Great difficulty was experienced with the floors, there being no timber for them. We puddled the mud and got the black gins to tramp it down, adding a picaninny to their backs to increase their weight.
About July of this year, Fitzmaurice returned from Townsville with three horses and a light dray on which he had brought his wife and little girl.
Taking a plan of the hotel with me, I started for Aramac to interview Mr. Sword, the P.M. (afterwards member of the Land Court), to obtain a provisional license. This he refused to grant until the building was erected.
When I returned Winton was entirely out of liquor, and Allen did a great business in selling bottles of painkiller as a substitute. It was laughable to see men take a bottle out of their pocket, saying, "Have a nip, mate, it's only five shillings a bottle?"
About March, 1880, the Western River was in high flood, and ran miles wide.
Sub-Inspector Kaye, of the native police, and Mr. John Haines, the manager of Elderslie Station, were in town, and wished to get to the station 40 miles down the river.
We put our carpenter on to make a boat, which carried them and the troopers safely to their destination.
Shortly afterwards Sub-Inspector Fred Murray came out from Blackall, bringing with him Sergeant Feltham, who formed the police station in a small building which I rented to them.
There was only a log to which offenders were chained. One day Feltham went down to the store, leaving a prisoner chained up. Shortly afterwards he was surprised when he saw his prisoner (who was a very powerful man) marching into the public house carrying the log on his shoulder, and call for drinks. It took three men to get him back to the lock-up.
Fitzmaurice's teams arriving, we were enabled to complete the store building, stock it, and the hotel, and resume business, which had been suspended owing to running out of goods, etc. My teams had gone down empty, and were now on their way up with more loading.