Water,
spelled most of the next day, given a last drink and travelled back to
the waiting waggons by sundown; yoked up and travelled on all that night
and part of the next day; once more unyoked at the end of the forty miles
of the stage; taken forward to the next water, and spelled and nursed up
again at this water for a day or two; travelled back again to the
waggons, and again yoked up, and finally brought forward in the night
with the loads to the water.
Fifty miles dry with loaded waggons being the limit for mortal bullocks,
the Government breaks the "seventy-five" with a "drink" sent out in tanks
on one of the telegraph station waggons. The stage thus broken into "a
thirty-five-mile dry," with another of forty on top of that, becomes
complicated to giddiness in its backings, and fillings, and goings, and
comings, and returnings.
As each waggon carries only five tons, all things considered, from thirty
to forty pounds a ton is not a high price to pay for the cartage of
stores to "inside."
But although the "getting in", with the stores means much to the
"bush-folk," getting out again is the ultimate goal of the waggoners.
There is time enough for the trip, but only good time, before the roads
will be closed by the dry stages growing to impossible lengths for the
bullocks to recross; and if the waggoners lose sight of their goal, and
loiter by the way, they will find themselves "shut in" inside, with no
prospect of getting out until the next Wet opens the road for them.
The Irish Mac held records for getting over stages; but even he had been
"shut in" once, and had sat kicking his heels all through a long Dry,
wondering if the showers would come in time to let him out for the next
year's loading, or if the Wet would break suddenly, and further shut him
in with floods and bogs. The horse teams had been "shut in" the same
year, but as the Macs explained, the teamsters had broached their cargo
that year, and had a "glorious spree" with the cases of grog - a "glorious
spree" that detained them so long on the road that by the time they were
in there was no chance of getting out, and they had more than enough time
to brace themselves for the interview that eventually came with their
employers.
"Might a bullock-puncher have the privilege of shaking hands with a
lady?" the Irish Mac asked, extending an honest, horny hand; and the
privilege, if it were one, was granted. Finally all was ready, and the
waggons, one behind the other, each with its long swaying line of
bullocks before it, slid away from the Warloch Ponds and crept into the
forest, looking like three huge snails with shells on their backs,
Bertie's Nellie watching, wreathed in smiles.
