ut the merino ruins
his man with greater celerity. Nothing on earth will kill cross-breds;
nothing will keep merinos alive. If they are put on dry salt-bush
country they die of drought. If they are put on damp, well-watered
country they die of worms, fluke, and foot-rot. They die in the wet
seasons and they die in the dry ones.

The hard, resentful look on the faces of all bushmen comes from a long
course of dealing with merino sheep. The merino dominates the bush,
and gives to Australian literature its melancholy tinge, its despairing
pathos. The poems about dying boundary-riders, and lonely graves under
mournful she-oaks, are the direct outcome of the poet's too close
association with that soul-destroying animal. A man who could write
anything cheerful after a day in the drafting-yards would be a freak of
nature.

THE BULLOCK

The typical Australian bullock--long-horned, sullen-eyed, stupid, and
vindictive--is bred away out in Queensland, on remote stations in the
Never Never land, where men live on damper and beef, and occasionally
eat a whole bottle of hot pickles at a sitting, simply to satisfy their
craving for vegetable food. Here, under the blazing tropic sun, among
flies and dust and loneliness, they struggle with the bullock from
year's end to year's end. It is not to be supposed that they take up
this kind of thing for fun. The man who worked cattle for sport would
wheel bricks for amusement.

At periodical intervals a boom in cattle-country arises in the cities,
and syndicates are formed to take up country and stock it. It looks so
beautifully simple--_on paper_.

You get your country, thousands of miles of it, for next to nothing.
You buy your breeding herd for a ridiculously small sum, on long-dated
bills. Your staff consists of a manager, who toils for a share of the
profits, a couple of half-civilized white stockmen at low wages, and
a handful of blacks, who work harder for a little opium ash than they
would for much money. Plant costs nothing, improvements nothing--no
woolshed is needed, there are no shearers to pay, and no carriage to
market, for the bullock walks himself down to his doom. Granted that
prices are low, still it is obvious that there must be huge profits in
the business. So the cattle start away out to "the country", where they
are supposed to increase and multiply, and enrich their owners. Alas!
for such hopes. There is a curse on cattle.

No one has ever been able to ex