EXIT SUNDOWNER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8855, 4 July 1907, Page 1

EXIT SUNDOWNER.

The Sydney Dally Telegraph has Ibsen lamenting the passing of the sundowner, taking as its text the evidence of a witness before the Arbitration Court, who declared that back country life was losing most of its picturesque features. The sundowner was long a prominent feature of Australian country life, buthe has disappeared before the advance of railways and civilisation. As the Telegraph says, the primitive type cf Australian station was not run on the hard business principles which later conditions have brought into operation Before the days of railways and telegraphs it was more isolated, and the stress of life was not so great. Anyone who turned up at sundown for a night’s lodging could get it, and a meal or two was a matter of no consequence to the station owner. The su'downer in , those days typified the class that ’went about looking for w'ork and praying not to find it, but ho could tell a good slory, perhaps, and white strangers’ faces were not overfrequently seen by the lonely denizens of the bush then. Circumstances havejehrnged in recent years. There is more method in the pastoral business, and less of the Arcadian element. The station is run with union labour, there is no place for the chance caller looking for a few days’ nominal woik, and so the sundowner, instead of roaming tie wilds on the pretence of looking for a job, joins tho professional unemployed in the city. ‘fJHis place will 1 e missed in Australian literature,'’ says the Telegraph, “for Avhile he nad a certain air of the picturesque about him in his original capacity there is no romance connected w.th the life of his present-day representative figuring cn a deputation from the Queen’s Statue to the Minister for Works. The car of what is sailed' modern progress has juggeruauted the old fashioned sundowner, riding or walking about from station to station, always sure of finding at east bed and board with, perhaps, die fiction of some kind of temporary ob that kept him above the ranks if mendicancy.” The swagger has ?one to a great extent from New Zealand abo, but mainly because ! rho co-operative works and the extension of settlement have found lermanent employment for him.