I was caught now, so I gave in. I took my saw out and fitted the shutter, screwed the hinges, and took my thirty shillings, all in less than an hour. This is eleven or twelve years ago. I have not worked in Brisbane since, but I know a friend of mine who two years ago put a shilling advertisement in the papers for a carpenter to do a few days' work, and in less than half an hour after the paper was out he had thirty-two applicants! I was now working on one of the largest stations on the Darling Downs. I had only come there in a roving sort of way, under a six months' agreement which was made in Brisbane, and I had no intention whatever of staying longer, but although the wages were less than what I could earn in Brisbane, or in any other town, I thought I should like to see a large sheep station, and I was told by the agent in town that I should be sure to like it. The property itself covered I do not know how many square miles, divided into paddocks, and in each or most of these paddocks stood a house in which the boundary rider and his family lived. The duty of this man is not fatiguing; he has to look out that the fences are in good repair and report to the head station when anything is out of order. Therefore his day's work is generally done when after breakfast he has been jogging round the boundary fence. For this work the wages are about thirty-five pounds sterling a year with double rations, a free house, use of cow, &c. These boundary riders are by no means the only employees on the station. There were general labourers, carriers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, storekeepers, carpenters, and a host of people who came and went without my knowing they did so, but the whole formed quite a little township at the head station. Once a year, when the wool was clipped off the two hundred thousand sheep there, it was an extra busy time. Then the shearers would arrive, sixty in number, and with all their assistants they would make nearly a hundred persons. Besides these there were the washers, who washed the sheep by elaborate machinery. There would be so many people that I do not know how the "boss" knew them all. Every one of them earned good money, although in various degrees. The shearers earned three shillings and sixpence for every score of sheep they could shear. An average day's work is from fifty to a hundred sheep. Then the wool-packers, who pressed the wool into bales, had also piecework, and this was a favourite job reserved as a reward for old hands. They earned at it a pound or more a day. This was of course for a short time only out of the year, but when one station is done shearing another generally begins, and the men can, therefore, keep on for at least six months at a stretch with very little lost time. The tradesmen on the station seemed all part and parcel of the station, old identities, who had made their homes there years before and did not intend to shift. I heard it