Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

Bert was up at daybreak to light the fires and fill the quart pots and then, while the women made their toilets at the stream, he and Philip caught and saddled the horses. For breakfast Bert produced the duck, which he had roasted overnight in earth under one of the fires, a dodge he had learned from the blacks. Very appetising the bird was too, in that early morning air that almost had a hint of frost.

Then on again: over peaks, through gullies of treeferns, maidenhair fern, musk and sassafras, round dizzy sidelings, conquering ridge on ridge of the last spur of the meridional range and attaining the more open country where Isabel and George Stanton had their home.