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Mr. Neuchamp of Rainbar had now reached a very important position in his career. He had gained a fulcrum for that lever by the aid of which he trusted to move the Australian world,―to raise or to cause to tremble―and finally to impel upon the incline of undoubted and social improvement―the hitherto inanimate mass of colonial society, strong in the _vis inertie_ which rules primitive or unenlightened communities. Before this happy moment of proprietorship he could but enunciate principles and theories. Now he was enabled to demonstrate them by practice. He would have comrades, neighbours, dependents, workmen of his own. And concurrently with the most effective and successful working of the station, he would show New South Wales, Australia, and the world generally, what an Englishman of culture, with a purpose, could effect in the way of reform. Captain Cook had discovered the continent―proconsuls of greater or less intelligence had governed it. It was left for him, Ernest Neuchamp, to raise it to that point of social and industrial eminence which should make it a Pharos, a wonder-sign, an exemplar throughout all the civilised world.
It may be gathered that Mr. Neuchamp was alone and possessed his soul in peace, when he found sufficient time in which to indulge these grand ideas and magniloquent reflections. Mr. Parklands' company was not favourable to contemplation. His very existence was an aggressively energetic fact, wholly adverse to reverie or mental repose of any description. He was always talking or smoking, or asserting or denying, or going out or coming in, or preparing for his next journey or reviewing his last one. His very correspondence was of a telegrammatic and restless nature, full of reference to distances and routes, orders to overseers and stockmen to go thither, or come hither, to await him at one place or meet him at another. He went to bed defiantly and got up noisily, full of plans and prospects, and requiring everybody to arise and be stirring, in the most literal sense.