The show ring was a circular enclosure of about four acres, with a spiked batten fence round it, and a listless crowd of back-country settlers propped along the fence. Behind them were the sheds for produce, and the machinery sections where steam threshers and earth scoops hummed and buzzed and thundered unnoticed. Crowds of sightseers […]

Most people think that the cat is an unintelligent animal, fond of ease, and caring little for anything but mice and milk. But a cat has really more character than most human beings, and gets a great deal more satisfaction out of life. Of all the animal kingdom, the cat has the most many-sided character. […]

The circus was having its afternoon siesta. Overhead the towering canvas tent spread like a giant mushroom on a network of stalks — slanting beams, interlaced with guys and wire ropes. The ring looked small and lonely; its circle of empty benches seemed to stare intently at it, as though some sort of unseen performance […]

“THEM things,” said Alfred the chauffeur, tapping the speed indicator with his fingers, “them things are all right for the police. But, Lord, you can fix ’em up if you want to. Did you ever hear about Henery, that used to drive for old John Bull—about Henery and the elephant?” Alfred was chauffeur to a […]

GREENHIDE BILLY was a stockman on a Clarence River cattle-station, and admittedly the biggest liar in the district. He had been for many years pioneering in the Northern Territory, the other side of the sun-down—a regular “furthest-out man”—and this assured his reputation among station-hands who award rank according to amount of experience. Young men who […]

BUCKALONG was a big freehold of some 80,000 acres, belonging to an absentee syndicate, and therefore run in most niggardly style. There was a manager on 200 pounds a year, Sandy M’Gregor to wit—a hard-headed old Scotchman known as “four-eyed M’Gregor”, because he wore spectacles. For assistants, he had half-a-dozen of us—jackaroos and colonial-experiencers—who got […]