ly and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly
greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the 'rough crowd'
(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she
went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or
'poor-man's' goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock
goldfield 'broke out', adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove
the truth of the old digger's saying, that no matter how thoroughly
ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.

Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the
river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in
the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.
Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the
effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was
unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and
was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then
lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did
sewing and washing for single diggers.

I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried
on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly
slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.

'Why don't you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on
good land, Peter Olsen? You're only slaving your stomach out here.' (She
didn't say stomach.)

*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). 'But then
you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn't like to take
her out in the Bush.'

*Mrs Middleton*. 'Delicate, be damned! she's only shamming!' (at her
loudest.) 'Why don't you kick her off the bed and the book out of her
hand, and make her go to work? She's as delicate as I am. Are you a man,
Peter Olsen, or a----?'

This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.

Long Paddock was 'petering'. There were a few claims still being worked
down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and
gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;
and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over
the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time
lost in baling and extra expense in t