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Updated: June 1, 2025
Colin's gloom over the evil prospects of squatting on the Leura re-acted upon her spirits. And besides, the piano had been attacked by white ants, and the tuner had not been so far up the river for a long time. It was inspiring to learn that Maule added to his gifts that of getting a piano into tune. Ninnis promised to rummage among the tools for a key that would serve.
What price honest labour, you blamed scab of a squatter? Just you wait a bit. It'll be our turn soon to burn all you blanked capitalists off the Leura. The lanky bushman took up the jeering note. 'Pretty flash turn-out, ain't it! My word, you think yourself a bloated fine gentleman now you've married into the British hairystocracy, don't you, Mister Colin McKeith?
And the Unionist labour men were making themselves a nuisance going round the stations burning the grass of squatters who employed non-Union stockmen and shearers in one instance, threatening to burn a woolshed. And there hadn't been any rain on the Leura for a month past, and weather prophets were predicting a drought. It was dreadfully prosaic and boring.
When service lacked, and there was no one to wash and iron her cambric and fine linen, she contrived somehow that the supply should not fail, and brought upon herself some ill-natured ridiculed in consequence. The wives of the Leura squatters thought her 'stuck-up' and apart from their kind.
Later, McKeith was given a mission to explore and develop a certain tract of fertile country between the heads of the Leura and the Big Bight the particular Premier instigating the mission being a far-sighted politician who realised that a Japanese invasion of the northern coast might eventually interfere very radically with the plan for a White Australia.
All the same, Biddy, you may pretend to despise the men of your own class, but I fancy that, after a spell of roughing it with Colin on the Upper Leura, you'd hanker after something in them that Colin hasn't and never will have.... And then, Joan's swift imagination carried her on with a rush, 'you don't know in the least the type of man he is.
Billy Leura walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand. Sissy, six years old, was present; she inspected the blackfellow and the ducks, and listened. Leura said he wanted to sell me the ducks, but not for money; he would take old clothes for them.
Finally, Rosamond promised that she would interest and amuse Lady Bridget to such an extent as would deter her from rash love-making for want of counter excitement. Then, Joan reflected, Colin was pre-eminently a prudent business man, and, as he had told her some time before, would have to go back to the Upper Leura before the strenuous work of the Session came on.
'No, Colin, I believe in all that and so do you. 'Blood and breeding and tradition all the grand stuff that's been grown in them on the NOBLESSE OBLIGE principle self-respect, courage, dignity the stuff that gives staying power as well as the fire for making good spunk.... Not that I'd put a pure-blood racer to haul up logs for an iron-bark fence: any more than I'd set out to plant an English lady of that sort to rough it on the Leura.
McKeith's father had owned a station on the Lower Leura the bank took it in payment of their mortgage after the catastrophe occurred. That station had been the scene of one of the most horrible native outrages in the history of Australia. The tragedy had set its mark on Colin McKeith.
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