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Updated: June 12, 2025
Whenever he felt inclined for what he called "a pitch with the boss and missus" he would saunter past at a little distance, apparently bound for the billabong, but in reality ready to respond to the Maluka's "Is that you, Dan?" although just as ready to saunter on if that invitation was not forthcoming a happy little arrangement born of that tact and delicacy of the bush-folk that never intrudes on another man's privacy.
No butter, of course. In Darwin, eight months before we had tasted our last butter on ship-board, for tinned butter, out-bush, in the tropics, is as palatable as castor oil. The tea had been made in the Maluka's quart-pot, our cups having been carried dangling from our saddles, in the approved manner of the bush-folk.
Then our Christmas guests rode out into the forest, taking with them the sick Mac, and as they faded from our sight we knew that the memory of that Christmas day would never fade out of our lives; for we bush-folk have long memories and love to rest now and then beside the milestones of the past.
A man who shall be known as the Outsider, for he was one of a type who could never be one of the bush-folk, even though he lived out-bush for generations: a man so walled in with self and selfishness that, look where he would, he could see nothing grander or better than his own miserable self, and knowing all a mail means to a bushman, he could refuse to carry a neighbour's mail even though his road lay through that neighbour's run because he had had a difference with him.
The bush-folk love to say that when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it decided to use that in its place. And so it would seem.
In town, dust, and haste, and littered papers, and nerve-racking bustle seem indispensable to the sending of a telegram; but when the bush-folk "shake hands" with Outside all is sunshine and restfulness, soft beauty and leisurely peace.
Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy of soft greygreen, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it.
A cheerful nightcap; but such was our faith in Sool'em and Brown as danger signals, that the camp was asleep in a few minutes. Perhaps also because nigger alarms were by no means the exception: the bush-folk would get little sleep if they lay awake whenever they were camped near doubtful company.
Sixty-five miles in three days, against sixty miles an hour of the express trains of the world. "Speed's the thing," cries the world, and speeds on, gaining little but speed; and we bush-folk travel our sixty miles and gain all that is worth gaining excepting speed. "Hand-over-hand this time!" Mac said, looking up at the telegraph wire that stretched far overhead. "There's no pulley here.
He may be, and generally is, sadly in need of a woman friend, "some one to share his joys and sorrows with", but because he knows few women is no reason why he should stand afar off and adore the unknowable. "Friendly like" is what appeals to us all; and the bush-folk are only men, not monstrosities rough, untutored men for the most part.
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