The Kangaroo Marines

Excerpt

A NOTABLE QUARTETTE

WANTED.—One Thousand cheerful toughs to enlist for the period of the war in the Kangaroo Marines. Boosers, scrimshankers and loonies barred. Gents with big waists and little hearts are warned off. Sharpshooters on the wallaby, able to live on condensed air and boiled snakes, are cordially invited. No parson's references are required. Jackaroos, cattlemen, rouseabouts, shearers—every sort of handy-man welcome. Pay, 6s. per day, and all the "jewels" in the Sultan's harem.

This is to be the crack corps of the Australian Force.

Hurry up and join.
            (Signed) SAM KILLEM, Lt. Col. Commanding.

This alluring advertisement appeared on the front page of The Bushmen's Weekly, a Sydney production, renowned for its wit and originality. It was designed to tickle the sides of the horny-handed men of the Bush, and to rope in the best of them. For these men of the Never-Never Land are soldiers born and heroes in the toughest job. They think deep and know the way of things. If they appear wild and uncouth, they carry beneath that scrubby exterior the will of men and the open heart of the child.

Moreover, they love the Motherland. This was specially true of the four who tenanted a little shanty on the sheep station of "Old Graham," one of the wealthiest men in Australia. The quartette consisted of Bill Buster, a typical Cornstalk with a nut-brown face, twinkling eyes and a spice of the devil and the Lord in his soul. Next came Claud Dufair, a handsome remittance man with an eye-glass and a drawl. This fellow had personality. He insisted on wearing a white collar and using kid gloves when doing anything, from dung lifting to sheep shearing. Paddy Doolan was the third member. He was an Irishman by birth, but Australian by adoption. He had been in the Bush since he was a kid. A kind soul was Paddy, with the usual weakness—the craving for the "cratur." Fourth, and by no means least, was Sandy Brown, a Glasgow stoker, who had skipped away in a tramp from the Broomielaw because of another fellow's wife.

A mixed bunch, these four, you will agree. All with a history, part of it bad, but the main part certainly good. It takes a good heart to be a Bushman. Work is hard, the heat is trying, pleasures few, and the chances of wealth are only meagre. But the Australian Bush has a lure of its own. It calls the bravest and the best. It calls and holds the men primed for adventure, unafraid of death, and full of that innate charm and gallantry which is always the particular prerogative of the wanderer. No questions are asked in this land. A man's soul is never probed, nor is he expected to reveal his birth, or the cause of his being there. It is the place to hide a broken heart or mend an erring past. But it is only a place for men. And this quartette was full of the war. They were itching to fight. This advertisement, therefore, cheered their hearts and clinched their hopes.

"Well, boys," said Bill, "this is our call. We'd better join."

"Hear, hear!" remarked the others....