All rights reserved
First Edition 1901
Re-issue 1903
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| In Bad Company | [1] |
| Morgan the Bushranger | [135] |
| How I became a Butcher | [146] |
| Moonlighting on the Macquarie | [165] |
| An Australian Roughriding Contest | [174] |
| The Mailman's Yarn | [182] |
| Dear Dermot | [190] |
| The Story of an Old Log-Book | [199] |
| A Kangaroo Shoot | [208] |
| Five Men's Lives for One Horse | [214] |
| Reedy Lake Station | [220] |
| A Forgotten Tragedy | [234] |
| The Horse you don't see Now | [241] |
| How I began to Write | [249] |
| A Mountain Forest | [255] |
| The Free Selector—A Comedietta | [261] |
| Bush Hospitality | [282] |
| Lapsed Gentlefolk | [288] |
| Shearing in Riverina, New South Wales | [296] |
| Ancient Sydney | [321] |
| After Long Years | [335] |
| In the Droving Days | [341] |
| The Australian Native-born Type | [351] |
| My School Days | [360] |
| Sydney Fifty Years Ago | [369] |
| Old Time Thoroughbreds | [377] |
| The First Port Fairy Hunt | [387] |
| Bendemeer | [398] |
| Sport in Australia | [407] |
| Old Stock-riders | [415] |
| Mount Macedon | [422] |
| Walks Abroad | [430] |
| From Tumut to Tumberumba | [437] |
| In the Throes of a Drought | [444] |
| A Spring Sketch | [449] |
| New Year's Day 1886 | [455] |
| A Dry Time | [461] |
| Australian Collies | [466] |
| In the Bloom of the Year | [474] |
| Fallen among Thieves | [481] |
| A Transformation Scene | [491] |
| In Bushranging Days | [501] |
IN BAD COMPANY
CHAPTER I
Bill Hardwick was as fine a specimen of an Australian as you could find in a day's march. Active as a cat and strong withal, he was mostly described as 'a real good all-round chap, that you couldn't put wrong at any kind of work that a man could be asked to do.'
He could plough and reap, dig and mow, put up fences and huts, break in horses and drive bullocks; he could milk cows and help in the dairy as handily as a woman. These and other accomplishments he was known to possess, and being a steady, sensible fellow, was always welcome when work was needed and a good man valued. Besides all this he was the fastest and the best shearer in the district of Tumut, New South Wales, where he was born, as had been his father and mother before him. So that he was a true Australian in every sense of the word.
It could not be said that the British race had degenerated as far as he was concerned. Six feet high, broad-chested, light-flanked, and standing on his legs like a gamecock, he was always ready to fight or work, run, ride or swim, in fact to tackle any muscular exercise in the world at the shortest notice.