Marcus Clarke

“ He had been his most intimate friend, and called him "Arthur" for years. I shall never forget one pathetic evening, when, after much unlimited loo, and some considerably hot whisky, Longbow told me of his troubles. "Beastly colony!" he said, "beastly! Why, my dear boy, when I was leaving;--but there, never mind, Buckingham and Chandos was right. Never mind what they may say, Sir, Buckingham and Chandos was right as the mail." I replied that from the reports I had read of Buckingham and Chandos, I had no doubt whatever that he was all that could be desired by the most fastidious. ”

“ I am afraid that religion, as an art, was not cultivated much in Bullocktown. The seed sown there was a little mixed in character. One week you had a Primitive Methodist, and the next a Hardshell Baptist,--and the next an Irvingite or a Southcottian. To do the inhabitants justice, they endeavoured very hard to learn the ins and outs of the business, but I do not believe that they ever succeeded. As Wallaby Dick observed one day, "When you run a lot of paddocked sheep into a race, what's the good o' sticking half-a-dozen fellers at the gate? The poor beggars don't know which way, to run!" ”

“ The other two were daughters of old Trowbridge, and could cut out a refractory bullock with the best stockman on the plains. But what were two among so many? I have seen fifteen couples stand up in "Trowbridge's" to the "Cruiskeen Lawn," and dance a mild polka, gyrating round each other like intelligent weathercocks.
The stationary dance of the bush-hand is a fearful and wonderful thing. Two sheepish, blushing stockmen grip each other's elbows, and solemnly twirl to the music of their loose spurs. ”