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Title: In The Far North
1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 12, 2008 [EBook #25059]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE FAR NORTH ***

Produced by David Widger

IN THE FAR NORTH

From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901

"Out on the wastes of the Never Never--
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance for ever--
That's where the dead men lie!"
(Barcroft Boake,
in the Sydney Bulletin.)

I

Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the
Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly
over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of
brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse
plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines
of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had repeated them
mentally, he cursed aloud.

"_That's where the dead men lie!_ Poor Boake must have thought of this
God-forsaken part of an utterly God-forsaken country, I think, when he
wrote 'Out where the Dead Men Lie.' For I believe that God Almighty has
forgotten it! Oh for rain, rain, rain! Rain to send the Gilbert down
in a howling yellow flood, and turn this blarsted spinifex waste of
scorching sand and desolation into green grass--and save me and the
youngsters from giving it best, and going under altogether.... Boake
knew this cursed country well.... I wonder if he ever 'owned' a
station--one with a raging drought, a thundering mortgage, and a
worrying and greedy bank sooling him on to commit suicide, or else
provide rain as side issues.... I don't suppose he had a wife and
children to leave to the mercy of the Australian Pastoralists' Bank.
D----n and curse the Australian Pastoralists' Bank, and the drought, and
this scorching sand and hateful spinifex--and God help the poor cattle!"

He drew rein almost