d me on their broad
shoulders, stuffed me with lollies and made a general pet of me. Without
the quiver of a nerve I swung down their deepest shafts in the big bucket
on the end of a rope attached to a rough windlass, which brought up the
miners and the mullock.

My brothers and sisters contracted mumps, measles, scarlatina, and
whooping-cough. I rolled in the bed with them yet came off scot-free. I
romped with dogs, climbed trees after birds' nests, drove the bullocks in
the dray, under the instructions of Ben, our bullocky, and always
accompanied my father when he went swimming in the clear, mountain,
shrub-lined stream which ran deep and lone among the weird gullies,
thickly carpeted with maidenhair and numberless other species of ferns.

My mother shook her head over me and trembled for my future, but father
seemed to consider me nothing unusual. He was my hero, confidant,
encyclopedia, mate, and even my religion till I was ten. Since then I
have been religionless.

Richard Melvyn, you were a fine fellow in those days! A kind and
indulgent parent, a chivalrous husband, a capital host, a man full of
ambition and gentlemanliness.

Amid these scenes, and the refinements and pleasures of Caddagat, which
lies a hundred miles or so farther Riverinawards, I spent the first years
of my childhood.

CHAPTER TWO

An Introduction to Possum Gully

I was nearly nine summers old when my father conceived the idea that he was
wasting his talents by keeping them rolled up in the small napkin of an
out-of-the-way place like Bruggabrong and the Bin Bin stations. Therefore
he determined to take up his residence in a locality where he would have
more scope for his ability.

When giving his reason for moving to my mother, he put the matter before
her thus: The price of cattle and horses had fallen so of late years
that it was impossible to make much of a living by breeding them. Sheep
were the only profitable article to have nowadays, and it would he
impossible to run them on Bruggabrong or either of the Bin Bins. The
dingoes would work havoc among them in no time, and what they left the
duffers would soon dispose of. As for bringing police into the matter, it
would be worse than useless. They could not run the offenders to earth,
and their efforts to do so would bring down upon their employer the wrath
of the duffers. Result, all the fences on the station would be fired for
a dead certainty, and the destruction