‘There were three of us. We were all young and healthy, and each had a little money. Foregathering (the first time was in this very room), we determined to become partners, and take up country. We would go out in person—far out, beyond even, as poor Neville put it, the “furthest paling of civilisation.”
‘There we would acquire a territory, expressible not in poor, miserable acres, but in square miles—thousands of ’em.
‘There we would breed sheep and cattle, increasing yearly in multitude, so that the sands upon the sea-shore
shouldn’t be a circumstance to them. We would plant in that far country our own vines and our own fig-trees, and sit under their shade in the good days to come—we and our children, and our children’s children after us—in that wide and pleasant heritage of our founding. Alas, the glamour of youth and confidence, and health and strength over a bottle or two of good wine! Five-and-twenty years ago, gentlemen, in this same old room!
‘So we went. And the days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, as we rode, searching hither and thither, to the right hand or to the left, but always with our faces to the falling sun. Over stony ridges and over [149] ]rolling downs; over deserts of cruel spinifex and barren sand; through great scrubs, thick and gloomy; along rivers, tortuous and muddy. At times drenched with rain, at others suffering from heat and hunger and thirst, but ever westward. At length, after many disappointments, emerging from a broad stretch of sterile country and ascending a range of low hills, our eyes beheld something resembling the Canaan of our dreams. Track of horse or beast we had not seen for weeks; therefore we knew that the land was, if we so willed it, ours.
‘For a long time we gazed over the timber-clumped, wide expanse, emerald-swarded after some recent fire, and through which ran a creek whose waterholes shone like polished steel under the mid-day sun.
‘“Here we rest?” said one; and another,—“The Plains of Hope lie before us!”
‘So we rested from our wanderings; and one, journeying backwards, secured the country, defining its boundaries, not by marked trees, but by parallels of latitude.
‘Shortly a homestead arose, rude but sufficient. Mob after mob of cattle came up from stations to the south and east, and Boorookoorora became itself a station.
‘We got the name from a black fellow. We understood him to signify that the word meant “No place beyond.” This pleased us, for we were, so far, proud of being the “farthest out”—the Ultima Thule of settlement. We may have been altogether mistaken, for the fellow was wild as a hawk, and, at the first chance, gave us the slip. But I’m glad, all the same, that the old name still holds.