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 of more than a hundred miles of heavy log fencing on rough country like Bruggabrong was no picnic to contemplate.

This was the feasible light in which father shaded his desire to leave.  The fact of the matter was that the heartless harridan, discontent, had laid her claw-like hand upon him.  His guests were ever assuring him he was buried and wasted in Timlinbilly’s gullies.  A man of his intelligence, coupled with his wonderful experience among stock, would, they averred, make a name and fortune for himself dealing or auctioneering if he only liked to try.  Richard Melvyn began to think so too, and desired to try.  He did try.