Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/429

Rh       "Many a vagabond makes an easy living by wandering from one station to another, pretending that he wants employment but carefully avoiding it. The sundowner is as insolent as the American tramp; by Australian custom he is welcome to supper, lodging, and breakfast, the food consisting of tea, sugar, bread, and beef or mutton, and the lodging being in his own blankets on the floor of the men's hut or the wool-shed. I have had a dozen or more of these 'travellers' on a single night, and my monthly average is not less than one hundred and twenty. Sometimes a party of them has been so unruly and so threatening in their demands that I have been compelled to send for the local police to carry them away.

"On one occasion," the gentleman continued, "a ruffianly traveller drew a knife and threatened to stab my cook, because the latter refused to give him a mutton-pie that had been prepared for the men, the travellers' table being filled with cold beef as the only viand. I had him handcuffed and taken to the police-station, where he was recognized as a man who was 'wanted' for a robbery somewhere up country.