Nothing in that year could keep people’s thoughts long away from the diggings, which was just as well for us. Everything but the gold was forgotten after a week. If the harbour had dried up or Sydney town been buried by an earthquake, nobody would have bothered themselves about such trifles so long as the gold kept turning up hand over hand the way it did. There seemed no end to it. New diggings jumped up every day, and now another big rush broke out in Port Phillip that sent everyone wilder than ever.

Starlight and us two often used to have a quiet talk about Melbourne. We all liked that side of the country; there seemed an easier chance of getting straight away from there than any part of New South Wales, where so many people knew us and everybody was on the look-out.

All kinds of things passed through our minds, but the notion we liked best was taking one of the gold ships bodily and sailing away to a foreign port, where her name could be changed, and she never heard of again, if all went well. That would be a big touch and no mistake. Starlight, who had been at sea, and was always ready for anything out of the way and uncommon, the more dangerous the better, thought it might be done without any great risk or bother.

“A ship in harbour,” he said, “is something like the Ballabri bank. No one expects anything to happen in harbour, consequently there’s no watch kept or any look-out that’s worth much. Any sudden dash with a few good men and she’d be off and out to sea before anyone could say ‘knife’.”

Father didn’t like this kind of talk. He was quite satisfied where we were. We were safe there, he said; and, as long as we kept our heads, no one need ever be the wiser how it was we always seemed to go through the ground and no one could follow us up. What did we fret after? Hadn’t we everything we wanted in the world—plenty of good grub, the best of liquor, and the pick of the countryside for horses, besides living among our own friends and in the country we were born in, and that had the best right to keep us. If we once got among strangers and in another colony we should be “given away” by someone or other, and be sure to come to grief in the long-run.

Well, we couldn’t go and cut out this ship all at once, but Jim and I didn’t leave go of the notion, and we had many a yarn with Starlight about it when we were by ourselves.