In Bad Company, and other stories, Classics To Go
Excerpt: "Bill Hardwick was as fine a specimen of an Australian as you could find in a day's march. Active as a cat and strong withal, he was mostly described as 'a real good all-round chap, that you couldn't put wrong at any kind of work that a man could be asked to do.' He could plough and reap, dig and mow, put up fences and huts, break in horses and drive bullocks; he could milk cows and help in the dairy as handily as a woman. These and other accomplishments he was known to possess, and being a steady, sensible fellow, was always welcome when work was needed and a good man valued. Besides all this he was the fastest and the best shearer in the district of Tumut, New South Wales, where he was born, as had been his father and mother before him. So that he was a true Australian in every sense of the word. It could not be said that the British race had degenerated as far as he was concerned. Six feet high, broad-chested, light-flanked, and standing on his legs like a gamecock, he was always ready to fight or work, run, ride or swim, in fact to tackle any muscular exercise in the world at the shortest notice. Bill had always been temperate, declining to spend his earnings to enrich the easy-going township publican, whose mode of gaining a living struck him as being too far removed from that of honest toil. Such being his principles and mode of life, he had put by a couple of hundred pounds, and 'taken up a selection.' This means (in Australia) that he had conditionally purchased three hundred and twenty acres of 2Crown Land, had paid up two shillings per acre of the upset price, leaving the balance of eighteen shillings, to be paid off when convenient. He had constructed thereon, chiefly with his own hands, a comfortable, four-roomed cottage, of the 'slab' architecture of the period, and after fencing in his property and devoting the proceeds of a couple of shearings to a modest outlay in furniture, had married Jenny Dawson, a good-looking, well-conducted young woman, whom he had known ever since he was big enough to crack a stockwhip."
Rolf Boldrewood
Thomas Alexander Browne (6 August 1826 – 11 March 1915) was an Australian author who published many of his works under the pseudonym Rolf Boldrewood. He is best known for his 1882 bushranging novel Robbery Under Arms. Browne was born in London, the eldest child of Captain Sylvester John Brown, a shipmaster formerly of the East India Company, and his wife Elizabeth Angell, née Alexander. His mother was his "earliest admirer and most indulgent critic . . . to whom is chiefly due whatever meed of praise my readers may hereafter vouchsafe" (Dedication Old Melbourne Memories). (Thomas added the 'e' to his surname in the 1860s). After his father's barque Proteus had delivered a cargo of convicts in Hobart, the family settled in Sydney in 1831. Sylvester Brown took up whaling and built a stone mansion, Enmore, which gave its name to the suburb of Sydney.[1] Thomas Browne was sent to W. T. Cape's school at Sydney, and afterwards to Sydney College, when Cape became its headmaster. One of Browne's closest school friends was a son of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, MLC, the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, and according to the Dulhunty Papers, Browne spent carefree holidays staying with the Gibbes family at their grand waterside residence on Sydney's Point Piper. When his father moved to Melbourne in 1839, Browne remained at Sydney College as a boarder until 1841 and then was taught by Rev. David Boyd in Melbourne. In 1843, though only 17 years old, Browne took up land near Port Fairy which he named Squattlesamere and was there until 1856. He visited England in 1860 and in 1862–1863 had a property, Murrabit run at Lake Boga near Swan Hill, followed by Bundidgaree station on the Murrumbidgee River near Narrandera in the Riverina in 1864. However, bad seasons in 1866 and 1868 compelled Browne to give up squatting, and in 1871 he became a police magistrate and gold commissioner. After living in Sydney a short time, in April 1871 he was appointed a police magistrate at Gulgong and gold commissioner in 1872. Browne was an experienced justice of the peace, having acted as chairman of the bench of justices at Narrandera, but in his first years at Gulgong, then one of the richest and largest goldfields in New South Wales, his ignorance of mining and the complicated regulations drew criticism of his competence as commissioner. He was persistently attacked by the Gulgong Guardian And District Mining Record until in 1873 it published an anonymous letter accusing him of bias and corruption. Its editor was thereupon convicted in Sydney of criminal libel and sentenced to six months gaol. The charges against Browne were disproved, and he won favour with the miners by magnanimously interceding with the judge for a light punishment of his libeller. In 1881 Browne was transferred as magistrate and mining warden to Dubbo and to Armidale in 1884. He moved to Albury as chairman of the Land Licensing Board in 1885, serving there as magistrate and warden from 1887 to 1895 until retiring to Melbourne. He died on 11 March 1915 in Melbourne and was buried in Brighton Cemetery.
