Behind him was only wilderness and "new" country.
Nobody ever saw him at home.

Either he was on the road with a bullock-team, bringing up supplies for the hotel and store, or he was droving cattle down on a six months' journey to market; or he was away looking at new country, or taking supplies out to men on the half-provisioned stations of the "outer-back;" or else he was off to some new mining camp or opal-field, to sell a dray-load of goods at famine prices.
When Charlie and Carew rode up to the store they did not see Pike, nor did they expect to see him.

By some mysterious Providence they had arrived the very day the coach started on its monthly trip down to Barcoo; and in front of the hotel were congregated quite a number of people--Pike's wife and his half-wild children, a handful of bushmen, station hands, opal miners, and what-not, and last, but not least, a fat lady of about forty summers, with flaring red hair.
She was a fine "lump" of a woman, with broad shoulders, and nearly the same breadth all the way down to her feet.

She wore a rusty black dress, which fitted perilously tight to her arms and bust; on her head was a lopsided, dismantled black bonnet with a feather--a bonnet that had evidently been put away in a drawer and forgotten for years.

Any want of colour or style in her dress was amply made up for by the fact that she positively glowed with opals.