Back O' Cairns

Ion Idriess

Description

In this book, Ion Idriess reflects on his life prospecting in far North Queensland from 1912 to 1914, and coincided with his earliest writing as "Gouger" for the Bulletin.
In Back of Cairns, Jack gives the reader a picture of what life was like when the peninsula jungle was falling under the settler's axe, his own day-to-day experiences, and the district's historical background. The book is peopled by characters given to polite chiacking and the writing of poetry, and the reading of 'pomes' by the evening campfire... Perhaps the most interesting is the 'Jungle Man' who could scent animals and Aborigines in the scrub before they scented him. He also possessed incredible hearing... who took Jack into the rugged mountains and the dense jungle and showed him a primitive world few men have ever seen. Jack was treading in the paths of his heroes - the explorers.
Beverley Eley, from her biography Ion Idriess.

Sujets

• Adventurers
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Explorers

Informations

• Publié par: ETT Imprint
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780648739074
• Langue: English

Extrait

ION IDRIESS
ETT IMPRINT has the following books back in print in 2021:

Flynn of the Inland
The Desert Column
The Red Chief
Nemarluk
Horrie the Wog Dog
Prospecting for Gold
Drums of Mer
Madman's Island
The Yellow Joss
Forty Fathoms Deep
Lasseter's Last Ride
The Silver City Sniping
Shoot to Kill
Guerrilla Tactics
Trapping the Jap
Lurking Death
The Scout
The Wild White Man of Badu
Gold Dust and Ashes
Headhunters of the Coral Sea
Gouger of the Bulletin
Ion Idriess: The Last Interview
Lightning Ridge
Man Tracks
Men of the Jungle
Outlaws of the Leopolds
Over the Range
Tracks of Destiny
Coral Sea Calling

This 11th edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2022
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
ETT IMPRINT PO Box R1906 Royal Exchange NSW 1225 Australia
First published by Angus & Robertson in 1958. Reprinted 1958, 1979, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994 First UK edition 1959 First published by ETT Imprint in 2021 First electronic edition by ETT Imprint 2021
Copyright © Idriess Enterprises Pty Ltd, 2016, 2021
ISBN 978-0-6487390-4-3 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-6487390-7-4 (ebk)
Cover: The Queenslander, August 16 1934.
Cover and internal design by Tom Thompson

Ion Idriess published this book in 1958, about his time prospecting at Nigger Creek and Cape York environs between 1912 and 1914. Nigger Creek was renamed Wondecla for culturally sensitive reasons in 2017.
For historical reasons we leave the text as Idriess wrote it. Indeed he clarifies the situation herein:

For the first white men to ride this way found this lovely spot swarming with natives who hotly disputed the right of way to this their choice tribal lands, their Wondecla, Meeting of the Waters.



CONTENTS
1. NIGGER CREEK
2. THE POET OF NIGGER CREEK
3. BY THE COUNCIL FIRE
4. SOME MEN DO THINGS
5. HOW IT STARTED
6. PATHFINDERS BY LAND AND SEA
7. THE RAILWAY
8. BILLY THE GOAT
9. THE AFFAIRS OF ANTS AND MEN
10. BLACK SANDS
11. THE TALE-TELLERS
12. GOUGER OF THE "BULLERTEEN"
13. MULLIGAN'S MONUMENT
14. OLD MICK THE GANGER LORDS IT
15. THE POETS OF NIGGER CREEK
16. JIM BELL'S PASSING WORRIES
17. WE GO WALKABOUT
18. THE MAKING OF TOWNS
19. I'VE GOT PLENTY TO LEARN
20. MY STRANGE MATE
21. HAPPENINGS IN THE NIGHT
22. THE TOWN THAT MOFFAT BUILT
23. MEN OF THE HILLS
24. THE THOUGHT-READER
25. OLD MICK'S "FAMILY"
26. THE SECRET
27. THE PUMP
28. THE DEATH-ADDER
29. I CANNOT KEEP A SECRET
30. LIFE IS EVERYWHERE
31. KING OF THE PATHFINDERS
32. THE OGRE
33. WILD LIFE IN THE SCRUBS
34. THE JUNGLE SPEAKS
35. HE CALLS UP THE ANTS!
36. SHE MUST OBEY
37. COPPER FROM WATER
38. JIM BELL LAUGHS LOUDEST
39. DISTANT HILLS
1
NIGGER CREEK
IT WAS good to be alive. Sunlight sparkling on the Wild River, on white tent and cottages, too, over hills and Hat. The quiet pools of Nigger Creek shaded by friendly trees offering home and life to bird, insect, and possum. Treasure within the earth. And youth, warmly spurred by hope, to dig it out.
Thus I felt, but I was in no hurry to climb down the shaft. A crimson parakeet screeched tauntingly by and I stood a moment with head peering above the windlass logs. Away down the slope stood the bold line of tough old trees caressing the Wild River singing over its rocky course. Gleaming ribbons of the brand-new railway line. The beckoning horizon of misty hills. And the wee village of Nigger Creek perched somewhat aloof from that bone of contention, the "Two Pubs". On the veranda of the New Pub the publican in shirt-sleeves stood frowning down the road at the Old Pub. The New Pub had been built to help assuage the thirst of the navvies building the line from the railhead at Herberton. But now the steel ribbons were laid past Nigger Creek and the hard-toiling, hard-drinking Knights of the Pick and Shovel were slaving a few miles farther on, their white tents and hessian huts stretching a mile through the green bush echoing to their toil as steadily they laid the rails mile after mile closer to those wind-blown Tumoulin and Evelyn scrubs. What wealth of timbers, maybe of minerals, too, certainly of rich soils, lay within those vast green depths no man yet knew.
Thus the turbulent gangs had toiled on, leaving Nigger Creek to dream in peace again. Gone was that hectic period, that sweat and toil, the growling of the gangers; some among those "slave-drivers", so truculent navvies swore, would have liked to swing the knotted whip as did the taskmasters of old. Vanished the sun-glint on the long line of shovel blades, the up-and-down on the picks, the shouts of the sleeper haulers, the creaking wheels of drays and wagons, clanging of hammers, mingled sweat of straining teams and gangs of men, the fire and song from the blacksmiths' and tool-sharpeners' anvils, the shrill ring of the drill, the thunderous Boom! Boom! Boom! from a rocky cutting. All this virile energy had whispered itself away towards the setting sun.
Again there was the murmur of the bush, the trilling waters of the Wild River, the joyous song of birds far and wide over creeks and hilltops, spreading ever farther to peaks of forest and jungle. Calm and lovely were the nights now-strangely lonesome, though, for gone were those hundreds of campfires along the Wild River and tucked away in by Nigger Creek, with here and there some firelit group singing sentimental chorus to fiddle and concertina; gone the rhythmic step-dance on the pub verandas, the lively clicking of the bones. Strangely sweet, those rough voices in haunting refrain drifting from the listening night across the tinkling waters of the river. The river voice had the night to itself now, the trill of water, gloomy hoot of the mopoke, unabashed screech of some ambitious possum. But gone was the murmur of men's voices from many a campfire and hurricane-lamp-lit shed-gone, too, the uproar of those wild and woolly pay nights.
But hark! Rollicking voices now came floating up from the Old Pub. Standing on the ladder in the shaft mouth, I listened a moment, gazing down the slope towards a pretty girl feeding ducks by the little cottage across the creek. Buck navvies', those voices were, celebrating. I could see their empty pump-car waiting on the line. On their way into Herberton for something or other, these Knights of the Banjo could not resist pulling up for one or two at "Mrs Reynolds's place". Just to renew old acquaintance, most likely, and crack a joke with the girls. Presently they would come stamping out over the ant-eaten veranda, mount the trolly, seize the handle-bars, then, with lusty farewell to Mrs Reynolds and the girls, start pumping and make the wheels fairly hum on the way to town – and the next pub.
Those navvies lived hard. Played hard, too.
Up at Grigg's store the storekeeper was hammering at a case.
The girl across by the cottage was patting a fat, greedy duck. I half wished I were a duck. Life seems harsh at times, when you're a stranger, and lonely, and absurdly young-and imagine yourself hopelessly in love with someone far, far away. The young girl was doubtless smiling as she patted the duck. Dreamily I thought that if she clutched an axe in that caressing hand I would not then envy the duck.
Up over the hill loomed the grey dumps of the Deep Lead, until recent years one of the great alluvial tin-fields of Australia. A rumbling of thunder came from away back in the hills around Herberton where the reef miners were blasting the rock in their ceaseless search for tinstone. Enviously I wondered whether the shots were fired by the lucky Bimrose brothers, whether that murmurous thunder came from the Bradlaugh, the Lyee Moon, the Rainbow or Great Northern. Maybe the St Patrick or Black King – I'd hardly hear it from the Ironclad. Some of the big shows had struck rich patches of ore; how wonderful it must feel to be blasting out a rich crushing, with everyone in town wondering what percentage the stone would go! I could not then imagine anything more wonderful. Just what could that heavy, dull, greyish-black stone mean to a man!
It meant for the lucky ones the laughing heart. Fortunes lay hidden in these far-flung hills, somewhere, far and few between, deep down in the granite, deep under the basalt. Man the insect, sometimes on blind chance, was burrowing down foot by foot, inch by inch where the rock was particularly hard, sometimes slaving on bread and dripping, sustained by the heart of a lion and that grim determination that holds a man together until he drops. On many a mining field fortune has thus been won on bread and dripping. Or was it dogged determination? Yet no matter how I toiled – I sighed at the lovely morning.
The girl had finished with the ducks. Empty dish in hand, she paused by the cottage door, lightly touching at gaily coloured Bowers adorning the creepers ever striving for entry into the very cottage. She stepped inside. To me, with my lonely heart, she seemed very cuddlesome. A parakeet sped past on his way to his mate anxiously waiting at the creek, the hurrying beauty fairly shied at my head above the windlass logs.
"Think you're a Scarlet Pimpernel!" I grumbled as the lovely bird flashed by. "Think Man is a silly insect for scratching his way into the bowels of the earth while you whistle in the sunlight sucking honey from gum-tree blossoms! I s'pose you wouldn't even look at a good fat duck!"
With a self-pitying sigh I climbed down the dark shaft to be an insect, yet eager now for work, though the sunlight was calling above. Crawled away into the cool, earthy drive, lit the candle, and peered at the face, which here was an old river-bed deep down under the basalt rock. A