Bush.
I used to think that they couldn't have much brains, or the loneliness
would drive them mad.

I'd decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive
alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better
than me--as long as the novelty lasted; and I'd stay at home for a
week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from
somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of
loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first
weeks in jail are--I was never there. I know it's so with tramping or
hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.
But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the
last days used to be the worst with me: then I'd have to make a move, or
drink. When you've been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,
you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts--provided you have
any imagination at all. You'll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the
lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that's
never likely to come that way--some one, or a stranger, that you can't
and don't really expect to see. I think that most men who have been
alone in the Bush for any length of time--and married couples too--are
more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who
is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to
stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a
rule. It's only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you
got. Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have
their periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they'd go raving
mad. Drink is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or
half-yearly spree is the only thing they've got to look forward to: it
keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead.

* 'Graft', work. The term is now applied, in Australia, to
all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry.

But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of
loneliness. WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn't as bad as it
might have been farther up-country: there was generally some one came
of a Sunday afternoon--a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe
a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On
a quiet Sunday, after I'd brought Jim home, Mary would dress h