and bent his head, and the other blackfellow hit him a whack on the skull

with a nulla nulla. Then they had a nip of rum all round --
Black Jimmie must have wanted it, for the nulla nulla was knotted, and heavy,

and made in the most approved fashion. Then the other blackfellow
bent his head, and Jimmie took the club and returned the whack with interest.

Then the other fellow hit Jimmie a lick, and took a clout in return.
Then they had another drink, and continued thus until Jimmie's rival

lost all heart and interest in the business. But you couldn't take
everything my uncle's brother said for granted.

Black Mary was a queen by right, and had the reputation of being
the cleanest gin in the district; she was a great favourite

with the squatters' wives round there. Perhaps she hoped
to reclaim Jimmie -- he was royal, too, but held easy views

with regard to religion and the conventionalities of civilisation.
Mary insisted on being married properly by a clergyman,

made the old man build a decent hut, had all her children christened,
and kept him and them clean and tidy up to the time of her death.

Poor Queen Mary was ambitious. She started to educate her children,
and when they got beyond her -- that is when they had learnt their letters --

she was grateful for any assistance from the good-natured bush men and women
of her acquaintance. She had decided to get her eldest boy

into the mounted police, and had plans for the rest,
and she worked hard for them, too. Jimmie offered no opposition,

and gave her no assistance beyond the rations and money he earned shepherding
-- which was as much as could be expected of him.

He did as many husbands do "for the sake of peace and quietness" --
he drifted along in the wake of his wife, and took things as easily

as her schemes of reformation and education would allow him to.
Queen Mary died before her time, respected by all who knew or had heard

of her. The nearest squatter's wife sent a pair of sheets for a shroud,
with instructions to lay Mary out, and arranged (by bush telegraph)

to drive over next morning with her sister-in-law and two other white women
in the vicinity, to see Mary decently buried.

But the remnant of Jimmie's tribe were there beforehand.
They tore the sheets in strips and tied Mary up in a bundle,

with her chin to her knees -- preparing her for burial in their own fashion --
and mourned all night in whitewash and ashes. At least, the gins did.

The white women saw that it was hopeless to attempt to untie
any of the innumerable knots and double knots, even if it had been possible

to lay Mary out afterwards; so they had to let her be buried as she was,
with black and white obsequies. And we've got no interest in believing

that she did not "jump up white woman" long ago.
My uncle and his brother took the two eldest boys. Black Jimmie

shifted away from the hut at once with the rest of his family
-- for the "devil-devil" sat down there -- and Mary's name

was strictly "tabooed" in accordance with aboriginal etiquette.
Jimmie drifted back towards the graves of his fathers

in company with a decreasing flock of sheep day by day
(for the house of my uncle had fallen on times of drought and depression,

and foot-rot and wool rings, and over-drafts and bank owners),
and a few strips of bark, a dying fire, a black pipe,

some greasy 'possum rugs and blankets, a litter of kangaroo tails, etc.,
four neglected piccaninnies, half a score of mangy mongrels,

and, haply, a "lilly drap o' rum", by night.
The four little Australians grew dirtier and more shy and savage,

and ate underdone kangaroo and 'possum and native bear,
with an occasional treat of oak grubs and goanna by preference --

and died out, one by one, as blacks do when brought within
the ever widening circle of civilisation. Jimmie moved promptly

after each death, and left the evil one in possession,
and built another mia-mia -- each one being less pretentious than the last.

Finally he was left, the last of his tribe, to mourn his lot in solitude.
But the devil-devil came and sat down by King Jimmie's side one night,

so he, too, moved out across the Old Man border, and the mia-mia
rotted into the ground and the grass grew there.

. . . . .
I admired Joe; I thought him wiser and cleverer than any white boy

in the world. He could smell out 'possums unerringly,
and I firmly believed he could see yards through the muddiest of dam water;

for once, when I dropped my boat in, and was not sure of the spot,
he fished it out first try. With cotton reels and bits of stick and bark

he would make the model of a station homestead, slaughter-yards,
sheep-yards, and all complete, working in ideas and improvements of his own

which might have been put into practice with advantage.
He was a most original and interesting liar upon all subjects

upon which he was ignorant and which came up incidentally.
He gave me a very interesting account of an interview

between his father and Queen Victoria, and mentioned casually
that his father had walked across the Thames without getting wet.

He also told me how he, Joe, had tied a mounted trooper to a verandah post
and thrashed him with pine saplings until the timber gave out

and he was tired. I questioned Jimmie, but the incidents seemed
to have escaped the old king's memory.

Joe could build bigger woodheaps with less wood than any
black or white tramp or loafer round there. He was a born architect.

He took a world of pains with his wood-heaps -- he built them hollow,
in the shape of a break-wind, with the convex side towards the house

for the benefit of his employers. Joe was easy-going; he had inherited
a love of peace and quietness from his father. Uncle generally came home

after dark, and Joe would have little fires lit at safe distances
all round the house, in order to convey an impression that the burning off

was proceeding satisfactorily.
When the warm weather came, Joe and I got into trouble with an old hag

for bathing in a waterhole in the creek in front of her shanty,
and she impounded portions of our wardrobe. We shouldn't have lost much

if she had taken it all; but our sense of injury was deep,
especially as she used very bad grammar towards us.

Joe addressed her from the safe side of the water. He said, "Look here!
Old leather-face, sugar-eye, plar-bag marmy, I call it you."

"Plar-bag marmy" meant "Mother Flour-bag", and ration sugar
was decidedly muddy in appearance.

She came round the waterhole with a clothes prop, and made good time, too;
but we got across and away with our clothes.

That little incident might have changed the whole course of my existence.
Plar-bag Marmy made a formalcomplaint to uncle, who happened

to pass there on horseback about an hour later; and the same evening
Joe's latest and most carefully planned wood heap collapsed

while aunt was pulling a stick out of it in the dark, and it gave her
a bad scare, the results of which might have been serious.

So uncle gave us a thrashing, without the slightest regard
for racial distinctions, and sent us to bed without our suppers.

We sought Jimmie's camp, but Joe got neither sympathy nor damper
from his father, and I was sent home with a fatherly lecture

"for going alonga that fella," meaning Joe.
Joe and I discussed existence at a waterhole down the creek next afternoon,

over a billy of crawfish which we had boiled and a piece of gritty damper,
and decided to retire beyond the settled districts -- some five hundred

miles or so -- to a place that Joe said he knew of, where there were
lagoons and billabongs ten miles wide, alive with ducks and fish,

and black cockatoos and kangaroos and wombats, that only waited
to be knocked over with a stick.

I thought I might as well start and be a blackfellow at once, so we got
a rusty pan without a handle, and cooked about a pint of fat yellow oak-grubs;

and I was about to fall to when we were discovered, and the full weight
of combined family influence was brought to bear on the situation.

We had broken a new pair of shears digging out those grubs
from under the bark of the she-oaks, and had each taken a blade