The background is filled in with an ever-moving company--a strange
medley of Whites, Blacks, and Chinese; of travellers, overlanders, and
billabongers, who passed in and out of our lives, leaving behind them
sometimes bright memories, sometimes sad, and sometimes little memory at
all.

And All of Us, and many of this company, shared each other's lives for
one bright, sunny year, away Behind the Back of Beyond, in the Land of
the Never-Never; in that elusive land with an elusive name--a land of
dangers and hardships and privations yet loved as few lands are loved--a
land that bewitches her people with strange spells and mysteries, until
they call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet. Called the Never-Never, the
Maluka loved to say, because they, who have lived in it and loved it
Never-Never voluntarily leave it. Sadly enough, there are too many who
Never-Never do leave it. Others--the unfitted--will tell you that it is
so called because they who succeed in getting out of it swear they will
Never-Never return to it. But we who have lived in it, and loved it, and
left it, know that our hearts can Never-Never rest away from it.









WE OF THE NEVER-NEVER