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pioneers. Natives were shot, white men killed in reprisals, and settlers, in fear of their lives, demanded police protection. A band of Aborigines, trained to ride after and subdue their countrymen, had already been operating in other parts of Queensland and were now brought out to this wild west. At first it was said that their task was only to arrest and reason with the bush natives, but soon it became clear that the black police rode to kill and that they shot without pity at guilty and innocent alike.

    . . . the black police rode to kill . . .
 
    Patsy, indignant at this cruel injustice, protested in vain, and when he had news that the police were on the trail again would ride the countryside with the native boys to warn the outlying tribes. Some took advantage of his offer of protection at Thylungra but most would now trust no white man whatever and remained to die in the bush.
    The good seasons continued and the pioneers were becoming rich, but Patsy’s heart no longer sang as it had when the tide of fortune began to turn for them.
    â€˜What are they doing?’ he asked. ‘Do they not understand that these too are the children of God?’

11
Distant Horizons
    P ATSY hardly liked to admit his restlessness or the worry he now felt about the education of his elder boys. He had scarcely noticed how quickly the years were passing until he realized that the babies who had come with them to Thylungra were now gangling bush youths of twelve and fourteen. As much as anything in the world he had wanted his children to have the good education he had missed himself, but it was nearly impossible to get tutors in the far outback andthe thought of splitting up the family was almost more than he could bear.
    Having decided to keep his worries to himself for a little while longer, he was surprised one day when John Costello confessed that he too had been feeling restless and worried about his family. His eldest girl, born on Mobel Creek, was now ten years old and neither she nor any of his other children had ever seen the ocean.
    â€˜You should take them all for a holiday to the coast,’ Patsy suggested, and then the blow fell. Costello had been leading up to the news that he had suddenly accepted the offer of £60,000 for Kyabra and was leaving with his family the following week. He was now rich enough to purchase any property he wished and had set his heart on a lovely place with an ocean frontage near Rockhampton.
    As he watched them moving off with John’s old parents and several of the faithful Kyabra natives, Patsy knew the time had come to prepare for changes in their own lives, and that to begin with the elder boys must go to school.
    When he announced his decision the station was plunged into gloom. The blacks wailed and Mrs Patsy, Grandma Durack and the younger children wept copiously. Patsy, to hide his own feelings, kept saying how their schoolmates would envy his boys the thousand mile ride to college in Goulburn that now lay before them.
    It was November 1879 when they set off, Patsy and his wife in the buggy, the two boys and the native Willie riding alongside. People prophesied that the ‘wet’ would catch them on the road, the rivers wouldcome down and they would not get through, but Patsy vowed they would be in Goulburn on the opening day if they had to swim.

    Sure enough the rains set in before they reached the border. The Culgoa River that cut across their track south had come down in a mighty flood, sweeping, with the dry grass and driftwood of the Queensland plains, into the river channels of New South Wales. Strong men with good horses were seldom baulked by flooded streams but to get a woman, two boys and a buggy across was another matter. Patsy knew of a station on the other side from which he could obtain help so he and Willie bare-back rode into the swirling current, and as their horses began to swim, slipped off and clung to their tails, reaching the opposite bank about