While the Billy Boils by Henry Lawson
page 56 of 337 (16%)
page 56 of 337 (16%)
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for?" snapped the stranger, who had refreshed considerably. "I've
got nothing to thank Australia for--except getting out of it. It's the best country to get out of that I was ever in." "Oh, well, I only thought you might have had some friends over there," interposed the traveller in an injured tone. "Friends! That's another reason. I wouldn't go back there for all the friends and relations since Adam. I had more than quite enough of it while I was there. The worst and hardest years of my life were spent in Australia. I might have starved there, and did do it half my time. I worked harder and got less in my own country in five years than I ever did in any other in fifteen"--he was getting mixed--"and I've been in a few since then. No, Australia is the worst country that ever the Lord had the sense to forget. I mean to stick to the country that stuck to me, when I was starved out of my own dear native land--and that country is the United States of America. What's Australia? A big, thirsty, hungry wilderness, with one or two cities for the convenience of foreign speculators, and a few collections of humpies, called towns--also for the convenience of foreign speculators; and populated mostly by mongrel sheep, and partly by fools, who live like European slaves in the towns, and like dingoes in the bush--who drivel about 'democracy,' and yet haven't any more spunk than to graft for a few Cockney dudes that razzle-dazzle most of the time in Paris. Why, the Australians haven't even got the grit to claim enough of their own money to throw a few dams across their watercourses, and so make some of the interior fit to live in. America's bad enough, but it was never so small as that....Bah! The curse of Australia is sheep, and the Australian war cry is Baa!" |
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