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There was also a sprinkling of assorted swagmen, who came in through the scrub and went out across the plain, or came in over the plain and went away through the scrub, according to which way their noses led them for the time being. He had a very big opinion of himself in a very small mind.
It was better to be two than one in this medley of bullock-teams, lorries, carts and pack-horses, of dog-teams, wheelbarrows and swagmen, where the air rang with oaths, shouts and hammering hoofs, with whip-cracking and bullock-prodding; in this hurly-burly of thieves, bushrangers and foreigners, of drunken convicts and deserting sailors, of slit-eyed Chinese and apt-handed Lascars, of expirees and ticket-of-leave men, of Jews, Turks and other infidels.
But most likely he'd find his way over after tea, and sit on his heels in the cool outside the hut, and argue with the swagmen about unionism and politics. And he'd argue all night if he met his match. The track by Baldy Thompson's was reckoned as a good tucker track, especially when a dissolution of parliament was threatened.
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.
There were other sailors ashore, there were many swagmen just in from the bush some with "stakes" they had earned on the ranches out in the country ... and in their good, simple hearts they were not averse to "standing treats."
There were drunken shearers, horsemen and swagmen sleeping all over the place, and in all sorts of odd positions; some on the veranda with their heads on their swags, one sitting back against the wall, and one on the broad of his back with his head on the bare boards and his mouth open. There was another horse rolling in its saddle, and I took the saddle off.
We knew that if we sat down we wouldn't want to get up again in a hurry that, if we did, our leg-sinews, especially those of our calves, would "draw" like red-hot wire's. You see, we hadn't been long on the track this time it was only our third day out. Swagmen will understand. We got the billy boiled first, and some leaves laid down for our beds and the swags rolled out.
Having learnt the value of white-fellows' food, they took to the road, and were continually bailing up lonely swagmen, who were forced to give up their provisions or be knocked on the head, since hardly any carried firearms. The finest prize that they captured was a loaded camel, which in some extraordinary way had got adrift from the end of a large caravan, and wandered into the scrub.
Some in real professional beggars' style called down blessings on me; others were morose and glum, while some were impudent and thankless, and said to supply them with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the squatters as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen would have had plenty.
Some days she spent at the homestead housekeeping, cooking, and giving out rations to swagmen the wild, half-crazed travellers who came in at sundown for the dole of flour, tea and sugar, which was theirs by bush custom. Some days she spent with the children, and with them learnt a lot of bush life.
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