Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: a story of Australian life

by Mrs. Campbell Praed

Bridget shot a scathing glance at the aide-de-camp.

'I don't admire your glorious British record, I think it's nothing but a record of robbery, murder, and cruelty, beginning with Ireland and ending with South Africa.'

'Oh! my dear!—I warn you,' said Lady Tallant, bending from her end of the table and addressing the Leichardt'stonians generally. 'Lady Bridget is a little Englander, a pro-Boer, a champion of the poor oppressed native. If she had been alive then she'd have wanted to hand India back to the Indians after the Mutiny, and now when she has made Cecil Rhodes Emperor of Rhodesia, she'll give over all the rest again to the Dutch.'

Bridget responded calmly to the indictment.

'Yes, I would—if Cecil Rhodes were to decline the Emperorship of all South Africa—which I should make his job.... But you'd better add on that I'm a Socialist too, Rosamond, because I've become one, as you know. I think the working man is in a shamefully unjust position, and that the capitalists are no better than slave-drivers.'

'Oh, not out here, my word!' exclaimed a Leichardt'stonian who happened to be one of the old squattocracy. 'The landowners and the capitalists are not slave-drivers, they are slave-driven. We've got to pay what the Trades' Union organisers tell us—or else go without stockmen or shearers. Fact is, our Labour War is only just beginning; and I can tell you, Sir, that before a year is out the so-called bloated capitalist and the sheep and cattle station owner will sing either pretty big or very small.'

'I don't think it will be very small—on MY station,' murmured McKeith. 'But it's quite true about the Labour War. They're organising, as they call it, already all along the Leura.'

The Governor asked to have the Labour situation explained from the squatters' point of view; and for a few minutes McKeith forgot to look at Lady Bridget. He was on his own ground and knew what he was talking about.

'It's this way,' he began. 'You see, though, I'm cattle—and I'm the furthest squatter out my way. But there are a few sheep stations down the river, and there isn't an unlimited supply of either cattle-hands or shearers, so we've got to look sharp about hiring them. Now, last year, we—of course I'm classing myself with the sheep-owners, for we all stand together—hired our shearers for seventeen shillings and sixpence a day. Then, up come the Union organisers, form a Union of the men and say to them: "You've got to pay ten shillings down to the Union and sign a contract that you won't shear under twenty shillings a day." The Organiser pockets the ten shillings, and makes three pounds a week and his expenses besides, so it pays HIM pretty well. Well then, the shearers go to the squatters. "All right," say they, "we'll shear your sheep, but it's going to be twenty shillings instead of seventeen and six." The squatters grumble, but they've got to have their sheep shorn, and they pay the twenty shillings. Next year, I'm told, the word is to go round that it's to be twenty-two and sixpence. Well sir, we're to see what's to happen then!'

The Labour talk lacked local picturesqueness. Sir Luke preferred the Blacks, and started the question of danger to white men in the out-districts. How far had officialdom penetrated into the back blocks? He understood that Mr McKeith had explored for the laying of a telegraph-line to the Big Bight. Could Mr McKeith give him any information about all that?