A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

From Petersburg down we got glimpses of pretty valleys and grassy slopes, picturesque homesteads and villages, and big wheat fields. But the giant timber, the grandeur of mount and gorge that flashed past on the line from Melbourne to Albury and from Albury to Sydney were wanting. The enthusiasm of Broken Hillites and Centralians when the scent of burning bush and grass came to them, and the smoke of small bush fires floated over us, was a joke to Victorians and East Coasters. Nobody got burnt out in Centralia. Perhaps they would not either in the eastern regions if they could run sheep instead of cattle. A blackfellow, finding his native game disappearing, observed of the mooching merino: "No good that pfella. All day feed; all night walk about. Turkey can't lay um egg; emu can't sit--him ruin in the country."

Through the wheat areas farmers watched the passing train with anxiety, not only because it belched sparks, but because careless travellers had a way of unburdening themselves of their superfluous glassware as they passed along. Numbers of passengers carried bottles on long journeys, the contents of which might be milk, or ginger beer, or lime juice; and as these were emptied they were pitched through the windows, regardless of the fact that gangers were always working somewhere on the line, and children were often standing in unexpected places watching the train go by. The offenders rarely knew where they were when they cast the dead marine, nor did they know from a moving train where it would land. Many a bush fire has been started by a bottle or a piece of broken glass, lying among dry quick-kindling stuff with a hot sun shining on it. For this reason the wheat-growers gathered them up and threw them into creeks, or stood them on stumps. When a bottle-disgorging train passed every second day or so this was no joke.