There were five bullock-teams altogether: Thompson's twenty;
Cooper's eighteen; Dixon's eighteen; and Price's two teams of fourteen each.
Three of the wagons, in accordance with a fashion of the day,
bore names painted along the board inside the guard irons. Thompson's was
the Wanderer; Cooper's, the Hawkesbury; and Dixon's, the Wombat.
All were platform wagons, except Cooper's, which was the Sydney-side pattern.

To avoid the vulgarity of ushering this company into the presence
of the punctilious reader without even the ceremony of a Bedouin
introduction--(This is my friend, N or M; if he steals anything,
I will be responsible for it): a form of introduction, by the way,
too sweeping in its suretyship for prudent men to use in Riverina--I shall
describe the group, severally, with such succinctness as may be compatible
with my somewhat discursive style.

Steve Thompson was a Victorian. He was scarcely a typical bullock driver,
since fifteen years of that occupation had not brutalised his temper,
nor ensanguined his vocabulary, nor frayed the terminal "g"
from his participles. I knew him well, for we had been partners in dogflesh
and colleagues in larceny when we were, as poets feign, nearer to heaven
than in maturer life. And, wide as Riverina is, we often encountered
fortuitously, and were always glad to fraternise. Physically,
Thompson was tall and lazy, as bullock drivers ought to be.

Cooper was an entire stranger to me, but as he stoutly contended
that Hay and Deniliquin were in Port Phillip, I inferred him to be a citizen
of the mother colony. Four months before, he had happened to strike
the very first consignment of goods delivered at Nyngan by rail,
for the Western country. He had chanced seven tons of this, for Kenilworth;
had there met Thompson, delivering salt from Hay; and now the two,