Henry Lawson - While the Billy Boils

Last updated on Sat Jun 25 18:31:48 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a beardedapparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as An old mate of yourfathers on the diggings, Johnny. And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls as the case may havebeen and that we had our fathers nose but our mothers eyes, or the other way about; and say that the baby was the deadspit of its mother, and then added, for fathers benefit: But yet hes like you, Tom. It did seem strange to the childrento hear him address the old man by his Christian name considering that the mother always referred to him as Father. Shecalled the old mate Mr So-and-so, and father called him Bill, or something to that effect.

Occasionally the old mate would come dressed in the latest city fashion, and at other times in a new suit ofreach-me-downs, and yet again he would turn up in clean white moleskins, washed tweed coat, Crimean shirt, blucher boots,soft felt hat, with a fresh-looking speckled handkerchief round his neck. But his face was mostly round and brown and jolly,his hands were always horny, and his beard grey. Sometimes he might have seemed strange and uncouth to us at first, but theold man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or did they understood each other so well and we wouldsoon take to this relic of our fathers past, who would have fruit or lollies for us strange that he always rememberedthem and would surreptitiously slip shilluns into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories about the old days, whenme an yer father was on the diggins, an you wasnt thought of, my boy.

Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the forenoon or after dinner he and father would take a walkamongst the deserted shafts of Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old ground, and talk of past diggersmistakes, and second bottoms, and feelers, and dips, and leads also outcrops and absently pick up pieces of quartz andslate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in an abstracted manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some oldlead they had worked on: Hogans party was here on one side of us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting goodgold and so was Hogan, and now, why the blanky blank werent we on gold? And the mate would always agree that there wasgold in them ridges and gullies yet, if a man only had the money behind him to git at it. And then perhaps the guvnorwould show him a spot where he intended to put down a shaft some day the old man was always thinking of putting down ashaft. And these two old fifty-niners would mooch round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break claylumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to look for hisfather and Mr So-and-so, and tell em to come to their dinner.

And again mostly in the fresh of the morning they would hang about the fences on the selection and review the livestock: five dusty skeletons of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece of equine scenery which, by theway, the old mate always praised. But the selectors heart was not in farming nor on selections it was far away with thelast new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married MansCreek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or BrownSnake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop,or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with manyGolden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks, Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamens Gullies. And so theyd yarn till theyoungster came to tell them that Mother sez the breakfus is gettin cold, and then the old mate would rouse himself andstretch and say, Well, we mustnt keep the missus waitin, Tom!

And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the edge of the veranda that is, in warm weather andyarn about Ballarat and Bendigo of the days when we spoke of being on a place oftener than at it: on Ballarat,on Gulgong, on Lambing Flat, on Creswick and they would use the definite article before thenames, as: on The Turon; The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian Lead. Then again theyd yarn of old mates, such as TomBrook, Jack Henright, and poor Martin Ratcliffe who was killed in his golden hole and of other men whom they didnt seemto have known much about, and who went by the names of Adelaide Adolphus, Corney George, and other names which mighthave been more or less applicable.

And sometimes theyd get talking, low and mysterious like, about Th Eureka Stockade; and if we didnt understand andasked questions, what was the Eureka Stockade? or what did they do it for? fatherd say: Now, run away, sonny, anddont bother; me and Mr So-and-so want to talk. Father had the mark of a hole on his leg, which he said he got through agun accident when a boy, and a scar on his side, that we saw when he was in swimming with us; he said he got that in anaccident in a quartz-crushing machine. Mr So-and-so had a big scar on the side of his forehead that was caused by a pickaccidentally slipping out of a loop in the rope, and falling down a shaft where he was working. But how was it they talkedlow, and their eyes brightened up, and they didnt look at each other, but away over sunset, and had to get up and walkabout, and take a stroll in the cool of the evening when they talked about Eureka?

And, again theyd talk lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps mother would be passing the wood-heap and catch aword, and asked:

Who was she, Tom?

And Tom father would say:

Oh, you didnt know her, Mary; she belonged to a family Bill knew at home.

And Bill would look solemn till mother had gone, and then they would smile a quiet smile, and stretch and say, Ah,well! and start something else.

They had yarns for the fireside, too, some of those old mates of our fathers, and one of them would often tell how agirl a queen of the diggings was married, and had her wedding-ring made out of the gold of that field; and how thediggers weighed their gold with the new wedding-ring for luck by hanging the ring on the hook of the scales andattaching their chamois-leather gold bags to it (whereupon she boasted that four hundred ounces of the precious metal passedthrough her wedding-ring); and how they lowered the young bride, blindfolded, down a golden hole in a big bucket, and gother to point out the drive from which the gold came that her ring was made out of. The point of this story seems to havebeen lost or else we forget it but it was characteristic. Had the girl been lowered down a duffer, and asked to pointout the way to the gold, and had she done so successfully, there would have been some sense in it.