Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
They talked a lot about the ranges which appeared to be so near, seen through the clear dry air, and they went over and over again the message which they had received in Oodnadatta from Boss Stobart, trying to find an explanation for the mystery. "In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. Tell Oodnadatta trooper, but no one else. He'll understand. Boy quite reliable. Don't worry. Get a job somewhere.
Peter decided to stay and help Becker with the camels as far as Oodnadatta, but, at his advice, the two boys went on by train, and so it came about that they completed their broken journey in the same way in which it had begun. A Message from the Unknown The sun had set several hours ago when the train finally pulled up at Oodnadatta station.
Sax and Vaughan had done some night watching on the way from Oodnadatta to Sidcotinga, when wild blacks had been about, but a few tired, broken-in horses were very easy to watch in comparison with a mob of nearly half a thousand wild desert cattle. The usual precautions were taken.
It was a still day, and Sax had climbed up the mill tower, and was sitting on the platform near the big wind-wheel, looking over the barren landscape, when he saw what looked like a brown stain on the southern sky near the horizon. He remembered having seen something similar to that at Oodnadatta, and he knew at once that it was caused by a big moving mob of stock. They're coming!"
In order fully to understand the position in which Sax and his friend were soon to be placed, it is necessary to go back several weeks and find out what had happened to the famous Boss Stobart. Joe Archer, the storekeeper at Oodnadatta who had been so kind to the boys, had told them that the drover had not been heard of since he had called in at Horseshoe Bend.
Through the clean sun-filled air of Central Australia the view was so clear that all sense of distance was lost, and objects many days away seemed no farther off than a few hours' ride. The character of the country was the same as that which they had travelled over since leaving Oodnadatta: masses of scanty mulga scrub standing out dark on a landscape of vast bare plains or rolling sand-hills.
If, as Joe Archer the storekeeper had suggested, Stobart had been forced to take a westerly track from Horseshoe Bend in order to find water and feed for the cattle, he could easily have sent word to Oodnadatta by the ordinary camel mail which passed the Bend once a month. Sax looked up and saw that his friend was awake. "What d'you reckon we ought to do, Boofy?" he asked, getting out of bed.
My name's Darby. Mick Darby. Me and your father were mates for close on ten years. You came up to meet him, did you?" Sax told him a little about the school, and how he and Vaughan had come up to Oodnadatta expecting to meet the drover, and how disappointed they were.
Two passengers, however, did not get out of the carriage for a time, being unwilling to face that crowd of absolute strangers. They were Saxon Stobart and Rodger Vaughan, boys of about fifteen, who were on their way to Oodnadatta. It was their first sight of the back country. Presently a big man with only one eye climbed back into the carriage where they were sitting.
He was a simple-hearted kindly man, and he could see by the boys' faces what they were thinking about. So he interrupted their gloomy thoughts by suggesting: "See here. I don't know who you lads are, and you don't know much about me. But I've got to get to Oodnadatta some way or another. There's a plant of horses and niggers waiting for me up there. I'll fix up something.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking