Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/69

 bread baked in ashes, and when well made is good enough. Many attempts bave been made to improve upon it, and in some instances with success. Very good bread is however made with barm at some stations, and at others with soda. At most stations in the bush, tea forms an accompaniment to every meal; and when the other parts of the repast are only mutton chops and damper, it is a great improvement, but it does not go well with vegetables. The tea in universal use is a cheap kind of green tea called Hyson-skin; it has a pleasant flavour, but is not remarkable for that quality alluded to in Rory O'More, of "taking a great hold of the second water." The shepherds and hut-keepers boil the tea and sugar together, and when a man is heated and thirsty, a pint pot of this, piping hot and without milk, is a most refreshing drink. At many stations, wine is now used at dinner. There is a Spanish wine grown, I believe, in Catalonia, which can be drunk for about 6d. a bottle, which makes very good wine and water. It is a strong, full-flavoured, rather rough, red wine. Teneriffe and Marsala (both cheap wines) are also in use.

Living in this manner, and lodged in the way I have described, the squatter's life passes in an uniform cur-