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The Australian bushman is born with a mate who sticks to him through life–like a mole. They may be hundreds of miles apart sometimes, and separated for years, yet they are mates for life. A bushman may have many mates in his roving, but there is always one his mate, “my mate;” and it is common to hear a bushman, who is, in every way, a true mate to the man he happens to be travelling with, speak of his mate’s mate–“Jack’s mate”–who might be in Klondyke or South Africa. A bushman has always a mate to comfort him and argue with him, and work and tramp and drink with him, and lend him quids when he’s hard up, and call him a b— fool, and fight him sometimes; to abuse him to his face and defend his name behind his back; to bear false witness and perjure his soul for his sake; to lie to the girl for him if he’s single, and to his wife if he’s married; to secure a “pen” for him at a shed where he isn’t on the spot, or, if the mate is away in New Zealand or South Africa, to write and tell him if it’s any good coming over this way. And each would take the word of the other against all the world, and each believes that the other is the straightest chap that ever lived-“a white man!” And next best to your old mate is the man you’re tramping, riding, working, or drinking with.

About the first thing the cook asks you when you come along to a shearers’ hut is, “Where’s your mate?” I travelled alone for a while one time, and it seemed to me sometimes, by the tone of the inquiry concerning the whereabouts of my mate, that the bush had an idea that I might have done away with him and that the thing ought to be looked into.

When a man drops mateship altogether and takes to “hatting” in the bush, it’s a step towards a convenient tree and a couple of saddle-straps buckled together.

I had an idea that I, in a measure, took the place of Jack Moonlight’s mate about this time.

“‘Ullo, Jack!” I hailed as he reached the corner of the park.

“Good morning, Harry!” said Jack, as if he’d seen me last yesterday evening instead of three months ago. “How are you getting on?”

We walked together towards the Union Office, where I had a camp in the skillion-room at the back. Jack was silent. But there’s no place in the world where a man’s silence is respected so much (within reasonable bounds) as in the Australian bush, where every man has a past more or less sad, and every man a ghost–perhaps from other lands that we know nothing of, and speaking in a foreign tongue. They say in the bush, “Oh, Jack’s only thinking!” And they let him think. Generally you want to think as much as your mate; and when you’ve been together some time it’s quite natural to travel all day without exchanging a word. In the morning Jim says, “Well, I think I made a bargain with that horse, Bill,” and some time late in the afternoon, say twenty miles farther on, it occurs to Bill to “rejoin,” “Well, I reckon the blank as sold it to you had yer proper!”

I like a good thinking mate, and I believe that thinking in company is a lot more healthy and more comfortable, as well as less risky, than thinking alone.

On the way to the Union Office Jack and I passed the Royal Hotel, and caught a glimpse, through the open door, of a bedroom off the veranda, of the landlord’s fresh, fair, young Sydney girl-wife, sleeping prettily behind the mosquito-net, like a sleeping beauty, while the boss lay on a mattress outside on the veranda, across the open door. (He wasn’t necessary for publication, but an evidence of good faith.)