The Romance of Runnibede.
CHAPTER I.
I REMEMBER well when father selected Runnibede for a cattle ran. A great run it was, too, a hundredthousand acres—stretches of sheltered valleys and scrubs, lofty ranges and wide grass plains. To the north loomed the Great Dividing Range; on the south the winding, bending Condamine, and most of it watered by creeks, lagoons, and great waterholes that never went dry—so father and others reckoned. The homestead, then, was different to what it is today rougher and wilder, and more romantic. The ‘big house,’’ as it was called, with father’s office at the end of a wide, high verandah, was walled and floored with dressed slabs—wonderful slabs they were, too; and the roof was covered with stringybark. The "store" and butcher’s shop and men’s huts were of similar architecture, and standing in a row amongst the wild limes and brigalow, looked like a lost township of primitive days. And the cattle yards that Sam Mann and Bill Hawkes erected on the bank of the station creek - all made of round saplings - I remember well. They have crumbled and rotted away since then, and only a few shaky panels are standing now.
