Published in 1891, this book by Alexander J. Boyd describes life
in the Queensland bush as witnessed by him during his time as a
school inspector and journalist. The collection of sketches of
Queensland life includes a stockman, shepherd, drover, pioneer,
fencer, splitter, timber-getter, cockatoo farmer, barman,
barmaid, larrikin, carrier, mailman, coachdriver, hawker,
swagsman, loafer, digger, prospector, bush doctor, bush banker,
pearl-sheller, bush butcher, sugar-boiler, independent
schoolmaster, and school inspector. Other chapters cover the
grog shanty, the gold escort, the native police, the noble
savage, the Chinaman and colonial institutions. There are
numerous black and white illustrations accompanying the text. A
LONG-SUFFERING, patient, much-enduring individual is the sugar-
boiler. On him depends the fate of a crop which has taxed the
time, the knowledge, and the labour of the planter. Woe be to
the sugar-boiler if the coolers be not hard, if the grain of the
sugar be not large, if there be an undu