Having for several years contemplated a life of seclusion in the bush,
and having sampled several attractive and more or less suitable scenes,
we were not long in concluding that here was the ideal spot. From that
moment it was ours. In comparison the sweetest of previous fancies became
vapid. Legal rights to a certain undefined area having been acquired in
the meantime, permanent settlement began on September 28, 1897.

For a couple of weeks thereafter we lived in tents, while with clumsy
haste--for experience had to, be acquired--we set about the building of a
hut of cedar, the parts of which were brought from civilisation ready for
assembling. Houses, however, stately or humble, in North Queensland, are
sacrificial to what are known popularly as "white ants" unless special
means are taken for their exclusion. Wooden buildings rest on piles sunk
in the ground, on the top of which is an excluder of galvanised iron in
shape resembling a milk dish inverted. It is also wise to take the
additional precaution of saturating each pile with an arsenical solution.
Being quite unfamiliar with the art of hut-building, and in a frail
physical state, I found the work perplexing and most laborious, simple
and light as it all was. Trees had to be felled and sawn into proper
lengths for piles, and holes sunk, and the piles adjusted to a uniform
level. With blistered and bleeding hands, aching muscles, and stiff
joints I persevered.

While we toiled our fare, simplicity itself, was eaten with becoming lack
of style in the shade of a bloodwood-tree, the tents being reserved for
sleeping. When the blacks could be spared, fish was easily obtainable,
and we also drew upon the scrub fowl and pigeon occasionally, for the
vaunting proclamation for the preservation of all birds had not been
made. Tinned meat and bread and jam formed the most frequent meals, for
there were hosts of simple, predestined things which had to be painfully