Mount Abundance by Allan Macpherson — Read

Up to the end of December was spent by me at Mount Abundance in superintending the preparations for the return of the whole sheep party and the superintendent from the junction, in preparations for shearing, and in collecting the scattered cattle, and those never-ending pests, the working bullocks. By this time things had got pretty well into their ordinary course again, and I thought I might with tolerable safety leave the establishment in charge of the superintendent while I paid a visit to Keera on important business connected with both establishments. On my journey to Keera, which occupied about a fortnight, I had special occasion to notice a climatic feature specially peculiar to the Northern districts of Australia, viz., the partiality of the rainfall--here and there green oases of ten to twenty miles in width, with burned-up deserts on each side.

By the end of January another party (of whose fate I shall have to speak presently) left Keera _en route_ for Mount Abundance with another herd of cattle, and, in the middle of February, I myself started for Mount Abundance with a friend of mine, with whom I proposed to make arrangements for the management of both establishments during a projected visit of mine to Great Britain. On our journey to Mount Abundance we passed the cattle party, and arrived without accident at Mount Abundance by the end of February. On our arrival "I found everything as wrong as could be expected; shearing not finished--no grass to speak of near the Mount--but sheep still in good condition from the myal and salt bush they eat." I saw plainly enough that the matter was too hard for me--to keep on the sheep establishment at Mount Abundance during my absence in Great Britain; and the shepherds declared to a man that they would not remain an hour after their periods of engagement expired. In vain I told them that I had recently met Mr. J. H. Durbin, the newly-appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the new district (to be called the Fitzroy Downs or Maranoa District), and that he said I might soon expect to see him at Mount Abundance with a strong body of police, and that very probably he would establish his head-quarters near there. It was all in vain--perhaps if he had actually been there it might have been different--but stay they would not any longer than till the shearing was over; and, accordingly, on the 13th of March the superintendent started with all the sheep on the return journey to Keera. I may say, in round numbers, that my losses in sheep and lambs during these two years, from blacks, losses, native dogs, and deaths of sheep and young lambs from overcrowding, etc., did not amount to less than ten thousand; and, consequently, fewer sheep returned to Keera than left on the 1st of July, 1847.