Sheilah McLeod: A Heroine of the Back Blocks

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Boothby Guy. Sheilah McLeod: A Heroine of the Back Blocks

PROLOGUE. VAKALAVI IN THE SAMOAN GROUP

CHAPTER I. OLD BARRANDA ON THE CARGOO RIVER, SOUTH-WESTERN QUEENSLAND

CHAPTER II. HOW I FIRST LEARNED MY LOVE FOR SHEILAH

CHAPTER III. WHISPERING PETE

CHAPTER IV. THE RACE

CHAPTER V. CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER VI. COLIN McLEOD

CHAPTER VII. I PROPOSE TO SHEILAH

CHAPTER VIII. A VISIT FROM WHISPERING PETE

CHAPTER IX. SHEILAH'S LOYALTY

CHAPTER X. THE TRIAL

CHAPTER XI. HOW I ESCAPED

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When first I remember old Barranda Township on the Cargoo River, South-Western Queensland, it was not what it is to-day. There were no grand three-storeyed hotels, with gilded and mirror-hung saloons, and pretty, bright-eyed barmaids, in the main street then; no macadamised roads, no smart villa residences peeping from groves of Moreton Bay fig-trees and stretching for more than a mile out into the country on either side, no gas lamps, no theatre, no School of Arts, no churches or chapels, no Squatters' Club, and, above all, no railway line connecting it with Brisbane and the outer world. No! There were none of these things. The township, however, lay down in the long gully, beside the winding, ugly creek just as it does to-day – but in those days its site was only a clearing out of the primeval bush; the houses were, to use an Irishism, either tents or slab huts; two hotels certainly graced the main street, but they were grog shanties of the most villainous description, and were only patronised by the riffraff of the country side. The only means of communicating with the metropolis was by the bullock waggons that brought up our stores once every six months, or by riding to the nearest township, one hundred and eight miles distant, and taking the coach from there – a long and wearisome journey that few cared to undertake.

One thing has always puzzled me, and that was how it came about that my father ever settled on the Cargoo. Whatever his reason may have been, however, certain was it that he was one of the earliest to reach the river, a fact which was demonstrated by the significant circumstance that he held possession of the finest site for a house and the pick of all the best country for miles around the township. It was in the earliest days that he made his way out west, and if I have my suspicions of why he came to Australia at all, well, I have always kept them religiously to myself, and intend to go on doing so. But before I say anything about my father, let me tell you what I remember of the old home.

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As I stood, listening, in the shadow of the doorway, I could not help thinking that this was rather scurvy treatment on my father's part of one who had come so many thousand miles to see him. However, Mr Redgarth did not seem as much put out by it as I expected he would be.

'I have come to tell you, my – ' he began, and then checked himself, 'well, since you wish it, I will call you Mr Heggarstone, that your father is dead.'

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