The Post-office clock in Bourke Street, Melbourne, is about to strike six, in the month of June 1858. At this \'everlastingly early hour A.M. in the morning\' (as remarked by Mr. Chuckster), I am the box-passenger of Cobb\'s coach, en route for Bendigo. The team of greys stand motionless, save for a faint attempt to paw on the part of the near-side leader. The first stroke vibrates on high. Mr. Jackson, with an exclamation, tightens his \'lines.\' The six greys plunge at their collars, and we are off.

There was no Spencer Street terminus in those days. We were truly thankful to King Cobb. I, for one, was glad to get over a hundred miles of indifferent road in a day—winter weather, too. We did not grumble so comprehensively as latter-day travellers.

Remembered yet, how, when we came to the long hill at Keilorbridge, the driver let his horses out when half-way down. The pace that we went \'was a caution to see.\' The wheel-spokes flew round, invisible to the naked eye. The coach rocked in a manner to appal the nervous. The horses lay down to it as if they were starting for a Scurry Stakes. But it was a good piece of macadam, and we were half-way up to the next hill before any one had time to think seriously of the danger.

Nobody, of course, would have dared to have addressed the driver upon the subject. In those flush days, when both day and night coaches loaded well, when fares were high and profits phenomenal, he was an autocrat not to be lightly approached. It almost took two people to manage a communication—one to bear the message from the other. Silent 221or laconic, master of his work in a marvellous degree, he usually resented light converse, advice infuriated him, and sympathy was outrage.

The roads were bad, even dangerous in places. Muddy creeks, bush-tracks, sidelings, washed-out crossings, increased the responsibilities and tried the tempers of these pioneer sons of Nimshi. Men of mark they mostly were. Americans to a man in that day, though subsequently native-born Australians, acclimatised Irishmen, and other recruits of merit, began to show up in the ranks.

I remember the astonishment of a newly-arrived traveller at seeing Carter, a gigantic, fair-bearded Canadian, coming along a baddish road one wet day, with seven horses and a huge coach, containing about fifty Chinamen. How he swayed the heavy reins with practised ease, his three leaders at a hand-gallop; how he piloted his immense vehicle through stumps and ruts, by creek and hillside, with accuracy almost miraculous to the uninitiated.

Mr. Carter was not a \'man of much blandishment.\' I recall the occasion, when a spring having gone wrong, he was, with the assistance of a stalwart passenger, silently repairing damage. A frivolous insider commenced to condole and offer suggestions in a weakly voluble way. \'Go to h—l,\' was the abrupt rejoinder, which so astonished the well-meaning person, that he retreated into the coach like a rabbit into a burrow, and was silent for hours afterwards.

One always had the consciousness, however, that whatever could be done by mortal man, would be accomplished by them. Accidents might happen, but they belonged to the category of the inevitable.

One dark night, near Sawpit Gully, a tire came off. Al. Hamilton (poor fellow! he was killed by an upset in New South Wales afterwards) was off in a minute; found his way to the smith\'s house; had him back in an inconceivably short time; left word for us to get the fire lighted and blown up—it was cold, and we thought that great fun; and before another man would have finished swearing at the road, the darkness, and things in general, the hammer was clinking on the red-hot tire, the welding was progressing, and in three-quarters of an hour we were bowling along much as before. We had time to make up, and did it too. But suppose the blacksmith 222would not work? Not work! He was Cobb and Co.\'s man—that is, he did all their \'stage\' repairs. Well he knew that the night must be to him even as the day when their humblest vehicle on the road needed his aid. As a firm they went strictly by results and took no excuses. If a man upset his coach and did damage once, he was shifted to another part of the line. If he repeated the accident, he was dismissed. There was no appeal, and the managing body did not trouble about evidence after the first time. If he was negligent, it served him right. If he was unlucky, that was worse.

The journey to Bendigo was accomplished at the rate of nine miles an hour, stoppages included. It was midwinter. The roads were deep in places. It was therefore good-going, punctual relays, and carefully economised time, which combined to land us at Hefferman\'s Hotel before darkness had set in. As usual a crowd had collected to enjoy the great event of the day.

Bendigo was in that year a very lively town, with a population roused to daily excitement by fortunes made or lost. Gold was shovelled up like sugar in bankers\' scoops, and good money sent after bad in reckless enterprise, or restored a hundredfold in lucky ventures.

Here I was to undergo a new experience in company with Her Majesty\'s Mails.

As I rather impatiently lingered outside of Hefferman\'s after breakfast next morning, an unpretending tax-cart, to which were harnessed a pair of queer, unmatched screws, drove up to the door. \'German Charlie\'—his other name I never knew—driver and contractor, informed me that I was the only passenger, lifted my valise, and the talismanic words \'Reedy Creek\' being pronounced, vowed to drop me at the door. He had always parcels for Mr. Keene. This gentleman\'s name he pronounced with bated breath, in a tone of deepest veneration.

Beyond all doubt would I be landed there early on the morrow.

I mounted the Whitechapel, saw my overcoat and valise in safely, and, not without involuntary distrust, committed myself to Charlie\'s tender mercies. He gave a shout, he raised his whip—the off-side horse made a wild plunge; the near-side one, blind of one eye, refused to budge. Our fate hung on the 223balance apparently, when a man from the crowd quietly led off the unwilling near-side, and we dashed away gloriously. The pace was exceptional, but it was evidently inexpedient to slacken speed. We flew down the main street, and turned northward, along a narrow track, perilously near to yawning shafts, across unsafe bridges, over race channels; along corduroy roads, or none at all, our headlong course was pursued. The sludge-invaded level of Meyer\'s Flat is passed. Bullock Creek is reached, all ignorant of reservoirs and weirs, and a relay of horses driven in from the bush is demanded.

A smart boy of fourteen had the fresh team, three in number, ready for us in the yard. He felt it necessary to warn us. They \'were not good starters, that was a fact.\' The statement was strictly correct. One horse was badly collar-galled, one a rank jib. The leader certainly had a notion of bolting; his efforts in that direction were, however, neutralised by the masterly inactivity of his companions. After much pushing, persuasion, and profane language, we effected a departure.

That the pace was kept up afterwards may be believed. Sometimes the harness gave way, but as the shaft and outrigger horses were by this time well warmed, they did not object to again urge on their wild career.

We stopped at the \'Durham Ox Inn\' that night, then a solitary lodge in the wilderness, a single building of brick, visible afar off on the sea-like plain, which stretched to the verge of the horizon. Woods Brothers and Kirk had at that time, if I mistake not, just concluded to purchase Pental Island from Ebden and Keene, but were debating as to price. The pasture seemed short and sparse, after the deep, rich western sward, but overtaking a \'mob\' of Messrs. Booth and Argyle\'s cattle farther on, I felt satisfied as to its fattening qualities. Each cow, calf, steer, and yearling in the lot was positively heaped and cushioned with fat. They looked like stall-fed oxen. And this in June! I thought I saw then what the country could do. I was correct in my deduction, always supposing the important factor of rain not to be absent. Of this, in my inexperience, I took no heed. In my favoured district there was always a plentiful supply; sometimes, indeed, more than was agreeable or necessary.

Kerang was passed; Tragowel skirted; Mount Hope, then 224in the occupation of Messrs. Griffith and Greene, reared its granite mass a few miles to the south. As Sir Thomas Mitchell stood there, gazing over the illimitable prairie, rich with giant herbage and interspersed but with belts and copses of timber, planted by Nature\'s hand, the veteran explorer exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, \'Australia Felix! This is indeed Australia Felix!\'

Steady stocking and an occasional dry season had somewhat modified the standard of the nutritive grasses and salsolaceous plants, at this point advantageously mingled. But that the country was superlative in a pastoral point of view may be gathered from the fact that, upon my first visit to the homestead a few weeks afterwards, I saw five thousand weaners—the whole crop of lambs for the previous year—shepherded in one flock. Very fine young sheep they were, and in excellent condition. Of course it was on a plain, but, unless the pasturage had been exceptional, no shepherd could have kept such a number together.

Later in the afternoon my Teutonic conductor, who had been going for the last twenty miles like the dark horseman in Burger\'s ballad, pulled up at Reedy Lake Head Station. There dwelt the resident partner and autocrat of his district, Mr. Theophilus Keene.

I saw a slight, fair man with an aquiline nose, a steady grey eye, and an abundant beard, who came out of a neat two-roomed slab hut and greeted me with polished courtesy. \'He was extremely glad to see me. He had looked forward to my coming this week in terms of a letter he had received from Messrs. Ryan and Hammond, but, indeed, had hardly expected that I would trust myself to their mail.\'

Mr. Keene, whom I saw then for the first time, was probably verging on middle age, though active and youthful in appearance, above the middle height, yet not tall—of a figure inclined indeed to spareness. He impressed me with the idea that he was no commonplace individual.

He carried nothing of the bushman about his appearance, at home or in town, being careful and soigné as to his apparel, formal and somewhat courtly in his address. He scarcely gave one the idea of a dweller in the waste; yet the roughest experiences of overlanding squatter-life, of a leader of the rude station and road hands, had been his. He looked 225more like a dandy Civil Servant of the upper grades. Yet he was more than a pioneer and manager—an astute diplomatist, a clever correspondent, an accurate accountant. The books of the Reedy Lake Station were kept as neatly as those of a counting-house. The overseer\'s sheep-books, ration accounts, and road expenses were audited as correctly as if in an office. The great station-machine revolved easily, and, though unaided by inventions which have smoothed the path of latter-day pastoralists, was a striking illustration of successful administration.

This large and important sheep property, as it was held to be in those primeval times, had considerably over 150,000 sheep on its books. Reedy Lake stood for the whole, but Quambatook, Murrabit, Lake Boga, Liegar, Pental Island and other runs were also comprised within its boundaries. These were separate communities, and were, upon the subdivision of the property, sold as such. These were worked under the supervision of overseers and sub-managers, each of whom had to render account to Mr. Keene—a strict one, too—of every sheep counted out to the shepherds of the division in his charge.

Mr. Ebden, erstwhile Treasurer of Victoria and for some years a member of Parliament, was the senior partner. He had sagaciously secured Mr. Keene, then wasting his powers on the Lower Murray, by offering him a third share of the property, with the position of resident partner and General Manager. Mr. Ebden, residing in Melbourne, arranged the financial portion of the affairs, while Mr. Keene was the executive chief, with almost irresponsible powers, which he used unreservedly—no doubt about that.

This was the day, let it be premised, of \'shepherding,\' pure and simple. There were, in that district at least, no wire fences, no great enclosures, no gates, no tanks. Improvements, both great and small, were looked upon as superfluous forms of expensiveness. To keep the shepherds in order, to provide them with rations and other necessaries, to see that they neither lost the sheep nor denied them reasonable range,—these were the chief duties of those in authority. And tolerably anxious and engrossing occupation they afforded.

Thus the great Reedy Lake Head Station, always mentioned with awe, north of the Loddon, was not calculated to strike the 226stranger with amazement on account of its buildings and constructions, formed on the edge of the fresh-water lake from which it took its name. The station comprised Mr. Keene\'s two-roomed hut aforesaid; also a larger one, where the overseers, young gentlemen, and strangers abode—known as The Barracks; the kitchen, a detached building; the men\'s huts, on the shore of the lake, at some considerable distance; an inexpensive, old-fashioned woolshed might be discerned among the \'old-man salt-bush\' nearly a mile away; a hundred acre horse-paddock, surrounded by a two-railed sapling fence; a stock-yard—voilà tout; there was, of course, a store. These were all the buildings thought necessary for the management of ￡150,000 worth of sheep in that day. How different would be the appearance of such a property now!

The special errand upon which I had journeyed thus far was to inspect and, upon approval, to accept an offer in writing, which I carried with me, of the Murrabit Station, one of the subdivisions of the Reedy Lake property, having upon it sixteen thousand sheep and no improvements whatever, except the shepherds\' huts and a hundred hurdles. The price was ￡24,000—one-third equal to cash, the remainder by bills extending over three years.

The tide of investment had set in strongly in the direction of sheep properties, near or across the Murray. I had followed the fashion for the purpose, presumably, of making the usual fortune more rapidly than through the old-fashioned medium of cattle. To this end it was arranged that Mr. Keene and I, with one of the overseers whom I had known previously, should on the morrow ride over and inspect the Murrabit country and stock, lying some twenty miles distant from Reedy Lake.

It is held to be bad form in Bushland to mount an intending purchaser badly. It is unnecessary to s............