When he was a young man working as Mr. Gordon's manager, and living
with the horse-breaker and the ration-carrier on the out-station
at Kuryong (in those days a wild, half-civilised place), he had
for neighbours Red Mick's father and mother, the original Mr. and
Mrs. Donohoe, and their family. Their eldest daughter, Peggy--"Carrotty
Peg," her relations called her--was at that time a fine, strapping,
bush girl, and the only unmarried white woman anywhere near the
station. She was as fair-complexioned as Red Mick himself, with
a magnificent head of red hair, and the bust and limbs of a young
Amazon.
This young woman, as she grew up, attracted the attention of Billy
the Bully, and they used to meet a good deal out in the bush. On
such occasions, he would possibly be occupied in the inspiriting
task of dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to
lead the wild dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in
light and airy garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear,
would be riding straddle-legged in search of strayed cows. When Grant
left the station, and went away to make his fortune in mining, it
was, perhaps, just a coincidence that this magnificent young creature
grew tired of the old place and "cleared out," too. She certainly
went away and disappeared so utterly that even her own people did
not know what had become of her; to the younger generation her very
existence was only a vague tradition. But it was whispered here and
muttered there among the Doyles and the Donohoes and their friends
and relations, that old Billy the Bully, on one of his visits to
the interior, had been married to this undesirable lady by a duly
accredited parson, in the presence of responsible witnesses; and
that, when everyone had their own, Carrotty Peg, if alive, would
be the lady of Kuryong. However, she had never come back to prove
it, and no one cared about asking her alleged husband any unpleasant
questions.
So much for the history of its owners; now to describe the homestead
itself. It had originally consisted of the two-roomed slab hut,
which had been added to from time to time. Kitchen, outhouses,
bachelors' quarters, saddle-rooms, and store-rooms had been built
on in a kind of straggling quadrangle, with many corners and unexpected
doorways and passages; and it is reported that a swagman once got
his dole of rations at the kitchen, went away, and after turning
two or three corners, got so tangled up that when Fate led him back
to the kitchen he didn't recognise it, and asked for rations over
again, in the firm belief that he was at a different part of the
house.
The original building was still the principal living-room, but
the house had grown till it contained about twenty rooms. The slab
walls had been plastered and whitewashed, and a wide verandah ran
all along the front. Round the house were acres of garden, with
great clumps of willows and acacias, where the magpies sat in the
heat of the day and sang to one another in their sweet, low warble.