"Brodribb and Hobson came here over the mountains with four Port Phillip blacks, and they decided to look for a better way by the coast. I landed them and their four blacks at the head of Corner Inlet. They were attacked by the Western Port blacks near the River Tarwin, but they frightened them away by firing their guns. The four Port Phillip blacks who were carrying the ammunition and provisions ran away too; and the two white men had nothing to eat for two or three days until they made Massey and Anderson's station on the Bass, where they found their runaway blacks.
"William Pearson and his party were the next who left the Port. They took the road over the mountains, and lived on monkey bears until they reached Massey and Anderson's.
"McClure, Scott, Montgomery, and several other men started next. They had very little of their provisions left when I landed them one morning at One Tree Hill there over the water. They were fourteen days tramping over the mountains, and were so starved that they ate their own dogs. They came back in a schooner, but I think some of them will never get over that journey. I tell you, Jack, it's hard to make a start in a new country with no money, no food, and no live stock, except Scott's old horse and that lame deerhound. Poor Ossian was a good dog, and used to run down an old man kangaroo for us, until one of them gave him a terrible rip with his claw, and he has been lame ever since. For eight weeks we were living on roast flat-head, and I grew tired of it, so on the 17th of last month I started down the inlet in my whaleboat, and went to Lady Bay to take in some firewood. I knew the mutton-birds would be coming to the islands on the 23rd or 24th, but I landed on one of them on the 19th, four or five days too soon, and began to look for something to eat. There were some pig-faces, but they were only in flower, no fruit on 'em. I could find nothing but penguin's eggs and I put some of those in a pot over the fire. But they would never get hard if I boiled them all day. There is something oily inside of them, and how it gets there I never could tell. You might as well try to live on rancid butter and nothing else. However, on November 23rd the mutton-birds began to come in thousands, and then I was soon living in clover. I had any quantity of hard-boiled eggs and roast fowl, for I could knock down the birds with a stick.
"But, Jack, what have you been doing since I met you the year before last? You had a train of pack bullocks and a mob of cattle, looking for a run about Mount Buninyong. Did you start a station there for Imlay?"
"No, I didn't. I found a piece of good country, but Pettit and the Coghills hunted me out of it, so Imlay sold the cattle, and went back to Twofold Bay. Then Charles Lynot offered me a job. He was taking a mob of cattle to Adelaide, but he heard there was no price for them there, so he took up a station at the Pyrenees, seventeen miles beyond Parson Irvine's run at the Amphitheatre. I was there about twelve months. My hut was not far from a deep waterhole, and the milking yard was about two hundred yards from the hut. The wild blacks were very troublesome; they killed three white men at Murdering Creek, and me and Francis, Clarke's manager, hunted them off the station two or three times. The blacks were more afraid of Francis than of anybody else, as besides his gun he always carried pistols, and they never could tell how many he had in his pockets. Cockatoo Bill's tribe drove away a lot of Parson Irvine's sheep, and broke a leg of each sheep to keep them from going back. The Parson and Francis went after them, and one of our stockmen named Walker, and another, a big fellow whose name I forget. They shot some of the blacks, but the sheep were spoiled.
"There was a tame blackfellow we called Alick, and two gins, living about our station, and he had a daughter we called picaninny Charlotte, ten or eleven years old, who was very quick and smart, and spoke English very well. One morning, when I was in the milking yard, she came to me and said, 'You look out. Cockatoo Bill got your axe under his rug--sitting among a lot of lubras. Chop you down when you bring up milk in buckets.'
"I had no gun with me, so I crept out of the yard, and sneaked through the scrub to get into the hut through the back door, keeping out of sight of Bill and the lubras, who were all sitting on the ground in front of the hut. We had plenty of arms, and I always kept my double-barrelled gun loaded, and hanging over the fireplace. I crept inside the hut, reached down for the gun, and peeped out of the front door, looking for Bill. The lubras began yabbering, and in an instant Bill dropped his rug and the axe, leaped over the heads of the women, and was off like a deer. I took a flying shot at him with both barrels. His lubra went about afterwards among the stations complaining that Jack Quart Pot shot Cockatoo Bill, and Parker (the Government Protector) made enquiries about him. I saw him coming towards my hut, and I said to piccaninny Charlotte, 'No talk, no English, no nothing;' and when Parker asked her if she knew anything about Cockatoo Bill she shammed stupid, and he couldn't get a word out of her. Who is that cove with the spyglass?"
"That's John Campbell, the company's storeman. He is looking for a schooner every day. He would have gone long ago like the rest, but he does not like to leave the stores behind. Here, Mr. Campbell, wouldn't you like to take a roast egg or two for breakfast? There's plenty for the whole camp."
"I will, Davy, and thank you. Who are the men in the boat down the channel?"
"They are George Scutt and Pately Jim fishing for their breakfast. They were hungry, I reckon, and went away before I brought out the eggs, or they might have had a feed."