"humped the bluey" [2] for the coast. That is how the remarkable
phenomenon of the human snowball marches commenced.

Simultaneously from inland towns in different parts of Australia men
without the means of paying their transportation to Sydney or Melbourne
simply started out to walk the three or four hundred miles from their
homes to the nearest camp. In the beginning there would just be half a
dozen or so, but as they reached the next township they would tell
where they were bound, and more would join. Passing by boundary
riders' and prospectors' huts, they would pick up here and there
another red-blood who could not resist the chance of being in a real
ding-dong fight. Many were grizzled and gray, but as hard as nails,
and no one could _prove_ that they were over the age for enlistment,
for they themselves did not know how old they were!

[Illustration: From inland towns . . . men without the means of paying
their transportation . . . started out to walk the three or four
hundred miles . . . to the nearest camp.]


"Said the squatter, 'Mike, you're crazy, they have
soldier-men a-plenty!
You're as grizzled as a badger, and you're sixty year or so!'
'But I haven't missed a scrap,' says I, 'since I was
one-and-twenty,
And shall I miss the biggest? You can bet your
whiskers--No!!'" [3]


Presently the telegraph-wires got busy, and the defense department in