Life in Up-Country Australia.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 250, 2 September 1902, Page 4

Life in Up-Country Australia.

Extracts from a recently received letter from an up-country correspondent are interesting, remarks the Melbourne Argus; “it makes me quite angry to read the papers nowadays. Anyone would think Melbourne was everything and the country nothing. You write of dresses and dances and distributing kitchens, and get hysterics if you can’t get servants, and you write letters to the papers when you have not got asphalt right up to the front door, and when a tramline does not run down your street. You have unlimited fish, flesh, and fruit in your markets, and yet you grumble every day and say, ‘ What can wo have for dinner? There is ab;olutely nothing to choose.’ Come up here and stay a month with us, and see if you like it. We had a garden once ; we have none now ; they are merely beds of dust, with here and there a few withered stalks of roses and dahlias. They look better now r.heir few poor withered leaves have fallen, for the north wind had turned them black. We are caning water from a dam, and we are sharing what is there with a hundred or so of the more valuable sheep. They are not allowed to go into it, of course, but stand in a pitying line outside the wire fence, bloating for more of the precious brown liquid so close to them. They force their headai and shoulders through the wires and stare at the water the livelong day. When their tllowance is poured into a long trough they shove and shoulder each other madly to get ever so little more of it. We don’t go for walks or rides if we can help it. £ would rather see a plague-stricken city or a battlefield than go the rounds of the paddocks as the men do daily; There is no grass, no water ; nothing from end to end of our once prosperous run but dust and dying sheep and cows. The sky is palely, dully blue, the earth is greybrown. The dry air makes distant, shimmering mirages on each little rise, and all round stretch the wire fences boundin' our particular misery and di.iding it from our neighbours’. The children save scraps from the table for a few pet lambs ; miserable, gaunt beasts that have learnt to eat treacle and crus • and potato peels. One of them evinces a [fancy for tinned fish. There is a sameness in everything—in the perpetual dry, I stringy mutton, the potatoes, the boiled rice, the treacle—which forms our usual bill of fare ; a sameness in the daily toil of misery, a sameness in the weather sports. One day is exactly like another, save that perhaps one grows just a little more and there are fines on our faces that were not there a year ago. It is not only the direct personal loss, though for most of us. ruin is very close, but it is the maddening sense of helplessness. Men and women felt this iu fever-stricken Ladysmith. Nothing to do but wait, and each day’s waiting makes the position worsei If, five years ago, we had cut the throats of our thousands of sheep aud burnt our homestead, we would be to-day far be.ter off. Think of the country sometimes, you town people; of the miles of drought-stricken land, grassless and waterless ; of dying beasts and despairing men and women,”

Wife ; Coma out at once, you miserable little grub. Heroic Husband (who has locked himself in) ; I won’t, Maria; I absolutely refuse to do your bidding. I will show you once and for all that 1 will be the master in my own bouse. Young Croesus : So you love another ? Nelly : Yes, madly ; bnt don’t be uneasy, Teddy, I’m going to marry you. Madge (sighing) : Ah, the men are not what the> used to be. Jack : I’d like to knew why not ? Madge : They used to be boys, you know. [And then he left.] She :Is Mr Hunter still paying attention to Miss Ooldbags ? He : Good gracious ! no. He’s not paying auy attention at all now; they’re marned.

“ Do you mean to say that I have no right to open my wife’* letters ?” •' Of course, you have the right. What you want is the nerve.” The Cook : I noticed there were five jars of preserves gone from the pantry to-day. The Boy ; Yes, Maty, I think you had better put up some more; ’specially the strawberries, Jasper—l understood that you had turned-over a new leaf, and were even going to love your enemies ; but it teems to me that you love no one but yourself. “ Well, I am my own wor.at enemy.” “ Graybeard is liyelj for a man of his age ” “ Yes. Old boys will be old boys 1” “ Bat he doesn’t realise that he boasts!” “ Ob, no I I’ve heard him boasting that he doesn’t boast.” She : So your brother is to be married? I supposehe is full of joyful anticipations 7 He ; Oh, not at all—he has been married before, you know.