Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/465

 The change has been sweeping and comprehensive. The vast area of nearly half a million of acres has been enclosed and subdivided by the all-pervading wire-fencing. A couple of hundred thousand merinos, with a trifle of forty thousand half-grown lambs, now graze at large, without a shepherd nearer than Queensland. A handsome, well-finished house stands by the artificial sheet of water, formed by the big dam which spans the once meagre 'cowall' or anabranch of the main stream.

A windmill-pump irrigates the well-kept garden, where oranges are in blossom and ripening their golden globes at the same time. Green peas and cauliflowers, maturing early, appeal to a lower aestheticism. The stables, the smithy, the store, the men's huts, the carpenter's shop, form a village of themselves; not a small one either.

A quarter of a mile northward, backed up by a dense clump of pines, stands the woolshed, an immense building with apparently acres of roofing and miles of battened floors, £5000 to £6000 representing the cost. It is now in full blast. We walk over with the centurion to whom that particularly delicate commission, the captaincy of 'the shed,' has been entrusted. It is by no means an ordinary sight. We ascend a few steps at the 'top' of the shed, and look down the centre aisle, where sixty men are working best pace, as men will only do when the pay is high, and each man receives all he can earn by superior skill or strength.

They are chiefly young men, though some are verging on middle age, and an old man here and there is to be seen. Scarcely any but born Australians are on the ' board,' as the section devoted to the actual shearing operation is termed. Though an occasional Briton or foreigner enters the lists, the son of the soil has long since demonstrated his superior adaptation to this task, wherein skill and strength are so curiously blended.

Watch that tall shearer halfway down the line. A native-born Australian, probably of the second or third generation, he stands six feet and half an inch, good measurement, in his stockings. His brawny fore-arm is bare to the elbow. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested, light-flanked, he would have delighted the eye of Guy Livingstone. You cannot find any