So poor old \'Flash Jack\' is dead, says the Port Fairy Gazette, drowned in a creek—a stock-rider\'s not unfitting end. We remember him, young, debonair, tall, sinewy and active, with longish, curling brown locks of which he was rather proud, as also of the cabbage-tree hat of the period. But every one seems to be old nowadays except a crowd of juniors so painfully young that one wonders they are permitted to take life seriously. His sobriquet was acquired more through the ebullitions of a harmless vanity than from any of the offensive qualities which the well-worn colonial adjective is wont to imply. There was a certain amount of \'blow\' about Jack, doubtless, but never in undue proportion to his attainments, which, as a stock-rider, horse-breaker, and mailman, were admitted to be creditable. His introduction to the Port Fairy district was through the Messrs. Carmichael, while before taking service with them he had reached Melbourne from England in the Eagle, Captain Buckley—both ship and commander favourably known in the early days.
A rumour prevailed that Jack was the scion of a good family; had been sent to sea as a midshipman, possibly to cure the malady of \'wildness,\' for which a voyage to or residence in Australia is (erroneously) held to be a specific. It did not answer in Jack\'s case, for he quitted his ship, \'taking to the bush\' (in a restricted sense), and never afterwards abandoning it. Uncommunicative about such matters generally, he threw out hints from time to time that he was not in the position for which his early associations had prepared him.
\'My name\'s not Crickmere, Mas\'r Rolf,\' he said to me once, as we were riding through the Eumeralla marshes. (He 416always adopted the fiction that he was an old retainer of our family.) \'Far from it.\' But after this dark saying he relapsed into his usual reserve on the subject and enlightened me no further. One trait of character which was in keeping with his presumed social past he was well known to possess.
\'You seem mighty independent, my man,\' said an employer to him on one occasion.
\'Yes,\' replied Jack proudly, \'and I can uphold it.\'
He was in my service before and after \'the gold\' as stock-rider, horse-breaker, and road-hand, both at Port Fairy and Lake Boga. Not the man to save his wages; unlike many of his contemporaries, who are now men of substance, Jack varied but little in his non-possession of the world\'s goods. But there were many homesteads in his old district where he was always sure of a welcome, a glass of grog, and a week\'s lodgings, so that when out of employment he was never in any great straits.
With one influential class of the community he was especially acceptable, and a favourite to the last. He had a natural \'Hans the boatman\' faculty for amusing children, whom he delighted by making miniature stockwhips and other bush requisites, while they never tired of listening to his wondrous tales of flood and field.
In the matter of stockwhip-making he was a second \'Nangus Jack,\' and, moreover, an extraordinary performer with that weapon in the saddle. I have seen him cantering along with a steady stock-horse, standing in the saddle and cracking a brace of stockwhips, one in either hand—a feat which any young gentleman is free to try if he wishes to ascertain if it be easy or otherwise. He had been through the rougher experiences of bush life, and mentioned casually, once, having been speared by blacks in Gippsland. The company being disposed to treat the statement as \'Jack\'s yarn,\' he gave ocular proof by exhibiting a cicatrice, far from trifling in dimensions, where the jagged spear-point had been cut out above his hip-bone.
He was a reliable horse-breaker, for several reasons. Being long and loose of frame, he rode a good deal \'all over his horse\'—unlike some breakers, who are so still and noiseless in their method that any unwonted cheerfulness of manner is apt to startle their pupils into \'propping,\' But as Jack on his excursions 417was always singing, shouting, and whistling; leaning half out of his saddle to greet a friend, or leaving his colts tied up at a public-house; by the time he had done with them they were safe for anybody, and would be difficult to alarm or astonish on account of these varied experiences.
As a road-hand Jack was quite in his element, and a decided acquisition to any overlanding party. He would have been invaluable in South Africa. Always in good humour, he kept every one alive during the monotonous days of driving and dreary nights of watching with his songs and stories, his \'quips and quiddities.\' He was also of signal service to the commissariat, making frequent reconnaissances where the country was inhabited, and returning with new-laid eggs, butter, and other delicacies, out of which he had wheedled the farmers\' wives or daughters.
At one time or other Jack had been in the employment of all the principal stockholders in the Port Fairy district, including Mr. John Cox of Werongurt, the Messrs. Rutledge, Campbell, and Macknight, Kennedy, Carmichael, and others. His never staying very long in one place was less due to any fault of his own than to an inherent restlessness and love of change. A born roamer, with strong Bohemian proclivities, Jack had wandered over a considerable portion of the colony. With commendable taste he latterly elected to make Western Victoria his habitual residence; and, strangely enough, he was fated to finish a roving life as nearly as possible at the place where he first took service, more than forty years since, on his first arrival in the district.
A fellow-worker and in a sense a companion of my youth, he \'was a part of those fresh days to me.\' Many a day we rode together in the heaths and marshes, the forests and volcanic trap-ridges which lie between the lower Eumeralla and the sea. At many a muster have I heard Jack\'s cheery shout, and enjoyed with others his drolleries at camp and drafting-yard. Now poor Jack\'s whip is silent; his songs and jests are hushed for evermore. A man with few faults and no vices. \'Born for a protest\' (as Mrs. Stowe says somewhere) \'against the excessive industrialism of the age.\' Many a dweller in the Port Fairy district must have felt sincerely grieved at the news of poor old Jack\'s ending, and deemed that \'they could have better spared a better man.\'
418Peter Kearney, who came to Port Fairy first with Mr. Frank Cobham from Monaro (a good specimen of the old race of stock-riders), was one of Jack\'s earlier contemporaries. With Tom Glendinning, generally known in the district as \'Old Tom,\' he was employed for a time on the Eumeralla station. Irish by birth and \'Sydney-siders\' by residence, these last had served apprenticeship to every grade of colonial experience. The naming, indeed, of the Eumeralla station and river was due to \'Old Tom\' and his mates, who brought from New South Wales the J.T.H. cattle (formerly the brand of John Terry Hughes............