Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/149

 ready money on "improvements." The yards were generally referred to as a proof of how very little expenditure was really necessary on a cattle station.

"I wish I'd been a Scotchman, Rolf," said Fred Burchett to me once, in a contemplative mood. "I should have had a good run and 20,000 sheep by this time." "True—most true, friend of my soul; the same here—and we should not only have had them,—the acquisition is not so difficult,—but have kept them. That's where one division of the empire differs so much from the other." Now, the owner of Blackfellows' Creek, partly by reason of his abnormal girth and a sort of Athelstane-the-Unready kind of nature, never did anything. Yet he prospered exceedingly, and waxed more and more wealthy and rotund. All the stock-riders in the district came cheerfully to his muster, knowing that they would be treated with a certain easy-going liberality, and, moreover, be sure to find quantities of unbranded calves and strayed stock, all in the best possible condition, and never driven off the run or impounded from the richly-abounding and carelessly-ordered pastures of Blackfellows' Creek. I myself secured at a muster, and sold there and then, a whole lot of fat bullocks to Mooney, the cattle-dealer, who was lifting a draft at the time. They were a portion of my Devil's River store lot, which had, with correct taste and calculation, taken up their abode at Blackfellows' Creek on the first winter of their arrival. They had not my station brand, but their own hieroglyph was sufficient to protect them in those Arcadian times. I received Mr. Mooney's perfectly negotiable cheque for a round