Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/182

172 of water, to last the sad, unwashed household for another week! In vain might the thirsty traveller crave one half-bucket of that far-fetched fluid for his pinched-up beast! With grudging does the otherwise hospitable selector grant him a pannikin-full for himself. The wheat that had rejoiced in the spring sunshine has lost heart. It will make the best of a bad job, hastily form at the top of each stinted stalk a miserable apology for an ear, and await, bolt upright, the advent of the stripper.

Four bushels to the acre, the fair promise of spring yields to the sorrowing farmer, who must subsist on that starveling harvest for many a weary month. Burnt wheat his coffee, infused in water already the colour of the future decoction, his best beverage. Boiled wheat, baked wheat, fried wheat, his only food, and that of his children, for months to come, save for the occasional luxury of 'possum baked whole in clay, wallaby soup, or dainty snake pie!

What of his live stock and crops? The carcases of the few cows and sheep he possessed are lying beneath the shade of wire fences, bogged fast in the lignum swamp, or covering the gaping clay bottom of the long-exhausted "tank." Of other crops he has none. He is a man of one idea, and that is wheat. If that succeeds he settles his score with the storekeeper and bank; if that fails, he is lost. No tree has he planted, no shed built, no garden sought to form. Nor could he! Alone, unaided, the State has encouraged him to venture, void of capital or experience, "on to the land." Half the year through waters have flowed, not so far away, unused to the sea.

A few simple wood-and-earth works, and the frogs might be merrily croaking all the summer through, down that winding lignum-lined creek, and across the miles of