The surroundings of the station looked quite hopeless; a few sun-baked sheep-pens and races stretched behind the Station Hotel, shimmering and wavering in the heat haze; half a mile away was a collection of home-made huts consisting of boxes and kerosene tins piled on top of each other. A primitive winding-gear and a heap of slag marked the position of a small manganese mine which had been the cause for prolonging the single line railway so far into the Bush. To the west and south and north stretched scrub and bush, right away to forest and purple hills on the far horizon. Eastward the glittering rails shone back to the city, sending out blinding little flashes of light as the sun caught them.
The guard and driver got leisurely out of the train and stood on the platform; the stationmaster-cum-porter-cum-hotel-keeper, in a pair of dungaree trousers and a dusty vest of flesh-coloured cellular material which gave him the effect of nakedness, stared at them as though passengers were the last phenomenon he had expected to see.
"Cripes! What yous want?" he said.
"Are we far from anywhere?" asked Marcella, smiling at him. He spat assiduously through a knothole in the boarding and looked from her to Louis.
"Depends on what you call far," he said reflectively. "There's Gaynor's about fifteen miles along, an' Loose End nigh on thirty. Where yous makin' for, then?"
"I should say Loose End would suit us, by the sound of it," said Louis with a laugh. "But it isn't much use starting out to-night."
The stationmaster looked proprietorially towards the station and the hotel site. There seemed room for tickets, and for the man who sold them—if he were not a very large man. There was not much hope for visitors.
"I'm running up a bosker hotel soon's I can get a bit of weather-boarding and a few nails along," he said hopefully.
"That doesn't solve th-th-the immediate problem," said Louis.
"Let's sleep with half of us in the hotel and half on the platform," said Marcella, delighted with the authentic lack of civilization.