Old George had got on in the world and no mistake. He’d worked early and late, always been as steady as a rock, and had looked ahead instead of taking his pleasure straight off when he got the first few hundred pounds together. He’d seen fat cattle must be dear and scarce for years to come. Noticed, too, that however cheap a far-away bit of country was held, sometimes bought for £200 or £300, it always rose in value year by year. So with store cattle. Now and again they’d fall to nothing. Then he’d buy a whole lot of poor milkers’ calves about Burrangong, or some of those thick places where they never fattened, for £1 a head or less, and send them away to his runs in the Lachlan. In six months you wouldn’t know ‘em. They’d come down well-grown fat cattle in a year or two, and be worth their £6 or £8 a head.

The same way with land; he bought up all the little bits of allotments with cottages on them round Parramatta and Windsor way and Campbelltown—all them old-fashioned sleepy old places near Sydney, for cash, and cheap enough. The people that had them, and had lived a pokey life in them for many a year, wanted the money to go to the diggings with, and quite right, too. Still and all, this land was rising in value, and George’s children, if he had any, would be among the richest people in the colony.

After he’d married Miss Oldham—they were Hawkesbury people, her grandfather, old Captain Oldham, was one of the officers in the first regiment that came out—he didn’t see why he shouldn’t have as good a house as anyone else. So he had a gentleman up from Sydney that drew plans, and he had a real stone house built, with rooms upstairs, and furniture to match, a new garden, and a glass house at the side, for all the world like some of them grand places in Darling Point, near Sydney.