But I begin to think, being able to see the right of things a bit now, and having no bad grog inside of me to turn a fellow's head upside down, as poaching must be something like cattle and horse duffing --not the worst thing in the world itself, but mighty likely to lead to it.
Dad had always been a hard-working, steady-going sort of chap, good at most things, and like a lot more of the Government men, as the convicts were always called round our part, he saved some money as soon as he had done his time, and married mother, who was a simple emigrant girl just out from Ireland.Father was a square-built, good-looking chap, I believe, then; not so tall as I am by three inches, but wonderfully strong and quick on his pins.They did say as he could hammer any man in the district before he got old and stiff.
I never saw him `shape' but once, and then he rolled into a man big enough to eat him, and polished him off in a way that showed me -- though I was a bit of a boy then -- that he'd been at the game before.
He didn't ride so bad either, though he hadn't had much of it where he came from; but he was afraid of nothing, and had a quiet way with colts.He could make pretty good play in thick country, and ride a roughish horse, too.
Well, our farm was on a good little flat, with a big mountain in front, and a scrubby, rangy country at the back for miles.People often asked him why he chose such a place.`It suits me,' he used to say, with a laugh, and talk of something else.We could only raise about enough corn and potatoes, in a general way, for ourselves from the flat;but there were other chances and pickings which helped to make the pot boil, and them we'd have been a deal better without.
First of all, though our cultivation paddock was small, and the good land seemed squeezed in between the hills, there was a narrow tract up the creek, and here it widened out into a large well-grassed flat.This was where our cattle ran, for, of course, we had a team of workers and a few milkers when we came.
No one ever took up a farm in those days without a dray and a team, a year's rations, a few horses and milkers, pigs and fowls, and a little furniture.They didn't collar a 40-acre selection, as they do now -- spend all their money in getting the land and squat down as bare as robins -- a man with his wife and children all under a sheet of bark, nothing on their backs, and very little in their bellies.However, some of them do pretty well, though they do say they have to live on 'possums for a time.
We didn't do much, in spite of our grand start.
The flat was well enough, but there were other places in the gullies beyond that that father had dropped upon when he was out shooting.
He was a tremendous chap for poking about on foot or on horseback, and though he was an Englishman, he was what you call a born bushman.
I never saw any man almost as was his equal.Wherever he'd been once, there he could take you to again; and what was more, if it was in the dead of the night he could do it just the same.
People said he was as good as a blackfellow, but I never saw one that was as good as he was, all round.In a strange country, too.
That was what beat me -- he'd know the way the creek run, and noticed when the cattle headed to camp, and a lot of things that other people couldn't see, or if they did, couldn't remember again.
He was a great man for solitary walks, too -- he and an old dog he had, called Crib, a cross-bred mongrel-looking brute, most like what they call a lurcher in England, father said.Anyhow, he could do most anything but talk.He could bite to some purpose, drive cattle or sheep, catch a kangaroo, if it wasn't a regular flyer, fight like a bulldog, and swim like a retriever, track anything, and fetch and carry, but bark he wouldn't.He'd stand and look at dad as if he worshipped him, and he'd make him some sign and off he'd go like a child that's got a message.
Why he was so fond of the old man we boys couldn't make out.