Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/143

 days of married life they had no food except salt pork and damper, or a kind of bread made without yeast, which is very nice on a picnic, but would be trying as a staple form of food. On Sundays they had rice boiled in water and raisins. "My grandfather used to be so hungry that he once shot a sitting magpie." It must, even so, have been a meal of bones and feathers.

There was something patriarchal about this pleasant, cultivated household. The settlement which the earlier generation had won from the bush remained in the family, and the descendants of its servants still served them. After lunch we were taken off to tea in the hospitable Australian way to some friends of our hosts' who were giving a tea-party. Their house lay at some distance from the town, with its back to the hills. It was approached by a park much like an English park, with eucalyptus for oaks and magpies for rooks, and the house itself was much like an English country house, and an English tea-party, with great bowls of roses and violets in the drawing-room.

It would be difficult to find anywhere a lovelier situation than the slopes of these hills, facing the far-distant sea. The entrance to the drive was heavy with the scent of stocks, and gay with masses of red geranium, a bougainvillea covered with purple flowers hung over the flight of steps,