TOO TOUGH.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXI, Issue 10921, 22 September 1932, Page 4

TOO TOUGH.

WHY CATTLEMEN KEEP SINGLE Adelaide, Sept. 13. “Those rodeo men are super-men. The tragedy is that so many are leaving no sons behind them,” said the Rev. John Flynn, “Flynn of the Inland.” But these “supermen” have many reasons for not marrying. Half a dozen of them discussed the problem in Sir Sidney Kidman’s •ffice.

“We don’t want to be confirmed bachelors,” said Mr J. Milne, of Momba Station, New South Wales. “Like any Other men, we would like to look ahead to a snug home, a wife, and family.” said Mr E. Spencer, manager of Quinyambie, New South Wales.

“Summing up,” said Mr Charlie Smith, of Bulloo Downs, “first we’ve got no money. Then, where would we park the wife? Where are we going to find a nice girl? And she must be nice to submit to the conditions outback. “There’s not one of us who would ask a nice girl to face the life. Then being married we would want children. Education costs money, and we haven’t got it and never will have enough to keep a wife as we would want to.” “Tons of Gh-ls.” “It’s all right to say there are tons of girls. We are down in the city now busting up our twelve months’ savings on a holiday,” said Mr E. Skett, of Bulloo Downs. “There’s a sort of a glamour about us. Rough-riders, men of the outback, and all that sort of thing. But getting down to tin-tacks, what city-bred girl could really -put up with the sort of home we could give her? There would be no electric lights, no refrigerators, ho anything that made for com-fort. “Most of us are away from the homestead for perhaps a week or perhaps a month at a time. There isn’t any glamour about a man who hasn’t shaved for a month, and who can’t even manage a, wash every day.”

“Here’s another problem,’’ said Charlie Smith. “We are men and we like the life. We are all jolly good fellows and get on well together. Give ns each a wife and plenty of money. Leave all the wives at the homestead while we are out on the run. What’s going to happen to five or six women left in each other’s company for about three weeks? “When we get back I shall be told off to tell Sketty that his wife has insulted my wife, or, to cut a long story short, there will be strained relationships between men who have been jolly good friends.” “Hear, hear,” chorused his fellow stockmen.

“Would Play on Nerves.”

“Flynn’s right, too,” said Mr Pierce Edwards, jun., of Nyelro Station, Queensland. “It’s the isolation that would get on a woman’s nerves. It is all right for men. They have their job, but a woman is cut off from everything.” “We’ll be old men with long beards before we are in a position to marry,” said Charlie Smith, with a grin. “The conditions are too tough, a.nd I think most of us would prefer to be single rather than see our wives roughing it and becoming roughened in the process. Meeting nice girls in Adelaide has brought that home to us properly.”

The “supermen” grinned simultaneously. “We hit out for home to-morrow, and although we have had a rattling good holiday, we’ll be glad to be back again, even without wives,” they said.