A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

In most parts of Australia the chief squattage residences are the oldest country homes. In the long stretches we were travelling, many of them had stood as the only places for as long as the oldest inhabitant could remember. So it was also in other parts. The buildings themselves, in all cases, were not old; but the homesteads were, and many relics remained of the earliest times, even when the main dwellings had been replaced with new. Wrapped around every one was a story full of incident and adventure, scraps of which were told from time to time as the big runs were cut up for closer settlement. Old hands dipped then into the half-forgotten history, recalling scenes and episodes that were strange and romantic to the new generation; and their reminiscences went back to the exciting days when the squattage was formed; how they rode forth into the unknown west, in search of grazing country, up and down creeks and rivers, and over hills and mountains, making their fires at sunset, and quietly moving on for a mile or two after tea to camp. This was done to dodge the blacks, who, attracted by the blaze, would sometimes gather round with, perhaps, hostile intentions to the invaders.

When the exploring was completed, and the new run decided upon, a line was blazed for the guidance of teams taking out stores and tools, and of the men going out with the first mobs of cattle. These had to be tailed until they settled down on the new run, for watercourses and mountains were the only boundaries; afterwards they had to be watched to guard against disturbance by the blacks, who for ages had been accustomed to kill what they liked in their own towri. They had to be taught that the invaders had superior rights. Armed men rode about the runs then on the lookout for cattle-spearing. The manager of Wooroowoalgoh, on the Richmond River, while riding along a rise one morning, chanced to look up as he drew close to a broad-topped wild apple tree. The fine shadow it cast had taken his eye; but what he saw aloft was disconcerting. Perched like birds among the limbs were a score of naked blacks. All were armed, some sitting and some standing, and everyone was as still and quiet as an ebon statue. What their object was he did not stop to inquire. He rode straight home and gave an order for the immediate ring barking of several hundred acres around the homestead.