Just before mid-day - five days after we had left the homestead - we rode
through the Southern slip rails to find the Dandy at work "cleaning out a
soakage" on the brink of the billabong, with Cheon enthusiastically
encouraging him.
The billabong, we heard, had threatened to "peter out"
in our absence, and riding across the now dusty wind-swept enclosure we
realised that November was with us, and that the "dry" was preparing for
its final fling - "just showing what it could do when it tried."
With the South-east Trades to back it up it was fighting desperately
against the steadily advancing North-west monsoon, drying up, as it
fought, every drop of moisture left from last Wet. There was not a blade
of green grass within sight of the homestead, and everywhere dust
whirled, and eddied, and danced, hurled all ways at once in the fight, or
gathered itself into towering centrifugal columns, to speed hither and
thither, obedient to the will of the elements.
Half the heavens seemed part of the Dry, and half part of the Wet: dusty
blue to the south-east, and dark banks of clouds to the north-west, with
a fierce beating sun at the zenith. Already the air was oppressive with
electric disturbances, and Dan, fearing he would not get finished unless
things were kept humming, went out-bush next morning, and the homestead
became once more the hub of our universe - the south-east being branded
from that centre. Every few days a mob was brought in, and branded, and
disbanded, hours were spent on the stockyard fence; pack-teams were
packed, unpacked, and repacked; and every day grew hotter and hotter, and
every night more and more electric, and as the days went by we waited for
the Fizzer, hungry for mail-matter, with a six weeks' hunger.
When the Fizzer came in he came with his usual lusty shouting, but varied
his greeting into a triumphant: "Broken the record this time, missus.
Two bags as big as a house and a few et-cet-eras!" And presently he
staggered towards us bent with the weight of a mighty mail. But a Fizzer
without news would not have been our Fizzer, and as he staggered along we
learned that Mac was coming out to clear the run of brumbies. "Be along
in no time now," the Fizzer shouted. "Fallen clean out with
bullock-punching. Wouldn't put his worst enemy to it. Going to tackle
something that'll take a bit of jumping round." Then the mail-bags and
et-cet-eras came down in successive thuds, and no one was better pleased
with its detail than our Fizzer: fifty letters, sixty-nine papers, dozens
of books and magazines, and parcels of garden cuttings.
"Last you for the rest of the year by the look of it," the Fizzer
declared later, finding us at the house walled in with a litter of
mail-matter. Then he explained his interruption.
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