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Updated: May 25, 2025
Only Dan and the inevitable black "boy" were to be with us on this preliminary walk-about; but all hands were to turn out for the muster, to the Quiet Stockman's dismay. "Thought they mostly sat about and sewed," he said in the quarters. Little did the Sanguine Scot guess what he was doing when he "culled" needlework from the "mob" at Pine Creek.
I coaxed; I threatened; I persuaded; but it was all in vain. I soon found he was a regular millstone round my neck particularly when we were on the "walk-about." He would suddenly take it into his head to sit down for hours at a stretch, and nothing would induce him to move until he did so of his own accord.
The walk-about was looked upon as a reprieve, and when a traveller, expressing sympathy, suggested that "it might sicken her a bit of camp life," Jack clung to that hope desperately. Most of the nigger world turned up to see the "missus mount," that still being something worth seeing.
A few days after telling the Sodom and Gomorrah story, I was on a walk-about with Yamba in my mountain region, when I suddenly discovered that shale existed in very considerable quantities, and I thereupon conceived the idea of demonstrating to the blacks that, not only was the Bible narrative a true one, but that it was quite possible to ignite stone; and I would even show them how it was done!
Now, the blacks do not look upon the advent of a female child with any favour; on the contrary, they frequently get rid of it at once in order to save themselves the trouble of taking it with them when on the walk-about.
"A dress rehearsal for the cattle-musters later on," Dan called the walk-about, looking with approval on my cartridge belt and revolver; and after a few small mobs of cattle had been rounded up and looked over, he suggested "rehearsing that part of the performance where the missus gets lost, and catches cows and milks 'em."
The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known, man and madman, twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap, a little too fond of the creature, who isn't at times?
It is true that fever and dysentery are perpetually on the walk-about, that loathsome skin diseases abound, that the air is saturated with a poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries.
He was always with me; but it must be remembered that he was now growing old, and the natives around me were by no means so keen to possess him as the tribes of Carpentaria had been in the days gone by. All kinds of extraordinary incidents befell me whilst on the "walk-about." Many a time have I been deceived by mirage.
It is true that fever and dysentery are perpetually on the walk-about, that loathsome skin diseases abound, that the air is saturated with a poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries.
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