BILLJIM.
BY S. LE SOTGILLE.
Nestling in the scrub at the head of a gully running into the Newanga was a typical Australian humpy. It was built entirely of bark. Roof, back, front, and sides were huge sheets of stringy bark, and the window shutters were of the same, the windows themselves being sheets of calico; also the two doors were whole sheets of bark swung upon leathern hinges.
The humpy was divided into three rooms, two bedrooms and a general room. The "galley" was just outside, a three-sided, roofed arrangement, and the ubiquitous bark figured in that adjunct of civilisation.
In springtime the roof and sides of this humpy were one huge blaze of Bougainvillæa, and not a vestige of bark was visible. It was surrounded by a paling fence, rough split bush palings only, but in every way fitted for what they were intended to do—that is, keep out animals of all descriptions.
In the front garden were flowers of every conceivable hue and variety, from the flaring giant sunflower to the quiet retiring geranium, and stuck to old logs and standing dead timber were several beautiful orchids of different varieties. Violets, pansies, fuchsias and nasturtiums bordered the walks in true European fashion, and one wondered who had taken all this trouble in so outlandish a spot.
At the back of the humpy rose the Range sheer fifteen hundred feet with huge granite boulders, twice the size of the humpy itself, standing straight out from the side of the Range, giving one the idea that they were merely stuck there in some mysterious manner, and were ready at a moment's notice to come tumbling down, overwhelming every one and everything in their descent.
On the other three sides was scrub. Dense tropical scrub for miles, giving out a muggy disagreeable heat, and that peculiar overpowering smell common, I think, to all tropical growth. No one could have chosen a better spot than this if his desire were to escape entirely from the busy world and live a quiet sequestered life amongst the countless beautiful gifts that Dame Nature seems so lavish of in the hundred nooks and corners of the mountainous portion of Australia. In this humpy, then, hidden from the world in general, and known only to a few miners and prospectors, lived Dick Benson, his wife, and their daughter Billjim. That is what she was called, anyway, by all the diggers on the Newanga. It wasn't her name, of course. She was registered at Clagton Court House as Katherine Veronica Benson, but no one in all the district thought of calling her Kitty now, and as for Veronica—well, it was too much to ask of any one, let alone a rough bushman.
The name Billjim she practically chose herself.
One evening a digger named Jack L'Estrange, a great friend of the Bensons, was reading an article from the Bulletin to her father, and Kitty, as she was then called, was whiling away the time by pulling his moustache, an occupation which interfered somewhat with the reading, but which was allowed to pass without serious rebuke.