2-355 (Original)

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It was rather queer that not one of them had ever visited those ranges till I did, but the truth is, there is nothing almost in any of the settlers heads but some half dozen things, to wit sheep, wool, bullocks, drays, servants, horses, and occasionally a little about tallow and boiling down and huts and such like. That is the eternal, never ceasing lingo, day and night, summer and winter. It becomes horribly boring, and you can rarely get anyone to talk even for a few minutes on any other possible subject whatever. They shirk it immediately, so that all your previous knowledge and stores of information are perfectly useless and become, as it were, screwed up in one of their screwpresses. As an instance, last year when the most intense interest was prevailing amongst, one would have said, the whole civilized world with regard to the stirring affairs of Europe and the fearful changes and catastrophes occuring so plentifully on the continent, they out in Port Phillip neither read nor cared one fig about the entire matter and never would speak almost on the subject, excepting to curse the French for spoiling the price of their wool, and then they smoke and drink and drink and smoke. [...]
As to the huts, in which they lived during the first years of their sojourning on their runs, why no language could almost give you an adequate idea of some of them. Some are still living in those primitive substitutes for houses, as Mr. and Mrs. Patterson of Lake Bolak within 9 miles of Robert's place. [42] I stopped twice there and slept, but you never in all your life saw, or perhaps imagined such queer rum places, and another far worse 8 miles from Muirhead's where the Archibald family lived near the base of Mount William, a most strange locality, and as to the hut, it was what they call a slab hut, that you could shoot easily through between every two slabs plenty of fresh air you see. [...]
Now, as to people going out, I decidedly think young people are the right sort, who will have their habits to form and not have to break up old habits or long contracted associations. They will fall into the ways, manners, habits, customs, and so forth of the colony with ease, and get soon to relish the new mode of life, but to older people the change in many respects is excessively unpleasant, miserable and depressing. In fact you would become quite ennuyed unless you drink and smoke etc etc although I must say some do not smoke at all, nor drink much [...] There are many nice people and some highly respectable, but many who are very coarse, and who had come out without a stiver. 
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