Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/115

 road, past Crécy, a trifle monotonous, perhaps,—it was all plain till you got to Salt Creek,—but possessing advantages for so large a drove. We reached an out-station of the Hopkins Hill property, then owned by a Tasmanian proprietary, and managed by "a fine old 'Scottish' gentleman, all of the olden time." We put the cattle into a small mustering paddock, and retired to rest with great confidence in their comfort and our own. About midnight a chorus of speculative lowing and bellowing acquainted us with the fact that they were all out. An unnoticed slip-rail had betrayed us. We arose, but could do nothing, and returned to our blankets. Our rest, however, had been effectually broken.

"How did you sleep, Fred?" was my query at daylight.

"Well," meditatively, "I've had a quantity of very inferior sleep" was his rejoinder.

At Nareeb Nareeb, the station then of Messrs. Scott, Gray, and Marr, we, by permission, camped for the purpose of separating our cattle, either by drafting through the yard, or by "cutting out" on horseback. After a brief trial of the latter method, we decided for the stock-yard, there being a large and well-planned one on the ground. But the mud!—it was the merry month of May, or else June only, and rain had fallen in sufficient quantities to make millionaires now of all the squatters from Ballarat to Bourke. We put on our oldest clothes, armed ourselves with sticks, and resolutely faced it. What figures we were at nightfall! We smothered a few head, but the work was done. Our entertainers had a short time since mustered their whole