[Editor: This is section 12 of “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir ”, by A. G. Stephens, published in Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (1897).]
[The floods of 1891]
On 25th July, 1891, Boake writes to his father from the survey camp at Mundawaddery, recording an incident which impressed him deeply —
… I suppose you saw by the paper that the floods in this part of the country have been without precedent in the recollection of the oldest settlers. We arrived at Brookong and camped there on the Thursday before the memorable 12th July. It began to rain on Friday, and that night 120 points fell. All day Saturday it poured, and the lamb-markers were working all through it. On Saturday night Mr. Dixon, the sheep-overseer, came in from the camp at Green’s Gunyah, and told us that they had been up to the waist in water all that day crossing sheep, and that the creek was rising very fast.
The buildings at Brookong are scattered all over the place; the manager’s house, bachelors’ quarters, men’s huts, and kitchens being down near the creek, while Mr. Halliday’s house and garden, the stables, and the office and store, are a couple of hundred yards away. Raymond and I were installed in the old schoolroom, which stands away by itself from the store. We used it for an office, and slept in the bedroom adjoining. Mr. L. had a room in the big house across the garden from us. He used to walk over to Mr. Grierson’s (the manager’s) house for meals, while we used to go to the barracks.
On Saturday night the water was up in Grierson’s back yard; but we never expected to see it as it was on Sunday morning. Staines, the storekeeper, whose room was just opposite the schoolroom, accompanied us down to look for breakfast. In order to get to the barracks we had a hundred yards of water up to our knees. When we got down, there was six inches of water on the kitchen floor, and it was just commencing to ooze into the dining-room. It was running like a mill-race in the passage between the two houses.
After breakfast Syd. Welman, Staines, and I got the boat out and started to take the letters out to the mail. The mail change is about a mile away, but the water was right over the plain. Syd. and I took the oars, and away we went. All the time it was pouring in torrents and blowing half a gale. It was great fun pulling over the tops of fences and dams in and out among the trees, but we could not get right over to the road. We got the boat stuck, and had to get out and pull her along. Now and again we’d come to a deep gutter, and down one of us would go over his head. It was beginning to get rather chilly by the time the coach came along. It would have made a striking picture: the boat in foreground and the scarlet coach with its four horses coming towards us — sometimes with the water over the wheels and horses almost swimming — and then, as far as the eye could reach, the plain one sheet of water. We were wishing we could have had a photo. of the scene.
I tell you, when we got back to Brookong we were glad to get dry things on. We three started a fire in the school-room and stayed there. The water rose all day, and at night they were rowing the boat between Grierson’s house and our residence. At eight o’clock Sunday night it was into the store, and we had to turn to and shift two tons of flour and one of sugar into a place of safety. The lamb-markers had all come into the station, and everything seemed pretty safe as far as the men were concerned.
… We went to bed on Sunday night with three inches of water in our rooms. It never rose any higher, and on Monday was beginning to fall. Then the bad news came. A man coming in from Green’s Gunyah hotel, where the lamb-markers had been camped, reported finding two of them dead on the main road about two miles from Brookong. Some of them had left the public-house to come in on Sunday in a waggonette. They were all drunk, and these two unfortunates had dropped out of the cart and lain there and perished — how, can never be ascertained. The coroner would not come out: he was afraid of the creek. He wired out to bury them, and held an enquiry a week afterwards; but their comrades swore that they were all so drunk they remembered nothing. Yet they were able to drive ten miles in that fearful storm, and never hit a tree or miss a gate.
On Monday night news came in from the out-station that a young fellow named Arthur Biscay was missing. They had been scouring the country, but it was not until Tuesday that they found him, also lying dead in the bush. They had all left the Gunyah together, but Arthur had slipped away from them and was never missed. He was riding a young thing, and the general opinion is that he got off and it pulled away from him; for they found a lot of hoof-marks of a struggling horse, and also Arthur’s hat. When it got away he walked on and on until he got exhausted and fell down. He then dragged himself along on his stomach for about a hundred yards, and then, burying his face in his hands, lay to sleep — and never woke. He was a fine young fellow, a great horseman, and the most popular man on the station.
They would not bury him until the parson could come out, which was on Wednesday. Every man on the station was at the funeral. Including visitors, there were ninety men followed his body to its grave at the wool-wash. We drove; but all who had no horses had to wade through mud and water up to their knees. It was a most impressive ceremony, rendered so by the earnestness of Arthur’s comrades, who had worked with him, played with him, and whose rough hands had fashioned his coffin and dug his grave, and who now followed him to it in the silence of the brilliant morning, broken only by the shrill tolling of the bell which had rung him and them out to work so many times. They put the coffin in a low waggonette: one of them perched himself on the side and drove the horses. Two poor little wreaths of jonquils and geraniums, twined with the lustrous leaves of the kurrajong — all the flowers afforded by the garden — reposed on the shell. The buggies fell into line, the horsemen and footmen four deep, and the cortège moved off down the creek. 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. I saw one young fellow crying manfully: I, for one, was not very far off it. The three victims of that awful night lie side by side in the little knot of graves on Brookong Creek; but I think it will be many a long day before the recollection of the 12th July, 1891, fades from the minds of the dwellers in Riverina. I have only spoken of what came within my own experience; but every station was flooded, and lives lost besides those at Brookong.
… I was very pleased to hear of Evie’s success. I suppose the scholarship entitles her to go to the High School for a certain period, and prepare for the University. I wish to God I could change places with her … I have very little time at present for writing — I do long sometimes to be able to sit down quietly and write, but everything I do is done in snatches. To have a quite room with an easy chair and a desk, and no one to disturb me, is the height of my never-to-be-gratified ambition.
I ought to have written to dear Grannie, but I have spun this out so long that there is no time. You must give this to her to read instead … Give my love to Addie and the girls. — Yours affectionately, BARTIE.
Source:
Barcroft Boake, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 195-198
Editor’s notes:
Addie = a diminutive form of the names “Addison”, “Adelaide”, “Adele”, and “Adeline” [in this instance, Barcroft H. Boake’s sister’s name was Adelaide]
cortège = a ceremonial or formal procession, such as for a funeral, wedding, or following a monarch; a funeral procession, being a line of people on foot, or in vehicles, at (or going to) a funeral or a burial, usually moving at a slow speed; a line or train of attendants, or a group or retinue of attendants accompanying someone (especially a monarch)
Evie = a diminutive form of the names “Eva”, “Evangeline”, “Eve”, and “Evelyn” [in this instance, Barcroft H. Boake’s sister’s name was Evelyn]
Grannie = (also spelt: Granny) an abbreviation of “Grandmother”
out-station = a station in a remote or outlying area of a pastoral property (distinct from the head station); a post or station in a remote or outlying area or position; an outpost
pathetic = something which evokes feelings of sadness or sorrow (can also refer to something which is considered inadequate, inferior, or beneath contempt)
photo. = (abbreviation) photograph
public-house = hotel; an establishment where the main line of business is to sell alcoholic drinks for customers to consume on the premises (also known as a “pub”)
Riverina = a region of south-central New South Wales, which encompasses Albury, Coolamon, Cootamundra, Deniliquin, Griffith, Gundagai, Hay, Jerilderie, Junee, Leeton, the Murrumbidgee River, Narrandera, Temora, Tocumwal, Tumbarumba, Tumut, Wagga Wagga, and West Wyalong
See: “Riverina”, Wikipedia
station = a large rural holding used for raising livestock, usually sheep or cattle (a pastoral property); can also refer to the principal homestead and main business centre of a pastoral property
See: “Station (Australian agriculture)”, Wikipedia
Syd. = a diminutive form of the name “Sydney”; an abbreviation of “Sydney” (the capital city of New South Wales)
waggonette = (archaic spelling of “wagonette”) a four-wheeled carriage with a crosswise driver’s seat at the front, with two long lengthwise benches or seats (facing towards each other) in the back section, often used without a covering or top
wired = sent a message by telegraph (a “wire” is telegram or message sent by telegraph)
[Editor: Added a full stop after “Arthur Biscay was missing”.]
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