Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

Bert returned next day in time for the midday meal but was unable to give news of Labosseer further than that he was supposed to be on the other side of the Murrumbidgee. A settler had told Bert that on the previous Tuesday it was known that Surveyor Labosseer was at the Royal Hotel in Gundagai awaiting the Bishop. As far as anyone knew, he was there still. The Murrumbidgee had been about two miles wide at Gundagai at its height and was still over a mile, too much for even Black Belle and her master, though she now had such confidence in him that she would have attempted to swim any water that he rode her into.

A discovery was made that afternoon. The rivers had filled with such suddenness that fish washed out of their haunts in the deep holes under the high banks could be picked by hand out of potholes scattered wide over the fields. They feasted on fish for two days in Bool Bool. Beautiful little golden and silver beauties previously unknown to the residents were washed up from recesses that had never been reached by hook and bait. Some of them, covered with flame-gold scales, had whiskers and ruffs as decorative as ever had the royal fish in Japanese and Chinese prints. Bert put some of them in a tub for the children, but Mrs Mazere objected to keeping creatures in captivity unless they were likely to become happy members of the family, like the great white cockatoo and the orphan lambs, pigs, calves and foals that had come in their season. So it was understood that the fish must be returned to their natural habitat as soon as it was safe for them.