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Updated: June 16, 2025
And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the edge of the veranda that is, in warm weather and yarn about Ballarat and Bendigo of the days when we spoke of being on a place oftener than at it: on Ballarat, on Gulgong, on Lambing Flat, on Creswick and they would use the definite article before the names, as: "on The Turon; The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian Lead."
He would be a protection against 'sundowners' or any shearers who happened to wander that way in the 'D.T.'s' after a spree. Mary had a married sister come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or so till we got settled down at Lahey's Creek. They were newly married.
But, some time after I brought Jim home from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days, nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten's shanty and see Brighten's sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten's overnight and didn't get back till late the next afternoon.
Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I'd sink a shaft somewhere, prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out of that. I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm that an old mate of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up about thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey's Creek.
I had had the wife and Jim out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays, and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of a doctor, the day we did.
I'd sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn't sit down and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking about the time when she was ill herself.
Tom spit in the dust an' thought a while; then he took a parcel out of the boot an' put it on the corner post of the fence. "There," he said, "There's some fresh fish that come up from Sydney by train an' Cobb & Co's coach larst night. They're meant for White the publican at Gulgong, but they won't keep this weather till I git out there.
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