Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/23

 thinking of putting down a shaft. And these two old 'Fifty-Niners would mooch round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break clay lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to 'look for his father and Mr. So-and-so, and tell 'em to come to their dinner.

And again―mostly in the fresh of the morning―they would hang about the fences on the selection and review the live stock: five dusty skeletons of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece of equine scenery―which, by the way, the old mate always praised. But the selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections―it was far away with the last new rush in West Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or 'Last Chance,' 'Nil Desperandum,' or 'Brown Snake' claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many Golden Points, Baikery Hills, Deep Creeks, Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies. And so they'd yarn till the youngster came to tell them that 'Mother sez the breakfus is gettin' cold,' and then the old mate would rouse himself and stretch and say, 'Well, we mustn't keep the missus waitin', Tom!'

And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the edge of the verandah―that is, in warm