XXI The Jackaroo and Others
When the Prince left Queensland he had practically completed his official tour of the Australian States. There remained for him the improvised series of visits to the back-blocks of New South Wales, which took the place of the abandoned journey to New Guinea. Here he stayed in the houses of squatters, some of them controlling sheep-runs hundreds of thousands of acres in extent, and mingled in the most informal manner in country life and country pastimes. In the wonderful air of this region he regained much of the spring and energy he had lost in the preceding months of strenuous official touring. The Government officers on the Royal train meanwhile returned to Sydney.
The route taken by the Prince after leaving Wallangarra for the interior lay through beautiful scenery across the famous Blue Mountains. One looked out, as the train climbed upwards, across vast stretches of green-forested gorges and grey crags of fluted limestone, with purple and aquamarine ridges on the far horizon—a land filled only with the colour and the form of wild nature. The Prince started on the foot-plate of the engine, which he drove himself up a one-in-thirty-three grade slope. Although his journey was now entirely unofficial, numbers of people assembled and cheered him at the principal stations. At Lawson he alighted and shook hands with returned men, including Private Duncan Allan, the oldest soldier in the Australian forces. Later on, crossing the open Bathurst sheep-downs, a halt was made at the wayside station of Kelso, where horses were in waiting and he took, in the rain, a brisk ride across country, rejoining the train that evening at Bathurst.
The following morning the train reached Coonamble, terminus of the railway, a township of wooden houses, situated on a vast grassy plain, in the heart of sheep-raising country, two hundred and sixty miles from Sydney. Here Mr. Oliver, President of the Shire, accompanied by the local mayor and members of his council, received the Prince upon the platform, and conducted him in a motor-car procession to a grassy park in the middle of the town, where he found awaiting him a large assemblage of people, including the usual contingents of returned men and school-children, also nurses and other war-workers. An address was presented, and thereafter the procession was continued to the racecourse, where horses had been collected. The Prince and his staff mounted and set off across recently flooded country for Wingadee, thirty miles distant, where the week-end was to be spent at one of the stations of the Australian and New Zealand Land Company. Lunch was served in the open at one of the artesian bore-holes that furnish this country with water, even the severe drought which preceded the recent floods not having affected the supply. The Prince here visited a typical bush saloon and in bush fashion called for drinks for all the settlers he found there. Later in the afternoon he reached Wingadee, where he was received by Mr. McEwan, General Manager of the Company. He spent the afternoon riding about this up-to-date station and going over the wool-sheds. The host of his visit was Mr. Fechan, the Superintendent.
In the next few days the Prince rode a number of horses, inspecting the wool-sheds and flocks, chasing kangaroos and emus, and had the opportunity of forgetting the formalities of public receptions. On the day of departure from Wingadee he rode thirty miles back to the little country racecourse at Coonamble, where he remained throughout the afternoon watching the racing in the casual mud-splashes of his own ride. The enclosure was crowded with squatters from all parts of Northern New South Wales, who gave him the most cordial reception, and followed him afterwards to the railway station to cheer the train by which he left for Myowera, another small station sixty miles distant in the same great plain.
Here the Prince stayed on the Canoubar run in the house of Mr. and Mrs. McLeod, Mr. Niall, managing director of the company, supervising the arrangements for his entertainment, which were on the most hospitable scale. At Canoubar he saw the working of a big sheep station in full operation, including shearing, sheep-drafting, wool-packing, and the driving of flocks by wonderfully trained dogs, also the handling and breaking-in of station horses. One of the merino rams shown to him had recently been bought for two thousand five hundred pounds sterling. As to the performances of the dogs, the confiding correspondents were told that they could drive a fowl into a jam tin, but I am not aware whether H.R.H. was asked to believe this. On the afternoon of his arrival he rode nine miles, much of it along natural avenues of gum-trees, to the country town of Nyngan. His host accompanied him, mounted on his fine steeple-chaser Bullawarra, once sent to England to run in the Grand National.
At Nyngan the entire countryside was found assembled and the Prince met a large company of returned men, besides relatives of those who would not return, nurses and other war-workers. All the school-children of the neighbourhood were also there. The programme included the laying of a foundation-stone, after which he rode home escorted by a bodyguard of light-horsemen, who gave a display of bush-galloping a mile outside the station.
Next day H.R.H. was made acquainted with the Jackaroo. The Jackaroo is neither a crow nor a parrot nor any kind of quadruped. He is a young gentleman of Australia who desires to become a squatter, and who gives his services on a sheep-run for the opportunity of picking up the business. He was living, where the Prince encountered him, with, half a dozen of his fellows, in a comfortable building with roomy sleeping quarters and an old soldier in charge of the mess. His food is plain but substantial and appetizing, a leading feature of it, the slab of “brownie” bread, full of currants, which tells its own tale of his age and digestion. The Jackaroo spends most of his day in the saddle, riding long distances to outlying parts of the run, on the hunt for bogged sheep, or in supervising lambing or moving flocks from one paddock to another. Often he will not see a living soul from the time he starts out in the morning until he returns at night, and he may even lose his way. He then makes a bee-line in the likeliest direction until he comes to the wire fence of the boundary, which he may follow for miles before he reaches a landmark he knows. The speedometer of one car which had been out on fence inspection the day before the Prince arrived, marked 120 miles, travelled in a single day, so it may be presumed that the Jackaroo’s bump of locality develops early. The squatter is generally glad to take on likely boys, as he finds them, when the first fecklessness is worn off, on the whole more conscientious than paid labour, an important point for work that has to be so largely delegated. The life is healthy and interesting, and on up-to-date runs like the ones seen, looked exceedingly pleasant. The young fellows come as a rule from families of good class and generally have means of their own—a combination which should make the life history of the Jackaroo not unrewarding to the student of the fauna of these parts. His own point of view would have been worth obtaining, but being young he was modest and said little. He rode buck-jumpers for the Prince. He buck-jumped rather specially well, as might be expected of a Jackaroo. His name is a felicity that will outlive much topography. One wonders who invented it.
The Prince on several occasions shared in the sport of kangaroo chasing, which leaves fox-hunting standing. On one occasion he rode all day guided by sons of his hosts through vast paddocks fenced with wire, over an even carpet of young green grass, which was then just springing up after floods following three years of drought, and took many a jump over fallen trunks of trees killed by systematic ringing to make way for fodder raising. On the way thirty or forty kangaroos were seen and five of them were chased over formidable obstacles which the “old men”—the male kangaroos—cleared with extraordinary ease in their long hopping stride, at a pace that took greyhounds all they could do to overtake. These kangaroos eat sometimes by no means an inconsiderable amount of pasture needed for the sheep, and some years ago were being so extensively shot down that they were in danger of being exterminated. A close season was introduced and now they are increasing to the extent, in some localities, of again becoming troublesome. They are much the colour of the tree trunks, and until startled are easily overlooked in the bush. They are off with most wonderful grace and agility the moment they are disturbed and can even clear the high barbed wire fences by which the runs are bounded provided they approach at a right angle. When running parallel to the fence they cannot get the necessary foothold for a big enough spring. This is sometimes taken advantage of by the rider, who, being of course unable to put his horse over so formidable an obstacle, endeavours to head off the kangaroo in such manner that it may reach the fence at a slanting angle. In this case the chase continues alongside instead of being finished by the kangaroo’s escape over the fence. When overtaken by dogs, which are often used in the chase, the kangaroo makes a gallant fight for life, and many a hound has been ripped open and killed by a well-directed kick from its powerful hind feet, before it can be shot.
The emu also lent itself to the excitement of the chase during the tour. The big brown wingless bird much the size and shape of the ostrich, is quite unable even to jump, but runs as fast as a horse can gallop, and when pursued will charge a barbed wire fence so hard as to break its way through, its feathers protecting it from being seriously torn. It is on this account not beloved by the squatter, but it is seldom shot. The Prince brought away with him two newly hatched emu chickens, creatures the size of ducks and prettily marked in shades of black and fawn. Their quarters on the Renown were in a roomy cage on the superstructure, where they soon established a reputation as quiet, sober and well-behaved members of the ship’s company.
On several of his expeditions the Prince was given a meal in the bush camp fashion. One of these was on the shady banks of a stream twenty-five miles from a station, from which he had ridden out in the morning accompanied by sons of his hosts. Here quantities of dead gum-tree trunks were quietly burning, and were made use of for grilling chops and making billy tea. The latter is quite unlike and, to the hungry rider, infinitely preferable to the teapot variety. A tin-can is filled at the nearest water-hole and is carried to a burning tree trunk, on which it is gingerly balanced, usually with the aid of a stick, the tree trunk being as a rule too hot to reach without one. The water boils with extraordinary rapidity and the pot is quickly hooked off the fire. A generous handful of tea is thrown into the water before it ceases to boil and the resultant brew is drunk from any utensil that happens to be handy. Nobody inquires what becomes of the tea leaves.
One of the sights on the Canoubar run was sixty thousand sheep recently returned from stations in well-watered districts, in one case five hundred miles distant by rail, whither they had been sent to stay over the years of drought. These sheep had all been carried by the state railways of New South Wales, at extraordinarily low rates, and with surprisingly few casualties. They offered a concrete example of what had been done on a very large scale throughout the State, where the railways were able to save for the squatters hundreds of thousands of valuable sheep, which must otherwise have perished when the fodder supply gave out. The Prince was so interested in what he saw that there was no getting him away before dark. By the time he was back in the station he had ridden over sixty miles without leaving the run.