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pp. 51-61.
“WITHIN the boundaries of location, it is open to any one who pleases to ‘put up’ a section, or 640 acres, of waste land; that is, to request that it may be let by auction; and he who does this often gives such a description, that no one knows were the land lies, further than that it is near such and such creek, in such and such county. Consequently the aspirant is rarely opposed; but becomes tenant for one year at the lowest rental that can be taken by the government, namely five pounds. Others may, each year, attempt to oust him, by bidding a higher rent; and, in that case, the longest purse decides the question of tenancy. Some, so situated, build a stock-yard, and fence in a paddock and garden; and, if known to be obstinate men of metal, are rarely interfered with; and for the time being, are in every respect as well off as the purchasers of land; and have the actual command of far more land than they really rent. With a view of affording glimpses of the country, I propose that the reader should accompany me to such a ‘station,’ situate at the foot of the Pigeon-House Mountain, before alluded to.
“A rather boisterous settler, known amongst us by the cognomen ‘Boreas,’ [Greek God of the North Wind] and whose mouth we used to stop by saying, ‘cease rude Boreas, blustering railer,’ having to conduct cattle to their domicile there, persuaded me to accompany him, which I was by no means loth to do. The direct route from Ulladulla to the foot of the Pigeon-House, is a distance of eight miles only; but, to avoid a difficult part of the country, we made a detour, and remained the first night, at a ‘Heifer-station,’ high amongst the hills. The aspect of the hut of the stockman, who lived here in solitude, not being very inviting, we procured some sheets of bark and made a gunyah, or small house, and lighted a fire in front of it; and, although the night was cold and rainy, I found it convenient to sleep without my coat; so warm was the interior of our place of shelter. These gunyahs are derived from those of the natives, and are shaped much like an extinguisher, with a triangular piece, or wedge, cut out of it. Hence, when a fire is lighted before them, they are, like a Dutch-oven, very warm; and, with the aid of an axe, bark is stripped from a tree, and the gunyah erected in a few minutes. The cattle we placed in a stock-yard, but had nearly lost them during the hours of darkness, in consequence of a black boy’s showing himself. They immediately rushed violently against the rails and endeavoured to break out.
“When a man travels in the bush with cattle, and there is no yard in which he can secure them at night, he takes care to bring them to a halting-place with full bellies, in order that they may be disposed to rest; and he lights fires round them, and keeps a careful watch. If cattle or horses are lost in a journey through the woods, or even if they are turned into a large paddock, it will always be found that they ‘make back’ for the place from whence they came. Hence, one always knows in what direction to seek them. Sheep always make for high land, and there they will be found. It may easily be imagined that squatters, who sometimes take cattle journeys which last for months, are sadly harassed; and that they need not only great patience and judgment, but an intimate acquaintance with the habits and fancies of their charge. When these bush-men lie out at night, in parts of the country frequented by wild blacks, they place themselves at some distance from a large fire, and apart from each other. If they lay together near a fire, the savages would take an opportunity of spearing them all; but, placed as they are, not only are the blacks in ignorance of their exact whereabouts, but the distant light discovers the skulking savage if he approach.
“To return: on the morrow, after crossing much rugged country, on which the Genius of everlasting solitude and desolation seemed to rest, and long climbing a gradual ascent, we arrived at the foot of the cone which crowns the Pigeon-House, Here we passed along; and then, almost literally, tumbled to the bottom of the mountain, by a precipitate descent on the side opposite that which we had ascended [this is the old route on the north side of the mountain]. I well recollect the figure of a person who accompanied us; and who stood on the point of rock, raving, jumping, gesticulating, and shouting, in order to drive the cattle down a narrow pass, which they did not like to face. His visage was nearly concealed by an immense black beard, that revealed, however, a large scar, occasioned by his horse’s carrying him against a tree.
“Once at the bottom of the mountain, we crossed several clear and rapid streams, which form the heads of the river Clyde, and found ourselves at a hut, stock-yard, and garden, formed in a valley[Yadboro], and occupied by two stock-men. The herbage was very abundant; and oat-grass, rising to the height of six feet, was the natural produce of the glens.
“The Pigeon-House is about 1000 feet in height [it is actually 2,361 feet or 720 metres, it is 2160 feet above the Clyde at Yadboro], and appears to have been thrown up by some convulsion of nature. It is much like a pepper-box: and we have, first, the body of the mountain; then the cone; and upon this again, are piled square masses of rock, crowned with a few miserable looking trees. The region lying around the mountain has been rent into valleys, ravines, and gullies. The tops of the fissure, thus formed, remain bare naked rock to this day; and present bold fronts, on which the sun strikes, bringing them out into bright relief. Here and there, on nay flat surface at the foot of the cone, rocks appear to have been hurled, as if in the wars of the giants; and now rest gray and moss-grown. The ravines are well wooded with evergreen Eucalypti - the foliage being formed in masses - and through each runs a clear stream; so that we have the romantic features of rocks, hanging-woods, and swift waters. So many are the ravines, that, after five hours heavy rain, the water, pouring down each separate one , and meeting at a common point, forms strong and impetuous floods; and during one of these, the stockmen were imprisoned night and day in a high tree, to which they clung in the utmost alarm.
“If, when standing at the foot of the cone, the rambler turn to the north, he looks down upon the broken country, and, over and beyond it, upon barren and inaccessible table-land; whilst, in the distance, he perceives the white line of sand which forms the beach with Jervis Bay, about thirty miles to the northward, and catches also a glimpse of the bright heaving ocean. If he turn to the southward and westward, he surveys a vast sea of undulating wood, extending further than the eye can reach, clothed in everlasting green, and tinted by the reflection of the clouds. In one direction, rises, amongst the woods, a black bare rock, square and massy [The Castle]; and I could not but think that it appeared like some huge animal - lord of those wild domains. The pinnacle of the towering cone, at one time, stands out clearly and boldly under the deep blue sky - that lofty firmament known only in such a climate; and, at another, it is shrouded by a floating cloud.
“ ‘The country between the Shoalhaven River and the sea coast,’ says Sir Thomas Mitchell, in his narrative of his three expeditions [Vol. I and Vol. II, ‘is very wild and mountainous. The highest part, including the Pigeon-House, consists of sandstone, passing from a fine to a coarse grain, occasionally containing pebbles of quartz, and, in some of the varieties, numerous flecks of decompsoed felspar.’
“Hertily did I wish, whilst I surveyed the country I have described, that I had been gifted with Aladdin’s lamp. Then would I have conjured Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield to my side; and, whilst I pointed in the direction of the fine alluvial, and naturally clear, flats on the banks of the Shoalhaven, to heavily-timbered yet fertile Ulladulla, and to the sea of woods, extending over vast tracts of land, that can never be used for any but pastoral purposes, I would have begged him to explain and exemplify the doctrine of the uniform price of land, for which the colonists, I believe, are indebted to him.”
Song of the Lyre Bird
“On the Pigeon-House dwells the lyre-bird; whose challenge is heard, as he struts round and round the foot of a tree, defying his rivals. It is graphically described by Margaret Catchpole: ‘The most beautiful attitude that I once saw the male lyre-bird in, beats everything I ever beheld of what men term politeness. I have heard and have read of delicate attentions paid to our sex, by men of noble and generous dispositions, but I scarcely ever heard of such devoted attention as I one day witnessed in this noble bird towards its mate. I saw her sitting in the heat of the meridian sun upon her nest, and the cock-bird sitting near her, with his tail expanded, like a bower overshadowing her; and, as the sun moved, so did he turn his elegant parasol to guard her from its rays. Now and then he turned his bright eye, to see if she was comfortable; and she answered his inquiry with a gentle note, and rustle of her feathers. Was not this a sight calculated to teach us all gentleness ? Dear lady, as I looked upon it, the tears came warmly down my cheek, as I thought of your good husband and yourself.’ She adds - and truly - ‘the tail-feathers of this mountain pheasant would form the most graceful ornament for a queen’s head dress.’
“The curious little creature called ‘a bear’ (phasclaretos fuscus) [Koala], but which is more like a monkey covered with fur, is also found here; and his cry is incessantly heard at night. The sides of the mountain are wooded, and it bears the grass-tree, with its long stem and flowering top, of which the blacks make the handles of some of their spears. A spring rises at the foot of the cone [Berry recorded this spring in 1822], and disappears in a small swamp, in which grow green flags and rushes. Our track up the mountain had been cleared with the axe, with the assistance of a bush fire, which a favourable wind had driven through it.
“I once met a gentleman [Alexander Berry], who had, twenty tears previously [1822], visited the Pigeon-House, being probably the first white visitor; and he had been much struck by the scenery as to retain a perfect recollection of its every particular, even of the spring. Indeed, being but a neophyte in bush matters when I first visited it, I was so much bewitched that I thought it would be pleasant to live in one of those retired valleys, ‘far from the hum of the populous world.’ I was ready to exclaim -
‘Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade !’
“But I know that, in such a situation, I should be oppressed as if by a perpetual nightmare, as if saddled with an incubus; an my song would be that of the starling - ‘I can’t get out.’
“Mr. Boreas narrated to me, during our ride the following anecdote. Up the country was a store which had been frequented by bush-rangers. At length the owner hired an old sergeant to take charge of it, who declared, with many ferocious asseverations, that no bush-rangers would rob it whilst he was in possession. That he might be enabled to keep his word, he provided himself with a fearful array of fire-arms, which he arranged in convenient positions about the store; so that, in whatever part of it he might chance to be when the enemy appeared, he might be able to lay his hand on a weapon, and be thus always ready for action. But he placed his chief dependence on a large blunderbuss, which he loaded so heavily, that. like a gun charged with grape and canister, it was calculated to scatter destruction amongst a whole army of assailants. Day after day elapsed, and no enemy appeared. The sergeant began to hug himself on the terror his name and mighty preparations had inspired, and to venture on a few modest wishes that they would come, in order that they might see what they should see. It chanced, one fine day, that a young fellow came to the store, and requested permission to light his pipe at the fire. This the sergeant, who was tolerably amiable when his bristles were stroked the right way, immediately granted, and the young man proceeded towards the fire, but suddenly turned round, and, seizing the sergeant by the throat, put a pistol to his head, saying, ‘Now, my old man-of-war, speak a word or move a finger, and your hour is come. Deliver up the keys; right about face, double quick, march!’ This was a dreadful situation for the old boaster, and he heartily wished that an earthquake, or something very dreadful, would happen, to save him from being the jest of the neighbourhood. Now it chanced that the keys were in an inner room, the door of which would only partly open, in consequence of a heavy box being behind it, and only one man at a time could enter. The bush-ranger foolishly went in forst, instead of driving the old man before him, and thus the latter had an opportunity of whipping to the place where his beloved blundebuss hung. He quickly seized it, and, trembling with anxiety and impatience, eaited the re-appearance of his foe. His destined victim soon presented himself, and the sergeant presented, took aim, and fired; and what an explosion took place ! Pots, pans, pannikins, saucepans, utensils, matters, and many things (as a word-stringing lawyer would say) came rattling down. The sergeant was stunned for a time. When he came to himself, he saw no signs of the bush-ranger, and addressed himself to look for the divers particles into which he doubted not that he was certainly blown. But no signs could he find of human remains; and, after cudgeling his brains in sore perplexity, he found that his pet blunderbuss had played him false. It was so heavily loaded that it had kicked violently, and the whole charge went off through the roof, whilst the bush-ranger went off through the door, very much frightened, but not at all hurt.
My Companion also told me, that, one night, after he (Mr. Boreas) had retired to his bed in his hut, but became conscious that some reptile was his bed-fellow. He fancied he felt it moving, and quickly jumped out, in no little alarm. The embers were still alive on the hearth, but he could find no candle, and was obliged to be content with a spill, formed of a piece of paper, which he twisted up. This he succeeded in lighting, after puffing, on his knees, at the dying embers, and contriving to fill his eyes and mouth with ashes. He then seized a tomahawk, and, on raising his pillow, discovered a black snake under it. He had but time to make one blow at it, when his spill was burned out, and he was left in darkness. He had no means to get another light, and waited for the morning in great trepidation, having, for safety, perched himself upon a stool, like a crouching homunculus, with his knees carefully drawn up to his chin. At daylight, he searched for his dangerous bed-fellow, but without success; however, after he had lighted his fire, and it began to blaze up, the snake made its appearance, with a view to enjoying the heat, and he had the satisfaction of destroying it.
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