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Updated: May 20, 2025
"Is it fenced?" Mick Darby laughed heartily. "Fenced!" he exclaimed. "Fenced! Oh my hat! No, lad, there's not a fence between here and glory, except round a little bit of a paddock where they keep the working horses over night. Why, d'you know that to fence Sidcotinga Station you'd need nearly four hundred miles of fencing?
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.
In a few minutes the warragul black, duly enrolled as a stockman of Sidcotinga Station, was strutting about in front of a group of native women, dressed in a pair of khaki trousers and a striped store shirt, and was puffing at a new clay pipe.
A Night Alarm It can well be imagined that both lads fell asleep quickly and soundly that night after their first day in the yards. Sidcotinga Government House had a veranda on one side of it, and they spread their swags under it just outside Mick's room, as there was no place for them inside, especially in summer.
Mick could easily have slept late the next morning, but when he woke up, as he always did, at the rising of the morning star, he did not turn over and go to sleep again, but roused himself, had a drink of tea and a chunk of bread and meat, and started out back on his tracks, accompanied by a station black-boy whom the Sidcotinga manager had lent him.
Then came the shouting of men, the racket of stock-whips, the prancing of horses, and the protesting roar of cattle, as they were jammed up tight. At last the gates were swung to and fastened with a chain. A Mad Bull The Sidcotinga stock-yards presented a very lively scene next morning. Sax and Vaughan were there with the rest, heartily glad to have something to do.
If the boys expected that the night alarm would be the chief subject of conversation next day they were quite mistaken, for the matter was hardly referred to at all. Sidcotinga was as far away from civilization as could possibly be, and its position under the dreaded and mysterious Musgrave Ranges made it the object of repeated attacks by little bands of warragul blacks.
Tracks of naked feet all around the troughs showed that a couple of Musgrave blacks had wilfully pulled the plugs out of the water troughs, knowing that this was one of the ways in which they could do most harm to the hated white man. If the native with the mutilated hand had not given the alarm, Sidcotinga Station would have been right out of water by the morning.
A fire was soon lit, and neither of the lads had ever enjoyed a meal so much as they did that one. The food was plain, though much better than what they had been having for the past weeks. The bread had been made with yeast, which makes it far nicer than baking-powder damper, and the Sidcotinga cook had included a few currant buns with the tucker.
They helped Yarloo rebuild the old shelter, and sat down under it, with their only possessions one pannikin, one badly torn camp-sheet, and an empty canteen. Everything else had been blown away or absolutely spoilt. Towards the middle of the afternoon, when, nearly sixty miles to the west of them, Mick was drawing near Sidcotinga Station, Yarloo went out from the shelter for a few minutes.
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