STRAGGLERS
An oblong hut, walled with blue-grey hardwood slabs, adzed at the ends and set horizontally between the round sapling studs; high roof of the eternal galvanised iron. A big rubbish heap lies about a yard to the right of the door, which opens from the middle of one of the side walls; it might be the front or the back wall―there is nothing to fix it. Two rows of rough bunks run round three sides of the interior; and a fireplace occupies one end―the kitchen end. Sleeping, eating, gambling, and cooking accommodation for thirty men in about eighteen by forty feet. The rouseabouts and shearers use the hut in common during shearing. Down the centre of the place runs a table made of stakes driven into the ground, with cross-pieces supporting a top of half round slabs set with the flat sides up, and affording a few level places for soup-plates; on each side are crooked, unbarked poles laid in short forks, to serve as seats. The poles are worn smoothest opposite the level places on the table. The floor is littered with rubbish old wool-bales, newspapers, boots, worn-out shearing pants, rough bedding, &c., raked out of the bunks in impatient search for missing articles―signs
