For A Moment We Waited, Spell-Bound In The Brilliant Sunshine; Then The
Dogs Running Down To The Water's Edge, The Gallahs And Cockatoos Rose
With Gorgeous Sunrise Effect:
A floating gray-and-pink cloud, backed by
sunlit flashing white.
Direct to the forest trees they floated and,
settling there in their myriads, as by a miracle the gaunt, gnarled old
giants of the bush all over blossomed with garlands of grey, and pink,
and white, and gold.
But the operator, being unpoetical, had ridden on to the "wire," and
presently was "shinning up" one of its slender galvanised iron posts as a
preliminary to the "handshake"; for tapping the line being part of the
routine of a telegraph operator in the Territory, "shinning up posts," is
one of his necessary accomplishments.
In town, dust, and haste, and littered papers, and nerve-racking bustle
seem indispensable to the sending of a telegram; but when the bush-folk
"shake hands" with Outside all is sunshine and restfulness, soft beauty
and leisurely peace. With the murmuring bush about us in the clear space
kept always cleared beneath those quivering wires, we stood all dressed
in white, first looking up at the operator as, clinging to his pole, he
tapped the line, and then looking down at him as he knelt at our feet
with his tiny transmitter beside him clicking out our message to the
south folk. And as we stood, with our horses' bridles over our arms and
the horses nibbling at the sweet grasses, in touch with the world in
spite of our isolation, a gorgeous butterfly rested for a brief space on
the tiny instrument, with gently swaying purple wings, and away in the
great world men were sending telegrams amid clatter and dust, unconscious
of that tiny group of bushfolk, or that Nature, who does all things well,
can beautify even the sending of a telegram.
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