The Geological Spieler

Macquarie's Mate

Baldy Thompson

For Auld Lang Syne





First Series


AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S


You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were
sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on
us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An
old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny." And he would pat
our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls--as the case may have
been--and that we had our father's nose but our mother's eyes, or the
other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its
mother, and then added, for father's benefit: "But yet he's like you,
Tom." It did seem strange to the children to hear him address the
old man by his Christian name---considering that the mother always
referred to him as "Father." She called the old mate Mr So-and-so,