Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake

“ THE BOX-TREE'S LOVE
Long time beside the squatter's gate
A great grey Box-Tree, early, late,
Or shine or rain, in silence there
Had stood and watched the seasons fare:
Had seen the wind upon the plain
Caress the amber ears of grain;
The river burst its banks and come
Far past its belt of mighty gum:
Had seen the scarlet months of drought
Scourging the land with fiery knout ”

“ I felt too dazed to cry:
I held him to me as I prayed
To God that I might die.
But sometimes now I seem to hear—
Just when the air grows chill—
A single whip-crack, sharp and clear,
Re-echo from the hill. ”

“ We have a pleasure and excitement in our work that they never feel. Every day brings something new: no two are alike. There is a charm about this life always in the saddle only those can appreciate who have lived it.
I got dear Grannie's letter. This must do for her and Addie as well as you, for I have to go up to the station presently. I am afraid Grannie must be getting very feeble. Dear old lady! won’t she be glad to see her good-for-naught grandson again! I often think about my prospective trip to Sydney when between the blankets, with the mosquitoes singing a sweet lullaby round my head. ”

“ The most pathetic touch in the whole thing was that one of the boundary-riders led Arthur's horse immediately behind the remains of its master, saddled, with the stirrups crossed dejectedly over its back. Its presence brought so sharply home the fact of its one-time rider's absence. We take Death as a matter of course, and a slight thing such as that serves to remind us of its awful reality.
Everybody was very much affected at the grave. ”

“ And, like a mighty gallows-frame,
The derrick in the New Chum claim
Hangs over where, despite the cold,
Strong miners seek the hidden gold,
And stiff and blue, half-frozen through,
The fickle dame of Fortune woo. ”

“ Some man will come yet who will be able to grasp the romance of Western Queensland and all that equally mysterious country in Central and Northern Australia. For there is a romance, though a grim one—a story of drought and flood, fever and famine, murder and suicide, courage and endurance.
And who reaps the benefit? Not the poor bushman; but Messrs. So-and-So, merchants, of Sydney or Melbourne—or the Mutual Consolidated Cut-down-the-drovers’-wages Company, Limited—or some other capitalist. ”

“ O, the rush and the rattle of fast-fleeing cattle,
Whose hoofs beat a mad rataplan on the earth!
Their hot-headed flight in! Who would not delight in
The gallop that seems to hold all life is worth? ”

“ Civilisation is only savagery silver-gilt . . . So, when the heart is stricken, and the head is humbled in the dust, civilisation fails us utterly. Back, back, we creep, and lay us like little children on the great breast of Nature, that she perchance may soothe us and make us forget, or at least rid remembrance of its sting. Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky, and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore ”

“ And the flotsam, froth-freckled, rides high.
Is it there that she buries her lovers,
This woman in scarlet and black?
Those swart caballeros, the drovers—
What sovranty set they above hers?
Riding in by a drought-beset track
To a fate which is worse than the rack.
A queen, no insignia she weareth
Save the dark, lustrous crown of her hair:
Her beauty the sceptre she beareth:
For men and their miseries careth
As little as tigresses care
For the quivering flesh that they tear. ”

“ Anthony Trollope, in one of his books about Australia, says: ‘The life of the Australian bushman is one continual picnic.’ He would not have said so if he had put in that night alongside of me.
Oh, well! I suppose a man reaps as he sows. I often grumble at these sort of things, but at the same time console myself by the thought that it was my own choosing. I might have been jogging along in monotonous respectability as a civil servant; but they don’t live, these men—they only vegetate. ”

“ The fire was lit; the fragrant tea
Drunk to a sunset melody
Tuned by the day before it died
To waken on Earth's other side.
There 'twas, beneath that Box-Tree's shade,
Fortune's foundation-stone was laid ”

“ On 19th October, 1891, Boake writes from the camp at ‘The Rock’— My Dear Father,—Did you ever lie on your back in the sun and have beautiful thoughts, that you can’t put into words, come to you? That is what I was doing this evening. You just lie down and fix your eyes on the red crest of the old rock, and wait. Presently you feel yourself melting away, and then the body stops behind and away you go—somewhere—I don’t know where—fairy-land, I suppose—that's where all the lovely things come from. Some men go and bring back beautiful stories ”

“ Who from the sea-coast hills have brought far-quarried spoils to build proud homes
Of high-piled palaces, all wrought in sloping roofs and arching domes,
Smooth-pillared hall, or cool arcade, and slenderest sky-piercing spire,
Where the late-sinking moon has laid her tender tints of mellow fire,
And golden paves the spacious ways where, o'er the smoothen granite flags,
The lightning-driven car conveys its freight with force that never lags. ”

“ Gaunt, slinking dingoes snap and snarl,
Watching his slowly-ebbing breath;
⁠Crows are flying,
⁠Hoarsely crying
Burial service o’er the dying—
Foul harbingers of Death.
Full many a man has perished there,
Whose bones gleam white from the waste of sand—
⁠Who left no name
⁠On the scroll of Fame,
Yet died in his tracks, as well became
A son of that desert land. ”

“ Far reaching downs a solid sea sunk everlastingly to rest,
And yet whose billows seem to be for ever heaving toward the west:
The tiny field-mice make their nests, the summer insects buzz and hum
Among the hollows and the crests of this wide ocean stricken dumb,
Whose rollers move for ever on, though sullenly, with fettered wills,
To break in voiceless wrath upon the crumbled bases of far hills,
Where rugged outposts meet the shock, stand fast, and hurl them back again,
An avalanche of earth and rock, in tumbled fragments on the plain ”

“ I often wonder if a day will come when these men will rise up—when the wealthy man, perhaps renowned inside [3] for his benevolence, shall see pass before him a band of men—all of whom died in his service, and whose unhallowed graves dot his run—the greater portion hollow, shrunken, burning with the pangs of thirst—others covered with the evil slime of the Diamantina, Cooper, and those far western rivers—burnt unrecognisably in bush fires, struck down by sunstroke, ripped up by cattle, dashed against some tree by their horses, killed in a dozen different ways—and what for? ”

“ As I watched his life flicker, his breath growing thicker,
I'd have given the world to be able to cry.
Rough-voiced, sunburnt men, far away beyond ken
Of civilisation, our comrades, stood nigh—
All true-hearted mourners, and sadly forlorn as
He gave them a handshake and bade them good-bye.
In my loving embrace there he finished life's race,
And nobly and gamely that long course was run;
Though a man and a sinner he weighed out a winner,
And God, the Great Judge, will declare he has won. ”

“ I think it is a natural consequence of being face to face with Nature so continually, but the great mystery of human nature often comes before me as I ride about. It seems to me so sad and so disheartening—to toil, with the knowledge of the vanity of it all in our hearts. ”

“ I don’t feel the heat nearly so much as I expected: in fact, I can stand it with much less inconvenience than I could the cold of Monaro. The only thing I feel is the thirst: I never seem to be satisfied. ”

“ It seems quite strange to sleep in a bed once more; but I wish I was on the road again. Lying about doing nothing but smoke does not suit me at all.
Two days later (20th November, 1889) , Boake writes to his father—
. . . I feel very lonely here—a stranger in a far land; and the time hangs very heavy.
He proceeds—
It is strange how easily the current of our life is turned. I don’t think in Sydney I could have found the pleasure in life that exists for me here—that is, at times: oftener I feel sick of the whole thing and long for some other country and a more stirring life. ”

“ That clasped the lithe arm, white and bare,
All in that garden fair.
I traced her fortune: love and wealth—
Though life, alas! was short.
But will that wealth be bought with love?
Or love with wealth be bought? ”

“ There is no man within the last century who has achieved such lasting fame as he has. His poems appeal not only to one class of cultured minds, as Tennyson or Browning and that lot; but there is not a bushman or drover who does not know a verse or two of ‘How We Beat the Favourite’ or ‘The Sick Stock-rider.’ I call this fame.
Gordon is the favourite—I may say only poet of the back-blocker ”

“ Lipscomb says—
He was a good horseman, and a first-class bushman. When he left me and came to Sydney he intended passing the examination for a license as surveyor, and he was thoroughly qualified to do so. In the field he was sufficiently capable, and he was a particularly good draughtsman. His work in the field-books (outlining the topography of the country) was the best I ever saw. He was very temperate—except in the use of tobacco: his pipe was hardly ever out of his mouth. He was fond of reading, whenever he had the chance: a surveyor's life gives little opportunity for study. ”

“ From equine bell-ringers comes over the hill.
But now the dull dawning gives place to the morning:
The sun, springing up in a glorious flood
Of golden-shot fire, mounts higher and higher,
Till the crests of the sandhills are stained with his blood. ”

“ The less I have to do the more time I have to grumble. Good hard work—physical labour—is the best panacea imaginable for a discontented mind. When I used to be in the yards in the heat and dust all I would think of was how to do the work well and expeditiously and have done with it; but now, from eleven o’clock in the morning I have absolutely nothing to do but kill time. ”

“ Still, this is the only life worth living that I see. No more New South Wales for me, except for a visit. This is the only place where a poor man can get a cheque together in a short time . . .
And the letter closes with ‘love to Grannie and the girls.’
To this period of his life Boake always looked back with keen pleasure. He was now 23 years old, in the prime of youth. No portrait gives a complete idea of him, but at this time he was changing from the bright lad to a thoughtful man. Boake matured slowly, and to the last there was a touch of boyishness in his nature and appearance. ”

“ It is a terror working in the yards now, but it is nothing to what we got putting out a bush fire the other day. We were all drafting when Will Chapman came galloping up to tell us there was a fire coming across the paddock about a mile away. We all made a rush for horses, and galloped off like mad along a swamp where the grass is four or five feet high, and as dry as a bone. There was a wall of fire coming across like the side of a house. ”

“ In November, 1888, Boake writes from Mullah.
. . . For the last three weeks we have been camped out lamb-marking and mustering, and I have not been in at the station once during that time except one day to get a fresh horse. We are working very hard at the camp from four o’clock in the morning to dark. I shall be glad when it is over and we can settle down again.
Boydie went to Sydney last Monday. He was very glad to get out of the dust and heat. My word! it is getting hot now. ”

“ Out where the lignum bushes twine,
This morn of good Saint Valentine.
'What ails the dog? Down, Stumpy, down!
No? Well, lead on, perchance a sheep
It is, poor brute, that fears to drown.
Heavens! how chill the waters creep! ”

“ Now, on the morning of the race,
Expectancy on every face,
They come the programme to fulfil
Upon the slope of Township Hill.
With silent feet the people meet,
While youths and maidens laughing greet. ”

“ Bidding the stockmen know no leisure —
That's when the dead men take their pleasure!
That's when the dead men fly!
Ask, too, the never-sleeping drover:
He sees the dead pass by;
Hearing them call to their friends — the plover,
Hearing the dead men cry ”

“ As some small potentate might gaze upon a ragged multitude.
Thus does the battlemented pile of high-built crags, all weather-scarred,
Where grass land stretches mile on mile, keep scornful solitary guard ”

“ It is very rough country here—nothing but stones and scrub—a bit different to the Diamantina, where it is nothing but plains. The cattle here are as wild as hawks, and we are galloping all day long.
The first day we went out to camp about ten miles away. We just took pack-horses, and, as it was very hot, only a blanket apiece. In the middle of the night it started to rain hard, and I lay in two inches of water till morning. Nobody had any coats—only shirts and pants on. We were quite unprepared for any bad weather. We had a job to light a fire, and it was infernally cold ”

“ Of course, I suppose I was a damn fool to put the rope round my neck, but still a fellow often does things without thinking, but they don’t always have such awful consequences. I am as right as the bank now, barring a red ring round my neck and a big splotch under my left ear where the knot came—so you need not be frightened; but my sensations were so curious that I wish I could explain them to you more accurately.
Give my love to Grannie and Addie, and write soon. I have not heard from you for a long time. ”

“ On 16th February, 1891, Boake writes to a sister from the survey camp at Carabosh, near Germanton—
Dear Addie,—To-night is the proudest moment of my life. I feel that at last I have my foot on the first rung of the ladder that leads to fame. I have just got a letter from the editor of The Bulletin, acknowledging some verses. This is what he says: it is short, but very sweet—
Dr. Sir,—Shall be glad to publish your pretty and melodious verses: they may be kept for Xmas and illustrated. Cheque will follow in due course. ”

“ A strange partnership indeed, for these two men so different in their tone to share popularity! I am afraid after all the bushman is not a very fine animal; but at any rate, even in his most vicious moments, he is far above many of the so-called respectable dwellers in towns.
Shortly after the date of the letter last quoted, Boake was employed, as he anticipated, to travel with cattle from Cunnamulla to Bathurst, N.S.W. He reached Bathurst in March, 1890: the cattle were delivered; and Boake engaged with the drover in charge to take a fresh job. ”

“ In December, 1891, Boake's engagement with Mr. Lipscomb ended, and he came to stay with his father and sisters at Croydon, Sydney: walking in unexpectedly one morning with a light portmanteau, and a ’possum-rug swag strapping up a few small articles—amongst them the lash of a stockwhip. His father continues the story—
When Bartie wrote to say that Mr. Lipscomb was breaking up camp, and he intended coming to Sydney, my heart sank within me, and I wished something might happen to deter him. The presentiment of evil was not without cause. ”