Over the Sliprails

There were about a dozen of us jammed into the coach, on the box seat and hanging on to the roof and tailboard as best we could. We were shearers, bagmen, agents, a squatter, a cockatoo, the usual joker - and one or two professional spielers, perhaps. We were tired and stiff and nearly frozen - too cold to talk and too irritable to risk the inevitable argument which an interchange of ideas would have led up to