While the Billy Boils

something sad and pathetic about that old practical joke⁠—as indeed there is with all bush jokes. There seems a quiet sort of sadness always running through outback humour⁠—whether alleged or otherwise.

There’s the usual yarn about a jackaroo mistaking Thompson for a brother rouser, and asking him whether old Baldy was about anywhere, and Baldy said:

“Why, are you looking for a job?”

“Yes, do you think I stand any show? What sort of a boss is Baldy?”

“You’d tramp from here to Adelaide,” said Baldy, “and north to the Gulf country, and wouldn’t find a worse. He’s the meanest squatter in Australia. The damned old crawler! I grafted like a nigger for him for over fifty years”⁠—Baldy was over sixty⁠—“and now the old skunk won’t even pay me the last two cheques he owes me⁠—says the bank has got everything he had⁠—that’s an old cry of his, the damned old sneak; seems to expect me to go short to keep his wife and family and relations in comfort, and by God I’ve done it for the last thirty or forty years, and I might go on the track tomorrow worse off than the meanest old whaler that ever humped bluey. Don’t you have anything to do with Scabby Thompson, or you’ll be sorry for it. Better tramp to hell than take a job from him.”

“Well, I think I’ll move on. Would I stand any show for some tucker?”

“Him! He wouldn’t give a dog a crust, and like as not he’d get you run in for trespass if he caught you camping on the run. But come along to the store and I’ll give you enough tucker to carry you on.”

He patronized literature and arts, too, though in an awkward, furtive way. We remember how we once turned up at the station hard up and short of tucker, and how we entertained Baldy with some of his own ideas as ours⁠—having been posted beforehand by our mate⁠—and how he told us to get some rations and camp in the hut and see him in the morning.

And we saw him in the morning, had another yarn with him, agreed and sympathized with him some more, were convinced on one or two questions which we had failed to see at first, cursed things in chorus with him, and casually mentioned that we expected soon to get some work on a political paper.

And at last he went inside and brought out a sovereign. “Wrap this in a piece of paper and put it in your pocket, and don’t lose it,” he said.

But we learnt afterwards that the best way to get along with Baldy, and secure his good will, was to disagree with him on every possible point.

For Auld Lang Syne

There were ten of us there on the wharf when our first mate left for Maoriland, he having been forced to leave Sydney because he could not get anything like regular graft, nor anything like wages for the graft he could get. He was a carpenter and joiner, a good tradesman and a rough diamond. He had got married and had made a hard fight for it during the last two years or so, but the result only petrified his conviction that “a lovely man could get no blessed show in this condemned country,” as he expressed it; so he gave it best at last⁠—“chucked it up,” as he said⁠—left his wife with her people and four pounds ten, until such time as he could send for her⁠—and left himself with his box of tools, a pair of hands that could use them, a steerage ticket, and thirty shillings.

We turned up to see him off. There were ten of us all told and about twice as many shillings all counted. He was the first of the old push to go⁠—we use the word push in its general sense, and we called ourselves the mountain push because we had worked in the tourist towns a good deal⁠—he was the first of the mountain push to go; and we felt somehow, and with a vague kind of sadness or uneasiness, that this was the beginning of the end of old times and old things. We were plasterers, bricklayers, painters, a carpenter, a labourer, and a plumber, and were all suffering more or less⁠—mostly more⁠—and pretty equally, because of the dearth of regular graft, and the consequent frequency of the occasions on which we didn’t hold it⁠—the “it” being the price of one or more long beers. We had worked together on jobs in the city and upcountry, especially in the country, and had had good times together when things were “locomotive,” as Jack put it; and we always managed to worry along cheerfully when things were “stationary.” On more than one big job up the country our fortnightly spree was a local institution while it lasted, a thing that was looked forward to by all parties, whether immediately concerned or otherwise (and all were concerned more or less), a thing to be looked back to and talked over until next payday came. It was a matter for anxiety and regret to the local business people and publicans, and loafers and spielers, when our jobs were finished and we left.

There were between us the bonds of graft, of old times, of poverty, of vagabondage and sin, and in spite of all the right-thinking person may think, say or write, there was between us that sympathy which in our times and conditions is the strongest and perhaps the truest of all human qualities, the sympathy of drink. We were drinking mates together. We were wrong-thinking persons too, and that was another bond of sympathy between us.

There were cakes of tobacco, and books, and papers, and several flasks of “rye-buck”⁠—our push being distantly related to a publican who wasn’t half a bad sort⁠—to cheer and comfort our departing mate on his uncertain way; and these tokens of mateship and the sake of auld lang