Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria.

Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria.

I struck a little north towards Victoria Range, and passed one of my nights with a solitary shepherd in an out-hut, so far and away from all companionable life but that of his sheep that I could well realize, in this extreme case, the dolorous side of squatting.  My breakfast was a tin of tea without milk, and a hunch of damper of my host’s own baking—­not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one had nothing else.  A sheep could not be killed for two, even if the business could afford it.  On I went, merrily withal, for it was the heyday of youth and strength, making steadily eastwards for the southern extremity of the Grampians, which rose in grand outline before me, forty miles away.  Neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till I reached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon, upon whose rocky summit the setting sun already glinted.  I was now upon a good, broad bush track, which must lead to some station.  But when?  This small side-track to the left looks as though a hut at least were nearer, and so I diverged into it.  Mile after mile I trotted, as well as the rough track would permit, and when night fell, and for long after, I still pegged away.  A dozen miles right up, within the outer sierra, towards Mount William, brought me at last to an open glade, where some small piles of “split stuff” showed me at once my mistake.  Dodging about till day, thus giving rest to my horse, I soon regained my road, and after an hour’s further ride, reached Dr. Martin’s sheep station, where a pleasant young fellow, Byass by name, who had lost an arm in wars of some kind, and was then in charge, ministered to my wants, and allowed me to take well-nigh the largest breakfast on record in those parts.

I must not continue in such detail with the rest of my western tours’ incidents, especially as the second was mostly over the same ground as the first.  I dilly reached my last Boyd station, in the pretty and varied Pyrenees district—­a sheep station, then under charge of my friend James M. Hamilton.  Here the hospitalities were equal, but all the rest sadly below The Gums, and an infinity underneath Dunmore.  But Hamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortable residence of a squatting neighbour, Mr. John Allen.  The master was not at home, but the mistress received us with squatting welcome.  She was a young South Australian wife, charming alike in person and manners, and surrounded by a little troop of children, some with the stamp of her own beauty.  She died not long afterwards, prematurely cut down, alas! like many another bright flower in the world’s great garden.

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Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.