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And all the way a long way Guthrie Carey had to make efforts not to bore his hostess. They talked about the clear air and the dun-coloured land the richest sheep-country in the colony, but now without a blade of green upon it and made comments upon three bullock drays piled with wool bales, and two camping sundowners, and one Chinaman hawker's cart, which they encountered on the way.
The weight of the swag varies from the light rouseabout's swag, containing one blanket and a clean shirt, to the "royal Alfred," with tent and all complete, and weighing part of a ton. Some old sundowners have a mania for gathering, from selectors' and shearers' huts, and dust-heaps, heart-breaking loads of rubbish which can never be of any possible use to them or anyone else.
The swagman loafer, or "bummer," times himself, especially in bad weather, to arrive at the shed just about sundown; he is then sure of "tea," shelter for the night, breakfast, and some tucker from the cook to take him on along the track. Brummy and Swampy were sundowners. Swampy was a bummer born and proud of it.
Here, too, was young Bill Squires, who had reached the age of twenty-one without having seen a parson, and asked a bush missionary who inquired if he knew Jesus Christ: "What kind of horse does he ride?" Not much of an army, this band. They would not have impressed a drill-sergeant. To many even in those towns they were just a number of sundowners.
Whenever as many as fifty had been gathered together, instructors, boots, and uniforms were sent along, and the march partook of a military character. No longer were they sundowners; they marched into town at the end of the day, four abreast, in proper column of route, with a sergeant swinging his cane at the head, sometimes keeping step to the tune of mouth-organs.
The shed cut out within three weeks and the two sundowners took the track again, Brummy with two pounds odd in his pocket he having negotiated his cheque at the shed. But now there was suspicion, envy, and distrust in the hearts of those two wayfarers. Brummy was now a bloated capitalist, and proud, and anxious to get rid of Swampy at least Swampy thought so.
B.'s ranch, I felt my false courage oozing out of the tips of my fingers, and as I rode up to the door, certain obnoxious colonial words, such as "sundowners," and "bummers," occurred to me, and I felt myself a "sundowner" when the host came out and asked me to dismount.
He would be a protection against 'sundowners' or any shearers who happened to wander that way in the 'D.T.'s' after a spree. Mary had a married sister come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or so till we got settled down at Lahey's Creek. They were newly married.
Sundowners and that lot sleep there; there's always some flour and tea in a hammock, under the roof, and there they are with a pub of their own. It's a fashion we have in Australia." "It seems all right, Glenn," I said with admiration. "It's surer than Elijah's ravens." "It saves us from their prowling about the barracks, and camping on the front veranda." "How many do you have of a week?"
Macdougal, who, in addition to his sobriquet of Monkey Mack, was known as Old Dint-the-Tin by the sundowners, shearers, and miscellaneous swagmen to whom he sold pints of flour out of a pannikin dinted in to shorten the measure, was not miserly in his dealings with his wife and his children.
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