The Squatter's Dream

Of a certainty, every one capable of being acted upon by the contagion of a very uncommon degree of energy had been working at high pressure for the last two months. Paddocks had been completed; huts were ready for the washers and shearers. The great plant, including a steam-engine, had been strongly and efficiently fitted at the wash-pen, where a dam sent back the water for a mile, to the great astonishment of Jingaree and his friends, who occasionally rode over, as a species of holiday, to inspect the work.

“My word,” said this representative of the Arcadian, or perhaps Saturnian, period. “I wonder what old Morgan would say to all this here tiddley-winkin’, with steam-engine, and wire-fences, and knock-about men at a pound a week, as plenty as the black fellows when he first came on the ground. They’ll have a Christy pallis yet, and minstrels too, I’ll be bound. They’ve fenced us off from our Long Camp, too, with that cussed wire. Said our cattle went over our boundary. Boundaries be blowed! I’ve seen every herd mixed from here to Bochara, after a dry season. Took men as knew their work to draft ’em again, I can tell you. If these here fences is to be run up all along the river, any Jackaroo can go stock-keeping. The country’s going to mischief.”

Winding up with this decided statement of disapproval, Mr. Jingaree thus delivered himself at a cattle muster at one of the old-fashioned stations, where the ancient manners and customs of the land were still preserved in an uncorrupted state. The other gentlemen, Mr. Billy the Bay, from Durgah, Mr. Long Jem, from Deep Creek, Mr. Flash Jack, from Banda Murranul, and a dozen other representatives of the spur and stock-whip, listened with evident approbation to Jingaree’s peroration. “The blessed country’s a blessed sight too full,” said Mr. Long Jem. “I mind the time when, if a cove wanted a fresh hand, he had to ride to Bochara and stay there a couple of days, till some feller had finished knockin’ down his cheque. Now they can stay at home, and pick and choose among the travellers at their ease. It’s these blessed immigrants and diggers as spoils our market. What right have they got to the country, I’d like to know?”

This natural but highly protective view of the labour question found general acquiescence, and nothing but the absurd latter-day theories of the necessity of population, and the freedom of the individual, prevented, in their opinion, a return of the good old times, when each man fixed the rate of his own remuneration.

Meanwhile Mr. M‘Nab’s daring innovations progressed and prospered at the much-changed and highly-improved Gondaree. On Saturday afternoon Redgrave and his manager surveyed, with no little pride, the completed and indeed admirable wool-shed. Nothing on the Warroo had ever been seen like it. Jack felt honestly proud of his new possession, as he walked up and down the long building. The shearing floor was neatly, even ornamentally, laid with the boards of the delicately-tinted Australian pine. The long pens which delivered the sheep to the operator were battened on a new principle, applied by the ever-inventive genius of M‘Nab. There were separate back yards and accurately divided portions of the floor for twenty shearers. The roof was neatly shingled. All the appliances for saving labour were of the most modern description, and as different from the old-world contrivances in vogue among the wool-sheds of the Warroo as a threshing-machine from a pair of flails. The wool-press alone had cost more as it stood ready for work than many a shed, wash-pen, huts, and yards of the old days.

CHAPTER VIII

“The crackling embers glow,

And flakes of hideous smoke the skies defile.” —Crabbe.

“There is accommodation for more shearers than we shall need this year,” said M‘Nab, apologetically, “but it is as well to do the thing thoroughly. Next year I hope we shall have fifty thousand to shear, and if you go in for some back country I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a hundred thousand sheep on the board before you sell out. That will be a sale worth talking about. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like plenty of room in a shed. The wool will be all the better this year even for it.”

“I know it has cost a frightful lot of money,” said Jack, pensively, practising a gentle gallop on the smooth, pale-yellow, aromatic-scented floor. “I dare say it will be a pleasure to shear in it, and all that – but it’s spoiled a thousand pounds one way or the other.”

“What’s a thousand pounds?” said M‘Nab, with a sort of gaze that seemed as though he were piercing the mists of futurity, and seeing an unbroken procession of tens of thousands of improved merinos marching slowly and impressively on to the battens, ready to deliver three pounds and a-half of spout-washed wool at half-a-crown a pound. “When you come to add a penny or twopence a pound to a large clip, all the money you can spend in a wash-pen, or a shed, is repaid in a couple of years. Of course I mean when things are on a large scale.”

“Well, we’re spending money on a large scale,” said Jack. “I only hope the returns and profits will be in the same proportion.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said M‘Nab. “I must be off home to meet the fencers.”

The shed was locked up, and they drove home. As they alighted, three men were standing at the door of the store, apparently waiting for the “dole” – a pound of meat and a pannikin of flour, which is now found to be the reasonable minimum, given to every wayfarer by the dwellers in Riverina, wholly irrespective of caste, colour, indisposition to work, or otherwise, “as the case may be.”

Jack went into the house to prepare for dinner, while M‘Nab, looking absently at the men, took out a key and made towards the entrance to the store.

“Stop,” cried M‘Nab, “didn’t I see you three men on the road to-day, about four miles off? Which way have you come?”

“We’re from down the river,” said one of the fellows, a voluble, good-for-nothing, loafing impostor, a regular “coaster” and “up one side of the river and down the other” traveller, as the men say, asking for work, and praying, so long as food and shelter are afforded, that he may not get it. “We’ve been looking for work this weeks, and I’m sure, sliding into an impressive low-tragedy growl, the ’ardships men ’as to put up with in this country – a-travellin’ for work – no one can’t imagine.”

“I dare say not,” said M‘Nab; “it’s precious little you fellows know of hardships, fed at every station you come to, taking an easy day’s walk, and not obliged to work unless the employment thoroughly suits you. How far have you come to-day?”

There was a slight appearance of hesitation and reference to each other as the spokesman answered – “From Dickson’s, a station about fifteen miles distant.”

“You are telling me a lie,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “I saw you sitting down on your swags this morning at the crossing-place, five miles from here, and the hut-keeper on the other side of the river told me you had been there all night and had only just left.”

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