Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

The next morning showed the river very little lower, but the sky was clearer and half promised that the rain might have passed for a spell. Daybreak found Rachel Mazere and her fellow nurse still with their battle to be won, and never had Mrs Mazere been so glad of the partnership of her friend.

Poor suffering Mrs Piper was not delivered until Monday evening, and then of a still-born child. Her two rescuers decided that the only way to care for her properly would be to remove her to a place of comfort and cleanliness, safely away from Piper and the children. Accordingly, Bert and Tim made a comfortable stretcher with stringybark poles and sacking, insisting on practising with Piper as the patient. The party set out early on Tuesday morning, Bert, Tim and the three blacks, Nanko, Lac-ma-lac and Yan Yan taking turns as bearers over the five miles that lay between Piper's place and Brennan's Gap. Mrs Mazere rode Bally this time and carried a Piper urchin in her arms while another child sat behind her and hung on by a strap around her waist. Bally was to be taken hack later for Mrs Brennan and two more Piper infants, neither of them yet being able to walk. The two eldest children were to go to the Saunders' as soon as the roads were passable.