We had on blue serge shirts, moleskin trousers, and roughish leather gaiters that came up to the knee, with ponchos strapped on in front; inside them was a spare shirt or two; we had oldish felt hats, as if we’d come a good way. Our saddles and bridles were rusty-looking and worn; the horses were the only things that were a little too good, and might bring the police to suspect us. We had to think of a yarn about them. We looked just the same as a hundred other long-legged six-foot natives with our beards and hair pretty wild—neither better nor worse.

As soon as Starlight came on to the Turon he was to rig himself out as a regular swell, and gammon he’d just come out from England to look at the goldfields. He could do that part wonderfully well. We would have backed him to take in the devil, himself, if he saw him, let alone goldfields police, if Sergeant Goring wasn’t about.

The second day Jim and I were driving quietly and easy on the road, the colts trotting along as steady as old stock horses, and feeding a bit every now and then. We knew we were getting near the Turon, so many tracks came in from all parts, and all went one way. All of a sudden we heard a low rumbling, roaring noise, something like the tide coming in on the seashore.

“I say, Jim, old man, we haven’t made a mistake—crossed over the main range and got back to the coast, have we?”

“Not likely,” he said; “but what the deuce is that row? I can’t reckon it up for the life of me.”

I studied and studied. On it went grinding and rattling like all the round pebbles in the world rolling on a beach with a tidy surf on. I tumbled at last.

“Remember that thing with the two rockers we saw at the Hermit’s Hut in the Hollow?” I said to Jim. “We couldn’t make out what it was. I know now; it was a gold cradle, and there’s hundreds and thousands rocking there at the Turon. That’s what’s the matter.”

“We’re going to see some life, it strikes me,” says he. “We’ll know it all directly. But the first thing we’ve got to do is to shut these young ‘uns up safe in the sale-yard. Then we can knock round this town in comfort.”

We went outside of a rocky point, and sure enough here was the first Australian gold-diggings in full blast. What a sight it was, to be sure! Jim and I sat in our saddles while the horses went to work on the green grass of the flat, and stared as if we’d seen a bit of another world. So it was another world to us, straight away from the sad-voiced solitudes of the bush.