People often asked him why he chose such a place.

'It suits me,' he used to say, with a laugh, and talk of something else.

We could only raise about enough corn and potatoes, in a general way, for ourselves from the flat; but there were other chances and pickings which helped to make the pot boil, and them we'd have been a deal better without.
First of all, though our cultivation paddock was small, and the good land seemed squeezed in between the hills, there was a narrow tract up the creek, and here it widened out into a large well-grassed flat.

This was where our cattle ran, for, of course, we had a team of workers and a few milkers when we came.

No one ever took up a farm in those days without a dray and a team, a year's rations, a few horses and milkers, pigs and fowls, and a little furniture.