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THE OLD STATION.
There are few countries in the world with such varieties of climate as Australia, and though some stations are out in the great, red-hot, frying wastes of the Never-Never, others are up in the hills where a hot night is a thing unknown, where snow falls occasionally, and where it is no uncommon thing to spend a summer's evening by the side of a roaring fire.

In the matter of improvements, too, stations vary greatly.

Some are in a wilderness, with fittings to match; others have telephones between homestead and out-stations, the jackeroos dress for dinner, and the station hands are cowed into touching their hats and saying "Sir." Also stations are of all sizes, and the man who is considered quite a big squatter in the settled districts is thought small potatoes by the magnate "out back," who shears a hundred and fifty thousand sheep, and has an overdraft like the National Debt.
Kuryong was a hill-country station of about sixty thousand acres all told; but they were good acres, as no one knew better than old Bully Grant, the owner, of whose history and disposition we heard something from Pinnock at the club.

It was a highly improved place, with a fine homestead--thanks to Bully Grant's money, for in the old days it had been a very different sort of place--and its history is typical of the history of hundreds of others.
When Andrew Gordon first bought it, it was held under lease from the Crown, and there were no improvements to speak of.