Bald-headed Joe.

It's sundown and a line of sheep trail over a hill in a moving white chain. Two magpies swoop back and forth over a weeping willow at the edge of the stream. The woolshed is beginning to blur and the old dray with its shafts turned up looks like a cat reaching for a bird. The cook-house looks warm with its square of illumination plastered on its darkening face. Bald-headed Joe stands at the door and bangs a tin plate with a fork. The angelus never sounded sweeter. A bull bellows dispiritedly from behind the homestead. Bald-headed Joe answers with a final tattoo. He is the original pattern from which have been cut all station cooks who ever turned a flap-jack that could be used as a saddle blanket. And when he dies, it will mean that sheep and cattle raising are being conducted from town by beam wireless. Euclid would have said that all Joes are the same Joe. He always comes from Bristol and has invariably been to sea. That is why he takes to the land. He never laces his boots and is ever tripping himself up on the tags. His trousers seem to hang to his hips mainly by accident and a piece of string. By some miracle, defying the laws of gravity and decorum, they never quite get the drop on him. He possesses the only bottle in the world that never becomes empty however much is taken out of it. He never hurries except when his “long-horn” moustaches catch fire over the stove and he dashes to the water barrel to submerge them. He is bald, bulbous and pontificial, and carries with him the autocratic dignity of “the last of the line.” Joe is a memory which will last until memory passes.

Face To Face With Facts

“His long-horn moustaches catch fire over the stove and he dashes to the water barrel to submerge them.”

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