Harry Heathcote of Gangoil | Page 4

burden of his father's care."
"By that time, Harry, you will have got rich, and we shall all be in
England, sha'n't we?"
"I don't know about being rich, but we shall have been free-selected off
Gangoil.--Now, Mrs. Growler, we've done dinner, and I'll have a pipe
before I make another start. Is Jacko in the kitchen? Send him through
to me on to the veranda."
Gangoil was decidedly in the bush--according to common Australian
parlance, all sheep stations are in the bush, even though there should
not be a tree or shrub within sight. They who live away from the towns
live a "bush life." Small towns, as they grow up, are called bush towns,
as we talk of country towns. The "bush," indeed, is the country
generally. But the Heathcotes lived absolutely and actually in the bush.
There are Australian pastures which consist of plains on which not a
tree is to be seen for miles; but others are forests, so far extending that
their limits are almost unknown. Gangoil was surrounded by forest, in
some places so close as to be impervious to men and almost to animals
in which the undergrowth was thick and tortuous and almost platted,
through which no path could be made without an axe, but of which the
greater portions were open, without any under-wood, between which

the sheep could wander at their will, and men could ride, with a sparse
surface of coarse grass, which after rain would be luxuriant, but in hot
weather would be scorched down to the ground. At such times--and
those times were by far the more common--a stranger would wonder
where the sheep would find their feed. Immediately round the house, or
station, as it was called, about one hundred acres had been cleared, or
nearly cleared, with a few trees left here and there for ornament or
shade. Further afield, but still round the home quarters, the trees had
been destroyed, the run of the sap having been stopped by "ringing" the
bark; but they still stood like troops of skeletons, and would stand, very
ugly to look at, till they fell, in the course of nature, by reason of their
own rottenness. There was a man always at work about the
place--Boscobel he was called--whose sole business was to destroy the
timber after this fashion, so that the air might get through to the grasses,
and that the soil might be relieved from the burden of nurturing the
forest trees.
For miles around the domain was divided into paddocks, as they were
there called; but these were so large that a stranger might wander in one
of them for a day and never discover that he was inclosed. There were
five or six paddocks on the Gangoil run, each of which comprised over
ten thousand acres, and as all the land was undulating, and as the
timber was around you every where, one paddock was exactly like
another. The scenery in itself was fine, for the trees were often large,
and here and there rocky knolls would crop up, and there were broken
crevices in the ground; but it was all alike. A stranger would wonder
that any one straying from the house should find his way back to it.
There were sundry bush houses here and there, and the so- called road
to the coast from the wide pastoral districts further west passed across
the run; but these roads and tracks would travel hither and thither, new
tracks being opened from time to time by the heavy wool drays and
store wagons, as in wet weather the ruts on the old tracks would
become insurmountable.
The station itself was certainly very pretty. It consisted of a cluster of
cottages, each of which possessed a ground-floor only. No such luxury
as stairs was known at Gangoil. It stood about half a mile from the

Mary River, on the edge of a creek which ran into it. The principal
edifice, that in which the Heathcotes lived, contained only one
sitting-room, and a bedroom on each side of it; but in truth there was
another room, very spacious, in which the family really passed their
time; and this was the veranda which ran along the front and two ends
of the house. It was twelve feet broad, and, of course, of great length.
Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and
very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's
sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while
his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they
lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice
there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular
quadrangle. The kitchen came first, with