The day is lovely in the atmosphere and ample draperies of November. Even ’Possum Gully, like a plain girl when happy, has a meed of beauty. The afternoon is hot and clear as though the sun were a box-wood fire. The flowers droop their heads in the fierce proud heat, lizards bask in the glare, the poultry spread their wings and pant in the shade, the cows lie in the reeds of the waterhole on the flat, the horses stand head to tail in pairs under the quince hedge rising above the orchard fence and stamp and switch the flies off themselves.

A tiny breeze goes flirting through the last of afternoon, the eschscholtzias furl their silken petals. I have ascended the hill behind which the sun departs and where a thousand times I have watched him gleam red as a fire between the trunks of the grey messmates and powdered brittle-gums. To the east, amid wild hop scrub and stringy-barks, a bridle track threads its way to the crisp main road to Goulburn, and on and on to Sydney, where the sea tracks lead on to the WORLD.

The final gleam of the sun kisses the waterhole, the shadows grow long and dark, reversing their morning journey. The rumble of a train miles distant bears my heart on its rhythm of departure. The kookaburras are laughing themselves to sleep, chorus answering chorus—coda—da capo—finale. The gentle curlews lure me farther into the scrub, where I still can see the departing sun and the afterglow falling far away through a gap in the ranges on to one of the bright rich plains of an early holding.

The flaunting afterglow melts and passes, the evening star is bright and bold, and throws a spark in the dam of the back paddock at the fall of the she-oak ridge where the night birds call in unmolested scrubs and flap slowly from tree to tree. A tremor of night runs along the seeding grasses.

A wise old moon slowly chases the shadows westward once again and laps all in her silver enchantment. A thousand jewels flash above the dark shadows as she catches the eyes of the flock camped on the rise.

Beauty is abroad. Under her spell the voices of the great world call me. To them I give ear and go.