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TheLadder/tools/story-to-pack/probe/lawson/claude/REFERENCE.html
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JesseMarkowitzandClaude Opus 5.5 3a4758172d story-to-pack: add the corpora and the catalogue v2/v3
Fourteen corpora split and classified: aesop, bierce, chekhov, holmes,
keefe, lawson, lorimer, maupassant, nobody, plaintales, poe, torchy,
wallingford and winesburg, each with its splitter and the hand-written
groups and pages; catalogue v2 and v3; and the shared splitters
gutenberg_chunks.py, se_split.py and se_build.py.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019rwKTmug58sEsJ72AuWsEi
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<h1>While the Billy Boils: reference groups</h1>
<p class="meta">Henry Lawson, 1896 (Standard Ebooks text). 52 stories, 308 scenes cut by the same rule as <code>chunk.py</code>.
Summaries, predicaments, groups and options written by Claude by reading every scene: no local inference.
A comparison baseline, not a pack. Option moves give a direction only, never a number.</p>
<section><h2>G01 · An old mate down on his luck leans on you</h2>
<p class="pred">An old mate from harder days has turned up broke and expects you to carry him, and he will not take a hint.</p>
<p class="meta">A settled person wants to help without being bled dry from an old mate down on his luck. · 7 scenes from 5 stories
(Steelman, Shooting the Moon, “Dossing Out” and “Camping”, Across the Straits, Steelman’s Pupil) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Take him in, for old times&#x27; sake. <span class='src'>from scene 105</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>money -</code> <code>relationships.family -</code></li><li>Invent an excuse to ease him out. <span class='src'>from scene 106</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.mate risk</code></li><li>Give him something, if only to be rid of him. <span class='src'>from scene 177 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.mate -</code></li><li>Tell him straight that he has to go. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.mate -</code></li><li>Leave food out for him and say nothing. <span class='src'>from scene 148</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>105</b> · <i>Steelman</i> — An old companion from wilder days turns up at a settled man&#x27;s home, invites himself to stay, and cannot be made to leave.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman, a hard case, seeks out old friends who have married and settled, stays to tea, then for the night, then indefinitely, and tells protesting wives he is their husband&#x27;s guest.</p></details><details><summary><b>106</b> · <i>Steelman</i> — A settled man tries to ease out an old friend who has overstayed, blaming his wife&#x27;s family because he cannot say it straight.</summary><p class="sum">The only escape is to move, and he helps with that too; his old schoolmate Brown tries to ease him out by inventing a sister-in-law who needs his room.</p></details><details><summary><b>107</b> · <i>Steelman</i> — A man trying to tell an old friend to go loses his nerve, and ends up begging him to stay and buying his beer.</summary><p class="sum">Brown flounders and apologises; Steelman cheerfully offers to move into the damp washhouse and borrows a shilling for beer, and Brown gives in.</p></details><details><summary><b>122</b> · <i>Shooting the Moon</i> — A man down to his last possessions waits for an old mate to send money, with nothing else between him and despair.</summary><p class="sum">In camp Mitchell recalls a pub he had to leave without paying, the rope he carried to lower his things, and the revolver he kept while waiting for a mate to send a pound.</p></details><details><summary><b>148</b> · <i>“Dossing Out” and “Camping”</i> — A man of small means leaves food out each night for a stranger, and finds it is an old mate fallen on hard times.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator recalls a night on the streets feeling like a felon; a small businessman left food scraps outside each night for a shadow, who turned out to be an old mate.</p></details><details><summary><b>158</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — Arriving broke among strangers, a traveller sends word to a friend far away asking for money to tide him over.</summary><p class="sum">Landing at Picton, he gloomily wires a friend in the North Island &#x27;Wire quid; stumped&#x27;, takes a room at a pub and writes the sketch as the candle dies.</p></details><details><summary><b>176</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — The pupil&#x27;s trick succeeds, and later, when his old mentor has done well, he turns up broke expecting to be looked after.</summary><p class="sum">Smith returns laden with food, clothes, medicine and money; later Steelman prospers managing a pub, and Smith turns up broke expecting help.</p></details></section><section><h2>G02 · Standing by a mate nobody else will</h2>
<p class="pred">A mate of yours has let himself and others down, everyone else has written him off, and standing by him will cost you.</p>
<p class="meta">A loyal mate wants to keep faith with him from the crowd that has written him off. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
(That There Dog o’ Mine, The Bush Undertaker, Macquarie’s Mate) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Speak up for him, and fight if it comes to that. <span class='src'>from scene 297</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>relationships.crowd -</code> <code>flags.fought_for_mate set</code></li><li>Remind them he never ran anyone down behind their back. <span class='src'>from scene 294</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.crowd risk</code></li><li>Refuse any help that means leaving him behind. <span class='src'>from scene 63</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>grit +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Carry him yourself, whatever it costs you. <span class='src'>from scene 215</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Keep your head down and let them talk. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.mate -</code> <code>relationships.crowd +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>62</b> · <i>That There Dog o’ Mine</i> — Badly hurt and needing help, a man is told he may have it only if he turns away the companion who stood by him.</summary><p class="sum">A shearer hurt in a drunken shanty brawl walks ten miles to hospital with his lame dog; the doctors will take him but not the dog, and he gets up to leave.</p></details><details><summary><b>63</b> · <i>That There Dog o’ Mine</i> — A man refuses help that means abandoning a loyal companion, remembering how he once could not bear to leave one behind.</summary><p class="sum">He refuses to stay without the dog, telling how it was born on the track and how he killed its blind mother because he could not leave her behind alive.</p></details><details><summary><b>64</b> · <i>That There Dog o’ Mine</i> — A man tells those in charge that his loyal companion is worth more than he is, and will not desert him now.</summary><p class="sum">He declares the dog a better mate than any man, which saved him from being robbed and fought beside him, then collapses; they take him in and he asks for the dog.</p></details><details><summary><b>214</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A man finds that an old mate who could never stay off the drink has finally drunk himself to death, alone.</summary><p class="sum">From the boots and the rum bottle he recognises Brummy, an old mate who could earn more than any man but drank it all, and scolds the corpse before pocketing the rum.</p></details><details><summary><b>215</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A man with almost nothing gives up part of what little he owns to carry home the body of an old mate decently.</summary><p class="sum">He sandwiches the body between sheets of bark, tears strips from his only shirt to tie it, and carries Brummy home on his shoulder with the bag of bones.</p></details><details><summary><b>293</b> · <i>Macquarie’s Mate</i> — When a crowd runs down an absent man, a broken old drunk who was once his mate stands up to defend him.</summary><p class="sum">Drinkers in a shanty run down Macquarie, an absent shearer, as a loafer and a liar; an old ruined drunk called Awful Example rises to say Macquarie was his mate.</p></details><details><summary><b>294</b> · <i>Macquarie’s Mate</i> — An old man shames a crowd of gossips by saying that the absent man never spoke ill of anyone behind his back.</summary><p class="sum">The old man denies each charge and says Macquarie never talked about any man behind his back, and the room falls into an uneasy silence.</p></details><details><summary><b>295</b> · <i>Macquarie’s Mate</i> — Told that the man they slandered is dead, a crowd of gossips shift uncomfortably and find excuses to be somewhere else.</summary><p class="sum">Barcoo says Macquarie was a bully who smashed smaller men; the old man says Macquarie is dead, and the drinkers shuffle and find reasons to go outside; a gaunt stranger rides up to the back.</p></details><details><summary><b>297</b> · <i>Macquarie’s Mate</i> — A broken old man squares up to fight for an absent mate&#x27;s name, and the mate himself walks in to stand beside him.</summary><p class="sum">The old man shouts that Macquarie&#x27;s mate is alive and squares up to fight Barcoo; the stranger pins him from behind and says &#x27;It&#x27;s Macquarie, old mate&#x27;, and Barcoo rides off.</p></details></section><section><h2>G03 · A mate always one move ahead of you</h2>
<p class="pred">Your mate is sharper than you, keeps you in the dark, and leaves you carrying the risk while he comes out ahead.</p>
<p class="meta">A the slower mate wants a fair share and fair treatment from a sharp mate. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
(Stiffner and Jim, Steelman, Steelman’s Pupil) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Tell him off to his face. <span class='src'>from scene 25</span><br><code>relationships.mate -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Do as he says and learn his game. <span class='src'>from scene 174 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>flags.learned_the_game set</code></li><li>Part company when the chance comes. <span class='src'>from scene 27 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.mate -</code> <code>flags.moved_on set</code></li><li>Stand up to him with your fists. <span class='src'>from scene 108</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.mate risk</code></li><li>Keep your own money where he cannot get at it. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>nous +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>19</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — A companion who says a man must take or be taken asks his mate to trust him with the little money they have.</summary><p class="sum">Bill, who believes the world is sharps and mugs, gets the narrator to cadge ten shillings from a navvy and takes charge of it.</p></details><details><summary><b>20</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — A mate seems to have lost the pair&#x27;s last money, and the two argue over which of them must face the one they owe.</summary><p class="sum">Next morning Bill has a black eye and eighteen pence; they quarrel over who must face the landlord and toss for it, and the narrator loses.</p></details><details><summary><b>25</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Safe at last, a man berates his boastful mate for the mess, and the mate calmly shows he held money back all along.</summary><p class="sum">In camp Bill boasts that he got them through; the narrator tears into him as a mug, and Bill quietly produces money he had all along.</p></details><details><summary><b>26</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — A man learns his mate let him carry all the risk of a trick the mate planned himself, and lies awake wondering about him.</summary><p class="sum">Bill produces the rest of the money, explaining he let the narrator take the risk to pay out the publican, whom he had a grudge against; the narrator lies awake.</p></details><details><summary><b>108</b> · <i>Steelman</i> — A man who finally tries to throw out an overstaying old friend is beaten, then lectured by him on how to treat a guest.</summary><p class="sum">At last Brown comes home drunk and tries to kick Steelman out, gets a hiding, and is nursed and lectured by him next morning on how to treat a guest.</p></details><details><summary><b>172</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — A hard, sharp companion takes a weaker one under his wing to teach him the game, and punishes every failure.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman, a humorous spieler, takes the weedy, cringing Smith in hand to teach him and beats him when he fails; as Smith sets off to beg at an old Scottish couple&#x27;s store, Steelman stops him in despair.</p></details><details><summary><b>173</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — A domineering companion scorns his pupil as a born fool, then offers to set up the whole scheme for him himself.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman calls Smith a born mug, which hurts him most, and wearily offers to stage the business for him.</p></details><details><summary><b>177</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — A man who prospered lectures a broke old companion for failing him, helps him grudgingly, and soon finds himself leaned on again.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman lectures Smith for failing his training and gives him a pound in disgust; later, down again, they team up, and Smith asks to borrow Steelman&#x27;s overcoat for the night.</p></details></section><section><h2>G04 · Keeping an old mateship alive</h2>
<p class="pred">An old mate from the hard years is far away or only passing through, and keeping the tie alive takes effort.</p>
<p class="meta">A old mate wants to keep the old tie alive from a mate from the old days. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
(An Old Mate of Your Father’s, Remailed, For Auld Lang Syne) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go to trouble over a small token for him. <span class='src'>from scene 114</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Make him welcome and let the old days talk. <span class='src'>from scene 0</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code></li><li>Keep what the two of you shared from your family. <span class='src'>from scene 3</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code> <code>flags.shared_secret set</code></li><li>Let it lapse; you both have lives now. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.mate -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>0</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — An old companion from a parent&#x27;s hard early years turns up, and the household makes room for a past it never shared.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator remembers how an old mate of his father&#x27;s from the diggings would turn up at the selection, praise the children, slip them coins and tell stories of the old days.</p></details><details><summary><b>3</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — Two old companions share a dangerous past they will not explain, and turn aside every question the children ask about it.</summary><p class="sum">In the evenings the mates yarn about old friends and talk low about the Eureka Stockade, while the father explains away his scars to the children.</p></details><details><summary><b>113</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — A man lends out something he treasures, has to fight to get it back, and keeps it safe for a friend far away.</summary><p class="sum">The paper passes round with grumbling and accusation, and when Bill gets it back he hides it away to send to his old mate Jim.</p></details><details><summary><b>114</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — A man goes to awkward trouble over a small gift for an old mate, finding even his friend&#x27;s formal name strange to him.</summary><p class="sum">Bill clumsily folds, ties and addresses the paper, finding his old mate&#x27;s formal name strange to write.</p></details><details><summary><b>115</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — A man far away goes looking for word from an old mate, though the two of them hardly ever write to each other.</summary><p class="sum">Far away, Jim strolls to the post office on mail night hoping for a paper from Bill; old mates like these seldom write.</p></details><details><summary><b>304</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — Mates with very little money pool what they have to send one of their own off with small tokens of friendship.</summary><p class="sum">Bound by work, poverty and drink, they slip tobacco, books and flasks into his bunk and pockets, and pool what money they have for more.</p></details></section><section><h2>G05 · Someone worse off than you</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone even worse off than you is right in front of you, and you have only a little to spare.</p>
<p class="meta">A person barely getting by wants to do right without going short from someone worse off. · 6 scenes from 5 stories
(Settling on the Land, Hungerford, Stragglers, “Rats”, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Share what you have. <span class='src'>from scene 83</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Give enough to see them on their way. <span class='src'>from scene 41</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.stranger +</code></li><li>Humour them kindly and leave a little behind. <span class='src'>from scene 208</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.stranger +</code></li><li>Lend your hands and your time instead of money. <span class='src'>from scene 265</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.stranger +</code></li><li>Walk on; you can barely keep yourself. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>9</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — Every effort a struggling beginner makes is undone by weather and sickness, and only one neighbour stands by him through it.</summary><p class="sum">Flood washes away his crop and soil, the next crop rusts, and nursing his cows&#x27; eyes he goes half blind himself, nursed through it by a German neighbour.</p></details><details><summary><b>41</b> · <i>Hungerford</i> — A penniless traveller is given enough to get him moving on, and an old hand shows what he thinks of every government going.</summary><p class="sum">A storekeeper gives a deadbeat swagman rations to see him over the border, and an old shepherd spits over the fence on both colonies, and on the rest.</p></details><details><summary><b>83</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Hungry men between jobs share what food they have with the worst off, and tease the one who offers to feed them all.</summary><p class="sum">A big Irish shearer invites the Exception to eat, but he can barely manage it; the men chaff the one who volunteered to bake bread for them all.</p></details><details><summary><b>207</b> · <i>“Rats”</i> — Travellers who meet a harmless old man gone strange from loneliness choose to humour his delusion rather than mock him.</summary><p class="sum">Rats says the swag knocked him down first, so the shearers stage a mock boxing match, seconding the swag and betting, and award him the fight.</p></details><details><summary><b>208</b> · <i>“Rats”</i> — Before moving on, a traveller quietly gives what money and food he can spare to a lonely old man who has lost his wits.</summary><p class="sum">Rats borrows meat for bait and fishes imaginary cod in the grass; before they move on, Sunlight gives him half a crown and tucker and tells him to reach the water before dark.</p></details><details><summary><b>265</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A band of rough youngsters turns out at night to help a woman in trouble, eager to lend a hand for nothing.</summary><p class="sum">Chinny arrives with a bony horse and a spliced bottle-cart; the boys eagerly load the furniture, the ironing table upside down with the rest between its legs.</p></details></section><section><h2>G06 · The one the crew picks on</h2>
<p class="pred">The crew has picked one of its own as the butt of every joke, and the next one is being planned with you in it.</p>
<p class="meta">A crew member wants to fit in without being cruel from the butt, and the rest of the crew. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
(An Echo from the Old Bark School, The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog, The Story of Malachi, Bogg of Geebung) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Join in the joke. <span class='src'>from scene 141</span><br><code>relationships.crew +</code> <code>relationships.butt -</code></li><li>Call it off before it goes too far. <span class='src'>from scene 275</span><br><code>relationships.butt +</code> <code>relationships.crew risk</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Keep a straight face and deny everything. <span class='src'>from scene 142 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.butt -</code></li><li>Treat him with extra respect once you see it hurt. <span class='src'>from scene 144</span><br><code>relationships.butt +</code> <code>relationships.crew +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>139</b> · <i>An Echo from the Old Bark School</i> — When a respectful silence is asked for, a slow child blunders a second time, and a classmate punishes him for it.</summary><p class="sum">The master asks for quiet out of respect; the dunce asks what D stands for and is elbowed by a classmate.</p></details><details><summary><b>141</b> · <i>The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog</i> — A rough crowd plays a cruel joke on an old man&#x27;s pet for fun, and he confronts all of them over the evening meal.</summary><p class="sum">The men chaff the cook, who answers with pathetic speeches about his age, hard work and small wages; at smoko Geordie shears the dog to roars of laughter, and the cook rages at teatime.</p></details><details><summary><b>143</b> · <i>The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog</i> — An overworked old man complains that the crew he slaves for have no respect for him, and the culprit cannot keep a straight face.</summary><p class="sum">The cook laments his long hours and asks why they could not play the trick on another man&#x27;s dog; Geordie, trying to look ashamed, catches sight of the dog and explodes with laughter.</p></details><details><summary><b>144</b> · <i>The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog</i> — A crew that went too far with a joke grows sorry, then resentful, until they learn what really stung the one they mocked.</summary><p class="sum">The cook sulks for three days, and the men grow sorry and then irritated, until he admits he only minded that the trimmed dog would make him look flash in town.</p></details><details><summary><b>243</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — A simple, shabby workmate becomes the whole crew&#x27;s butt, and never protests beyond a mild word or two.</summary><p class="sum">Malachi, a tall, shabby, simple station hand who has barely left the bush, is the butt of all the boys&#x27; jokes and never protests beyond &#x27;Now, none of your pranktical jokes!&#x27;</p></details><details><summary><b>244</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — A crew&#x27;s jokes on a slow, trusting workmate grow crueller, playing on everything he fears or dislikes.</summary><p class="sum">The boys graduate to forged letters from women threatening breach of promise, in the long words he hates; a visiting bricklayer who dabbles in phrenology and seances offers a bigger joke.</p></details><details><summary><b>245</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — The crew persuades a trusting workmate that a visiting stranger means him harm, and watches his fear grow.</summary><p class="sum">They get Malachi&#x27;s bumps read at a seance, then persuade him the bricklayer kills people for their skulls and admires his.</p></details><details><summary><b>247</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — A frightened man bursts out of the trap the crew set for him, and the jokers laugh at him until they ache.</summary><p class="sum">Malachi offers his skeleton after death, then bursts out through the bark wall and runs for the station, while the hidden jokers laugh themselves sick.</p></details><details><summary><b>275</b> · <i>Bogg of Geebung</i> — Youths planning a cruel joke on a lonely drunk glimpse him grieving over old keepsakes, and their leader calls it off.</summary><p class="sum">Sober, Bogg fossicks and splits palings, keeps his credit good and feeds any sundowner; larrikins come to play a ghost joke on him, but their leader sees him grieving over a letter, a portrait and a lock of hair.</p></details></section><section><h2>G07 · Whose side are you on</h2>
<p class="pred">The people around you are sorting out who stands with the workers and who with the masters, and you must show which.</p>
<p class="meta">A working man wants to stand with the right people from mates on one side, masters on the other. · 5 scenes from 3 stories
(His Country-After All, Stragglers, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Declare yourself with your mates. <span class='src'>from scene 84</span><br><code>relationships.mates +</code> <code>relationships.boss -</code></li><li>Boast of how you stood up to a boss. <span class='src'>from scene 234</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.mates risk</code></li><li>Say your loyalty goes only to whoever treats you fairly. <span class='src'>from scene 50</span><br><code>relationships.mates -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Keep your views to yourself. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.boss +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>50</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — A man who was starved and overworked in his own country declares loyalty only to the place that treated him fairly.</summary><p class="sum">He rails that he starved and worked harder for less at home than anywhere else, and that the country belongs to foreign speculators.</p></details><details><summary><b>51</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — A man who was used up by the people who owned his country argues that loyalty to it only serves those masters.</summary><p class="sum">He attacks patriotism as a lie that makes men slave and fight for their masters, silencing the bagman, then asks about a grove of trees.</p></details><details><summary><b>84</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Men between jobs sound each other out about which side each one is on, then swap boasts about getting the better of the bosses.</summary><p class="sum">The sick man goes to the station for medicine and rations; the rest sound each other out about the union, curse the squatter and swap lies about outwitting bosses.</p></details><details><summary><b>233</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men thrown together by hard times argue about who will really stand up for working people, while one keeps boasting.</summary><p class="sum">The drinkers argue drunkenly about women voting and about working men in parliament, while another tries to finish a yarn in which he is the hero.</p></details><details><summary><b>234</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — A man boasts to strangers of defying a boss and beating the men brought in against him, until someone tells him to stop.</summary><p class="sum">A quarrel over &#x27;horny heads&#x27; is smoothed over with a flask; a shearer boasts of flooring the boss-over-the-board and two blacklegs until a voice begs him to give it a rest.</p></details></section><section><h2>G08 · The one who holds your living</h2>
<p class="pred">Your living depends on someone who will not wait, will not raise your pay, and can put another in your place.</p>
<p class="meta">A worker wants to keep their place from the boss. · 7 scenes from 5 stories
(Hungerford, A Day on a Selection, Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock, Mitchell Doesn’t Believe in the Sack, A Visit of Condolence) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go to work sick rather than lose your place. <span class='src'>from scene 75</span><br><code>relationships.boss +</code> <code>grit +</code> <code>flags.worked_sick set</code></li><li>Refuse to take the sack. <span class='src'>from scene 120</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.boss risk</code></li><li>Do only what anyone will check. <span class='src'>from scene 55</span><br><code>relationships.boss -</code> <code>nous +</code></li><li>Turn down terms that put every cost on you. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Keep your head down and never ask for a rise. <span class='src'>from scene 199 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.boss +</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>42</b> · <i>Hungerford</i> — An old hand has been offered work on terms that put every cost and every risk on him, and sours on the whole country.</summary><p class="sum">The old man had been offered droving at a pittance, finding his own horse, feed and supplies; a trooper checks on the travellers, and next morning they move on.</p></details><details><summary><b>55</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A bored youngster left with the daily drudgery cuts every corner he can, knowing nobody will ever check the work properly.</summary><p class="sum">The boy milks carelessly, dozing against the cow, drowning dirt in the bucket and beating the animals when they kick.</p></details><details><summary><b>75</b> · <i>Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock</i> — A sick youngster insists on going to work anyway, because the people he works for will not wait and someone else wants his place.</summary><p class="sum">Sick with croup on the last night of the holidays, Arvie insists on setting the alarm for work: the firm will not wait, and someone might take his place.</p></details><details><summary><b>119</b> · <i>Mitchell Doesn’t Believe in the Sack</i> — A man who has lost every place he ever had resolves that next time he is let go, he simply will not leave.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell vows that if he gets a job again he will stick to it and save, and that if the boss gives him the sack he simply will not take it.</p></details><details><summary><b>120</b> · <i>Mitchell Doesn’t Believe in the Sack</i> — A worker told there is no more work for him argues calmly that he is comfortable where he is and will not accept it.</summary><p class="sum">He rehearses telling the boss that taking the sack has been the cause of all his troubles and that he is comfortable and will not go.</p></details><details><summary><b>121</b> · <i>Mitchell Doesn’t Believe in the Sack</i> — A man let go for lack of work stays on for his meals, betting the boss will give him work rather than feed him.</summary><p class="sum">Unpaid, he will potter about for his meals until the boss decides he may as well give him regular work, and then he will draw his wages again.</p></details><details><summary><b>196</b> · <i>A Visit of Condolence</i> — A rough youngster comes to warn a workmate that someone will take his place, and learns that the workmate has died.</summary><p class="sum">A rough boy, Bill, turns up at Jones&#x27;s Alley to warn Arvie that another lad will take his job if he does not come to work tomorrow, and learns from the mother that Arvie is dead.</p></details></section><section><h2>G09 · No work to be had</h2>
<p class="pred">There is no work to be had, and you must keep yourself fed until there is, however you can.</p>
<p class="meta">A worker out of work wants work, or at least a meal from whoever might hire or feed them. · 6 scenes from 6 stories
(Stragglers, In a Dry Season, “Dossing Out” and “Camping”, Mitchell: A Character Sketch, Jones’s Alley, Baldy Thompson) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep walking from one handout to the next. <span class='src'>from scene 80</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Ask for any work at all, then settle for a handout. <span class='src'>from scene 209</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.boss +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Take whatever work is going, however poor. <span class='src'>from scene 261</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>grit +</code></li><li>Go wherever you are sent, however far. <span class='src'>from scene 97</span><br><code>relationships.authority +</code> <code>money risk</code></li><li>Stay put and wait for the season to turn. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>80</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Men with no work must keep walking from one handout to the next just to live until the season&#x27;s work comes round again.</summary><p class="sum">Half a dozen travellers spell in the hut on New Year&#x27;s Eve, hoping to shear a few stragglers but mostly tramping for rations to live till next shearing.</p></details><details><summary><b>97</b> · <i>In a Dry Season</i> — A man out of work is sent after a place that turns out to be days away on foot, with nothing to eat.</summary><p class="sum">The country past Nevertire is parched; shearers watch the train with an independent air, and an unemployed man sent with a labour bureau letter finds his job is a hundred miles off.</p></details><details><summary><b>145</b> · <i>“Dossing Out” and “Camping”</i> — Men with no work and nowhere to sleep huddle together on a cold pavement, scavenging for scraps before the day begins.</summary><p class="sum">On a cold wet night some two hundred unemployed men sleep on the pavements of Sydney under shop verandas, sharing newspapers and rooting in rubbish bins.</p></details><details><summary><b>209</b> · <i>Mitchell: A Character Sketch</i> — Asking a mean boss for work and getting none, a man settles for a handout and quietly helps himself to the better share.</summary><p class="sum">At a mean station Mitchell asks the manager for any work, is refused, and asks for rations instead; told to kill a sheep and take a forequarter, he takes a hindquarter.</p></details><details><summary><b>261</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A youngster who quit underpaid work to escape a sponging stepfather can only fall back on work that pays nothing.</summary><p class="sum">Bill says his mother remarried for his sake and left him a stepfamily to support; he quit the factory because his stepfather waited for his pay, and now sells papers.</p></details><details><summary><b>298</b> · <i>Baldy Thompson</i> — A boss who once did every kind of work himself turns travellers away, pleading hard times, though he can never quite refuse them.</summary><p class="sum">Baldy Thompson, an old squatter who has been everything from swagman to politician and is now at the banks&#x27; mercy, grumbles to travellers that he cannot afford to take on more men.</p></details></section><section><h2>G10 · Taking from those who will not miss it</h2>
<p class="pred">The outfit that employs or carries you has plenty and gives you little, and it would be easy to help yourself.</p>
<p class="meta">A poorly treated worker wants a fairer share from the company or the boss. · 5 scenes from 4 stories
(Stragglers, Across the Straits, The Bush Undertaker, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Help yourself, and share it round. <span class='src'>from scene 240</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code> <code>flags.pilfered set</code></li><li>Time it for when the boss is away. <span class='src'>from scene 82</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>money +</code></li><li>Knock off early; nobody will know. <span class='src'>from scene 211</span><br><code>relationships.boss -</code> <code>flags.skived set</code></li><li>Leave it alone; some poor man may bear the loss. <span class='src'>from scene 241</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.mates -</code></li><li>Tell on whoever did it. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.boss +</code> <code>relationships.mates -</code> <code>flags.informer set</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>82</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Men waiting out the slack time shelter together, time their begging for when the boss is away, and watch over a sick newcomer.</summary><p class="sum">A sick young newcomer lies in a bunk while the others rest and read scraps; now and then a man goes to the station for flour when the manager is likely to be out.</p></details><details><summary><b>150</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — Travellers forced to pay high prices to the only company going are served bad food, and quietly help themselves to the cargo instead.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator crosses the strait in an old rusty coastal steamer; without competition, fares are high and food is foul, and the passengers pilfer the fruit cargo to survive.</p></details><details><summary><b>211</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — An old man alone at a remote post decides to knock off early for the holiday, sure that the boss will never know.</summary><p class="sum">On a scorching Christmas Day an old hut-keeping shepherd plans to yard the sheep early without the super knowing, cooks his dinner and thinks of digging up an Aboriginal grave.</p></details><details><summary><b>240</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — When some of the group steal from the cargo, everyone shares the spoils and keeps quiet rather than be taken for an informer.</summary><p class="sum">Oranges vanish from the deck cargo; a shearer blames the saloon passengers, the comedian drops the narrator an orange, and no man dares complain about the peel lest he seem an informer.</p></details><details><summary><b>241</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men who helped themselves to someone else&#x27;s goods argue it was no wrong, until one asks whether a poor man bears the loss.</summary><p class="sum">Two jokers eat a stolen pineapple by an open porthole; next day the men argue it is no sin to rob a company that underfeeds them, feel mean when told a poor grower may bear the loss, and feel better when blamed on a middleman.</p></details></section><section><h2>G11 · A venture that keeps failing</h2>
<p class="pred">Everything you have put into a venture keeps being lost, and you could give it up or put in still more.</p>
<p class="meta">A struggling small holder wants to make it pay at last from bad luck and bad advice. · 7 scenes from 5 stories
(An Old Mate of Your Father’s, Settling on the Land, A Day on a Selection, His Father’s Mate, The Drover’s Wife) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Try again the same way, only harder. <span class='src'>from scene 10</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Take the advice of whoever is nearest. <span class='src'>from scene 54</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li><li>Keep talking of the fresh start you will make one day. <span class='src'>from scene 1</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Cut your losses and take wage work. <span class='src'>from scene 13 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Scratch a living from what others left behind. <span class='src'>from scene 126</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>1</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — Two old companions walk over the ground of a venture that failed them and plan a fresh try neither will ever make.</summary><p class="sum">The two old mates walk among the abandoned shafts, pick over past mistakes and plan a new shaft the father will never sink.</p></details><details><summary><b>2</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — A man stuck with a poor living keeps his mind on the lost chances of his youth, egged on by an old companion.</summary><p class="sum">The father&#x27;s heart is not in his poor farm but in the old rushes, and the two yarn about lost claims until the children call them to breakfast.</p></details><details><summary><b>7</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A beginner working alone takes on the hardest task first, armed with more advice from others than experience of his own.</summary><p class="sum">With no experience and much bad advice he spends days digging round and trying to burn out the first great tree.</p></details><details><summary><b>10</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A man who keeps acting on bad advice watches everything he owns die one after another, and still will not give up.</summary><p class="sum">Following local advice he doctors his sick cows and then his horses, and they all die.</p></details><details><summary><b>54</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A worn-out household scrapes a living from sick stock and slack habits, following advice from people who know even less.</summary><p class="sum">On a poor selection the worn-out wife shrieks for her son to bring in the cows, and the boy milks sore-teated cows in a yard of slush, dosed with an ointment recommended by a man who knows nothing.</p></details><details><summary><b>126</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — Those too poor, old or disheartened to follow the next opportunity stay behind to scratch a living from what others abandoned.</summary><p class="sum">Only the stragglers remain, men too poor, old or disheartened to follow the rushes, fossicking in old claims; a boy sits writing on a slate beside a newly rigged windlass.</p></details><details><summary><b>166</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A wife alone keeps losing battles against flood and sickness, and pretends her menfolk are close by whenever a stranger calls.</summary><p class="sum">She remembers losing the dam to a flood, losing her best cows to disease, shooting a mad bullock and selling its hide, and telling suspicious strangers that her husband and sons are nearby.</p></details></section><section><h2>G12 · Going away for work, leaving people behind</h2>
<p class="pred">There is no living to be had where your people are, and the only work is far away, where they cannot follow yet.</p>
<p class="meta">A worker wants a living from the family and mates they would leave. · 7 scenes from 4 stories
(He’d Come Back, “Some Day”, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage, For Auld Lang Syne) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go, and send for them when you can. <span class='src'>from scene 302</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code> <code>flags.went_away set</code></li><li>Go, and let the ties lapse. <span class='src'>from scene 99</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Follow your mates out. <span class='src'>from scene 307</span><br><code>relationships.mates +</code> <code>money risk</code></li><li>Stay and make do. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>99</b> · <i>He’d Come Back</i> — A man who left his wife behind to follow work drifts into another life far away, and tells the story for sympathy.</summary><p class="sum">In a travellers&#x27; hut a man tells how hard times sent him upcountry for work, away from a wife he loved, and how he fell in with another woman.</p></details><details><summary><b>192</b> · <i>“Some Day”</i> — A rough man sure the woman he loves could never want him keeps his distance, and takes work far away to escape it.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell tells his mate about a girl visiting his sister whom he loved but thought too good for a rough, ugly man like him, so he kept away and took two or three years&#x27; work near the border.</p></details><details><summary><b>236</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men who sold up to seek work abroad kill the idle hours of the passage, with nothing to do but watch and wait.</summary><p class="sum">The consumptive newcomer is sick in the night; next morning the men idle about the deck, smoking, playing quoits and eyeing a huge log lashed by the hatch.</p></details><details><summary><b>242</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men who left their wives behind to go ahead and find work sight the new shore, and the fear of finding none returns.</summary><p class="sum">The women appear near the end, young wives with babies whose husbands go ahead to earn enough to send for them; nearing land the men face again the question of how to make a living.</p></details><details><summary><b>302</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — A skilled worker who can find no steady work at home must leave his wife behind and go abroad to try again.</summary><p class="sum">Ten mates gather on the wharf to see off their first mate, a carpenter who can get no regular work or fair wages in Sydney, leaving his wife with her people and four pounds ten.</p></details><details><summary><b>303</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — A band of workmates who shared good times and lean ones gather to see off the first of them forced to leave.</summary><p class="sum">He is the first of the old mountain push of building tradesmen to go; they have shared good times and lean ones and famous fortnightly sprees on country jobs.</p></details><details><summary><b>307</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — As the last of his old mates leaves, a man left behind decides it is time he followed them too.</summary><p class="sum">Jack, the narrator&#x27;s closest mate, left today, and the narrator thinks it is time he raised his own fare and followed the others.</p></details></section><section><h2>G13 · Time to walk away</h2>
<p class="pred">A place or an arrangement has stopped being good for you, and the question is whether to leave, and how.</p>
<p class="meta">A restless person wants to be free of it from the people they would leave. · 5 scenes from 5 stories
(Stiffner and Jim, On the Edge of a Plain, Drifted Back, Board and Residence, The Geological Spieler) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Leave quietly, without a word. <span class='src'>from scene 111</span><br><code>relationships.locals -</code> <code>flags.moved_on set</code></li><li>Invent a polite excuse and go. <span class='src'>from scene 189</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.locals +</code></li><li>Say plainly why you are going. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.locals risk</code></li><li>Stay, because you promised. <span class='src'>from scene 94</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Move on before you are found out. <span class='src'>from scene 292</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>27</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — A mate who shared fairly still proves too sharp to travel beside, and the other quietly decides to go his own way.</summary><p class="sum">Bill shares out fairly, but the narrator parts from him soon after: he is too sharp to keep up with.</p></details><details><summary><b>94</b> · <i>On the Edge of a Plain</i> — A wanderer swears to stay home for good, but within a week his family are grumbling because he cannot find work there.</summary><p class="sum">They made him swear never to leave while his parents lived, but within a week they were grumbling that he could not get work, so he left; he and his mate set off across the plain.</p></details><details><summary><b>111</b> · <i>Drifted Back</i> — A wanderer finds nothing left for him in the place he came back to, and quietly takes to the road again alone.</summary><p class="sum">He notes the fence he helped build twenty years ago, says the people have changed, and drifts out along the track at dusk.</p></details><details><summary><b>189</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A man who wants to leave a bad arrangement is too timid to say why, and invents polite excuses instead.</summary><p class="sum">A timid boarder tells the landlady he must leave because the place is too far from work, inventing excuses rather than the truth, while she gushes and asks him to send her new boarders.</p></details><details><summary><b>292</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — Unsure which of his hosts has seen through him, a trickster decides it is time to move on before he is exposed.</summary><p class="sum">Another man says the boss can barely write his name and that the grinning navvy is the college man; Steelman decides there is too much humour in the camp and they leave next day.</p></details></section><section><h2>G14 · Owing more than you can pay</h2>
<p class="pred">You owe money you cannot find, and the one you owe has you cornered and knows it.</p>
<p class="meta">A debtor wants time, or a way out from a creditor who holds their roof or their goods. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
(Stiffner and Jim, Across the Straits, Board and Residence, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Stand and listen, and hope it buys you time. <span class='src'>from scene 187</span><br><code>relationships.creditor +</code> <code>grit +</code></li><li>Keep out of their way as much as you can. <span class='src'>from scene 186</span><br><code>relationships.creditor -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Go from door to door arguing that it is not your debt. <span class='src'>from scene 256</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.creditor -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Pay what you can now, and promise the rest. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.creditor +</code></li><li>Run up more, looking as if you can pay. <span class='src'>from scene 18</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>flags.living_on_tick set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>18</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Two broke travellers run up a debt with a hard, dangerous man, trusting that they look as if they can pay.</summary><p class="sum">Two broke swagmen reach the hotel of a huge, mean, violent publican and run up drinks they cannot pay for, trying to look as if they have just been paid off.</p></details><details><summary><b>154</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A man who lost money he partly owed to someone else feels the loss as a judgment on him for not paying.</summary><p class="sum">The lost coin haunts him for months; since part of it was owed to his last landlord, he feels the loss as a judgment and hopes it is enough.</p></details><details><summary><b>185</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A lodger who has fallen behind finds the politeness of the one he owes turning cold, however well he paid before.</summary><p class="sum">A slovenly daughter is scrubbing his room, so he lies on the parlour sofa under the landlady&#x27;s disapproval; he is two weeks behind, and her politeness has cooled.</p></details><details><summary><b>186</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A man behind on what he owes is made unwelcome in the only home he has, and has nowhere else to rest.</summary><p class="sum">A sly child comes to tidy the parlour, so he takes his hat and goes out again, wishing he were upcountry or dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>187</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A man who owes money must stand and listen for hours to the one he owes, because she has him cornered and knows it.</summary><p class="sum">The landlady corners him in the passage for hours about her respectability, her boarders and her children, saying she could never be hard on a young man out of work.</p></details><details><summary><b>256</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A woman billed for repairs she never ordered is passed from one person to the next until the whole debt lands on her.</summary><p class="sum">The contractor&#x27;s men botch the work and bill her; contractor, landlord and agent each refer her to another, and she is sued while her grocer and wood-man press her for the first time in years.</p></details></section><section><h2>G15 · Slipping away from what you owe</h2>
<p class="pred">You owe more than you can pay, and you could slip away quietly before the one you owe can stop you.</p>
<p class="meta">A debtor wants to get clear with their things from the one they owe. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
(Stiffner and Jim, Shooting the Moon, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Clear out by night with whatever you can carry. <span class='src'>from scene 264</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>flags.did_a_flit set</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Hobble the pursuit first, then run. <span class='src'>from scene 22 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.creditor -</code> <code>flags.did_a_flit set</code></li><li>Go to them and admit you are broke. <span class='src'>from scene 124</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.creditor +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Take a little more on your way out. <span class='src'>from scene 21</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.creditor -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Stay and face what comes. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>21</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Planning to slip away from a debt, a man chats easily with the one he owes and decides he may as well take more.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator carries the swags out to the veranda, then lingers chatting with the publican and decides to take a big flask of whisky too.</p></details><details><summary><b>23</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Having crippled the pursuit in advance, a man asks what he owes, hears the threat he expected, and runs for it.</summary><p class="sum">He drives a nail up through the boot sole, asks what they owe, hears the threat of a beating, and bolts.</p></details><details><summary><b>24</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Running from someone he cheated, a man outlasts him on rough ground and vanishes before a proper pursuit can be organised.</summary><p class="sum">The publican gives chase in a slipper and loses it in a waterhole; the two swagmen escape into the bush and stay out of sight.</p></details><details><summary><b>123</b> · <i>Shooting the Moon</i> — Two strangers each planning to slip away from what they owe discover each other and agree to join forces on the spot.</summary><p class="sum">A stranger in the other bed woke as he raised the window and asked to borrow the rope, so the two teamed up to lower their swags.</p></details><details><summary><b>124</b> · <i>Shooting the Moon</i> — Caught sneaking away from a debt, a man is asked why he did not simply admit he was broke, and is helped instead.</summary><p class="sum">The shadow catching the swags was the landlord, who asked why they had not simply told him they were broke, then fed them and sent them off with supplies.</p></details><details><summary><b>263</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A youngster offers to move a woman out by night before the one she owes can seize her goods, asking nothing back.</summary><p class="sum">She says the landlord would not let her take her furniture if she left; Bill offers to move her that night with a mate&#x27;s cart and his push, for nothing, saying the landlord can do nothing.</p></details><details><summary><b>264</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A frightened woman decides to trust a young friend&#x27;s plan to slip away with her few belongings before they are taken.</summary><p class="sum">She hesitates over losing her few things, especially the ironing table, then agrees; at eight Bill arrives with his push, lounging by the window while one keeps watch.</p></details><details><summary><b>266</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — Helping a woman slip away from her debts, the helpers are watched by someone in authority who chooses to look the other way.</summary><p class="sum">A policeman stands under the lamp opposite, apparently seeing nothing, an old Irishman who once resisted evictions himself; they go ahead, Bill carrying two of the children.</p></details><details><summary><b>267</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A night flight gets away quietly while the one person who could stop it walks steadily off in the other direction.</summary><p class="sum">Chinny drags the horse and cart out of the gutter with the mangy dog behind; the push vanishes, and the policeman is already two blocks off, walking very straight the other way.</p></details></section><section><h2>G16 · Up against a powerful man with the rules on his side</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone powerful wants you gone or wants what is yours, and the rules and the people who apply them are on his side.</p>
<p class="meta">A small holder wants to keep what is theirs from a powerful man and the law that backs him. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
(Settling on the Land, “Dossing Out” and “Camping”, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Hit back the same way he hits you. <span class='src'>from scene 12</span><br><code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>flags.hit_back set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Fight it out in front of the ones who judge. <span class='src'>from scene 258</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.authority risk</code></li><li>Hold on and outlast him. <span class='src'>from scene 8</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Say out loud that the rules are rigged. <span class='src'>from scene 227</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code></li><li>Give up the ground and move on. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.authority +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>8</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A small holder struggling to clear his ground finds a powerful neighbour set on driving him off by any means at all.</summary><p class="sum">The tree falls on the squatter&#x27;s fence; he breaks ploughshares he cannot pay for, while the squatter&#x27;s people rob him, burn his hut and have him charged with stock theft.</p></details><details><summary><b>12</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A small holder hounded by a powerful neighbour tries to hit back the same way, and it is he who ends up locked away.</summary><p class="sum">He buys sheep to fatten, but the squatter&#x27;s men set dogs on them and poison his dog; his nephew is jailed on a false charge and he gets six months for beating the squatter.</p></details><details><summary><b>13</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A man ruined by one blow after another is comforted by a neighbour ruined alongside him, then loses the rest to a powerful man.</summary><p class="sum">Out of jail, his wife robs him and runs off, hail ruins his orchard and a ruined neighbour shares wine with him; then the survey shows his land is elsewhere and the squatter seizes everything and sues.</p></details><details><summary><b>146</b> · <i>“Dossing Out” and “Camping”</i> — A man down and out in the city is treated as rubbish by the law, and longs for the freedom of being poor elsewhere.</summary><p class="sum">The police look at them as rubbish; the narrator contrasts dossing out in the city with camping in the bush, where a poor man can light a fire, wash and be left alone.</p></details><details><summary><b>227</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Travellers leaving to look for work meet a newcomer who complains that the rich rob freely while the poor are punished hard.</summary><p class="sum">The New Zealand steamer waits inside Sydney Heads to take on English immigrants, one of whom, a radical, complains that bankers rob widows unpunished while a poor man is transported for a shilling.</p></details><details><summary><b>258</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A poor woman sued by someone on good terms with the one judging loses in a moment and is hustled out unheard.</summary><p class="sum">Her greengrocer gives her credit; in the local court the magistrate greets the landlord, finds against her in a moment, and she is steered out into the crowd with no one to listen.</p></details></section><section><h2>G17 · Keeping up appearances while broke</h2>
<p class="pred">You are broke, and the people whose good opinion you care about must not find out.</p>
<p class="meta">A proud person down on their luck wants to keep face from relatives, neighbours or a sweetheart. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
(“Dossing Out” and “Camping”, Board and Residence, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Spend your last on a show for them. <span class='src'>from scene 230</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing +</code> <code>flags.keeping_up set</code></li><li>Say you have eaten, and go hungry. <span class='src'>from scene 184</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Let them think you are better off, and slip away. <span class='src'>from scene 229</span><br><code>relationships.sweetheart risk</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Own up that times are hard. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>149</b> · <i>“Dossing Out” and “Camping”</i> — An old man with almost nothing left guards his one good possession for a better day, sleeping on it in the cold.</summary><p class="sum">On the quay after midnight an old man carefully folds his best trousers into a pillow, puts on his rags and sleeps.</p></details><details><summary><b>184</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A man out of work comes back to his lodgings after a fruitless week, hoping for news, and pretends he has eaten.</summary><p class="sum">An unemployed man drags himself back to his boarding house at one on Saturday, asks hopelessly for letters, and says he has eaten when he has not.</p></details><details><summary><b>229</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men driven abroad by hard times crowd the cheapest berths, and one has hidden from his sweetheart that he could not afford better.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator travels steerage with shearers, tradesmen, labourers and clerks driven from Australia by hard times; a bagman whose girl thought he was travelling saloon gives her flower to the stewardess.</p></details><details><summary><b>230</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — A man leaving home broke spends his last money keeping up appearances for proud relatives who come to see him off.</summary><p class="sum">A well-known Sydney man spends his last shilling treating friends and waves from the saloon deck for the sake of proud female relatives, then comes forward to steerage, bitterly proud.</p></details><details><summary><b>232</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men who have come down in the world hide their poverty from their neighbours in the cramped quarters of the cheapest berths.</summary><p class="sum">Men of better days undress furtively, ashamed of their poor underwear, while the drunk shearers and their friends keep up a noisy concert late into the night.</p></details><details><summary><b>254</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A woman doing piecework for someone who takes half the pay clings to her respectability as the one thing she has left.</summary><p class="sum">In her spare time she sews new cuffs on gentlemen&#x27;s shirts for a landlady who charges double; being called &#x27;Misses&#x27; and respectable is the one thing she has left, and her house is falling down.</p></details></section><section><h2>G18 · Looked down on for being poor</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone who thinks themselves above you treats you as beneath notice, and you have only your pride to answer with.</p>
<p class="meta">A poor worker wants to be treated as an equal from someone who looks down on them. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
(Enter Mitchell, “Dossing Out” and “Camping”, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage, She Wouldn’t Speak) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Tell them flatly you are not ashamed. <span class='src'>from scene 16</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.betters -</code></li><li>Make a game of forcing them to notice you. <span class='src'>from scene 278</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>money -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Show them the door without a word. <span class='src'>from scene 237</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.betters -</code></li><li>Take what they offer anyway, once your point is made. <span class='src'>from scene 17</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.betters +</code></li><li>Swallow it and keep your eyes down. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>standing -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>15</b> · <i>Enter Mitchell</i> — A worn traveller arriving in the city is offered a service and takes it as a sneer at the way he looks.</summary><p class="sum">A swagman steps off the train in the city and a cabman offers him a cab, which he takes as a joke at his expense.</p></details><details><summary><b>16</b> · <i>Enter Mitchell</i> — A poor traveller told his belongings do not look respectable in town refuses to be ashamed of them for anyone at all.</summary><p class="sum">When the cabman hints that his swag does not look well in town, the swagman defends it and his dog and threatens to have him summoned.</p></details><details><summary><b>17</b> · <i>Enter Mitchell</i> — Having made his point about pride, a traveller quietly accepts the service anyway and admits he once earned his living the same way.</summary><p class="sum">Having made his point he gets into the cab anyway, to leave his swag and dog while he buys clothes, and mentions he once drove a cab himself.</p></details><details><summary><b>147</b> · <i>“Dossing Out” and “Camping”</i> — A man out of work among well-dressed crowds feels degraded and suspected, as if being poor were itself a crime.</summary><p class="sum">In the city the outcast cannot light a fire or wash, must cadge breakfast and walk in circles all day, and among well-dressed men he feels despised and criminal.</p></details><details><summary><b>237</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — A well-off stranger comes to gawk at poor travellers like a sideshow, and one of them silently shows him the door.</summary><p class="sum">A bloated first-class Englishman comes forward to gawk at the steerage as if it were a zoo until the comedian silently points him aft; the men grumble about the food.</p></details><details><summary><b>277</b> · <i>She Wouldn’t Speak</i> — Two rough workers are snubbed by someone who was all smiles for their betters, and set out to make her notice them.</summary><p class="sum">Two dusty shearers sit down to dinner at a pub where a pretty servant girl is laughing and joking with some young gentlemen, but she will not say a word to the shearers, whatever Dave tries.</p></details><details><summary><b>278</b> · <i>She Wouldn’t Speak</i> — Snubbed by the one serving them, two rough men try every trick to get a word out of her, and bet on it.</summary><p class="sum">Dave tries flattery and gossip without a word from her, then bets his mate five pounds he will make her speak.</p></details><details><summary><b>279</b> · <i>She Wouldn’t Speak</i> — Two men determined to break a snub keep making demands until the joke is on them, and she still says nothing.</summary><p class="sum">They keep passing their cups for more tea, grumbling at its weakness, until they are brimming over; she refills them without a word or a sign of temper.</p></details><details><summary><b>280</b> · <i>She Wouldn’t Speak</i> — Two men who tried to force a response from someone who snubbed them give up at last, beaten by her silence.</summary><p class="sum">After a dozen cups each and nearly an hour, they give up and leave their cups half full, and sit outside to let the tea settle before taking the track.</p></details></section><section><h2>G19 · Money in your pocket and the drink on offer</h2>
<p class="pred">You have a little money and mates about you, and the drink would make tonight better and tomorrow worse.</p>
<p class="meta">A worker with money in hand wants a good time from mates, and the bar. · 6 scenes from 6 stories
(His Father’s Mate, Across the Straits, In a Wet Season, Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage, Bogg of Geebung, For Auld Lang Syne) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Shout your mates and hang the cost. <span class='src'>from scene 305</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code> <code>flags.on_the_spree set</code></li><li>Drink the last of it and decide not to care. <span class='src'>from scene 157</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>grit -</code></li><li>Head straight for the bar when work is done. <span class='src'>from scene 203</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code></li><li>Keep it in your pocket. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.mates -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>130</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A man remembers the hopeful start he shared with a brother, and the night drink and jealousy ended it for good.</summary><p class="sum">He remembers sailing out to the goldfields with his brother, full of hope, and the brother&#x27;s arrest at Ballarat for a killing done in drink and jealousy.</p></details><details><summary><b>157</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A worried traveller shares drinks with a friendly stranger, spends what little he has left, and decides not to care.</summary><p class="sum">Knocked back down the hatch by a wave, he drinks with the Maori, spending his last half-crown, and decides he will fall on his feet.</p></details><details><summary><b>203</b> · <i>In a Wet Season</i> — Men at the end of a long, wet day&#x27;s work bring the stock in and head straight for the only warm place: drink.</summary><p class="sum">At shanties on a mud flat, forlorn horses wait outside a pub, and three drovers bring a small flock in across the flat, bound for the shanty once the sheep are yarded.</p></details><details><summary><b>231</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Rough travellers drink with a well-off stranger slumming it among them, and he makes a thorough fool of himself.</summary><p class="sum">The drunk shearers befriend a saloon dandy who makes a fool of himself; passengers buy sour beer from a reticent, failed-looking steward.</p></details><details><summary><b>273</b> · <i>Bogg of Geebung</i> — The town drunk, fined and locked up as a matter of routine, shows a learning nobody expects by correcting his betters&#x27; work.</summary><p class="sum">Bogg, the town drunk regularly fined in the police court, once wandered into the newspaper office and corrected the editor&#x27;s proofs, Latin and all.</p></details><details><summary><b>305</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — Workmates seeing one of their own off stretch the parting with one more drink after another until the very last moment.</summary><p class="sum">They fuss over his bunk, drag him ashore for drink after drink, and grip his hand over the rail as the steamer casts off, singing and cheering till a sergeant of police watches them.</p></details></section><section><h2>G20 · Talking a kind host out of a free feed</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone decent has something you need, and a good story or a little flattery would get it for you free.</p>
<p class="meta">A traveller on their uppers wants food, shelter or money for nothing from a kindly host. · 8 scenes from 4 stories
(Steelman’s Pupil, Mitchell: A Character Sketch, The Geological Spieler, Baldy Thompson) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Spin a sad story to fit their soft spot. <span class='src'>from scene 175</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>nous +</code> <code>flags.worked_a_mark set</code></li><li>Pose as someone important. <span class='src'>from scene 283</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>nous +</code> <code>flags.worked_a_mark set</code></li><li>Agree with everything they say. <span class='src'>from scene 299</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.host +</code></li><li>Keep them talking while they give. <span class='src'>from scene 210</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>money +</code></li><li>Ask straight, and take what you are given. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.host +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>174</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — A domineering companion disguises his pupil as a dying man and scripts a tale of loyalty to work on kind strangers.</summary><p class="sum">He dresses Smith in rags and greasepaint as a dying consumptive, and scripts a tale of a faithful mate who gave up his first job in nine months to carry him.</p></details><details><summary><b>175</b> · <i>Steelman’s Pupil</i> — A schemer drills his pupil in every detail that will soften one particular household, and threatens him if he fails.</summary><p class="sum">He drills Smith in a Scottish birth, a wronged old mother, the right church and the right symptoms, and threatens him if he comes back empty-handed.</p></details><details><summary><b>210</b> · <i>Mitchell: A Character Sketch</i> — A man begging supplies keeps a lonely worker talking so pleasantly that he hands over far more than he meant to.</summary><p class="sum">He keeps the lonely cook talking while the cook fills his bags generously and hands over cooked beef and cake; the cook and overseer decide he is a bit gone, but he is only a city man who has been around.</p></details><details><summary><b>283</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — A trickster introduces himself with an impressive false title and a hired helper in tow, and waits for the other to be impressed.</summary><p class="sum">Asked if he is a commercial traveller, Steelman introduces himself as Stoneleigh the geologist, with Smith as his man, and watches the boss grow uncertain.</p></details><details><summary><b>284</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — A trickster wins over a plain working man with a flood of learned-sounding nonsense about his own place of work.</summary><p class="sum">He claims to be vice-president of a geological society and lectures on the strata of the cutting as if reading a book.</p></details><details><summary><b>286</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — Having dazzled his listener, a trickster drops a hint of hidden riches and angles for a free place to stay.</summary><p class="sum">He says the rock is rotting, which makes their work easier, hints at gold, tin and silver in the gullies, and asks where he might find lodgings.</p></details><details><summary><b>299</b> · <i>Baldy Thompson</i> — Travellers learn that the way to a boss&#x27;s charity is to flatter his opinions, and he half knows it and pays anyway.</summary><p class="sum">He sends them for rations and argues politics all night; travellers flatter his views to get a full nosebag; shearers once woke him with a false fire alarm, and he sacked them all, but they worked as usual next day.</p></details><details><summary><b>301</b> · <i>Baldy Thompson</i> — A man who flattered a generous boss to get help learns that honest disagreement would have won him more respect.</summary><p class="sum">Next morning the narrator agreed with him some more and got a sovereign, but learned later that the best way to win Baldy was to disagree with him on every point.</p></details></section><section><h2>G21 · Vouching for a stranger</h2>
<p class="pred">A stranger with a pitiful or impressive story has been taken in among you, and you are the one who vouched for him.</p>
<p class="meta">A soft-hearted worker wants to do right by the stranger from a stranger who may be taking them in. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
(The Man Who Forgot, Board and Residence, The Geological Spieler) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Vouch for him and warn off the mockers. <span class='src'>from scene 32</span><br><code>relationships.stranger +</code> <code>relationships.crew -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Give him shelter and see how he turns out. <span class='src'>from scene 287</span><br><code>relationships.stranger +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Check your things before you trust him further. <span class='src'>from scene 35</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.stranger -</code></li><li>Go after him and take back what he took. <span class='src'>from scene 37 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money +</code> <code>flags.settled_it set</code></li><li>Test his story quietly. <span class='src'>from scene 291</span><br><code>nous +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>31</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — A soft-hearted worker takes up a helpless stranger who claims to remember nothing about who he is or where he came from.</summary><p class="sum">At a shearing shed the soft-hearted shearer called The Oracle, who collects afflicted men, takes an interest in a forlorn swagman found wandering with no memory of who he is.</p></details><details><summary><b>32</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — A kindly man vouches for a helpless stranger to the boss and threatens anyone in the crew who dares to mock him.</summary><p class="sum">The Oracle gets the stranger a job and threatens anyone who mocks him; Mitchell jokes about working the case for money; the stranger muses that he might be a lord.</p></details><details><summary><b>35</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — The kind man who stood up for a stranger learns, in front of everyone, that the stranger has robbed him blind.</summary><p class="sum">The boss sacks Smith; the men nearly revolt on his behalf until Mitchell suggests The Oracle check his bunk, where he finds he has been robbed.</p></details><details><summary><b>36</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — Everyone who shared quarters discovers the helpless stranger they sheltered has robbed them all, and the kindest of them is angriest.</summary><p class="sum">The Oracle goes silently for his horse, and one by one the others find their own bunks robbed too.</p></details><details><summary><b>188</b> · <i>Board and Residence</i> — A newcomer who paid in advance on a stranger&#x27;s recommendation finds the promises were lies and the recommender was paid.</summary><p class="sum">He was steered there by a furniture dealer who praised the landlady and took a commission; after paying in advance he found extras charged and food of the worst kind.</p></details><details><summary><b>287</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — The leader of a working crew, taken in by a learned stranger, offers him shelter and hospitality for as long as he likes.</summary><p class="sum">The boss invites them to camp with the party and use an empty hut; after tea Steelman lectures the more thoughtful men.</p></details><details><summary><b>289</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — Hard-working men who have little themselves go out of their way to make a pair of pretending strangers comfortable.</summary><p class="sum">In the hut Steelman reads a cheap adventure novel, then hurriedly resumes his spectacles when a serious navvy brings coffee and cake and asks if they are comfortable.</p></details><details><summary><b>291</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — A trickster learns that his host may know far more than he ever pretended to, and wonders whether the joke is on him.</summary><p class="sum">A grinning young navvy tells Steelman the boss is a university man and the country&#x27;s best mineralogist, ruined by drink; Steelman decides to stay one more day and take them down.</p></details></section><section><h2>G22 · Holding the place together alone</h2>
<p class="pred">Your partner is away earning or has gone, and everything at home rests on you, with nobody to call on.</p>
<p class="meta">A partner left at home wants to keep the family safe and fed from hardship, and a partner who is not there. · 8 scenes from 4 stories
(A Day on a Selection, The Drover’s Wife, A Visit of Condolence, Jones’s Alley) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Sit up and keep watch yourself. <span class='src'>from scene 160</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Tell strangers the men are close by. <span class='src'>from scene 166 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nous +</code></li><li>Face down a threat with whatever is to hand. <span class='src'>from scene 167</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>standing +</code> <code>flags.faced_down set</code></li><li>Fight the disaster until help comes. <span class='src'>from scene 165</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Give up the place and go where there are people. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.partner -</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>57</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A worn-out wife does the daily work with broken tools and dirty makeshifts that nobody has the time or will to mend.</summary><p class="sum">The wife skims dusty cream with her fingers and sets the milk through a strainer full of holes.</p></details><details><summary><b>61</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A gathering of talkers argues about reforming society while a harried wife keeps the home from falling apart around them.</summary><p class="sum">The debate about utopian books and a notorious murderer runs on in fragments while the wife shoos fowls, scolds the children and sends a rooster flying.</p></details><details><summary><b>160</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — Left alone to protect her children, a woman gives up her own sleep to keep watch through the night against a hidden danger.</summary><p class="sum">She will not take the children into the house, so she puts them to bed on the kitchen table and sits up all night beside them with a club, the dog and her sewing.</p></details><details><summary><b>162</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A wife left on her own for months, with no word from a husband gone to find work, has let every girlhood hope die.</summary><p class="sum">Her nerves are shaken: a nephew recently died of snakebite, and she has not heard from her husband for six months since drought ruined him and sent him back to droving; her girlish hopes are long dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>165</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A wife left alone to defend the place fights a disaster far beyond her strength, and is rescued only just in time.</summary><p class="sum">She remembers fighting a bushfire alone in her husband&#x27;s trousers with her small son beside her, saved only by four bushmen who arrived in time.</p></details><details><summary><b>167</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A woman alone faces down a threatening stranger who expected no man about, and keeps up appearances though nobody will see.</summary><p class="sum">Last week she drove off a menacing swagman with a batten and the dog; every Sunday she dresses the children and walks the empty track with the pram, having grown used to the loneliness.</p></details><details><summary><b>198</b> · <i>A Visit of Condolence</i> — A grieving mother and a rough boy find they share one hard story: fathers dead at work, mothers scrubbing to live.</summary><p class="sum">Bill and the mother find their stories alike: fathers who died suddenly at work, mothers who scrub offices and wash; she wishes she were dead, and he tells her to cheer up.</p></details><details><summary><b>253</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A worn-out mother works every waking hour to keep her family, while the men who should help her only take from her.</summary><p class="sum">Mrs Aspinall cleans offices, washes and nurses from dawn to dark to keep her sickly children, dreading the return of a husband supposed dead and buying off a loafing elder son.</p></details></section><section><h2>G23 · A young one eager to do grown-up work</h2>
<p class="pred">A youngster in your care is eager to take on hard or dangerous work before their time, to help or to prove themselves.</p>
<p class="meta">A parent or guardian wants to keep the young one safe from an eager youngster. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
(Going Blind, Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock, His Father’s Mate, The Drover’s Wife) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Let them help; the family needs it. <span class='src'>from scene 128</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.child +</code> <code>flags.child_at_risk set</code></li><li>Hold them back yourself. <span class='src'>from scene 170 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.child -</code> <code>grit +</code></li><li>Send them home, out of harm and bad company. <span class='src'>from scene 67</span><br><code>relationships.child risk</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Let them rest, though it costs the pay. <span class='src'>from scene 77 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.child +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>67</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man going blind leans on a young relative to guide him, yet plans to send the youngster home before the city spoils him.</summary><p class="sum">Gunther is nearly blind, his sight made worse by a quack; a young cousin guides him, and he plans to send the boy home before the city corrupts him.</p></details><details><summary><b>76</b> · <i>Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock</i> — A worn-out child working himself to death for a pittance begins to doubt the promise that hard work brings its own reward.</summary><p class="sum">Reading the clock&#x27;s motto about early rising, Arvie decides it lies; his mother lies awake over her dead husband, her gaoled and absent sons, her scrubbing and the rent.</p></details><details><summary><b>128</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A small boy proud to do a man&#x27;s share of the work insists on hauling more than he should to help his father.</summary><p class="sum">Isley winds up the wash-dirt for his father below, insisting he can take bigger loads, and is told to send down the slate for sums.</p></details><details><summary><b>135</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A child eager to help at dangerous work falls to his death, and the hard men around him can do nothing to save him.</summary><p class="sum">Leaning over the shaft to hear his father, Isley falls when the windlass slips; hauled up, he says goodbye to Tom and his father and dies.</p></details><details><summary><b>161</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — Keeping watch alone through a stormy night, a mother calms frightened children while her eager eldest wants to face the danger himself.</summary><p class="sum">Her eldest son swears and vows to stay awake and kill the snake; a thunderstorm comes on, and the dog&#x27;s gaze tells her the snake is behind the partition.</p></details><details><summary><b>171</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — Seeing his mother&#x27;s tears after the long night, a boy vows never to take up the life that leaves a family alone.</summary><p class="sum">She burns the snake; her son sees her tears, hugs her and vows he will never go droving, and they sit together as day breaks.</p></details></section><section><h2>G24 · Caught out at home</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone at home has caught you at something, or blames you for it, and you must answer for it.</p>
<p class="meta">A family member wants to get off lightly from whoever at home caught them. · 5 scenes from 3 stories
(An Old Mate of Your Father’s, A Day on a Selection, Our Pipes) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Deny everything. <span class='src'>from scene 58</span><br><code>relationships.family -</code></li><li>Put it on someone else. <span class='src'>from scene 224</span><br><code>relationships.family risk</code> <code>relationships.friend -</code></li><li>Let a mate help you brush it aside. <span class='src'>from scene 4</span><br><code>relationships.mate +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code></li><li>Keep at it, only better hidden. <span class='src'>from scene 225</span><br><code>nous +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code></li><li>Own up. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>4</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — A wife overhears a hint of her husband&#x27;s past with another woman, and his old companion helps him brush it aside.</summary><p class="sum">The mother overhears a hint about a woman and the father brushes it off with the mate&#x27;s help; the mate tells the story of a diggings bride.</p></details><details><summary><b>56</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A mother suspects her son of skimping his work, he swears she is wrong, and the place they share keeps falling down.</summary><p class="sum">His mother accuses him of skimping the milking and he denies it; the dairy of rotten bark is propped up and patched with newspaper.</p></details><details><summary><b>58</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A youngster blamed for every mishap on the place denies everything and takes his temper out on whatever is weaker than him.</summary><p class="sum">The boy is blamed for a missing prop and a lost cow and swears he is always blamed; he hand-feeds the weaned calves and beats them when they butt.</p></details><details><summary><b>224</b> · <i>Our Pipes</i> — A youngster caught at a forbidden habit blames the one who lent him the means, and keeps at it in secret anyway.</summary><p class="sum">His mother caught him sick, took the pipe and returned it to its owner; she burned his next pipe and hid his tobacco, which his father seemed to have smoked.</p></details><details><summary><b>225</b> · <i>Our Pipes</i> — A youngster keeps dodging a parent over a forbidden habit until she gives up, and years later remembers her with regret.</summary><p class="sum">He hid the bowl and stem of a cherry pipe separately, but she sniffed out the bowl; he switched to cigars, then a pipe again until she gave in; she has been dead seventeen years.</p></details></section><section><h2>G25 · Trifling with someone who takes it seriously</h2>
<p class="pred">You made a light promise or flirted for amusement, and the other person has taken it completely to heart.</p>
<p class="meta">A careless charmer wants the fun without the obligation from someone who believes them. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
(A Camp-Fire Yarn, Another of Mitchell’s Plans for the Future, An Unfinished Love Story) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Send word that it was only a joke. <span class='src'>from scene 46</span><br><code>relationships.sweetheart -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Clear out and keep moving. <span class='src'>from scene 46</span><br><code>flags.ran_off set</code> <code>relationships.sweetheart -</code></li><li>Keep it up until you leave. <span class='src'>from scene 182 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.sweetheart +</code> <code>flags.trifled set</code></li><li>Honour it, and settle down. <span class='src'>from scene 104</span><br><code>relationships.sweetheart +</code> <code>money +</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>45</b> · <i>A Camp-Fire Yarn</i> — A joking proposal is taken seriously, and the whole neighbourhood hears of the match before the young man can take it back.</summary><p class="sum">He proposes to the second girl as a joke and she accepts at once, tells his family and the whole district, and he is mocked everywhere.</p></details><details><summary><b>46</b> · <i>A Camp-Fire Yarn</i> — A man who made a promise he never meant keeps running from it, and it keeps following him from place to place.</summary><p class="sum">He sends a mate to say it was a joke and that he is already married, then flees to another town and moves again when warned she is coming; his mate begins a yarn about a youth pursued by an older woman.</p></details><details><summary><b>103</b> · <i>Another of Mitchell’s Plans for the Future</i> — A man who dreams of a good position also imagines growing bored and wanting to leave, and being cornered into staying.</summary><p class="sum">He imagines shearing the farmer&#x27;s sheep, growing restless and giving notice, and the farmer demanding to know if he means to marry the girl.</p></details><details><summary><b>104</b> · <i>Another of Mitchell’s Plans for the Future</i> — A drifter imagines being bribed into settling down, and promises his old mate a welcome that already comes with conditions.</summary><p class="sum">He will marry her for the farm and two hundred pounds, and tells his mate he can come for tucker if he is hard up, but not while Mitchell is away.</p></details><details><summary><b>180</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A worldly visitor about to leave presses an inexperienced young woman to say that she could love him.</summary><p class="sum">Sitting on a log at dusk he tells her he leaves tomorrow, puts his arm round her and asks if she could love him.</p></details><details><summary><b>181</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A worldly man leaving soon presses an inexperienced young woman into a secret meeting she fears is wrong.</summary><p class="sum">He kisses her, draws her behind a bush, and presses her until she promises to walk with him by moonlight, though she fears her aunt and parents would not like it.</p></details><details><summary><b>183</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A visitor who trifled with a young woman for a week goes back to his own life and leaves her heartbroken.</summary><p class="sum">After a week of moonlight walks he leaves by coach; she waves hopelessly and buries her face in her hands; he goes straight to a bar in the city, and they say she broke her heart.</p></details></section><section><h2>G26 · A quarrel neither side will end</h2>
<p class="pred">You and someone you could be friends with have fallen into a quarrel, and each of you waits for the other to give way.</p>
<p class="meta">A quarreller wants to be in the right from the other party. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
(Settling on the Land, When the Sun Went Down, Remailed, Two Dogs and a Fence) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Refuse their hand until they fully admit it. <span class='src'>from scene 28</span><br><code>relationships.rival -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Keep it going, since they started it. <span class='src'>from scene 251</span><br><code>relationships.rival -</code></li><li>Keep it friendly, a standing joke between you. <span class='src'>from scene 116</span><br><code>relationships.rival +</code></li><li>Make it up before the day is out. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.rival +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>14</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — Two old enemies, both ruined in the end, meet on equal terms at last and find they can get on quite well.</summary><p class="sum">The selector ends in the asylum, and the ruined squatter follows him there, where the two become friends.</p></details><details><summary><b>28</b> · <i>When the Sun Went Down</i> — A younger brother apologises for a quarrel before a dangerous task, and the elder refuses his hand out of stubborn pride.</summary><p class="sum">Before going down the shaft, Jack asks his brother Tom not to let the sun go down on their quarrel; Tom refuses his hand, then sits alone feeling mean.</p></details><details><summary><b>116</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — Two old mates far apart keep an old argument going by post, each sending the other proof he was right all along.</summary><p class="sum">Bill marks articles that support his side of an old argument and sends them on; Jim answers in kind, or they send a good joke or notice of an old mate&#x27;s death.</p></details><details><summary><b>250</b> · <i>Two Dogs and a Fence</i> — Someone penned in rages at another who is free to come and go, even when the other means no harm at all.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell explains that nothing maddens a dog like another dog sniffing at him through his fence; the inside dog starts it and would kill even his own brother if he got out.</p></details><details><summary><b>251</b> · <i>Two Dogs and a Fence</i> — Two people who each claim the other started the quarrel keep it going, each blaming the other for losing his temper.</summary><p class="sum">Sometimes the outside dog grins, but sometimes he is short-tempered, like peaceful men who never start a row but keep it going because the other started it.</p></details><details><summary><b>252</b> · <i>Two Dogs and a Fence</i> — Two who would be friends anywhere else are made bitter enemies by the barrier standing between them.</summary><p class="sum">Then they go at it like a war, though if the same two dogs met outside they might become the best of mates.</p></details></section><section><h2>G27 · Coming back to find it changed</h2>
<p class="pred">You come back after years away and find the people you left have changed, gone, or managed without you.</p>
<p class="meta">A returning wanderer wants to find their place again from the people they left behind. · 8 scenes from 6 stories
(On the Edge of a Plain, He’d Come Back, Drifted Back, An Unfinished Love Story, His Colonial Oath, “Brummy Usen”) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Knock on the door and face them. <span class='src'>from scene 101</span><br><code>relationships.family risk</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Walk off before anyone knows you. <span class='src'>from scene 110</span><br><code>relationships.family -</code> <code>flags.moved_on set</code></li><li>Try to talk as you used to. <span class='src'>from scene 190</span><br><code>relationships.old_friends risk</code></li><li>Stay and start over among them. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>93</b> · <i>On the Edge of a Plain</i> — A man who drifted away for years without writing comes home to find his family mourning him, and is smothered with welcome.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell tells his mate how he came home after eight years without writing to find the family in mourning, having been reported dead, and was smothered with joy.</p></details><details><summary><b>101</b> · <i>He’d Come Back</i> — A man returns to the wife he deserted, is met with weary resignation instead of forgiveness, and in time leaves again for good.</summary><p class="sum">He waylaid his children and knocked at sundown; his wife only said, &#x27;Well, so you&#x27;ve come back&#x27;; he stayed a year, then deserted her again for good.</p></details><details><summary><b>109</b> · <i>Drifted Back</i> — A man returns after many years to see old friends and finds, one after another, that they have died or moved away.</summary><p class="sum">A swagman walks into a country grocery expecting to surprise old Ben Hake after many years, and learns that Hake sold out and died and that his other friends are gone.</p></details><details><summary><b>110</b> · <i>Drifted Back</i> — A returning wanderer learns the sweetheart he left behind married the man in front of him, and leaves before she can see him.</summary><p class="sum">He asks after more names, all dead or gone, then after Mary Wild, and learns she is the grocer&#x27;s wife; he refuses to see her and shoulders his swag.</p></details><details><summary><b>178</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A man who escaped a hard early life comes back for a visit and feels more contempt than pity for the youth he was.</summary><p class="sum">Brook, fifteen years in the city, lets the cattle through the sliprails of his dead father&#x27;s old selection, now let to a tenant, and feels contempt for the unhappy boy he was there.</p></details><details><summary><b>190</b> · <i>His Colonial Oath</i> — A man back from years in the city meets an old schoolfellow who stayed behind, and they find nothing left to say.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator meets an old schoolmate, now a lank, red-bearded man on his father&#x27;s farm, who answers everything with &#x27;My oath!&#x27; and says the old schoolmaster &#x27;finished&#x27; his education.</p></details><details><summary><b>191</b> · <i>His Colonial Oath</i> — Two old schoolfellows let the talk die, and the one who went away wonders which of them has really changed.</summary><p class="sum">The schoolmate says he is thinking of training as a teacher, grows uneasy at talk of the old school and escapes; the narrator wonders which of them has changed.</p></details><details><summary><b>269</b> · <i>“Brummy Usen”</i> — A man reported dead turns up to find his wife managing better without him and a neighbour sitting by her fire.</summary><p class="sum">Billy Nowlett, a bullock-driver, was reported dead by a publican who sent the widow five pounds; she managed better without him, an old digger began courting her, and then Billy turned up.</p></details></section><section><h2>G28 · The pull of the place you left</h2>
<p class="pred">The place and people you left keep pulling at you, but going back empty-handed would mean admitting you failed.</p>
<p class="meta">A exile or wanderer wants to go home with something to show from home, and their own pride. · 5 scenes from 4 stories
(His Country-After All, Going Blind, He’d Come Back, “Some Day”) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go back now, just as you are. <span class='src'>from scene 53</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Work and save until you can go back decently. <span class='src'>from scene 100</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>grit +</code></li><li>Swear you will never go back. <span class='src'>from scene 49 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.family -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Stop hoping, and keep walking. <span class='src'>from scene 194</span><br><code>grit -</code> <code>flags.gave_up_hope set</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>52</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — A hardened exile is caught off guard by a familiar smell from home, and an old-fashioned greeting between equals moves him.</summary><p class="sum">He smells gum leaves burning in a trapper&#x27;s fire, recognises Australian gums, and shouts a greeting to the trapper, who answers him like an echo from the past.</p></details><details><summary><b>53</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — An exile who swore never to go home hears an outsider sneer at it, defends it, and decides to visit an old friend.</summary><p class="sum">After a long silence he snaps at a tourist who sneers at Australia, and decides to visit an old mate in Sydney first.</p></details><details><summary><b>68</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man losing his sight asks after a brother he has lost touch with and pictures the country he may never see again.</summary><p class="sum">They talk about the bush and Gunther asks after a half-brother he has lost track of, seeing the home country clearly in his mind.</p></details><details><summary><b>100</b> · <i>He’d Come Back</i> — A man who deserted his family is driven by conscience to work and save, then go back to try to make amends.</summary><p class="sum">His conscience worked on him, he says, so he slaved for a year to save money and went to find his wife, who was struggling alone.</p></details><details><summary><b>194</b> · <i>“Some Day”</i> — A man who swore never to go home without money to show has been on the road so long he has stopped hoping.</summary><p class="sum">&#x27;Some day,&#x27; says Mitchell bitterly: he swore never to go home without a cheque, the cheque days are over, and the track slowly turns a man&#x27;s heart into a bullock&#x27;s.</p></details></section><section><h2>G29 · Doing right by the dead</h2>
<p class="pred">Someone has died with nobody of his own nearby, and whatever decency he gets must come from you.</p>
<p class="meta">A workmate or neighbour wants to do what is proper without the means from the dead, and whoever mourns them. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
(The Union Buries Its Dead, His Father’s Mate, A Visit of Condolence, The Bush Undertaker) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Turn out for the burial, whoever he was. <span class='src'>from scene 86</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code></li><li>Give up something you prize to do it properly. <span class='src'>from scene 136</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Bury him yourself and say what words you can. <span class='src'>from scene 221</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.mates +</code></li><li>Offer practical help to those left, since you cannot come. <span class='src'>from scene 200</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Leave it to whoever is paid to do it. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>money +</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>86</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — A worker dies among strangers, and the only people who turn out for his burial are those who belonged to his side.</summary><p class="sum">A young union labourer, almost a stranger in town, drowns swimming horses; his funeral gathers at a pub, and most of it is too drunk to follow the hearse.</p></details><details><summary><b>89</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — A stranger&#x27;s burial is done cheaply and quickly, and the small rites only show how little anyone spent on him.</summary><p class="sum">At the cemetery the priest&#x27;s holy water shows up how cheap and shabby the coffin cloth is.</p></details><details><summary><b>91</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — The one paid to bury a stranger tries to show a little decency, though nothing much can soften the moment for anyone.</summary><p class="sum">The gravedigger tries to soften the fall of the clods, but they knock on the coffin all the same.</p></details><details><summary><b>92</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — A worker who died among strangers leaves nothing behind but his membership papers, and even his name turns out to be false.</summary><p class="sum">There is no grieving mate and no letters in his swag, only union papers; his name turns out to be false, and the mourners soon forget it.</p></details><details><summary><b>136</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A poor community gives up the few things it prizes to bury a child decently for a grieving, stony father.</summary><p class="sum">Tom says &#x27;He never knowed&#x27; and Mason answers &#x27;What does it matter?&#x27;; the neighbours make a shroud and a woman gives up her prized table for the coffin.</p></details><details><summary><b>197</b> · <i>A Visit of Condolence</i> — A rough youngster who is ashamed of softness views the body of a workmate and lets a moment of tenderness show.</summary><p class="sum">Bill asks to see him, takes his hat off, sizes up the pauper coffin, and lays his hand on the dead boy&#x27;s forehead before covering the weakness with a question.</p></details><details><summary><b>200</b> · <i>A Visit of Condolence</i> — A rough youngster who cannot take time off work for a funeral offers what practical help he can give instead.</summary><p class="sum">Bill says kids get sharp in the alley, offers to mend her step and sends his own mother to help lay Arvie out, though he cannot come to the funeral because he must work.</p></details><details><summary><b>219</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — Unable to leave his charge to fetch anyone, a man alone takes on the burial of an old mate by himself.</summary><p class="sum">He shoots a goanna that had been feeding on the body; unable to leave the sheep to report the death, he decides to bury Brummy himself.</p></details><details><summary><b>221</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A rough, lonely man wants to say something proper over an old mate&#x27;s grave and does his best with half-remembered words.</summary><p class="sum">Feeling something ought to be said, he takes off his hat and recites a garbled &#x27;ashes to ashes&#x27; in hope of the resurrection, then walks back to the hut.</p></details></section><section><h2>G30 · Too late</h2>
<p class="pred">You understand at last what you owed someone, and it may already be too late to make it right.</p>
<p class="meta">A person who held back wants to set it right from someone they failed. · 6 scenes from 6 stories
(An Old Mate of Your Father’s, When the Sun Went Down, Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock, The Union Buries Its Dead, A Visit of Condolence, The Story of Malachi) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Throw everything into putting it right now. <span class='src'>from scene 30 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.wronged +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Go to them at once, before your pride stops you. <span class='src'>from scene 29</span><br><code>relationships.wronged +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Pay what you can to those they left behind. <span class='src'>from scene 249</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Tell yourself it could not have been helped. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.wronged -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>5</b> · <i>An Old Mate of Your Father’s</i> — After an old companion leaves, a man broods on their shared past, and his grown child wonders whether he gives what he owes.</summary><p class="sum">The mates recall the generous fellowship of the old fields; after the visitor leaves the father broods, and the narrator wonders whether old mates were kinder to each other than sons are to fathers.</p></details><details><summary><b>29</b> · <i>When the Sun Went Down</i> — Just as a man decides to make peace with someone he snubbed, disaster traps the other, and he must lead the rescue.</summary><p class="sum">Tom decides to go and make up, but the shaft caves in on Jack; Tom rallies the diggers to dig through from old workings.</p></details><details><summary><b>77</b> · <i>Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock</i> — A mother who tries to give her overworked child a little rest from the grind finds that it is already too late.</summary><p class="sum">His mother sets the alarm back two hours to let him rest; while the owners hold a ball, the alarm rings in the night and Arvie does not wake: he is dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>88</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — Mourners realise the stranger they are burying is the man they brushed off the day before, and wonder what they owed him.</summary><p class="sum">A drover walking with the narrator wonders if the dead man&#x27;s union ticket will count in heaven, and points out that he was the man they joked with on the bank the day before.</p></details><details><summary><b>199</b> · <i>A Visit of Condolence</i> — A mother learns from a workmate that her child was bullied and held down at work, and never said a word about it.</summary><p class="sum">Bill tells her Arvie was kept at the same work, dared not ask for a rise for fear of the sack, and was bullied by the other boys; she never knew, for he never complained.</p></details><details><summary><b>249</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — The men who mocked a dead workmate learn he was quietly supporting his family, and try too late to make amends.</summary><p class="sum">He tells them he and his mother were saving to provide for his blind younger brother; the narrator regrets the jokes, and the men take up a collection for the brother.</p></details></section><section><h2>G31 · Passed from door to door</h2>
<p class="pred">You are owed something or need something done, and everyone who could do it says it is not their business.</p>
<p class="meta">A person with a just claim wants what they are owed from the people who keep passing them on. · 5 scenes from 4 stories
(Going Blind, In a Wet Season, Jones’s Alley, “Brummy Usen”) · stage <b>low</b></p>
<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep at them until one gives way. <span class='src'>from scene 255</span><br><code>grit +</code> <code>relationships.authority -</code></li><li>Swallow your pride and beg a favour of someone with influence. <span class='src'>from scene 204</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.authority +</code></li><li>Give it up and start again somewhere else. <span class='src'>from scene 272</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>flags.moved_on set</code></li><li>Settle for sympathy instead of help. <span class='src'>from scene 257</span><br><code>relationships.neighbours +</code> <code>money -</code></li></ol>
<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>72</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man who wants to help a friend in trouble realises he is too poor and shabby to go where help could be found.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator sets out to find someone with influence to help, then remembers his own worn-out clothes and unpaid board and goes no further.</p></details><details><summary><b>204</b> · <i>In a Wet Season</i> — To get out of a place with no work, a man must beg a favour from someone with influence and swallow every humiliation.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator is travelling on a drover&#x27;s pass in charge of cattle trucks, obtained after two humiliating weeks besieging local influence to escape the bush; the note of introduction says &#x27;send this beggar on&#x27;.</p></details><details><summary><b>255</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A tenant whose home is falling down gets nothing from the people she pays but excuses, each saying it is not his business.</summary><p class="sum">Only after plaster falls and injures a child does the landlord agree to repairs; the agent had always said it was not his business, and the landlord has evicted fifteen-year tenants for six weeks&#x27; arrears.</p></details><details><summary><b>257</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A woman in trouble finds plenty of sympathy but no help, and refuses the one real offer from someone she thinks beneath her.</summary><p class="sum">The landlord refuses her; she gets sympathy but no help, and scorns the practical help of the brothel-keeper opposite; nobody considers that the landlord himself has been ruined in the crash.</p></details><details><summary><b>272</b> · <i>“Brummy Usen”</i> — A man everyone insists is dead cannot even claim the wages he is owed, so he gives up his name and starts again.</summary><p class="sum">Only the publican&#x27;s wife believed him; he could not collect the wages owed him or convince the police, so he went away to start again; the old swagman then shows the same tattoo on his own arm.</p></details></section>
<section><h2>Unassigned (98)</h2><p class="meta">Scenes that fit no situation recurring in three or more stories.</p><details><summary><b>6</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A man gives up a steady living in town to start out on land of his own, sure he can do better alone.</summary><p class="sum">A man leaves a good trade in the city to take up a selection, asks his sweetheart to wait, and starts fencing at a venture because the surveyors never come.</p></details><details><summary><b>11</b> · <i>Settling on the Land</i> — A man worn raw by failure loses his temper with a neighbour&#x27;s child and brings the neighbour&#x27;s whole family down on himself.</summary><p class="sum">Ploughing with a borrowed broken-down horse and a hired child, he loses his temper, beats the cheeky boy and is set on by the boy&#x27;s whole family.</p></details><details><summary><b>22</b> · <i>Stiffner and Jim</i> — Keeping a dangerous creditor talking, a man spots a weakness and offers him a friendly favour that will quietly hobble him instead.</summary><p class="sum">He wins a bet over the flask, notices the publican limping from a nail in his boot, and offers to fix it, claiming it was his old trade.</p></details><details><summary><b>30</b> · <i>When the Sun Went Down</i> — A man drives himself past every limit to reach someone he wronged, and saving him costs everything he has left.</summary><p class="sum">Tom digs like a madman, breaks through in time to save Jack, then collapses with a burst heart, gripping his brother&#x27;s hand as he dies.</p></details><details><summary><b>33</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — A crew humours a newcomer with a strange story, lends him a borrowed name, and gradually stops keeping an eye on him.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell suggests he take a dead man&#x27;s name, so they call him Smith and come to treat him as a harmless lunatic, while he borrows tobacco and forgets to return it.</p></details><details><summary><b>34</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — A newcomer someone vouched for stops turning up for work, and the boss comes to find out what is going on.</summary><p class="sum">Smith fails to turn up to work, claiming he has forgotten again; The Oracle vows to see it through, and the boss goes to confront him.</p></details><details><summary><b>37</b> · <i>The Man Who Forgot</i> — A man betrayed by someone he protected tracks him down, takes back what was stolen, and settles the matter with his fists.</summary><p class="sum">The Oracle finds Smith drunk at a shanty, recovers the stolen goods with the shanty-keeper&#x27;s help, and beats his memory back into him.</p></details><details><summary><b>38</b> · <i>Hungerford</i> — Two travellers on foot reach a miserable settlement at the end of an unfinished road and stop there for a day.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator and his mate strike through the scrub to a tiny border town at the end of an unfinished government road, and camp there a day.</p></details><details><summary><b>39</b> · <i>Hungerford</i> — Travellers stopping in a divided settlement find each half blaming its distant masters, and nobody able to say what is true.</summary><p class="sum">The town is split by a rabbit-proof fence between two colonies, with the pubs on one side and the post office on the other, and nobody&#x27;s account of it can be trusted.</p></details><details><summary><b>40</b> · <i>Hungerford</i> — Travellers with little money must pay stiff prices for poor goods in a barren place with nowhere else to buy.</summary><p class="sum">The country round is a barren ash-heap, the river is dry, and the stores charge high prices for sour bread and poor sugar.</p></details><details><summary><b>43</b> · <i>A Camp-Fire Yarn</i> — A young man laughs along when a father mocks a plain daughter as unwanted, then sees how badly it hurt her.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell tells his mate how a farmer mocked his plain, hardworking daughter as unmarriageable, and how he laughed along and then felt sorry for her.</p></details><details><summary><b>44</b> · <i>A Camp-Fire Yarn</i> — Turned down when he offered out of pity, a young man sets out to learn whether anyone would have him at all.</summary><p class="sum">Trying to comfort the girl, he offers to marry her and is refused; stung, he sets out to learn whether any girl would have him by asking an even plainer neighbour.</p></details><details><summary><b>47</b> · <i>A Camp-Fire Yarn</i> — A young man caught by a woman he ran from gives in without a fight, and is ordered about in front of everyone.</summary><p class="sum">The pursued youth gives in without a struggle, marries the older woman, and is ordered about in front of the whole boardinghouse, though she makes him a good wife.</p></details><details><summary><b>48</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — A man who left his homeland long ago runs it down to strangers who expected him to speak up for it.</summary><p class="sum">On a coach in New Zealand a grey-bearded Australian-born man calls the poorest local country grand and Australia a mongrel desert.</p></details><details><summary><b>49</b> · <i>His Country-After All</i> — An exile passing close to his old home swears he will never go back, and scorns anyone who suggests a visit.</summary><p class="sum">He says he left Australia twice, swearing never to return, and scorns the suggestion that he visit Sydney on his way back to America.</p></details><details><summary><b>59</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — While the rest of the household labours, the man at its head idles the morning away with a neighbour, admiring what needs no work.</summary><p class="sum">The selector spends three hours leaning on a fence with a neighbour discussing a cow, then fools about the stick-planted orchard and asks the neighbour to dinner.</p></details><details><summary><b>60</b> · <i>A Day on a Selection</i> — A man too shiftless to mend his own fences talks grandly over a meal about how the whole world ought to be put right.</summary><p class="sum">At a scalding dinner on a hot day, with fowls in the house and steers in the wheat, the shiftless selector and his guests talk social reform.</p></details><details><summary><b>65</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A single man living as cheaply as he can in the city shares cramped, grubby rooms with strangers who come and go.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator describes the cramped, greasy city dining rooms where he boards as a respectable single man, sharing a room with four others.</p></details><details><summary><b>66</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A countryman who has come to the city for help with his failing health strikes up an acquaintance with a stranger there.</summary><p class="sum">He meets Jack Gunther, a slight old-school bushman half deaf from a horse&#x27;s kick, who has come to the city to get something done for his eyes.</p></details><details><summary><b>69</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man whose health is failing regrets ignoring it when young, and pins his hopes on a slow cure that may not come.</summary><p class="sum">They talk fencing and timber; Gunther says the doctors can only promise slow improvement, and wishes he had seen one when his eyes first weakened.</p></details><details><summary><b>70</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man facing disability plans cheerfully how he can still be useful back home, and asks a friend to write to his sweetheart.</summary><p class="sum">Always cheerful, he plans to sort wool by feel if the worst comes, and has the narrator describe his photographs and write to his girl.</p></details><details><summary><b>71</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A man running out of money and hope is shoved into the worst corner of his lodging and quietly prepares to beg.</summary><p class="sum">He gives up the hospital, waits anxiously for a letter, is moved onto the stair landing by the landlord, and practises a cheap concertina in case he has to busk.</p></details><details><summary><b>73</b> · <i>Going Blind</i> — A lost brother turns up just in time, fiercely protective, and takes charge of a helpless relative in a place full of sharps.</summary><p class="sum">Gunther&#x27;s half-brother turns up, suspicious of everyone, and takes charge of him with rough tenderness, settling the bill and carrying him off; the narrator knows he is all right.</p></details><details><summary><b>74</b> · <i>Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock</i> — A child worker terrified of losing his place is given a small charity by the family he works for, who make much of it.</summary><p class="sum">A newspaper reports a small boy found asleep on a factory&#x27;s steps at four in the morning for fear of being late; a daughter of the factory&#x27;s owners gets up a subscription for an alarm clock and is praised for it.</p></details><details><summary><b>78</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Men between jobs shelter in the bare quarters a work gang left behind in a rush when the last season&#x27;s work was done.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator describes the bare slab hut where thirty shearers and rouseabouts eat and sleep in season, left littered with rubbish when the shed last cut out.</p></details><details><summary><b>79</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Men between jobs look over the rough workplace of a distant owner, himself owned by others further off, who never sets foot there.</summary><p class="sum">He describes the brush shearing shed and glaring iron wool-shed of a station owned by a company, owned by a bank, owned mostly from England.</p></details><details><summary><b>81</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — Among men already down on their luck, one has sunk so far that he has stopped trying to mend anything at all.</summary><p class="sum">One of them, the Exception, is an outcast even among these men, in a boot and a slipper found in rubbish, who has stopped mending his clothes.</p></details><details><summary><b>85</b> · <i>Stragglers</i> — A man who owns almost nothing must decide whether a castoff he found is worth carrying, when every ounce on his back counts.</summary><p class="sum">Pat cannot decide whether a pair of trousers found in the scrub are worth carrying, and the men make tea by feel in the dark with no firewood left.</p></details><details><summary><b>87</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — Strangers along the road show rough respect to a dead man none of them knew, the drunkest of them pulling himself together.</summary><p class="sum">A drover is waved away to the bar before he can join; pubs close their front doors as the procession passes, and a drunk shearer pulls himself together to take his hat off.</p></details><details><summary><b>90</b> · <i>The Union Buries Its Dead</i> — At a stranger&#x27;s burial an important local makes a show of his own piety, and nobody present dares tell him to stop.</summary><p class="sum">A pompous publican holds the priest&#x27;s hat over his head throughout the service to show off his importance to the church.</p></details><details><summary><b>95</b> · <i>In a Dry Season</i> — A traveller passes one poor settlement after another, where nothing lasts but a place to drink and one dear place to buy.</summary><p class="sum">From the train the narrator sketches the western railway towns: a pub, a store in its shadow, a failed rival shop and a sundowner on the veranda.</p></details><details><summary><b>96</b> · <i>In a Dry Season</i> — A traveller sizing up the people along the way sees a ragged wanderer drop everything to kill a danger by the road.</summary><p class="sum">Bushmen with crape on their hats board the train; a ragged sundowner drops his swag and runs at the train, but is only killing a snake.</p></details><details><summary><b>98</b> · <i>In a Dry Season</i> — A loudmouth boasts of the offers pouring in and the bosses he has thrashed, until a quiet man in the corner takes him down.</summary><p class="sum">A bush liar boasts of lost money, telegrams offering him work anywhere and a boss he thrashed, until a quiet bushman in the corner takes him down.</p></details><details><summary><b>102</b> · <i>Another of Mitchell’s Plans for the Future</i> — A man with no work dreams aloud of the easy place where he will be welcomed like family and never go hungry again.</summary><p class="sum">Mitchell plans to go down among the farms, where a farmer once wanted to keep him and the daughters liked his fiddle, and he will never want for tucker.</p></details><details><summary><b>112</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — A man who looks forward to one small pleasure must share it round the others before he can pass it to an absent friend.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator praises the custom of mates remailing newspapers to each other; Bill reads his paper through, and others in the camp ask to have it after him.</p></details><details><summary><b>117</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — Two old friends who lost the same sweetheart to another man reopen the old hurt, half as a joke and half in earnest.</summary><p class="sum">Both men once courted the same girl, who married another; Bill sends Jim the notice of her twins&#x27; birth with a chuckle, and each sits brooding over the old pain.</p></details><details><summary><b>118</b> · <i>Remailed</i> — Someone whose work is judged by others decides a friend&#x27;s rough mark of approval means more to him than any official praise.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator says he would sooner see his own work marked with crosses in a mate&#x27;s remailed paper than praised by critics.</p></details><details><summary><b>125</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A place that once promised fortunes lies abandoned and scarred, and the wilderness is slowly closing back over it.</summary><p class="sum">Golden Gully is an abandoned goldfield, its mullock heaps and shafts slowly being reclaimed by scrub under three lone pines.</p></details><details><summary><b>127</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A motherless child raised among hard, lonely men becomes everyone&#x27;s favourite as he works at his lessons beside his father.</summary><p class="sum">Little Isley Mason, called His Father&#x27;s Mate, labours over his copybook; he has always been a favourite of the diggers.</p></details><details><summary><b>129</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A silent, hardened worker who stayed on after every loss keeps at his work while old griefs rise up in his mind.</summary><p class="sum">Tom Mason, a silent hard worker of sixty, stayed on after his wife died; digging by candlelight he is lost in painful memories.</p></details><details><summary><b>131</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A father watches the law take away his son, and keeps working mechanically because he cannot bear to look up.</summary><p class="sum">He remembers troopers taking his seventeen-year-old son for armed robbery while he went on digging, unable to look up.</p></details><details><summary><b>132</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A man who has lost a brother and a son to disgrace dreads the same end for his last child more than death itself.</summary><p class="sum">His wife died of shame after the trial and hard times; he fears the same fate for Isley and prays for the boy to die before it can come; Long Tom Hopkins is introduced.</p></details><details><summary><b>133</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A kindly old hand who has taken to a hard man&#x27;s child sits down to talk with the boy about his lessons.</summary><p class="sum">Long Tom, a good-natured one-eyed digger, stops to chat with Isley and tells him education is a failure.</p></details><details><summary><b>134</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — A family friend quietly questions a child about the relatives nobody speaks of, keeping his own tie to them hidden.</summary><p class="sum">Isley proudly winds alone; Tom asks about Isley&#x27;s lost brother and his father&#x27;s brother, and takes a newspaper from the father&#x27;s coat.</p></details><details><summary><b>137</b> · <i>His Father’s Mate</i> — An old companion brings a disgraced son home to the bitter father who disowned him, and leaves the two face to face.</summary><p class="sum">The women cover the coffin with a riding-skirt and the little funeral leaves in a dray; months later Tom brings a tall young man to Mason&#x27;s hut, who calls him father.</p></details><details><summary><b>138</b> · <i>An Echo from the Old Bark School</i> — Someone in charge of children calls out the name of one who has died, and a slow child answers it far too cheerfully.</summary><p class="sum">On the first day back at school the master calls the roll and reads the name of a girl who has died; her sister sobs and the school dunce brightly answers &#x27;Dead, sir&#x27;.</p></details><details><summary><b>140</b> · <i>The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog</i> — An old man out of place among a rough crowd of workers keeps an unlovable pet that trails after them all day.</summary><p class="sum">The cook&#x27;s sulky, unlovable poodle follows the shearers to the shed each morning; the cook, Curry-and-Rice, is a fat old ship&#x27;s cook stranded among rouseabouts far from the sea.</p></details><details><summary><b>142</b> · <i>The Shearing of the Cook’s Dog</i> — Accused over a prank the whole crowd enjoyed, everyone denies it, and the ringleader himself loudly condemns the rest to keep clear.</summary><p class="sum">Every man denies knowing anything, and Geordie, who did it, loudly condemns the others for a mean, dirty trick.</p></details><details><summary><b>151</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — Customers chasing the cheapest price help starve out the competition, and then pay dearly once only one seller remains.</summary><p class="sum">Fares are cheaper now, but the public will patronise the cheapest until the rival is starved out and prices rise again; the crews have grown used to the danger.</p></details><details><summary><b>152</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A traveller with almost nothing loses a good part of his money in the rush to catch his passage.</summary><p class="sum">Rushing for the wharf with little money, he pulls out his ticket to read the boat&#x27;s name and loses his half-sovereign.</p></details><details><summary><b>153</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A man who has lost money he cannot spare searches himself again and again, retracing every drink he had on the way.</summary><p class="sum">He describes searching his pockets again and again for a lost coin and retracing every hurried farewell beer.</p></details><details><summary><b>155</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A man who lost money he could not spare hopes some poorer soul found it, though he would much rather have found it himself.</summary><p class="sum">He once found a lost coin in a pipe bowl months later; he leaves port hoping some poor devil found his, though he would rather have found it himself.</p></details><details><summary><b>156</b> · <i>Across the Straits</i> — A traveller is assured his worn-out transport is safe by a man who then admits it is rotten all the way through.</summary><p class="sum">A sailor calls the old boat safe, then says he could poke a stick through her anywhere; below, sick families lie in the stinking cabin while a young Maori plays a concertina.</p></details><details><summary><b>159</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A wife left alone with small children far from any help finds that a deadly danger has got into their home.</summary><p class="sum">A drover&#x27;s wife is left alone with four children in a slab hut nineteen miles from anyone; a snake goes into the woodheap and under the house, and her eldest boy and the dog rush after it.</p></details><details><summary><b>163</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A wife left alone when she most needed help has faced childbirth and a child&#x27;s death with only strangers to turn to.</summary><p class="sum">Her husband is careless but good to her when he has money; she bore her last children alone, helped once by an Aboriginal woman, and rode nineteen miles carrying a dead child.</p></details><details><summary><b>164</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — Sitting up alone at night, a woman whose life holds little else keeps company with her own hard memories.</summary><p class="sum">Near two in the morning, with the old scarred dog watching the wall, she lays down her sewing and thinks about her life, since there is little else to think about.</p></details><details><summary><b>168</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A woman who praised and paid someone for honest work finds, at the worst possible moment, that she was cheated.</summary><p class="sum">She is glad but undemonstrative when her husband returns; going for wood before dawn, she finds the woodheap she praised and paid an Aboriginal man for was built hollow, and cries.</p></details><details><summary><b>169</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — A worn-out woman at the end of her tether finds something absurd enough to laugh at instead of weeping.</summary><p class="sum">Wiping her eyes, she pokes her fingers through the holes in her handkerchief and laughs, as she once laughed when the cat seemed to cry with her.</p></details><details><summary><b>170</b> · <i>The Drover’s Wife</i> — After a long night&#x27;s watch alone, the danger at last shows itself, and a woman and her loyal dog must kill it together.</summary><p class="sum">Near daylight the snake shows itself at a crack; the dog drags it out and the woman clubs it to death, holding her eldest back in bed.</p></details><details><summary><b>179</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A visitor from the city, on holiday in the place he left, finds himself studying a plain and serious young woman there.</summary><p class="sum">He studies Lizzie, the tenant&#x27;s plain, grave niece, who watches without smiling as he struggles with the jammed rails and bangs his knee.</p></details><details><summary><b>182</b> · <i>An Unfinished Love Story</i> — A man who despises the hard life he left joins in its chores for a few days, for a young woman&#x27;s attention.</summary><p class="sum">Next morning he helps her milk, though the work brings back the past he despises, and they kiss over the strainer in the dairy.</p></details><details><summary><b>193</b> · <i>“Some Day”</i> — At the last moment before leaving, a man learns that the woman he kept away from loved him all along.</summary><p class="sum">On the platform as he left she cried and held up her arms to him; his mate asks if he will go back and marry her some day.</p></details><details><summary><b>195</b> · <i>“Some Day”</i> — A man who opened his heart for a moment closes it again and settles down before the long, hard day ahead.</summary><p class="sum">He admits he is out of sorts, and they roll out their swags for the long dry stretch tomorrow.</p></details><details><summary><b>201</b> · <i>In a Wet Season</i> — A traveller passing through a drowned, dismal country sees the camps of men with nowhere else to be.</summary><p class="sum">From a train in heavy rain beyond Bourke the narrator sees dismal flooded plains, a swagman&#x27;s camp and a platform of patient, damp townsfolk.</p></details><details><summary><b>202</b> · <i>In a Wet Season</i> — A traveller glimpses a lone man trudging through the mud with no hope in his face, going nowhere in particular.</summary><p class="sum">He sees a swagman trudging hopelessly through the mud with a dingo at his heels, a hawker&#x27;s sorry turnout and a teamster&#x27;s camp.</p></details><details><summary><b>205</b> · <i>In a Wet Season</i> — A man who begged his way out of a hard country endures a cold, wretched night on the road back.</summary><p class="sum">He spends a freezing night in an ancient van while bushmen open the windows at every stop, and the weather clears for the cities.</p></details><details><summary><b>206</b> · <i>“Rats”</i> — Travellers hurry to stop what looks like a brutal attack on the road, and find a lonely old man fighting his own belongings.</summary><p class="sum">Three shearers on a lonely plain see what looks like a man beating a woman, hurry to stop it, and find old Rats, a crazed swagman, fighting his own swag.</p></details><details><summary><b>212</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A solitary old man makes a holiday out of almost nothing, with only his dog for company, and goes hunting for curiosities.</summary><p class="sum">He shares his Christmas dinner with his dog Five Bob, yards the sheep, and walks three miles to dig up the grave for its bones.</p></details><details><summary><b>213</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A man alone far from anyone stumbles on the body of someone who died out there with no help at all.</summary><p class="sum">Coming home through a gully he finds the sun-dried body of a man lying face down under a sapling.</p></details><details><summary><b>216</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — Carrying home a dead mate, a man steadies himself with the dead man&#x27;s own drink while something keeps following them.</summary><p class="sum">On the way he keeps stopping for pulls at the rum, while black goannas keep appearing and his dog will not touch them.</p></details><details><summary><b>217</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — Alone at night with the body of an old mate, a man is badly frightened and scolds the dead man to steady himself.</summary><p class="sum">At the hut the corpse falls against him and later seems to stare from empty sockets; he threatens it not to play jokes on him.</p></details><details><summary><b>218</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — A man alone at night hears something he cannot explain, and sits up armed and watching until he knows what it is.</summary><p class="sum">He wakes after dark to a rustling on the roof, searches with his shotgun, and finally sits up outside to watch till dawn.</p></details><details><summary><b>220</b> · <i>The Bush Undertaker</i> — Burying an old mate who drank himself to death, a lonely man remembers their past and feels his own end coming.</summary><p class="sum">He lowers the body into the grave and, leaning on his spade, remembers the past and says tomorrow has come for Brummy and is coming for him.</p></details><details><summary><b>222</b> · <i>Our Pipes</i> — Two mates reach water after a brutal day on foot, so worn out that even stopping to rest will hurt.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator and Mitchell reach water two hours after dark following a twenty-five-mile dry stretch on their third day out, too stiff to sit down.</p></details><details><summary><b>223</b> · <i>Our Pipes</i> — Resting after a hard day, a man recalls copying an older youth he admired in a habit his family forbade.</summary><p class="sum">Lying on their swags with tea and pipes, they curse society for not being rich, and Mitchell recalls starting to smoke at fifteen by minding an admired older youth&#x27;s pipe.</p></details><details><summary><b>226</b> · <i>Our Pipes</i> — A son finds that his father, kept on a tight allowance, is glad to share his forbidden habit behind the mother&#x27;s back.</summary><p class="sum">His father, kept on an allowance by his mother, livened up on learning of it and asked him for a fill; they had many quiet smokes together, and he has been dead twelve years.</p></details><details><summary><b>228</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Everyone on a crowded passage repeats the same old local story, each man sure that he alone knows the right spot.</summary><p class="sum">After being told transportation is long over, the newcomer is unconvinced; passenger after passenger points to a different part of the cliff as the place of a famous wreck.</p></details><details><summary><b>235</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — In the dim, cheap berths, drunken workers sleep it off beside young foreigners learning the language and a sick man staring at nothing.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator describes the dim steerage: drunk shearers asleep with knuckles on the deck, two young Swiss emigrants with a dictionary, and a consumptive newcomer staring at nothing.</p></details><details><summary><b>238</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Men grumbling about poor food are topped by a veteran&#x27;s tall tale of how much worse it was where he worked.</summary><p class="sum">A shearer tops the complaints with a tall tale of meat so bad out west that it had to be chained up and shepherded by dogs; the Sydney man starts a dog yarn.</p></details><details><summary><b>239</b> · <i>Coming Across⁠—A Study in the Steerage</i> — Strangers pass a dull night swapping ever taller tales, each trying to outdo the last, until the light goes out on them.</summary><p class="sum">The Sydney man&#x27;s yarn falls flat, and a commercial traveller tells of a bag that knew its own way into pubs, until the steward turns off the light.</p></details><details><summary><b>246</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — A trusting man alone at night is confronted by the very stranger he has been told wants to kill him.</summary><p class="sum">On his last night the bricklayer walks into Malachi&#x27;s hut with a pumpkin in a bag, claims it is another man&#x27;s skull, and says he has come for Malachi&#x27;s.</p></details><details><summary><b>248</b> · <i>The Story of Malachi</i> — The crew&#x27;s despised butt dies saving someone a smarter man abandoned, and they learn that others depended on him.</summary><p class="sum">When a cow charges the squatter&#x27;s daughter and her city fiance runs for the fence, Malachi stops it barehanded and is gored; dying, he wonders how his mother will manage.</p></details><details><summary><b>259</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A woman at her lowest meets a young man who once worked beside her dead son, and he offers to walk her home.</summary><p class="sum">Billy Anderson, who worked with her dead son Arvie, recognises her outside the court and offers to walk her home.</p></details><details><summary><b>260</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A worn-out woman pours out her troubles to a sympathetic youngster, who listens patiently and asks what nobody else will.</summary><p class="sum">She cannot afford the tram; she tells her troubles over and over while Bill repeats that it is red-hot, and admits her second husband ran off and is supposed dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>262</b> · <i>Jones’s Alley</i> — A friend asks a woman drowning in debt why she will not accept the refuge a relative keeps offering her.</summary><p class="sum">He lost his carting jobs when the banks failed and his boss went bankrupt, and the paper trade is overcrowded; he asks her why she does not go to the sister-in-law who keeps inviting her.</p></details><details><summary><b>268</b> · <i>“Brummy Usen”</i> — An old wanderer admits that his friends thought better of him while they believed him dead than they ever did alive.</summary><p class="sum">An old swagman tells the narrator that most old bushmen have been reported dead at some time, and that he himself was better thought of by his friends when they believed him dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>270</b> · <i>“Brummy Usen”</i> — People who made up their minds about who died adjust their story rather than admit they were ever wrong.</summary><p class="sum">Billy had been confused with another driver; young Joe Swallow was buried and his ghost seen, until Joe turned up and people decided the ghost had been someone else&#x27;s all along.</p></details><details><summary><b>271</b> · <i>“Brummy Usen”</i> — A man wrongly declared dead comes back, and nobody will believe he is who he says he is.</summary><p class="sum">A bushranger shot in a hold-up was identified by a tattoo as Brummy Usen, a sawmill hand; when the real Brummy turned up, the obstinate neighbours would not believe he was alive.</p></details><details><summary><b>274</b> · <i>Bogg of Geebung</i> — A newcomer recognises in the town drunk the ruins of an educated man, and wonders sadly what brought him so low.</summary><p class="sum">A young doctor hears Bogg muttering in a bar and recognises a passage of Homer and a Dublin University song: he must once have been a classical scholar.</p></details><details><summary><b>276</b> · <i>Bogg of Geebung</i> — A bully shields a lonely man from his own gang, but the lonely man&#x27;s private grief ends his life anyway.</summary><p class="sum">The leader makes the gang leave Bogg alone; days later the paper reports him drowned in the river, apparently by his own hand, his sorrows unknown.</p></details><details><summary><b>281</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — Two tricksters looking for free board approach a gang of hard-working men and ask who is in charge.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman and Smith reach a cooperative gang working on a new railway line in New Zealand; a gloomy navvy tells them the boss is only the party&#x27;s elected spokesman.</p></details><details><summary><b>282</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — A trickster posing as a gentleman of learning chats up the leader of a hard-worked gang, sizing him up as an easy mark.</summary><p class="sum">Steelman, dressed as a scientific gentleman with Smith as his servant, chats with the young spokesman, who says they worked the swamps up to their waists in midwinter for eighteenpence a yard.</p></details><details><summary><b>285</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — A pretender keeps up a show of expertise and orders his companion about to make the act more convincing.</summary><p class="sum">He declares the country geologically ancient, sends Smith up a slippery bank for a specimen, and talks of upheavals and restoring the mineral kingdom.</p></details><details><summary><b>288</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — The trickster&#x27;s sidekick, loosened by drink, grumbles about his supposed master to the workers, which only adds to the act.</summary><p class="sum">Smith entertains the other men, and in drink calls geology bosh and his employer Old Rocks, while praising his easy, well-paid billet.</p></details><details><summary><b>290</b> · <i>The Geological Spieler</i> — Two tricksters settle in as guests of a working crew, making a show of work each morning and loafing out of sight all day.</summary><p class="sum">The pair wink and chuckle in the dark; they stay on for days, poking at rocks in sight of the works each morning, then loafing in the bush till dinner and lecturing on stones at night.</p></details><details><summary><b>296</b> · <i>Macquarie’s Mate</i> — The gossips rally round a reason for speaking ill of the dead, and the old man stubbornly insists on having his say.</summary><p class="sum">Sally Thompson argues there is too much sentiment about the dead and justice is owed to the living; Barcoo calls Macquarie a spieler, and the old man says he has one more point.</p></details><details><summary><b>300</b> · <i>Baldy Thompson</i> — A boss mistaken for one of his own workers runs himself down as the meanest boss alive, then feeds the stranger anyway.</summary><p class="sum">Taken for a fellow rouseabout by a jackaroo, Baldy calls Thompson the meanest squatter alive and then gives the lad tucker from the store; the narrator once got rations by repeating Baldy&#x27;s own ideas to him.</p></details><details><summary><b>306</b> · <i>For Auld Lang Syne</i> — One by one the old crew leave, one to prosper far away, another fleeing debt and shame, and the rest see each one off.</summary><p class="sum">The policeman joins in the singing; the first mate has since prospered in New Zealand; another left secretly to escape debt, dishonour and a drunken wife, and others followed.</p></details></section>
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