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Updated: June 15, 2025
I did a deal of house-painting at one time; I was a pretty smart brush hand, and made money at it. Well, I had a run of work at a place called Redclay, on the Lachlan side. You know the sort of town two pubs, a general store, a post office, a blacksmith's shop, a police station, a branch bank, and a dozen private weatherboard boxes on piles, with galvanized-iron tops, besides the humpies.
Peering through the bush, finding the track took him nearer the spot whence came the sounds, he saw the grass humpies. "Who can these be?" he thought. The track led him right into the camp, where alone Weedah was to be seen. Mullyan advanced towards him and asked where were the people whose voices he had heard as he came through the bush. Weedah said: "How can I tell you?
The pearls were carefully emptied into a couple of cigar boxes, and placed under lock and key in a small closet in the captain's cabin, of which Mallam now took possession, while that evening his followers, who quite scorned the forecastle below deck, camped above it, close up to the bulwarks, starboard or port, according to which way the wind blew, these seeming to remind them of their humpies or wind-screens, which some of the most savage used instead of huts.
What's Australia? A big, thirsty, hungry wilderness, with one or two cities for the convenience of foreign speculators, and a few collections of humpies, called towns also for the convenience of foreign speculators; and populated mostly by mongrel sheep, and partly by fools, who live like European slaves in the towns, and like dingoes in the bush who drivel about 'democracy, and yet haven't any more spunk than to graft for a few Cockney dudes that razzle-dazzle most of the time in Paris.
The little town of Muttaburra, for instance, has a population of two hundred, one-half of whom are eligible for military service. They live in galvanized-iron humpies with dirt floors, newspaper-covered walls, sacking stretched across poles for beds, kerosene-boxes for chairs, and a table made from saplings.
Our strongest places were the half-dozen built-up observation posts at the mines near Fricourt, Serre, and La Boisselle. For the rest, our greatest strength was but a couple of sandbags deep. There was no concrete in any part of the line, very few iron girders and not many iron "humpies" or "elephant backs" to make the roofs of dugouts.
Then the old women were told to come and say good-bye to the boys, after which they were ordered to join the young women in the humpies. About five men watched them into the humpies, then pulled the boughs down on the top of them that they might see nothing further.
Besides these there are several nomadic dwellings, such as tents, bush humpies, and drays. A house is a luxury, and some of the oldest residents have never built one. "Here to-day and gone to-morrow, what's the good of a house?" was the answer I got from one who had only been there for ten years! Mud-brick walls and corrugated-iron roofs is the style of architecture in general vogue.
On one particular day, as the young adventurers passed up this valley on an all-day tramp, they found the salmon heaps especially abundant, and observed that the numbers of crows and eagles were more than usually great. "I think it's a new run of fish coming in," said Rob. "Probably the 'humpies' are beginning to run. They're bigger than the red salmon, which we've been having so far.
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