A Fortunate Life (Puffin story books) Page 5

From then on the Phillips’ attitude to me changed. I did not know why. I tried to please them all I could, but they wouldn’t let me join in when they were talking and never took me with them any more when they went to a dance or out visiting. I asked Frank one day if he would agree to me buying myself a push-bike so I could ride over and see Grandma occasionally. He refused, telling me that my place was there and not running around the country.

  About the middle of July, Frank accused me of taking apples from his garden. He told me to leave the apples alone, but the temptation was too great. Each tree had twenty or thirty apples. I think Frank must have counted them, because one morning I heard him say to Mum that there were two more apples missing. He came to me a little later and told me to get a spade and dig around each apple tree till I was at least twelve feet away from the trunk.

  It took me two days to finish digging around the four trees. Then Frank made me get the garden rake and smooth the ground where I had dug, so that I couldn’t get the apples without leaving tracks. So my apple supply was cut off. Or was it? At first I worked out that if I got my two apples (that’s all I ever took at once), then raked over the ground, he wouldn’t be any the wiser. But then he locked the rake in the tool shed.

  Now I had become as determined as he was. I found a way around the problem, and next morning, two more apples were missing. Frank was really baffled. A neighbour suggested that possums may be taking the apples, so Frank set snares. He never caught a possum but still two apples were missing each morning. This went on until all the apples were gone. I often wondered if they had found out how I got those apples.

  This is how I did it. One day down at the stable, I noticed two six-foot lengths of guttering soldered together, and tied up very loosely over part of the roof. I found it was easily removed and put back. After Frank and Mum had gone to bed and their light had gone out, I would wait until I could hear Frank snoring and then I would sneak out and get the guttering. I would take it to an apple tree and lift one end up to a nice red apple. Then I would move the end up and down until the apple stem gave away, and the apple would simply run down the guttering to me. I suppose it could be called stealing, but if they had given me an apple now and then I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking them.

  I made up my mind to go out occasionally for a day, usually Sunday. I would get up early and do my chores and cut enough firewood for the day. Sometimes I would go over to some neighbours called the Bibbys, who always made me welcome. They were middle-aged and had no children. Mrs Bibby was very nice, but she wasn’t enjoying good health.

  On one of my visits Mr Bibby asked me how I was getting along with my job, and I told him not too good since my mother had refused to sign the adoption papers. He said this had hurt the Phillips very much, but he didn’t think they should take it out on me. He went on to say that should anything happen so that I was looking for another job, they would be glad to give me one on the same terms as the Phillips. I said that I liked the idea.

  About two weeks later Frank made me drive four horses pulling a three-furrow stump jump-plough. He told me I was big enough to learn to do all kinds of farm work. I didn’t like the fact that I had to do all the chores around the place as well as get the horses in early in the morning, harness them and take them to do the fallowing as well. I was working from five in the morning until seven at night.

  After a week of this I said to Frank, ‘Do I get a raise in my wages while I am doing a man’s work or do you expect me to do all this for ten shillings a week and keep?’ He told me that if I wasn’t satisfied to get out.

  Three days later, a nasty boil formed on the back of my neck. It was very painful and the bumping of the plough going over the uneven ground and stones made the pain worse. A few days later two more boils came up in the same place. I asked Frank to relieve me of the ploughing until the boils were better. He grabbed me around the neck and started squeezing the boils. The pain from this was terrible. I swung my hand towards him and struck him in the stomach, knocking him down.

  Frank said, ‘Why did you hit me?’ I told him that I was in so much pain, I had to do something to make him let go. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I will not employ you any longer.’ He paid me what was coming to me, and I packed my swag and walked off.

  Six

  I set out along the track leading to the Bibbys’ house. My swag was heavy so I rested several times. I suddenly became very depressed and I couldn’t help it, I cried and cried. I felt alone in the world. Why was it, I asked myself, that my mother had deserted me when I was two years old and didn’t care if I lived or died, but was still allowed to prevent me from being adopted by someone decent who wanted to send me to school and give me something that most other kids had, a home and comfort? After a while I pulled myself together and started off again.

  I arrived at the Bibbys’ place before lunchtime. Mrs Bibby came out and stared at me, then all of a sudden she laughed. She said, ‘I didn’t know you. Your swag is bigger than you are. Surely you never carried it all the way from the Phillips’ place. We could have fetched it for you in the sulky.’

  A few minutes later Mr Bibby arrived home for lunch. He greeted me, and Mrs Bibby told him about me leaving the Phillips and how it came about. Mr Bibby then said, ‘Do you still want to work for us?’ I said, ‘I would like to if you’ll have me.’ He replied, ‘Of course we will. We are not as well off as the Phillips are but we have plenty of work. We are doing our clearing on the Government grant of one pound an acre and we don’t get paid until it’s cleared. We may not be able to pay your wages until we receive the Government cheques. We will pay you ten shillings a week and full keep. Will you be satisfied with that? I said that that would be fine.

  The Bibbys had taken up one thousand acres on conditional purchase and had a homestead block of one hundred and sixty acres. They had one hundred and fifty acres cleared and in crop—one hundred acres of wheat and fifty of oats for hay. They had most of their land fenced, and it was lovely land, as good as the Phillips’ but not so rocky.

  The Bibbys had a four-roomed house. They gave me a room all to myself and a bed with sheets and blankets and a bedspread. It was the first time that I had sheets to sleep between since we left Victoria. They wouldn’t let me work until the boils on my neck got better, and Mr Bibby insisted that I called him Charlie. It seemed too good to be true.

  To start with my work was chopping the small trees and scrub off level with the ground. All trees six inches to a foot thick, Charlie and I chopped down at waist height, then we knocked the bark off the stump and put the pieces around the base. By doing this the stump and bark would dry off, and when the burning season came, a lot of the stumps would burn down to ground level.

  Charlie said that I was real good with an axe. The two of us had one hundred and thirty acres ready for firing in two and a half months, and Charlie was so pleased with the work that we had done, he would skite about it to the neighbours when they came to visit.

  Besides the chopping and burning down, we had to look after the stock morning and night. When I got out of bed in the morning at six o’clock, I would light the kitchen fire and put the kettle on, then call Mrs Bibby. Then I would feed the fowls and the pigs and let the sheep out. All the fowls had to be locked up and the sheep yarded at night, on account of the dingoes and native cats.

  I bought a .44 Winchester rifle from a travelling man for twenty-five shillings. One day Charlie and I took the two kangaroo dogs out for a run, and I took my new rifle. We hadn’t been gone for long when the dogs startled some kangaroos on the run and scattered them in all directions. One big boomer came towards us and it was about a hundred yards away when I had my first shot, the first time I had shot at anything other than a target. Charlie called, ‘You got him, Bert.’ And that was so. My first shot had killed the boomer. Mrs Bibby was delighted. It meant they would have plenty of meat for their dogs and domestic cats.

  In the slack two or three weeks until hay-cutting
time, Charlie and I went out kangarooing many times and got quite a few. I shot several and Charlie insisted that I keep the skins. Mrs Bibby would take the skins into town when she went for stores and sell them for me, and I did quite well out of kangaroo skins.

  One day, in the second week of December 1907, Charlie and I heard Mrs Bibby’s geese making a loud noise. Charlie said, ‘Sounds like something is after them.’ I grabbed my rifle and ran towards the geese. A dingo had killed one and was dragging it away.

  When I got a clear view, I shot the dingo dead, then I spotted another in some scrub. I fired again. The dingo sprang into the air, then came bounding towards me. I was scared and unable to move for a few moments, then, after the dingo had covered some forty or fifty yards it fell into a heap, dead.

  Charlie ran to me, threw his arms around me and yelled, ‘You’re wonderful, Bert. Two shots, two dingoes!’ He called out to Mrs Bibby, ‘What do you think of our boy, he shot two of them!’ Charlie was a terrific slate and told everyone about the incident. He used to say to his neighbours, ‘The kid’s only thirteen years old.’

  Dingo scalps were worth twenty shillings each from the Government. This bounty was to encourage people to destroy the pests. It cost farmers a lot of money protecting their stock, especially sheep; it was a horrible sight to see what a dingo could do to a sheep.

  Soon after this we started hay-cutting. A neighbour purchased a reaping binder and he and Charlie came to an understanding that Charlie could use the binder if he later lent the neighbour his new Sunshine Harvester. The harvester was a new invention that stripped, threshed and cleaned the wheat in one operation as it travelled through the crop. The clean wheat was elevated into a large container where it could be fed into bags ready for market. We finished the hay-cutting Christmas Eve.

  The Bibbys put on a lovely Christmas dinner. Charlie invited Mrs Bibby’s sister, Mrs Mutton, and her boy and baby girl from the Goldfields for Christmas. After dinner, I asked Charlie if I could go over to Uncle’s place to see Grandma. The Bibbys often gave me this pleasure and always lent me the sulky and horse for the seven mile trip. They agreed I should stay the night and come back next day. It was good of the Bibbys because it meant that they would have to do my work while I was away.

  I got away about two o’clock and arrived at Uncle’s two hours later. They were all pleased to see me. We had a cup of tea, then I helped with the evening chores. Cousin Bill was anxious to get me alone to ask all about the rifle. Bill’s father didn’t like firearms much. He said, ‘Do you think my dad would buy me one? There are plenty of ’roos and dingoes around here.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  Bill said, ‘I’ll ask Mum to ask him. I’m not game. You are lucky in a way, Bert. You haven’t any father or mother to boss you around.’ I replied, ‘You have a home and loved ones, Bill, a father and mother to care for you. I wish I was like you many times.’ I said that the Phillips were all right and that the Bibbys were lovely people, but not my own. ‘It’s just that it isn’t my own home. That’s the difference, Bill. Sometimes I feel very lonely.’

  And that’s the way it was. I would often go into the bush and watch the birds and think that in some ways they were like me—they had to fend for themselves as soon as the mother bird thought that they were old enough.

  After our evening meal that night, Grandma told me that my mother had written saying that she might be going to Subiaco to live (a suburb of Perth), and when she did she would like my brothers and me to go and see her. Grandma said, ‘Be careful, Albert. She may only want your money, so don’t tell her how much you have.’ I told Grandma I had promised the Bibbys I would stay with them through next year’s cropping, so I wouldn’t be able to leave until September. Grandma and I talked together until well after the others had gone to sleep.

  At about five o’clock the next morning Grandma woke me. She cooked me breakfast, and she gave me a loving hug and kiss and made me promise to come to see her as often as I could. The rest were still in bed when I left.

  I arrived back at about eight o’clock. Something wasn’t as it should be; the pigs hadn’t been fed, the cows were waiting to be milked. The sheep-yard gate was knocked down. Something had frightened the sheep so that they crowded up against the gate and caused it to collapse. I put the pony in the stable and ran to the house and Mrs Mutton came out and told me that the Bibbys had taken more drink than they should. So I got my rifle and set out to find the sheep. I noticed dingo tracks as I followed the sheep trail. The dingo makes a track very different from a tame dog. The claws of the dingo dig deep into the ground—it’s as if a dingo runs on his claws.

  Within one hundred yards of the sheep-yard I found two dead sheep, and a few yards farther on were three more, so badly savaged I had to finish them. I followed the other sheep tracks and found more dead and many badly bitten. The dingoes had killed eleven sheep and twelve lambs, and eight more were badly injured. I had to kill four that were too bad to save, and then doctor some of the others. I drove all the sheep that could walk back to the yard and did the gate up.

  By now it was midday. I milked the cows and turned them out. Mrs Bibby had sobered up enough to know what was wrong, and she managed to get Charlie awake. At first he didn’t seem to understand, so I drove him down to where several of the dead sheep lay and that made him sober up quickly. Charlie said how sorry he was about getting drunk and that it wouldn’t happen again. They made the mistake of drinking wine and whisky with beer, and he finished up saying, ‘It cost us dearly.’ It was an expensive Christmas for the Bibbys, and the whole cause was booze.

  New Year came and went; the Muttons returned to the Goldfields and Charlie and I were busy carting hay. Charlie was the stack builder, I had to pitch the sheaves up to Charlie, one at a time, while he stacked them on the cart. When we got the cart loaded and into the haystack yard, I had to pitch the sheaves from the cart down to Charlie who put them into position on the stack. This was very hard work.

  Then Charlie started harvesting. He had one hundred acres to strip, and there were many interested farmers coming to see his new harvester, so he was delayed a lot having to stop and show them how it worked. Charlie got just over four hundred bags from the one hundred acres, a good return.

  One night Charlie said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you, Bert, how you have worked and looked after the stock. We haven’t forgotten Boxing Day. We look like getting a good price for our wheat, so we have decided to raise your wages to fifteen shillings a week.’ I felt so pleased I didn’t know what to say. I thanked Charlie and Mrs Bibby and tried to tell them how happy I felt.

  Then burning-off season opened. Several neighbours came to help put the fire through and Charlie had a ‘good burn’; the undergrowth, scrub and timber burnt freely and left only the large logs and stumps. Then we started on the clearing. Charlie and I worked hard and long hours six days a week from the middle of February through to the end of the first week in April.

  Just after the clearing was finished we had a storm with heavy rains, and this softened the ground. Charlie started ploughing the new land and my job now was picking up any roots pulled up by the plough.

  I had Sundays off, except I still had to look after the stock, and fill up the wood-box in the kitchen for Mrs Bibby. I never had any young people to play with apart from an occasional trip over to Uncle’s when I would join in games with my cousins. Otherwise I had no company, so I used to take my rifle and walk in the bush. Sometimes I got a shot at a ’roo and many times I would find a quiet spot and sit down and keep quiet and watch the animals. I loved the bush.

  The birds used to fascinate me. There were so many different kinds and most of them were friends of the farmer. The bush in those days was alive with them; their beautiful noises were something you had to hear to believe. The martin sparrow, the willy wagtail, the woodpecker, the ground-lark that wouldn’t sit on a tree, but flew from ground to ground. There were large flocks of black cockatoos; the noise they made in flight was deafe
ning. There were also the night birds such as the curlew, the owl, and the mopoke, which had much the same habits as the owl. All these birds helped me forget about loneliness.

  After seeding and finishing the new land, Charlie and Mrs Bibby went away for a fortnight’s holiday to Perth in July, leaving me in charge of the farm and stock. Charlie told me before he went: ‘All you have to do while we are away is look after everything. You are the manager.’ I felt very proud of myself—my fourteenth birthday wasn’t until the next month but they had enough confidence in me to leave me to look after their possessions. I was a little scared at first, but soon settled to doing the daily chores.

  Seven

  It rained every day for over a week after the Bibbys left. I felt very lonely at times. I could not read or write and there wasn’t any music, not even a gramophone. This made the nights seem extra long.

  On the morning of the twelfth day I got up at daylight, and looking over towards the new land that had a nice crop growing, I saw about sixty head of cattle grazing. This puzzled me, as we hadn’t seen any cattle around other than our own. I saddled a horse and rode across to chase the cattle off. I took my rifle with me. When I was close enough, I fired two quick shots into the air to frighten them into not coming back. Wow! I didn’t expect what I got. The horse jumped sideways, throwing me heavily on to the ground, then bolted back to the stable.

  A little shaken I picked myself up. The cattle had all cleared out—the shots had done the job. I was about to walk back to the house when I saw a man on horseback coming towards me. He rode up to me and said, ‘Who gave you permission to shoot my cattle?’ I replied, ‘I fired the shots into the air to frighten them off our crop.’ He yelled, ‘Like hell you did! There’s two lying dead over the hill. You shot them. I’ll learn you a lesson.’

  He started to unwind a large stock-whip, so I quickly brought my rifle up to my shoulder and called out, ‘Don’t come any closer if you want to live.’ I must have looked like I meant it because he stopped, turned his horse around and rode off, saying, ‘You will be hearing more of this.’