Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch

Perhaps I ought to make it clear that very little of this story is imaginative. Until a few years ago there were quite a number of old people in our district who had been with Cabell in the early days. They were all good storytellers, and it needed very little to set them going. There was one old fellow named Sambo who could remember back as far as 1840. How old Sambo was nobody could guess, but time had begun to rub his features away, as weather wears away the nose of a stone statue. He was terribly scornful of the days into which he had arrived, and if any of us youngsters tried to defend ourselves he would immediately produce a story that threw over our pretentious bravado the gigantic and belittling shadow of the past.

Then, of course, there are the memoirs and reminiscences of the early settlers, of which at this time the best of Australian literature is composed, the gossip handed down in the old families of our district, the letters that have been preserved, including Cabell's own letters to his sister Harriet in Dorset. These begin with Cabell's arrival in Sydney in 1842 and end with a remarkable document which marks the end of an epoch in his life and the opening up of the country.