An Outback Marriage

In that year the Legislature threw open all leasehold lands to the

public for purchase on easy terms and conditions. The idea was to

settle an industrious peasantry on lands hitherto leased in large

blocks to the squatters. This brought down a flood of settlement

on Kuryong. At the top end of the station there was a chain

of mountains, and the country was rugged and patchy--rich valleys

alternating with ragged hills. Here and there about the run were

little patches of specially good land, which were soon snapped up.

The pioneers of these small settlers were old Morgan Donohoe and

his wife, who had built the hotel at Kiley's Crossing; and, on their

reports, all their friends and relatives, as they came out of the

"ould country," worked their way to Kuryong, and built little bits

of slab and bark homesteads in among the mountains. The rougher

the country, the better they liked it. They were a horse-thieving,

sheep-stealing breed, and the talents which had made them poachers

in the old country soon made them champion bushmen in their new

surroundings. The leader of these mountain settlers was one Doyle,

a gigantic Irishman, who had got a grant of a few hundred acres in

the mountains, and had taken to himself a Scotch wife from among

the free immigrants. The story ran that he was too busy to go to

town, but asked a friend to go and pick a wife for him, "a fine

shtrappin' woman, wid a good brisket on her."

The Doyles were large, slow, heavy men, with an instinct for the

management of cattle; they were easily distinguished from the Donohoes,

who were little red-whiskered men, enterprising and quick-witted,

and ready to do anything in the world for a good horse. Other

strangers and outlanders came to settle in the district, but from

the original settlement up to the date of our story the two great

families of the Doyles and the Donohoes governed the neighbourhood,

and the headquarters of the clans was at Donohoe's "Shamrock Hotel,"

at Kiley's Crossing. Here they used to rendezvous when they went

away down to the plains country each year for the shearing; for they

added to their resources by travelling about the country shearing,

droving, fencing, tanksinking, or doing any other job that offered

itself, but always returned to their mountain fastnesses ready for

any bit of work "on the cross" (i.e., unlawful) that might turn up.

When times got hard they had a handy knack of finding horses that

nobody had lost, shearing sheep they did not own, and branding and

selling other people's calves.

When they stole stock, they moved them on through the mountains

as quickly as possible, always having a brother or uncle, or

a cousin--Terry or Timothy or Martin or Patsy--who had a holding

"beyant." By these means they could shift stolen stock across

the great range, and dispose of them among the peaceable folk who

dwelt in the good country on the other side, whose stock they stole

in return. Many a good horse and fat beast had made the stealthy

mountain journey, lying hidden in gaps and gullies when pursuit

grew hot, and being moved on as things quieted down.