Landlopers

By John Le Gay Brereton

Landlopers by John Le Gay Brereton is the story of a group of drifters in Britain and the wild and humbling record of their travels. Excerpt: "I cannot offer you cakes and ale, But campfire bread and a billy of tea— A loafer's dream and a swagman's tale. I cannot offer you cakes and ale, But a johnny-cake and some post-and-rail I trust you'll share by the track with me. I cannot offer you cakes and ale, But—campfire bread and a billy of tea!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 4066338071682

Book preview

John Le Gay Brereton

Landlopers

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4066338071682

Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

A Foreword.

LANDLOPERS.

A Foreword.

Table of Contents

If it be fair to take one's impressions from English books and papers, I am surely justified in supposing that the average British tramp is a despicable loafer or an abandoned ruffian. The Australian trav'ler is on a different footing. Ragged prowlers do not hide behind Australian barns and watch for unprotected females to insult or blue-eyed babes to kidnap. Our girls can usually look after themselves, and our infants are saleable only at starvation prices. And yet the country is full of moneyless men who pad the hoof from place to place, and drift backward and forward, always begging, occasionally stealing, seldom finding rest, and in some cases quite undesirous of a more settled fortune or a less precarious mode of existence. These men belong to the vast army of The Unemployed. When a poor tradesman or labourer is out of work, he must move on or starve on the spot. He therefore rolls up his bluey and starts off, billy in hand, on the wallaby track in search of a job. But countless others are engaged in the same quest, and jobs are scarce. Some wanderers are eventually enthralled by the irresistible charm of nomadic idleness, and are unable to return to a definite and cabined way of life.

In the beginning of the shearing season, the main current sets westward, and the wayfarers wander from shed to shed on the inland stations. When shearing-time is over, the tide sets back towards the cities. Travelling in the out back country is full of hardship—and there is no health in it, as a vagabond rouseabout once told me. In the dry season, hardly a drop of water is to be had: in the wet season, the whole country is a puddle of mud of various consistency. Travelling in the coastal districts is distinctly pleasant, if the weather be moderately fine. Personally, I have never tramped on the western side of the Blue Mountains.

The trav'ler usually gets his food by the system which he honours with the title of bummin'—in other words, he begs it. He levies his tax upon every homestead, and everywhere he meets with helping hands. Of course, many graceless scamps take advantage of this state of affairs and roam about the country for a living. They are professional trav'lers. They refuse to work, because for them labour is an unnecessary trouble. They camp on the outskirts of a township until they have thoroughly bummed it, and then they set out for pastures new.

When I am out of employment in the summer time, I become a trav'ler. My tactics depend upon the condition of my finances. Sometimes I pay my way; sometimes I am a bummer. Why I love the rough and ready life of comparative hardship, and what comfort I find in the manifold discomfort of the track, are questions which the reader may answer for himself when he has come to the end of Knight Wilford's narrative.

It must be obvious to the most casual reader—even to the counter-lunch man, who takes his literature in snacks at the bookstalls—that much of the story is founded upon the author's own experiences. Therefore I think well to explain that The Boy is not a portrait of any of my friends, though in depicting him I have found it convenient to borrow a few accidental details (of costume, employment and so forth) from one who travelled with me a few years ago. But essentially The Boy is himself alone.

J. LE GAY BRERETON

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LANDLOPERS.

Table of Contents

Thursday, 12th March.

Still at home: still at work. From the window where I sit, I can see some of the roofs and spires of the city, above which hangs the dark morning-cloud of smoke. By road, it is seven miles to Sydney—seven dreary, dusty miles. Half a mile to the southward of this house is the village of Gladesville on the hills above that portion of the Harbour which is mis-named the Parramatta River. And here I sit, pent in by four walls and faced by an irregular array of books and manuscripts. The hideous sameness of things! The misery of clock-work regularity! This limited existence galls me; and the enforced study of Old English poetry increases my dissatisfaction. Freedom and action nerve every line of Anglo-Saxon verse. To start reading the ancient songs is to plunge into the swirl of foaming sea-waves and to feel the battle frenzy. If I am to stay here, I must read something soothing and enervating—conservative and Tennysonian. But only one thing can bring me peace now. The old longing is upon me—the longing for the open road and its lazy labour. I want to burst these prison-walls of home and custom; to meet my mates of former days on the proper footing, and to mingle with them unrestrained and unrebuked. My fellow-thanes await me. I hear their voices and I must go. I must lie close to the living earth, encompassed by the stars. My eyes are dim with longing for the dear blue of hills and sea and sky. I am eager for a thousand natural pleasures; to dive down into cool water and gaze up through spaces of dim green or grey, or mark in clear depths the blending of tints in wave-worn pebbles and aquatic weeds; to let the branches of trees sweep across my face and body, causing indescribable thrills of love; to lie with my back against a hill and watch slow melting clouds, and see birds gliding down the wind; to sink my face in sweet-scented grass, and spread my fingers that I may feel the caress of the elastic blades; to rejoice in the smooth flow of the breeze; to stand upon the shore and feel the ceaseless pulsing of the Pacific. I am hungry for communion with these mates of mine. And then the freedom from restraint, the fetterless uncertainty of vagrant life! And the darling children by the wayside!—children who laugh shyly at the incomprehensible tramp who asks such foolish questions. He asks them merely for the sake of hearing childish tones and looking into childish eyes. The confidence of these younglings is not won until they have done the poor trav'ler a favour—filled his billy with water, perhaps. It is one of the earliest-developed traits of our nature that we love better those whom we freely serve than those from whom we receive service. These things need not be curiously enquired into. Enough for us that they are good. And the tramp can appreciate everything, and can find enjoyment even in misfortune. He is not stifled by conventional obligations. He wanders at large in a perfect atmosphere of love. He is on the common level; no social lies raise him to a pedestal or depress him in a cess-pit. He feels his fellowship with Nature. An individual, he is yet merged in the universe. He recognises his union with the Divine. He is a god. And the people whom he passes on the road see only a tramp with fringed breeches and a hat full of holes. They wonder at his half-curbed bursts of laughter, and possibly suppose he may be mad. But he is so brimming with exultant joy that he would like to clasp the hand of every man he meets, and kiss the lips of every girl...

And Marjorie? Is the breach permanent this time; or will she forgive me for the gusty violence of my love? To what end does the Life-Spirit set the blood of a man boiling on the flame of passion? I am a law-abiding subject of a Sovran who crumbles your manufactured rules as Time brings to naught the parchment they are written on. I am called a rebel, because I resist all senseless and unnatural tyranny. And Marjorie? The longest way round, as some Scriptural writer says, is the shortest way home. I shall start for your door, my own, by turning my back on it.

The bell! Gods, how I hate this deadly regularity! Curse their punctual habits! But dinner is dinner.

Friday, 13th March.

The Boy crossed my track to-day. He is eighteen years of age, but looks several years younger. By trade he is a house-painter. I asked him whether he would swear mateship and shoulder swags with me. He will.

So it is all settled, and we are to start as soon as The Boy has finished his current job. I must borrow some money. Farewell to conventionality and Anglo-Saxon!

    Busted be Beowulf, blasted the aetheling.

    Blooming well blowed be the bloke under helm!

But whose ear can I bite for a few bob?

Sunday, 15th March.

Marjorie