He gave up Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East and Bin Bin West, bought Possum Gully, a small farm of one thousand acres, and brought us all to live near Goulburn.  Here we arrived one autumn afternoon.  Father, mother, and children packed in the buggy, myself, and the one servant-girl, who had accompanied us, on horseback.  The one man father had retained in his service was awaiting our arrival.  He had preceded us with a bullock-drayload of furniture and belongings, which was all father had retained of his household property.  Just sufficient for us to get along with, until he had time to settle and purchase more, he said.  That was ten years ago, and that is the only furniture we possess yet—­just enough to get along with.

My first impression of Possum Gully was bitter disappointment—­an impression which time has failed to soften or wipe away.

How flat, common, and monotonous the scenery appeared after the rugged peaks of the Timlinbilly Range!

Our new house was a ten-roomed wooden structure, built on a barren hillside.  Crooked stunted gums and stringybarks, with a thick underscrub of wild cherry, hop, and hybrid wattle, clothed the spurs which ran up from the back of the detached kitchen.  Away from the front of the house were flats, bearing evidence of cultivation, but a drop of water was nowhere to be seen.  Later, we discovered a few round, deep, weedy waterholes down on the flat, which in rainy weather swelled to a stream which swept all before it.  Possum Gully is one of the best watered spots in the district, and in that respect has stood to its guns in the bitterest drought.  Use and knowledge have taught us the full value of its fairly clear and beautifully soft water.  Just then, however, coming from the mountains where every gully had its limpid creek, we turned in disgust from the idea of having to drink this water.

I felt cramped on our new run.  It was only three miles wide at its broadest point.  Was I always, always, always to live here, and never, never, never to go back to Bruggabrong?  That was the burden of the grief with which I sobbed myself to sleep on the first night after our arrival.

Mother felt dubious of her husband’s ability to make a living off a thousand acres, half of which were fit to run nothing but wallabies, but father was full of plans, and very sanguine concerning his future.  He was not going to squat henlike on his place as the cockies around him did.  He meant to deal in stock making of Possum Gully merely a depot on which to run some of his bargains until reselling.

Dear, oh dear!  It was terrible to think he had wasted the greater part of his life among the hills where the mail came but once a week, and where the nearest town, of 650 inhabitants, was forty-six miles distant.  And the road had been impassable for vehicles.  Here, only seventeen miles from a city like Goulburn, with splendid roads, mail thrice weekly, and a railway platform only eight miles away, why, man, my fortune is made!  Such were the sentiments to which he gave birth out of the fullness of his hopeful heart.