One of the first days I was in Townsville, I went out in the main road leading to the gold diggings, and when I was about a mile or two out of town I came to a house which attracted my attention. It was very small, the walls were built of saplings, the roof was covered with bark, tin, and all sorts of odd materials. The door was made of a sapling frame with bagging stretched across it. Yet the place had a cool, clean sort of appearance, and under the verandah in a home-made squatter's chair sat a man smoking a long pipe. Yet I should probably have passed by without taking notice of any of these details if it had not been that in front of the house, but close to the road, was erected a sort of frame like a gallows, and from it dangled in a most conspicuous way an empty bottle. Underneath was a piece of board nailed to a tree, and on it was written with chalk the one word thrice repeated: "Bier. Bier. Bier." That caused me to look at the man, and I perceived it was one of my shipmates. This man was between fifty and sixty years old when he landed nine months before with his wife and eight children. I am very certain that he did not then own more than I did myself, but he had on the voyage exhibited such a cheerful disposition, and had such a happy knack of always trying to explain things in a way that would make one think that any misfortune that might happen would have been just the very thing wanted, that he had been a general favourite. But when we came to Bowen nobody had engaged him and his eight children, and so he had been sent here, and now I saw him sitting smoking his pipe under the verandah with great gusto. He seemed as glad to see me as I was to see him, and asked me to come and sit on a box which stood alongside him, and to have a smoke out of his long pipe. Then he began to spin his yarn. His girls were at service, the two of them, and had each ten shillings per week, and they brought it all home, for they were good girls. He had got somebody to apply for this land for him on his land order, "and here," he said, "right and left is all mine. Me and mother built the house ourselves; come inside and see." "But," said I, "what is the meaning of that empty bottle you have hung up there?" "Oh," cried he, "did you not see my signboard. I sell beer. I cannot understand their blessed language, but I thought if I showed them the bottle they would know what it meant, and Annie drew that signboard herself last Sunday she was home; she is a splendid scholar, you know--you should only hear her talk English. It fetches them right enough. You will see nearly everybody who comes along the road must be in here and have his beer."