s paddock. The floods
washed his drain into a deep gully near his hut, which was sometimes
nearly surrounded with the roaring waters. He then tried to dam the
water back on to my ground, but I made a gap in his dam with a
long-handled shovel, and let the flood go through. Nature and the
shovel were too much for Billy. He came out of his hut, and stood
watching the torrent, holding his dirty old pipe a few inches from
his mouth, and uttered a loud soliloquy:--"Here I am--on a
miserable island--fenced in with water--going to be washed away
--by that Lord Donahoo, son of a barber's clerk--wants to drown me
and my kids--don't he--I'll break his head wi' a paling--blowed
if I don't." He then put his pipe in his mouth, and gazed in silence
on the rushing waters.

I planted my ground with vines of fourteen different varieties, but,
in a few years, finding that the climate was unsuitable for most of
them, I reduced the number to about five. These yielded an unfailing
abundance of grapes every year, and as there was no profitable
market, I made wine. I pruned and disbudded the vines myself, and
also crushed and pressed the grapes. The digging and hoeing of the
ground cost about 10 pounds each year. When the wine had been in the
casks about twelve months I bottled it; in two years more it was fit
for consumption, and I was very proud of the article. But I cannot
boast that I ever made much profit out of it--that is, in cash--
as I found that the public taste for wine required to be educated,
and it took so long to do it that I had to drink most of the wine
myself. The best testimony to its excellence is the fact that I am
still alive.

The colonial taste for good liquor was spoiled from the very
beginning, first by black strap and rum, condensed from the steam of
hell, then by Old Tom and British brandy, fortified with tobacco--
this liquor was the nectar with which the ambrosial station hands
were lambed down by the publicans--and in these latter days by
colonial beer, the washiest drink a nation was ever drenched with.
the origin of bad beer dates from the repeal of the sugar duty in
England; before that time beer was brewed from malt and hops, and
that we had "jolly good ale and old," and sour pie.

A great festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on
the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks.
All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the
most exten