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Updated: June 6, 2025
As for ourselves, I doubt if we ever enjoyed anything better. A simple thing, perhaps, to amuse grown-up white folk a fat, perspiring Chinaman, and eight or ten lubras chivying fowls; but it is this enjoyment of simple things that makes life in the Never-Never all it is. Busy as he was, Cheon found time to take the missus also under his ample wing, and protect her from everything even herself.
Toonda left us on our arrival at this place, to go to his tribe at Cawndilla, but returned the day Mr. Poole left us, with the lubras and children belonging to it, and the natives now mustered round us to the number of sixty-six.
At three miles struck a large sheet of deep clear water, on which were a number of natives, with their lubras and children; they set up a fearful yelling and squalling, and ran off as fast as they could. Rounded the large sheet of water and proceeded along it. At a mile, three men were seen following; halted the party, and went up to them.
"When I've got 'em in me swag, I never need 'em, and when I've left 'em somewhere else I can't get 'em: so you see the same box does for always." Yard-building lacking in interest, lubras and piccaninnies provided entertainment, until Dan failing to see that "niggers could teach her anything," decided on a course of camp cookery.
In the morning there was a free fight in camp between the staff and some of the camp lubras, the rejected, led by Jimmy's lubra another Nellie declaring the Maluka had meant two different lubras each day. Again there was much ear-splitting argument, but finally a compromise was agreed on. Two lubras were to sit down permanently, while as many as wished might help with the washing and watering.
Chop you down when you bring up milk in buckets. "I had no gun with me, so I crept out of the yard, and sneaked through the scrub to get into the hut through the back door, keeping out of sight of Bill and the lubras, who were all sitting on the ground in front of the hut. We had plenty of arms, and I always kept my double-barrelled gun loaded, and hanging over the fireplace.
"There! go round to the kitchen," said Alice, "and get something to eat. Is it not abominable, Mr. Buckley? I cannot give anything to this old woman but the young lubras take it from her. However, I will 'put the screw on them. They shall have nothing from me till they treat her better. It goes to my heart to see a woman of that age, with nothing to look forward to but kicks and blows.
But as he insisted on the walls being scrubbed as soon as they were up, and before the doors and windows were in, Johnny had one or two good duckings, and narrowly escaped many more; for lubras' methods of scrubbing are as full of surprises as all their methods.
We almost immediately struck on the native path which, as my tall friend had informed me, led direct to the N.E. I was not at first aware, what object our new friends had in following or rather accompanying us; but, at about a mile and a half, we came to a native hut at which there was an old man and his two lubras.
All served, the tureen was whisked away to ensure against further inroads, and then Cheon trundled round the table, removing the soup plates, inquiring of each guest in turn if he found the soup to his liking, and informing all that lubras were on guard in the kitchen, lest the station cats should so far forget themselves as to take an unlawful interest in our dinner.
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