Death of a Lake. Arthur W. Upfield
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behaviour. He led the way through the door in the wall. After him went Bony, and after Bony came Red Draffin. Following on came the two enormous cats, and after the cats waddled the galah. The dogs only remained without. The sheep arrived later.
Inside the wall of canegrass were two huts, and the cook led the procession to that which served as the kitchen-dining-room.
“Boss said you were coming out,” he remarked, waving to the table set for three. “Did you bring me stores and mail and things?”
“Get ’em off the load later, George,” replied Draffin. “Meet Bony. He’s goin’ out to the Lake breakin’.”
George and Bony nodded the introduction, and Draffin went on:
“Bony’s come down from Uradangie. You never been up there, George?”
Barby asked to be told why he should have been up at Uradangie and Bony looked about the hut. It was surprisingly clean and tidy. The cooking was done with camp ovens and billies on the large open hearth. There were crevices between the pine log walls and several holes in the corrugated iron roof. But the place was cool this hot day, and what it was like when the wind blew the sand off the summits of the surrounding dunes he could imagine.
Barby served roast mutton, potatoes and tomato sauce. The bread was well baked and the tea was hot. He sat on the form at the table opposite his visitors, and the conversation at first excluded Bony. Slightly under fifty, he had been so long in Australia that his Lancashire accent had almost vanished. His face was long, his chin pointed. His eyes were dark and, in the soft light, brilliant. And like the great majority of bush dwellers he was intelligent and well read.
To Bony’s amusement the galah suddenly appeared above table-level. Using beak and claws, the bird climbed the cook’s cotton vest to gain his shoulder, and once there distended its rosy comb and emitted a screech of defiance at the guests. Barby went on talking as might a mother pass off the misbehaviour of her child, but the effort was ruined when the bird said softly and confidentially in his ear:
“Bloody ole fool.”
“Lake’s getting low, they say,” Barby remarked, offering no sign of annoyance, or of being conscious of the “brat”. The bird proceeded to preen his feathers, and Draffin said:
“Down to three feet. Bit under, accordin’ to the Boss this morning. She’ll go out like a light when she does throw a seven.”
Barby politely wiped his mouth with a pot rag, and the bird lovingly scraped its beak against his ear.
“Ought to be good money in rabbits,” he said. “And now that Royalty’s taken to fox furs the skins ought to be high come May and June.”
“Yair. But rabbit skins are low now, though. Only three quid a hundred.”
“Quantity would make the dough,” Barby pointed out. There’s quantity enough round that Lake, and when she dies there’ll be more rabbits than could be handled by a thousand trappers. I’m thinking of giving it a go. What d’you reckon?”
“Could think about it,” answered Draffin. “You said anything to the Boss?”
“This morning. Boss said he’d try for another cook. You size up the possible take out at the Lake, and we’ll decide when you come back.” To Bony he said: “You going to work contract?”
“Yes. On a dozen horses to start with.”
The galah screeched, and the noise would have upset a stoic. Barby puffed into its near eye and the bird screeched again, and at once, insulted, proceeded to descend from the shoulder as it had climbed. It fell off the stool to the ground and nipped a cat that spat and fled. Quite unconcerned, Barby said:
“Nice place, Lake Otway. Good tucker. Good quarters. You ought to do well. Tell the women you’re married and got fifteen kids, and you’re hard put to it to buy fag tobacco.”
“I tipped him off,” said Red Draffin.
“I am married, and I have three children,” Bony told them. “I can easily add another twelve. Termites, Red said they are.”
Barby regarded Bony with prolonged scrutiny.
“As I told you, Lake Otway’s a nice place. Best policy is to know nothing, and see everything, and give nothing away. Some of the fellers out there been there too long. You know how it is.”
“I have known a similar set-up,” agreed Bony. “I’m all for the move on.”
“And we’d better get going, too,” said Draffin, rising.
All went out to the truck ... dogs, cats, sheep and galah. Draffin climbed the load to take off stores and a bag of mail and papers. The sheep nudged at Bony’s hip, persisted, and the cook said:
“He wants a pinch of tobacco.”
Bony produced the “pinch” and the sheep daintily accepted it and chewed with evident delight. The galah waddled to his feet and ducked its head and turned over on its back. For the first time Barby smiled. He clicked his tongue and the sheep went to him. He picked up the cats and placed them on the sheep, and the bird he put with the cats, and as the truck rolled away, Bony waved and was always to remember that picture.
When a mile had passed under the wheels, Red said:
“If the Boss wants to shift flocks from the back end of the run where it’s pretty dry already this summer, I can’t see him agreeing to George taking on the rabbits. Cooks ain’t that easy to get. If the Boss says no, George might stand by it, but I don’t think so. For a long time now George has had his mind on trapping when the Lake dried out. Funny bloke.”
“How so?” pressed Bony, turning his sea-blue eyes to the driver.
“Well, he don’t spend and he don’t drink and he don’t go for skirts. They sez never to trust that kind of bloke, but George is all right even though he’s got a mania for saving money. Now me, I reckon money’s only good for booze. But what does George do? He saves his dough till he’s got enough to buy a good ute and a trapping outfit. When fur prices is good he slings in the cookin’ and goes trapping, and when the trappin’ is finished he goes back to cookin’. No between spell, no guzzle on the honk. Not even a trip down to the city. Why? Search me! Tain’t like he was savin’ to buy a pub, or a racehorse or something. He ain’t got no wife to drain him, neither. Leastways he never owned to one.”
The wind came after the truck and the cabin was hot and fouled with burned gas and oil. Only at Sandy Well had they seen animals on this trip, and the naive would have complained that the land was a desert. Invisible animals hugged the shadows of trees and bush, and deep underground the warrens were packed with rabbits.
They were travelling over a treeless plain extending for twelve miles when Draffin broke a long silence.
“Crook, the Lake dryin’ up like she is,” he said as though speaking of one close to him. “Lot of fish in her, too. Cod up to nine pound and brim up to seven.”
“The floods filled it, of course,” encouraged Bony.
“Yair. Record flood what began up your way. The River got miles wide, and the overflow brought water into the Lake. Nineteen feet of water she took, and with it she took enough fish spawn to feed Orstralia for a year.”
“And now the water has drained from the Lake?”
“No. Evaporation took six or seven feet a year. Then there’s the birds. Ruddy thousands of birds from pelicans down to moorhens. And this summer there’s been millions of rabbits drinking at her. Cripes! No lake could stand for that.”
“Do any fishing yourself?”
“Now and then.”
“Boat, of course.”
“There was a boat, but she broke up on the beach one windy day. You hear about the bloke what was drowned? In the Adelaide papers?”
“No,