Chapter Eleven

South West You Head

Earlier that afternoon, after the boys had left the old man’s hut, Joseph checked his bearings with the mountain peak in the far distance. The old man was right. The peak lay in a straight line to the southwest point on his compass.

‘Okay, fellas, listen up!’ ordered Joseph, who now considered himself to be the leader of the expedition. ‘We have to make it to the dirt road by nightfall or we’ll be spending the night in the bush with the snakes and spiders.’

Joseph knew the mention of snakes or spiders would be sure to get Daniel’s utmost attention with immediate and complete cooperation.

‘The dirt road is only two miles through that bush,’ he added. ‘Once we get to the road, we’ll camp until dawn.’

It all seemed straightforward to Joseph, but the other two could not help but stare into the depths of the all-too-familiar scrub. The boys knew they had about two hours before nightfall, but had no idea how long it would take to reach the road.

With the thought of spiders down his collar and snakes slithering up his pant legs in the middle of the night, Daniel took the lead with Sally, pushing and stomping his way relentlessly on and on through the long grass and anything else that happened to get in his way. They had made good ground, but the fading light was catching up to them quickly, and they were still not sure of how much further they had to travel. Daniel was now exhausted, and his enthusiasm for any more major assaults on the never ending bush was equally spent. Drained of strength, he settled himself down on the ground and waited for the others to catch up.

‘What are you doing, Danny?’ cried Joseph. ‘We don’t have time to sit down. We’ve got to keep going, come on.’

‘NO!’ he shouted angrily. ‘I can’t go any further. I’m tired and my feet are really sore.’

Sitting himself down beside his brother, Joseph’s heart went out to the little boy. He had forgotten for a moment that Daniel was two years younger, and considering what they had all gone through, he could understand why Daniel was so tired.

‘Okay, Danny, we’ll make camp here for the night and get an early start in the morning.’ Joseph put his arm around his brother, laughing. ‘And don’t worry about any snakes -- it’s too cold for them anyway. We’ll make camp in the small clearing near that old gum.’

Daniel was too tired and hungry to argue. All he wanted was something to eat and a soft place to sleep. The mist from the now cold air floated amongst the trees and settled on the ground like a moist blanket.

‘I think we need to start a fire, Joe, or we’re all going to freeze to death,’ said Fred, rubbing his hands together furiously.

‘You’re right, mate. I’ll get some dry twigs to get it started and we’ll use some of that newspaper Jock wrapped the meat in.’ Minutes later Joseph had built a pyre that would have done a bushman proud. Staring at the pile of twigs and paper, he was abruptly confronted with the stark reality that without the use of matches the simple exercise of lighting a fire is by no means an easy task. Daniel could see his brother at the unlit fire, but could not understand why his brother had not actually lit it.

‘Joe,’ he shouted, ‘don’t just look at it. Hurry yourself and light it; I’m freezing.’

The self-appointed leader of the group now found himself in a most embarrassing and somewhat chilly predicament.

Fred just sat back with a grin from ear to ear. ‘Are you missing something, mate?’ he asked sarcastically.

Joseph could contain his temper no longer and started to kick wildly at the sticks and paper as he screamed into the silence of the night, ‘I have nothing to light the fire with! We’re all going to freeze to death!’

Fred couldn’t hold back any longer. He reached into the small leather satchel he had been carrying around his shoulders since they started their journey and promptly produced the much-needed box of matches.

The urge to set Fred alight instead of the kindling had briefly crossed Joseph’s mind, but the great relief of a warm fire curtailed his moment of spite. Huddled around the now-crackling fire, the boys picked casually at the piece of leftover roo meat their new friend had so kindly given them, and laughed and chatted about the day’s events and the adventures that lay ahead.

Fred rummaged through his bag once more and retrieved, much to Joseph and Daniel’s surprise, a pipe and a small pouch containing tobacco. Along with the tobacco he also produced a small bottle filled with liquid that looked and smelt very similar to the contents of old Jock’s jar.

‘Where the hell did you get those from, Fred?’ asked Daniel curiously.

‘Well, the pipe and tobacco I lifted from my father’s drawer, and the grog I found back at old Jock’s. When Joe was talking to him, I took a walk around the back of his hut and found a box filled with these little bottles. I think he makes the stuff himself.’

Fred filled the pipe, lit it, took a good suck, and immediately started coughing and choking.

‘Hey, give me a go!’ shouted Daniel, snatching the pipe from his hand. A moment later the pipe’s toxic contents had taken its second victim.

Not content with choking themselves to death on Tom McAllister’s pipe, old Jock’s volatile concoction was just too much of a temptation. Fred pulled out the cork and cautiously took a sip. It took less than a second before the contents started to take effect. Gasping for every ounce of breath, his eyes the size of dinner plates, Fred could do nothing but sit there until the fumes had cleared from his young and unsuspecting lungs. Perspiration started to run down his face as he offered the bottle to the other boys.

‘Go on, mates, have a drink. It kinda makes you feel warm and funny.’

Warm and funny was good enough for Daniel, and he was more than willing to participate in Fred’s exciting experiences. Joseph looked on, shaking his head at the sight of his brother and best mate, sipping and sucking at whiskey and tobacco, choking and coughing until their twisted faces turned to a glowing shade of crimson. 

The night sky arrived without notice, turning the silence of the surrounding bushland into a symphony of nocturnal activity. The sounds of birds and crickets filled the air with their endless chorus, while possums leapt through tree tops, crashing through branches in their nightly search for food. The kangaroos and wombats bounded and scurried their way through the long grass. From the solitary glow of the campfire, the intermittent sounds of belching, farting and giggling brought nature’s symphony to an abrupt but momentary silence.

Joseph was tired and had had enough of the constant larking and carrying on of the now slightly-inebriated duo and decided to get some sleep. Before bedding down for the night, he checked the old mare, built up the dying fire, and, curling up like a dog in its soothing warmth, drifted peacefully in to a deep sleep. Daniel and Fred continued their strange antics until sheer exhaustion felled them until the palest glint of sunrise.

The sun had not quite risen when Joseph awoke to the icy chill of an early winter morning biting his shivering body. The once-soothing fire had now turned into nothing but cold grey ash, and the scolding magpies seemed pleased with his apparent discomfort. Jumping to his feet, Joseph began stomping his feet and rubbing his arms vigorously to increase his circulation; then he gathered some more kindling and started the fire again.

Looking down at the previous night’s merrymakers lying on their backs with mouths wide open, Joseph could not help but notice that they slept exactly the way they would have in their own beds.

 ‘Wake up, you two!’ he shouted as he gave each a nudge with the toe of his boot. ‘We’ve got a long way to go.’

Daniel and Fred slowly opened their eyes and stared up at the trees as if they had no idea where they were.

‘Not so cheery now, are you, Danny?’ cried Joseph.

The two struggled to their feet and stood shivering around the fire.

‘I don’t feel too good, Joe,’ replied Daniel, looking rather pale.

‘Me either,’ said Fred. ‘My head aches.’

Joseph opened the tin of corned beef and proceeded to slice it for breakfast. ‘Do you two want any of this?’

Declining his offer, Daniel and Fred each took a good drink from the water bottle and waited uneasily while Joseph finished eating. Checking the compass once more, Joseph extinguished the fire and the travellers continued their journey, blissfully unaware of the anguish and heartache they had brought to their families and men who had spent most of the freezing night searching for them. They were also unaware of the large party of men gathering at the police station who were preparing to start another search that very morning.

The boys had barely moved a hundred yards through the trees when to their amazement, they emerged upon the road and open ground. The distant range awoke as the sun’s rays reached out to touch the dew-covered earth, merging its countless blades of grass into a brilliant sheet of silver. Its beauty astonished Joseph. Unfortunately, to Daniel and Fred, the beauty was lost in the face of the headaches and nausea acquired from their previous night’s carryings-on.

‘Let’s get going, Joe, or we’ll never get there,’ pleaded Daniel impatiently.

Taking in one last look, Joseph climbed up on Sally’s back, and with Daniel and Fred mounted behind, they continued southwest, onward and onward towards the old bullock track, and hopefully to the shed and giant red gum -- their final key to the whereabouts of the mysterious falls. With the fresh morning air stinging their faces, the boys’ spirits began to take on a strange but exhilarating sense of freedom.

‘Come on, Sally old girl!’ shouted Daniel, waving his hat above his head. ‘Here comes the brave Kelly gang!’

It wasn’t long before the open ground had been crossed that the eucalypts and stringybark trees once again began to show themselves in ever-increasing numbers. With no sign of the bullock’s track, their once-exhilarated spirits were slowly but surely starting to desert them, until… 

‘Joe!’ cried Daniel, tugging anxiously at his brother’s sleeve and pointing in the direction of the range. ‘What’s that? Over near that clump of trees.’

‘I think it looks like what’s left of an old broken wagon,’ replied Fred.

Upon closer inspection, they could clearly see the wagon had been resting in the same place for a very long time. The weather over the years had taken its toll, and every piece of wood and iron had been turned to nothing but rust and rotted timber. As they picked through the remains, Daniel was impressed by its sheer size.

‘What do you think this was used for, Joe?’ he asked inquisitively.

‘I’m not sure, Danny, but whatever it was, it must have been very big and very heavy.’

Joseph took a good look in the direction of the mountain peak Jock had pointed out, and decided to walk a little further towards it. The wagon looked like it had come from the ranges and he was sure that the illusive bullock track must be very near. He had walked no more then thirty paces when his instincts were confirmed. There in front of him lay two furrows almost a foot deep, no more than two yards apart, and almost hidden by grass. Joseph’s heart started to skip as he turned to attract the others’ attention.

Following the furrowed ground left by the straining wheels of a thousand loaded wagons over countless years, the three boys moved slowly in the direction of the Warby Range. Cockatoos and rosellas with their welcoming screeches lined treetop branches that looked more like gnarled fingers reaching out to touch the clear morning sky. On either side of the winding track, the trees closed in on the three innocent visitors as if to camouflage them from the clutches of the outside world.

It was now half past six on Saturday the 24^th of June. Joseph could feel the end of their search was drawing near, but the shed and the giant red gum the strange riddle had mentioned still remained a mystery.

As they ambled along the bullock track, Joseph could not help but feel a change had come over him in the last twenty-four hours. The journey to the falls had given him a sense of freedom and independence that he had never experienced before. Joseph loved his mother dearly, but the time spent away had also given him an inner strength and a way of proving to her he was no longer a child but a man -- a man who was old enough to take care of his family until his father’s return.

In a clearing not more than a mile from the thick bush that formed at the foot of the range, the boys could clearly see what seemed to be the remains of a large wooden building. On closer inspection it looked very similar to a larger version of the old forge they’d found the day before. Most of its tin roof was still intact except for one of the main supports, which had collapsed, leaving one corner of the structure scattered on the ground. The ironbark timbers used in the building’s construction were now a light grey colour, with rot taking hold of almost every piece that had been exposed to the unforgiving elements. In the surrounding area, hardly a blade of grass had made its way through the dried mud and sawdust matting that was trodden and compressed over the years by man and beast, then left to harden in the scorching sun.

‘This has got to be that sawmill old Jock was talking about, fellas!’ cried Joseph, sliding down from Sally’s back. The three boys stared in awe at the rusted heart of the once-thriving mill.

‘It’s a steam engine, Joe!’ shouted Daniel excitedly. ‘Quick, you blokes, give me a push up!’

Before long, all three were standing atop the silent relic, looking down at the ruins that once supplied the timber for the railway lines that now stretched like vines across Victoria from Melbourne to the mighty Murray River. Joseph imagined the hard men laughing above the loud noises of the engine as they sweated and pushed the huge logs through the razor-sharp teeth of the steam-driven saw. In his mind he heard the shouts from the bullock drivers as they steered their teams across the virgin ground, and the sharp sound of cracking whips echoing across the distant range.

‘What lives they must have led!’ he thought.

Taking one last look around the once-thriving mill, the three walked outside and looked further down the track.

Daniel shook his head and looked at his brother. ‘Joe, I can’t see any sign of the shed, or that rotten tree.’

‘We’ll try a little further, Danny, and if we can’t find anything, we may as well go home and face the music.’

 ‘What do you think mother will say, Joe?’

‘I don’t want to think about it, Danny. I know we’re going to have sore backsides, not to mention how angry granddad will be with us taking Sally.’

While the brothers pondered their punishment, Fred’s eyes were staring in the direction of one very large red gum not more than fifty yards from where they were standing. He grabbed Joseph’s arm and pointed to the enormous tree.

‘Joe, look over there. There’s no shed but at least there’s a gum.’

‘Go ahead and have a look, Fred,’ replied Joseph, who by now had given up all hope. ‘Danny and I’ll wait for you here.’

Still mounted on Sally’s back, the boys waited for Fred to satisfy his curiosity. He looked a strange sight as he stomped around in circles through the long grass that surrounded the giant tree.

‘What’s he doing, Joe?’ asked Daniel curiously.

‘I’m not sure, other than wasting his time.’

Suddenly Fred bent down and held up a piece of rusty metal. Screaming at the top of his voice, he waved it above his head.

‘Come on, boys, I think I’ve found something!’

Joseph jabbed his heels into Sally’s flanks and galloped across to Fred. ‘What is it mate? What did you find?’

Fred held it out to him. ‘Roofing iron. And look around, Joe. I think there used to be something here, but there’s not much left of it now.’

‘I think you’re right, Freddy old mate,’ answered Joseph, slapping him on the back with a renewed sense of hope. ‘This has got to be the place.’

His hands now shaking with excitement at the thought of seeing the falls, Joseph pulled his compass from his pocket and turned it until he found true west. Straining their eyes to the range, the boys searched its terrain, looking for the slightest sign of flowing water. To their disappointment, however, they could see nothing but the treetops reaching up from the foot of the range. With no sign of the illusive falls, the boys were again back where they started.

‘Joe, maybe the trees have grown in all this time,’ suggested Daniel, ‘and they’re blocking our view. What if I climb to the top of this tree and see if I can spot something?’

Joseph’s incredulous gaze traveled from his little brother to the top of the giant red gum. ‘Are you mad, Danny? Do you realise what will happen if you fall?’

Not to be deterred, Daniel led Sally to the base of the gum and climbed up onto her back. Stretching on the tips of his toes, he reached out to the lowest branch and slowly pulled himself up.

‘Be careful, Danny’ shouted Joseph, all the while thinking about what he would tell his mother if anything happened to her youngest son. On the positive side, if anyone was capable of climbing this giant gum, it was Daniel. He had more than enough experience in the gentle art of tree climbing, especially when it came to acquiring apples, or for that matter, any other type of fruit that happened to grow in trees.

With Joseph’s compass secured in his pocket, he made his way cautiously from branch to branch until he had reached halfway up the hundred-foot monster. Checking the compass, he looked towards the range and shook his head. Not wasting any more time, Daniel continued up the giant tree until he had finally reached its precarious top. Fred and Joseph waited patiently below, their heads turned skyward, their eyes not leaving him for a second. Nestling in between the fork of a sturdy branch, Daniel again took his bearings. To the two waiting boys below, he seemed to be taking forever on such a simple task, but with the tree top swaying from side to side and his legs wrapped around a most uncomfortable branch, it was far from easy.

Looking across to the range once more, Daniel started pointing in its direction repeatedly, staring down at Joseph and Fred as if to relay some sort of message.

‘What the blazes is he doing, Fred?’ asked Joseph.

‘I don’t know, mate, maybe he’s seen something.’

The boys waited for Daniel as he warily made his descent, stopping now and again to point toward the range. Minutes later, he was hanging from the lowest branch with his feet firmly planted on Sally’s back.

Daniel was not only exuberant but almost out of breath as he tried to relay his findings to Joe. ‘I saw it…I saw it… I saw the falls, Joe….I think I saw the falls.’

‘Calm down, Danny.’ Joe waited a moment until his brother had regained his composure.

‘I think I saw the falls, Joe; I’m sure it was them. I could see something shining halfway up the ranges. It looked like water, you know, when the sun shines on it.’

‘But can you be sure it’s the falls, Danny?’

‘Well, I… I’m almost sure,’ replied Daniel, reaching for the water bottle.

Frustrated and unconvinced, Joseph turned to Fred. ‘What do you think we should do? We’re not even sure he saw the falls.’ For the third time since they started their quest, Joseph felt like giving up and returning home.

Fred shrugged. ‘I’ll do whatever you do, Joe.’

But Daniel had other ideas. ‘No!’ he shouted angrily. ‘It was your idea to search for the damned stupid falls in the first place and I’m not going home until I find them. They’re right there, Joe! I’m sure I saw them.’

Joseph knew his young brother was stubborn, but had never seen him quite so determined. His thoughts now totally confused, Joseph looked into his brother’s face and remembered the words their father had always told them when a task just seemed too hard.

“Remember you’re a Delaney, boys, and Delaneys never give up.”

How he wished his father were with them right now! ‘But maybe he is,’ Joseph thought.

‘Okay, Danny, you win,’ he said aloud. ‘But if those falls aren’t there, you’d better start running.’

Daniel pointed half way up the range to where he had seen the supposed reflection on the water and prayed he had not been mistaken.