So Jim and I hadn't been a week in Melbourne before we fell across a couple of--well, friends--that we were hard set to leave.

It was a way of mine to walk down to the beach every evening and have a look at the boats in the bay and the fishermen, if there were any--anything that might be going on.

Sometimes a big steamer would be coming in, churning the water under her paddles and tearing up the bay like a hundred bunyips.

The first screw-boat Jim and I saw we couldn't make out for the life of us what she moved by.

We thought all steamers had paddles.