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Bohemian tastes as he evidently possessed at that time, one is at fault to guess how his mind found play to work out the airy images of the brain in song. Bushmen and bullock drivers some thirty years ago were certainly not famed for refined imagery of thought or expression, yet Loyau was more at home with these rough denizens of the bush than in the elegant circles of city life, and his most expressive poems were written while wandering, Bohemian fashion, the length and breadth of Australia. From extensive rambling through nearly every town and hamlet in the land, Loyau took to himself a wife in 1875. To the influence and judicious counsel of his better-half, a far-seeing and amiable lady, the author of this volume owes his safe anchorage in the harbour of domestic happiness. Doubtless the incidents of his long wanderings had furnished him with many of the quaint characters depicted in his tales and sketches of colonial experiences and adventure. Some of these are weird, romantic pictures, but they are none the less true to nature, and will be valuable to posterity, as showing what manner of people comprised the bush pioneers of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. The longest and best of Mr. Loyau's stories were written after his marriage: "Leichardt the lost Explorer," "The Early Days of New South Wales," "Out on the Flinders," "The Castaways," "Affection's Test," "The Bargunyah Records," "Australian Press Experiences," "Types of Colonial Life," "A Remarkable Life," "Jollimonts' Legacy," "The Lifer," "The Victim of Circumstances," etc., together with "Essays on Fifty Subjects"—went through the columns of the press in the various colonies. If the whole of these were gathered together for publication they would comprise more than twenty volumes of 200 pages each. Later on he wrote the "Gawler Hand* book," "The Representative Men of South Australia," and "Personal Adventures," all of which were published in book form in Adelaide.