An Outback Marriage
Page 20The house stood on a spur running from the hills. Looking down
the river from it, one saw level flats waving with long grasses,
in which the solemn cattle waded knee-deep. Here and there clumps
of willows and stately poplars waved in the breeze. In the clear,
dry air all colours were startlingly vivid, and round the nearer
foothills wonderful lights and shadows played and shifted, while
sometimes a white fleece of mist would drift slowly across a distant
hill, like a film of snowy lace on the face of a beautiful woman.
Away behind the foothills were the grand old mountains, with their
snow-clad tops gleaming in the sun.
The garden was almost as lacking in design as the house. There were
acres of fruit trees, with prairie grass growing at their roots,
of grapevines, with little turnings and alleys, regular lovers'
walks, where the scent of honeysuckle intoxicated the senses. At
the foot of the garden was the river, a beautiful stream, fed by
the mountain-snow, and rushing joyously over clear gravel beds,
whose million-tinted pebbles dashed in the sunlight like so many
opals.
In some parts of Australia it is difficult to tell summer from
winter; but up in this mountain-country each season had its own
attractions. In the spring the flats were green with lush grass,
speckled with buttercups and bachelors' buttons, and the willows
put out their new leaves, and all manner of shy dry-scented bush
of birds and the calling of animals. Then came summer, when never
a cloud decked the arch of blue sky, and all animated nature
drew into the shade of big trees until the evening breeze sprang
up, bringing sweet scents of the dry grass and ripening grain. In
autumn, the leaves of the English trees turned all tints of yellow
and crimson, and the grass in the paddocks went brown; and the big
bullock teams worked from dawn till dark, hauling in their loads
of hay from the cultivation paddocks.
But most beautiful of all was winter, when logs blazed in the
huge fireplaces, and frosts made the ground crisp, and the stock,
long-haired and shaggy, came snuffling round the stables, picking
but a stone's throw away in the intensely clear air, and the wind
brought a colour to the cheeks and a tingling to the blood that
made life worth living.
Such was Kuryong homestead, where lived Charlie Gordon's mother and
his brother Hugh, with a lot of children left by another brother who,
like many others, had gone up to Queensland to make his fortune,
and had left his bones there instead; and to look after these young
folk there was a governess, Miss Harriott.