Page 5 - A Little Bush Maid

BTLLABONG

Norah’s home was on a big station in the north of Victoria--so large that

you could almost, in her own phrase, "ride all day and never see any one
you didn’t want to see"; which was a great advantage in Norah’s eyes. Not

that Billabong Station ever seemed to the little girl a place that you needed
to praise in any way. Tt occupied so very modest a position as the loveliest
part of the world!

The homestead was built on a gentle rise that sloped gradually away on

every side; in front to the wide plain, dotted with huge gum trees and great
grey box groves, and at the back, after you had passed through the
well-kept vegetable garden and orchard, to a long lagoon, bordered with

trees and fringed with tall bulrushes and waving reeds.

The house itself was old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattle and
dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as the grey
shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had been added

to from time to time by different owners, though no additions had been
made since Norah’s father brought home his young wife, fifteen years

before this story opens. Then he had built a large new wing with wide and
lofty rooms, and round all had put a very broad, tiled verandah. The
creepers had had time to twine round the massive posts in those fifteen

years, and some even lay in great masses on the verandah roof; tecoma,
pink and salmon-coloured; purple bougainvillea, and the snowy

mandevillea clusters. Hard-headed people said this was not good for the
building--but Norah’s mother had planted them, and because she had loved
them they were never touched.

There was a huge front garden, not at all a proper kind of garden, but a

great stretch of smooth buffalo grass, dotted with all kinds of trees,
amongst which flower beds cropped up in most unexpected and unlikely
places, just as if some giant had flung them out on the grass like a handful

of pebbles that scattered as they flew. They were always trim and tidy, and