Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/113

Rh Far better as a picture, our host and his tall sons on the stone steps to welcome us; and in the pretty drawing-room—the drawing-room of a Victorian house at home—the hostess and her daughter. You might see them both any summer's day at Hurlingham, or Henley, or at Lord's when the Oxford and Cambridge match is being played.

However, our purpose was to see sheep. Could this be a sheep farm? Where were the countless thousands which ought to have filled the landscape—as they do in the photographs? We had driven over rolling downs of short grass, through clearings of trees, and by tracks which made the car leap like a tiger as it cleared the ruts, but where were the sheep? We had seen other things that filled us with delight, a flock of wild cockatoos—and though that may seem nothing to you who read, let us add that there is an inexplicable thrill in seeing wild anything that one has never before beheld except captive. There were flocks of green and red and blue parrots too, and the laughing jackass perched on the tree-stumps. But about the sheep?

They are there; no doubt about that. An Anglo-Australian whom we know at home once confessed to us that the only blot on life in that southern continent of free air and sunshine was