watchman and insulation are provided.

The unrelaxing energy with which the work was pushed at this stage was
exciting and contagious; at or before daylight every soul in the great
establishment was up. The boundary-riders were always starting off for
a twenty or thirty mile ride, and bringing tens of thousands of sheep
to the wash-pen. At that huge lavatory there was splashing and soaking
all day with an army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight
till dark, or used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and
needful food. At nine o'clock p.m. luxurious dreamless sleep, given
only to those whose physical powers have been taxed to the utmost and
who can bear without injury the daily tension.

Everything and everybody were in splendid working order, nothing out of
gear. Rapid and regular as a steam-engine the great host of toilers
moved onward daily with a march which promised an unusually early
completion. Mr Gordon was not in high spirits, for so cautious and
far-seeing a captain rarely felt himself so independent of
circumstances as to indulge in that reckless mood--but much satisfied
with the prospect. Whew! The afternoon darkens, and the night is
delivered over to water-spouts and hurricanes, as it appears. Next day
was raw, gusty, with chill heavy showers; drains had to be cut, roofs
to be seen to; shorn sheep were shivering, washers all playing
pitch-and-toss, shearers sulky; everybody but the young gentlemen
wearing a most injured expression of countenance. "Looks as if it would
rain for a month," says Long Jack. "If we hadn't been delayed might
have had the shearing over by this." Reminded that there are 50,000
sheep yet remaining to be shorn, and that by no possibility could they
have been finished, he answers, "Suppose so, always the same,
everything sure to go agin the poor man." The weather did not clear up.