The northern territory police magazine $4 c tat

UNDERDOWN'S HOTEL - ALICE SPRINGS


Centrally located — Friendly service — Excellent cuisine Single rooms and family suites all air conditioned
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Box 5 Alice springs. Phone 21.
45 -Ix

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another three weeks I'll be back in the town drinking a cool beer.

" Anything I can do for you Jack? — registrations, licences, dingo scalps ", he said.

" No, Wal, she's jake. But you can come in and we'll boil the billy and have a feed; you can't push on in this heat. Put 'em up for a while and we'll have a yarn ".

" O.K." said Langley, " I'll just give old Handlebar a feed and push on later in the day ".

This done, he and Jack walked into the homestead kitchen.

Lunch over, the pair fell to discussing the state of the country, cattle markets, and all those subjects dear to the heart of the bushman. Jack_. cast a glance at Langley. He said, " Do you know, Wal, I can't figure you blokes out; you come to this God foresaken country as young blokes, you learn the hard way, dust, flies, heat and weeks away on what you call a routine patrol ".

" I don't know about that ", said Langley, " what about yourself— hardly enough to buy a bag of flour, cattle starving and perishing, banks yelling for overdrafts, stock and station agents after you; you should talk ".

" Oh, it's not bad ", said the station owner.

Both fell silent and Langley brooded for a while on the recent expression of opinion — the opinion of two men who loved this sunburnt country — and thought to himself, " It's got me licked, too ".

So the long afternoon wore on and the shadows lengthened over the homestead.

Langley stretched and said, " Well, I think I'll put a few miles behind me, Jack, and get an early start in the morning ".

Jack replied, " You won't stay the night, Wal? " might be able to find a drop of the doings " — This with a cunning leer.

" No, I'll kick along, thanks all the same "; and Langley strode towards the stockyard where Handlebar, ever alert to routine, had the camels ready to move off.

Langley swung aboard the lead riding camel and the plant plodded off into the western sun now low on the horizon.

So this would go on until the completion of the routine patrol, hundreds of miles of sameness, heat, desolation._,„ The same hardy characters to meet, and in some cases their wives, on isolated cattle stations far from the hurly burly of cities. Their only contact with civilization, the radio, and their only personal contact, the patrolling Policeman and the odd traveller, rare in these parts.

In the course of his patrol, the Policeman would listen to personal troubles, wrongs and fancied wrongs of people living in a world apart; a harsh forbidding world.

He would fill in forms, issue licences, and often turn to and help to repair windmills, or shoot cattle bogged down around a leaking trough, too weak to move or save themselves.

He would see the kangaroos, lolling in the shade, competing with the cattle for what little feed was available and through it all would never cease to wonder why men would continue to do battle with a country as hard and remorseless as this one.

It was just on dark when Langley stopped the plant, and the orderly bustle of unloading the camels, hobbling them out in a patch of ironwood to feed, stacking the saddles and preparing a meal commenced.

All these chores accomplished, he pulled out his tobacco and rolled a cigarette. He lay there smoking and gazing out over the haze of the distant plain.