When I had been on the station for six months I took a trip in the train to the surrounding towns of Dalby, Toowoomba, Warwick, and Stanthorpe, with a view to seeing if there was an opening for permanent business in my line. It did not seem to me that the prospect was good enough for more than a bare living, because bad times seemed suddenly to have set in, and competition for work and contracts requiring small capital was very keen. I therefore went back to the station again and bought two horses, intending to go out west. I had my three hundred pounds safe in a Brisbane bank, and I did not mean now to work for any employer, but to keep my eyes open as I came along and to take any opportunities for contracts that might come in my way and for which I could obtain a reasonable price.
I started from Roma, which is a town lying about 350 miles west of Brisbane and 200 miles from the station on which I then was located. It was fearfully dry weather when I started and there was not a blade of grass anywhere for the horses. I made long stages of thirty to forty miles a day, but how the horses endured it I do not know. When I camped out at night I would have to tie the horses to a tree alongside of me, as there was nothing for them in the bush to eat, and they would have rambled away never to be found again if I had let them go. All the food it was possible for me to provide for them was a little bread which I bought at the inns on the road at intervals of seventy or eighty miles, and in the mornings when I got up I would take a pillow-case I had and a knife and walk about in places where the ground was inaccessible to horses, such as the brinks of a gully or between large stones; there I would manage to find some dry, withered stuff, wherewith I filled the pillow-case and shared it between them. It was all I could do, and when I arrived in Roma they were both very far gone for hunger, and there, in town even, there was nothing for them either—the last bushel of corn had been sold for two pounds sterling. I fed them on bread, but even that seemed like a forbidden thing. People appeared to regard the proceeding with evil eyes. Flour was scarce and getting more scarce. There was no prospect of rain, and soon all would have to starve! In St. George, which is another town 150 miles south of Roma, I was told a perfect famine was raging. For fear of being misunderstood by people who do not know much about Queensland, I would say that want of money had nothing to do with this state of things, it was only the want of rain which prevented teams from travelling and supplies from coming forward.
I left Roma again. There was nothing to do there, scarcely a prospect of getting enough to eat. I rambled away with my two horses out west, and I am now anxious, for obvious reasons, not to particularize too closely where I went.
It had now become of more importance to me to save the lives of my horses than to find anything to do for myself. I travelled for a month or more at slow stages, and was now right away in the "Never Never" country. Occasionally I would find a little for the horses to eat, but very often it was scanty fare they had. I arrived at a station where shearing was in full swing, and as both grass and water seemed more plentiful there than I had seen it for hundreds of miles, I turned the horses out for a month's spell, while I made myself comfortable in my tent and occupied myself by reading such literature as I could borrow from the shearers on the station.
Among the shearers was a man with whom I grew to be on very friendly terms. He was a big, strong, good-looking young fellow, about thirty years of age, and seemed to me at all times so polite and well-informed that I was always seeking his company. What interested me most in him was a peculiarly sad expression in his face, and I often wondered at the cause of it. When the shearing was over all the shearers went in a body to the nearest hotel, as is customary, to have a jollification. It happened to be located the way I had come, so, though they did not actually pass me, I saw them ride away, and thought it rather shabby of my acquaintance not to come and say good-bye to me. I was mistaken, however, as I shortly afterwards saw him coming up to the tent on a really good horse and leading another.
"Well," said I, "are you off? I thought you had left with the others; how is it you did not?"
"No," said he, "I know my weakness. If I had gone with them I should probably have got on the spree and drunk all I possess. But I am now already pretty well-to-do, because I have a cheque for over thirty pounds and these two horses besides. All I want is just another shed, and then I will make tracks for Ipswich where my people live."
"But," said I, "there is a public-house this way too."
"Ah, yes," cried he, and winked, "but they do not catch me this time. I have worked for the publicans for seven years, but I will never enter such a place again."
With that we parted, and two or three days after I got my horses up and followed along the same road that he had taken. About noon I came to the hotel. I did not intend to go in because the money I had with me was getting scarce and I did not wish to draw on what I had in the bank. I carried, too, all sorts of necessaries on my horses and wanted for nothing. But when the publican saw me passing the door, he came running out.