On Our Selection E-Book

Steele Rudd

• Herausgeber: Steele Rudd
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Australian author, pseudonym of Arthur Hoey Davis, and best known for On Our Selection. Towards the end of 1895 Rudd sent a sketch based on his father's experience 'Starting the selection' to The Bulletin in which appeared on 14 December 1895. This afterwards became the first chapter of On Our Selection when it was published in 1899. Encouraged by J. F. Archibald, Davis continued the series of sketches, 26 of which were included in the volume. Within four years 20,000 copies had been printed. It afterwards appeared in numerous cheap editions and by 1940 the number of copies sold had reached 250,000. It has also been the subject of a play and more than one picture.

Leseprobe

On Our Selection

Steele Rudd

Table of Contents

Starting the Selection.

Our First Harvest

Before We Got The Deeds

When the Wolf was at the Door.

The Night We Watched For Wallabies.

Good Old Bess.

Cranky Jack.

A Kangaroo–Hunt from Shingle Hut.

Dave’s Snakebite.

Dad And The Donovans.

A Splendid Year For Corn.

Kate’s Wedding.

The Summer Old Bob Died.

When Dan Came Home.

Our Circus.

When Joe Was In Charge.

Dad’s “Fortune.”

We Embark in the Bear Industry.

Nell and Ned.

The Cow We Bought.

The Parson and the Scone.

Callaghan’s Colt.

The Agricultural Reporter.

A Lady at Shingle Hut.

The Man with the Bear–Skin Cap.

One Christmas.

Pioneers of Australia!

To You “Who Gave Our Country Birth;” to the memory of You whose names, whose giant enterprise, whose deeds of fortitude and daring were never engraved on tablet or tombstone; to You who strove through the silences of the Bush-lands and made them ours; to You who delved and toiled in loneliness through the years that have faded away; to You who have no place in the history of our Country so far as it is yet written; to You who have done MOST for this Land; to You for whom few, in the march of settlement, in the turmoil of busy city life, now appear to care; and to you particularly, GOOD OLD DAD, This Book is most affectionately dedicated.

Chapter 1.

Starting the Selection.

It’s twenty years ago now since we settled on the Creek. Twenty years! I remember well the day we came from Stanthorpe, on Jerome’s dray — eight of us, and all the things — beds, tubs, a bucket, the two cedar chairs with the pine bottoms and backs that Dad put in them, some pint-pots and old Crib. It was a scorching hot day, too — talk about thirst! At every creek we came to we drank till it stopped running.

Dad didn’t travel up with us: he had gone some months before, to put up the house and dig the waterhole. It was a slabbed house, with shingled roof, and space enough for two rooms; but the partition wasn’t up. The floor was earth; but Dad had a mixture of sand and fresh cow-dung with which he used to keep it level. About once every month he would put it on; and everyone had to keep outside that day till it was dry. There were no locks on the doors: pegs were put in to keep them fast at night; and the slabs were not very close together, for we could easily see through them anybody coming on horseback. Joe and I used to play at counting the stars through the cracks in the roof.