Old Melbourne Memories by Rolf Boldrewood

Excerpt from book:
” From the lubras,” rather consciously ; ” I gave them beef in exchange.” ” A very fair one,” but a light suddenly striking upon my mental vision. ” Where do the lubras get them from ? They toil not, neither do they spin ! ” ” I don’t know for certain, sir,” she answered, looking down, ” but they’re digging the potato crop, I believe, at Campbell’s farm.” Here was foreshadowed the enormous Warrnambool export, that immense intercolonial potato trade, which has latterly assumed such proportions, and which invades even this far north-western corner of New South Wales. What glorious times I had, gun in hand, or with our three famous kangaroo dogs, slaying the swift marsupial. In those days he was tolerated and rather admired, no one imagining that he would be, a couple of generations later, a scourge and an oppressor, eating the sparse herbage of the overstocked squatter, and being classed as a ” noxious animal,” with a price actually put on his head by utilitarian legislators. THE DEATH of VIOLET. Though kangaroo were plentiful, they were not so overwhelming in number as they have since become. Joe Burge and I had many a day’s good sport together on foot. Like Mr. Sawyer and other sensible people we often saved our horses by using our own legs. For the dogs, Chase was a rough-haired Scotch deerhound, not quite pure, yet had she great speed and courage. Nothing daunted her. I saw her once jump off a dray, where she was in hospital with a broken leg (it had been smashed by the kick of an emu), and hobble off after a sudden- appearing kangaroo. She was said to have killed a dingo at ten months old—no trifling feat. Nero and Violet were brother and sister. They were smooth-haired greyhounds—the ordinary kangaroo dog of the colonist—very fast; and from a distant cross of ” …