A friendly advisor put a spring in Henry Lawson’s step by giving him a vision of ‘green and shady banks’ awaiting them at Lake Eliza. Instead, he found:
‘A patch of grey discoloured sand,
A fringe of tufty grasses,
A lonely pub in mulga scrub
Is all the stranger passes.‘
He left thirsty and bitterly disappointed, muttering, “I hope that I will never be, as dry as Lake Eliza”. The image of this remote bush hotel was preserved in his poem published in The Bulletin in December 1893.
Lake Eliza, by Henry Lawson
The sand was heavy on our feet,
The Bulletin – December 1893.
A Christmas sky was o’er us,
And half a mile through dust and heat
Lake ’Liza lay before us.
‘You’ll have a long and heavy tramp’
So said the last adviser
‘You can’t do better than to camp
To-night at Lake Eliza.’
We quite forgot our aching shanks,
A cheerful spirit caught us;
We thought of green and shady banks,
We thought of pleasant waters.
’Neath sky as niggard of its rain
As of his gold the miser,
By mulga scrub and lignum plain
We’d tramp’d to Lake Eliza.
A patch to grey discoloured sand,
A fringe of tufty grasses,
A lonely pub in mulga scrub
Is all the stranger passes.
He’d pass the Lake a dozen times
And yet be none the wiser;
I hope that I shall never be
As dry as Lake Eliza.
No patch of green or water seen
To cheer the weary plodder;
The grass is tough as fencing-wire,
And just as good for fodder.
And when I see it mentioned in
Some local ADVERTISER,
’Twill make me laugh, or make me grin
The name of ‘Lake Eliza.’
Lake Eliza Hotel appears to have been abandoned around 1912 as indicated by the remainder of this tale, which is partly told on the Yantabulla page. A traveller, eager to make his way to Sydney to ‘escape’ the clutches of an over-friendly publican in Yantabulla, heads towards Bourke. Interesting too that by the time of the writers visit, parts of Lawson’s poem had morphed into some form of popular ballad.
Continued from ‘The Shanty By The Lake’
Deserted Shanty
“YAIRS, mate,” he said, looking critically at the leaden sky, “it’s goin’ to rain, all right.”
I swung myself into the saddle. “Tell you what, mate,” said the shanty- keeper. “Lake Eliza isn’t far from here. You’ll see the lake to the right of the track and the old pub will make a good camp if it comes on wet.” One of the idlers came forward and laid a hand on my horse’s bridle. “That’s right mate,” and added more instructions about finding the deserted pub. I rode off and before long it began to rain. It was a cold, miserable rain and the moisture from the thick mulga scrub wet me completely. In less than an hour’s ride I came to the lake, where wild duck and other birds of the bush were winging their way to settle down for the night; through an opening in the scrub I saw the old, deserted slab shanty.
I quickly unsaddled and hobbled my horse, taking my swag and gear through the doorless entrance of the shanty. In the fast deepening gloom I saw that the window frames and fittings of the building had been stripped. Old news papers on the floors bore the date 1912; the year, I presumed, the place had ceased to function as a public house. In the dim light I could read headlines concerning some Balkan War. To the rear of the shanty stretched Lake Eliza, eerie and silent save for the occasional squawk of some wild bird.
A light breeze sent faint ripples over the dark waters of the lake and as I looked about the lonely scene, half-remembered lines of an old bush ballad began to run through my head —
“There’s a lonely pub in the Mulga scrub
And they call it Lake Eliza,
You could pass it by a thousand times
And still be none the wiser.”
Cold, wet and miserable, I looked about for dry wood to boil the billy, but the increasing darkness forced me to give up my quest. Supperless and depressed, I unrolled my swag in one of the empty rooms and turned in. As I lay I thought about my coming visit to the city. At the railhead in Bourke I would store my gear, arrange for a paddock for my horse and, after buying some decent clothes, take the train and have five or six weeks in Sydney.
This pleasant musing was soon disturbed, for the lines of the Lake Eliza ballad kept forcing themselves on my consciousness. Rightly or wrongly, I recalled that the ballad contained the story of a traveller being murdered for his money and the body being cast into the nearby lake.
In this state of mind I fell asleep, only to dream that I was struggling in the clutches of the steel-eyed publican and idlers of Yantabulla. Startled, I awoke and listened intently. Suddenly there was a “twang” of wire, then a “thud-thud.” Horses. I thought, raising myself on an elbow. Swiftly mv mind went back to the Yantabulla shanty. I recalled how the publican, when I had refused to stay, had told me of this place, urging it as a good, dry camp. The idlers, too. had been eager that I should not miss the shanty. Though I tried hard to reason differently,
I convinced myself that these men, tempted by the money they knew I carried, were coming to rob me. With one hand I groped in my saddle bag, feeling reassured as my fingers closed about the butt of my old Colt, a weapon I had not used since I left the Northern Territory. Pistol in hand I stepped onto the verandah of the hotel and peered into the darkness.
Again I heard the soft “thud-thud” and the “twang-twang” of wire. Slowly I raised the Colt, pointed it in the direction of the noises, and pressed the trigger. Instead of a shattering explosion there was a sharp “click” as the hammer fell upon an empty chamber. Then I remembered, the gun was unloaded — had been for months. Annoyed with myself for what I now considered my groundless fears, I returned to the blankets.
Though my fears were gone, so, too, was sleep and I tossed and turned throughout the rest of the night. At daybreak I went to the lake’s’ edge to fill the billy and there, by a wire fence, I saw fresh tracks; tracks of kangaroos and other bush animals which, during the night had come to drink. I felt thankful that the unloaded pistol had saved me from making a bigger fool of myself than what the night had already proved me to be. Still, even in the full daylight there was something uncanny and repulsive about this black lake and its deserted shanty. Snatching a hasty breakfast, I saddled up, relieved at my departure.
Late that night I crossed the Darling at Bourke and put up at Molloy’s Royal Mail Hotel. Over a nightcap with the friendly proprietor I mentioned that I had camped the previous night in the deserted shanty at Lake Eliza.
Molloy lowered his glass and looked at me with undisguised surprise.
“Most bushmen,” he said, “avoid that place— it’s supposed to be haunted.” Then he added: “I wonder you didn’t put up at Eric’s pub in Yantabulla. He’s the whitest and most honest publican west of the Darling.”