Now, with official stock routes for the drovers and the bullockies vanished into legend, things were more
amicable1 between vagabonds and stay-puts.
The occasional drovers were welcomed as they rode in for a beer and a talk, a home-cooked meal. Some times they brought women with them, driving
battered2 old sulkies with
galled3 ex-stock horses between the
shafts4, pots and billies and bottles banging and clanking in a fringe all around. These were the most cheerful or the most
morose5 women in the Outback, drifting from Kynuna to the Paroo, from Goondiwindi to Gundagai;, from the Katherine to the
Curry6. Strange women; they never knew a roof over their heads or the feel of a
kapok7 mattress8 beneath their iron-hard
spines9. No man had bested them; they were as tough and en during as the country which flowed under their restless feet. Wild as the birds in the sun-drenched trees, their children
skulked10 shyly behind the sulky wheels or
scuttled11 for the protection of the woodheap while their parents
yarned12 over cups of tea,
swapped13 tall stories and books, promised to pass on vague messages to Hoopiron Collins or Brumby Waters, and told the fantastic tale of the Pommy jackaroo on Gnarlunga. And somehow you could be sure these rootless wanderers had dug a grave, buried a child or a wife, a husband or a mate, under some never-to-be-forgotten coolibah on a stretch of the TSR which only looked the same to those who didn't know how hearts could mark out as singular and special one tree in a
wilderness14 of trees.
Meggie was ignorant even of the meaning of a phrase as hackneyed as "the facts of life," for circumstances had
conspired15 to block every avenue whereby she might have learned. Her father drew a
rigid16 line between the males of the family and the females; subjects like breeding or mating were never discussed in front of the women, nor did the men ever appear in front of the women unless
fully17 clothed. The kind of books that might have given her a clue never appeared on Drogheda, and she had no friends of her own age to contribute to her education. Her life was absolutely harnessed to the needs of the house, and around the house there were no sexual activities at all. The Home Paddock creatures were almost
literally18 sterile19. Mary Carson didn't breed horses, she bought them from Martin King of Bugela, who did; unless one bred horses stallions were a nuisance, so Drogheda didn't have any stallions. It did have a bull,
