Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through
a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting
for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks,
and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth,
a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor.
Ten yards behind the grey saddle-horse follows a black pack-horse,
lightly loaded; and three yards behind the pack-horse ambles listlessly
a tall, slate-coloured kangaroo dog, furnished with the usual
poison muzzle--a light wire basket, worn after the manner of a nose-bag.

Mile after mile we go at a good walk, till the dark boundary
of the scrub country disappears northward in the glassy haze, and in front,
southward, the level black-soil plains of Riverina Proper mark
a straight sky-line, broken here and there by a monumental clump or pine-ridge.
And away beyond the horizon, southward still, the geodesic curve carries
that monotony across the zone of salt-bush, myall, and swamp box;
across the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, and on to the Victorian border--say,
two hundred and fifty miles.

Just about mid-day, the station track I was following intersected
and joined the stock route; and against the background of a pine-ridge,
a mile ahead, I saw some wool-teams. When I overtook them,
they had stopped for dinner among the trees. One of the party was
an intimate friend of mine, and three others were acquaintances;
so, without any of the ceremony which prevails in more refined circles,
I hooked Fancy's rein on a pine branch, pulled the pack-saddle off Bunyip,
and sat down with the rest, to screen the tea through my teeth
and flick the diligent little operatives out of the cold mutton
with the point of my pocket-knife.