43^ 



The Australian Bush, 



rule. He eats when he is hungry, sleeps when he is tired, and 

 works just when it pleases him. The laughing jackass calls him up 

 in the morning, and the flute-like note of the magpie is his vesper 

 bell. Content and health go hand in hand, and although he may 

 have a small share in the world's troubles — and what class is entirely 

 exempt from them ? — he has also the inward satisfaction of feeling 

 that he is leading a happy, healthy, and independent life, and has 

 no one to thank but himself for his daily bread. 



I have lived at times quite by myself in the bush^ and then, per- 

 haps, it was a lonely, laborious life. Often have I toiled from sun- 

 rise to sunset, come home dead-beat to my lonely tent, and after 

 ten hours' fasting had to light my fire and cook my solitary 

 supper J and often have I turned in fairly " baked," and put my 

 supper off till morning. But with a good mate the case is 

 different. It is true I have spent many a rough day in the forest, 

 and many a night, when lost, have lit my pipe and thrown myself 

 down to sleep before a log fire — no companions but my dogs> 

 no covering save the sky, and no supper but an opossum or 

 bandicote thrown upon the ashes to roast. But I can also truly 

 say that some of the happiest hours in a life which certainly has 

 had its bright as well as its gloomy passages, have been passed in 

 my bush tent j when, after a good day's sport, supper finished, and 

 pipe lit, I have thrown myself upon my opossum-rug, and, the toils 

 of the day fairly over, have spent the hour just before turning-in 

 yarning with my old mate over " the past, the present, and the 

 future." At such a moment I would hardly exchange the rough 

 freedom of the shooter's life for the best situation in the colony. 



Nowhere do we meet with more real friendship and true kind- 

 ness of heart than in the bush. Rough in aspect, careless in dress, 

 off-hand in his manners, there ^ a vein of simple and warm-hearted 

 kindness running through the character of the real bushman which 

 we rarely, if ever, find among men whose better feelings have be- 

 come insensibly deadened by a continual intercourse with tne 

 world. Isolated, as it were, from his fellow-men, solely depena^nt 

 upon his own exertions for his daily bread, he feels himself under 



