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So it came about that early on Monday morning Jim and Bob fixed swags more or less scientifically to their saddles Jim made his disciple unstrap his three times before he consented to pass it and rode away from Billabong, amidst derisive good wishes from Norah and Tommy, who kindly promised to feed them up on their return, prophesying that they would certainly need it.
We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time following father step by step before we came to the place where I thought the cattle were going to be driven over the precipice. Here we pulled up for a bit and had a smoke.
They came upon it at a point where no one was in sight, but had not ridden half a mile before they saw a straggling mob of men, with swags and mining tools, toiling along. As the parties met, the miners crowded round the two with questions as to whether they had come from the field, whether many men were there, and what the prospects were.
At last they got tired of the fun, Sunlight let the swag lie after Milky called time, and the jackaroo awarded the fight to Rats. They pretended to hand over the stakes, and then went back for their swags, while the old man put on his shirt.
After eighteen months' whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne.
They say publicans are damned, an' I think so, too; an' I wish I'd bin operated on before ever I seen a pub. Mitchell and I rolled up our swags after New Year and started to tramp west. It had been a very bad season after a long drought.
On the price of carriage up, depended of course the price of provisions at the diggings. The weight of one of these "swags" is far from light; the provender for the road is itself by no means trifling, though that of course diminishes by the way, and lightens the load a little.
We hired two Bapedi boys to carry some of our goods. One was named Indogozan; I forget the name of the other. They turned out to be lazy scoundrels, and gave endless trouble by loitering. On weighing our "swags" at Mac Mac the day we started, Maclean's and mine tipped the scale at fifty-six pounds each. Those of the boys weighed, respectively, about fifteen pounds less.
"He went out back, as most of them do, to try and work out their salvation, and knocked round amongst the sheds. He 'picked up' in one shed where I was shearing, and we carried swags together for a couple of months. Then he went back to the Lachlan side, and prospected amongst the old fields round there with his elder brother Tom, who was all there was left of his family.
And at night, when they lay out on their swags under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their boyhood, but onwards into the unknown.
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