We couldn't stand the thought of clearin' out for America, as Starlight advised us.

It was like death to us, so we thought we'd chance it somewhere in Australia for a bit longer.
Now where we put up a good many drovers from Gippsland used to stay, as they brought in cattle from there.

The cattle had to be brought over Swanston Street Bridge and right through the town after twelve o'clock at night.

We'd once or twice, when we'd been out late, stopped to look at them, and watched the big heavy bullocks and fat cows staring and starting and slipping all among the lamps and pavements, with the street all so strange and quiet, and laughed at the notion of some of the shopkeepers waking up and seeing a couple of hundred wild cattle, with three or four men behind 'em, shouldering and horning one another, then rushing past their doors at a hard trot, or breaking into a gallop for a bit.
Some of these chaps, seeing we was cattle-men and knew most things in that line, used to open out about where they'd come from, and what a grand place Gippsland was--splendid grass country, rivers that run all the year round, great fattening country; and snowy mountains at the back, keeping everything cool in the summer.

Some of the mountain country, like Omeo, that they talked a lot of, seemed about one of the most out-of-the-way places in the world.