58 Australian Life 



always hoping that the next season will bring 

 better fortune; that is, more rain. They have 

 water, at least, although it is muddy and yellow, 

 or has to be boiled and skimmed before they may 

 drink it. But all around them there is a belt of 

 bad country, so dry that it is impossible to move 

 their stock across it, if they wished to. Their 

 stores come to them once every three months by 

 camel-train, and the sight of a fresh white face is 

 a rarity. There is little cause to wonder that, 

 after a time, this isolated life of hardship has its 

 effect upon the character of the men who lead it, 

 and that some of them become morbid and others 

 hopeless and desperate. 



When the long-expected good seasons at last 

 come, these outback stations begin to justify their 

 existence. Soon there is plenty of feed every- 

 where, and the listless sheep and hollow-sided 

 cattle become round and sleek. Even in the 

 worst of the bad country there is at last some feed 

 and water, and now is the chance to send all the 

 surplus stock to market. This is the busy time 

 of the drovers. On these stations in the Never- 

 Never country, the marketable cattle have per- 

 haps been accumulating for three years, and now 

 in mobs of a thousand or more they are being 

 despatched from the far-away Gulf country to the 

 Southern and Eastern markets. Each mob is in 

 charge of a band of stockmen, who think nothing 

 of a three months' journey across the silent central 

 plain behind their restless herd of cattle. In ad- 



