The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about
getting the people on the land, and button-holes you in the street
with a little scheme of his own. He generally does not know what he
is talking about.

There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land
once, and sometimes you can get him to talk about it. He did very
well at his trade in the city, years ago, until he began to think that
he could do better up-country. Then he arranged with his sweetheart
to be true to him and wait whilst he went west and made a home. She
drops out of the story at this point.

He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the
arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries; but they
didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up
within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and
started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does. He found the
biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of
ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started
without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice
from men who knew less about farming than he did. He found a soft
place between two roots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow,
irregular hole, and burrowed down till he reached a level where the
tap-root was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite
as hard as flint: then he found that he hadn't room to swing the axe,
so he heaved out another ton or two of earth--and rested. Next day he
sank a shaft on the other side of the gum; and after tea, over a pipe,