THE PA8T0RALI8T AND THE NATIVE 121 



Native labour." Natives used to shear on all the 

 stations in the North- West, and on some they do it 

 still. They are fencers, shepherds, rabbiters, gardeners. 

 The men plant and tend ornamental trees, such as the 

 oleanders. The women " can be trained to make 

 excellent housemaids and nurses," and they are said, 

 by their patient ministrations to make the life of the 

 white woman in these sohtudes endurable. But they 

 must be treated according to their dispositions. They 

 must be left a good deal of their freedom, and they 

 must not be too much interfered with.* What was 

 said about them in more southern districts in the 

 forties is true of them still. Mr. Brown, of the famous 

 Queensland runholding firm of Beck and Brown, " always 

 found them reliable, if rehance was placed on them, 

 and if they were kindly, though firmly, used." They 

 did their work well, he admitted. "f 



The relationship had its darker side. The blacks, 

 writes Mrs. Campbell Praed, who knew the sunny side 

 of them so well, " were a vague terror of my childhood." 

 Nightly she listened to blood-curdling stories of murder 

 by the vindictive and treacherous natives, and again 

 to tales of pursuit and wholesale massacre by the 

 infuriated whites. That very night when she was 

 taken to the corroboree she witnessed the rehearsal of 

 a deed of blood, and she ever afterwards reproached 

 herself with not having betrayed to her father the wild 

 things she saw, believing that she might thus have 

 prevented the terrible tragedy that followed, when 

 venerable mother and marriageable daughters, men 

 and boys were slain under their own roof. News would 

 come that several hands had been murdered at Young's 

 station, near Gladstone, or that Folsom, of Balloo 

 Creek, had been speared on the verandah of his house, 

 and that another squatter had been tomahawked while 

 camping under his dray. After a succession of such 

 outrages, or after one that was more than ordinarily 



* Sydney Morning Herald, May 14, 1910. 

 f Baetley, Beminiscetices, p. 185. 



