76 Australian Life 



the very moment when the water is beginning to 

 boil. At this critical juncture, the bushman 

 throws in a handful of cheap tea, and a good al- 

 lowance of moist brown sugar, stirring vigorously 

 with a twig of eucalyptus. The billy is then set 

 aside for a moment while the tea leaves settle, 

 and the brew is drunk scalding hot from quart 

 pots known as "pannikins." 



It sometimes happens that a number of travel- 

 lers meet at a favourite camping-place, when a 

 billy-boiling contest may ensue. Many bushmen 

 are proud of the possession of a billy that is a 

 quick boiler, that is, old and worn thin, but kept 

 free from any coating of non-conducting soot. 

 But billy-boiling contests usually resolve them- 

 selves into questions of individual skill in the 

 management of a camp-fire. In the great tragedy 

 of the bush, the billy-can also plays its part, for 

 when the traveller has turned by mistake along 

 the lonely track that leads nowhere, and finds 

 himself without water or food in the heart of a 

 pathless waste, he scratches his dying message 

 upon the billy-can. Sometimes it is his name, 

 or a few words that tell the whole story of 

 the tragedy, which is still so usual an event in 

 the "back country" as to pass almost without 

 comment. 



There are other signs which distinguish the 

 experienced "traveller," in addition to his work- 

 manlike swag and the deftness with which he 

 provides for his own comfort in camp. He gen- 



