Old Melbourne Memories/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE DEATH OF VIOLET
Though kangaroo were plentiful, they were not so overwhelming in number as they have since become. Joe Burge and I had many a day's good sport together on foot. Like Mr. Sawyer and other sensible people, we often saved our horses by using our own legs. For the dogs, Chase was a rough-haired Scotch deerhound, not quite pure, yet had she great speed and courage. Nothing daunted her. I saw her once jump off a dray, where she was in hospital with a broken leg (it had been smashed by the kick of an emu), and hobble off after a sudden-appearing kangaroo. She was said to have killed a dingo at ten months old—no trifling feat.
Nero and Violet were brother and sister. They were smooth-haired greyhounds—the ordinary kangaroo dog of the colonist—very fast; and from a distant cross of "bull" had inherited an utter fearlessness of disposition, which was rather against them, as the sequel will show.
Violet was so fast that she could catch the brush kangaroo (the wallaby) within sight. We rarely had occasion to search if they started close to our feet, and the largest and fiercest "old man" forester did not seem to be too heavy weight for her. When he stood at bay she would fly in at the throat, instead of looking out for a side chance. In consequence she was awfully cut up many times when a more cunning dog would have escaped scatheless.
One afternoon Joe and I had taken a longer round than usual on foot, and were returning by the beach, when we heard Violet's bark a long way in front. We knew then that she had "stuck up" or brought to bay a large forester. If middle-sized she would have killed him; in that case running mute. So it was an "old man" large enough to stand and fight.
"We'd better get on, sir," said Joe; "the poor slut'll be cut to ribbons. She's a plucky little fool, and don't know how to save herself."
On we went, both running our best. We were in decent wind, but it was a couple of miles before we reached "hound and quarry." Some time had elapsed, and the fight had been many times renewed. When we got up the grassy spot was trampled all around, and in more than one place were deep red stains. Both animals were dreadfully exhausted. The great marsupial—the height of a tall man when he raised himself on his haunches—was covered with blood from the throat and breast, his haunches were deeply pierced by the dog's sharp fangs, but his terrible claws had inflicted some frightful gashes down Violet's chest and flanks. As she feebly circled round him, barking hoarsely, she staggered with weakness; but her eye was bright and keen—there was not a shade of surrender about her.
Joe rushed in at once and struck the old man full between the eyes with a heavy stick. He fell prone, and lay like a log. Violet staggered to his throat, which she seized, but, having not another grain of strength, fell alongside of him, panting and sobbing until her whole frame shook convulsed. I never saw a dog suffer so much from over-exertion. There was water near, and we carried her to it and bathed her head and neck. She had three terrible gashes, the blood from which we could not manage to stanch. Joe was genuinely affected. The tears came into his eyes as he looked on the suffering creature. "Poor little slut!" he said; "I'm doubtful it's her last hunt. Pity we hadn't took the horses, we should ha' bin up sooner, and saved that old savage from 'mercy-creeing' of her. Anyhow, I'll carry her home and see what the missis can do for her."
He did so. I walking sadly behind, the dumb brute looking up at him with grateful eyes, and from time to time licking his hand. She was nursed by Mrs. Burge like a child. We tried all our simple remedies, sewed up the gaping wounds, and even went to the length of a tonic, suited to her condition. But it was of no use. The loss of blood and consequent exhaustion had been too great. Violet died that night, and for the next few days a gloom fell over our little household as at the death of a friend.
A curious spot, in some respects, was that which I had pitched on—full of interest and variety. The river ran in front of our hut-door, losing itself in wide marshes that marked its entrance to the sea. It was a capital natural paddock, as at a distance of five or six miles the River Hopkins ran parallel to it towards the sea. Neither river was fordable, except at certain points, easily protected. Across the upper portion was a fence, running from river to river, and some ten miles from the sea, put up by the Messrs. Bolden, when this was one of their extensive series of runs, and, indeed, known as the bullock paddock.
Warrnambool, as I before stated, was as yet unborn. There was not an allotment marked or sold, a hut built, a sod turned. No sound in those days broke upon the ear but the ceaseless surge-music; no sight met the eye but the endless forest, the sand-hills, and the long, bright plain of the Pacific Ocean, calm for the most part, but lashed to madness in winter by furious south-easterly gales. Its jetties and warehouses, mayor and municipal council, villas and cottages, fields and gardens, were still in the future. Nought to be seen but the sand-dunes and surges; little to be heard save the sea-bird's cry. But at the old whaling station of Port Fairy the town of Belfast—so named by the late Mr. James Atkinson—had arisen, and its white limestone walls afforded a pleasing contrast to the surrounding forest. It lay between the mouth of the River Moyne and the sea. An open roadstead, suspiciously garnished with wrecks, told a tale of the harbour which afforded a larger element of truth than invitation.
Chief among the pioneers were Messrs. John Griffiths and Co., who had, for many years, maintained extensive whaling stations on the coast between Port Fairy and Portland.
Captain Campbell, then and long after widely known as Port Fairy Campbell, was their principal superintendent of fleets and fisheries, farms and stores. He, in the pre-land-sale days, like John Mostyn, "bare rule over all that land"; and, moreover, if legends are true, "on those who misliked him he laid strong hand." His sway was for many a league of sea and shore unquestioned, and no "leading case" will carry down his memory to budding barristers. He never, however, relinquished his faith in prompt personal redress, and years afterwards, when harbour-master in Hobson's Bay, regretted to me that the etiquette of the civil service forbade him to convince a contumacious shipmaster by the simple whaling argument. Among his lieutenants, John and Charles Mills held the highest traditional rank. The brothers, natives of Tasmania, were splendid men physically, and as sailors no bolder or better hands ever trod plank or handled oar.
Years afterwards I made one of a crowd assembled on the Port Fairy beach to watch a vessel encountering at her anchors the fury of a south-easterly gale. A wild morning, I trow; the sky red-gloomy with storm-clouds; the fierce tempest beating down the crests of the leaping eager billows; the air full of a concentrated wrath which prevented all sounds save its own from being audible.
It was impossible that the barque could ride the gale out, and, in anticipation, the skipper had all his sails bent and merely made fast with spun-yarn.
The supreme moment came. After a hurricane-blast which transcended all former air-madness, we saw the vessel quit her position. A hundred voices shouted, "Her anchors are gone!" In an instant, as it seemed to us, every sail was unfurled, and she swung round, with her stem towards the white line of ravening breakers. We had before us the unusual spectacle of a ship with every stitch of canvas set going before the wind, and such a wind, dead on to a lee shore.
Proudly and swift she came gallantly on, while we watched, half-breathless, to see her strike. A sudden pause, a total arrest. The good ship struggled for a space, like a sentient creature in the toils, then broached to, and the wild, triumphant waves broke over her from stem to stern.
But the situation had been foreseen. A dozen willing hands dragged out one of the whaleboats, and what sea ever ran which a whaleboat could not live in? She was safely, though with desperate exertion, launched, and we soon watched her rising and falling amid the tremendous rollers that came thundering in. At her stern was the tall form of Charley Mills standing unmoved with a 16-foot steer oar in his strong grasp, one of the grandest exhibitions of human strength, skill, and courage that eyes ever looked on.
The skipper had carried out his immediate purpose successfully. He had run his vessel in comparatively close, by charging the beach at the pace which he had put on; and in successive trips of the whaleboat the crew were landed in safety. And though the barque's "ribs and trucks" added another unprepossessing feature to Port Fairy harbour, no greater loss occurred.
Captain John Mills, afterwards harbour-master of the port of Belfast, and long a master mariner in the trade between Belfast and Sydney, was the elder of these two brothers. In his way, also, a grand personage. Not quite so tall as his younger brother, he was fully six feet in height, powerfully built, and a very handsome man to boot. There was an expression of calm courage about his face and general bearing which always reminded one of a lion. He had had, doubtless, as a whaler and voyager to New Zealand and the islands, scores of hairbreadth escapes. After such a stormy life it must have been a wondrous change to settle down, as he did, quietly for the rest of his days in the little village as harbour-master. He is gone to his rest, I think, as well as the grand, stalwart boat-steerer. They will always live in men's minds, I doubt not, on the west coast of Victoria, among the heroes of the storied past. I remember once, indeed, at a great public dinner, when a popular squatter, whose health had been drunk, declared with post-prandial fervour that he regarded all the inhabitants of old Port Fairy as his brothers. During a lull in the cheering, a humorous mercantile celebrity placed his hand on Charles Mills's shoulder, and cried aloud, "This is my brother Charley"—a practical application which brought down the house.
Ah! those were indeed the good old days. How free and fresh was the ocean's breath as one looked westward over the limitless Pacific, where nothing broke the line of vision nearer than Lady Julia Percy Island! How green was the turf! How blue the sky! How strong and unquestioning was friendship! How divine was love "in that lost land, in that lost clime"—in the realm of poesy and the kingdom of youth!
Port Fairy certainly had the start in life, and Belfast was, as I have narrated, a townlet before an acre of land was sold in Warrnambool. But it turned out that Warrnambool was situated in nearer vicinity to the wonderfully rich lands of Farnham and Purnim. The great wheat and potato yields began to affect shipments, and at this day I rather fancy nearly all the mercantile prosperity has taken lodgings with Warrnambool, while the broad, limestone-metalled streets of Belfast are less lively than they were wont to be a score of years agone.
To the Johnny Griffiths dynasty succeeded that of Mr. John Cox, the younger, of Clarendon, Tasmania, a worthy scion of a family which had furnished, perhaps, more pattern country gentlemen to Australia than any other. He had quitted Tasmania for the western portion of the new colony, which promised wider scope for energy and enterprise. His earlier investments were a trading station at Port Fairy, the purchase of such town allotments and buildings as seemed to him likely bargains, and the first occupation of the Mount Rouse station, long afterwards known as perhaps the choicest, richest run of a crack district.
Mr. Cox, however, relinquished his not wholly congenial mercantile task to the late Mr. William Rutledge, of Farnham Park, whose commercial talent and business energy soon made quite another place of Belfast. Mr. Cox from that time forth devoted himself wholly to pastoral pursuits, and having been unhandsomely evicted from Mount Rouse, which the Governor, without much practical wisdom, wished to turn into an aboriginal reservation, he retired to Mount Napier, a run only second in extent and quality.
I may mention that some years after, the Government, finding that the aboriginal protectorate system merely served to localise gangs of lazy and mischievous savages without any sort of benefit to themselves or others, revoked the reserve. But instead of handing back the land to those from whom it had been taken unjustly, they had the meanness to let it by tender. This run of Mount Rouse brought a rental of £900 per annum, a price altogether unprecedented in the history of pastoral leases.
After I had been a dweller on the banks of the Merai for a few months, I resolved to move farther westward, where there was country to spare and a more favourable opportunity of getting an extensive run than in my present picturesque but restricted locality. I was grieved to lose my pretty and pleasant home just as I had begun to get attached to it, but I judged rightly that to the westward lay the more profitable pastures, and I adhered to my resolution.
A few days' muster saw us once more on the road. Our herd was increased and complicated by the presence of many small calves, of ages varying from a week to three months. These tender travellers would have much retarded our march under other circumstances. But we had not, as luck would have it, much more than fifty miles to move, and for that short distance we could afford to travel easily, and give time to the weaker ones. All our worldly goods were packed upon the dray, which, as before, sufficed to carry them.