The children, as compensation for having no part in this pleasure,
were to have a very, out-of-the-way kind of picnic all to themselves.

In the first place, the picnic ground was fourteen miles away;
in the second, the journey was to be made, not in everyday buggies,
or on commonplace horses, but on a dray drawn by a team of twelve
yoked bullocks.

A boundary-rider had reported that a magnificent blue gum that
they had long called King Koree had been blown down during a violent
gale, and Mr. Hassal immediately declared that, whatever the
trouble, it must be brought for the foundation of a kind of dam
across the creek at Krangi-Bahtoo, the picnic spot. The fallen
bush monarch lay twenty miles away from the station, and six beyond
the place chosen for the picnic; so it was arranged the trolly
should carry the party for the fourteen miles, leave them to
picnic, go forward for the tree, bring it back, and deposit it near
the creek ready for future operations, and bring the children
back in the cool of the evening.

But for escorting his daughter to the ball, Mr. Hassal would have
gone himself to the place and seen about it in person. As it was, he
placed the great trolly in the charge of four men, with instructions
to pick up a couple of men from distant huts to help in the task.

Krangi-Bahtoo--or Duck Water, as, less prettily, we should call
it--was the name given to the head of the creek, which had scooped
out the earth till it made itself a beautiful ravine just there,
with precipitous rocks and boulders that the kangaroos skipped across