An Outback Marriage by Andrew Barton Paterson

The spring-the glorious hill-country spring-was down on Kuryong. All / the flats along Kiley's River were knee-deep in green grass. The / wattle-trees were out in golden bloom, and the snow-water from the / mountains set the river running white with foam, fighting its way over / bars of granite into big pools where the platypus dived, and the wild / ducks-busy with the cares of nesting-just settled occasionally to / snatch a hasty meal and then hurried off, with a whistle of strong / wings, back to their little ones. The breeze brought down from the / hills a scent of grass and bush flowers. There was life and movement / everywhere. The little foals raced and played all day in the sunshine / round their big sleepy mothers; the cattle bellowed to each other from / hill to hill; even those miserable brutes, the sheep, frisked in an / ungainly way when anything startled them.

At all the little / mountain-farms and holdings young Doyles and Donohoes were catching / their horses, lean after the winter's starvation, and loading the / pack-saddles for their five-months' trip out to the borders of / Queensland, from shearing-shed to shearing-shed. A couple of months / before they started, they would write to the squatters for whom they / had worked on previous shearings-such quaint, ill-spelled / letters-asking that a pen might be kept for them. Great shearers they / were, too, for the mountain air bred hardy men, and while they were at / it they worked feverishly, bending themselves nearly double over the / sheep, and making the shears fly till the sweat ran down their / foreheads and dripped on the ground; and they peeled the yellow wool / off sheep after sheep as an expert cook peels an apple.