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Updated: June 16, 2025
Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn't too well and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn't time to get them cut, so we let Jim's time run on a week or so longer, till I happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of flour for Lahey's Creek way.
I thought best to tell Mary's sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told her I'd keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered into the spirit of the thing, and said she'd give the world to be able to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw it; but she couldn't go, on account of a new baby she had.
"Redmond had his mate, Duigan, and one or two others of the rough gang that used to terrorise the fields round there in the roaring days of Gulgong.
They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck. 'Sick, Jim? I asked. 'No, dad, I ain't sick; I don't know what's the matter with me. 'Have some tea, sonny? 'Yes, dad. I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I'd brought in a bottle from his aunt's for him.
Sandy had kept steady and travelled from one end of the world to the other, and roughed it and toiled for five years, and the very day he bottomed his golden hole on the Brown Snake Lead at Happy Valley he got a letter from his girl in Scotland to say she had grown tired of waiting and was married. Then he drank, and drink and luck went together. Gulgong on New Year's Eve!
'It's only this, she said suddenly, 'I can't stand this life here; it will kill me! I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table. 'This is more than a man can stand! I shouted. 'You know very well that it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren't you content to stay in Gulgong? 'And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe? asked Mary quietly.
But it was this: I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife who'd gone out to live with them lately: she'd been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack for exposing the doctors or carrying on with them I didn't remember which.
'It would be better than the buggy, Joe, she said 'there'd be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows. Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get them for less than half-a-crown a-head.
'Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy. I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he'd brought from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ''night-night' and 'daddy' were two-year-old language to Jim. I'd thought he'd forgotten those words he seemed to be going back.
Fear also restricted his wanderings in the bush, which kept him within sound of the dreaded waves. He was an unaffected beach-comber. Neither the food-bestowing sea nor the safe dry land was for him. By instinct he seemed to be guided to the best trees for bark, generally selecting "gulgong," though others were equally pliant in his hands.
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