around to the other side of the patch of ferns to catch the koala when it came out.

  Now, koalas have another protective device, apart from the one they use on you from a great height. They cling to the belly of their oppressor and simply hang on with tooth and claw. It’s a mechanism probably designed to work on dingoes. Once the koala is clinging to the dog’s underside, the dog can’t get at it with its jaws. I gather that in these circumstances the koala is quite prepared to hang on until the dingo collapses.

  I didn’t know this at the time. It wouldn’t have helped if I had.

  The koala evidently gave up all hope of escape and decided on the anti-dingo defence. It was upside down in relation to me and its back claws grasped my chest and dug in. Its front claws grasped my thighs and dug in. Its head went between my legs and its teeth dug into my crotch.

  Fortunately a koala’s mouth isn’t very big. But it’s big enough.

  I screamed.

  ‘What’s happened?’ called Mary Anne, out of sight.

  ‘It’s got me!’ I bellowed, rolling over on my back and clawing at the koala with both hands. It rolled with me and clamped its hold tighter—all its holds.

  I screamed again and started pummelling the brute with my fists. It was like pummelling fur-covered wood and made as much impression. The thing had muscles fashioned from some substance far harder than any animal tissue ought to be.

  Again I screamed and I could hear Mary Anne crashing through the ferns towards me.

  The koala, presumably thinking I had reinforcements coming, gripped harder still at all points.

  It was growling like something demented, which it was, of course, and its backside was almost in my face—even my peril in no way diminished the frightful stench of the creature.

  Mary Anne’s head came in sight over the ferns. I was thrashing and clawing in a tangle of fern fronds and she couldn’t see exactly what was going on beyond the fact that I had the koala and the koala had me.

  ‘Careful you don’t hurt it,’ she called. I would have laughed in different circumstances.

  ‘Get it off!’ I gasped.

  ‘Never get him off now,’ she said vexedly, ‘I’ll have to sedate him.’ And the bloody woman trotted off to the wharf to get her medical kit.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I heard her call as she disappeared through the ferns. ‘Just lie still—don’t worry, he won’t let go now.’

  That wasn’t my worry at all. ‘Mary Anne!’ I roared, ‘The brute has got me by the . . .’ but she didn’t hear me.

  There was no way I could lie there until she came back, with that creature vigorously trying to desex me.

  I struggled to my feet complete with koala and tried to run after her.

  Ever tried to run with a koala’s claws in your chest and thighs and its teeth in your crotch? It’s not possible.

  I was very close to tears of rage, pain and frustration. I floundered through the ferns and tried barging into a tree, koala first. All I did was drive tooth and claw further in. I tried falling on the damned thing. I winded myself.

  On all fours now and near collapse, my disintegrating mind suddenly grasped the fact that I was on the edge of a pool in the centre of the koala-haunted grove of trees.

  With a manic cry of hope I scuttled forward, took a deep breath and flung myself in, complete with koala.

  The water was blessedly deep and we went down like stones.

  I didn’t know how long a koala could hold its breath but as far as I was concerned we were both staying down until the koala let go or we both drowned.

  Unfortunately, it seems that koalas can hold their breath indefinitely.

  The koala was a dead weight holding me down and we stayed in those brown dark depths for what seemed like half an eternity. The pain in my bursting lungs began to equal my other pains.

  Eventually, I realised that there was no need for me to have my head under wa
ter. It may seem I was slow in reaching an obvious conclusion but if you’ve never been submerged in a bush pool in the clutches of a furious koala, you can’t appreciate how difficult it is to think clearly in the circumstances.

  I struck for the surface, got my head out, breathed deeply and gratefully and set about trying to throttle the koala.

  Koalas are very hard to throttle, particularly when they have the sort of grip on you this one had on me. But I tried hard, completely disregarding the fact that it was a member of a protected species.

  The koala seemed determined to die under water with my fingers around its neck. That was all right by me, as long as it died quickly.

  Then, even through my pain, I had the terrible worry that a dead koala might not loosen its grip. Would I need surgery to detach me from this malign beast?

  Then the beast gave up—a good twenty minutes, I swear, after it was first submerged, although Mary Anne has claimed she was away less than a minute. Time is, of course, relative.

  The koala let go and surfaced near my face. Its toy features were expressionless, but it coughed and growled viciously and I backed away fearfully.

  A gleam of contempt seemed to appear in its bloodshot eyes and it turned and swam expertly to the edge of the pool, clambered out, trundled across to a tree, climbed it, looked down at me bleakly, and went to sleep, dripping water.

  I climbed out of the pool.

  Mary Anne came back and expressed surprise that the koala had let go and asked why I was all wet.

  I said I would explain later and went off into the bush to examine my person.

  The overalls I was wearing were of very thick cloth and no serious damage had been done. No thanks to the koala.

  Mary Anne and I eventually caught all the koalas on the island and set them free on the mainland, but I didn’t carry out the task with good grace. I’ll never go to the aid of the brutes again.

  I do not like koalas.

  THE DELIGHTS OF

  THE BUSH

  ‘AH CHEE’

  AMONG A CERTAIN CLASS of fatuous writers there has always existed a custom of sending forth gushes of gladsome song, and warbling, in more or less tuneful warbs, about the pleasures of country life.

  The miserable wretch who is condemned by hard fate to live in the city, with all its inconveniences (such as postal deliveries, newspapers, shops and trams), is held up to the gaze of public sympathy; while all are requested to envy the lucky individual whose habitation is in the backwoods, about 387 miles from nowhere in particular, who lives in a humpy made of several sheets of stringybark, with three big rocks on top to hold on the roof, and who has to walk seven miles for his mail.

  When he does walk the seven miles he usually finds there is no mail, as the mailman couldn’t cross the Buggabulla ‘crick’. Or has lost his horse, or is drunk, or something.

  It is time that some hard-fisted resident of the back country formed himself into a Royal Commission to inquire into the best mode of inflicting capital punishment, diversified with floggings, on the perjurers who so wantonly trifle with the immortal truth.

  If a ton or two of these miscreants were placed in the hands of a conscientious forwarding agent, and dumped down in judiciously chosen spots in the back-blocks where they would have to chop wood, and cook damper, and boil junk, and ‘graft’ hard all day, and walk to the township for provisions, and do without society and clean shirts and socks, the amount of imbecile verse on the glorious lot of the bush dweller would be reduced by several cubic yards.

  I know it—I have lived in the bush till the light of my once beauteous hazel eyes has become dimmed with suffering, and the noble chestnut curls that once adorned my commanding brow have vanished into thin hair.

  And when something does occur that momentarily lifts a man from the black gulf of despondency into which he has sunk, it is morally certain that something else will occur which has the effect of making him feel much the same as ever.

  Here is an illustration.

  One of the many afflictions which I bear (with as large a quantity of fortitude as is possible for one who, after all, is but human) is the nightly visitation of numerous bovines of inquiring character and assorted sexes.

  My hut is not fenced in; indeed it would make little difference if it were, for, when the average bush cow means business, such a trifle as a fence does not daunt her. So, about the time I am snugly settled in my bunk, and have knocked the ashes out of my last pipe, some robust young steer begins to paw up the dirt outside with sickening thuds, preparatory to organising a party to prospect for soap, or towels, or shirts, or similar delicacies.

  Pretty soon his comrades, and the milky mothers of the herd, and the little cowlets, and eleven of eight working bullocks, chip in. They eat up any soap that is left about, also saddlecloths and undershirts and pyjamas and socks. Then they ‘moo’. Singly at first, then as a number of duettists, afterwards in trios, and eventually their fresh young voices ring out in the frosty atmosphere as a full orchestral symphony.

  Sometimes they go away after this, but mostly they stay till daylight.

  One night I arose in my wrath, and a brief nightshirt, and hunted them all away, through a very irritating wattle scrub, for about two miles and a distance. When I returned, covered with splinters and perspiration, I found that I had overlooked two brindled steers and their ma. They were inside the hut chewing my blankets.

  What is the use of a man forming a resolution not to swear?

  The exertion of pursuit and the subsequent wrath did not agree with me. I took a chill and later contracted inflammation of the lungs, combined with two large abscesses on the liver and a rupture of the bicuspid artery.

  I also stubbed my big toe while pursuing the oxen.

  Prompt remedial measures were necessary, so I made a warm mustard-plaster and applied it to the ailing parts. Next day I threw it out. It seemed to excite some interest among the leading members of the herd which visited me at sundown. A meditative, matronly-looking old cow elbowed one of her daughters out of the way and tackled the poultice in a sort of nil admirari manner. She got a good grip and laid it well back on her tongue. Then the poultice began to get its work in.

  The female ox laid it down, sighed deeply, and went away to look for sour grass.

  The next candidate was a red steer that I had once helped to pull out of a shaft. On that occasion he had put down his head and charged his rescuers as soon as he emerged. He opened the poultice out before sampling it, and then got about seven ounces of the mustard well under his tongue before his suspicions were aroused. Then he retired to the creek, breathing hard.

  I thought I had hit on a splendid idea. Visions of taking out a patent for the invention, and getting about £10,000 royalty from the Agricultural Bureau, flashed through my mind. I was positively exhilarated! For the first time in thirteen months I smiled! The thought that I had at last got level with those piratical beeves had a truly wonderful effect on my sorrow-laden bosom.

  For five minutes I was ecstatically happy.

  Then one of my most constant interviewers came along. His name is Strawberry, and he is a working bullock. ‘Working’ is a courtesy title, given to Strawberry because he is yoked up with the team, but it has no real significance, for Strawberry has long abandoned any idea of actually pulling. He is a gaunt male beast, and is scored with ancient whip marks, so that he looks like a railway map. His favourite food is gunny bags, but he will also eat tarpaulins and bridles.

  Strawberry ambled up, with a modest confidence oozing out of every square inch of his hide. He swallowed the poultice without a tear. In fact, he lingered over it as if he loved it, and I saw him chewing the cud of that mustard-plaster three weeks afterwards.

  When I get over this spree, I will try the effect on Strawberry of arsenious acid spread on dynamite.

  THE TALLAGANDRA

  TURKEY

  FRANK DANIEL

  WE WERE VISITING UNCLE Roy’s farm at Tallagandra, near Gundaroo. It was
sometime around 1951.

  As was usual in those days, the folks went inside the big old house and left us kids outside with the standard message, which was ‘don’t get into any mischief’.

  I had already seen plenty of opportunities for mischief that I could get into.

  Uncle’s farm always had so many extra things on offer in the way of ‘entertainment value’. Horse-drawn vehicles and farm equipment scattered about the farm and in the sheds offered plenty of scope for ‘imagining’.

  The last warning given us as we watched and waited for the folk to go inside, however, was from Uncle himself.

  He said, ‘Stay away from that flaming gobbler or I’ll give youse a kick in the pants!’

  Gobbler!

  What gobbler? Where’s the gobbler?

  Quick, let’s find the gobbler! What could be wrong, or right, or interesting or dangerous, for that matter, with an ordinary old gobbler?

  Colin, our cousin, was about our age, and was used to doing what he was told. He knew what a kick in the pants from Uncle Roy was and was not as eager as Jim and I were to find the turkey that was supposed to be worth a good kick in the pants.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ we asked our cousin.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Is he cranky?’

  ‘Is he mean?’

  ‘Why can’t we go near him?’

  ‘Because he’ll chase ya! He hates kids!’ said Colin.

  ‘Good! Let’s find him and have a look!’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Jim.

  ‘He’s locked in the back garden so he can’t get us,’ warned Colin.

  Behind the old Tallagandra Homestead was an orderly vegetable garden set out in neat rows and paths.

  There was no sign of the gobbler as we walked along outside the garden fence.

  It was deemed necessary by Jim and me, although it was against our cousin’s wishes, to climb the fence and make a more positive search.

  What harm could a gobbler do? Besides, there were three of us and only one of him. He wouldn’t stand a chance.