While the Billy Boils quotes

“Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom?”

Those old mates had each three pasts behind them. The two they told each other when they became mates, and the one they had shared.

And when the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps.

but they didn’t come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does.

He found the biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice from men who knew less about farming than he did.

Tom was discharged a few years since. He knocks about certain suburbs a good deal. He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly in connection with a dray and a lantern.

He says his one great regret is that he wasn’t found to be of unsound mind before he went upcountry.

The member never came back, and two more were sent to find him—or Hungerford. Three days later the two returned in an exhausted condition, and submitted a motion of want-of-confidence, which was lost. Then the whole House went on and was lost also.

Strange to relate, that Government was never missed.

However, we found Hungerford and camped there for a day. The town is right on the Queensland border, and an interprovincial rabbit-proof fence—with rabbits on both sides of it—runs across the main street.

One old buck rabbit sat up and nearly laughed his ears off at a joke of his own about that fence. He laughed so much that he couldn’t get away when I reached for him.

I could hardly eat him for laughing.

I never saw a rabbit laugh before; but I’ve seen a possum do it.

The country looks as though a great ash-heap had been spread out there, and mulga scrub and firewood planted—and neglected. The country looks just as bad for a hundred miles round Hungerford, and beyond that it gets worse—a blasted, barren wilderness that doesn’t even howl.

If it howled it would be a relief.

I believe that Bourke and Wills found Hungerford, and it’s a pity they did;

America’s bad enough, but it was never so small as that. … Bah!

The curse of Australia is sheep, and the Australian war cry is Baa!

”

The wool-washing, soap-boiling, and wool-pressing arrangements are further up the dam. “Government House” is a mile away, and is nothing better than a bush hut; this station belongs to a company.

And the company belongs to a bank. And the banks belong to England, mostly.

Mulga scrub all round, and, in between, patches of reddish sand where the grass ought to be.

then you must tramp on to the next. If you cannot get it once you must go short; but there is a lot of energy in an empty stomach. If you get an extra supply you may camp for a day and have a spell.

To live you must walk. To cease walking is to die.

The Exception is an outcast amongst bush outcasts, and looks better fitted for Sydney Domain. He lies on the bottom of a galvanized-iron case, with a piece of blue blanket for a pillow.

The departed was a “Roman,” and the majority of the town were otherwise—but Unionism is stronger than creed. Liquor, however, is stronger than Unionism; and, when the hearse presently arrived, more than two-thirds of the funeral were unable to follow.

The procession numbered fifteen, fourteen souls following the broken shell of a soul.

Perhaps not one of the fourteen possessed a soul any more than the corpse did—but that doesn’t matter.

Four or five of the funeral, who were boarders at the pub, borrowed a trap which the landlord used to carry passengers to and from the railway station. They were strangers to us who were on foot, and we to them.

We were all strangers to the corpse.

A horseman, who looked like a drover just returned from a big trip, dropped into our dusty wake and followed us a few hundred yards, dragging his packhorse behind him, but a friend made wild and demonstrative signals from a hotel veranda—hooking at the air …

They closed their bar doors and the patrons went in and out through some side or back entrance for a few minutes. Bushmen seldom grumble at an inconvenience of this sort, when it is caused by a funeral.

They have too much respect for the dead.

On the way to the cemetery we passed three shearers sitting on the shady side of a fence. One was drunk—very drunk.

In the latter case, he buys a new piece of crape. This outward sign of bereavement usually has a jolly red face beneath it.

Death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush.

We crossed the Macquarie—a narrow, muddy gutter with a dog swimming across, and three goats interested.

He didn’t like to offend an old friend by refusing his invitation.

Steelman knew his men.

The married victim generally had neither the courage nor the ability to turn him out. He was cheerfully blind and deaf to all hints, and if the exasperated missus said anything to him straight, he would look shocked, and reply, as likely as not:

“ ’Tain’t no use!” he said, sitting down on the clay and drawing his knees up.

“Edication’s a failyer.”

“Listen at ’im!” exclaimed the boy. “D’yer mean ter say it ain’t no use learnin’ readin’ and writin’ and sums?”

Then he’d go home. What he wanted at the shed at all was only known to himself; no one asked him to come.

Perhaps he came to collect evidence against us.

The cook called him “my darg,” and the men called the cook “Curry and Rice,” with “old” before it mostly.

… when the wretched “dosser” rises in the morning, he cannot shoulder his swag and take the track—he must cadge a breakfast at some back gate or restaurant, and then sit in the park or walk round and round, the same old hopeless round, all day.

There’s no prison like the city for a poor man.

Nearly every man the traveller meets in the bush is about as dirty and ragged as himself, and just about as hard up;

They were sheep. Someone said that that country was only fit to carry sheep. It must have been bad, then, judging from some of the country in Australia which is only fit to carry sheep. Country that wouldn’t carry goats would carry sheep, we think.

Sheep are about the hardiest animals on the face of this planet⁠—barring crocodiles.

You may rip a sheep open whilst watching for the boss’s boots or yarning to a pen-mate, and then when you have stuffed the works back into the animal, and put a stitch in the slit, and poked it somewhere with a tar-stick (it doesn’t …

She thinks how she fought a flood during her husband’s absence. She stood for hours in the drenching downpour, and dug an overflow gutter to save the dam across the creek. But she could not save it.

There are things that a bushwoman can not do.

Next morning the dam was broken, and her heart was nearly broken too, for she thought how her husband would feel when he came home and saw the result of years of labour swept away. She cried then.

This makes her laugh, to the surprise of the dog.

She has a keen, very keen, sense of the ridiculous; and some time or other she will amuse bushmen with the story.

She had been amused before like that. One day she sat down “to have a good cry,” as she said—and the old cat rubbed against her dress and “cried too.” Then she had to laugh.

The younger children are quieted, and presently go to sleep. The dirty-legged boy stands for a moment in his shirt, watching the fire. Presently he looks up at her, sees the tears in her eyes, and, throwing his arms round her neck exclaims:

“Mother, I won’t never go drovin’; blarst me if I do!”

And she hugs him to her worn-out breast and kisses him; and they sit thus together while the sickly daylight breaks over the bush.

Steelman was a hard case, but some said that Smith was harder.

Steelman was big and good-looking, and good-natured in his way; he was a spieler, pure and simple, but did things in humorous style. Smith was small and weedy, of the sneak variety; he had a whining tone and a cringing manner.

He always called Smith a “mug” when he was particularly wild at him, for it hurt Smith more than anything else.

“There’s only two classes in the world, spielers and mugs⁠—and you’re a mug, Smith.”

“What have I done, anyway?” asked Smith helplessly. “That’s all I want to know.”

Brook reached the city next evening, and, “after hours,” he staggered in through a side entrance to the lighted parlour of a private bar.

They say that Lizzie broke her heart that year, but, then, the world does not believe in such things nowadays.

So you get up and take your hat and go out again to look for a place to rest in—to try not to think.

You wish you could get away upcountry. You also wish you were dead.

The landlady, Mrs. Jones, is a widow, or grass-widow, Welsh, of course, and clannish; flat face, watery grey eyes, shallow, selfish, ignorant, and a hypocrite unconsciously—by instinct.

An awestricken child stood on the step, staring at Bill with great brimming eyes. He patted it on the head and said:—

“Keep yer pecker up, young ’un!”

The cook scratched his head; he seemed to have nothing to say.

He thought about trying to think, perhaps, but gave it best. It was too hot and he was out of practice.

“Here, fill these up, will you?” said Mitchell. “That’s the tea-bag, and that’s the sugar-bag, and that’s the flour-bag.” He had taken them from the front of his shirt.

This reflection seemed to engender a flood of memories, in which the old man became absorbed. He leaned heavily upon his spade and thought.

“Arter all,” he murmured sadly, “arter all⁠—it were Brummy.”

“Brummy,” he said at last. “It’s all over now; nothin’ matters now—nothin’ didn’t ever matter, nor—nor don’t. You uster say as how it ’ud be all right termorrer” (pause); “termorrer’s come, Brummy—come fur you—it ain’t come fur me yet, but—it’s a-comin’.”

and presently he rose, took up the tools, and walked back to the hut.

And the sun sank again on the grand Australian bush⁠—the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.

“Did he? So did my old man, and he livened me up, too. But what did your old man do—what did he say?”

“Well,” said Mitchell, very slowly, “about the first thing he did was to ask me for a fill.”

“Ah! many a solemn, thoughtful old smoke we had together on the quiet—the old man and me.”

“Ah! many a solemn, thoughtful old smoke we had together on the quiet—the old man and me.”

“Is your old man dead, Mitchell?” I asked softly. “Long ago⁠—these twelve years,” said Mitchell.

We explained to this new chum that transportation was done away with long ago, as far as Australia was concerned, that no more convicts were sent out here—only men who ought to be; and he seemed surprised.

He did not call us a liar, but he looked as if he thought that we were prevaricating.

We were glad that he didn’t say so, for he was a bigger man. New chums are generally more robust than Australians.

“That’s where the Dunbar was wrecked.”

The Dunbar fiend is inseparable from Australian coasting steamers.

We travelled second-class in the interests of journalism. You get more points for copy in the steerage. It was a sacrifice; but we hope to profit by it some day.

When Australia was fading from view we shed a tear, which was all we had to shed; at least, we tried to shed a tear, and could not.

It is best to be exact when you are writing from experience.

Just as Australia was fading from view, someone looked through a glass, and said in a sad, tired kind of voice that he could just see the place where the Dunbar was wrecked.

but now they were again face to face with the cursed question, “How to make a living.” They were wondering whether or no they would get work in New Zealand, and feeling more doubtful about it than when they embarked.

Pity we couldn’t go to sea and sail away forever, and never see land any more⁠—or, at least, not till better and brighter days⁠—if they ever come.

In the last half-hour of his life we all gathered round Malachi’s bed; he was only twenty-two. Once he said:

“I wonder how mother’ll manage now?”

“Why, where’s your mother?” someone asked gently; we had never dreamt that Malachi might have someone to love him and be proud of him.

“Oh, he’s blind,” said Malachi—“always was—we wanted to make it all right for him agin time he grows up—I—I managed to send home about—about forty pounds a year—we bought a bit of ground, and—and—I think—I’m going now. Tell ’em, Harry—tell ’em how it was—”

I had to go outside then. I couldn’t stand it any more.

There was a lump in my throat and I’d have given anything to wipe out my share in the practical jokes, but it was too late now.

She slaved for her children, and nag-nag-nagged them everlastingly, whether they were in the right or in the wrong, but they were hardened to it and took small notice.

She had the spirit of a bullock.

Her whole nature was soured. She had those “worse troubles” which she couldn’t tell to anybody, but bad to suffer in silence.

We tramped on by his side again towards the station-thinking very hard and not feeling very comfortable.

He must have been an awful old liar, now we come to think of it.

There was some demur at this, and an explanation was demanded; but the boss bully unbuttoned his coat, and spat on his hands, and said:

“We’re a-goin’ ter let Bogg alone; that’s wot it is.”

So they went away and let Bogg alone that night.

We finished the first blanky course, and, while she was gettin’ our puddin’ from the side table, Dave says to me in a loud whisper, so’s she could hear: “Ain’t she a stunner, Joe! I never thought there was sich fine girls on the Darlin’!”

But no; she wouldn’t speak.

Then Dave says: “They pitch a blanky lot about them New Englan’ gals; but I’ll back the Darlin’ girls to lick ’em holler as far’s looks is concerned,” says Dave.