was a wretched sapling
cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for
shelter. There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set
in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to's behind the hut,--the
other was 'the boys' bedroom'. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers,
and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek
once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter
and eggs. The hut was nearly as bare inside as it was out--just a frame
of 'round-timber' (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was
permanent (unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab
table on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same
way. Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark
partitioned-off room ('mother's bedroom') were simply poles laid side
by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with
straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old
patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said
it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds--to
hide them as much as possible--when she went down there. A packing-case,
with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked
looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.
There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys' beds were
three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights. The
floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven with much
sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked. Mrs
Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets under as many of
the leaks as she could. The saucepans, kettles, and boilers were old
kerosene-tins and billies. They used kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in
halves, for setting the milk in. The plates and cups were of tin;
there were two or three cups without saucers, and a crockery plate or
two--also two mugs, cracked and without handles, one with 'For a Good
Boy' and the other with 'For a Good Girl' on it; but all these were kept
on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company. They were the only
ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock that hadn't gone for
years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she had 'some things packed
away from the children.'

The pictures were cut from old copies of the 'Illustrated Sydney News'
and pasted on to the bark. I remember