There came a man from Adelaide to Bourke once, and he collected all the empty bottles in town, stacked them by the river, and waited for a boat. What he wanted them for the legend sayeth not, but the people reckoned he had a "private still", or something of that sort, somewhere down the river, and were satisfied. What he came from Adelaide for, or whether he really did come from there, we do not know.
All the Darling bunyips are supposed to come from Adelaide.
Anyway, the man collected all the empty bottles he could lay his hands on, and piled them on the bank, where they made a good show.
He waited for a boat to take his cargo, and, while waiting, he got drunk.
That excited no comment. He stayed drunk for three weeks, but the townspeople saw nothing unusual in that. In order to become an object of interest in their eyes, and in that line, he would have had to stay drunk for a year and fight three times a day -- oftener, if possible -- and lie in the road in the broiling heat between whiles, and be walked on by camels and Afghans and free-labourers, and be locked up every time he got sober enough to smash a policeman, and try to hang himself naked, and be finally squashed by a loaded wool team.
But while he drank the Darling rose, for reasons best known to itself, and floated those bottles off. They strung out and started for the Antarctic Ocean, with a big old wicker-worked demijohn in the lead.
For the first week the down-river men took no notice; but after the bottles had been drifting past with scarcely a break for a fortnight or so, they began to get interested. Several whalers watched the procession until they got the jimjams by force of imagination, and when their bodies began to float down with the bottles, the down-river people got anxious.
At last the Mayor of Wilcannia wired Bourke to know whether Dibbs or Parkes was dead, or democracy triumphant, or if not, wherefore the jubilation?
Many telegrams of a like nature were received during that week, and the true explanation was sent in reply to each. But it wasn't believed, and to this day Bourke has the name of being the most drunken town on the river.
After dinner a humorous old hard case mysteriously took us aside and said he had a good yarn which we might be able to work up. We asked him how, but he winked a mighty cunning wink and said that he knew all about us.
Then he asked us to listen. He said:
"There was an old feller down the Murrumbidgee named Kelly.
He was a bit gone here. One day Kelly was out lookin' for some sheep, when he got lost. It was gettin' dark. Bymeby there came an old crow in a tree overhead.
"`Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st! Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st!' sez the crow.
"`I know I am,' sez Kelly.
"`Fol-ler me, fol-ler me,' sez the crow.
"`Right y'are,' sez Kelly, with a jerk of his arm. `Go ahead.'
"So the crow went on, and Kelly follered, an' bymeby he found he was on the right track.
"Sometime after Kelly was washin' sheep (this was when we useter wash the sheep instead of the wool). Kelly was standin' on the platform with a crutch in his hand landin' the sheep, when there came a old crow in the tree overhead.
"`Kelly, I'm hun-gry! Kel-ley, I'm hun-ger-ry!' sez the crow.
"`Alright,' sez Kelly; `be up at the hut about dinner time 'n' I'll sling you out something.'
"`Drown -- a -- sheep! Drown -- a -- sheep, Kel-ley,' sez the crow.
"`Blanked if I do,' sez Kelly. `If I drown a sheep I'll have to pay for it, be-God!'
"`Then I won't find yer when yer lost agin,' sez the crow.
"`I'm damned if yer will,' says Kelly. `I'll take blanky good care I won't get lost again, to be found by a gory ole crow.'"
. . . . .
There are a good many fishermen on the Darling. They camp along the banks in all sorts of tents, and move about in little box boats that will only float one man. The fisherman is never heavy.
He is mostly a withered little old madman, with black claws, dirty rags (which he never changes), unkempt hair and beard, and a "ratty" expression. We cannot say that we ever saw him catch a fish, or even get a bite, and we certainly never saw him offer any for sale.
He gets a dozen or so lines out into the stream, with the shore end fastened to pegs or roots on the bank, and passed over sticks about four feet high, stuck in the mud; on the top of these sticks he hangs bullock bells, or substitutes -- jam tins with stones fastened inside to bits of string. Then he sits down and waits. If the cod pulls the line the bell rings.
The fisherman is a great authority on the river and fish, but has usually forgotten everything else, including his name.
