about eighteen miles of heavy, sandy, cleared road north-west to the
next water in that direction. With one exception, the men do not seem
hard up; at least, not as that condition is understood by the swagmen
of these times. The least lucky one of the lot had three weeks' work
in a shed last season, and there might probably be five pounds amongst
the whole crowd. They are all shearers, or at least they say they
are. Some might be only "rousers."

These men have a kind of stock hope of getting a few stragglers to
shear somewhere; but their main object is to live till next shearing.
In order to do this they must tramp for tucker, and trust to the
regulation--and partly mythical--pint of flour, and bit of meat, or
tea and sugar, and to the goodness of cooks and storekeepers and
boundary-riders. You can only depend on getting tucker _once_ at
one place; then you must tramp on to the next. If you cannot get it
once you must go short; but there is a lot of energy in an empty
stomach. If you get an extra supply you may camp for a day and have a
spell. To live you must walk. To cease walking is to die.

The Exception is an outcast amongst bush outcasts, and looks better
fitted for Sydney Domain. He lies on the bottom of a galvanized-iron
case, with a piece of blue blanket for a pillow. He is dressed in a
blue cotton jumper, a pair of very old and ragged tweed trousers, and
one boot and one slipper. He found the slipper in the last shed,
and the boot in the rubbish-heap here. When his own boots gave out he
walked a hundred and fifty miles with his feet roughly sewn up in
pieces of sacking from an old wool-bale. No sign of a patch, or an
attempt at mending anywhere about his clothes, and that is a bad sign;
when a swagman leaves off mending or patching his garments, his case
is about hopeless. The Exception's swag consists of the aforesaid bit