Not far from the spot the late John Hunter Kerr, afterwards of Fernihurst, had a veritable cattle station. I attended one of the musters for a purpose. The cattle were in the yard, with various stock-riders and neighbours sitting around, preparatory to drafting, as I rode up, attended by a sable retainer driving a horse and cart. What did I please to want? "I've come for our black J. B. bullock," said I. "He has been running with your cattle these two years, and I thought he would most likely come in with your muster." "He is here sure enough, and in fine order, but how are you going to take him home? He always clears the yard when we begin to draft, and no stock-rider about here can drive him single-handed." "I'll take him home fast enough," returned I, with colonial confidence, "if he'll stay in the yard long enough for me to shoot him." "Oh, that's the idea," quoth Mr. Kerr. "Go to work; only don't miss him or drop any of my cattle." "No fear." Old Harvey, an expatriated countryman of Cetewayo's, handed me my single-barrelled fowling-piece, a generally useful weapon, which had been loaded with ball for the occasion. I walked cautiously through the staring, wildish cattle, to the middle of the yard, where stood the big black bullock. He lowered his head, and began to paw the ground. I made a low bovine murmur, which I had found effective before; he raises his head and looks full at me for a second. The bullet crashes into the forehead "curl," and the huge savage lies prone--a quivering mass. Harvey promptly performs the necessary phlebotomy, and being dragged out of the yard, the black ox is skinned, quartered, and on his way to the beef-cask at Hartlands well within twenty minutes of his downfall. Years after, when a full-fledged Riverina squatter, Mr. Kerr and I met _in partibus_. He at length recalled my name and _locale_, remarking, "Oh yes! remember now; you were the boy that shot the black bullock in my yard at South Yarra long ago." Well, Mr. Bolden and I ride along the winding, gravelly bush road, over ranges that skirt and at times leave the course of the river wholly, not seeing a house or a soul, except Mr. Gardiner's dairy farm, for more than twenty miles. The country, in an agricultural and pastoral point of view, is as bad as can be. Thick--_i.e._ scrubby, poor in soil, scanty as to pasture, when all suddenly, as is so often the case in Australia, we come upon a "mountain park." We cross a running creek by a bridge. We see a flock of sheep and a shepherd, the genuine "old hand" of the period. The slopes are gently rising towards the encircling highlands, the timber is pleasingly distributed, the soil, the pasture, has improved. We are in a new country. We have entered upon Yering proper, a veritable oasis in this unredeemed stringy-bark desert.