Gradually the unsuccessful one, after a year or two of nomadic life, tramping it from one end of a colony to another, begins to abandon the punctilious habits of his early life. His speech shows signs of degeneration. He talks of people indifferently as 'coves' or 'cards'; causerie with him is 'pitching'; he refrains with difficulty from expletives, and so on. His reading has not been kept up, though, had he cared, it might have been. He is scented unpleasantly with coarse tobacco, occasionally, alas! with the too frequent 'nip' of alcohol. If he by any chance re-enters civilised life, he shows in a dozen ways that he is no longer in touch with it. He makes things uncomfortable for his friends or companions, and is thoroughly convinced that he is out of place himself.
A youngster of this type came to a squatter's station one evening, carrying his 'swag' like any other tramp. The owner knew that he was or had been a gentleman, but apologised, as he had guests, for not asking him into the house. He was too dirty to be quite exact, and neither in raiment nor in other matters was he then fitted for the society of ladies. So he had his supper and bed in the men's hut, smoked his pipe over the fire with the man-cook, and turned in, quite contented with his accommodation.
Sometimes, if fairly industrious and steady, the ex-tramp makes his way to a managership, or even a share in a station, where he recovers a portion of his earlier form. But he is apt to be rough and careless to the end, which his English friends attribute to the necessarily deteriorating influences of colonial life.
Perhaps the saddest sight of all is the broken-down 'swell' of maturer years, carrying his 'swag' along the road, sometimes a solitary 'traveller'—a name that has its own significance in Australia—sometimes in company with other 'sundowners.' He is free of the guild now, unluckily. They neither resent his companionship, nor feel flattered by it; in no way do they alter their mode of speech or action in consequence. It is known that he has 'seen better days,' as the phrase runs. If so, it is nobody's business but his own. A certain amount of reticence characterises Australian bushmen, which is not noticeable among their British comrades. The nomadic habit, and the goldfields' experience—for nearly every able-bodied man in Australia has graduated there—may be held accountable for this trait. Travel is the true civiliser, and in many respects supplies the place of the higher education, teaching reserve, undemonstrativeness, and the patient endurance of privations and dangers which cannot be evaded.
So, though it is generally believed that Jack Somers or Bill Brown was a gentleman (nothing, alas! will ever make or keep him one again), he is treated by the master who employs him, and the station hands or farm labourers who work with him, exactly as the others—neither better nor worse. Generally a smart, intelligent worker, whether a shearer, rouseabout, boundary rider, road hand, what not, during the often protracted periods when he is compulsorily sober. This is secured by giving him no money (the more obvious necessaries can be procured from the station store), until his term of work be completed or his contract finished. Then he gets his cheque, and short work he makes of it. For the nearest bush public-house is to him a barrier fixed and impassable, while there is a pound in his purse.
After all, Australia is perhaps the best country for the fallen swell. A reasonable share of honest work is always open to him, which, from the custom of the country, is not held to be degrading, as it would be in Europe. He could not work in the field in Britain, tend sheep, drive a team, break stones. All these things he can do in Australia with but temporary loss of prestige or social rank. He would find it next to impossible to gain a living in the old country in any form of day labour. Were he even to succeed in doing so, he would be gazed and wondered at by the whole country-side. A man of good family requested me to officially certify his identity for the security of his people at home, who were remitting money to his credit. Roughly dressed was he—had evidently been 'on the wallaby' recently. After telling me his name and birth, he must have thought I looked doubtful, for he said, 'I am the man I say; I'm not the Claimant.' That great personage was then supplying England and Australia with food for conversation. A book lay near me with a Latin quotation on the frontispiece. This I slightly indicated; he at once took the hint and translated it correctly.
'What have you been doing lately?' I inquired. His hands, roughened and gnarled, with no make-believe manual labour, assured me that he had been pretty continuously at work of some sort.
'Well, station work mostly,' he returned answer. 'My last job was cooking for a survey camp.'
'Was it for this that you graduated at Trinity College, Dublin?' was my unspoken thought. That he drank hard between times, poor fellow, was apparent to my experienced eye. He received his money duly, which was, of course, 'blued' like all previous remittances. I exchanged letters with the friends who had written after him. I advised, if they were really anxious for his return, that he should be placed on board ship, but no money given to him till safe on blue water. What historiettes of lapsed gentlefolk in the colonies might be written! The Honourable Blank Blank, long past even the middle passage of station work, who loafs about country towns, taking work as ostler, or even 'boots' at the hotels, ready to drink with any rough, and feebly subsisting upon the reflection of former greatness, until he becomes too useless for even such a position, is locked up for repeated drunkenness, and finally dies in a gutter.
The 'cranky' long-bearded shepherd vegetates on a back-block station, amid desert regions now becoming traditionary, where wire fences are all unknown, or by dingoes rendered ineffectual.