possums. They run up and down the verandah and squeak the whole night. One ran up and sat on the eave of the house, and incautiously let his tail dangle over the edge, and I sneaked up and caught hold of it—and if he didn’t jump! He must be going yet.
A month later (10th December, 1888), Mullah is waiting anxiously for the drought to break. Boake writes to his father—
. . . I don’t feel the heat nearly so much as I expected: in fact, I can stand it with much less inconvenience than I could the cold of Monaro. The only thing I feel is the thirst: I never seem to be satisfied.
Times are pretty easy now. Most of the work is over among the sheep, and all I have to do is to ride round about twenty miles of the boundary and see that no sheep are getting bogged at the water. I generally make a start about four in the morning, when it is cool, and get back about ten o’clock. After that, as a rule, I have nothing to do for the rest of the day except pass the time reading, unless I feel inclined to take a ride round the lagoon about sundown . . .
A characteristic letter from Boake to his father may be quoted in full.
Mullah, Trangie,
29th December, 1888.
My dear Father,—Your last letter must assuredly have miscarried, as it is two months or more since I heard from you. From the tone of your letter I should say that the world is treating you better than hitherto. It is about time too.
So there is another inhabitant added to this continent. Poor little beggar! I wonder if he will ever wish he had never been born, like most of us do. I think it is a natural
