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Updated: June 9, 2025
It thrilled me, and brought a warm gush to my eyes; but, all the same, I wished I had half the money I'd lent them, and spent on 'em, and I wished I'd used the time I'd wasted to be a jolly good fellow. When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on the Sydney side.
"We shall need the whisky for him on the track, Joe," said Peter, when the flask came. "Get another glass and a bottle of soda; you want a nip." He poured out a drink for himself. "The first thing we've got to do is to get him away; then I'll soon put him on his feet. But we'll let him sleep a while longer. I find I've got business near Solong, and I'm going down with you."
He rescued them and some of their cash from the soulless shanty keeper, and was riding home with them, on some pretence, because he had known them as boys, because Joe Wilson had a vein of poetry in him a something in sympathy with something in Peter; because Jack Barnes had a dear little girl-wife who was much too good for him, and who was now anxiously waiting for him in the pretty little farming town of Solong amongst the western spurs.
In their resolution they were sustained by their young chief Omoyao, who refused to abandon on on any terms the country where his fathers had solong hunted, fished, and built their lodges.
I was about to ask a policeman where I was when I saw, by the name on a corner of the buildings, that I was in City Road, North. All the willow-fringed rivers and the sunny hills of Solong flashed before me at the sight of the name of that street.
I'll tell M'Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he's a straight man he'll keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker's sisters is staying with her, and I'll give her a hint so that she can warn off any women that might get hold of a yarn.
Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place at Haviland, a few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush carpenters, so we took the job to keep us going till something else turned up. 'Better than doing nothing, said Jack. 'There's a nice little girl in service at Black's, he said.
Johnson was thin when he came to Solong; he had landed a living skeleton, he said, but he filled out later on. The democratic atmosphere soothed his mind and he soon loved the place for its unconventional hospitality. He worked hard and seemed to have plenty of energy he said he got it in Australia. He said that another year of the struggle in London would have driven him mad.
He said he wouldn't go right into Solong with us; he was going back along another road to stay a day or two with an old friend of his. When we reached Solong we stopped on the river-bank just out of sight of Jack's house. Peter took the ten-pound cheque from his pocket and gave it to Jack. Jack hadn't seen Peter give the shanty-keeper the five-pound note.
The Solong climate was reckoned the best in Australia; the "wretched hole" was a pretty little town on the banks of a clear, willow-bordered river, with vineyards on the slopes, and surrounded by a circle of blue hills and peaks. We knew nothing of London, so she had her own way there. "She'll feel a bit lonely at first, but she'll soon get used to Australia," said Johnson.
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