Perhaps one of the
brightest thoughts for the Fizzer as he "punches" along those desolate
Downs is the knowledge that a little before eleven o'clock in the morning
Anthony's will come out, and, standing with shaded eyes, will look
through the quivering heat, away into the Downs for that tiny moving
speck. When the Fizzer is late there, death will have won at the
dice-throwing.
I suppose he got a salary. No one ever troubled to ask. He was
expected, and he came, and in our selfishness we did not concern
ourselves beyond that.
It is men like the Fizzer who, "keeping the roads open," lay the
foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the
Never-Never along the Fizzer's mail route, in all probability they will
be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that
day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in
repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten;
for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.
Three days' spell at Anthony's, to wait for the Queensland mail-man from
the "other-side" (another Fizzer no doubt, for the bush mail-service soon
culls out the unfitted), an exchange of mail-bags, and then the Downs
must be faced again with the same team of horses.
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