But the wide-spreading wild fig tree that stood between the wings of the old yard thrives the same as ever. And how the tired, sun-baked stockmen used to gather in the shade of it when the breaking, rushing, crushing mobs were safely yarded, to lunch on damper and steaming billy tea. Splendid horsemen and cattlemen were those old stockmen - reckless, cheerful prodigals for the most part And tossing junks of damper to each other, as they knelt round the "hamper," what accounts they had to tell of the gallops and spills and escapes they had in the muster. And carved with pocket knives and skinning knives on the trunk of the fig tree are still to be seen the crude initials of most of them or what is left of the initials, for the bark has long since grown over, leaving but the scars. Ned Kearney and Jack Holloway are the only two I know of living now; the others all are gone - buried in different parts of Runnibede - and passing drovers will tell you that, when on their lonely night watches round the resting, silent mobs, they often see them -
"Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,
Hearing their laughter pealing, pealing,
Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling,
Round where the cattle lie."
Drovers used to say that in the weird wailings of the curlew and the plover they could discern the voices of the lonely dead souls of the bushland. I remember them telling this to father, one morning while at the store, getting a supply of rations from him.
"What!" he laughed. "Curlews and plovers the
