The spiders were dreadful, huge hairy things with a leg span of inches, or deceptively small and deadly black-things
lurking1 in the
lavatory2; some lived in vast wheeling webs
slung3 between trees, some rocked inside
dense4 gossamer5 cradles hooked among grass blades, others dived into little holes in the ground complete with lids which shut after them.
Predators6 were there, too: wild pigs frightened of nothing,
savage7 and flesh-eating, black hairy things the size of
fully8 grown cows; dingoes, the wild native dogs which slunk close to the ground and blended into the grass; crows in hundreds carking
desolately9 from the blasted white skeletons of dead trees;
hawks10 and eagles,
hovering11 motionless on the air currents. From some of these the sheep and cattle had to be protected, especially when they dropped their young. The kangaroos and rabbits ate the precious grass; the pigs and dingoes ate lambs,
calves12 and sick animals; the crows pecked out eyes. The Clearys had to learn to shoot, then carried rifles as they rode, sometimes to put a suffering beast out of its
misery13, sometimes to fell a boar or a dingo.
This, thought the boys
exultantly14, was life. Not one of them
yearned15 for New Zealand; when the flies clustered like
syrup16 in the corners of their eyes, up their noses, in their mouths and ears, they learned the Australian trick and hung
corks17 bobbing from the ends of
strings18 all around the brims of their hats. To prevent crawlies from getting up inside the legs of (heir
baggy19 trousers they tied strips of kangaroo hide called bowyangs below their knees,
giggling20 at the silly-sounding name, but
awed21 by the necessity. New Zealand was tame compared to this; this was life. Tied to the house and its
immediate22 environs, the women found life much less to their
liking23, for they had not the leisure or the excuse to ride, nor did they have the
stimulation24 of varying activities. It was just harder to do what women always did: cook, clean, wash, iron, care for babies. They battled the heat, the dust, the flies, the many steps, the muddy water, the nearly
perennial25 absence of men to carry and chop wood, pump water, kill
fowls26. The heat especially was hard to bear, and it was as yet only early spring; even so, the thermometer out on the shady
veranda27 reached a hundred degrees every day. Inside the kitchen with the range going,
