The Best Australian Bush Stories Read online

  ‘Serves you right,’ I said.

  Chivalry did not permit me to laugh out loud, so I contented myself with a quiet smile.

  ‘Are you in the habit of indulging in this sort of horseplay?’ I drawled.

  Then we walked away—me and the goanna.

  But for that goanna I might now have been the squatter’s son-in-law, pushing sheep about the place and picking the flies out of my ears, with a trip to the city once a year when the Show was on.

  No, one doesn’t have to go abroad for thrills. In one day on an outback station I was—a) Kicked by a horse.

  b) Chased by a bull.

  c) Savaged by a dog.

  d) Lacerated on a barbed-wire fence.

  Also, in some mysterious fashion, I managed to put the lighting plant out of action.

  You can’t tell me anything about bush life. I am fully qualified to put an advertisement on the ‘positions wanted’ column containing the words, ‘Do anything. Go anywhere.’

  Address all communications to ‘Lantana W. (Wallaby) Lower’.

  I am equally good as a horse-breaker, tutor, or native companion.

  THE DRUNKEN

  KANGAROO

  KENNETH COOK

  MY DEEP FEAR OF all Australian animals probably stems from my childhood association with an alcoholic kangaroo.

  My father was a policeman and for a time was stationed at Walgett in northern New South Wales. He, my mother and I found ourselves living next door to an old man who kept as a pet a huge red kangaroo.

  The old man’s name was Benny and he called his kangaroo Les after a famous boxer. Benny was a fuzzy-haired, sparrow-like man with a sweet disposition. Les was almost two metres of muscle and malice. I never saw why Benny was so fond of him.

  Les lived in Benny’s backyard. It was surrounded by a tall paling fence which he simply hopped over when he wanted to get out. He wanted to get out at least six times a day, and poor old Benny spent most of his life trying to persuade Les to come home. Benny used to get badly bruised in these encounters because the roo had a habit of hitting him with his forepaws, kicking him with his hind legs or whacking him with his tail when Benny tried to catch him.

  Sometimes Benny tried to take Les for walks on a lead, and it was a sad sight to see that nice man being dragged through the main street of Walgett by a massive marsupial given to punching, kicking or whacking him with great frequency.

  People often advised Benny to turn Les loose, or, better still, to convert him into dog’s meat, but Benny would protest that he loved the animal and, contrary to all the evidence, the animal loved him.

  At that stage, Les was no problem to anybody else in Walgett and if Benny wanted to maintain an unusual association with a kangaroo, that was his business. Nobody interfered.

  My father and I became quite friendly with Benny and often used to help him catch Les and bring him home. It was an exciting business, and I used to enjoy it, particularly as Les never punched, kicked or whacked anybody but Benny.

  * * *

  But then Les took to drink and became a public menace.

  There was a brewery in Walgett in those days, and every Wednesday the hops mash was strained off the brew and dumped at the rear of the premises in a large pond.

  Les discovered this on one of his jaunts, tasted it and found he loved the beery, sloppy mess. He ate and ate until he fell down in an alcoholic stupor.

  Benny learned of this when a messenger from the brewery called to tell him that his bloody kangaroo had dropped dead in the rear of the brewery premises and would he please get the corpse out of there immediately.

  Poor old Benny was distraught, and enlisted my father and me to help him. The three of us trooped down to the brewery and found Les not dead, but very, very unconscious.

  ‘He’s mortal bad,’ keened Benny in his squeaky old voice.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said my father, eyeing the great pool of hops mash and noting that the same stuff was liberally splattered over the kangaroo’s brutish face. ‘He’s rotten drunk.’

  Benny pleaded with us to help get Les home. My father was a big man, and strong, and I wasn’t bad for my age. Benny wasn’t much use. The three of us grabbed Les by the tail and tried to drag him home. But half a tonne of comatose kangaroo is hard to drag and we finally had to go and get a draught horse to do the job. We rolled Les onto a gate and the draught horse dragged him the half kilometre or so to Benny’s backyard.

  We left Benny covering Les with a blanket and pressing wet towels to his forehead, if kangaroos can be said to have foreheads.

  I was there the next morning when Les finally woke up. Benny was squatting next to him, holding his right paw, as he had apparently been doing all night. Les opened one eye with extreme care. It was very bloodshot. He shut it quickly. There was a long pause, during which Benny clucked and tutted sympathetically, and then the kangaroo opened both bloodshot eyes. I swear he winced.

  My memory may be playing me false, but I am convinced that at this point Les very slowly and clumsily scrambled to his feet and leaned against the paling fence, holding both front paws to his head. He groaned. Kangaroos do groan.

  Benny went rushing off to get a bucket of water and Les drank the lot without pausing for breath, which is normally a very difficult thing for a kangaroo to do.

  The water seemed to help him a lot. He stood looking reflectively into the empty bucket. Then suddenly he leaped straight over the paling fence and went bolting down the street towards the brewery.

  ‘After him!’ squeaked Benny, flung open the gate and went hobbling after the kangaroo as fast as a man of eighty or so can hobble, which is not very fast.

  I ran ahead of him and managed to keep Les in sight. He made straight for the brewery, leaped the two-strand wire fence around the rear of the building, flung himself into the hops mash and began sucking the stuff up as though his life depended on it. He probably felt that it did.

  I stood helplessly at the edge of the pond, watching the huge kangaroo, waist-deep in hops mash, plunging his head again and again into the yeasty mess, eating, imbibing, inhaling the whole highly alcoholic mixture. I later realised that I was witnessing a classic case of instant alcoholic addiction.

  Benny came panting up and nearly burst into tears when he saw what was happening.

  ‘Come out of it, Les, you naughty kangaroo,’ he cried, ‘you’ll make yourself sick as a dog.’ Les took no notice whatsoever.

  ‘Go and get your father, boy,’ squeaked Benny. I shot back home and told my father what was happening. A kindly man, he stroked his beard and thought for a moment.

  ‘He’s actually in the pond this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So if he takes in enough of the stuff, he’ll probably pass out and drown?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Might be the best possible solution,’ said my father.

  But I was young and fond of Benny. I pleaded with my father to come to the rescue. He eventually collected a rope and the draught horse and we returned to the brewery.

  Quite a crowd had gathered by then. Old Benny was literally in tears as he pleaded with Les to pull himself together and give up the drink. Les determinedly continued to try and absorb enough of the hops mash to render himself insensible.

  My father made a lasso out of the rope, threw it over Les’s chest and tied the other end around the neck of the draught horse. Les was hauled from the pond kicking and grunting and desperately trying to swallow a few more mouthfuls.

  As soon as he was on dry land, dripping hops mash, he turned ugly. This was no comatose, alcohol-sodden marsupial: this was a fighting-drunk kangaroo. He leaped at my father, grunting angrily, and knocked him down with one mighty kick. Then he turned on the crowd, who ran away shrieking. Les went after them but was brought up short by the rope around his chest. He turned and went for the draught horse. The draught horse looked at him sourly and kicked him in the stomach. Les stood for a moment, gasping, and Benny rushed in and t
hrew his arms around the beast. Les drew back his left paw, struck and knocked Benny flat on his back.

  My father had recovered a little by then but was still obviously dazed. He drew his revolver and advanced on Les, shouting, ‘Surrender in the name of the king!’

  Les just stood there, grunting furiously.

  ‘Surrender in the king’s name,’ repeated my father, pointing his revolver, ‘or I’ll blow your bloody head off!’

  Benny was on his feet now and he flung himself between my father and Les. The conversation became inconsequential.

  ‘You can’t shoot a kangaroo,’ said Benny.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ said my father. ‘I have, often.’

  ‘But this is a civilised kangaroo,’ said Benny. ‘You can’t shoot a civilised kangaroo without a charge.’

  ‘The charge is being drunk and disorderly,’ roared my father.

  ‘But you don’t shoot people for being drunk and disorderly,’ pleaded Benny.

  ‘Kangaroos aren’t people,’ said my father, who could never resist an argument.

  ‘There you are,’ said Benny triumphantly. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Eh?’ said my father.

  Les, meanwhile, on a slack rope, had slipped back into the pond and was absorbing hops mash again.

  ‘You wouldn’t shoot my old mate, would you, man?’ asked Benny piteously.

  My father, whose head seemed to be clearing, began to see the funny side of the situation. He slipped his revolver back into its holster.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let him guzzle on for a while. He’ll get dopey, then we’ll drag him out and toss him in the lockup until he’s sober.’

  So that’s what we did. Les went on tucking into the hops for about half an hour, then he started to sway, went cross-eyed and was about to collapse when my father began to lead away the draught horse, to which Les was still attached.

  ‘What are you doing with my kangaroo?’ squeaked Benny.

  ‘I told you,’ said my father. ‘I’m going to gaol him until he sobers up.’ He pulled out his handcuffs, preparatory to handcuffing Les’s legs together, if you can handcuff legs.

  ‘How long are you going to lock him up for?’ asked Benny.

  ‘Until I’m satisfied that he’s no longer a public danger,’ said my father.

  ‘But you can’t do that without charging him,’ said Benny. ‘I’ll have habeas corpus on you.’

  ‘Then I’ll charge him,’ said my father desperately.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Disturbing the peace, being drunk and disorderly, assault, resisting arrest, causing a public disturbance—I’ve got enough on your bloody kangaroo to keep him in gaol for life. Now stop making a fuss, or I’ll shoot him dead for trying to escape.’

  ‘But he’s not trying to escape,’ said Benny plaintively.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ asked my father.

  ‘I’m going to get a lawyer,’ cried Benny and hobbled away purposefully.

  While all this legal argument was going on, Les unobtrusively slipped out of the noose and went bounding drunkenly up the main street. He was far from being comatose; he was in an advanced state of delirium tremens.

  The street was packed with horses and sulkies, drays, motor cars, shoppers, old ladies and small children.

  Les was bounding higher and more wildly than any sober kangaroo possibly could. Emitting loud explosive grunts, he went over the head of a horse harnessed to a cart and kicked it on the nose as he passed. The horse whinnied, reared and bolted. Les blundered into a shop window and smashed it. Two old ladies had hysterics.

  My father, revolver drawn again, went racing after the kangaroo, but his shooting was restricted by fear of killing too many innocent civilians. Les stunned an old gentleman with his tail, then did shocking damage to an expensive motor car with his rear claws.

  My father got close enough for a safe shot, but missed (he was a rotten marksman) and blew out another shop window. Les leaped over four fat middle-aged ladies, three of whom fainted.

  My father tripped over one of them and accidentally shot the tyre of a motor bus. All the passengers started to scream. The main street of Walgett, for the first and probably last time, was like a Marx Brothers movie.

  Finally Les stopped in front of a pub, as though instinctively looking for more drink. My father caught up with him and loosed off four shots at point-blank range. They all missed and the pub window suffered irreparable damage. But Les’s booze-soaked mind finally grasped the fact that he was in real danger. He turned and bolted out of town.

  My father commandeered a car and went after him, still shooting, but soon lost him when Les turned off the road and went into the scrub.

  Benny was disconsolate. ‘I loved that kangaroo,’ he told my father reproachfully, ‘and now you’ve frightened him right out of my life.’

  Privately my father thought he had done Benny a favour, but he was a soft-hearted policeman and he caught a young wallaby and gave it to the old man as a pet. ‘But for God’s sake, keep it off the grog,’ he warned.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Benny, wrapping his arms around the wallaby, ‘but it’s a terrible thing to know I’ll never see Les again.’

  This wasn’t true. Les came into town every Wednesday night, after the new hops mash had been poured into the pond, got disgustingly drunk and cleared out before dawn.

  Lots of people saw him, but he didn’t do any more harm so nobody bothered about him.

  He went on doing this for five years. Then the brewery closed down, there was no hops mash, and nothing more was seen of Les.

  But even to this day I cannot go out to the bush without worrying that I might blunder into the clutches of a huge, red, drink-crazed kangaroo who may well be bearing a grudge against me.

  ‘THE DROVER’S LAMENT’

  ANON

  There’s the red kangaroo and the mad cockatoo,

  That nests in the old gum tree,

  And there’s all those rabbits with engaging habits,

  And they’ve all got a mate but me!

  The emu on the flat, the little bush rat,

  The wedgetail flying free,

  Goanna lying still, wallaby on the hill—

  They’ve all got a mate but me!

  Part 2

  BUSH JUSTICE

  The bush is a great leveller. Pretention, cleverness, education and snobbery are often defeated by the simple ways and wisdom of the bush folk. A sense of bush justice which is all about giving credit where it is due, whether the protagonist be a decent citizen or not, is seen in ‘Marks’s Cutter’, where the strong Lutheran morals of the farmer are tempered by a sense of fairness which leads him to work in subtle ways against the ‘letter of the law’ to give a ne’er-do-well back his livelihood.

  In other stories, like ‘Bush Justice’, the happy outcomes are achieved by a more deliberate conniving. Here the hero is the simple, good-hearted, hard-working bushman or respected local identity who finds the means to see ‘bush justice’ achieved in spite of officialdom or the superior knowledge of the city slicker.

  Lawson’s final twist in ‘The Ironbark Chip’ turns the whole idea on its head and leaves the hero laughing at himself, along with the reader.

  ‘THE SIX-STITCHER’

  FRANK DANIEL

  A brand new six-stitcher, shiny, red and hard.

  Dad saw us playing with it as he walked across the yard.

  ‘Where’d ya get that, fellas?’ was his curious remark.

  ‘It’s alright Dad, we found it in the long grass at the park.’

  ‘You sure that it was lost?’ he asked, his voice was turning sour.

  ‘Bloody oath!’ my brother said, ‘They were searching for an hour!’

  BUSH JUSTICE

  BANJO PATERSON

  THE TOWN OF KILEY’S Crossing was not exactly a happy hunting ground for lawyers. The surrounding country was rugged and mountainous, the soil was p
oor, and the inhabitants of the district had plenty of ways of getting rid of their money without spending it in court.

  Thus it came that for many years old Considine was the sole representative of his profession in the town. Like most country attorneys, he had forgotten what little law he ever knew, and, as his brand of law dated back to the very early days, he recognised that it would be a hopeless struggle to try and catch up with all the modern improvements. He just plodded along the best way that he could with the aid of a library consisting of a copy of the Crown Lands Acts, the Miner’s Handbook and an aged mouse-eaten volume called Ram on Facts that he had picked up cheap at a sale on one of his visits to Sydney.

  He was an honourable old fellow, and people trusted him implicitly, and if he did now and then overlook a defect in the title to a piece of land, well, no one ever discovered it, as on the next dealing the title always came back to him again, and was, of course, duly investigated and accepted. But it was in court that he shone particularly.

  He always appeared before the police magistrate who visited Kiley’s once a month. This magistrate had originally been a country storekeeper, and had been given this judicial position as a reward for political services. He knew less law than old Considine, but he was a fine, big, fat man, with a lot of dignity, and the simple country folk considered him a perfect champion of a magistrate.

  The fact was that he and old Considine knew every man, woman, and child in the district; they knew who could be relied on to tell the truth and whose ways were crooked and devious, and between them they dispensed a very fair brand of rough justice. If anyone came forward with an unjust claim, old Considine had one great case that he was supposed to have discovered in Ram on Facts, and which was dragged in to settle all sorts of points. This, as quoted by old Considine, was ‘the great case of Dunn v. Dockerty, the ’orse outside the ’ouse’.