Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
So far Tiddle'ums had acted as fence, when we were in, at the homestead, scattering fowls, goats, and dairy cows in all directions if they dared come over a line she had drawn in her mind's eye. When Tiddle'ums was out-bush with us, Bett-Bett acted as fence. Johnny, generally repairing the homestead now, admired the garden and declared everything would be "A1 in no time."
"Another moon'll see her on the staff," he prophesied, as we prepared to go out-bush for Easter. The Easter moon had come in dry and cool, and at its full the Wet lifted, as our traveller had foretold.
Further consultations being necessary, Dan feared arousing suspicion, and to ensure his surprise party, and to guard against any word of the coming patrol being sent out-bush by the station "boys," he indulged in a little dust-throwing, and there was much talking in public about going "out to the north-west for the boss to have another look round there," and much laying of deep plans in private.
"Meant to fill up here meself," he said in apology, as, with the generosity of a bushman, he offered it all unconditionally. Let us hope the man has been rewarded, and has never since known what it is to be tealess out-bush! We never heard his name, and I doubt if any one of us would know the man again if we saw him.
No butter, of course. In Darwin, eight months before we had tasted our last butter on ship-board, for tinned butter, out-bush, in the tropics, is as palatable as castor oil. The tea had been made in the Maluka's quart-pot, our cups having been carried dangling from our saddles, in the approved manner of the bush-folk.
"She'll do for this place!" he said, wagging his head wisely. "I've been forty years out-bush, and I've known eight or ten women in that time, so I ought to know something about it. Anyway, the ones that could see jokes suited best. There was Mrs. Bob out Victoria way. She'd see a joke a mile off; sighted 'em as soon as they got within cooee.
Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of Sabbath-keeping out of Dan's blood, although he was not particular which day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath. "Two in a fortnight" was all he worried about.
It is this freight that makes the grocery bill such a big item on stations out-bush, where several tons of stores are considered by no means a large order. Close on the heels of the Fizzer came other travellers, with the news that the horse teams had got going and the Macs had "pulled out" to the Four Mile. "Your trunks'll be along in no time now, missus," one of them said.
Southern red tape has decreed no doubt wisely as far as it goes that telegrams shall travel by official persons only; but out-bush official persons are few, and apt to be on duty elsewhere when important telegrams arrive; and it is then that our Department draws largely on that surplus supply of common sense.
Already the air was oppressive with electric disturbances, and Dan, fearing he would not get finished unless things were kept humming, went out-bush next morning, and the homestead became once more the hub of our universe the south-east being branded from that centre.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking