Mirror Perth – 27 December 1907, page 16
AUSTRALIAN BUSH YARN
by Rodney Creek, an old Bushman
Lost in the Bush.
It is doubtful if, for bodily and mental anguish, anything can much exceed the hardships of one who is lost in the bush, more especially so when those sufferings are accentuated by the lack of water to assuage his raging thirst, as is so often the case in Australia. His lot is indeed terrible, with the blazing tropical sun overhead, the rough tussocky ground beneath his feet, the interminable and treeless plain, the brigalow scrub, or, it may be, the heavy and sweltering sand ridges spread out before him, through or over which he must press his aimless way. Most bushmen have, at one time or another, been at least temporarily confused, and have experienced some of the discomforts of such a position; but for he who is hopelessly lost, without any reasonable chance of being rescued, the slowly coming end to his painful wanderings is almost too terrible to dwell upon.
First, there will be the doubt, closely followed by the almost certainty of error, though unaccompanied by any actual knowledge of which is the right direction to take. Then, if the wanderer is wise, he will sit himself under the shadiest tree he can find, light his pipe, and try to think out his position calmly. The sun, which he has doubtless been bitterly cursing for the last hour or so, is of course his best friend. For nine months out of the twelve — at any rate, in the north of Australia — it is a sure guide by day as are the Southern Cross, the Magellan Cloud, and numerous constellations by night. For nine months they alternately light and direct the bushman’s path. For the other three—the wet season —a sight of them cannot always be relied on.
Lost – Image my Meta
The moon is a jade, luring and unreliable. All he is certain of respecting her, is that she never rises in the west nor sets in the east. But there is the general course of the rivers and the trend of the main tracks in that part of the country where his futile wanderings are taking place. Even the stranger must have some idea of these one would think; also the prevailing wind — according to the time of year—whether it be trade wind, monsoon, or nightly land breeze. Then there are such signs as the lean of the trees, and the damp stains on them, or the flood wrack in their branches—if it is low-lying ground: the flight of certain birds, and many others, apparently of little value, but never missed by the eye of the true bushman. Many of such rarely failing signs are there to help him, if he would but stop and think.
But, no! Water is his trouble now!
He has no time to waste in thinking, but must be up and doing. He must keep going — now in one direction, now in another, hoping every moment to spy some distinguishing landmark that will put him straight, till, at last, he is “bushed” indeed. He cannot—he must not stop; so he goes on. It must be in a straight line this time; that will, at any rate, bring him somewhere. But he does not go in a straight line, though he vainly imagines he is doing so. He is merely describing a more or less large circle—always—always bearing to the left. This he would soon discover, would he but consult the sun; but he is to far gone for that now. His throat is parched, his tongue black and swollen, and his lips dry and cracked. He could not give a “coo-ee” now, though one outcry might perchance save his life. Sooner or later he will be siezed by the madness of the bush—and most grim and wonderful is that madness.
In front of him he sees a beautiful blue lagoon, covered with water lilies of every hue, and surrounded by the shadiest of shady bauhinia trees. Ten more minute—five more minutes—he will be there, and up to his neck in the deliriously cool water. He takes his eyes off it for one moment; then, when he looks again, lo! it has disappeared. But he has scarcely had time to realise his disappointment before he sees before him the very station homestead he has been making for. Yes, he knew he couldn’t have been going wrong! What an ass he was to get nervous!
That’s the very place, and he’ll soon, get a drink. But then the station, too, disappears. Then there may appear in front of him a large lakeside expanse, sunk in the sandhills, and fringed with rushes — not so beautiful, perhaps, as the blue lily lagoon — but water, still water! Thank God for that! Now he is all right! But that, too, is gone like the others! In the intervals between such visions, he may, perchance, partially regain his reason; then, indeed, his agony is horrible! He can no longer stand the heat and weight of the few clothes he wears. Off they must come — hat, boots and all; and on he goes, naked as the day he was born, with cut and blistered feet, scorched and lacerated body, and his very brain fermenting in the furnace heat of the sun. Nor is this wandering a matter of twenty-four hours only. It may be, and has been, prolonged for nine days, during which you may picture the horror and agony of the man as he staggers and tumbles along till he falls, a gaunt and discoloured mass of humanity, never to rise again.
Face downwards he lies on the treeless plain, in a brigalow scrub, or on the sweltering sandhill, a prey for the wild dogs and Eagle hawks. His bleached and scattered bones may be found months, or maybe years afterwards by some wandering stockman; but who he was, or where he came from, are, in all probability, secrets that have perished with him.
Now, there are two remarkable facts that are nearly always to be noticed in the cases of lost persons. One has already been alluded to — the constant bearing to the left of those who are in such a hopeless position. The only exceptions to this rule are said to be in the case of left-handed people, who in their turn circle to the right. The second peculiarity is that, though the lost one will nearly always, in his semi delirium, cast every stitch he has on, he will still retain whatever he may chance to have had in his hand when first astray—a billy can, strap, bridle, or stick. Here are three instances of this peculiarity that, among many, have become known to the writer.
Some years ago, in a sparsely settled district of New South Wales, there lived a man and his wife. It was washing day with her and she had set about that usual weekly job, but when she was nearly through she discovered that she had not enough soap to finish. So she put on her sun bonnet, and went off to a neighbour’s — no more than a mile distant—to borrow some. She got the soap, stayed for a cup of tea, and then set out homewards. She never reached it. Her husband, becoming anxious at her continued absence, saddled up and rode to the neighbors.
On hearing she had left for home, he went back and found her still absent. That night he spent hunting for her. The next day several parties were organised to search, but she was never again seen alive. Some weeks afterwards her dead body was found sixty miles away. During her wanderings, though she had cast her sun bonnet, boots and stockings, only retaining the torn fragments of her thin print dress, when found she had still the bar of soap she had borrowed on the fateful evening, for it was found clutched in her dead hand.
On a station in the far north of Australia, a boy, aged fifteen, was sent out to bring in the horses early one morning. He never returned. Later in the same day, the owner started for the township some hundreds of miles distant. Three nights afterwards he stayed at the station of a Mr. B. White, there he told his friend about the boy not having returned to the station before he left. He thought the young rascal might possibly have cleared out altogether. If so, he would make for the township, passing Mr B.’s station on the way. He had however, given instructions to his stockmen and native boys to hunt for him, as he would be sorry if anything happened to him, as he was a smart kid in the bush. He also described the boy to Mr. B. as being under-sized and with an abnormal head—very narrow and long.
Some months afterwards Mr. B. chanced to be twelve miles up the creek his station was situated on. While riding along he espied a skull, and was about to pass it, thinking it to be that of an animal. Something, however, made him get off his horse and examine it. He soon saw, by its shape, that it was no animal but human, and that it was unusually long from, front to base, and very narrow. By the teeth in the upper jaw, he saw that it was of a very young man, and then he thought of the lost boy. How he died was a mystery, though Mr. B. thought from lightning, starvation, or snake bite, for there was no sign of him having been murdered. Nor had he been seized by the bush madness, for he had retained his clothes, and died in them, as Mr. B. had no difficulty in finding after the scattered remains had been gathered for burial. But what at last assured Mr. B. of the identity of the boy was the finding of the bridle stamped with the station brand that he had been seen to have in his hand on leaving and still clutched in the bones of the hand.
Now, it was certain that the boy must have wandered for days before he reached the place where he died—he may have been weeks wandering, for there was plenty of water everywhere, and such food as mussels, crayfish and berries were to be had easily. Yet though it could have been no possible use to him, he still carried the bridle.
Also, in the far north, a little girl of scarcely seven years was missed from her home. For days she was searched for by half the township but without success. Less than a fortnight afterwards her dead body was found on a desert spinifex ridge some ten miles from her home and in her dead hand was still grasped the broken tin money box her mother had seen her playing with shortly before she was missed.
The Dead Swagman – ny Lionel Lindsay
There are many persons who are utterly hopeless in the hush, continually getting lost, even within sight of their own camps. More than one man, overtaken by night, has camped on the side of a plainly defined road yet, in the morning has retraced his steps of the previous day, never finding out his mistake for hours. Yet he must have known on which side of the road he had camped, and one wonders now how such a mistake was possible. In the early days of the track between Normanton and Darwin, a party were camped on a big river some hundreds of miles from any white settlement. The night was chilly, and in the early hours of the morning, the fire being low, a young fellow got up to replenish it. There was plenty of wood within sight of the fire, yet he never returned that night, and was only found by his mates on the following evening.
When asked how on earth he managed to get lost, he replied that he didn’t know, but somehow must have got out of sight of the fire, and wandered in the wrong direction. Another case of the same kind happened on the same track; a young fellow too, and under like circumstances. When found, he was warned to never again to leave the camp at night, nor his companions in the daytime. Yet, in less than a fortnight afterwards, he did the very same thing, and from that day to this has never been heard of.
At times, however, there will be reported the loss of a man well known as a good bushman. Here is an instance:— He was a police officer, whose duties for many years had taken him to the innermost depths of the bush. Yet, owing to some reason or other never explained, but probably from an attack of malarial fever, he managed to lose himself, and thereby met his death. He had a seventy mile journey before him along a telegraph line when last heard of. On that night he was to camp about half way. When he didn’t turn up as expected, a constable and a tracker were sent out to search for him. They found his night’s camp, but empty. Then they got onto his tracks which they followed round and round for two days. On two different occasions these tracks took them within a few yards of the telegraph line, and then bore away once more.
His horses had been found close to his night’s camp. On the evening of the second day of their search, the constable and tracker found the wretched man who had been murdered by natives. He must have left his camp in the morning to fetch up his horses, and perhaps an attack of fever rendering him half delirious, had been the cause of his aimless wanderings and his death. He too, had cast all his clothes, for they had been found some time before the body was discovered.
But on the other hand there are men who are simply marvellous in their bushmanship of whom there can be no better example than that explorer so well known to all Northerners by the nickname of ‘Old Bluey’. Tales of his peerless bushmanship have been told that are more or less true. But there is one on which I, who was with the explorer at the time, can vouch for. We had a forty-mile night journey to make over a country that was without water or a sign of a track. I had never been over the country before and ‘Old Bluey’ had only once, and that fifteen years previously, and then in the reverse direction.
None of our horses had ever been in that part. Moreover, we had to make for a certain narrow crossing — the only crossing for many miles — of the river at the end of this stage. To keep an absolutely straight course, even with a compass, is hard enough, as every bushman knows, but without that or leading marks, it is almost an impossibility.
Neither of us had a compass, and all that we knew was that our course was said to be west by north. The night was dark, there being no moon, and the stars were shrouded at times by thick misty clouds. All through the night there were occasional drizzles of rain, though scarcely a sigh of wind. A start was made just before sundown, when “Bluey” led the way, followed by the pack horses, after which I myself rode. It was impossible for most of the time to see ten yards ahead of the horse one was riding. One stop was made that night, for half an hour, in order to boil our quart pots for a drink of tea, for we had carried some water for that purpose in a water bag. There were no distinguishing or leading marks all the way, saving a couple of dry watercourses, bordered by weedy Coolabah trees, to cross, and a few miles of “white wood” forest to go through. All the rest of the way lay over open, well-grassed plains, or through dry “blue bush” swamps. Nevertheless, ‘Bluey’ went as straight as a die; and, just at daylight we hit the crossing we had been making for as though it had been lit up by an electric light and we had leading light all the way.
How did ‘Bluey’ do it ???
Moya Sharp
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