"Tea ain't any good to drink unless you can put a stick straight up in
it, and it can stand alone there," joked an old swagman, who had invited
us to partake of a hospitable "billy-can" with him.
* * * * *
We had long, marvellous talks with different swagmen, as we slowly
sauntered north to Newcastle....
We heard of the snakes of Australia, which workmen dug up in torpid
writhing knots, in the cold weather ... of native corrobories which one
old informant told us he had often attended, where he procured native
women or "gins" as they called them, for a mere drink of whiskey or gin
... "that's why they calls 'em 'gins'" he explained ... (wrong, for
"gin" or a word of corresponding sound is the name for "woman" in many
native languages in the antipodes)....
The azure beauty of those days!... tramping northward with nothing in
the world to do but swap stories and rest whenever we chose, about
campfires of resinous, sweetly smelling wood ... drinking and drinking
that villainous tea.
In Australia the law against stealing rides on freights is strictly
enforced. The tramp has always to walk--to the American tramp this is at
first a hardship, but you soon grow to like it ... you learn to enjoy
the wine in the air, the fragrance of the strange trees that shed bark
instead of leaves, the noise of scores of unseen Waterfalls in the hills
of New South Wales.
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