Squatters moved into unoccupied Victorian countryside from both the North (southern NSW areas) and the South (Port Phillip Bay and Portland) . Squatting began soon after October 1835 when "overlanders" Hawdon, Gardiner and Hepburn drove the first cattle from NSW down the central corridor ,roughly following Major Mitchell's line.
                The Murray region started to be taken up from 1835 with a peak uptake in 1843, dropping to nil  in 1849. (* from "Victorian Squatters" by Spreadborough and Anderson.)

                Some of the runs taken up by squatters were

Arcadia (37)	80,000 acres (later subdivided to Arcadia 48000 ac and Pine Lodge 43000 ac) .Abandoned 1878
Mundoona (92)	12,000 acres .Gazetted 1848 .Forfeited 1875.
Cobram (80)	128,640 acres .Gazetted 1848.
Gowangardie (152)	40,000 acres .Gazetted 1849 .Forfeited June 20 1879.
Kotupna (56)	34,850 acres .
Noorilim (93)	44,320 acres .Gazetted 1848 .Forfeited 1870.
Yabba (53)	25,000 acres .Gazetted 1848 .
Yabba Yabba	32,000 acres .1855 to June 1879 .Forfeited.
Tallygaroopna (100)	160,000 acres .1841 to

 A brief history of the Tallygaroopna Run:   

( extracts  from "Victorian Squatters" by  Spreadborough / Anderson and "Pastoral Pioneers" by Billry booksis / Kenyon.)

Tallygaroopna 100  Gazetted July 26 1848      estimated to be 160,000 acres in area.  (Licence 24 months prior to NSW OIC Oct 1847)

1841	Edward Khull*         (* this is a possible error in history records as Khull was still in Scotland until 1848)
1854 April 22nd	Hugh Glass
1854 July 10th	Sheppard ,La Soeuf and Atkins
1857 July 16th	Charles Ryan and Robert Hammond
1859 May 6th	Alexander Brock and William Brokman?
1866 Feb 28th	William Fraser
1870 May 12th	The National Bank of Australia
1874 July 10th	Licence for year 1873 forfeited
1885 January 21st	William Fraser

      The Katandra district was originally part of the Tallygaroopna Run. The Katandra Run was subdivided off the Tallygaroopna Run  in March 1848** and taken up by Charles Ryan.

Katandra      subdivision of No 100 Tallygaroopna.    Area 43,180 acres  Subdivided from Tallygaroopna, March 1848**

1848 March	Charles Ryan (born in Dublin Ireland 1818, arrived Australia 1839.)
1855 June 7th	Hugh Glass (born Partferry, County Down, Ireland 1817.   Arrived with JVL Foster in Australia 1840. Richest man in Victoria in 1862 .Died in poverty 1871. Had a total of 49 runs in Victoria.)
1856 January 7th	George Wegge Horne and Peter Snodgrass. (Peter Snodgrass, third son of Hon Lt Col Kenneth Snodgrass, arrived in Sydney 1828. Was MLC 1851-56 and MLA 1856-67. He was the first full time commissioner for Port Phillip. Had eight runs in Victoria)
1862 January 11th	Adolph Page
1862 July 18th	Trust and agency Co of Australia
1864 September 30th	Edward Casey Dunn (Station sold in 1873* from W.E.Dunn book "Reminisces of My Life")( Read about life at  Katandra, an extract from this book  "Boyhood and Bush Days")
1875 July 29th	John Murray (of Benalla)
1876 October 5th	David Webster (of Khull's Range). Donated fencing for Katandra Cemetery. First person buried there 10/5/1879
1880 September 24th	Lease Cancelled
	** This is a possible error in the history records as Tallygaroopna Run was still listed as being 160,000 acres into the early 1850's

 Government Legislation saw the breaking up of many of the squatters holdings into 320 acre blocks . Government surveyors first surveyed land suitable for farming and it was then up to would be farmers to select a block, register it with the Titles Office, (Benalla for this area), sign a form guaranteeing to clear  at least ten per cent of the land each year, fence and make improvements.
    Only one 320 acre block was to be selected by each farmer but many obtained extra blocks by registering them in the names of family members and false names.
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An extract from the Book    "Reminisces of My Life" by William Edward Dunn.        W.E.Dunn was the son of Squatter Edward Casey Dunn.

    The death of my two sisters, and the complete collapse of business in Geelong, made a move from that place desirable, and my father made up his mind to become a squatter, though I cannot help feeling that it was a calling for which he was not in many ways fitted. I believe he was a good judge of wool and cloth business as a youth in the West of England; but as a merchant he would probably have done far better. He was too much of the English gentleman to do much of the rough work which falls to the lot of every successful squatter, more especially in those days; and he was inclined to spend too much time at his hobby  -gardening- and let others attend to the work amongst the sheep.
     After searching for a long time for a suitable station, he decided to buy "Katandra", a leasehold property of about 64,000 acres in the Goulburn Valley district of Victoria and about 15 miles south of Cobram on the River Murray. It was, in those days, a rather isolated place, the nearest township being Benalla, which was 45 miles distant, and to get to the railway we had to drive 60 miles to Echuca.
     The country around was absolutely level and we could only get a view above the trees by driving to Khull's Range, a small elevation about 200 feet in height, some 10 miles from the homestead. The view from these hills was somewhat unique, as the trees seemed to form a perfectly even plane as far as the eye could reach.
     Fortunately for the family, the homestead was a nice brick building of six living rooms, beside kitchen and outhouses, upon which the late owner had squandered most of his capital. My father later added four more rooms, making it a very comfortable dwelling. At the time of this purchase I was about eight years old, and well remember the sale at Geelong of our furniture at most appallingly low prices, all except the piano, which we kept, and which remained in the family until my father gave up housekeeping in 1903, some 40 years later.
     We journeyed to the station first by train to Melbourne, and from thence by coach to Murchison on the Goulburn River, a most wearisome journey, especially for young boys. There a station vehicle met us, and we completed thus 120 miles of travel, passing through Shepparton on route, which in those days (1863) was the merest bush hamlet consisting of a public house and blacksmith's shop.
     To us boys this new home was a perfect revelation, especially after the somewhat cramped surroundings of our Geelong house. There was a fine garden through which ran (in flood time) a large creek, a tributary of the Broken River, giving us a never failing supply of water. To our young minds our father was a prince, owning such a large tract of land, with many horses, thousands of sheep, and quite a number of station hands at his beck and call. But, bush surroundings did not in any way cause him to alter his life's habits; as when riding over the station he might still be seen attired in tall hat and long frock coat and carrying an Englishmen's hunting crop, though the horses he bestrode were the tamest and most harmless of "mokes". Even in the shearing shed where he always did his own wool-sorting, and where on account of the heat he had to discard the black coat, yet the "bell-topper" was always in evidence. I fancy myself his men laughed at him behind his back, but being such a truly honest and straightforward man, they could scarcely fail to respect him.
     He certainly did what he could for the spiritual as well as the material well-being of those whom he employed. Family prayers morning and evening were always the rule, at which all the household was expected to be present. Besides these of a Sunday he held a short service for the family in the morning, and at night the station bell was tolled, and a short C of E service took place with a read sermon. At this the domestics were expected to attend, and the overseer and men if they so desired, and I have known as many as thirteen of the station hands to be present of an evening.
     It always took my fancy as a boy to see the men trooping in dressed in their Sunday best which consisted mainly of their cleanest shirt and pair of pants. My Mother played the piano for the hymns etc and sang, and the rest of the family formed the choir.
     On one occasion, some of the men previous to the service had obtained liquor from a travelling hawker, and one or two men were fairly "tight" when they came for the service. One especially, a very decent fellow in the ordinary way, was rolling about in a most suspicious manner whenever he attempted to stand up, and repeated the Creed all wrong. At a signal from my father, he was marched out by the overseer, and the next morning dismissed, a punishment which seemed to me, even as a boy, to be rather drastic.
     Once in twelve months or so a C of E clergyman came from Benalla and held a service in the house; but he was a cold formal man, and his services were not so much appreciated as those conducted by my father. An occasional non-descript itinerant minister came round (as for instance the Rev. J. J. Westwood, whose book of wanderings I still possess) and held a service, but this was very rare.
     There was certainly one man of whom we boys and all others were very fond, the Rev. J. Murdock, a Presbyterian minister from Benalla, who in the "seventies" visited us two or three times a year. He was a man first, a parson afterwards, and we were always very glad to see him.
     In the year 1864, my sister Kate was born, and is now the only one of the family beside myself still surviving. It was a great event in our life, and my father was so proud at the child being a girl that he actually called some of the men together, and drank her health and prosperity in port wine, though I fancy that whiskey would have appealed to them more: but this he never kept. This was my mothers last child, and we three youngsters lived very happily on the station till the year 1871 when my brother and I were sent to boarding school in Melbourne - the first break up of the family.
     After running wild for about twelve months, from the time we first began our life on the station, we two boys were handed over to the care of a governess for our education and general training, a Miss Hill, whose uncle had been manager of the Geelong Savings Bank and a personal friend of my father's. She was rather short in stature, but her full name was Sarah Ann Hill, and by a peculiar coincidence during her reign in the schoolroom, we happened to have a cook whose name was Sarah Ann Vale, and was unusually tall.
     This governess was a kind-hearted creature, and did her best, and no doubt grounded us well, but she was scarcely fitted to control two over-strictly brought up boys, who were not allowed, until I was more than eleven years old, even to take dinner with our parents except on a Sunday, and who once out of sight of "Papa" and "Mama" were apt to let off their animal spirits at the expense of the governess. When I look back, it seems scarcely possible that we could have said some of the awful things which we did in her presence, and yet in all innocence. But we were really very fond of her, and I can quite recollect that when she left, after a couple of years of our vagaries, I wept copiously.
     As we were now getting almost beyond the control of a lady, a tutor was found for us in the person of a Mr William Bromby, son of the then Bishop of Tasmania. He was a very refined and highly religious young Englishman, but frightfully reticent, and outside his actual teaching, he scarcely spoke to anyone and even when addressed at the table, would answer only in monosyllables.
     Like a great many Englishmen of that day, his education did not extend much beyond a slight knowledge of Latin and Greek, and the barest necessary English. He taught us conscientiously but not very successfully for about a couple of years, and then left to take up hop farming in Tasmania. After him and until we were sent to boarding school, a succession of tutors followed, some of them clever men, but the majority, like most bush tutors, derelicts, and one of them even something worse, a felon, who on leaving altered a cheque of my father's, and later on forged a signature of Professor Irving of the Melbourne University.
     During our sojourn at Katandra, a few events stand out prominently in my memory, the foremost being the tragic death of Miss Ellen Bromby, a cousin of my tutor, and the daughter of the Rev.Dr and Mrs Bromby of the C of E Grammar School, Melbourne. She had been suffering from consumption, but had become obsessed with the idea  that if she could only get to Katandra, the dry pure air of the Murray district would soon make her strong again. After 150 miles of train to Echuca and 60 miles of buggy travelling to the station (during which a serious accident took place), she arrived at our home, but died only about a week later. Her vitality, however, was marvellous, and I well remember that only on the night before she passed away, she played a game of chess together, and she seemed as bright and well as if nothing was wrong with her.
     With considerable difficulty a coffin was built by the station carpenter, and her body conveyed to the nearest cemetery ay Benalla, a distance of 45 miles over bush roads, where she was laid to rest. Her brother, Edward Bromby (who quite recently -1926- retired from the position of librarian at the Melbourne University) was the only one of her family able to be present at the funeral. And here I might mention that this fell disease (consumption) carried off no less than five members of this estimable family, all fine, young sterling people, in their early manhood and womanhood.
 During our sojourn at Katandra, two heavy floods occurred, one in 1864, and the second in 1870. The first caused us little loss with the exception of the drowning of nearly the whole of our team of working bullocks. The bullock driver, while probably under the "influence", attempted to take the team across a raging torrent with the bullock dray attached. When he realised what he had done, he swam in after them at great risk of his life, and managed to get one solitary beast loose, which I well remember seeing on the following day calmly chewing the cud on the bank of the creek, while the bodies of its less fortunate mates were stranded against trees, fences, etc, further down stream.
     I think, too, that it was during this flood that the legend of the "Great fish caught at Katandra" originated. The facts were a follows: My father with several of the men, while mustering, was cut off from the homestead by the sudden rise of the waters. He was a man of great moral courage, but much lacking in physical: and whereas most old bushmen would have simply swum their horses over the creek without hesitation, for him this was altogether too dangerous an undertaking.
     And so a rope was thrown across the raging torrent and fastened round my father's waist. Then, having solemnly divested himself of his tall hat and frock coat, he walked into the water until obliged to swim, while two or three station hands on the homestead side of the creek hauled for all they were worth, and brought him triumphantly through, wet but safe. I shall never forget his remarkable appearance as he ran up to the house shedding water from his clothes at every step, and evidently under the impression that he had been mercifully preserved from fearful danger.
     While narrating the hair raising adventures of the bullock driver, another bush character comes into my mind whom we had in our employ about the same period. His name was Lannigan, and I should imagine that like the bullock driver, he was "raised" in the Emerald Isle. Katandra had not very long before changed over from a cattle  to a sheep station, and a few old hands had been kept on, amongst others Lannigan, who was known as "The Stockman". He was a daring and fearless rider, but had only one arm, his left having been amputated after a fall from his horse. On to the stump the surgeons had fitted a wooden terminal, into which he could screw a fork while eating, and a hook to guide his horse for riding.
     This latter was very convenient, but unfortunately it served a double purpose. For Lannigan, like most of the bushmen in those days, could not exist without his annual "spree" and after consuming a large quantity of bad liquor, became pugnacious, and fell foul of the local force, generally the Shepparton police, and before he was lodged in the lock-up, the unfortunate "bobbies" had a terrible time with the stalwart stockman's iron-tipped arm, so that not only was the charge of "drunk and disorderly" preferred against him, but also  "assaulting the police in the execution of their dooty". He disappears early from my recollections, and I suppose that some such escapade cause his dismissal.
     The second great flood occurred in 1870 and we lost several hundred sheep through drowning, and the general inconvenience caused was enormous. The year 1869 had been very droughty and quite a number of sheep and even working bullocks died from lack of feed. Early in 1870 tremendous rans fell and continued off and on until some time in August and September.
     The homestead was built on a slight elevation about 10 feet or so above the high water mark of the creek, but the remainder of the surrounding country was one dead level, and consequently the back waters of the creek found their way over miles and miles of bush land, completely cutting us off from all the roads, so that, off  and on, for about five months we were living virtually on an island, although in no place except in the actual bed of the creek was the water more than two or three feet deep.
 We had a visitor staying with us for nearly the whole of 1870, Miss Charlotte Bromby, the youngest daughter of the family already mentioned, and to us young people, the escapades caused by the flood were a source of great pleasure. We thought nothing of wading through miles of water to reach some favourite spot or rowing up water courses which till then in the memory of white man had never been known to have a drop of water running through them.
     But the luckless station people who were here, there, and everywhere, trying to save the sheep, had a very tough time. I recollect well our overseer and others wearing long Wellington boots to keep their feet dry; but as they had to frequently go through water which was well over the top of their boots, they soon found that they could keep themselves drier by cutting holes in the leather to allow the water to escape more quickly.
     A good many sheep were drowned, but on the whole the flood did immense good to the land, and the following year, 1871, was most wonderful for grass and water. A huge lake formed on the plain in front of the homestead, and one of the curious effects of this super abundance of water was to bring all sorts of wildfowl round the house, some of which we had never seen before: pelicans, black swans and many species of wild duck.
     I was then at an age when sport in the shape of shooting birds and wild game generally was almost an obsession, and amongst other tricks, I tried with success the blackfellows' method of stalking swans on the water, by placing bushes in front of the boat which I propelled from behind until within shooting distance of my quarry. And here I might mention that during the '69 drought, and for some two or three years after, we had quite a visitation of grey kangaroos, huge animals, now nearly extinct, standing, when at bay, nearly seven feet high.
     During the drought there was practically neither grass nor water except near the homestead, and so these great beasts used to come at night and feed on the grass on our croquet lawn, jumping the 6 ft paling fence with the greatest of ease. This lawn was only a few feet from my bedroom, and many a time have I jumped out of bed in the early summer morning and fired through my window at these animals.
     The general custom in those days , however , was to run the kangaroo down with dogs, a special breed, a cross between a grey hound and a stag hound, combining fleetness with great strength.
     At times a kangaroo when chased by the dogs would take refuge in nearest creek, or in a water hole of sufficient depth to force the dogs to swim, and then turning on its pursuers, would seize the dog that had followed it with its powerful front paws and hold it under the water until it was properly defunct.
     These kangaroos were really remarkable animals and I much doubt if any of the same description now exist either in Victoria or N.S.W. There were supposed to be some three thousand of them on our station alone in 1869, and it is probable that this was well within the mark, as a friend of mine, a most reliable man, has since told me that on his station (somewhere in the north of N.S.W.) in one year they killed as many as thirty thousand.
     The length of their leap was also something to be remembered, as happening on one occasion to be riding out with some friends on the neighbouring station, Yabba, we suddenly came upon an "old man", who went straight for the nearest fence, over which we did not think it worthwhile to follow him; however, out of curiosity, I measured the length of this single leap, and found out that it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 feet. Very little use was made in those days of the skin or any part of the dead kangaroo, though we occasionally cut off the tail  for soup, and the paws for trophies, and I still possess the front and hind claws of a kangaroo killed in '69 or '70 as a relic of my boyhood's hunting days.
     We also had quite a large number of emus on the station, but they made such an astonishing pace when hunted that I never succeeded in killing any myself. Several huge iguanas, however, fell under my gun; one especially comes back to my memory as being in the neighbourhood of six feet from nose to end of tail.
     Snakes also were very common in and around the house, one finding its way into the room on the verandah in which I slept, and hiding under the bed. I could recount some remarkable escapes from being bitten by these reptiles, but "snake yarns" are considered bad form for anyone who has lived much in the bush. There is a theory among some bushman that a snake with its back broken will, when apparently dead, still continue to wriggle till sundown. I have known this to be the case, but I have also known exactly the opposite, so possibly this legend may not hold good for all species of snakes.
     During the period  we spent in the district, bushranging was very prevalent in N.S.W. and also in our own part of Victoria. Although no one was stuck up in our particular station, yet within a few miles many outrages took place, and the most bloodthirsty and brutal bushranger of those days, Morgan, was shot on the neighbouring station, Peechelba. A part owner of this station, Mr Evan McPherson, later on brought Cobram, which was only 15 miles from Katandra, and as his family and ourselves were on intimate terms, from some of the sons who were my of my own age and who had been present at the shooting, I had, at first hand, the details as they saw it themselves.
     The bushranger had stuck up the homestead and during the best part of the night had held the family and the maids in the principal room of the house at the point of the revolver, with the exception of one housemaid who was allowed out to supply him with refreshments. This girl managed to communicate with the police at Wangaratta, and several troopers were hurried to the scene and placed in hiding around the house so that when Morgan came out in the morning he should get a warm reception. The bushranger came out as expected with the adult members of the family walking before him covered by revolvers, his intention being to take one of the best horses from the stable then make off.
     But suddenly, and quite contrary to all police arrangements, one of the station hands (the carpenter if my memory serves me right), stepped out from behind a tree and fired at Morgan with a common fowling piece, Mercifully for the family, the bullet struck him in the neck , otherwise most probably all the men in front would have been shot down by the desperado.
     He eventually died of the wound, and the carpenter  and the housemaid were awarded 500 pound apiece by the Government, this being the price which had been offered for his capture or death.
     The bushranger Power was also captured not very far from our home; and the Kelly gang had its origin in the Wangaratta ranges, no very great distance from the station, though the murders and other lawless acts they committed occurred after we had left the district, and I cannot speak personally with any certainty about them.
 In mentioning Mr Ewan McPherson as the subsequent owner of the Cobram station, a rather curious coincidence suggests itself  to my memory. His name at once gives the land  of his birth; and it is rather interesting to note that all our immediate neighbours came from Old Caledonia, my father being the only Englishman for many miles around. Along the Murray River the Telfords, the McPhersons, and the Rutherfords held sway; and on the South, East and West we had for neighbours a Ross, a Frazer, and a Currie. With one exception they were all fine sterling men, mostly from the Highlands, and we were on the best of terms with them all excepting one already mentioned who was a bad neighbour to everyone who had the misfortune to possess a common boundary with him.
     Those who held Peechelba, Yarrawonga, and Ulupna stations, also Cobram, were all intermarried, and the old clan feeling was largely in evidence so that if some unwise person made the mistake of treating one of them with disrespect, it was not only the particular person but the clan that he had offended. I am glad to say that between ourselves and these fine old pioneers nothing but the very kindest feelings existed, and many a pleasant holiday have I, as a lad, spent among them.
     We had also some very good friends on the N.S.W. side of the Murray, almost opposite Yarrawonga, Mr William Hay and his family, who owned Boomanoomana, which station, if I mistake not, is still in the hands of his descendants.
     But when the fertile region in which we lived, known as the Goulburn Valley, was thrown open to free-select, my father, in common with most of our neighbours, sold out and sought fresh fields and pastures new and alas, in only too many cases they lost in other states the fortunes which they had with so much toil and trouble won when in Victoria.
 It may seem strange to anyone reading these reminiscences, that no mention whatever has been made of the aborigines, generally in our time known as "blackfellows". Well, as a matter of fact, although there were evidences that Katandra had at one time been a great camping place for the Murray River tribes, I only remember seeing one blackfellow on Katandra, and that was during the time of the first great flood, already mentioned. What took my fancy as a boy was to see the smart way in which he made a canoe out of a sheet of bark, which he cut with a tomahawk from a standing tree, in a very short space of time, and crossed the raging waters of the creek in perfect safety.
     Along the main creek which ran through our garden there were every few miles apart blacks' camping grounds, where from generation to generation they had sat round fires and cooked their food. In one of these I, as a boy of 14, made a very interesting discovery, or rather "find". Out of sheer curiosity I one day dug into one of these camping places and came upon a complete stone apparatus used by the old time blacks for grinding the Nardoo seed, that only just life supporting meal on which Burke and Wills lived (or rather starved) shortly before they both succumbed, on their return trip to Melbourne. This consisted of a hollowed out stone trough about 18 inches long together with two rounded stones with which the black gins rubbed the seed together to reduce it to powder.
     What was most remarkable, however, was the fact that such a thing as a stone was practically unknown in our district, as the whole countryside was a mass of level black soil formed by the overflowing of the rivers, Murray and Goulburn. True that on Khull's Range, already mentioned, red volcanic stone in small quantities might be found, but grey sandstone of the size of this grinding mill was absolutely unobtainable.
     I may also mention that I still have in my possession a stone tomahawk made out of a sort of flint which I found in one of the shallow creeks, and also several weapons, some of them of great antiquity, which we bought from blacks on the neighbouring stations, Kaarimbah and Ulupna. The Nardoo grinder, however, was of necessity left behind when I was sent to school and ,much to my regret, it disappeared altogether when my father sold the place in 1873.
     The only adventure - and that a very mild one, but real enough to a child of nine - which I can call to mind during our station life, was getting lost in the bush with my father. As already has been mentioned, he was in many ways utterly unfit for bush life, having none of the bushman's born instinct, and what was perhaps worse, he suffered from very defective sight and was therefore unable to note things as he passed through the country which others  would have done as a matter of course. He himself said on more than one occasion that if it were possible to take the wrong track, he would be certain to do so.
     Well, on the occasion mentioned he had decided to pay a visit to our good neighbour, Mr George Currie, of Kaarimbah station, a brother of the well known sheep breeder of Lara station in the western district of Victoria. The distance was about 20 miles (33 km), over perfectly level country, but with no properly defined roads, mere bush tracks through trees, and which, to make things worse, had shortly before our journey been very much deflected owing to some fresh subdivisions in our neighbours paddocks.
     He had taken me with him for company, and we started off immediately after midday dinner in the wagonette, expecting to arrive at our  destination in nice time for tea. But after going for some miles it began to rain: mists formed on the surface of the ground, the track became more and more faint and unreliable, and just as darkness was setting in, my father managed to drive the vehicle between two small trees so that it was firmly wedged, and we could get neither backwards or forwards.
     There was nothing for it, therefore, but to make camp for the night, so the horses were taken out, tied up to the trees and given feed, and we started to walk through the pouring rain to a deserted shepherd's hut which we had passed about a mile back. It was tenantless except for sheep which had taken shelter there from the rain, and which we promptly chased out, also dragged  from under the only bunk a dead lamb which had chosen this spot to depart this life. Fortunately, my father had brought matches, and we soon had a roaring fire in the bark chimney, at which we dried our clothes. A few biscuits we had with us served for our tea, and we then made an attempt to sleep on the curved bark of the bunk.
     Very early in the morning, long before daybreak, my father, who had began to get anxious for the safety of the horses, made up his mind to walk over to where he had tethered them, and so I was left for a long while until his return. It seemed an eternity to me, a child of nine, and one who had never been alone for a minute in my life. All the wild-birds and animals of the bush seemed to have congregated round the hut, uttering their weird cries, and further to add to my terrors it was pitch dark, as there was no light except from the ashes of the fire which had nearly died out. I did not forget that night for many a year.
 However, when dawn broke the day had cleared a little, and we managed to release the vehicle from the trees, harnessed up the horses, and were soon on our way again, and before long reached Mr Curries hospitable home. We remained there all that day, and on the afternoon of the day following, started for home.
     It scarcely seems credible, but is none the less true, that again my father lost his way. But fortunately this time, we had reached what was then known as the eighteen mile plain, an outstation of Ulupna, and where the town of Numurkah now stands. Here there was a decent building with a young under-overseer in charge, so we had a hearty welcome and good accommodation for the night, and next day we again started for Katandra which we made without further mishap.