An Outback Marriage, page 99 by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson
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you came in?"
"Yes, we saw him. He couldn't speak any English, seemingly."
"That's him," said the old man. "That's him! He don't savvy much English. He knows all he wants, though. He can lower the rum with any Christian ever I see. It don't do to let him get his hands on a bottle of anythink in the spirit line. It'll come back half-empty. Now then, cook," he roared, seating himself at the rough slab table, and drumming on it with a knife, "let's have some grub, quick, and you'll get a nip of rum. This new boss b'long you, you savvy. All about station b'long him. I go buffalo-shooting. Me stony broke. Poor fellow me! Been fifteen years in this God-forgotten country, too," he said reminiscently, placing his elbows on the table, and gazing at the wall in front of him. "Fifteen years livin' mostly with the blacks and the Chineyman, and livin' like a black or a Chineyman, too. And what have I got to show for it? I've got to hump my bluey out of this, and take to the road like any other broken-down old swagman."
"It's a bit rough," said Charlie. "How did you come to grief?"
"Oh, I came out here with a big mob of cattle," said the old man, filling his pipe, as Ah Loy placed some tin plates, a tin dish, and a bottle of Worcester sauce on the table, and withdrew to the kitchen for the provender. "I lived here, and I spent nothing, and I let 'em breed. I just looked on, and let 'em breed. Oh, there was no waste about my management. I hadn't an overseer at two pounds ten a week, to boss a lot of flash stockmen at two pounds. I jest got my own two gins and three good black boys, and I watched them cattle like a blessed father. I never saw a stranger's face from year's end to year's end. I rode all over the face of the earth, keepin' track of 'em. I kep' the wild blacks from scarin' 'em to death, and spearin' of 'em, as is their nature to, and I got speared myself in one or two little shootin' excursions I had."
"Shooting the blacks?" interpolated Gordon.
"Somethin' like that, Mister