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Already he had projected ahead until he saw himself the complacent owner of vast herds; saw the miles of his ranches; saw the wool of his flocks being trampled into the long sacks in his own shearing-sheds. And all the time his impotent instrument-case shone darkly in the light of his candle, lying there between his feet at the edge of the canvas bed.
'Yes of course, she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, 'Is there anything more you want while the shop's open? I'd met just the same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I didn't turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again. 'Come inside, she said, 'and sit down.
As a rule the big shearing-sheds within a fortnight of Bourke cut out in time for the shearers to reach the town and have their Christmas dinners and sprees and for some of them to be locked up over Christmas Day within sound of a church-going bell. Most of the chaps gathered in the Shearers' Union Office on New Year's Eve and discussed Douglas amongst other things.
Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the camp-fire. He was a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a certain 'cleanness' about the shape of his limbs which suggested the old jockey or hostler.
He put a fire on, made tea, and he and Dan talked till near daybreak Dad of the harvest, and the Government dam that was promised, and the splendid grass growing in the paddock; Dan of the great dry plains, and the shearing-sheds out back, and the chaps he had met there.
At the back was a fair-sized garden, with fine, healthy-looking trees; and about a quarter of a mile away was the straggling collection of bark-roofed sheds and corkscrew-looking fences that served Red Mick as shearing-sheds for his sheep, and drafting and branding-yards for his cattle and horses.
He had always held the proud position of "ringer" in the shearing-sheds of the stations round Birralong, beating all comers by never having a tally of less than a hundred sheep shorn a day, and that with the old-fashioned hand-shears.
But he could not. The stench of the stifling shearing-sheds and of the crowded sleeping huts where men are packed in rows like trucked sheep came to him with the sickening smell of the slums. On the faces of men in the bush he had seen again and again that hopeless look as of goaded oxen straining through a mud-hole, that utter degradation, that humble plea for charity.
The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the business three days in a week. On the other three they study and hear lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculture like chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep.
The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the business three days in a week. On the other three they study and hear lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculture like chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep.
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