Thirty Years in Australia

ECOND

we had become a family, fell to us through the death of our friend the police magistrate. That sad event left his widow with means too small to permit of her retaining her pretty home for a day after

he prime of the spring season (October 12th) there is an entry which credits it with "innumerable varieties of everything," including, naturally, "roses all over the house" and "our own asparagus for dinner every other day." The (even then) old house, masked with shrubs and hedges, surrounded by beds and borders full of s

e teal with one shot. I saw it done, and it was no great feat, seeing that the little birds were so thick that their flight at the moment was like the flutter of silver cloth. In that watery time the lake was generally brimming. One night we were called up by the bellowing of the cow, and Dik and G. rode naked into the inclosure where her calf had been submerged to its nose by a sudden rise; they were only just in time to save it. We had a roomy boat, in almost constant use. A friend or two would come out to dine, and after dinner we would paddle them about in the moonlight-explore the "North-West Passage," which reminded me of a "fleet" in the Broads at home. We fished sometimes for next day's breakfast; I b

n, touched an invisible snag, which jerked it from his arm. In falling forward the trigger was struck or jagged with sufficient force to explode the charge. I saw down the barrel as the flame leaped out, apparently at my breast; and then we all stood still for some seconds, expecting horrors. When nothing more happened, and each was proved unhurt, we returned home very soberly, Dik himself much shaken. I then went to my room, t

(carefully measured afterwards) sat upon a few rings of its tail near the wall of the little dairy-a most enticing place to snakes-the rest of its body upreared to about the level of my waist, its

here was no man on the place at the time

seen other snakes do when thus desperately at bay, although they will always wriggle out of a difficulty if a loop-hole is left to them. We killed it with the clothes' prop and put it under an inverted wash-

head to them in service time (during the sermon, probably) and make them nervous. So it was sought to entice it to its destruction with saucers of milk. The parson used to lay the bait over-night, and go to look for results in the morning. Always the saucer was fo

ad read in missionary magazines as a child, and wonder where Dik's revolver was. He only wanted bacca, or an old rag of clothes, or a penny, or a bit of meat-bacca first, always; and there was nothing savage about him except his looks. Some of the stations in that district made a point of protecting and showing kindness to the blacks. On these they made their camps, and swarmed like the dogs about the homesteads, bringing offerings of fish, and receiving all sorts of indulgences in return. I visited at the one of those places which was most notoriously benevolent in this direction. The gins whose husbands had used the waddy to them used to come to the house to have their wounds plastered; the nursing mothers got milk and other privileges; some of the least lazy and dirty young ones were put into the family's cast-off clothes and taken into a sort of service-given little jobs of dish-washing and wood-chopping, for which they were overpaid in such luxuries as they most valued. I was deeply interested in seeing them at such close quarters, and studying their strange habits and customs; it was a valuable and picturesque experience. But there was not a lock or bolt on

There is a gap in my diary where the happenings of November and December (1871) should have

ter-in-law), and our three portmanteaux; and one poor horse managed the journey in four or five days. We jogged along easily, as near the making railway as we could get, because the scrub had been cleared from that track more or less; camping in the shade at mid-day to lunch and rest the h

ched and dripping to the nearest hotel, which fussed over us with fires and hot drinks, it was found that my little portmanteau (frocks folded close in those days) had been put into the buggy that morning wrong side up. The deluging rain, running inside the flap, had saturated all my best clothes! My wedding-dress was done for; my next best gory all over with the dye from cerise ribbons that had lain next it; muslins and laces a flimsy pulp. And the ruin was irremediable, except in the case of the latter (I sent the two silks to be dyed black

skinned with the sun; we wilted on the hard buggy seats under our useless umbrellas; the poor horse gave up, and had to be left by the way. But all our concern was for the unfortunate infant. Whenever we came to sheltered water we used to get down and lay him in; we

nerally, though particularly and originally its uncultivated parts. "The miserable Bush of Australia," poor Dik called it, and it has that character with many, I know; but-save, perhaps, at the first glance-it never struck me that way. In the exquisite lights, the clear distance

had seen at the beginning to be without promise of comfort or success. But on the social, the secular, side, we had nothing to complain of. We had not begun to miss the things we were cut of

put her down in the census paper as aged twenty-five, would have been considered an excellent servant in the most proper English household; and so would her successor, a smart lady who went to church o' Sundays in silks and velvets, and drank all our spirituous liquors that she could lay her hands on. And these were the slight, very slight, mistakes at the beginning. Since then I have had virtually unbroken peace. I have never had to "look

e last occasion it was:-"I am not going to let you have the trouble of moving with only strangers to help you. I shall see you settled first." She married from the house at last, so collapsed with grief over the parting that she could not touch the wedding-breakfast we had prepared. The bride

from a person who's no better than I am." Although servants like her were precious rarities, and lady-helps a drug in the market, I felt bound to stand by my representative-the intermediary whose position is always difficult; and so the result would be that the other got a week's notic

on south walls we could batten on now; a few pence would heap the sideboard with grapes or apricots, but all was so plentiful that it generally cost us nothing. Wine was not what it is now, and we could not at once break ourselves of our English beer; but it was not long before we learned to

been so all these years, and is so still. You will hardly find a private kitchen garden, except on the isolated stations, where the gardener is nearly always a Chinaman. Every little township depends, for the food it can least afford to do without, on the industry of this man who, of all others, is the most d

ns of the British race. One can see a certain reasonableness in the poll tax of ￡50, hard as it seems that one only of the various aliens amongst us should be thus penalised (and for his industry too); it is, doubtless, advisable that we should prevent ourselves from being over-run (seeing that

he provisions of the Shops and Factories Act. Constable P-- deposed that about 5.30 P.M. on the day named he went into defendant's premises and found him ironing collars. In Sept

th a similar offence, also on the afternoon of the 26th January. The defendan

ours, while the wash that customers may be clamouring for lies about them undone. One poor Chinaman was arrested and fined for-according to his defence in court, which it appeared was not listened to-ironing his own shirt out of factory hours. And when candidates for the Federal Senate and House of Repres

ave heard her sigh for the old days (before my time) when a deputy of the Cr