Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/107

 Mulga scrub all round, and, in between, patches of reddish sand where the grass ought to be.

It is New Year's Eve. Half-a-dozen travellers are camping in the hut, having a spell. They want it, for there are twenty miles of dry lignum plain between here and the Government bore to the east; and about eighteen miles of heavy, sandy, cleared road north-west to the next water in that direction. With one exception, the men do not seem hard-up; at least, not as that condition is understood by the swagmen of these times. The least lucky one of the lot had three weeks' work in a shed last season, and there might probably be five pounds amongst the whole crowd. They are all shearers, or at least they say they are. Some might be only 'rousers.'

These men have a kind of stock hope of getting a few stragglers to shear somewhere; but their main object is to live till next shearing. In order to do this they must tramp for tucker, and trust to the regulation―and partly mythical―pint of flour, and bit of meat, or tea and sugar, and to the goodness of cooks and storekeepers and boundary riders. You can only depend on getting tucker once at one place; then you must tramp on to the next. If you cannot get it once you must go short; but there is a lot of energy in an empty stomach. If you get an extra supply you may camp for a day and have a spell. To live you must walk. To cease walking is to die.

The Exception is an outcast amongst bush outcasts, and looks better fitted for Sydney Domain. He lies on the bottom of a galvanised iron case, with a piece of blue blanket for a pillow. He is dressed in a blue