THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 295 



(the latter another ex-convict), and thus wrecks the 

 Ufe of the eldest of her three young pupils, who was 

 affianced to him. The description of the " one supreme 

 moment," when she surrendered herself to the false 

 lover — " the one sublime bound to the copestone of 

 bliss, then the chilling recall," may be the high-water- 

 mark of Australian verse. The convict twice, as she 

 might well be, ends appropriately with brain-fever, 

 madness, and death. 



Brunton Stephens's celebrated poem was composed, 

 Mrs. Campbell Praed tells us, by the shores of a lagoon 

 on a station where he was a tutor, but station-life has 

 not been favourable to the production of literature. 

 Years after the station-holder or the dweller on it has 

 left it he may put together his reminiscences of bush- 

 life, or work up the materials then gathered. Strange 

 to say, the one squatter in New South Wales, Wilham 

 Forster, once Premier of the Colony, who is known to 

 have produced verses has apparently written nothing 

 on station-life, but has found conventional themes. 

 It is otherwise in Victoria. There the chief literary 

 glory of the South, T. A. Browne (" Rolf Boldrewood "), 

 has masked a virtual autobiography behind A Squatter's 

 Dream, but though he has written a score of works, 

 chiefly novels, he will live, it is understood, by his 

 masterpiece — Robbery under Arms. For, though himself 

 originally a squatter, he had experience of other profes- 

 sions, and was for a time a resident magistrate, when he 

 had occasion to study the facts of both bush-ranging and 

 gold-digging at close quarters. He studied them to 

 some purpose. No other such picture of the bush- 

 ranging for which Victoria has an ill name, though 

 New South Wales was still more severely scourged by 

 it, has been painted. So humane and yet so true, it 

 harrows the feelings by terror, while it purifies them 

 by pity. It has perpetuated in literature a sad and 

 bad social type, which was the necessary sequel of 

 convict antecedents in Australian history. 



Full many a gem of description or portraiture lies 



