FullReads

An’ three or four herrin’-gutted jackaroos comes along about dinner-time, when the table’s set and the cookin’ smellin’ from the kichen, with their belts done up three holes, an’ not the price of a feed on ’em. What’s a man ter do? I’ve known what it is ter do a perish on the track meself. It’s not the tucker I think on. I don’t care a damn for that. When the shearers come every one is free to go inter the kitchin an’ forage for hisself when he feels hungry–so long as he pays for his drink. But the jackaroos can’t pay for drinks, an’ I have ter pay carriage on the flour an’ tea an’ sugar an’ groceries–an’ it all tells up by the end o’ the year.

An’ a straight chap that knows me gets a job to take a flock o’ sheep or a mob o’ cattle ter the bloomin’ Gulf, or South Australia, or somewheers–an’ loses one of his horses goin’ out ter take charge, an’ borrers eight quid from me ter buy another. He’ll turn up agen in a year or two an’ most likely want ter make me take twenty quid for that eight–an’ make everybody about the place blind drunk–but I’ve got ter wait, an’ the wine an’ sperit merchants an’ the brewery won’t. They know I can’t do without liquor in the place.

An’ lars’ rains Jimmy Nowlett, the bullick-driver, gets bogged over his axle-trees back there on the Blacksoil Plains between two flooded billerbongs, an’ prays till the country steams an’ his soul’s busted, an’ his throat like a lime-kiln. He taps a keg o’ rum or beer ter keep his throat in workin’ order. I don’t mind that at all, but him an’ his mates git flood-bound for near a week, an’ broach more kegs, an’ go on a howlin’ spree in ther mud, an’ spill mor’n they swipe, an’ leave a tarpaulin off a load, an’ the flour gets wet, an’ the sugar runs out of the bags like syrup, an’– What’s a feller ter do? Do yer expect me to set the law onter Jimmy? I’ve knowed him all my life, an’ he knowed my father afore I was born. He’s been on the roads this forty year, till he’s as thin as a rat, and as poor as a myall black; an’ he’s got a family ter keep back there in Bourke. No, I have ter pay for it in the end, an’ it all mounts up, I can tell yer.

An’ suppose some poor devil of a new-chum black sheep comes along, staggerin’ from one side of the track to the other, and spoutin’ poetry; dyin’ o’ heat or fever, or heartbreak an’ home-sickness, or a life o’ disserpation he’d led in England, an’ without a sprat on him, an’ no claim on the bush; an’ I ketches: him in me arms as he stumbles inter the bar, an’ he wants me ter hold him up while he turns English inter Greek for me. An’ I put him ter bed, an’ he gits worse, an’ I have ter send the buggy twenty mile for a doctor–an’ pay him. An’ the jackaroo gits worse, an’ has ter be watched an’ nursed an’ held down sometimes; an’ he raves about his home an’ mother in England, an’ the blarsted University that he was eddicated at–an’ a woman–an’ somethin’ that sounds like poetry in French; an’ he upsets my missus a lot, an’ makes her blubber. An’ he dies, an’ I have ter pay a man ter bury him (an’ knock up a sort o’ fence round the grave arterwards ter keep the stock out), an’ send the buggy agen for a parson, an’–Well, what’s a man ter do? I couldn’t let him wander away an’ die like a dog in the scrub, an’ be shoved underground like a dog, too, if his body was ever found. The Government might pay ter bury him, but there ain’t never been a pauper funeral from my house yet, an’ there won’t be one if I can help it–except it be meself.