"Whatever do you do with your time?" ask the townsfolk, sure that life
out-bush is stagnation, but forgetting that life is life wherever it may
be lived.
CHAPTER XVIII
Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and
creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked
snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we found
it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of men and
cattle and commerce. Beside it stood the simple camp of the stockman--a
litter of pack-bags, mosquito-nets, and swags; here and there were
scattered the even more simple camps of the black boys; and in the
background, the cumbrous camp of the Chinese drovers reared itself up in
strong contrast to the camps of the bushfolk--two fully equipped tents
for the drovers themselves and a simpler one for their black boys. West
of the Yellow Hole boys were tailing a fine mob of bullocks, and to the
east other "boys" were "holding" a rumbling mob of mixed cattle, and
while Jack and Dan rode here and there shouting orders for the "cutting
out" of the cattle, the Dandy busied himself at the fire, making tea as a
refresher, before getting going in earnest, the only restful, placid,
unoccupied beings in the whole camp being the Chinese drovers.
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