Ere the diggings had broken out on Bruggabrong, our nearest neighbour, excepting, of course, boundary-riders, was seventeen miles distant.  Possum Gully was a thickly populated district, and here we were surrounded by homes ranging from half a mile to two and three miles away.  This was a new experience for us, and it took us some time to become accustomed to the advantage and disadvantage of the situation.  Did we require an article, we found it handy, but decidedly the reverse when our neighbours borrowed from us, and, in the greater percentage of cases, failed to return the loan.

CHAPTER THREE

A Lifeless Life

Possum Gully was stagnant—­stagnant with the narrow stagnation prevalent in all old country places.

Its residents were principally married folk and children under sixteen.  The boys, as they attained manhood, drifted outback to shear, drove, or to take up land.  They found it too slow at home, and besides there was not room enough for them there when they passed childhood.

Nothing ever happened there.  Time was no object, and the days slid quietly into the river of years, distinguished one from another by name alone.  An occasional birth or death was a big event, and the biggest event of all was the advent of a new resident.

When such a thing occurred it was customary for all the male heads of families to pay a visit of inspection, to judge if the new-comers were worthy of admittance into the bosom of the society of the neighbourhood.  Should their report prove favourable, then their wives finished the ceremony of inauguration by paying a friendly visit.

After his arrival at Possum Gully father was much away on business, and so on my mother fell the ordeal of receiving the callers, male and female.

The men were honest, good-natured, respectable, common bushmen farmers.  Too friendly to pay a short call, they came and sat for hours yarning about nothing in particular.  This bored my gentle mother excessively.  She attempted to entertain them with conversation of current literature and subjects of the day, but her efforts fell flat.  She might as well have spoken in French.

They conversed for hours and hours about dairying, interspersed with pointless anecdotes of the man who had lived there before us.  I found them very tame.

After graphic descriptions of life on big stations outback, and the dashing snake yarns told by our kitchen-folk at Bruggabrong, and the anecdotes of African hunting, travel, and society life which had often formed our guests’ subject of conversation, this endless fiddle-faddle of the price of farm produce and the state of crops was very fatuous.

Those men, like everyone else, only talked shop.  I say nothing in condemnation of it, but merely point out that it did not then interest us, as we were not living in that shop just then.