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"By and bye I hears a rumbling and a creaking, and cracking of whips; and when I looks out, what do I see but the bullock-dray from Simmons' coming up the flat. It was the only thing on wheels within forty mile, and Simmons had brought it his own self to see if we couldn't manage to get the poor fellow down to the nighest town.
There had been a baby born unexpectedly under the tilt of a bullock-dray, on one occasion, the night before McKeith's party appeared on the scene, and Lady Bridget had a trunk down from the buggy, and there in the road tore up some of her fine-laced smocks and petticoats to provide swaddling clothes for the poor little scrap of mortality.
In their new home they did not renounce their love of dancing, though their ladies had sometimes to be driven in a bullock-dray to the door of the ballroom, and stories are told of young gentlemen, enthusiastic waltzers, riding on horseback to the happy scene clad in evening dress and with coat-tails carefully pinned up.
His whole air seemed to say: 'This is the Queen, and I, the King, expect that proper homage be paid her. The loafers at the bar all came out to see the start. The family on the top of the bullock-dray peered forth from under the tilt.
A lamb will follow a bullock-dray, drawn by sixteen bullocks and driven by a profane person with a whip, under the impression that the aggregate monstrosity is his mother. A ewe never knows her own lamb by sight, and apparently has no sense of colour.
That was why a condition was attached to the freely granted picnic. Everyone might go, and go on the bullock-dray, but the picnic was to take place above the ravine, and no one was to venture down, on pain of being instantly packed back to Sydney. They all promised faithfully. Mrs. Hassal, tiny as she was, had a way of commanding implicit obedience.
"Better git the bloomin' bullock-dray," growled Dan, quite keen to see this aggregation of luggage; and foreseeing something to talk about for the next three months. "She must ha' come up to start a store, I reckon," said Dan; and off he went to struggle with boxes for the next half-hour or so. Over Mary Grant's experiences at the Tarrong Hotel we will not linger.
I think I can put you on to something for a month or two. "'Thanks. Start now? "'Look. I have got a few men on digging tanks, about thirty miles out. It's north-north-east. You can pick up their camp? "'Yes. "'Well, I want you to take a bullock-dray out, with stores, and bring back anything they want sent back. "'Yes. Where are the bullocks? "'I haven't got a team broken in.
He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had so often passed through to go to mass or compline within, and presently his heart gave a great leap, for he saw the straw-enwrapped stove brought out and laid with infinite care on the bullock-dray. Two of the Bavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleigh-wagon slowly crept over the snow of the place snow crisp and hard as stone.
The great road winding over it bore the mark of the convicts, and other traces of their solid workmanship were to be found in occasional buildings within a radius of twenty miles; but their day had passed as that of the bullock-dray and mail-coach, superseded by the haughty "passenger-mail" and giant two-engined "goods" trains, while for quicker communication with the city than these afforded, the West depended upon the telegraph wires.
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