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Updated: June 17, 2025
An' A've got other proofs furbye, that we'll go over wan be wan. It's a mysthery, Tammas." "It is indeed." Whilst replying, I was constrained to glance round at the weather; and my eye happened to fall on the creeper-laden pine, a quarter of a mile away. Suddenly a strange misgiving seized me, and I asked involuntarily, "Do you have many swagmen calling round here?"
The teams drag on again like a "wounded snake that dies at sundown," if a wounded snake that dies at sundown could revive sufficiently next morning to drag on again until another sun goes down. Hopeless-looking swagmen are met with during the afternoon, and one carrier he of the sanded leg lends them tobacco; his mates contribute "bits o'" tea, flour, and sugar. Sundown and the bullocks done up.
They always come just after mealtime, too, and we have to get everything laid on the table again sometimes we have ten meals a day in this house. And the swagmen come all day long, and Mrs. Gordon or I have to go and give them something to eat; there's plenty to do, always. So you see, there are plenty of strangers, but no neighbours." "What about Mr. Blake?" said Miss Grant.
The meal-signal is the real Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame; the Greek invocation which calls fools into a circle as surely as wise men; for neither folly nor wisdom is proof against its spell. Just then, two swagmen on foot came into the yard, and approached Moriarty and me. I fixed my belltopper, adjusted my specs, and assumed my stately pipe, whilst my soul went forth in psalms of thanksgiving.
They need it, for there are twenty miles of dry lignum plain between here and the government bore to the east; and about eighteen miles of heavy, sandy, cleared road north-west to the next water in that direction. With one exception, the men do not seem hard up; at least, not as that condition is understood by the swagmen of these times.
"Come on, now we'll beat it. They're after me." Hoppner had also brought a blanket. We went "humping bluey" as swagmen, as the tramp is called in Australia. The existence of the swagman is the happiest vagrant's life in the world. He is usually regarded as a bona fide seeker for work, and food is readily given him for the asking.
We had tramped twenty-five miles on a dry stretch on a hot day swagmen know what that means. We reached the water about two hours "after dark " swagmen know what that means. We didn't sit down at once and rest we hadn't rested for the last ten miles.
This reads funnily now when Mount Margaret is as civilised as Coolgardie was then, and is connected by telegraph, and possibly will be soon boasting of a railway. The blacks had been very troublesome, "sticking up" swagmen, robbing camps, spearing horses, and the like.
We had long, marvellous talks with different swagmen, as we slowly sauntered north to Newcastle.... The azure beauty of those days!... tramping northward with nothing in the world to do but swap stories and rest whenever we chose, about campfires of resinous, sweetly smelling wood ... drinking and drinking that villainous tea.
We walked right into the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to look as if we'd just drawn our cheques and didn't care a curse for any man. We looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go. We were dirty and haggard and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more reason why we might have our cheques all right. This Stiffner was a hard customer.
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