“Another moon’ll see her on the staff,” he prophesied, as we prepared to go out-bush for Easter.

The Easter moon had come in dry and cool, and at its full the Wet lifted, as our traveller had foretold.  Only a bushman’s personal observation, remember, this lifting of the Wet with the full of the Easter moon, not a scientific statement; but by an insight peculiarly their own, bushmen come at more facts than most men.

Sam did his best with Bunday, serving hot rolls with mysterious markings on them for breakfast, and by midday he had the homestead to himself, the Maluka and I being camped at Bitter Springs and every one else being elsewhere.  Our business was yard-inspection, with Goggle-Eye as general factotum.  We, of course, had ridden out, but Goggle-Eye had preferred to walk.  “Me all day knock up longa horse,” he explained striding comfortably along beside us.

Several exciting hours were spent with boxes of wax matches, burning the rank grass back from the yard at the springs (at Goggle-Eye’s suggestion the missus had been pressed into the service); and then we rode through the rank grass along the river, scattering matches as we went like sparks from an engine.  As soon as the rank grass seeds it must be burnt off, before the soil loses its moisture, to ensure a second shorter spring, and everywhere we went now clouds of dense smoke rose behind us.

That walk about with the Maluka and “Gadgerrie” lived like a red-letter day in old Goggle-Eye’s memory; for did he not himself strike a dozen full boxes of matches?

Dan was away beyond the northern boundary, going through the cattle, judging the probable duration of “outside waters” for that year, burning off too as he rode.  The Quiet Stockman was away beyond the southern boundary, rounding up wanderers and stragglers among the horses, and the station was face to face with the year’s work, making preparations for the year’s mustering and branding—­for with the lifting of the Wet everything in the Never-Never begins to move.

“After the Wet” rivers go down, the north-west monsoon giving place to the south-east Trades; bogs dry up everywhere, opening all roads; travellers pass through the stations from all points of the compass—­cattle buyers, drovers, station-owners, telegraph people—­all bent on business, and all glad to get moving after the long compulsory inaction of the Wet; and lastly that great yearly cumbrous event takes place:  the starting of the “waggons,” with their year’s stores for Inside.

The first batch of travellers had little news for us.  They had heard that the teams were loading up, and couldn’t say for certain, and, finding them unsatisfactory, we looked forward to the coming of the “Fizzer,” our mailman, who was almost due.

Eight mails a year was our allowance, with an extra one now and then through the courtesy of travellers.  Eight mails a year against eight hundred for the townsfolk.  Was it any wonder that we all found we had business at the homestead when the Fizzer was due there?