92 NEW ENGLAND (n.S.W.) ETC. 



New South Wales have converted it into a coach road at a cost 

 of many thousand pounds. After Dundee we passed the 

 Yarrowford Station. It is there no longer, nor are its then 

 owners, the Radford Brothers They came to Queensland and 

 for a time settled at Princhester, near Rockhampton ; later on 

 the younger brother obtained a parliamentary appointment and 

 for some years he has filled the dignified office of Clerk of the 

 Parliaments in this State. Next came the small township of 

 Glen Innes, the Demerique's Station, Farakabad, in close 

 proximity. No selectors' cottages marked the distances along 

 the route, no large sheep paddocks, no ringbarked country, but 

 white-stemmed gum trees, rough barked bastard box, and silver- 

 leafed peppermints with an occasional intervening patch of 

 green wattle, an uninviting shepherd's hut and sheep yards, and 

 here and there a shepherd with his dogs dragging himself along 

 lazilj after his flock. 



After leaving Glen Innes we skirted the Beardie Plain as 

 the railway does now, passed through the granite rocks 

 of Stonehenge, and when we reached the foot of Ben 

 Lomond, the biggest of big hills of New England, ascended 

 a very steep spur on the eastern side of the railway 

 line. The Ben Lomond station was at that time owned by 

 Codrington. It was a very bleak spot in winter time, but I 

 think I never felt more biting air on New England than at 

 Falconer station, a few miles further on. There was a town- 

 ship thtre, consisting of some half-dozen buildings. I forget 

 who owned the station. This was the old coach route which was 

 in use until the time when the railway was constructed, and it 

 was an uncommonly rough one. The next station was Gyra. It be- 

 longed to Millais, who also kept a roadside pub of the same 

 name. Millais died in 1879 at the good old age of 104 years. 

 Henry Dutton afterwards bought the station. Yet another bad 

 hill beyond this ; the Devil's Pinch it was called. Happily we 

 had to descend this, and, after the fashion thereabouts, the driver 

 took a stout tree down dragging at the tail of his dray. From 

 this point we passed by Maister's Tilbuster station, kept a 

 couple of miles to the right of Armidale, then by Saumarez, 

 Kentucky, Carlisle's Gully, to Bendemeer on the Macdonald 

 River, and so on to the Moonby Range, and down it to Oaky 

 Creek, which falls into the Peel River just above Tamworth. 

 The rest of that trip occupied several months, during which we 

 experienced biting frosts, pouring rains, Cumberland disease, 



