‘We had taken up Tthoondula, Will Lorton and I, only the year before, and we had fixed to commence our first shearing on the 20th of August. It was the 15th, so no time could be wasted. Small parties of shearers were camped by the edge of the long black gum-shrouded lagoon which had given its name to the run. No one could have imagined that the dark deep water was in reality transparently clear. The sombre hue produced by the illusion of a mud stratum, and the swart shadows cast by the huge eucalypti which lined its banks, caused one involuntarily to recall “the dark tarn of Auber,” while as the pall of swift-speeding night fell heavily o’er the scene, it needed but little fancy to re-create the “ghoul-haunted wood and of Weir.” Slowly on that eve dropped the sun behind the rugged “divide” which separates the Paroo and Warrego, leaving the rosy-lipped hills smiling adieu till the morrow. The frown on the face of the mulga-studded lowlands deepened, and the wrinkles harshly marked by many a tributary creek bore witness to its sorrow for the dying day. ‘The weather was simply perfect. We anticipated a successful shearing. The mornings were crisp as lettuces, the succeeding portion of the day exhilarating to the degree of making conscious existence a pleasure of the highest order. Summer, with a register of 120 in the shade, would have been forgotten but for the dry harsh wool and the sand banks on the sheep’s back. We were in high spirits nevertheless. If the wool was worth little we were separated by a thousand miles from our bills. Our bankers could only get at us by letter, and we were spared the discontent patent on the faces of those officials when the balance is on the wrong side of the ledger.