Harry Heathcote of Gangoil | Page 5

a small adjacent chamber in
which slept the Chinese man-cook, Sing Sing, as he had come to be
called; then the cottage, consisting also of three rooms and a small
veranda, in which lived Harry's superintendent, commonly known as
Old Bates, a man who had been a squatter once himself, and having
lost his all in bad times, now worked for a small salary. In the cottage
two of the rooms were devoted to hospitality when, as was not unusual,
guests, known or unknown, came that way; and here Harry himself
would sleep, if the entertainment of other ladies crowded the best
apartments. Then at the back of the quadrangle was the store, perhaps
of all the buildings the most important. In here was kept a kind of shop,
which was supposed, according to an obsolete rule, to be open for
custom for half a day twice a week. The exigencies of the station did
not allow of this regularity; but after some fashion the shop was
maintained. Tea was to be bought there, and sugar, tobacco, and pickles,
jam, nails, boots, hats, flannel shirrs, and mole-skin trowsers. Any body
who came might buy, but the intention was to provide the station hands,
who would otherwise have had to go or send thirty miles for the supply
of their wants. Very little money was taken here, generally none. But
the quantity of pickles, jam, and tobacco sold was great. The men
would consume large quantities of these bush delicacies, and the cost
would be deducted from their wages. The tea and sugar, and flour also,
were given out weekly, as rations--so much a week--and meat was
supplied to them after the same fashion. For it was the duty of this
young autocratic patriarch to find provisions for all who were

employed around him. For such luxuries as jam and tobacco the men
paid themselves.
On the fourth side of the quadrangle was a rough coach-house, and
rougher stables. The carriage part of the establishment consisted of two
"buggies"--so called always in the bush--open carriages on four wheels,
one of which was intended to hold two and the other four sitters. A
Londoner looking at them would have declared them to be hopeless
ruins; but Harry Heathcote still made wonderful journeys in them,
taking care generally that the wheels were sound, and using ropes for
the repair of dilapidations. The stables were almost unnecessary, as the
horses, of which the supply at Gangoil was very large, roamed in the
horse paddock, a comparatively small inclosure containing not above
three or four hundred acres, and were driven up as they were wanted.
One horse was always kept close at home with which to catch the
others; but this horse, for handiness, was generally hitched to a post
outside the kitchen door. Harry was proud of his horses, and was
sometimes heard to say that few men in England had a lot of thirty at
hand as he had, out of which so many would be able to carry a man
eighty miles in eight hours at a moment's notice. But his stable
arrangements would not have commanded respect in the "Shires." The
animals were never groomed, never fed, and many of them never shod.
They lived upon grass, and, Harry always said, "cut their own
bread-and-butter for themselves."
Gangoil was certainly very pretty. The veranda was covered in with
striped blinds, so that when the sun shone hot, or when the rains fell
heavily, or when the mosquitoes were more than usually troublesome,
there might be something of the protection of an inclosed room. Up all
the posts there were flowering creepers, which covered the front with
greenery even when the flowers were wanting. From the front of the
house down to the creek there was a pleasant failing
garden--heart-breaking, indeed, in regard to vegetables, for the
opossums always came first, and they who followed the opossums got
but little. But the garden gave a pleasant home-like look to the place,
and was very dear to Harry, who was, perhaps, indifferent in regard to
pease and tomatoes. Harry Heathcote was very proud of the place, for

he had made it all himself, having pulled down a wretched barrack that
he had found there. But he was far prouder of his wool- shed, which he
had also built, and which he regarded as first and foremost among
wool-sheds in those parts. By-and-by we shall be called on to visit the
wool-shed. Though Heathcote had done all this for Gangoil, it must be
understood that the vast extent of territory over which his sheep ran
was by no means his own property. He was simply the tenant of the
Crown, paying a rent computed at so much a sheep. He had, indeed,
purchased the ground on