A LONG DRIVE

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 18

A LONG DRIVE

"NEGOTIATING" COOK STRAIT.

Winter was in the air, and the bar portion of a well-known hotel in - the Waimate district was filled'by a miscellaneous collection of drovers, fairmers, and knights of the road, says F.R., in the "Timaru Herald." The parlour fire, handicapped by the wintry blasts that swirled around the chimney top, and the expectorations of the aesemb.led company strove valiantly to hold its own. The flowing bowl had been, passed, not .once nor twice, and the seneral conversation was rapidly approaching the stage when the pronoun I gets badly' overworked. The drovers held sway, and an.admiring crowd listened with ea°;er mien to tales of distant drives and heroic hardship. A bearded drover from the North claimed the record. He had taken delivery of three thousand wild station ; sheep at Blenheim in the middle of winter, and had delivered three thousand and five at Invercargill. nine weeks later. All eyea rested enviously on the bearded stranger as he sipped his "gin and' ginger" with, the careless air that denotes the master drover. A Waimate man -who evidently possessed a finer knowledge of sheep and cattle than the geography of our native country could stand the strain no longer, and with an heroic effort took the floor. "That's nothin'," he said. "I once took a four thousand mob from Auckland to the Bluff!" "Auckland to the Bluff!" the stranger incredulously inquired. "But what about Cook Strait." Nothing daunted the local champion tool: a long draught from his glass of ale, and expectorated with great disdain into the flickering coals." "Cook Strait be d d," he said, we went round the other way !"