“Well, why don’t they? One would think they could see the profit in it. Here it is, under their feet.”
“It’s this way; a man with a couple of thousand acres can keep a flock of sheep. They don’t do extra well, but they grow a fleece once a year, and when wool’s a decent price the family can live on it—with the help of poultry, eggs and bacon, and chops now and then. It’s a poor life, and only just keeps them—hand to mouth, as it were.”
“Still, they’re independent.”
“Oh! independent enough—the ragged girls won’t go out to service. The boys loaf about on horseback and smoke half the time. If they had only a hundred acres or so, they couldn’t pretend to be squatters. The men would dig more and plough more, the greater part of the area would be cultivated, they could feed their cows in winter (which is long and cold in these parts), fatten pigs, have an orchard (look at the apple-trees at the last place we passed), do themselves real well, and have money in the bank as well.”
“We must have a republic, and make you first Dictator, I see that. Now, where does this tremendous ravine lead to?”
“It leads through Wild Horse Gully, down to the Dark River—we’d better get off and walk the next mile or two—there’s a big climb further on.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the traveller. “How wild horses or any other travel about here, astonishes me. Where do they come from? There were none in Australia when the first people came, I suppose?”
“Not a hoof. They’ve all been bred up from the stray horses that got away from the stations, long ago. They’re in thousands among these mountains. It takes the squatters at the heads of the rivers all their time to keep them under.”
“Do they do much harm?”
“Well, yes, a lot. They eat too much grass for one thing, and spoil more than they eat, galloping about. Then they run off the station horses, especially the mares. Once they join the wild mob, they’re never seen again. Get shot by mistake, too, now and again.”