We had a really decent comfortable little house.

She and I carried our stuff over to the new place, having to make a long detour through the scrub to avoid scrambling about in Jimmy's overgrown loggy clearing, but the end of March saw us comfortably installed. Mrs. Ellison made us a present of a wee dolly stove she had used at first, so there were no more scorched aprons and smarting eyes for the wife, and the only fly in the ointment was how to make a bob or two. Though so early in the year, people were anticipating a dry spell, as the Rainy Season had not, so far, been up to much, as the grass wasn't as plentiful as it should have been. On that account there wasn't much doing. My first move, after talking things over with older settlers, was to get some cows.

Two "purple patches" of advice:—

Dad Vincent: "Lord love yer, man! Of course you've done the right thing! Look at me. Came up here with no experience, a wife and thirteen kids. I've been submerged half a dozen times, and look at me now. Get some cows and good luck to you."

Old Pardy: "So yeh've got married? Well, a man's a blanky lizard ef 'e can't knock out a blanky livin' in the bush. Git some blanky cows; and dairy!"

So I put the fear of a drought away from me. Such a thing had never happened before in the thirty years' history of the Tableland. Cows were fairly cheap. Therefore—borrow some more cash from the Agricultural Bank and buy cows. Good. I applied for £200 and got it without any trouble.

Then Bayton the bullocky offered to take some pine off my place at sixpence a hundred (two pounds odd in Sydney!) and give me the cutting. I jumped at it, and he took about twelve thousand feet. This gave me enough money to get six coils of barb wire (it hadn't risen much up to then), and about £3 over to renew my credit with the storekeeper. That was the last money he got for twelve months; yet he never worried me. I was only one of scores on his books that year, but he always got more kicks that thanks, and of course was a profiteer.

I used the wire to fence my road line; then made a deal for sixteen cows, a bull and seven twelve-month heifers for my £200, and thought I was all sagalio. Four cows were milking, and the others were supposed to be in calf, but weren't. We made a bit of butter and sold it to some bachelor neighbours for about two months, and that paid the rent. Then the green grass disappeared, the cows went dry, and the two calves that had come with them died.

I assisted the maintenance man putting up a bridge near my place, and that paid for rates. A week or two cutting timber nearby for Hood and Bayton, and the half-yearly interest bill worried us no more; then their bullocks got too weak to work, so that source of income stopped too. And "Old Store's" account rendered kept on mounting up, although we lived on rice and beef-shins, made a seventy-pound bag of sugar last six months, and a fifty-pound bag of flour eight weeks. A nightmare of a time!