The Elsey, and upwards of forty pounds
for "inside." It is this freight that makes the grocery bill such a big
item on stations out-bush, where several tons of stores are considered
by no means a large order.
Close on the heels of the Fizzer came other travellers, with the news
that the horse teams had got going and the Macs had "pulled out" to the
Four Mile. "Your trunks'll be along in no time now, missus," one of them
said. "They've got 'em all aboard."
The Dandy did some rapid calculations: "Ten miles a day on good roads,"
he said: "one hundred and seventy miles. Tens into that seventeen days.
Give 'em a week over for unforeseen emergencies, and call it four weeks."
It sounded quite cheerful and near at hand, but a belated thunderstorm or
two, and consequent bogs, nearly doubled the four weeks.
Almost every day we heard news of the teams from the now constant stream
of travellers; and by the time the timber was all sawn and carted to the
house to fulfil the many promises there, they were at the Katherine.
But if the teams were at the Katherine, so were the teamsters, and so was
the Pub; and when teamsters and a pub get together it generally takes
time to separate them, when that pub is the last for over a thousand
miles.
