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In The Far North, by Louis Becke
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Title: In The Far North 1901
Author: Louis Becke
Release Date: April 12, 2008 [EBook #25059]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE FAR NORTH ***
Produced by David Widger
IN THE FAR NORTH
From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"
By Louis Becke
C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.
1901
"Out on the wastes of the Never Never-- That's where the dead men lie! There where the heat-waves dance for ever-- That's where the dead men lie!" (Barcroft Boake, in the Sydney Bulletin.)
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Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had repeated them mentally, he cursed aloud.
"That's where the dead men lie! Poor Boake must have thought of this God-forsaken part of an utterly God-forsaken country, I think, when he wrote 'Out where the Dead Men Lie.' For I believe that God Almighty has forgotten it! Oh for rain, rain, rain!