Chapter X: Part 10

There were between us the bonds of graft, of old times, of poverty, of vagabondage and sin, and in spite of all the right-thinking person may think, say or write, there was between us that sympathy which in our times and conditions is the strongest and perhaps the truest of all human qualities, the sympathy of drink. We were drinking mates together. We were wrong-thinking persons too, and that was another bond of sympathy between us.

There were cakes of tobacco, and books, and papers, and several flasks of “rye-buck”--our push being distantly related to a publican who wasn't half a bad sort--to cheer and comfort our departing mate on his uncertain way; and these tokens of mateship and the sake of auld lang syne were placed casually in his bunk or slipped unostentatiously into his hand or pockets, and received by him in short eloquent silence (sort of an aside silence), and partly as a matter of course. Every now and then there would be a surreptitious consultation between two of us and a hurried review of finances, and then one would slip quietly ashore and presently return supremely unconscious of a book, magazine, or parcel of fruit bulging out of his pocket.

You may battle round with mates for many years, and share and share alike, good times or hard, and find the said mates true and straight through it all; but it is their little thoughtful attentions when you are going away, that go right down to the bottom of your heart, and lift it up and make you feel inclined--as you stand alone by the rail when the sun goes down on the sea--to write or recite poetry and otherwise make a fool of yourself.

We helped our mate on board with his box, and inspected his bunk, and held a consultation over the merits or otherwise of its position, and got in his way and that of the under-steward and the rest of the crew right down to the captain, and superintended our old chum's general arrangements, and upset most of them, and interviewed various members of the crew as to when the boat would start for sure, and regarded their statements with suspicion, and calculated on our own account how long it would take to get the rest of the cargo aboard, and dragged our mate ashore for a final drink, and found that we had “plenty of time to slip ashore for a parting wet” so often that his immediate relations grew anxious and officious, and the universe began to look good, and kind, and happy, and bully, and jolly, and grand, and glorious to us, and we forgave the world everything wherein it had not acted straight towards us, and were filled full of love for our kind of both genders--for the human race at large--and with an almost irresistible longing to go aboard, and stay at all hazards, and sail along with our mate. We had just time “to slip ashore and have another” when the gangway was withdrawn and the steamer began to cast off. Then a rush down the wharf, a hurried and confused shaking of hands, and our mate was snatched aboard. The boat had been delayed, and we had waited for three hours, and had seen our chum nearly every day for years, and now we found we hadn't begun to say half what we wanted to say to him. We gripped his hand in turn over the rail, as the green tide came between, till there was a danger of one mate being pulled aboard--which he wouldn't have minded much--or the other mate pulled ashore, or one or both yanked overboard. We cheered the captain and cheered the crew and the passengers--there was a big crowd of them going and a bigger crowd of enthusiastic friends on the wharf--and our mate on the forward hatch; we cheered the land they were going to and the land they had left behind, and sang “Auld Lang Syne” and “He's a Jolly Good Fellow” (and so yelled all of us) and “Home Rule for Ireland Evermore”--which was, I don't know why, an old song of ours. And we shouted parting injunctions and exchanged old war cries, the meanings of which were only known to us, and we were guilty of such riotous conduct that, it being now Sunday morning, one or two of the quieter members suggested we had better drop down to about half-a-gale, as there was a severe-looking old sergeant of police with an eye on us; but once, in the middle of a heart-stirring chorus of “Auld Lang Sync,” Jack, my especial chum, paused for breath and said to me:

“It's all right, Joe, the trap's joining in.”

And so he was--and leading.

But I well remember the hush that fell on that, and several other occasions, when the steamer had passed the point.

And so our first mate sailed away out under the rising moon and under the morning stars. He is settled down in Maoriland now, in a house of his own, and has a family and a farm; but somehow, in the bottom of our hearts, we don't like to think of things like this, for they don't fit in at all with “Auld Lang Syne.”'

There were six or seven of us on the wharf to see our next mate go. His ultimate destination was known to himself and us only. We had pickets at the shore end of the wharf, and we kept him quiet and out of sight; the send-off was not noisy, but the hand-grips were very tight and the sympathy deep. He was running away from debt, and wrong, and dishonour, a drunken wife, and other sorrows, and we knew it all.

Two went next--to try their luck in Western Australia; they were plasterers. Ten of us turned up again, the push having been reinforced by one or two new members and an old one who had been absent on the first occasion. It was a glorious send-off, and only two found beds that night--the government supplied the beds.

And one by one and two by two they have gone from the wharf since then. Jack went to-day; he was perhaps the most irreclaimable of us all--a hard case where all cases were hard; and I loved him best--anyway I know that, wherever Jack goes, there will be someone who will barrack for me to the best of his ability (which is by no means to be despised as far as barracking is concerned), and resent, with enthusiasm and force if he deems it necessary, the barest insinuation which might be made to the effect that I could write a bad line if I tried, or be guilty of an action which would not be straight according to the rules of mateship.

Ah well! I am beginning to think it is time I emigrated too; I'll pull myself together and battle round and raise the price of a steerage ticket, and maybe a pound or two over. There may not be anybody to see me off, but some of the boys are sure to be on the wharf or platform “over there,” when I arrive. Lord! I almost hear them hailing now! and won't I yell back! and perhaps there won't be a wake over old times in some cosy bar parlour, or camp, in Western Australia or Maoriland some night in a year to come.

NOTES ON AUSTRALIANISMS.

Based on my own speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry overtones.

bagman: commercial traveller
Bananaland: Queensland
billabong: Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an
anabranch (a bend in a river cut off by a new channel, but more
often used for one that, in dry season or droughts
especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main
stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.
billy: quintessentially Australian. It is like (or may even be made
out of) a medium-sized can, with wire handles and a lid. Used to
boil water. If for tea, the leaves are added into the billy itself.
The billy may be swung ['to make the leaves settle') or a eucalyptus
twig place across the top, more ritual than pragmatic.
These stories are supposedly told while the billy is suspended over
the fire at night, at the end of a tramp.
(Also used in want of other things, for cooking)
blackfellow (also, blackman): condescending for Australian Aboriginal
blackleg: also scab. Someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to
break a workers' strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up
on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never
cross a picket line.
blanky or ---: Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used
for “bloody”
blucher: a kind of half-boot (named after the Austrian general)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebhard_Leberecht_von_Blücher>
blued: of a wages cheque: all spent extravagantly--and rapidly.
bluey: swag. Supposedly because blankets were mostly blue (so Lawson)
boggabri: Probably Aboriginal for several low herbs, esp. Amaranthus mitchelli,
Chenopodium pumilio, C. carinatum and Commelina cyanea (scurvy grass);
also a town in NSW. [Australian National Dictionary, OUP 1988]
What then is a 'tater-marrer' (potato-marrow?). Any help?
bowyangs: ties (cord, rope, cloth) put around trouser legs below knee
bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to
wagons carrying, e.g., wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and
foul mouthed.
bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert
regions ['mulga' and 'mallee'), and hence equivalent to
“outback”. Now used generally for remote rural areas (“the
bush”) and scrubby forest.
bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires.
bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from
cities, “in the bush”. (today: a “bushy”)
bushranger: an Australian “highwayman”, who lived in the 'bush'--
scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks.
Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned
Kelly--but usually very violent.

cheque: wages for a full season of sheep-shearing; meant to last until the next year, including a family, but often 'blued' in a 'spree' chyack: (chy-ike) like chaffing; to tease, mildly abuse cocky: a farmer, esp. dairy farmers (='cow-cockies') cubby-house, or cubby: Children's playhouse (“Wendy house” is commercial form))

Darlinghurst: Sydney suburb, where the gaol was in those days dead marine: empty beer bottle dossing: sleeping rough or poorly (as in a “doss-house”) doughboy: kind of dumpling drover: one who “droves” cattle or sheep. droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head. drown the miller: to add too much water to flour when cooking. Used metaphorically in story.

fossick: pick over areas for gold. Not mining as such.

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown. half-sov.: a coin worth half a pound (sovereign)

Gladesville: Sydney suburb, where the mental hospital used to be goanna: various kinds of monitor lizards. Can be quite a size.

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney humpy: originally an aboriginal shelter (=gunyah); extended to a settler's hut

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early
days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a
sheep/cattle station (U.S. “ranch”)
jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: “where's that
jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag”.

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member
of a gang (“push”). Was considered a major social problem in
Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The Bulletin, a magazine in
which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the “aggressive,
soft-hatted “stoush brigade”. Anyone today who is disrespectful of
authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the
Australian character.
larrikiness: jocular feminine form
leather-jacket: kind of pancake (more often a fish, these days)
lucerne: cattle feed-a leguminous plant, alfalfa in US
lumper: labourer; esp. on wharves?

mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket. Maoriland: Lawson's name for New Zealand marine, dead: see 'dead marine' mooching: wandering idly, not going anywhere in particular mug: gullible person, a con-man's 'mark' (potential victim) mulga: Acacia sp. (“wattle” in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region. mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock myall: aboriginal living in a traditional pre-conquest manner

narked: annoyed navvies: labourers (especially making roads, railways; originally canals, thus from 'navigators') nobbler: a drink nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled

pannikin: metal mug peckish: hungry--usually only mildly so. Use here is thus ironic. poley: a dehorned cow poddy-(calf): a calf separated from its mother but still needing milk

rouseabout: labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed. Considered to be,
as far as any work is, unskilled labour.

sawney: silly, gormless
selector: small farmer who under the “Selection Act (Alienation of
Land Act”, Sydney 1862 could settle on a few acres of land and farm
it, with hope of buying it. As the land had been leased by
“squatters” to run sheep, they were NOT popular. The land was
usually pretty poor, and there was little transport to get food to
market, many, many failed. (The same mistake was made after WWI when
returned soldiers were given land to starve on.)
shanty: besides common meaning of shack it refers to an unofficial
(and illegal) grog-shop; in contrast to the legal 'pub'.
spieler: con artist
sliprails: in lieu of a gate, the rails of a fence may be loosely
socketed into posts, so that they may 'let down' (i.e. one end pushed
in socket, the other end resting on the ground). See 'A Day on a
Selection'
spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks.
stoush: a fight
strike: perhaps the Shearers' strike in Barcaldine, Queensland, 1891 [gjc]
sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a
“handout”. Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who
turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for “tea” i.e. the
evening meal. In view of the Great Depression of the time, these
expressions of attitude are probably unfair, but the attitudes are
common enough even today.
Surry Hills: Sydney inner suburb (home for this transcriber)
swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the “outback”
with a swag. (See “The Romance of the Swag” in Children of the
Bush, also a PG Etext) Lawson also restricts it at times to those
whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for
“handouts”. See 'travellers'.
'swelp: mild oath of affirmation = “so help me [God]”

travellers: “shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work” (Lawson).

whare: small Maori house--is it used here for European equivalent? Help anyone? whipping the cat: drunk