saplings.

Now and then, they would stop at a deserted-looking station, round
which stood a few shanties, and the inevitable public house. Maybe it
had formerly been a sheepfold, abandoned when the scab had destroyed
the flocks; and there were enormous rusty iron boiling-pots to which a
fetid odour still clung, and where the dust that blew up, had the
grittiness and faint smell of sun-dried sheeps' droppings.

At one of the more important stopping places, they had early lunch of
more fried steak, with sweet potatoes and heavy bread and butter and
peach jam. Most of the other passengers got out for lunch also.

There was a fifth-rate theatrical company cracking jokes among
themselves, drinking brandy and soda at extortionate prices, and
staring hard at Lady Bridget. Colin pointed out to her a lucky digger
and his family--two daughters in blue serge trimmed with gold braid,
and a fat red-faced Mamma, very fine in a feathered hat, black brocade,
a diamond brooch, and with many rings and jangling bangles. There were
some battered, bearded bushmen who seemed to be friends of Colin's,
though he did not introduce them to his wife, and who talked on topical
subjects in a vernacular which Lady Bridget thought to herself she
would never be able to master. There was a professional horse-breaker
whom McKeith hailed as Zack Duppo, and to whom he had a good deal to
say also. There were some gangs of shearers or stockmen or what not,
who appeared to be the following of two or three rakish, aggressive
looking males upon whom the bushmen scowled. Union delegates, Strike
Organisers, McKeith explained.

After that station, marks of civilisation diminished. The Noah's Ark
humpeys in their clearings became few and far between, and the long
lines of grey two-railed fences melted into gum forest. Now and then,
they saw herds of cattle and horses. Once, a company of kangaroos
sitting up with fore paws drooping and a baby marsupial poking its head
out of the pouch of one of the does. Then, taking fright in a second,
all leaped up, long back legs stretched, tails in air, and, in a few
ungainly bounds they were lost to sight among the gum trees. Early in
the afternoon the train reached the temporary Terminus, for the line
was being carried on by degrees through the Leura district. This was a
mining town called Fig Tree Mount--why, nobody could tell, for there
were no fig trees, and not a sign of a hill as far as the level
horizon--except for