to put down a shaft some day--the old man was always thinking of
putting down a shaft. And these two old fifty-niners would mooch
round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break clay
lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of
shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to "look for his father
and Mr So-and-so, and tell 'em to come to their dinner."

And again--mostly in the fresh of the morning--they would hang about
the fences on the selection and review the live stock: five dusty
skeletons of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece
of equine scenery--which, by the way, the old mate always praised.
But the selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections--it was
far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or
perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's
Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten
reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim
would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of
sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged,
half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation
would be pointed with many Golden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks,
Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies. And so they'd
yarn till the youngster came to tell them that "Mother sez the
breakfus is gettin' cold," and then the old mate would rouse himself
and stretch and say, "Well, we mustn't keep the missus waitin',
Tom!"

And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the
edge of the veranda--that is, in warm weather--and yarn about
Ballarat and Bendigo--of the days when we spoke of being on a place
oftener than at it: _on_ Ballarat, _on_ Gulgong, _on_ Lambing Flat,