8o Australian Life 



Some "chaps" have bottomed on good wash dirt 

 over the range from Lonely Gully, where he had 

 always said the indications were favourable. An 

 old crony in the Wimmera district has just put in 

 another acre of vines, and complained that the 

 parrots, worse than ever this year, have not left 

 him a single cherry. The farmers in the Mailee 

 are complaining of the locusts already, and he 

 (Ben) would like to know whether the Govern- 

 ment ever will do anything about it; and so on, 

 with many a yarn of bird and beast observed by 

 the way, of bush publicans, civil and uncivil, 

 and of "chaps" hard-up or humping their swag 

 in deadly earnest. Old Ben likes it all. May he 

 live many a long year to carry his swag through 

 the glad bush in the first joyous flush of spring! 



