Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/188

Rh bush in the vicinity as had not been appropriated to private holders. A poor old fellow, who had been a convict, eked out a scanty living by acting as cow-tender to this miscellaneous herd, consisting of some twenty-five head of rawboned cattle, mostly young stirks, which he drove out every morning and brought home again at night. For the care of each animal the cow-tender received twopence a week from its owner, and lived on the proceeds of his gains in a little mud hut which no English person would have supposed to be the residence of a human being, excepting for the fact that a little clay oven stood beside it. As each beast wore a bell upon its neck, in order that its whereabouts amongst the trees and stony heights might be ascertained, there was an amount of merry tinkling, when the herd started at sunrise, which sometimes proved so fascinating to our cow in her field, that she would jump the fence in a most spirited and hunter-like fashion in order to make one of the party. The exhilarating noise, however, must have been almost the only attraction, for the much-frequented "Government run" afforded scarcely any pasture, excepting in the winter. A fixed determination to calve in the bush was another of our cow's peculiarities, and on one such occasion neither she nor her calf could be discovered until after much search, and the promise of five shillings to the person who should find her. She reappeared at the end of several days with a very fine calf, followed by a little Irish boy who had found out her hiding place in a thicket at two miles distance.

If we had not kept an abundant supply of poultry, and secured ourselves also a regular supply of milk by giving