CHAPTER XXXV 



THE HOMESTEAD AND THE HOUSE 



The first business of a squatter who purchased or formed 

 a run in a new country was to fix a site for the head- 

 station, where he was to reside. There he built a house 

 and planted a fresh germ of the collective life. The 

 growth of the dwelling reflected the successive stages of 

 the pastoral life. 



For a time many pioneers lived in tents. Henry 

 O'Brien, says Dr. Lang, was, like Jabal, the " father of 

 such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle." It 

 was the first stage in the pastoralist existence and re- 

 called the nomad phase. Two ladies, the wife and mother 

 of Victorian pioneers, one of them seventy years old, lived 

 in tents for ten months. Doubtless, it was a brief stage 

 with the squatters and their ladies, but in one form it 

 long survived. The lining of the first slab huts on a 

 station long consisted of canvas. 



The improvements on some of the pioneer stations 

 began with two thatched huts. Then, with the arrival 

 of a new proprietor and his wife a cottage was built, 

 after the model of an Indian bungalow, with an all- 

 round verandah. It was thatched with long tussock 

 grass, as was also the new detached kitchen. A garden 

 was made, and a piano introduced. 



Sometimes, but very rarely, as with F. N. Broome's 

 station in the Malvern Hills of Canterbury, New Zealand, 

 the house was built two miles away from the homestead, 

 when the squatter's wife liked "to be removed from 

 the immediate neighbourhood of all the work of the 



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