Mount Abundance by Allan Macpherson — Read

The following couple of months were spent in the usual occupations incident to the formation of a new station--building huts--building sheep and cattle yards--a little fencing--all, in fact, that was absolutely necessary for the slightest of shelters for the men, and the necessary accommodation for drafting the stock. Some out-stations were also formed, including a cattle station--distant about twenty miles from Mount Abundance--being the site of what is now the flourishing little inland town of Roma, to which I am informed a railway from the city of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, is now in the course of construction.

Some very rough preparations had also to be made for the approaching shearing, which would necessarily be very late; but still it was a case of better late than never. There was not much doubt of getting shearers, even at this great distance beyond the settled parts of the colony. A shearer in my days (as a squatter) would go _anywhere_ for a job, merely expecting so much a score more in proportion to the distance of the station from the nearest public-house. Many of these men, by two or three months' work during the shearing season, earned, and no doubt earn still, not only sufficient to make work unnecessary during the remaining nine months of the year, but sufficient, if they so employed their earnings, to enable them to start in various occupations on their own account. But to quote a witticism of their own, as a general rule, their investments of their earnings were all "in houses"--_public_ being understood; and during the nine off months they loafed about from station to station, sometimes doing a few weeks' work at splitting, or fencing, or other odd jobs, but more generally travelling by slow stages of a few miles a day from one station to another (living on the hospitality extended to _all_ travellers), but seldom doing much work--working like horses for three months, spending like asses during another--and living as they best could during the rest of the year. The approaching shearing, then, was not my difficulty, but the fact that there was only a sufficient amount of supplies to last the Mount Abundance establishment till the end of February was a serious consideration.