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Updated: May 22, 2025
The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to 'settle on the land' at Lahey's Creek. I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making, and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary drove out in the spring-cart.
Ted and his wife go back to their lonely life on their selection; Tom returns to his fencing or tank-sinking contract; Jim, who has borrowed "a couple of quid" from Tom, goes out back with strong resolutions for the New Year, and shears "stragglers," breaks in horses, cooks and clerks for survey parties, and gambles and drinks, and gets into trouble again.
There were men there who had slaved for twenty, thirty, forty years; worked as farmers have to work in few other lands first to clear the stubborn bush from the barren soil, then to fence the ground, and manure it, and force crops from it and for what? There was Cox, the farmer, starved off his selection after thirty years and going out back with his drays to work at tank-sinking for a squatter.
I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock, near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the Cudgeegong river some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred from the coast and 'carrying' was good then. I had a couple of draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking, and one or two others running in the Bush.
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