When Mr. Lemuel Bolden and I rode to Yering from Heidelberg, about the year 1845, to pay a promised visit to Mr. William Ryrie, the Upper Yarra road and the place of our destination presented a different appearance.
We forded the Yarra below Mr. D. C. M'Arthur's orchard, and crossing a heavily-timbered river-flat, with deep reed-fringed lagoons, debouched on the up-river road. This particular locality was well known to me, inasmuch as, being formerly in our pastoral possession, it had constituted a species of "chase" in my early sporting days. The only denizens of that period were an occasional pair of sawyers, generally "Derwenters," as the Tasmanian expirees were called, thither attracted by the unusual size and straightness of the timber which grew in the flats and "bends" of the winding Yarra.
Owing to the sinuous shape of the lagoons on the south side of the river, coupled with the dense nature of the thickets, it was not an easy matter for a stranger to find his way through the maze. It[Pg 201] naturally came to be, therefore, the happy hunting ground of my boyhood; many a grand day's sport and thrilling adventure did I have therein.
The largest lagoon was fringed with a wide border of reeds, growing in deep water. It had in the centre a clear lakelet or mere, upon the lonely waters of which disported the mountain duck, with his black and other congeners, the greater and lesser grebe; while among the reeds waded or flew the heron (Ardea australis), the sultana water-hen, a red-billed variety of the coot, the bittern, the land-rail, and in the season an occasional flock of pied geese or black swans.
To approach the wild-fowl in the open mere was a work of difficulty, if not of danger, inasmuch as the water was too deep for wading, and the entanglement with weeds—which then cost more than one strong swimmer his life—was not out of the reckoning. I did once struggle to the verge of total exhaustion within the green meshes of one of these weed nets, in a lonely pool in which I had to swim for a black duck. The thought uppermost in my mind was that it would be such a time before I should be found, in case of—an accident which didn't come off. I used to circumvent my feathered friends in the horse-shoe lagoon by climbing a tree upon the slope which lay opposite. From this coign of vantage I could see the birds swimming in fancied security, and lay plans accordingly. In order to open fire with effect, I had caused to be conveyed a light canoe, which one of my sawyer friends had neatly scooped out for me, into the outer mere among the reeds. It was in waist-deep water—carefully [Pg 202]concealed, and I could, of course, gain it unseen. Paddling or pulling it through the outer reed-brake, I ensconced myself at the edge of the clear water, waiting patiently until the unsuspecting birds sailed past. Once I remember getting two couple of black duck. An occasional goose, or even the lordly swan, found its way into my bag.
Once, as I had planned a day's shooting, I was startled by seeing a flock of ducks wheeling around, and finally making straight for the South Pole, as if decided not to return for a year. Gazing angrily around to discern the cause of this untoward migration, I descried a man carefully got up in correct shooting rig emerge from the reeds. Half-paralysed by the audacity of the unknown—this was years before the free-selection discovery—I sat still in my saddle for one moment. Then, as the enormity of the offence—trespass on our run—rose before me, I dashed spurs into my horse and charged the offender.
"What's your name, and what do you mean by coming here to shoot and frighten the ducks?" I called out, stopping my frantic steed within a few feet of him. "Don't you know whose ground you're on?"
The unknown looked calmly at me with a rather amused countenance (I was about fourteen, and scarcely looked my age), and then said, "Who the devil are you?"
"My name's Boldrewood," I returned, "and this is our run, and no one has any right to come here and shoot or do anything else without my father's leave."
"Gad! I thought it was the Lord of the Manor[Pg 203] at least! You're a smart youngster, but I don't know that there are any game laws in this country. What are you going to do with me for instance?"
The stranger turned out to be a guest at a neighbouring station. There were cattle stations in the vicinity in those days. Anyhow, we compromised matters and finished the day together.
Not far from the spot the late John Hunter Kerr, afterwards of Fernihurst, had a veritable cattle station. I attended one of the musters for a purpose. The cattle were in the yard, with various stock-riders and neighbours sitting around, preparatory to drafting, as I rode up, attended by a sable retainer driving a horse and cart.
What did I please to want? "I've come for our black J. B. bullock," said I. "He has been running with your cattle these two years, and I thought he would most likely come in with your muster."
"He is here sure enough, and in fine order, but how are you going to take him home? He always clears the yard when we begin to draft, and no stock-rider about here can drive him single-handed."
"I'll take him home fast enough," returned I, with colonial confidence, "if he'll stay in the yard long enough for me to shoot him."
"Oh, that's the idea," quoth Mr. Kerr. "Go to work; only don't miss him or drop any of my cattle."
"No fear."
Old Harvey, an expatriated countryman of Cetewayo's, handed me my single-barrelled fowling-piece, a generally useful weapon, which had been loaded with ball for the occasion. I walked cautiously[Pg 204] through the staring, wildish cattle, to the middle of the yard, where stood the big black bullock. He lowered his head, and began to paw the ground. I made a low bovine murmur, which I had found effective before; he raises his head and looks full at me for a second. The bullet crashes into the forehead "curl," and the huge savage lies prone—a quivering mass. Harvey promptly performs the necessary phlebotomy, and being dragged out of the yard, the black ox is skinned, quartered, and on his way to the beef-cask at Hartlands well within twenty minutes of his downfall.
Years after, when a full-fledged Riverina squatter, Mr. Kerr and I met in partibus. He at length recalled my name and locale, remarking, "Oh yes! remember now; you were the boy that shot the black bullock in my yard at South Yarra long ago."
Well, Mr. Bolden and I ride along the winding, gravelly bush road, over ranges that skirt and at times leave the course of the river wholly, not seeing a house or a soul, except Mr. Gardiner's dairy farm, for more than twenty miles. The country, in an agricultural and pastoral point of view, is as bad as can be. Thick—i.e. scrubby, poor in soil, scanty as to pasture, when all suddenly, as is so often the case in Australia, we come upon a "mountain park."
We cross a running creek by a bridge. We see a flock of sheep and a shepherd, the genuine "old hand" of the period. The slopes are gently rising towards the encircling highlands, the timber is pleasingly distributed, the soil, the pasture, has improved. We are in a new country. We have entered upon[Pg 205] Yering proper, a veritable oasis in this unredeemed stringy-bark desert.
How Mr. William Ryrie, in the year 1837 or 1838, brought his flocks and herds and general pioneer equipment straight across country from Arnprior in far Monaro in New South Wales, hitting precisely upon this tenantless lodge in the wilderness, will always be a marvel. It was one of the feats which the earlier explorers occasionally performed, showing their fitness for the heroic work of colonisation, wherein so many of them risked life and limb. With the great pastoral wild of Australia Felix lying virgin and unappropriated before him, Mr. Ryrie might easily have made a more profitable, a more expansive choice. But he could not have hit upon a more ideal spot for the founding of an estate and the formation of a homestead had he searched the continent.
Amid the variously-gathered outfit which accompanied the pastoral chief, as he led flocks, herds, and retainers through unknown wilds to the far promised land, happened to be some roots of the tree, the survival of which caused Noah so much uneasiness, and more or less humbled his descendants, before John Jameson and Co. took up the running with the now fashionable product of the harmless avena. A few grape vines reached the spot unharmed. Planted in the first orchard on the rich alluvial of the broad river-flat which fronted the cottage, they grew and flourished, so richly that the area devoted to the vine was soon enlarged. From such small beginning arose the vineyards of Yering and St. Hubert's. From those, again, Messrs. de Pury and others[Pg 206] planted the wine-producing district which has now a European reputation.
Little of this, however, was apparent to my companion and myself, or we might have been entertaining royalty by this time—who knows?—carrying ............