CHAPTER 1
The House that was Never Built
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There had been heavy rain and landslips all along the branch railway which left the Great Western Line from Sydney just beyond the Blue Mountains, and ran through thick bush and scrubby ridgy country and along great alluvial sidings-were the hills on the opposite side of the wide valleys (misty in depths) faded from deep blue into the pale azure of the sky-and over the ends of western spurs to the little farming, mining and pastoral town of Solong, situated in a circle of blue hills on the banks of the willow-fringed Cudgegong River.
The line was hopelessly blocked, and some publicans at Solong had put on the old coach-road a couple of buggies, a wagonette, and an old mail coach-relic of the days of Cobb & Co., which had been resurrected from some backyard and tinkered up-to bring the train passengers on from the first break in the line over the remaining distance of forty miles or so. Capertee Station (old time, "Capertee Camp"-a teamster's camp) was the last station before the first washout, and there the railway line and the old road parted company for the last time before reaching Solong-the one to run round by the ends of the western spurs that spread fanlike, and the other to go through and over, the rough country.