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We, of course, had those ups and downs which all settlers in Australia must meet: dingos carried off our sheep, and the rot visited them; the blacks were troublesome, and droughts and blights occurred; bush-fires occasionally took place, and our wool brought lower prices than we had hoped for.
And as there, where the bush-fires had ravaged, all was a desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all was a garden.
In this direction the Zaire assumes the semblance of a mountain lake, whilst down stream the broad bosom of the Nshibul branch forms almost a sea-horizon, with dots showing where tall, scattered palms spring from the watery surface. We cannot but admire the nightly effects of the wintry bush-fires.
And as there, where the bush-fires had ravaged, all was a desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all was a garden.
After a good season, and when the bush is tall and dry, when the bush-fires threaten a man's crop of ripened wheat, there are tired men who run and ride from miles round to help that man, and who fight the fire all night to save his wheat and some of them may have been wrangling with him for years.
No, they are the waratahs, which love to grow where there have been bush-fires. The waratah is of a brilliant red colour, growing single and stately on a high stalk. Its shape is of a heart; its size about that of a pear.
It was New Year's Eve at Rocky Rises. There was no need for fireworks nor bonfires, for the bush-fires were out all along the ranges to the east, and, as night came on, lines and curves of lights clear lights, white lights, and, in the nearer distance, red lights and smoky lights marked the sidings and ridges of a western spur of the Blue Mountain Range, and seemed suspended against a dark sky, for the stars and the loom of the hills were hidden by smoke and drought haze.
I had seen many bush-fires, but never such a one as this. The wind was blowing a hurricane, and, when I had ridden about two miles into scrub, high enough to brush my horse's belly, I began to get frightened.
The evening of that day was spent in the garden before the homestead. The day had been hot there had been Bush-fires. The smoke hung about, and the big moon floated like a great round blood-red kite above the range. Ryder was sitting by Mrs. Macdougal on the garden-seat; Lucy played with the children on the grass till it was their bed time, when the three romped indoors together. Mrs.
I've got my fare... All aboard! All aboard! All aboard for Alla-Bam! ... Midnight... chu-chu... chu-chu..." And so, slowly his soul steamed out of the wrecked station of his body and left for "Alabam!" One evening, the 25th of August, bush-fires broke out on the right of Chocolate Hill.
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