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As for ourselves, I doubt if we ever enjoyed anything better. A simple thing, perhaps, to amuse grown-up white folk a fat, perspiring Chinaman, and eight or ten lubras chivying fowls; but it is this enjoyment of simple things that makes life in the Never-Never all it is. Busy as he was, Cheon found time to take the missus also under his ample wing, and protect her from everything even herself.
It is men like the Fizzer who, "keeping the roads open," lay the foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the Never-Never along the Fizzer's mail route, in all probability they will be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten; for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.
"If ever I do get lost, I'll just catch a cow and milk it." Knowing nothing of the wild, scared cattle of the fenceless runs of the Never-Never, I was prepared for anything rather than the roar of delight that greeted that example of town "common sense." "Missus! missus!" the Maluka cried, as soon as he could speak, "you'll need a deal of educating "; and while Mac gasped, "Oh I say! Look here!"
They failed to take the "tide in the affairs of men" and their golden dream has been swept, into the Never-Never Land. It is bitter tragedy to end life as a failure. In 1901 I visited Montenegro and went down the lake to Scutari. Scutari captured me at once. It had colour, life, art.
But there are hundreds of courageous women to-day, not perhaps engaged in exploration, but who, nevertheless, are living in remote stations in the heart of Africa, in the midst of the Australian "never-never," in the lonely islands of the Pacific women whose husbands, whose fathers, whose brothers are carrying on the work of Empire, or the greater work of the gospel.
Beneath her steady ray The desert-circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!" Night really unrobes her beauty only in silence, the silence of the desert. Never can I forget nights spent in Western Australia, far beyond Kalgoorlie, away back in the Never-Never Land, where no rain falls.
Mrs Gildea sighed as she read, and pictured in her imagination the wild wastes of the Never-Never Land and the rough head-station which was to be Lady Bridget's home. It was the way of the O'Haras to do things first and to consider afterwards whether it were well or ill that they should be done. Many a ruined O'Hara might have fared differently in life's battle had he thought before he acted.
"You will find that a woman alone in a camp of men is decidedly out of place," the Darwin ladies had said; and yet that day, as at all times, the woman felt strangely and sweetly in place in the bushmen's camp. "A God-forsaken country," others of the town have called the Never-Never, because the works of men have not yet penetrated into it.
That's the name in Australia for trampin' west through the plains of the Never-Never Country lookin' for the luck o' the world; as, bedad, it's meself that knows it, and no other, and not by book or tellin' either, but with the grip of thirst at me throat and a reef in me belt every hour to quiet the gnawin'." And Shon proceeded to light his pipe afresh.
That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan, for a little while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish forefathers; as we spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling Bromli kites, that seemed then as at all times, an essential part of the sunshine. To the bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine without Bromli kites would be as a summer's day without the sun.
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