AN AUSTRALIAN HOME IN 1930
When you come to an old spotted gum right on the saddle of Sandstone Ridge, after an eighteen-mile ride from Timpanundi, you’re very close to Freddy Prince’s war selection. There’s a well-made gate in the road fence on your left, and it bears the legend, “Prince’s Jolly.” Through that the track will lead you gently uphill into a wide and gradually deepening sap, until you think you’ve made some mistake. Then look to your left, and behold the front entrance to Freddie’s dug-out.
An old shell-case hangs near by, and when you strike it you’ll hear an echo of children’s voices, and a small platoon of youngsters charge you at the double. First time I blew in it was just on teatime, and my first glance in at the well-lit gallery and the smell of the welcome food are worth the recollection. Fred came out and led my cuddy round to the stable sap, where he was given what had been on his mind for some hours past. I didn’t lose much time in settling down to tea—it was already too dark to look around outside. Besides, as Fred explained, there was nothing to see of the homestead bar the inside, and by the third year of excavation most of that had been dumped into the gully and pretty well all washed away.
The meal finished, we played games with the kids. Fred seldom read the papers—he said he didn’t want to strain the one eye that was left to him—so Mrs. Prince retired to absorb the news I had brought in their mail-bag, and to prepare herself to issue it to her husband later.
Long after the children went to burrow, he and I smoked and pitched away about the past. He told me how he and many others had come to adopt the underground home. It had been the case of making a penny do the work of a pound, and Fred himself had done the work of a company. It had been a hard struggle, but the missus was a treasure, and never growled except when things were going well—as some people will do. It was just a case of dig in, dig up, and dig down. Anything in the way of iron or steel was prohibitive. Timber was too expensive, and in any case the timber that stood on the selection he had been forced to sell in order to stock the farm. It had been a problem of years, but he had made a job of it; and when he showed me round the house I didn’t grudge him his little bit of pride.
The main gallery opened to the surfaceat the front and back, and was about forty-five paces long. It was driven through hard ground, and was well arched so that it required no timber. On one side there was a branch to the pantries and the galley, and on the other side the dining-room and the bedrooms, which were really one big chamber with solid pillars of earth left at intervals, forming a group of rooms each with a dome roof and canvas partitions. A borehole had been put through to the surface at the centre of every room for ventilation and light, a device of reflectors enabling one to bring the sunlight in at all hours of the day.
Once, as we sat and smoked, a subdued chattering came from the adjoining room. I looked up and saw the top of a periscope over the partition. Instantly it disappeared with a noise like the scattering of furniture. Then a voice: “Oh, daddy, do you know what?”
“What’s happened, Kit?” replied the father.
“Two of your biscuit photo-frames are smashed.”
“Oh, never mind, old girl,” said Fred; “it’s time they began to break up after fifteen years. Go to sleep, both of you.”
As I lay awake next morning I overheard some homely details. How the baldy steer had hopped over O’Dwyer’s parapet into his lucerne patch; and Jimmy ought to have widened the trench last week when he was told to; and the milking sap hadn’t been cleaned out the previous day because Georgie had forgotten he was pioneer; and Jerry O’Dwyer had shot two crows from the new sniper’s pozzy[2]down at the creek—and so on.
When we sat down to breakfast Mrs. Prince was primed with news. “I told Fred,” she said, “I didn’t believe we’d taken Lake Achi Baba; the latest cable says it’s still occupied by the German submarines.” Fred nodded as if he didn’t care much.
“Achi Baba used to be a hill once, wasn’t it, daddy?” chipped in one of the youngsters.
“Yes, it used to be one time,” replied his father, looking into the blue puffs that drifted away from his pipe and out past the waterproof sheet of the dug-out door. In those blue mists of the past what he saw was the bald pate of the great hill, with the howitzers tearing earth out of the crest of it by the hundredweight, while the Turkish miners ever heaped the outside of it with the spoil from their tunnels. “Yes, it was a hill once.”
Thus Freddy and his wife and family live their life as happily as if there were no war.
“Soldieroo,”2nd Field Co., Aust. Engrs.
FOOTNOTES:[2]Pozzy or Possie—Australian warrior’s short for “position,” or lair.
[2]Pozzy or Possie—Australian warrior’s short for “position,” or lair.
[2]Pozzy or Possie—Australian warrior’s short for “position,” or lair.