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Updated: June 25, 2025
Next came the two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying out, the other thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge.
She's high and dry, you see; bedded there on an even keel, same's if she was afloat. Yes, it is a wonder, as you say, Mr. Freydon; but it's a lonely place, you see; nothing nearer than what is it? Werrina, I think they call it; fifteen mile away; and that's a day's march from anywhere, too. Oh yes, there might be an odd sundowner camp aboard of her once in a month o' Sundays; but I doubt it.
We crossed the Macquarie a narrow, muddy gutter with a dog swimming across, and three goats interested. A little farther on we saw the first sundowner. He carried a Royal Alfred, and had a billy in one hand and a stick in the other.
Drinks is sixpence here I have to pay for it, an' pay carriage on it. It's all up ter me in the end. I used sometimes ter think it was lucky I wasn't west o' the sixpenny line, where I'd lose a shillin' on every drink I give away. An' supposen a sundowner comes along smokin' tea-leaves, an' ses ter me, "Look her, boss! me an' my mate ain't had a smoke for three days!" What's a man ter do?
In this preponderance of the lazy traveller over the industrious lies the distinction between the state of affairs in America and Australia, for in the latter country the "sundowner," or "murrumbidgee whaler," or "hobo" proper, is in the minority. When I was on the tramp myself in Oregon I was much annoyed by being taken for one of the truly idle kind.
I struck the wicket-gate with accuracy and bowled on toward the declining sun, which showed dull and coppery through suspended dust; till, just at that hour which calls the faithful Mussulman to prayer, and the no less faithful sundowner to the station store, I reached my destination. One glance was enough.
However, all this must be taken as referring back to my own apparently insignificant decision not to disturb the masterly inactivity of that sundowner under the wilga. As a matter of fact, I approached Rory's neat, two-roomed hut speculating as to why he had purposely left me to feel my own way. I soon formed a good rough guess.
"Oh, yes," said Mitchell, "and any ratty old shepherd or sundowner, that's gone mad of heat and loneliness like the old codger we met back yonder he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native village in England about fifty years ago.
Does he say he won't go?" "Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day." "And yet isn't crazy. Show him up." The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing." Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any words; what is it you want?"
Osborne listened respectfully, but his eyes were looking far away, with dreams of the veld in them. The Superintendent's preaching of a sort of Christian Jehad appealed to him infinitesimally. There was a silence. He knocked his pipe out, and offered the Superintendent a sundowner. 'I'm glad to have had your opinion, he said. 'I take it you don't want me just now as a candidate for ordination?
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