1868. Marcus Clarke, `Peripatetic Philosopher' (Reprint), p. 41:
"At the station where I worked for some time (as `knock-about-man') three cooks were kept during the `wallaby' season—one for the house, one for the men, and one for the travellers. Moreover, `travellers' would not unfrequently spend the afternoon at one of the three hotels (which, with a church and a pound, constituted the adjoining township), and having `liquored up' extensively, swagger up to the station, and insist upon lodging and food—which they got. I have no desire to take away the character of these gentlemen travellers, but I may mention as a strange coincidence, that, was the requested hospitality refused by any chance, a bush-fire invariably occurred somewhere on the run within twelve hours."
1893. `Sydney Morning Herald,' Aug. 12, p. 8, col. 7:
"Throughout the Western pastoral area the strain of feeding the `travellers,' which is the country euphemism for bush unemployed, has come to be felt as an unwarranted tax upon the industry, and as a mischievous stimulus to nomadism."
1896. `The Australasian,' Aug. 8, p. 249, col. 2:
". . . never refuses to feed travellers; they get a good tea and breakfast, and often 10 to 20 are fed in a day. These travellers lead an aimless life, wandering from station to station, hardly ever asking for and never hoping to get any work, and yet they expect the land-owners to support them. Most of them are old and feeble, and the sooner all stations stop giving them free rations the better it will be for the real working man. One station-owner kept a record, and he found that he fed over 2000 men in twelve months. This alone, at 6d. a meal, would come to L100, but this is not all, as they `bag' as much as they can if their next stage is not a good feeding station."
<hw>Travellers' Grass</hw>, i.q. <i>Settler's Twine</i> (q.v.).
<hw>Tree-creeper</hw>, <i>n</i>. popular name applied to members of an old Linnaean genus of birds. The Australian species are enumerated by Gould in quotation.
1848. J. Gould, `Birds of Australia,' vol. iv.:
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