Our new house was a ten-roomed wooden structure, built on a barren
hillside. Crooked stunted gums and stringybarks, with a thick underscrub
of wild cherry, hop, and hybrid wattle, clothed the spurs which ran up
from the back of the detached kitchen. Away from the front of the house
were flats, bearing evidence of cultivation, but a drop of water was
nowhere to be seen. Later, we discovered a few round, deep, weedy
waterholes down on the flat, which in rainy weather swelled to a stream
which swept all before it. Possum Gully is one of the best watered spots
in the district, and in that respect has stood to its guns in the
bitterest drought. Use and knowledge have taught us the full value of its
fairly clear and beautifully soft water. Just then, however, coming from
the mountains where every gully had its limpid creek, we turned in
disgust from the idea of having to drink this water.

I felt cramped on our new run. It was only three miles wide at its
broadest point. Was I always, always, always to live here, and never,
never, never to go back to Bruggabrong? That was the burden of the grief
with which I sobbed myself to sleep on the first night after our arrival.

Mother felt dubious of her husband's ability to make a living off a
thousand acres, half of which were fit to run nothing but wallabies, but
father was full of plans, and very sanguine concerning his future. He was
not going to squat henlike on his place as the cockies around him did. He
meant to deal in stock making of Possum Gully merely a depot on which
to run some of his bargains until reselling.

Dear, oh dear! It was terrible to think he had wasted the greater part of
his life among the hills where the mail came but once a week, and where
the nearest town, of 650 inhabitants, was forty-six miles distant. And
the road had been impassable for vehicles. Here, only seventeen miles