United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools, harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets of bark and old chaff-bags.

The air quivered; the heat drove the fowls under the dray and sent the old dog to sleep upon the floor inside the house. The iron on the skillion cracked and sweated so did Dad and Dave down the paddock, grubbing grubbing, in 130 degrees of sunshine. They were clearing a piece of new land a heavily-timbered box-tree flat.

She stepped into a skillion room, which happened to be Bob's room, and there caught sight of a pair of trousers and a coat hanging on the wall. Bob Ross, beating desperately along a line of fire that curved down-hill to his right, and half-choked and blinded with the smoke, almost stumbled against a figure which was too tall to be his father. "Why! who's that?" he gasped.

Haddon's little cottage, four roomed, with a queer skillion front, was surrounded by a tumbled mass of tangled vegetation miscalled a garden, and Dick loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider what manner of entrance would be most politic.

I ain't had anything to speak of since I left Cudgeegong. I want some grub. Then Mary pulled herself together. 'You'll have your tea directly, she said. 'Pick up that harness at once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it presently and we'll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to keep the sun off.

Harry returned to the skillion and loitered about for ten minutes without discovering anything of Dick Haddon, but at the expiration of that time Dick stole out of the darkness and approached him with an affectation of the greatest unconcern. His greeting was very casual, and he followed it with a fishing inquiry intended to discover if the young man knew anything of Christina's whereabouts.

Joe, "poor" Mary's husband, who has been droving in Queensland since the Christmas before last while poor Mary, who is afraid to live alone, shared a skillion and the family quarrels at home Joe rides day and night and reaches home at sunrise on Christmas morning, tired and dusty, gaunt and haggard, but with his last cheque intact.

The front and such portion as is required of the side walls are next constructed of pizie or rough stone, with mud mortar, and the roof either gabled or skillion of bough, grass, or reed thatch, and covered with pizie, over which is sometimes put another thin layer of thatch to prevent the pizie being washed away by heavy rain.

I want to brand old Polly's calf and another or two. Father came down to the hut while the brands were getting ready, and began to look at the harness-cask, which stood in a little back skillion. It was pretty empty; we had been living on eggs, bacon, and bread and butter for a week.

"Nat six in the coorse o' the year," replied Rory, too amiable to heed the impolite change of subject. "Las' time A seen Ward," he continued, after a moment's pause, "he toul' me there was a man come to the station wan mornin' airly, near blin' wi' sandy blight; an' he stapped all day in a dark skillion, an' started again at night.